Man U Defending?

The difference is that our young players learn from their mistakes. You seriously cannot expect a young player not to perform badly in the early stages of their career, in fact, you can't expect this of anyone.

The problem with this "no excuses" card is that it reflects a very critical attitude, an eagerness to hop on a player's back the moment they put a foot wrong. Rather than pointing fingers and looking to assign blame, it's much more constructive to accept that every player is going to have a bad game every once in a while. A player is not deserving of a judgemental glare just because they have a bad game.

Phil Jones was fantastic for us and, to my memory, didn't make any mistakes.
I'm not saying young players can't make mistakes, that's far from my point. I was merely stating that saying "they were our 3rd and 4th defenders" isn't a good excuse if you play badly against a team playing poorly.

He was at fault for 2nd goal needed to head it out for corner, jones = vidic Evans = rio

so every goal scored against us now would be scrutinized to see where de gea went wrong, really? Is he d first to concede a goal between his legs? Pathetic. You keep finding faults, we keep winning.

Super Keith Andrews,

It's not really an excuse, it's contextualisation; it's an explanation as to why we shouldn't be surprised that Vidic and Ferdinand's presences were missed. We just write off that game and move on.

If they did this consistently, that's when you get into "no excuses" territory. We have to allow them to have a bad game every once in a while at this age, because it's all part of the learning curve. The problem is when they don't learn the necessary lessons, and I think that's what you're worrying about.

I wouldn't say I'm worried really, to be honest I don't care. I didn't even watch the match so can't actually comment on what they did wrong and if it can be attributed to inexperience but using the excuse that they are young and need to learn isn't a valid point.
If they do something wrong, it shouldn't be sugar coated because they're young, it should be shown up so that they can see where they went wrong and they can learn that way.

What you're talking about is something different, you're talking about constructive analysis. Players should absolutely be analysed, but young players should never be given a hard time just because of the occasional bad game.

What you seem to understand by "making excuses" is someone saying that a player did nothing wrong because they are young, rather than saying they're young, they'll learn. Nobody's trying to sugar-coat them; when we say bad games are to be expected, we still subject them to the same analysis as we do any other player, we simply don't act like they've let the team down because of one bad performance. In other words, it's all meant to be constructive.

I completely understand what you're saying and you are absolutely right but all I said was in response to the 2nd comment saying it was you're 3rd, 4th and 5th choice CB's as though that is a good reason for a poor performance. Surely these players who have cost quite a bit should be expected to put in good displays when need be.

If the comment had been, it was an off day, everyone has one or, they're young and still did well but were up against good opposition, that would have been acceptable. However, that excuse is not a viable option.

i prefer us this way. its like the late 90's all over again. 4-4-2 and swashbuckling manchester united football. i never really liked that run of 1-0's we had in 2008 when everyone was knocking one out over van der sar. and in any case,we've got three members of our first choice back four still to come back. so we'll be winning 8-0 in future.

couldnt care less we won 8-2