didierforever

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.

against everton, their analysis would have made u think that we had drubbed everton 4-0 (which should have been a case). i think the motd analysis is very fair in general. norwich deserved a point yesterday and deserved a some focus.

but we wont be selling our best player. i mean we can get 30 mil (easily) off just ba, marin, moses, kakuta and i seriously doubt they are anywhere near our plans. we already have 6 WC AMs and the likes of piazon coming thru. so definitely expect these 4 to be offloaded. lamps, essien is a maybe but lets see. but we have a LOT of options in this department. i mean rambo, lamps, mikel, essien, mvg, josh, romeu, chalobah. plus i think we will buy witsel/gundogan/bender or some other WC DM. so i do expect a lot of off-loading in this department too. etoo i feel wont be given an extension. he was a stop-gap and will remain so. we will definitely buy a WC striker next season. torres being sold is wishful, but i hope that comes true. lukaku as a 2nd striker and a WC striker (rooney) as the 1st one, would be ideal.

atleast he is boosting his re-sale value.

i feel next year, we will get back on some of the investments we have made. marin - sold moses - sold (or one of the current 6 AMs who are better than moses) kakuta - sold. ba - sold mikel - sold (?) torres- sold. lamps - retires/free agent essien - free agent etoo - free agent with the wages and the money generated by these transfers we can easily buy a high profile ST and CDM and bring back players like lukaku, josh and romeu.

exactly...

i feel, even if it had not worked, jose did make the right calls. there is a poster above who says "jose reminded him of rafa" and i say that is utter bullshit. jose had the balls of taking the risk and going all out for the win. all rafa would have done would have been like for like changes, and we ultimately would have dropped 2 or 3 points. jose knew that it would have been his head on the block if norwich had scored in a counter after taking off cole, yet, he made the right decision of going for the 3 points , as he knew how important a win would be. simply shows that he puts the team ahead of himself.

MOTM - jose mourinho. brilliant subs. took the risk and it damn well payed off... reminded me a little of how it was done in his first stint here. calling DD off the bench in a lot of games to change matches... good old mou.

will be interesting to see who jose plays in this game. after this match we have some important and relatively tough games on the trot. 19th - cardiff (h) 22nd - schalke (a) 27th - man city (h) 2nd - newcastle (a) 6nd - schalke (h) so this is a relatively easy game compared to the other games and they come thick and fast. so probably some squad rotation in this game. cech azpi cahill JT bert rambo mikel willian kdb schurlle torres (if fit). also with the other title "pretenders" and "contender" having tough fixtures, it maybe our week to open up some gap. pool play away to newcastle. tottenham play away to villa, united host southampton and city play away to west ham. so i expect atleast 3 out these 4 to drop points. will be interesting to watch jose's team selection for the game.