billycopper
Player Valuation: £40m
If we'd drawn 0-0 or 1-1 yesterday all the pressure would have been on Van Gaal and we'd be talking about a decent draw to a team who have recently beaten City and Arsenal and only conceded one league goal since the start of March.
Yes, there are problems but Baines hasn't said that we have "no chemistry". He has said that "the chemistry isn't quite there at the moment". It's a major difference.
Our confidence is low and getting on their back isn't going to help. We need to stick together. If the team are afraid of making mistakes our football will become increasingly sterile and predictable and we'll still make mistakes anyway.
Yesterday Blind and Smalling were able to double up on Lukaku and he was receiving high balls with his back to goal. Even Ibrahimovich would have struggled to create anything for himself. I'd have liked to have seen us switch to 4-4-2, so that Rom could have isolated one of their centrebacks.
Our wingers were ahead of the ball when play broke down and McCarthy and Cleverley were overwhelmed. If we'd been a bit more compact in the middle it might have helped us to keep the ball better.
Baines and Coleman offered nothing going forward because they were afraid of leaving space in behind them. Our back four was still too stretched though and it was easy to play through us. If we had two banks of four spanning the width of the penalty area they wouldn't have broken us down and we had enough pace on the counter to trouble them.
I think that the team are disappointed that things seem to be going against them and they've become a bit despondent. It happens. It might be the catalyst for Martinez to change system and suddenly things will click into place. Perhaps we need to go to 4-3-3 with a Dogs of War trio of Besic, Barry and McCarthy in the middle and move Barkley out to the left? That might give us enough protection for the fullbacks to start bombing on again.
Until yesterday we'd lost the same number of games as City, Chelsea and Liverpool and only one more than United. We've still only conceded one more goal than Liverpool and Chelsea. And only the top four clubs have outscored us.
It's those fine margins that are costing us once again.
Yes, there are problems but Baines hasn't said that we have "no chemistry". He has said that "the chemistry isn't quite there at the moment". It's a major difference.
Our confidence is low and getting on their back isn't going to help. We need to stick together. If the team are afraid of making mistakes our football will become increasingly sterile and predictable and we'll still make mistakes anyway.
Yesterday Blind and Smalling were able to double up on Lukaku and he was receiving high balls with his back to goal. Even Ibrahimovich would have struggled to create anything for himself. I'd have liked to have seen us switch to 4-4-2, so that Rom could have isolated one of their centrebacks.
Our wingers were ahead of the ball when play broke down and McCarthy and Cleverley were overwhelmed. If we'd been a bit more compact in the middle it might have helped us to keep the ball better.
Baines and Coleman offered nothing going forward because they were afraid of leaving space in behind them. Our back four was still too stretched though and it was easy to play through us. If we had two banks of four spanning the width of the penalty area they wouldn't have broken us down and we had enough pace on the counter to trouble them.
I think that the team are disappointed that things seem to be going against them and they've become a bit despondent. It happens. It might be the catalyst for Martinez to change system and suddenly things will click into place. Perhaps we need to go to 4-3-3 with a Dogs of War trio of Besic, Barry and McCarthy in the middle and move Barkley out to the left? That might give us enough protection for the fullbacks to start bombing on again.
Until yesterday we'd lost the same number of games as City, Chelsea and Liverpool and only one more than United. We've still only conceded one more goal than Liverpool and Chelsea. And only the top four clubs have outscored us.
It's those fine margins that are costing us once again.
