Mattyc55 said:
The movement was poor, but maybe you have to give credit to the United 3 who at times made it nigh on impossible for De Jong and Barry to play any sort of pass into feet. Maybe Yaya felt sorry for himself, coz that's what it looked like; but instead of ambling around the midfield, maybe just maybe he could of tried to do what united were doing to us and get his fucking body/foot in there. Awful.
The problem is, at Barca he was the deeper player, with Xavi and Iniesta immediately infront of him. Teams backed off and it allowed Alves and Maxwell forward. The gave Toure options to either side of him aswell as the excellent movement of Xavi and Iniesta.
Here he is the furthest forward of the 3. Zabaleta comes inside from the left and crowds the pitch. Boateng is still finding his feet. Barry and De Jong are behind him and only Tevez, Silva and Milner are in front of him.
All 3 have to take the ball with their back to goal. Milner's ball retention is remarkably bad. Silva and Tevez's is great, but when marshalled tightly, Silva struggles sometimes because of his size.
The team is missing Kolarov and Boateng. Then we can realistically challenge for a top 3 place. Then in the summer we will make the necessary changes to push on challenge for the title. I'd be amazed if Barry and Milner were integral parts of our team next year.
To be a fluid unit, there has to be intelligent off the ball movement, backed up with assured control. Neither Barry or Milner have that. Silva does, Balotelli does and Tevez does.
Finally finding a balance between conservative and gung-ho is very difficult. Johnson isn't good enough to start against somebody like Evra, and he would have left us exposed on occasion. Spurs are a perfect example of a gung-ho team. It's great when it works, not so great when you're losing at Bolton and at home to Wigan etc. They have an outlet in Crouch and they have two exciting wingers who lift the crowd. We have one exciting winger and a false 9 striker. We're a completely different team and we are set up to not concede.
Most successful teams are built on top of a solid base. We're in a transitional period where we are gradually becoming a better side. We will probably see the best out of this team towards the end of the campaign unfortunately. For now, we are doing fine. If we lost tonight we'd have been 6 behind United and 5 behind Arsenal, with them both to play away. United and Arsenal are both dropping points against weak teams and we're within touching distance of both teams after having the harder start. We'll be fine. We just have to be patient with the team, the players and the managers.
