Jase

Confidence likely battered and he has a clueless manager in charge.

I'd say that Solskjaer, in the past two seasons, at least looked like he had a plan especially in the big games. But with Ronaldo in the team all of a sudden, whatever he was trying to build - if he had a plan - went out of the window.

United ended the game with more shots against their own goal than City's.

There's Kante for that in midfield.

The one at the Etihad was worse. City were in the middle of a busy period, IIRC, and just came off a cup final and we turned up there by just strolling around with City nowhere near their best. Again IIRC, Conte said he went there in damage limitation mode

🤝

United's first half performance reminded me of Conte's defensive approach aka waiting-to-be-beaten setup at the Etihad in 2017. And Solskjaer is literally all vibes and no tactics, no plan. He is so similar to Lampard, or might even be worse than him.

Think Tuchel wants physicality.

At the risk of jinxing it, is anyone really concerned about United now? I guess, if anything, it's better to just pull away from 5th and the rest just so that we don't get pulled into another Top 4 scrap. But one can't deny that the fixtures of late have also been kind. We play Malmo (twice), Southampton in the cup and Norwich, Newcastle and Burnley - three teams who have won only ONE league game between them this season. Imagine if we had these injuries earlier this season or later this month/next month with tougher fixtures.

lol No. As Tomo mentioned, there's a difference between training and actually playing matches, U21 or not. Games are still games and they can be used to maintain the momentum and heck, given who we have played recently, they might as well be U21 matches of sorts. Don't think the comparison is quite on the mark. The Alonso-Chilwell was in pre-season, where the former returned early, trained and able to play matches as well to get going while the latter returned later due to the Euros and was supposedly not in the best frame of mind because of what happened at the tournament. It wasn't all just training. Both Alonso and Chilwell didn't get called up for the September international break but Alonso continued playing because he was still in decent form then. But that went out of the window after the Juventus game and Chilwell came back straight in. He got into form, then played matches (he even scored) with England in October - Alonso also played matches with Spain - and was able to continue his momentum with us after returning.

A gap is nice but it's still only 11 games in and nothing is decisive yet. Moreover, we haven't even gone through the November-December period yet, a period of where we have typically gone downhill in past seasons.

Don't think it's secured either way and one might argue that CHO could be better off playing during the international break to at least maintain his momentum instead of going two weeks without playing.

Isn't it a bit too early to think about gaps, other teams dropping points etc?

Looks like Eddie Howe will be going to Newcastle and thank god we have played them once already this season in the league. He somehow always turns into peak Mourinho against us and shithouses his way to a win.

Not a surprise given who wrote the article. Agree with both of you there but one other thing TAA has over James right now is that the former has been doing it right back for a good few seasons now. James has yet to do it consistently. Never mind the goalscoring form - is it just a purple patch or is it something more? - James' final passes can still be rather dodgy.

Not saying your notion is necessarily wrong but you're comparing players who are going through poor spells for different reasons.

You're not wrong, mate. You have all the power to talk about whatever you want!

Bring on Bayern!

With the away goals rule now gone, starting the first leg at home might not be a big disadvantage like before.

Nothing to suggest that we won't go buy another attacker if we sell Ziyech.

Think we'll survive.

But he's at his peak age, he's supposed to be the finished article and yet his performances have been inconsistent. If he goes somewhere else and does well, it could be down to several factors why that could be the case, such as the nature of the league for example as opposed to the manager not getting the best out of him. And not to mention, Ziyech has also gotten more chances than De Bruyne and Salah ever did here.

He turns 29 next year though, completely different scenario to the De Bruyne and Salah situations.

Emery is out of the picture. Eddie Howe is now the favorite apparently. 🤣