Man Utd vs Aston Villa post-match thread

[Risso]

Surprised that there has been little comment about just how poor McGinn was tonight, at both ends of the pitch. Thought he should have been replaced long before he was.

Probably due to the fact he was the only midfielder trying to take responsibility. Which brings me to Douglas Luiz, a Rolls Royce of a player 6-8 wekks ago. Now he's more like an Austin Princess. Anybody watching his recent performances and reading Villa rating him at £100m must be pissing themselves laughing. He'd be lucky to get half of that due to to recent holiday. On the beach sums him up.

Ramsey, it looks like we're making the same mistake Slippy Gee made, playing him into fitness. He looks at least a month away. No where near ready to start.

Same with Moreno, both of them look miles off. However, we don't really have any alternatives, especially now if Digne is out for a while.

[AV82EC]

Tonight was the first time this season I've thought we could really do with supplementing the squad with some more quality.

Yep. There is definite quality there but you need a pair of bollocks, belief and work rate to go with it, neither of which we saw tonight.

[hipkiss92]

Surprised that there has been little comment about just how poor McGinn was tonight, at both ends of the pitch. Thought he should have been replaced long before he was.

He's not a number 10, I don't care how many goals he scores for Scotland playing against San Marino or whoever. This season he seems to have played on the left and in the middle more than his actual best position on the right.

I suspect he'll be replaying the chance he had at 2-2 over and over again.

[Risso]

And it had to be against those twats, didn't it, who were getting played off the park by Bournemouth in their last home game.

One could even say that Bournemouth's comfortable 3-0 victory at Old Trafford as part of their winning run was impressive and worthy of praise.

(meant in a playful dig-in-the-ribs way, not in a being-a-belligerent-twat way)

I've never even *heard* of Bournemouth! Does that nice Eddie Howe still manage them?!

[Beard82]

Why does he keep shoving Konsa out wide to RB to play a mediocre pairing at the back. Konsa is the best defender and the most comfortable on the ball out of those 3 and they get keep getting the shirts.  It's costing us.

Agree - lose defensive stability with him on the right. 

[Brazilian Villain]

Sometimes, just sometimes things conspire. It's an awful place for us to go,  the number of unexpected and bizarre occurrences is somewhat beyond belief over the years. Players that never score, score, unexpected comebacks and ridiculous scorelines. But we are still OK, still a good side, let's not panic because I'm sure the Manager isn't 

I agree with this.

It's been a poor couple of matches, but we're THIRD in the league.

There's a bit of getting of a grip that would help tonight. It's not going to be a linear, uninterrupted march to glory, there will be ups and downs, great results and shit ones (a week and a bit ago we were beating Arsenal and Man City in 4 days).

From next week we have a chance to strengthen the squad, too, so let's see what happens. I am sure we'll be trying to do something, else we wouldn't have bothered hiring Monchi.

Agree with all this (plus I've just poured myself a very large Havana Club 7YO and coke). Don't worry, it's going to be a great 2024.

[pauliewalnuts]

We're all sickened by it, no doubt about that, but it doesn't mean anything more than any match we lose this season, and given that's only our second league defeat since the end of September, that adds a bit more context.

Well it does, because they're one of the big teams we need to finish above, so losing 3-2 after leading 2-0 means we're now 8 points ahead of them, rather than the 14 we would have been had we won. And we're only 3rd now pending games in hand for Spurs and Man City.

So, we're third.

Yeah, I agree it is one shit half and a piss poor result that particularly sticks in the craw because it was against those wankers.

There's been plenty of excellent stuff this season so far, and there will be plenty more. Hopefully we'll learn from this. Tonight doesn't make everything else is either terrible or only due to other teams being shit.

[colin69]

Decent first half, awful second half. Very disappointed as I thought we’d win. Carlos was garbage, Ramsey needs to get his act together and the subs were poor. However I think almost all of us would have took where we are now all day long. I still fancy us to keep it going and who knows where we might end up. On another note Ally McCoist can fuck right off with his Man Utd love in.

[SoccerHQ]

Don’t know what’s more embarrassing

Their fans or Emery’s subs

Stupid post.  What's he supposed to do with the players we have out?

I thought that the narrative (see Spurs and Newcastle fans) is that we don't bleat and whine about players being missing because that is why we have a squad of players?

We still had a decent spine out back to front. If we were having to stick Olsen and Chambers out there like in the league cup match last season then a collapse would be more expected. Guys like Luiz and Konsa are vastly experienced prem players now and have been very very good for a long while now. Both weren't at it all second half.

Personally I'd have got Tim out there a bit earlier. Perhaps it would've still gone wrong but they had a kid out in that position (and put two more on in injury time) but we need another CM desperately just to stop Fernandes having his annual testimonial match v us.

Hopefully Tielemans is back in January. That's a real annoyance from last few weeks, he finally breaks into the team and shows top level quality and then picks up an injury. Could've done with him Friday and tonight and hopefully he's back for Everton.

[markeeeebeeee2005]

Well that’s not how you win the league.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

As hard as this one is to take against that lot, we are going to lose some games. If each one is off the back of a 10 match unbeaten run, we will be doing more than OK come May.

[AV82EC]

It’s all very well moaning about the commentary but we didn’t exactly give them much to talk about did we? We did create some decent chances second half but poor execution and decision making let us down.

[Villafirst]

We can't rotate properly with Mings, Buendia, Torres, Tielemans, Kamara & Cash out. That's 6 players and possibly Digne now. The squad definitely needs at least two players adding in January.

[kippaxvilla2]

As sick as I feel seeing them celebrate like it’s a major scalp and they’ve won the league gives me hope. 

[SoccerHQ]

Going to have to hope Brighton win on Thursday now to make this result not seem as bad. Then hammer Burnley at the weekend.

I think CL will go down to 5th so there's really no reason to panic as crushingly disappointing as that second half was. Of course the live table had us 14 points clear of Man. United and now it's just the 8 (with a far superior GD) but we've just got to settle down and start beating the teams in this league we should be beating. We play all of Burnley, Everton and Sheffield United before Man. United come to VP so I'd expect the lead over them (and Newcastle) to be back to double figures.

If we keep messing up and they come to VP and do a smash and grab and get the lead down to 4-5 points then we really will have ourselves to blame. It will certainly be a worse collapse than 08/09 and I'm expecting better considering who we have as manager and we also have a transfer window in play and won't be signing Emile Heskey this time.