IrishVilla10

2 hours ago, thunderball said:

The reality is nothing lasts forever. If the opportunity arrived for Unai and his team to move to somewhere like Bayern for mega money he would go. I would suggest the better he does here the more chance he leaves: his value increases, he has made good on his Arsenal experience, ticked the Premier League box. I suspect he might want to manage in Germany, Italy and one of the top two in Spain. He is only 52 and the weather is terrible here.

I don't think the timing is right however, I think he will feel there is still Champions League and a convincing title challenge here as unfinished business. I don't think he will be here in after 25/26 season (two more full campaigns).

I think we’re blessed by the fact he has experience with psg and arsenal, the hierarchy at Bayern for example will be miles apart from what he’s been allowed to do here. 

1 hour ago, Pinebro said:

Missing out on 4th won't be the end of the world

Players want champions league 

Just swing a cross in. Majority of the first half was him doing nothing on the ball outside their box 

Bit mental seeing the narrative that Ollie blew his chance because Toney scored a pen, think he touched the ball twice in the second half. 

18 hours ago, nick76 said:

 

I’m just taking it one day at a time.  

Too many fans thinking of all the combinations of whose going to get wins against who, where they are in the league, how points different, goal difference, European co-efficient and guessing all the combinations.  

So much can happen between now and the end of the season with form, injuries, winning and losing runs, lucky and unlucky score lines along with surprising results.  

There are very few easy games these days and slip ups can and will happen and it if was purely down to league position or team strength then there would be no point playing any individual fixture.

We might have another 15 games this season, we are going to have ups and downs and so are our competition for things…too many combinations to predict.  

Focus for now is the West Ham game and then onto the next.  Just have to try and enjoy the ride, trust in Emery’s brilliance we’ll be ok, whatever that means…

Top comment. I’d been doing this for the majority of the season and it’s exhausting, checking other teams fixtures etc. I think it’s because this is an unfamiliar position for us, you don’t want to lose it. It’s very easy to forget how we’ve got here and stop enjoying the process. Heard a comment on a pod last night along the lines of if you’d have told me in October 2022 we’d be beating Ajax 4-0 at home next season I wouldn’t have believed you. Let’s enjoy the next few months 

 Even when mcginn comes back I’d like to see us continue with this

9 hours ago, Pinebro said:

He isn't ready yet.

I'd be looking to get him a loan in the summer

He hasn’t had much chance to be ready though, hasn’t played regular football since last season. And dropped into a European fixture Ajax away for his first start under Emery. I thought he was understandably nervous, and probably stopped the flow of our play at times not offering up for the ball but it was a massive occasion 

89% of our revenue covering the wage bill, it’s hard to crack the top 6 without top 6 revenue. 

 Thought him and Pau worked well together yesterday, his lack of right foot is a bit nervy though. 

Beat Luton next weekend and United have city, potentially 11 points clear of them 

             Martinez  

Cash Lenglet Torres Digne 

  Tielemans Luiz Mcginn 

   Bailey Watkins Ramsey 

On 13/02/2024 at 07:00, Captain_Townsend said:

Personally I feel, maybe we need to shift formation to more of a 4-3-3/4-5-1?

 

‐--------‐-------Martinez------------

Cash-----Carlos-----Pau-------Moreno

-----McGinn----Luiz--‐--Youri-----

Bailey-----‐--------------------------Ramsey

‐---------------Watkins‐---------------

 

This is what I want to see, think we’re so much better in attack when we’ve got width and Moreno alone doesn’t provide enough down the left. Things have been stale for a while and the next three could be an opportunity to try something else. 

4 hours ago, Tom13 said:

Wasting every good attacking situation should not guarantee you a start.

We’re better in attack with JJ on the left, and Saturday was the best he’s played since he’s come back. Had no pre season and was injured again, he’ll be starting 

On 13/02/2024 at 13:02, JW7494 said:

With Kamara now out, I think we should possibly use Pau further forward in the more defensive midfield role. This would still allow us to convert to a back 3 on the ball & would give us less disruption rather than dropping mcginn back and sacrificing his strengths

Pau doesn't have the mobility for defensive midfield 

Just now, MaVilla said:

i would bet money that he isnt yet at the point where Emery would remotely trust him as a PL starter.

