Tokyo Blue wrote:Im_Spartacus wrote:Originally posted in the match thread, but perhaps better here...........as I think there is a deja vu from last season in several senses.
We weren't on the same level as Spurs from the get go, completely outfought and outthought in midfield.
I stopped reading here.
We did make roughly the same number of chances as they did. The difference was they took theirs and we didn't.
I am not having this shite the media peddle about how we were battered. We weren't battered and the facts say it was only 2-0 to them, not seven or eight as the hyperbole here and in numerous other places would suggest, and we had just one shot less than they did. Don't kid yourselves; even though we didn't play well by our standards, we made chances and could have drawn or even won that match if we had taken them.
I am not apologising for knee-jerking against the knee-jerkers.
By all accounts we taught United a footballing lesson, yet the score line didn't reflect that.
With respect, whether you agree with my opinion or not about getting outplayed, the points in the remainder in the post in question are about our squad not having the depth of quality to play a certain way all season, are absolutely spot on, there is no hiding from that.
That we didn't take our chances is irrelevant, even had we won 3-2 any objective person would say that we still would have played poorly (by the standards we have set) and turned the ball over in midfield and shit ourselves in defence, signs that were there against Swansea twice although with an inferior team to Spurs they couldn't punish us, though Celtic came close. This is the exact same pattern of steuggling but not losing 3 or 4 games before the incedible decline last season, and also after Mancini's great start which got similarly figured out after we schooled the rags and lasted 4 months before tevez came back and brought something different to the table.
I don't think anyone is calling out an impending disastrous run of results like in those seasons, just the facts as they see them that we have some big weaknesses in the squad which are increasingly getting exposed in recent weeks. If indeed he is testing the squad to destruction as some have said by refusing to adapt our approach where our team can't cope with what is being asked of it, fine. But what if maybe.......just maybe, he has never had a squad as deficient as this in terms of quality in depth and he can't manage any other way. Is it acceptable to spend the rest of the season hailing him a genius but being overrun whenever all our best players aren't available, or does the time come when he starts getting called out on a need to play with the hand he has?
I don't know whether that suggestion above will play out, but I think it's worthy of discussion, as its exactly what we have seen play out under both Pellegrini and particularly Mancini where we start blaming the players rather than the manager for a stubborn refusal to adapt tactics and/or selections.