13 Nov 2018 20:46:22
So here we are, a third of the way through the season in 8th place in the League and so far, it hasn’t been good. We have lost 4 of 12 league games, only 4 teams have conceded more goals, and we were knocked out of the League Cup at home to a Championship side. The Juve game appears to be the odd one out this year: poor displays against West Ham and Brighton, plus a shellacking at home to Spurs, topped off with the surrender to City at the weekend sum up our season.

Our signings have for the most part been failures and with the exception of Shaw, nobody is improving (I accept that Martial is starting to return to form) . Rashford is standing still, Lukaku is going backwards, Matic looks like his legs are going, Pogba remains infuriatingly average, Lingard has gone quiet, the £50M Fred looks lost, and Bailly was all over the place before being dropped. As for Sanchez, if there has been a worse piece of business in the history of our club then I’m struggling to remember it.

Herrera, player of the year 2 years ago, struggles to get into the team, whilst Matic gets picked week in week out. Mata, a player who rarely let's us down is in and out of the team.

I’m pretty confused right now. We finished runners up with the second best defensive record and Jose spent the summer slagging off the defence. We showed against Chelsea we can play well yet in other games we just didn’t turn up.

My view remains consistent. We may need new players but I believe that many other Managers would be getting far more out of this group thank Jose is. His ways don’t work any more, I expect him to get grumpier with every passing month before he has another implosion. The sooner the better for me.

1.) 13 Nov 2018
13 Nov 2018 21:29:35
Good post Tony. Agree on the point other managers would get more out of the current crop. Squad still has glaring deficiencies in key areas but it seems all of our ‘star’ players are playing well below their ability.

2.) 13 Nov 2018
13 Nov 2018 22:55:53
That Juve game that you talk about was pure luck, we didn't deserve to tied let alone win the game. Played really bad, horrible. I guess Juventus had a bad day.

3.) 14 Nov 2018
14 Nov 2018 00:02:41
Reman,

I totally disagree, we played very well against a top Juventus side and deserved at least a point. The win was maybe a bit lucky but we deserved to be in with a chance of winning the game.

We have the bottom 6 teams in our next 8 games, we will know a bit more about this season once it gets to the new year, our Christmas fixtures all look winnable, I think we will be almost in the top 4 by January.

4.) 14 Nov 2018
14 Nov 2018 00:57:44
We played well? Wow we didn't create anything De Gea kept us in the game, 2 free kicks got us the win. There were times where we couldn't even get out of our own half. Oh well i may be asking for too much i guess.

5.) 14 Nov 2018
14 Nov 2018 06:00:18
I thought we did well away against Juve. GDS, fair point, but the games against Brighton and West Ham were also winnable. Given the run of fixtures we have if we don’t see progress then something has to change.

6.) 14 Nov 2018
14 Nov 2018 08:47:39
I thought it was a poor performance against juve, glossed over by pinching 2 late goals. If juve take there chances we would of got stuffed . But that's football.

7.) 14 Nov 2018
14 Nov 2018 22:48:34
We did ok against juve away. Rode our luck a bit we could have been 3 down at half time.
But we won and played well in the 2nd half.
We won a final in 99 and played worse than we did against juve. It happens.