Luiz is the clear choice to drop in to that DM role, with McGinn, Tielemans or maybe even Rogers going to that no.8 role.

If not now when though, probably could have been sent on loan somewhere. 20 now with championship loan experience, I’d let him play the next few games 

No luck whatsoever, I wonder is it the same leg again? I’d like to see Tim in there from now on. 

1 minute ago, Deano & Dalian's Umbrella said:

Unai got rid of the entire medical staff a few months ago and replaced them all with Spanish staff, or at least I've been told they are all Spanish.

I have no idea if any of them were / are any good or not.

 

Surely that’s out of unais control? Medical staff?

1 hour ago, Herman22 said:

The more I’ve thought about this game I think we need legs in midfield. I’d be tempted to put JMc into the middle of the park (anlong with Luiz and Bouba) and get him to run and hassle (I assume) Casemiro. He’s a good player with time and space but he struggles when he’s pressed.

United are a counter attacking team a d we struggle against teams to park the bus. Hopefully we get an early goal to settle the nerves. 

We struggle to score against teams who park the bus, lately we struggle to defend against counter attacking teams. 

13 minutes ago, Callum said:

We, Unai and backroom staff knew the position we were in and what we can achieve this season - We also knew we had JJ coming back, Pau out, Digne, Mings, Buendia, Bailey Prone and did absolutely **** all about it in January. Buying kids, who might come good in 2/3 years. Brilliant. What we needed was support NOW. Even loan players. It's honestly baffling and more frustrating than some of the underwhelming seasons gone-by. 

I don't understand the ins and outs of football business, so try not to speak too much about what I don't know so this is probably a naive post, but I don't care. We needed players, we had an opportunity and we **** it. 

Everyone was blowing their beans over 2 kids and Morgan Rogers, without really sufficing the immediate needs this squad has. 

Look at the lack of spending in January across every league. We didn’t have the spending room to sign players to come in and improve the 11. And no one’s giving loan moves to players good enough to play for us either. 

The whole set up was a mess last night. Kamara and cash the obvious two. And to make things even more confusing at times kamara is making runs into the box looking to score, is he being told to get forward like that? 
Took me about ten minutes to work out where bailey was playing, was central at one point then out wide, but when he gets the ball out wide he’s so deep all he can do with it is dribble backwards and pass it back to the defence. Tielemans was like a supporting striker then playing central to cover kamara when he was at right back, tielemans doesn’t have the legs for that. And that also doesn’t make sense when we’re trying to play it through teams because it leaves us with two central midfielders and Ollie up top alone. Cash may as well not be on the pitch he’s either glued to kamara or stopping any momentum down the right. Moreno sits out wide half the game but receives the ball on the half way line mostly, with no support ahead of him, he’s dangerous attacking the box but he’s not dangerous 45 yards out with two Chelsea players ahead of him. Every game since Everton apart from Sheffield ollies been contesting long balls, that’s surely evidence that the midfield is either short of numbers or being tactically nullified. From the first 5 minutes last night we resorted back to it, giving Chelsea the ball. And the worrying thing similar to Newcastle is in the space of ten seconds we go from controlling the ball at the back to being dangerously countered. 

6 minutes ago, Osirus said:

Moreno looks like he has lost that yard of pace that made him so dangerous last season, at 30 i'm not sure it will ever come back, he's been poor lately albiet massively exposed at times

Digne can't get back quick enough

I think a big part of the problem is he’s running a whole left side by himself at times, he’s getting the ball just inside opponents half’s with nothing in front of him. Last season it was more attacking their box 

28 minutes ago, DJBOB said:

The problem starts and stops with this Cash/Kamara rotation.

Either Unai trusts Cash to play as the 3rd CB or we continue playing disjointed.

I think it’s deeper than that we’ve been watching teams do the same thing to us for too many games now. Personally I’d love to see us go 433 

1 minute ago, TheAuthority said:

We've had 12 shots

Which of them would have made it 4-0. We’ve an XG of 0.89 and only three shots on target 

2 minutes ago, Leeroy said:

Maybe the Arsenal fans were right about Unai. He does seem to be making some bizarre decisions lately. Not making changes at half time in this game or against Newcastle, lost the plot.

Tonight’s something I’ve not seen from him with us before, not making subs until the 70th minute there, not even attempting to tweak the tactics. It’s stubborn nothing else