I am yeah. My point is we were worse defensively vs United (imo ofc) than we were vs Norwich. The only difference is the scoreline
Yup, only 3, Fergie Time, a distant memory. I forgot it had been on MOTD later that evening. GT doing a jig and the boos ringing out at the end. Haha.
I was a student in Sheffield at the time and was in Manchester that day with a girlfriend of mine and wasn't able to go. The relationship didn't last long.
Take a look here for all the head-to head info: https://www.worldfootball.net/teams/manchester-united/watford-fc/11/ Denis Law, scored 3 in the 2 cup games, Gordon Strachan (pen), and Alan Brazil.
What's the point of tracking back when you can't tackle or win the ball for a whole 90 minutes? I give up on this argument! Sent from my TECNO P701 using Tapatalk
Yeah, you're using the much nicer other profile which means your retinas aren't being burned by the garish yellow. Welcome to the club.
Norwich was a complete mess, no question but to stop United scoring with the talent they have was a great effort. Yes we had a little bit of luck but you need that at Old Trafford but had we defended like we did against Norwich we would have lost by 5
I think if we were doing better this season overall then viewed on it's own we would all be much more happy with this as a result. We beat them at home and then for the first time in ages didn't concede and didn't lose away. Any other non-relegation season that is fantastic.
See what you’re saying but I don’t agree. Norwich didn’t have a clear chance all game against us, United had 4. Granted United are a considerably better team. But putting the result aside, the performance at the weekend was atrocious, and if we perform like that for the rest of the season; we won’t get another point
First half completely agree. Second half it was nice to see bodies on the line and a bit of work rate, which hasn't been apparent in every game. If we show that in every game we might have a small chance
But we won't play teams like United for the rest of the season. Ignore Norwich because it was so bad and has nothing to do with the game we just played. We drew 0-0 at Old Trafford. I think most will say it's a decent result, if not very good. They have arguably the best footballer there has ever been up front along with Fernandes, Pogba, Sancho etc. They will create chances against pretty much anybody. To get a draw at places like that we are likely to require some luck which I admit we got but you also make your own luck and I thought the effort to not give them any space, block shots, make important tackles was excellent. Did we make mistakes? Of course we did but we were not punished. Every goal scored is because of a mistake. At home we've been dreadful of late but our away performances in general have been much better and we are now harder to beat as we were Saturday
I still don’t agree, the result doesn’t match the performance. Just because United didn’t score, doesn’t mean we were defensively good. We put in the same performance this weekend vs Arsenal, we probably get beat 3/4-0
Agree with the effort levels, that never dropped. I spose I have a slight bias against Hodgson as I think he’s an appalling manager that has been horrendous for the last two and a half seasons. But I just can’t agree it was a good defensive performance
Palace finished 14th last season and the season before. Do you think they should’ve finished much higher than that?
I think first half was honestly up there with the worst we've played this season, and United should have scored at least 3. I think if we put in the effort we did in the second half against the lesser teams it'll be enough to get some decent results
I don’t think they finished 14th down to Hodgson though, the same reason Bruce kept Newcastle up. They were one of the worst performing teams in the league with a better squad than we have now, with a goalkeeper who over performed the most in the league and Zaha who bailed them out through individual quality. 20/21 Open play chances created: 19th Open play chances conceded: 18th Expected points: 18th 19/20 Open play chances created: 20th Open play chances conceded: 16th Expected points: 18th The performance levels were really bad, they just somehow stayed up due to other teams being much worse and not having the quality of player they possessed. Now add his methods and underlying numbers to this Watford squad, a worse one than Palace — you get what you’re seeing now. Really bad performances, minimal attacking threat, whilst conceding a lot of chances each game
I think this is verging on Ranieri didn’t really win the league, Pearson did territory. His football may not be to everyone’s taste but he kept Palace up effortlessly every season he was there. It would be lovely to be lucky every season and magically avoid relegation, just because 5 or 6 teams just always happen to be even worse then you, but I don’t think the PL is really that forgiving.
I think it’s worlds apart. It’s entirely possible to play badly under a certain style and pick up points, providing you have a good enough squad. Did we play well under any manager in the Championship? Not really, we just had better players in a system that worked. Hodgson is a bad manager, and has been for two and a half years
I think we've been due some luck at OT for a few seasons. Pretty sure we've outplayed them a couple of times, only to lose by the odd goal.
Yep. Pretty the first QSF season Igalho missed a hat full and we lost to a Mata goal. Also there was a game when Rashford was miles offside but allowed to then run forward and convert a cross from an onside position.
The weird thing is our opponents have had far more shots in our last two away games than they’ve had in the last two home, yet we’ve kept two away clean sheets in a row and conceded six in the last two home games. Shots Watford 9 Brighton 11 Aston Villa 20 Watford 8 Watford 8 Palace 7 Man Utd 22 Watford 10 Of course one major factor in the home defeats is that we only had one shot on target, but that doesn’t explain how we clearly defended so badly. And despite the shots count being close, I felt we were largely outplayed and outclassed and save for the opening 30 or so minutes against Palace and a brief period at the start of the second half vs Brighton, those games never felt like close contests, particular in terms of quality on the ball and controlling the game.
And I'm pleased to say, without a trace of smugness naturally , that I went to those 3 games as well as Saturday's 0-0. A bit too young to go loopy in 1969 (dad said we could clap politely!) when Scully's shot went in but went the full tonto (as the current vernacular would have it) as Cally burst Man U's bubble in injury time spoiling Strachan's and Brazil's debuts for them, tee hee. YouOrns!
Sorry Teide, but I have to disagree about Ngakia. Sadly he does look out of place. He did OK in the first half but, just like WTE, he always has a fatal error in him. That duly arrived in the second half as he held back as did Louza and that hesitancy should have led to Ronaldo's winning goal but fortunately Elanga helpfully blocked it. He was subbed pretty quickly and Cathcart looked miles more assured at right back against Sancho to the end. Not exactly an identical error from Jeremy but it was really a re-run of his hesitancy and non-tackle on (or to be honest his failure to chop down) St Maximin at St James Park. Again subbed and fortunately we did salvage a draw with Kiko's brilliant cross to Pedro. As the usual lazy pundits would say, "he has that in his locker". For once they would be right. I said on another thread he's a likeable player and I'd love him to succeed but he doesn't learn from his mistakes and I fear he'll end his playing career being described as a promising player who never fulfilled his potential. Please prove me wrong Jezza!
