The Official Manchester United Thread

[The Infamous]

this just gets better and better

[HangTheDJ]

Matt d*ckinson in The Times today (behind the paywall apparently):

 

United were so sure of Moyes that they did not bother with a job interview. Mourinho once presented a PowerPoint display of his strategy to Roman Abramovich. Brendan Rodgers gave the Liverpool owners a 180-page dossier on his methods, his vision.

Ferguson rang Moyes on May 2, summoned him from a shopping trip with his wife (he was replacing a watch strap, if you must know) and told an astonished Glaswegian that he was the new United manager.

 

“He took me in, took me up the stairs, made me a cup of tea and came out with it,” Moyes said. “It’s a moment I’ll never forget.”

 

We might imagine that, whenever it starts, the search for the next United manager will involve rather more formality.

 

I thought Moyes would be a fine appointment, but in hindsight the way he was appointed seems like lunacy.

[The Infamous]

Fergie was backing that southern comfort

Silly old git

[Young £]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDZ_09aoLn8

[JOHN DOE]

mans bare stiff (no homo)

[Badman]

one big happy family 

[Mame Biram Diouf]

Moyes weighs up Nani gamble

 

David Moyes is weighing up whether to throw Nani and Ryan Giggs into his Manchester United side for Wednesday's do-or-die Champions League clash with Olympiakos, according to the Times.

United's season reached a new low on Sunday with bitter rivals Liverpool humbling them 3-0 at Old Trafford. It left Moyes' side in seventh place, 12 points off the top four and 18 points behind leaders Chelsea, with key figures in the Old Trafford boardroom turning against the manager.

 

There have even been suggestions that Holland coach Louis van Gaal, who had been expected to move to Tottenham in the summer, would be in the running to replace Moyes if the wavering Glazer family decide to act.

 

The predicament at United, last season's Premier League champions, is such that they must overturn a 2-0 deficit against the Greek champions to progress to the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

 

So for Moyes to gamble on the fitness of Nani and Giggs and go on to the attack would be bold, a far cry from the unimaginative approach fans have started to bemoan.

 

A serious hamstring injury has kept Nani from featuring for United since the 1-0 home defeat to Newcastle at Old Trafford on December 7 and the winger only returned to full training last week.

 

Moyes said last Friday he was confident his staff could get Nani "up to speed very quickly".

 

Nani, who signed a new five-year deal at the club in September, has made only 10 appearances for United this season. His only goal came in the 5-0 win at Bayer Leverkusen - his solitary Champions League outing.

 

Giggs on the other hand has only been on the pitch for a total of 81 minutes in the past two and a half months. The club were forced to deny reports of a bust-up between the player and Moyes earlier this week, saying Giggs was "fuming" over the "total and utter rubbish" claims.

 

Danny Welbeck is also expected to start against Olympiakos in support of Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie in attack, with January signing Juan Mata ineligible having featured for Chelsea in the competition earlier this season.

 

 

[Mame Biram Diouf]

---------------DGD---------------

-Rafa---Jone--Vidic----Evra--

----------Carrick--Clev--------

---Nani-------Kagawa----Adnan--

---------------------------------------

----------------Welbeck------------

 

Only way we can go through, which is why I think we will go out

 

He will go with

 

---------------DGD---------------
-Rafa---Jone--Vidic----Evra--
----------Carrick--Fellaini--------
---Valencia--------------Welbeck--
--------------Roooney-----------
----------------RVP------------

[Mame Biram Diouf]

 

 

ESPN FC        ✔ @ESPNFC

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Stat of the Day: Manchester United have never lost at home to Greek opposition. Olympiakos have never won in England.

[Mame Biram Diouf]

 

 

Wayne Rooney's last goal at Old Trafford came on October 26. Since then, 22 players have scored there:

UNITED: Javier Hernandez (4), Danny Welbeck (3), Robin van Persie (3), Ashley Young (2), Phil Jones (2), Fabio, Michael Carrick, Antonio Valencia, Jonny Evans, Adnan Januzaj.

