Match Day Thread Manchester United versus Norwich City

At least it wasn't a "must win game." We had a free shot and didn't hit the bullseye, or the target, or the backdrop.

 

I'm tempted to put £50 on Norwich not receiving a Penalty this season .

That Cantwell V.A.R check would have been given if he had a red shirt 100%

 

Call me a happy clapper if you must, I shall wear it as a badge of honour. I bloody love my club!

 

#metoo Dave but this baron run is becoming arduous and confidence sapping.

 

My loyalty to the club is undiminished, but this season has been a real test of the self financed model. I'm not calling for a splash of the cash, but I would like to see us replace the 3 players who have left with better players. Duda would be a start and that seems to be happening and that shoul only cost a loan fee. Given our unlikely chance of survival, we might as well keep Idah in the squad as the third striker. What I'd really like to see is a quality CB, probably on loan, who would at least help us escape this season with some dignity intact.

 

This season isn't a test of the self-financing model Rick, it's a test of the Webber/Farke interpretation of "entertaining football". As I posted on the Season thread, if your approach is structurally flawed, you will fail, whatever the financial status of the club.

 

This season should now be about damage limitation so a replacement CB is a must, and investing in some quality players who will get us out of the Championship next season. We have the nucleus of a fantastic squad (if we can keep it together) and a couple of shrewd additions should see us in good stead for a bounce back next season.

Whatever happens we should not let defeats like today get us down (they are almost inevitable) and stick to the longer term plan.

 

I'm not sure it's a test of either!

Self-financing so far (under Webber/Farke) has been more about surviving than thriving. Without the sale of Maddison we'd have been in real trouble financially, never mind having the funds to address the squad. Hopefully going forwards, we'll be able to see more of the funds from player sales, etc, driven into improving the first team squad. This season was meant to end in play-off/automatic promotion contention, it wasn't planned to be in the Prem so quickly. Obviously that's a massive boost to the finances, but perhaps the club and squad were underprepared to be able to maximise that.

In terms of entertaining football, last season was certainly entertaining, but has any club ever been relegated playing football that the fans have loved? It's really difficult to entertain when you're not up to the level you're playing at. I think the playing out from the back, particularly when it leads to self-inflicted defeats, certainly tests the fans more than perhaps it should be allowed to, but otherwise the football style is about as good as it gets for a side out of their depth.

Where the two are linked, is that the self-financed model requires the style of football we're playing. Fundamentally our plan is to be able to buy players cheap and sell high. That requires us to look for players other clubs don't desire, in markets which develop more players that suit us. If our style relied on a 6ft10 lump of a striker, we'd be looking for far more expensive players. Those developed players must then be attractive to big clubs. Look at the likes of Burnley. Their playing style is effective and uses cheap players, but in the last two seasons the most they've sold a player for is £8m. Because no matter how many seasons Chris Wood scores 10+ goals Prem goals, he doesn't fit at big clubs.

Burnley have made £58m since summer 2016 in player sales, Norwich have made £98m. That's 3 championship seasons for Norwich, 3 Prem seasons for Burnley.


As for this transfer window, I want to seem money spent, but with one eye firmly on next season. We need signings that immediately improve us, but also who will be prepared to stay and dominate the championship. Duda is fine, but I'd be worried if we're signing too many short-term options.

 

To be honest, I don't want to agree with you, Robbie, but I am coming round to your way of thinking. Last season we were at least the equal of Sheffield United, although we took a very different approach to promotion than they did. But this season their tried and trusted way (be solid and don't screw up) has proved much more successful than Norwich's 'entertaining football'. (Villa don't interest me because anybody can spend 140 million and maybe survive, maybe screw up. I hope they screw up and go down with us because they have neither the honesty of the Sheffield approach nor the idealism of our approach. Anyone can spend 140 million and hope - it doesn't require genius, or even intelligence.)

I find it frustrating, though, because the Sheffield United way has its limits and what Farke is trying to do would push us beyond those limits, and at times we seem close to achieving that. And I know it sounds like a cop-out, but if Sheffield United had hit our injury problems, they'd be where we are today in all probability, so sometimes it doesn't seem as simple as we tried and we failed. For all the faults in our approach, the gods really have been against us this season.

