Match Day Thread United v Crystal Palace

Haha. You’re famous now, Chief. And you caught a rare moment of Fred dancing. A sight that must have made Treble shed a tear.

 

https://www.football365.com/news/diogo-dalot-new-hero-manchester-united-fans-mailbox

That article is a great balanced view of this new chapter. I won’t bother comment on Rangnick’s effect. We need to wait for a trend to be developed to really understand if the system works.

However, we definitively can start talking about individual players - the fullbacks! Dalot and Telles together bring so much to the team that I really don’t want to see Shaw especially come back as an automatic starter. He has to earn it! AWB also offers very little to attack plays. He in fact epitomizes the back to wall type of football that we have been playing on that right side where we have lacked consistent production for years. Greenwood made that right side better last year, but he couldn’t do it alone without a dynamic fullback. Dalot is exciting going forward and on balanced play is just a better player to AWB. Not sure why he didn’t get a chance but I’m guessing that the nationality of Shaw and AWB played a major role.

 

Tbh nothing is guaranteed but unfortunately this change had to be done as the previous regime has run out of road. Fingers crossed we’ve got a process that will lead to improvement but as long as our squad are being utilised and improved that’s all we can ask. The full backs under Ole were in a rut. Shaw and AWB played in all matches whether on form or not. Definitely a plus that the likes of Dalot and Telles are given a run. More competition if nothing else.

 

Just like the "pressing football" debate in the other thread, when I hear pressing football, what I hear is players working their socks off to get the ball back when they don’t have it. This is not a ground breaking concept and if you have players that are fitter than the average, then the byproduct is that they will work harder to retain control of the ball and without playing it sideways like we did under LvG. And if the players are as skilled as what we have in the squad, then we should be able control more games than we have in the last few years and accumulate more points.