OPPONENTS: Gerrard (Liverpool, 2) Oviedo (Everton), Cabaye (Newcastle), C Cole (West Ham), Adebayor, Eriksen (Tottenham), Routledge, Bony (Swansea), Bardsley (Sunderland), Sidwell, Bent (Fulham), Suarez (Liverpool).

[JOHN DOE]

For David Moyes it was the first time he had faced questions about whether his position at Manchester United was vulnerable. Was his future on the line? Had there been any assurances from the people at the top of the club? How much longer could he expect the supporters to stomach it?

 

The tone has certainly changed since those wretched defeats by Olympiakos and Liverpool and there were even more seats filled inside the Europa Suite at Old Trafford for his latest press conference than that day, last July, when he walked out in front of all the flashing bulbs for the first time as United's manager.

 

The job, he now admits, has been harder than he had imagined. Another bad result against Olympiakos, who lead 2-0 from the first leg, and the bottom line is no one can be sure whether the club's supporters will be able to keep in all that pent-up frustration. Or, more to the point, how the Glazer family will consider the possibility of no more Champions League for at least 18 months.

 

There is certainly the sense that things may be coming to a head and that takes some doing bearing in mind every single piece of information out of Old Trafford since last summer has pointed to this being a club that want to operate to different principles from their rivals. Imagine, for example, if Manuel Pellegrini had taken Manchester City down to seventh in his first season at the club, and on the brink of surrendering any last chance of silverware before the clocks had gone forward. A manager at Chelsea would have been escorted off the premises long ago. Spurs were seventh when André Villas-Boas was fired, eight points from the top. United are 18 behind, and on the edge of being eliminated from the Champions League by supposedly the weakest team left in the competition.

 

The first leg in Athens ended with headlines such as "Greek Clods", "Humiliated!", "Rocked by the Also-Rans" and "Greek Tragedy". This time around everything has been so harrowing for United lately it has largely been overlooked that their opponents have played in England 11 times and lost on each occasion, scoring only three goals in the process and conceding 34. Olympiakos may yet be obliging opponents for a team with United's needs.

 

On the flipside it is not since the end of October, when Norwich lost 4-0 in the Capital One Cup, that Moyes' men have won at Old Trafford by a score that would see them go through on aggregate. They have managed only 18 home goals in the league – the same as bottom-placed Fulham – and it is not always entirely convincing listening to Moyes. This was his opportunity to remove some of the pessimism with a statement of boldness and conviction but, if anything, it was the guy sitting to his right who sounded the more impressive.

 

"Everyone wants to fight for this club," Patrice Evra said. "Everyone loves this club. We know we had a bad game in the first leg. I think even a three-year-old Man United fan has been hurting by all the problems. But in life you always have a second chance. I'm not telling you we are going to qualify but I can promise we are all going to fight and respect the shirt."

 

Moyes talked about the sympathetic meetings he had had with Sir Alex Ferguson. "He has been incredibly supportive. I speak to him regularly. I see him at the games, I have a few minutes with him, he told me when I came in it would be a difficult job but he's always there to help. Him, David Gill, Ed [Woodward], all of them –- they are all very supportive."

 

What he really needs, though, is the players' backing and the latest leaks out of the dressing room are not exactly glowing for Moyes and his staff, in particular the coach who now goes by a deeply unflattering nickname. Footballers can be brutal sometimes and, behind his back, that coach is apparently being referred to as "f*ck off (name)" – on the basis that is so often the first response when they hear his instructions.

 

In football that kind of insult is actually quite common. A Strange Kind of Glory, Eamon's Dunphy's book about his time at Old Trafford, tells one story about a sheet of paper being passed around the team bus showing a caricature of Matt Busby, with his nose as a penis, his cheeks as two testicles, and the caption: "Bollocks Chops". Carlos Queiroz was hardly the most popular man when he was Ferguson's assistant and Eric Harrison, the coach who nurtured the Class of '92, is probably better off not knowing some of the names they used to call him.

