didierforever

false 9 is played in a number of ways. what jose wanted is pace upfront. he wanted united to commit their fullbacks (which they normanlly do) and then us to hit them hard on the counter. add to it rio's pace and u have a decent plan but we were poor on the day and united simply dint commit for the win. no need to re-iterate. we all know the need and the want of a good striker.

u do what is best for the team. not for the investments. plus we would be tweaking our set-up. the games will still be controlled by our AMs. the team may not be scoring more goals as all this is hypothetical, but the last balls will be falling on the feet of the best goal-scorer in the team. so the probabilty increases that much more. right now, i would say RAMBO is our best finisher or rather someone i would like a 1v1 fall to. goes on to say a lot about our ST and CAMs i think u forgot everton and norwich among them too. dint u? at goodison park and carrow road they are a tough nut to crack. and by the way these will be the level of teams we will be playing against normally. infact everton's organization in goodison park might be one of the top10. 42 chances!!!!! what chances??? i have seen every united match. all i can say is welbeck missed a sitter against us, rvp missed one against sunderlan, and a couple against leverkusen but apart from that, i cant think of any sure-shot chances. if u think rvp putting his shoes thru a cross directed from young and valencia becomes a chance than i simply cant argue with that. compare that with the etoo chance or ba chance (rambo low cross) and u will know the difference.

taking up the striker role in an unorthodox manner - points a lot to false 9. as for the 2nd part - dint get it??? i said they wont be better target men than OUR strikers so why the comparision with these strikers?

we have done that in the most important match we have played so far, UNITED AWAY. when jose dint trust ba, torres or lukaku to be a better option upfront than schurlle. but again, the point comes back to would those AMs be better targetmen than our strikers?

so roman will fire jose if he plays long ball? i dont get the point u r trying to make. jose is using the players we have which (which have changed for the strong and bullish of the likes of ballack to mazacar). he is accomadating them the best he feels. and yes, that will take some time. but in the meantime he has to deliver the right results. because i dont think a trophy less year, but good football year would guarantee jose's job next year. but the vice-versa almost certainly does. there was not much irony. ba was our biggest threat when norwich were defending deep. the 2 chances he had when he hustles ruddy, the mata thru ball that he could not convert, the rambo low cross. u cant say it dint work because in the end, even our first goal came from a long ball, which ba won and put it in the path of oscar. as for the goal no.2 and 3, i can see why jose did that. norwich were no longer the defendors, in fact they were the aggresors. the game had become very open and more sutied to etoo/torres' style of play than ba's. so it was not much of a suprise with what happened. again, i am in no longer saying that ba is good enough. i would have preferred lukaku myself. i mean watch his hold-up play for everton, its just brilliant. but with the options we have, ba is the best for it.

oh dear!!! and do u think we would play this system even with an awesome target man ahead like rvp, cavani or falcao? do u think jose would say things like "i dont know why ivanovic was putting crosses into the box because i dont think DD plays for us!!!" we are playing in this system because jose knows that right now our AMs are a bigger threat than our strikers. he knows the limitations and constraints of all our strikers and is trying to use them in the best way we can. to say that we would have been playing the same way with a World Class ST and targetman upfront is ridiculous. i mean even for a moment u think we would play exactly the same way if we had DD in his prime upfront. NO WAY. we would be playing something like how BVB plays. the striker wont just have a role of creating space for AMs (which good ST anyways do for other players thru their movement) but also be a worthy outlet for our AMs. ps - all u need to do is watch our last season's away defeat to WBA. for 60 odd minutes, we had no chances. our only goal came from a hazard freak header. but as soon as rdm changed sturridge from the right wing to the striker position and brought mata on for torres, sturridge had 3 1v1 which had a lot to do with his off the ball movement and his movement to run behind the defence. and that is what will happen with a good striker. we will become far more direct and way more threatening. (like i said before, just like BVB). also those stats about conversion rate, tell me how many of those were clear-cut chances like the ones, etoo had against everton and bucuresti, ba had against norwich or torres had against swindon. falcao/cavani take a number of shots from outside the box, and play a lot of percentages with their runs and headers and shots from crosses. but give them the chances, that our strikers have had and they will convert 9 out of 10 of those chances.

