Three points:
1. Antonio Valencia: I will never see what all the fuss about him is. He has decent pace but that’s about it. His left foot is nearly absent and he lacks general footballing intelligence to do a quick one-two and end up in the box. His game is to take the ball to the goal line and cross with the right foot. Every left-back he faces already knows this and hence they find it easy to stop the crosses or make him turn and go over to his left side which eventually means a pass back to Carrick in the mid-field and thus nullifying the threat. He has been effective for us despite all the limitations mainly because of pace but it doesn’t take away from the fact that he has no plan-B. He may get three assists next game and people may forget all this temporary eruption on our board, but to my mind his limitations have been exposed time and again and he will never be the player we can look up to, to provide some inspiration if things are not going for us.
2. Javier Hernandez: Before I say anything I love him and his late goals and his runs between the defenders and the options he provides to us. But whenever he starts I almost expect that we are going to have a disjointed performance where the midfield fails to link up with the forward line. In my mind he will always be a super-sub who can prey on tired defenders. There is nothing wrong in being an effective sub and I would say it’s a privileged position to be able to be the player that a manager will turn to if we need a plan-B. I would keep using him as an effective sub until he matures as a player and can spray passes around and can develop other aspects of his football.
3. 4-4-2: We play 4-4-2 well only when we have someone line Rooney who plays in the hole. He has the discipline to be able to fall deep and collect the passes, spray them around to the wide players and keep the link between midfield and attack alive. If Rooney is not fit, I would rather have 3 in the midfield especially for the away games.
Even though it may look like one, none of this is knee-jerk reaction. Dropping 3-points was bad but it could be worth it if we learn some lessons.
Also I am not a fan of ‘the team was capable of winning’ argument. It’s almost like we want to deliberately play a weaker side just to push the players to their limit. If there is one lesson we have learnt from last season, it is the importance of goal-difference. So we should be putting our strongest teams out irrespective of the opposition (especially when there are no important mid-week games coming up).
Random thoughts
posted on 19/11/12
A very limited player with limited output.
A right-footed Matthew Etherington. I laugh when people rave about Tony, i have been stating for a while now, that he is arguably the most wasteful player in our team and i get shot down.
It has taken his current abject form for some people to realise that he is just not that good.
posted on 19/11/12
I agree with all your points especially the Hernandez one. With Valencia, I think he's a massively effective player. Pace and strength to burn but the last two years at least when he got to the line, he'd look for the cross. I don't understand why he's stopped doing that and just looks to smash it a long the ground all the time. Or failing that chip it 10 metres past the back post. He's regressing that's for sure.
posted on 19/11/12
comment by The_Red_Cognoscente (U9741)
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I have been in the same boat. When he was bought I still gave him some benefit of doubt and assumed he will develop as a player. But sadly he sis till as limited as he was earlier.
Also any discussion about Tony soon descends into Nani being worse. I agree Nani is not very consistent and can frustrate the hell out of us. But Valencia is not the answer to whatever it is that Nani lacks. Valencia should be a decent squad player not the one starting most games and Champions League finals.
posted on 19/11/12
Im not agree with the Valencia statements, fact is, we played poor and slow football the other day, and that made Valencias job hard. Norwich doubled on the right, so where was we on the left, what if we could have had midfielders coming in the center and shoot? It's our midfield that is limited, and no goal threat that makes us so predictable.
That game as awful, mostly because we had no engine, no real midfielder in the team that can make that pass, and we also lacked legs in the midfield when it cames to defending. We need young boys that can run 11-12k every match, Giggs ran barely 5k and so did Carrick, I can't imagine what a player like İlkay Gündoğan, we lack strenght too, Victor Vanyama could be an option..
Carrick , Scholes, Giggs, all these guys looks like they think its already won before they enter the pitch, they know we are the best team and therefore underestimate our opponent! Most of our "defensive issues" is actually caused by a midfield that is never trying to win back the ball, and the lack of legs results in us getting counterattcked. This is why I don't get why we still use the old guys and not Cleverley and stuff
posted on 19/11/12
comment by YouKnowWilson (U11917)
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Even though our midfiled could obviously improve, against Norwich the main reason for our bad performance was the lack of width. 4-4-2 is too reliant on wingers and Valencia is very often found out. Even Young provided some decent crosses when he moved to the right. We should have exploited the right side more in the first half. Most decent crosses on the right actually came from Rafael.
posted on 19/11/12
comment by The_Red_Cognoscente (U9741)
posted 32 minutes ago
A very limited player with limited output.
A right-footed Matthew Etherington. I laugh when people rave about Tony, i have been stating for a while now, that he is arguably the most wasteful player in our team and i get shot down.
It has taken his current abject form for some people to realise that he is just not that good.
posted on 19/11/12
comment by YouKnowWilson (U11917) posted 8 minutes ago
Im not agree with the Valencia statements, fact is, we played poor and slow football the other day, and that made Valencias job hard. Norwich doubled on the right, so where was we on the left, what if we could have had midfielders coming in the center and shoot? It's our midfield that is limited, and no goal threat that makes us so predictable.
That game as awful, mostly because we had no engine, no real midfielder in the team that can make that pass
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Michael Carrick hit more passes than anyone in the PL on Saturday and he regularly tops the ground covered stats
He needs Ando or Clevs with him, not Scholes or Giggs
By the end of the game, he had Scholes and Giggs with him
Carrick was our best player on Saturday, Tidy with the ball and always looking for a forward pass. Sadly, at times, the movement ahead of him was worse than pedestrian.
Let's not pick on the easy targets eh. Carrick's a slow starter but has started to show his form of last season in the last 2 games.
If I was Clevs or Ando and was sat watching a 39 year older winger in CM ahead of me, I would be questioning what I'm doing at OT.
We had 4 fit CM sat on the bench and Sit Alex plated Giggs again when we have a dead rubber to play this week
For me, it's utterly ridiculous.
3 points chucked away by a team that looked like total strangers.
Worst performance I've seen from United for a long time