 

Plainly, though, it is not ideal, at a time when the manager is desperately trying to create the impression that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Has he lost the dressing room? The way it has been described to this newspaper is that he never actually had the dressing room. That does not mean the players were against his appointment. Indeed, some were actually relieved, for selfish motives, that it was not José Mourinho, on the basis they had seen his treatment of Iker Casillas at Real Madrid and – footballers always thinking of themselves – suspected he would bring in his own players.

 

Yet Moyes had to win their full approval and, unfortunately for him, that process has never really happened. Nemanja Vidic's decision to cut himself free this summer is a case in point. Vidic was not even willing to discuss the possibility of a contract extension.

 

There have even been sporadic complaints from players behind the scenes – and this is maybe the most surprising part – about Ryan Giggs. A legend at Old Trafford, Giggs is now player-coach in a dressing room that operates in a different way from when Ferguson ruled the place. Giggs, one imagines, understands that points should come before popularity.

 

As always in football, the only way of shifting the mood is to start winning. "I have a great job and I know exactly the direction I want to go in," Moyes said. "It has not been the season we hoped but I have ideas of what I want to do and what I want to put in place when the time is right. But the most important thing now is to get the Olympiakos game played and hopefully get through."

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/18/patrice-evra-david-moyes-manchester-united-olympiakos

 

 

fuck off phil?

 

 

[Mame Biram Diouf]

United wrong to put all its eggs in Rooney’s basket

 

Having long been knocked off its perch, Liverpool used the weekend to consolidate the knocking off of Manchester United from its own large-scale construction, completing a hobbling league double at Old Trafford on Sunday.

 

That defeat meant that for David Moyes there’s not even the dignity of a Champions League place to play for any more, just grimy, Europa League disappointment.

 

Under Moyes, United can be said to be moving in two interlinking directions. These are: downwards, and towards the fetishisation of Wayne Rooney.

 

One persuasive theory about Moyes has been that he does not possess a plan. United haven’t looked cohesive since he took over the club. His team has looked like a collection of whims, pieced together by a manager who seemed himself the ultimate whim, his successor having placed him in charge without any great explanations to hand.

 

But I’m no longer convinced there is an absence of a plan at United. There is a plan. It’s just that the plan is Rooney, which, to be fair to anyone who missed it, can very often take on the appearance of being no plan at all.

 

My argument is that much of what we are seeing right now from United makes more sense when Rooney’s role in it all gets the examination it deserves. As we see how ludicrously central he’s become at the club, we see how much damage that’s potentially doing.

 

“Central” is a decent place to start with this. That’s where Rooney played on Sunday, at the expense of Juan Mata, the £40million man, who was pushed wide for the sake of Rooney’s creative instincts in the number ten position. As you will no doubt be aware, quite a few people in this team are pushed somewhere for the sake of Rooney’s creative instincts in the centre of the pitch.

 

Mata, the most consistent assist-maker in the Premier League for the last two seasons, so far plays quietly from the right or the left at United. Similarly, the midfield is left as an overloaded two-man operation very often against three-man equivalents. Likewise, Robin van Persie reckons he’s had to adjust his runs. All of this because Moyes likes Rooney behind his striker.

 

Few players could justify so many moves to accommodate them and Rooney simply isn’t one of them. Of his 12 assists in the league this season, the most substantial genre he’s evoked is dead-ball specialist, and for all the talk of a personally productive few months, his return of assists also represents only three more than Mesut Ozil.

 

As United’s main on-pitch plan, which he undoubtedly, intentionally is under Moyes, Rooney is at best a risky bet—both because of his individual ability and because of his impact on the huge talent around him.

 

And if the numbers lie, they actually lie in Rooney’s favour. Against Liverpool on Sunday he looked as unwieldy as we’re used to seeing by now, hardly justifying his tactical status. After 60 minutes, he received the ball on the edge of the Liverpool area, controlled it, then waited and waited more. For the great playmakers, at moments like this, time seems to stand still; in the case Rooney on the edge of the Liverpool area, only he did, and, obviously, he was dispossessed.

 

It went on like that all afternoon. In between pinging predictable cross-field passes, Rooney seemed at times to be pre-emptively admiring his creative genius, only to have the moment of actual genius cruelly taken away by defenders less accommodating than his manager.

