"Footballing Lesson"

[Anonymous]

I expect our results to improve generally this year against the whole league overall, not just the top teams, and events yesterday have done nothing to lessen my expectations.

An expectation of improvement on last season is an absolute given. The question is can we improve enough to overtake the rags and Chelsea - for me that's where head to head games will come into play. I'm pretty sure that in the last decade the league winners have more often than not been the leaders of that 'mini' league.

Anyway...the real stuff starts next week...then we can start analysing and deficiencies in the team and in performances.

 

[SWP's back]

I expect our results to improve generally this year against the whole league overall, not just the top teams, and events yesterday have done nothing to lessen my expectations.

An expectation of improvement on last season is an absolute given. The question is can we improve enough to overtake the rags and Chelsea - for me that's where head to head games will come into play. I'm pretty sure that in the last decade the league winners have more often than not been the leaders of that 'mini' league.

Anyway...the real stuff starts next week...then we can start analysing and deficiencies in the team and in performances.

Not always no as I alluded to in my other reply

 

[Anonymous]

I expect our results to improve generally this year against the whole league overall, not just the top teams, and events yesterday have done nothing to lessen my expectations.

An expectation of improvement on last season is an absolute given. The question is can we improve enough to overtake the rags and Chelsea - for me that's where head to head games will come into play. I'm pretty sure that in the last decade the league winners have more often than not been the leaders of that 'mini' league.

Anyway...the real stuff starts next week...then we can start analysing and deficiencies in the team and in performances.

Not always no as I alluded to in my other reply

No, not always, but more often than not. I'm currently trying to dig up the exact figures but I'll be shocked if it's any less than 70% of the last decades prem winners.

 

[Failsworth_Blue]

I expect our results to improve generally this year against the whole league overall, not just the top teams, and events yesterday have done nothing to lessen my expectations.

An expectation of improvement on last season is an absolute given. The question is can we improve enough to overtake the rags and Chelsea - for me that's where head to head games will come into play. I'm pretty sure that in the last decade the league winners have more often than not been the leaders of that 'mini' league.

Anyway...the real stuff starts next week...then we can start analysing and deficiencies in the team and in performances.

I agree to an extent Billy with regards to the 'mini' league however i know Arsenal fans always used to say to have a chance of winning the league their results against the 'top' teams needs to improve. Last season they come top of the mini league (City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal) yet finished nowhere near United and thats because of the results against the teams they think they should be beating. If you look at a mini league including the top four you'll play 6 games, thats not even 1/6th of the season so it's just as important if not more important to make sure you are beating teams that you have a greater quality than

Far too often last season we'd be looking at pushing on and put in a poor result (Birmingham away in January stands out), thats something we need to look at improving aswell as our results against the other top four teams

 

[Anonymous]

I agree to an extent Billy with regards to the 'mini' league however i know Arsenal fans always used to say to have a chance of winning the league their results against the 'top' teams needs to improve. Last season they come top of the mini league (City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal) yet finished nowhere near United and thats because of the results against the teams they think they should be beating. If you look at a mini league including the top four you'll play 6 games, thats not even 1/6th of the season so it's just as important if not more important to make sure you are beating teams that you have a greater quality than

Did they really come top of the mini league last season?

Far too often last season we'd be looking at pushing on and put in a poor result (Birmingham away in January stands out), thats something we need to look at improving aswell as our results against the other top four teams

We put a lot of teams to the sword without taking three points last season...so I totally agree with that.

 

[Failsworth_Blue]

I agree to an extent Billy with regards to the 'mini' league however i know Arsenal fans always used to say to have a chance of winning the league their results against the 'top' teams needs to improve. Last season they come top of the mini league (City, United, Chelsea and Arsenal) yet finished nowhere near United and thats because of the results against the teams they think they should be beating. If you look at a mini league including the top four you'll play 6 games, thats not even 1/6th of the season so it's just as important if not more important to make sure you are beating teams that you have a greater quality than

Did they really come top of the mini league last season?