no one needs to be told that ba is not good enough. he was a stop gap that we bought to plug a hole. we wanted to loan him out and that speaks a lot. but let us look at our options. is torres good enough? hell no. why is he still here - because roman and the board are unwilling to accept the 50 mil pounds shambles he was. is etoo good enought? definitely no. why is he here - because we could not get falcao, cavani and rooney and he was the only one close to good enough, ex WC player that we was available in the market, that too for free. looking at our options, while accepting that ba is not good enough, i would still say ba is the best of our options. so far he has not had any problems with his knees for us, and even if he does, we would not moan twice about it. going to the ground or not, he wins us balls in the air. luiz canot play out of the defence all the time. watch how van wolveswinkel kept biting at his ankle, because teams know we dont have a way out except for luiz. so their is not much of ball retention for us without ba. as for roman - he can want what he wants, but right now the the manager is JOSE and even for a second i wont believe that jose would have made it completely clear to roman that he would want total control of this team.

how are you saying that??? most strikers in the world are deadly when u put the ball into the box, the likes of falcao, cavani, ibra, but our strikers dont even fight for those half balls. they dont put the defence under that minimum pressure to fluff their clearances or make a mistake. ba did that against norwich that is the reason he had so many chances. twice he made rudy make a mistake. torres and etoo dont and simply cant hustle the defenders. so a whole dimension of attack is lot to us when playing with out current STs because we simply cant cross the ball into the box. the movement of our strikers is decent specially etoo, but half the times he simply cant get the ball off his feet. that one second is all that professional defenders need to cover it up. and thats the difference between WC strikers and our current crop. i mean how many of united's goal scored by rvp and rooney combined are tap-ins. they have scored from 50-50 oppurtunities (rooney FKs, rvp over the head goals) rather than scoring bare tap ins. as for the majority of chances, they are getting it. telling me the no. of sure shot goal opportunities missed by all our AMs and compare it to the ones missed by the STs. our AMs are doing the things that are STs are supposed to do. they have to create as well as score. double-pressure. i mean the oscar goal against norwich was a half chance or lamps goal against bucuresti was a half-chance but not the ones our STs have been missing.

highly disagree. the chances ARE currently falling to the ST. against everton - etoo had the best 2 chances. against bucurest - again etoo had a couple of glorious chances. against swindon - torres easily could have had a hat-trick. against norwich - ba should have had a hat-trick. these are sure-shot chances. chances which ST like rooney, rvp, falcao, cavani, ibra would convert with their eyes closed. and all these chances are without counting the 50-50 chances. chances like the one RVP converted against leverkusen with united 1-1. valencia putting in an awkward cross, chest high, behind the striker and rvp still converted to change the whole game. i dont think we would have to change our game at all, just change the STs and we ll be set.

arsenal (away) thats it. 2 and a half years and that is one match in which you can say he was a 50 million striker. against bayern he did score a goal but was not even in our top 5 performers on the day - hazard, oscar, schurlle, cole, cech. i dont think that is a good stat in anyway. ba is a better targetman and a better option for us specially when playing away against organized and physical defences (which is almost all PL teams). torres is a better option when playing against teams like tottenham and bayern because they will give him space and he will be better suited in a counter-attacking situation.

those "good days" were against pub sides in europa, while ba was playing in the PL. an "in-form" torres is a myth which after 2 and a half years i refuse to believe in.

i am not sure what exactly is iniesta's best attribute, his passing, his vision, his dribbling, his understanding of the game... he is a different class altogether.

in that case, tell me how many goals has torres scored in PL? u r talking as if torres playing would mean a definite goal over ba and etoo. sorry to disappoint u but that is far-far-far from the truth.infact, most of the games, playing torres becomes a liability. we have 3 strikers who have different strengths. and as i mentioned to bushman, i expect mourinho to play them according to their strengths and the oppostion's weakness.

