Pizy

As incredibly annoying as it is to see Spuds continuing this dream start under Big Ange, at least the silver lining of this poor start to our season is that United look even worse than us. They’ve been horrific in EVERY match they’ve played in the PL thus far. Even in their 2 wins they were tremendously fortunate that their opponent couldn’t finish despite dominating them. Seems I will be proved right with my prediction that they would take a considerable step back from last season’s position.

The blueprint has 100% been set on how to play against Chelsea when we use this formation by both WH & Forest. 1) Sit super deep and congest the box 2) Let us have all of the possession 3) Hoof long balls repeatedly up to a super physical, athletic striker who can bully our CB’s 1v1 4) Wait for the guaranteed horror show mistake that they pounce on and score 5) Shut the game down again defensively again Of course, what could destroy this game plan that every small club we come up against will use is to have an actual, natural attacking player instead of Chilly playing high up and most importantly of all SCORE BEFORE THEY DO. If we fucking scored goals before our opponents they’d then have to open up and chase the game.

Definitely his poorest performance yet for us but STILL should’ve scored at least 1. That Werner/Torres like miss was inexcusable. Think it’s pretty clear that Jackson may struggle against opponents like this and as a result the whole team will continue to struggle against low blocks with 10 men packed deep defending. He wants to run in behind and use open space to kill defenders with a quick turn and sprint. Being unable to do that really hampers him.

Everyone can score goals for fun except for us.

I really did have genuine belief that we would bounce straight back up to at least competing for 4th this season. But it looks like another season of pain is on the way and it’ll be another season out of Europe next time around. This rebuild is going to take a while. What’s most gutting is that several of our rivals have or are currently going through their own rebuilds but have hit the ground running instantly. United finished in the wilderness 2 years ago and bounced straight back up to finish 3rd. Newcastle turned into a genuine top 4 threat virtually overnight. And now even fucking Spuds have completely changed their team and look transformed. Then there’s us. On paper we are PACKED with talent none of those clubs I named have at their disposal. But none of that quality is concentrated in the most important area: a fucking goal scorer. We might sadly have an Arteta like rebuild where it takes a couple of years of pain and mediocre finishes with flashes of promise before eventually exploding in year 3. But there’s no way we’d have the patience for that considering the money we’ve spent. And tbf, it shouldn’t take that long with these players.

Is a single journalist actually going to do their job and ask the question to Poch about why he is playing this turgid system? How the fuck have we not heard his reasoning yet? He played a 4-2-3-1 at Spuds for years, he played a back 4 all preseason which the players took well to, and then goes completely away from it. Why?! Ask him why, you useless fucks! If we come back from the break and see it again I’m done watching for a while.

It’s just insanity that we played one system all preseason, looked promising doing so, and then just completely switched the second the real thing started and not looked back. Is that ALL because of the injury to Nkunku? Seriously, how the fuck do you explain this?

We looked at our opening fixtures and were so optimistic about getting off to a flyer to put that nightmare of a season behind us. Now we’ve already lost against 2 teams Chelsea sides of the past would've battered. And we still lose games in identical ways to last season. Teams like West Ham and Spuds who everyone expected to struggle massively after selling their best players have gotten better whilst we have taken zero strides forward. And now we have to stew in this abysmal defeat for 2 weeks. After which we’ll probably return with 5 fresh new injuries from international duty and against another side who will park the bus and stop us from scoring. 😡😡😡

We haven’t changed at all from last season despite all the new players. Still dominate all the ball, still pass it around 1000 times, still create plenty of chances, still concede horrendous goals from individual errors over and over again, and STILL CANT SCORE GOALS. And this was against perhaps the worst side away from home in England. We’re still the laughingstock of the entire football world. A disgrace to the shirt. Just 4 matches into the new season and already MILES off the top end of the table.

Spuds sold the best striker in the league, have a new manager, new system, bunch of new players and have scored 5 and counting today. Us, meanwhile….

Look at the scores of the other matches flashing on the screen and see every other big club scoring for fun whilst we struggle desperately to score 1. Depressing, man.

FOR FUCKS SAKE, MAN Any other big side creating these chances would be out of fucking sight right now. Yet our opponents only ever need ONE chance and score against us.

Our players get pushed over and no fouls given. Their players get knocked over we get yellow cards.

Of course. First goal in 44 games and it comes against us.

Chilly is dangerous when he’s bombing into the opponents box but he doesn’t have the pace, recovery reaction, or positional awareness to play in this role. Either play him as a LB/LWB or don't okay him at all.

Don’t think we’ve played poorly at all here. Just missing that creative spark of a player in our attack against a super congested, deep sitting defense. We’re creating plenty of half chances and getting the ball in dangerous areas but that last bit of quality in the last action is missing.

Yet more Gallagher square passes that start an opponents counter. He’s truly the new Ross Barkley. Desperate for him to become nothing more than a squad player. Nowhere near the quality on the ball to be starting for us.

The ONLY mode of attack they have is hoofing it up to him. Double up on him if we have to, ffs.

We have to pick up the damn tempo in possession. This walking the ball up the pitch stuff plays right into their hands.

True, but with Mudryk, Palmer, and Madueke all available to play here I’d rather throw them in against a poor Forest side at home than have Chilly playing out of position.

I’m just annoyed that there are so few potential goal scorers in these XI’s. Literally only 2 of our starting lineup I genuinely think to myself have a good chance of scoring, Sterling and Jackson. And elite club should have about 4 or 5 in their first XI. Enzo and Caicedo aren’t really goal threats, Gallagher hasn’t been since he returned here from Palace, and Chilly isn’t even an actual attacker. We need to switch to 4-3-3 after the international break when a bunch of our players are hopefully back fit.

I realize he didn’t have a preseason really, but does anyone else find it strange that Lavia still isn’t even fit for the bench yet? Did he arrive here significantly overweight or something? Caicedo also had basically no preseason and he was ready almost immediately.

Back 3 with Chilly on the wing again….🤦‍♂️

Sadly think we’ll continue to see the back 3 until Lavia is fit and ready to go. At least I hope that’ll be the end of it. As for this match, I have no idea what to expect from Forest. I’ve watched them a couple of times so far this season and they’ve looked okay in spells and horrific in others. Their big #9 is an absolute handful in the same way that Michail Antonio is and as we saw a couple of weeks ago that kind of high energy, physical forward causes us issues. Gibbs-White is a threat as well. They’ve signed so many damn players since just their last match that who the hell can know what to expect. They went up 0-2 at Old Trafford last weekend and then proceeded to get dominated and surrender meekly. There was a point in that match where the possession stats came up on the screen and it read 90% for United and Forest were pathetic. Can see this being a super defensive Forest with lots of long balls up to the striker who will try to get isolated against Silva or Colwill. Park the bus, long balls, and Gibbs-White set pieces will be their game plan. Very similar to West Ham with Antonio and Ward-Prowse.

Could he be replacing Burstow as the “last few minutes of the game” striker? Kind of hard for me to imagine that it was Poch’s intention and plan to have yet another totally unproven and raw teenager to depend on in an already inexperienced squad. Feels to me like we bought him with the clear idea of sending him straight out on loan but simply ran out of time. Although…..Fabrizio has been saying in some of the tweets about Washington that it wasn’t actually certain that he’d go out on loan and he could stay. So I don’t know whether to believe my gut feeling or Fab.