Far too often last season we'd be looking at pushing on and put in a poor result (Birmingham away in January stands out), thats something we need to look at improving aswell as our results against the other top four teams

We put a lot of teams to the sword without taking three points last season...so I totally agree with that.

I worked it out off the top of my head and had them down as having 10 points but just realised United also got 10 points when i had them down as 9 for some reason so they came joint top (Albeit Arsenal had a better goal different in the 6 games). Still point stands in respect that they improved a lot last season against the 'top' teams but struggled against teams they are much better than in terms of quality and thats something we need to make sure we improve on aswell as improving our results against the top four teams

 

[tonea2003]

games against teams at this level is all about possession, 9 times out of 10 the team that dominates possession wins the game.
yesterday for some reason we let anderson own the centre of the park and that ensured utd dominated possession.
we were damm lucky to be 2 up but as we were could and should have seen it out but we allowed them to control the first half of the second half and we paid for it.
bringing barry on was the right thing to do but too late.
lesson learned i hope.

 

[BigBlueNick]

We were 2nd best yesterday for 80mins!
Rooney was mostly correct and yes it hurts!
lets get our heads down, work hard and show why we are a good side!

 

[Matty]

If we'd been beaten 3-0 or 4-0 for example then, yes, I could understand this extremely arrogant attitude and comments from Rooney. However, what I witnessed on Sunday was City play stunningly badly for 75 of the 90 minutes, and ok for 15 minutes just prior to half time, whereas United played well at times, ok at others, and poorly at others as well during the 90 minutes. United were the better side, without question, we desevred nothing and that's what we got. But, ultimately, United beat us 3-2 thanks to a 94th minute horrific error by Kompany. Does that sound like a "footballing lesson" was taught to you? To have to take it to the wire, to narrowly beat a side, who played as poorly as we did? Not to me. If I'm bieng homest, I'm quite happy for Rooney to think that the United performance yesterday was so good as to be classified as teaching someone a footballing lesson, because I thought United were good to average, so if that's the level of performance they're going to be this happy with it can only bode well for City for the upcoming season.

 

[Deleted member 14625]

According to FatHead Rooney “Have to say, I think today was a footballing lesson. This shows who the best team is. We took them apart."

Discuss

ps I wonder if the next lesson will be how to be a committed and faithful husband.

He's right. They took us apart at times and apart from two shots, that both ended up in goals and an Adam Johnson shot, what else did we do all game?

But let's break it down for the reasons why. Well I reckon the real lesson wasn't of the United players over the City players; I reckon it was Fergie over Mancini over how to run a Premier League pre-season training schedule. Because United were A LOT fitter than us yesterday, not just here and there, but every one of them! They were quicker, sharper, had better movement, had quicker recovery times after runs/sprints.. every bit of their play shouted out that they were a fit and prepared team; every bit of our play shouted out that we were lazy, lathargic, didn't have sharpness of control or in the mind, we were leaving lazy legs in or lazily lunging into tackles instead of being on our toes and moving our feet quickly (studder-stepping) to get ourselves in the right places.

8 days before the new season starts and we looked like we were still in the middle of pre-season. Now I've made it clear I'm not arsed about he Community Shield, but this fitness element alarmingly made me concerned!

 

[mike channon´s windmill]

Not sure if its already been mentioned?

Anyone know why we came out to train so late yesterday? The staff were all out waiting for ages - United had been out for a good 20 mins. Some of the staff were looking perplexed and pissed off. Platt came out and they all looked to him to ask what was happening. When we did finally trott out it was only the 10 starters (Hart was out earlier) and they did a half hearted session - whereas United did a good work out. It was 5 - 10 mins later that the subs enventually came out and the whole session ended with the sprinklers coming on.
Everything about yesterday was lethargic.

Coach gotnstuck in traffic and arrived 55mins before kick off. Same thingnhappened away at Pool last season with the same net results. A wank performance

Well that would account for some of but not all of the problems of yesterday

 

[DenisLawBackHeel74]

We were shite yesterday probably at our worst, United were at their best and they only managed to squeeze past us at the end with a mistake so I'm still confident we are moving in the right direction.