I'm not sure I'm making much sense in this post, but I have to say I am finding this season so sad. Not because we are bottom of the league, but because it really does seem that the only way you can survive in the Prem is by being Burnley or Crystal Palace, playing percentage football and just hanging around until your luck runs out. I really don't want to go back to the days of Hughton and I honestly would prefer to be a successful Championship team than put up with that depressing negative anti-football week after week. But what's the alternative if we want to be in the top league? It seems there isn't one for clubs of our size.

 

We’ve just played a team who are worth a billion and whose “bad run” involved losing to other teams worth a billion. We lost without our best player and top scorer on the pitch.

To misquote Aragorn, there will come a day when our courage fails and we can go into meltdown, but it is not this day.

 

To add to my previous depressing post, my sense of gloom has been made worse by the idiocy that is our version of VAR. Not only does it seem impossible for small ambitious teams to play 'the beautiful game', but the people who run the game seem determined to take all of the beauty out of it by subjecting it to a 'Computer Says No' mentality. That goal by Pukki was a beautiful goal and if the future of the game is to be decided by morons with a slide rule and camera shots taken from 33 different angles who cannot see that beauty, perhaps I should take up origami.

 

Byram was poor for me, Tettey worked hard, Buendia worked hard and was bright for about 10-15 mins around the interval but it wasn’t a good performance other than that.

as a team we were dragged all over the place.

I foolishly though as they’d had a tough game in the week they would be a bit slower than us, that couldn’t have been more wrong, we were second to everything today

 

Having limited hope for this game, I was pleased to see the lineup, but we were punished for playing Vrančić in this case. ManUtd were 'reacting' to their home loss to Citeh, and we paid the price.

 

I'm unsure if it's been accepted you're going down, but if it's any consolation I have no doubt that Norwich will jump right back up. You have a good ethos, loyal fans, and if you keep these players and some additions you'll have a cracking squad.

Your attitudes here is extremely uplifting compared to the utter misery surrounding my own club.

 

Too painful - I decided to go to sleep at 3-0. I could not watch it any further. Not that I expected anything from the game to begin with.

 

That was peak pants from us, and it goes to show how much respect teams give to the threat of Pukki. We were dragged all over the place and sloppy as hell. The Finn somehow creates the balance all over the park for us as the opposition back four can never quite relax. Ho hum, we move on and learn some more.

 

yeah it certainly puts into perspective some of pukki’s matches where he fails to score!

he brings so much to the team and it was no surprise for me to see him listed well within the top 100 players in the world

 

A very well reasoned argument, DH. The two issues are linked and that is where the problem lies. Last season we succeeded because we were playing effective tactics against teams who struggled to counter them. This season we are playing the same tactics against teams which play those tactics better than us or teams which have learned how to stifle those tactics in order to survive.

The players we signed in the summer haven't improved us much. Roberts and Heise have gone without ever playing, Fährmann and Drmić have bee injured most of the season, so only Byram and Amadou have added to our output. This is the reality of the self-funding model in the PL. The injury crisis was the final blow, but that was in part due to having bargain players with a history of injuries, like Drmić and Klose. The outcome was a bad run of results which sapped confidence after a reasonable start to the season. I had hoped that we were pulling out of that, but our inability to hold on to the ball showed a lack of confidence and left us outclassed on the pitch. Yes, ManUtd have far more expensive players, but we failed to allow for that fully, trying to play them on their terms. That failed badly. I hope we learn from that, but like Robbie I'm not very optimistic. We need to play to our own strengths, but we also need to counter the strengths of the opposition. The latter is what we haven't done well enough except in a handful of games.

 

What the self-financing model requires is that we bring young talent on playing a style of football that creates resale value. In the modern game that means players technically proficient in defence as well as in attack. It's essential that we continue playing out from the back, making our way upfield with good movement and slick passing, and weight our penetrative attacking play to breaking through the centre. BUT it is equally important for the youngsters we bring through to be playing in a team collectively coached to defend. Everybody, apart apparently from us, can see that our ineptitude in that aspect of the game is why we will be back in the Championship next season, and if we don't accept the fact and address it, it will be no different next time we play in the EPL.

 

Too many times yesterday we had chances to clear the ball but opted for silly flicks or trying to dribble past Man U in front of our own goal, giving away the ball in dangerous areas and inviting pressure.

I'm not endorsing an Allardyce style lump it forward at every opportunity but I would estimate most of our goals conceded were not because of brilliant attacking rather than fannying about on the ball in defence and not marking players from crosses and set pieces.

I don't know If this is because of zonal marking but we get done from crosses far too often .