 

Against Liverpool he played like a man who believes his own hype, which is no coincidence, given how his club has treated him off the pitch too—indulged as the centre of the known universe there as well.

 

Not only has his manager insisted that Rooney operates as his playmaker—at the expense of others and, I reckon, the team as a whole—he’s also given him a £300k a week contract, the promise of the captaincy and access to transfer plans. He has been given absolutely everything anyone could think of to prove that he is United’s complete priority: its whole plan for the future based around him.

 

Does this really play well with the other egos at the club? Other people get sacked when they say that they don’t like their co-workers, but Rooney gets asked who he’d prefer to work with. The message: Ferguson’s replacement as Top Dog at United wasn’t Moyes, it was you, Wayne. Moyes, with a little help from those around him, has allowed the entire club to revolve around his number ten and the results of that have been drawn up in a handy league table.

 

Even last summer’s transfer policy became about keeping Rooney more than signing the midfielders or defenders whose absences are now being lamented. From the start of the Moyes Experience, it’s been all about Rooney and it’s been costing the manager all along.

 

There’s easily enough evidence to call Rooney’s positioning at United a fetish, representative of a disproportionate degree of affection for an object not deserving of said affection. He’s not a rubbish player, but the marginalisation of everything else at such a massive club relative to him can’t be justified on even that club’s own terms.

 

Making Rooney The Plan has definitely happened and it definitely hasn’t worked, because his talent simply doesn’t justify it.

 

There is of course still the argument that Alex Ferguson did something similar with Rooney already once—indulged him after his first transfer request in 2010 and went on to win the title. But, crucially, Ferguson was Ferguson. Moyes has to play by real people rules, and by those rules a Rooney fetish is as unhealthy as it sounds.

 

Far healthier, perhaps—if you must fetishise someone, David—would have been to pick Van Persie, a man who gave winning the league single-handedly a good go last season. He appeared to have the talent to carry Manchester United all on his own. Instead, last week, he found himself reassuring United fans he didn’t want to leave the club, and we all know what that meant when he told Arsenal fans the same thing.

 

[i5_PRODUCER]

Lmao @ " Fuck off Phil "  & the Pic

[Mame Biram Diouf]

lmao @ ''fuck off phill''

[Horatio Caine]

De Gea; Rafael, Jones, Ferdinand, Evra; Valencia, Carrick, Giggs, Welbeck; Rooney, van Persie.

6:33 PM - 19 Mar 2014

[Adotbiz]

Hearing moyes on sky now, he just jars me so much lol

[Mame Biram Diouf]

What I would expect after todays game from a normal manager who has found something that works:

- Keep Rooney deeper 

- Keep Rooney away from as much attacking moves as possible

- Welbeck has to start whether it is upfront or cutting in from the left

- One of our CMs needs to be allowed to cross the half way line and play forward passes and run past players

- Never give Young a minute of football

- RVP needs players who give him moment and create space to give him his best so play Kagawa or Mata in the #10

 

What will happen?

 

IMO apart from Welbeck starting more, nothing

[Agony]

[Michel Kane]

LMAO

[JOHN DOE]

In this day and age that should be a video not a pic

[Adotbiz]

What's injury news on RVP??

Got him in my dream team ha

[Kompressor]

Matt d*ckinson in The Times today (behind the paywall apparently):

 

 

 

United were so sure of Moyes that they did not bother with a job interview. Mourinho once presented a PowerPoint display of his strategy to Roman Abramovich. Brendan Rodgers gave the Liverpool owners a 180-page dossier on his methods, his vision.

Ferguson rang Moyes on May 2, summoned him from a shopping trip with his wife (he was replacing a watch strap, if you must know) and told an astonished Glaswegian that he was the new United manager.

 

“He took me in, took me up the stairs, made me a cup of tea and came out with it,” Moyes said. “It’s a moment I’ll never forget.”

 

We might imagine that, whenever it starts, the search for the next United manager will involve rather more formality.

 

I thought Moyes would be a fine appointment, but in hindsight the way he was appointed seems like lunacy.

 

 

"They tell me"  Its the biggest and best run club in the world. 

[O Fenomeno]