who would not have wanted that? falcao/cavani in the blue shirt. the perfect targetmen. i feel cavani would have been perfect. strong, workman-like player, proper jose player. also their names would have preceded them. i feel the opposition defenders are no longer scared of our strikers the way DD used to make them or the way, rvp and rooney make them. they are more worried about our AMs. these guys could have done us wonders and would have taken so much pressure off our AMs. but since it dint happen,we have to make do with what we have. i feel ba suits us most against organized defences especialy away from home (like norwich, cardiff, stoke,wba etc). etoo suits us when teams come at the bridge to park the bus so as to break down the defences. and torres when he gets space and chances to run at the defenders (like tottenham, and other big games). my take on things. we have to make do with what we have.

in that case, the BAGGIES got 3 at OT.

a good day? when does that come? or rather when will that come. with ba and etoo, the law of averages has to catch up soon. i mean , the everton game, etoo could have had 2, ba yesterday could have had a hat-trick, and soon they WILL start taking their chances. and the statement "these two don't look like getting a goal between them" is so wrong. they do look like getting a goal. after 20-25 minutes in the norwich game, u definitely would have predicted ba scoring a goal, rather than not scoring one. but he had no luck. even from 4 yards out somehow it just dint go in and sometimes u need that luck and like i said, it will happen.

that is true. specially with the kind of "small" AMs we have got, we need a physical presence. but u know, in a year or two, lukaku will have almost all the attributes u just described for costa. i feel what we need now is rooney/ibra/tevez. "hustlers" (as u said) but WC finishers, who the defenders are scared to go up against.

i expect PL specially looking at the way other teams (city mostly) are playing. right now, our squad is only 2nd to city in PL but our manager is a 100 times better. he just earned us 3 points. on the other hand, pellegrini started with richards and clichy (out for 4 months and 1 month respectively), with navas and nasri on the wings against the best side in europe. carling and FA cup - are very arbit and hard to predict but i do expect jose to go for one of them. CL- dont think we have it in us to win it this year. maybe semis. barca, bayern, psg, rm, bvb are definitely better teams. but in a year or 2 with a WC ST and CDM, we will be there.

sometimes the desperation to play is poorly considered as an "attitude problem". i dint know much about morrison so cant say anything but totally understand pogba's stand. right now he is playing alongside vidal and pirlo in a juve mid-field and is playing some fantastic football. but after watching a 38 year old, back from the retirement, player play again and again over him, he would have been pissed. or for that matter even cleverly got the nod ahead of him.

i would take ba and etoo's poor finishing than torres' well... anything. the fact that these 2 our missing chances means they are getting at the end of things. they are taking their shots, getting at the end of crosses and moving well. i can guarantee that torres would not have even tried to get at the end of the ramires' low cross that ba embarassingly missed.he has barely been involved but given a real go, he will start converting them and then we ll be fine. same goes for etoo. also ba gives us the option of retaining possession exponentially when we hoof the ball from gk when luiz is being pressed by opposition strikers. also it gives us a directness in our play for JT and lamps to find a striker with a long ball. now dont get me wrong. torres this season has been decent but i am not going to fall for "he is back" stuff.

somebody start the slow clap... pls...

why??? he is in red hot form but simply not that good... and again, he is the main focus of atm's attack. everythin goes thru him. i think what we need is a box player,a poacher who can finish whatever is thrown at him in the opposition D.

wishful - YES, probable and possible - also YES. every manager needs top players (maybe except saf, how he won the PL with this united squad is unthinkable). we expect jose to win us PL, FA, CARLING and CL. for that he defo needs top players. right now we are about one ST short.

hansen is a wanker. i have not seen motd2 yet so maybe u r right. but in general i find it is fair. specially with shearer.

always thought he was quite pacy. specially his pace on the ball is quite good. i know we dint see that pace last season. but if u remember the pre-season, especially the game against seattle. english football is very tough. specially for a light-weight like marin. u either have to be absolute class to adjust or atleast have some faith from the manager. he has had none. now i cant see him play for us again.