Facing familiar problems

I returned from a weekend away last night having gone to great lengths to avoid the score of our game, fully expecting the game to have been recorded only to discover my Sky box had crashed and hadn’t recorded it. After a foul mouthed tirade, I settled down grumpily to watch the highlights. Having suffered through that half hour, I realised I’d actually dodged a bullet not having to watch the whole game.

First off, how the mighty have fallen. I predicted the other day that United would try and keep it tight and ensure there was no repeat of last season’s 7-0 shellacking but I didn’t expect them to just completely park the bus. It’s embarrassing really, when you think of the money they’ve spent over the last decade that they travel to their fiercest rivals and set up like a newly promoted team but enough about them. We know they were crap before the game, the frustrating thing was our inability to capitalise on it.

Once again, the low block is our Achilles heel and to be honest, it almost feels like it’s been that way for most of the PL era, long before Klopp. The season we nearly won the league under Rafa, it was too many draws against poor opposition and damaging defeats to Middlesbrough and Fulham that cost us the title and despite the fact we’ve vastly improved in the Klopp era, the frequent inability to find a way through teams that park the bus continues to haunt us.

I genuinely believed that the arrival of a couple of proper attacking midfielders who provide a goal threat in the shape of Szoboszlai and Gravenberch would make a big difference in this regard but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference whatsoever and so you have to look at our tactics.

We’re SOOO predictable in these games it’s unreal. Teams pack their final third, wanting us to play narrow and deny any space and we duly oblige again and again. We huff and puff, create half chances and unless we score one of them reasonably early, you just know how it’s going to go. The longer the game goes on, we get frustrated, look fairly devoid of ideas and Salah just starts shooting from anywhere. He’s infuriated me with that throughout his Anfield career and yesterday was no different. Taking on ridiculous shots when others are far better positioned. Can anyone remember the last time he scored from outside the box? He’s done great things for the club but that doesn’t make him above criticism and I thought he was very poor yesterday.

Diaz looks a shadow of himself this season, although given the recent travails of his family off the pitch I’m preparing to cut him some slack. I’m getting concerned about Darwin though. That’s 10 games without a goal, hasn’t scored since October I think it is and when he does get chances, I’m never confident he’ll finish them. In fact I’d go as far as to say I’m actually surprised when he does find the net. We spent a LOT of money on a player whose game is so flawed and is SO far from being the finished article. He has bags of potential no doubt but after a bright start to the season where it looked like he was going to kick on, he’s badly regressed in the last two months skd has become the erratic, headless chicken we saw for most of last season. Could easily have been sent off for dissent as well for sarcastically applauding the officials after being booked. I don’t know what the answer is with him, I always thought he was a strange signing that didn’t suit our style of play and as much as I want to be proved wrong, there’s little evidence so far to suggest I am.

The hugely frustrating thing is, we never seem to learn how to play against teams that deploy a narrow, low block system when the answer is simple – width!! These teams want us to play narrow, directly in front of them where there’s no space and we always oblige, when the space is on the flanks. You need to make the pitch as big as possible, drag the opposing fullbacks out wide to create at least some space centrally but we never do it, we constantly cut inside and run into traffic and our passing simply isn’t good enough to play through packed defences. Everyone is well aware of my hatred of the inverted fullback system so I won’t bore you with it again but if you play with inverted wingers, all your width comes from your fullbacks and so in games like yesterday, I’d want both my fullbacks with chalk on their boots the whole game, constantly hugging the touchline in order to stretch the pitch but we never do it snd too often the result is the same. Even if we must persist with Trent moving centrally, then tell Szoboszlai or whoever is playing RCM to provide the width but as it is, nobody is doing it. Speaking of Szoboszlai, what has happened to his form? Started the season like a train but has been poor in recent weeks. It may just be coincidence that has coincided with Trent’s return from injury but there may be something in the theory that moving Trent into midfield is affecting Dominik’s game. One to keep an eye on.

A frustrating game then. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the end of the world and I think we’d all agree that the team are ahead of schedule this season and we’d all have bitten your hand off to be one point off the summit at this stage of the season but with City suffering a predictable hangover after their treble exploits last season, it would be so frustrating to just miss out on the league again, due to dropping points against the likes of Luton and in truth, we’ve not been playing well for weeks.

Carabou cup midweek and I’d expect major changes to the side as we’ve another huge game next Saturday against Arsenal, which looks like a 6 pointer at this stage of the season. At least Arsenal will come to play though and so I expect a good game if nothing else. Anything will be better than that game yesterday. On the bright side, parking it is the closest United will be getting to any kind of bus parade for the foreseeable future. Walk on!!