We are languishing in 10th, 8 points behind ‘struggling’ Man United. Defense is leaking goals, attack is largely misfiring and players are losing discipline.
The mentality has also become like that of a mid-table team. Nothing in and around the club screams world class at the moment.
I just don’t find many differences between Chelsea and say, Crystal Palace (apart from the wages and all). As fans, should we also have a mid-table mindset? Satisfied with draws against the big boys and finishing the season with 45-50 points?
This doesn’t answer the question but a big deal is being made of Man U’s struggles in the media (social and mainstream) so it’s easy to use them as a benchmark for “just how bad are we?” However, they’re not a good benchmark for that. Since the start of October, they’re the form team in the league having won every game except vs Man City. They’ve lost two games in the UCL that they shouldn’t be losing but that’s it (and Galatasaray are in splendid form right now anyway).
The thing with man u though is they haven’t really looked very good in many games this season. Having a GD of 0 and 24 points is quite mental. So are they a good side who’s grinding out results when playing poorly. Or are the results papering over the cracks.
They’ve only played 4 decent teams and lost all of them while struggling to beat the likes of sheff utd, Burnley and luton
They’ve won so many games in the last minute. They’ve looked terrible in every performance. People have this idea that they’re just out of form and because they are still winning, it means when they are in form they will be winning even more. That’s just not how it works, you return to your average over time. Right now their results make them look better than they are and they will start drawing/losing more until Ten Hag becomes a better manager or Rashford does that thing where he pretends he’s a good player for 10 games
The equal but opposite argument is “champions find a way to win when they’re not playing well.” I agree that form is more than just results, but the KPI of form is points.
That refers to top players/teams playing beneath their best. ManU aren’t a top team and don’t have top players. They were previously known for getting the most out of average players, whereas they are now known for getting the least out of decent players.
I love how people just ignore injury crises when it’s United that’s affected. When Liverpool have an injury crisis it’s on the News at Ten and people are holding vigils calling them heroes for not getting relegated.
To be fair, most of the teams in the league have an injury crisis at the moment. The scheduling last year really did a number on a lot of players.
This is a really fair assessment of our season. I don’t believe in making excuses but the injury list has been terrible and the games in the champions league we had a man sent off in each (which is definitely our fault there, just contextualising the games really). We have been off the boil in some games and we’re lucky in a few (Wolves springs to mind) but it does astound me how some teams are “high flying” in the media (I.e Liverpool who are 4 points in front and Newcastle who are 1 behind) yet United cannot seem to catch a break off people. We haven’t been amazing don’t get me wrong, but it feels like many fans (including Everton yesterday) view us as an easy fixture and then get a shock.
Yeah your troubles have been way overblown in the media because you are Manchester United.
I don’t think you have much of a footballing identity under Ten Hag, but to his credit you do end up getting the results you need. Like yesterday, outside of Mainoo you looked genuinely awful in the first half, but you managed to not concede and ended up getting the win.
And it’s quite funny to see how much the media obsessed over Ange and spurs for the first months of the season just to see them now only 2 points ahead of supposed disaster club Man United.
Yeah, there’s a lot of bandwagon thinking going on. I imagine that ETH won’t mind staying in form and getting piled on in the press for being rubbish though.