^^This.

I also think there are a couple of other things going on here.

1. mancini is making a point about our midfield
2. mancini does not want to show his hand before the season starts

 

[mike channon´s windmill]

According to FatHead Rooney “Have to say, I think today was a footballing lesson. This shows who the best team is. We took them apart."

Discuss

ps I wonder if the next lesson will be how to be a committed and faithful husband.

He's right. They took us apart at times and apart from two shots, that both ended up in goals and an Adam Johnson shot, what else did we do all game?

But let's break it down for the reasons why. Well I reckon the real lesson wasn't of the United players over the City players; I reckon it was Fergie over Mancini over how to run a Premier League pre-season training schedule. Because United were A LOT fitter than us yesterday, not just here and there, but every one of them! They were quicker, sharper, had better movement, had quicker recovery times after runs/sprints.. every bit of their play shouted out that they were a fit and prepared team; every bit of our play shouted out that we were lazy, lathargic, didn't have sharpness of control or in the mind, we were leaving lazy legs in or lazily lunging into tackles instead of being on our toes and moving our feet quickly (studder-stepping) to get ourselves in the right places.

8 days before the new season starts and we looked like we were still in the middle of pre-season. Now I've made it clear I'm not arsed about he Community Shield, but this fitness element alarmingly made me concerned!

Agree 110% - this is the PL - the prep is much different from other leagues

 

[kinkysdribble]

We were poor yesterday and hopefully that's out of the way but the only lesson learnt yesterday was that if you're going to have a hair transplant don't use Bobby Charlton as the f*ckin donor!

 

[1.618034]

If we'd been beaten 3-0 or 4-0 for example then, yes, I could understand this extremely arrogant attitude and comments from Rooney. However, what I witnessed on Sunday was City play stunningly badly for 75 of the 90 minutes, and ok for 15 minutes just prior to half time, whereas United played well at times, ok at others, and poorly at others as well during the 90 minutes. United were the better side, without question, we desevred nothing and that's what we got. But, ultimately, United beat us 3-2 thanks to a 94th minute horrific error by Kompany. Does that sound like a "footballing lesson" was taught to you? To have to take it to the wire, to narrowly beat a side, who played as poorly as we did? Not to me. If I'm bieng homest, I'm quite happy for Rooney to think that the United performance yesterday was so good as to be classified as teaching someone a footballing lesson, because I thought United were good to average, so if that's the level of performance they're going to be this happy with it can only bode well for City for the upcoming season.

Exactly. This comment could come back to haunt him.

They were given a "Footballing Lesson" by Barca in May. Yesterday they just beat us... We can't play any worse than that and the real thing starts next week.

I actually think that yesterday was a good thing as it will certainly dispel any complacency. It was a wake up call for us and it reminded me of the game at Anfield last season, look what happened in the weeks after that.

So much for all their pre-game talk of it being meaningless in terms of the championship.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Stupid thing for Rooney to say in public really... But not surprising, considering he is borderline retarded.

Agree with all of that apart from "borderline".

I mean, seriously, he must have an IQ of what? 80?

 

[mmadave1]

what annoys me is that they play us as if there the underdogs.

 

[adammck]

We were shit, but a footballing lesson? he sounds like his trying to prove something... Meh, see you in the season

 

[casualdeyna]

It's a pre-season friendly, beating Swansea next Monday is more important, we were garbage but at least we didn't get any bad injuries and got a good workout. Good yard-stick as to how far we will have to come between now and season end if we want to win it, but yesterday means and changes nothing

 

[Anonymous]

We were shit, but a footballing lesson? he sounds like his trying to prove something... Meh, see you in the season

Thinks he's trying to prove that he was never gonna come to us...unfortunately half the footballing world already knows he would've and it's only the thick MIB's who support that shite club who believe his badge kissing antics.