in spite of how great we've been this season, and the form of Ronaldo...

Originally Posted by Lou_Macari_Chippy

United wont implode - if chelsea win the league this year it will be thanks to an amazing comeback and amassing an incredible amount of points out from the last third of the season. United might lose one and draw two or three but thats no implosion thats just chelsea again raising the bar and being slightly more consistent winners than us.

I think if united come first or second we should all be proud of the team this year because;

1. The football has been it's best in years
2. We have been very consistent
3. a few players have stepped up to the plate this year

Winning the league for me will always be secondary to playing entertaining football which has been accomplished this year thanks to ferguson finally allowing the team to play the way united should play rather than testing out complicated formations that often left players playing out of position and confused.

We can all rightfully grumble about things that have and are going on behind the scenes but you cant grumble about the team this year - even if they win nothing they have represented MUFC the way we would want them to.

Great post.

"If only I hadn't been so tactically inept!"

(Surrounded by mural of all his greatest teams and 768 trophies).

Originally Posted by Lou_Macari_Chippy

United wont implode - if chelsea win the league this year it will be thanks to an amazing comeback and amassing an incredible amount of points out from the last third of the season. United might lose one and draw two or three but thats no implosion thats just chelsea again raising the bar and being slightly more consistent winners than us.

I think if united come first or second we should all be proud of the team this year because;

1. The football has been it's best in years
2. We have been very consistent
3. a few players have stepped up to the plate this year

Winning the league for me will always be secondary to playing entertaining football which has been accomplished this year thanks to ferguson finally allowing the team to play the way united should play rather than testing out complicated formations that often left players playing out of position and confused.
We can all rightfully grumble about things that have and are going on behind the scenes but you cant grumble about the team this year - even if they win nothing they have represented MUFC the way we would want them to.

What? This has happened on numerous occasions.

Originally Posted by Carrick

What? This has happened on numerous occasions.

Please elaborate...

Originally Posted by Lou_Macari_Chippy

Please elaborate...

What do you need explaining?

Originally Posted by Carrick

What do you need explaining?

what happened on number occasions? and what period?

The team was tinkered with on numberous occasions or we played good football on numerous occasions? just not quite sure what you mean...

ferguson finally allowing the team to play the way united should play

Arsenal (h) and (a)

Chelsea (h)

Celtic (a)

Copenhagen (a)

So you think we should win every single match?

Ferguson can only have a negative impact on the team. If we didn't have him we'd win every single match.

Also,why bother having an opposition that tries? or has eleven men?
Combined with the %@#$&!,fluker of trophies who manages us it seems to be robbing us of our rightful 100% win rate.

Just saying it's no coincidence we have lost those games but Fergie has persisted with the 4-5-1 nonesense.

Well I don't think any of us are fans of 4-5-1 but in the Emirates match it was a special situation against a special side ..it should have worked but for Benett's inability to blow his whistle and our player's lack of concentration. Despite people's slightly optimistic/arrogant belief that we'd smash unbeaten Arsenal at home playing 4-4-1-1 attacking...there is no guarantee we wouldn't have been picked off by a few quick counters in the opening twenty minutes.

He came unstuck through squad rotation in some of the others - something Mourinho,Benitez and Wenger all do.

Sure,he makes mistakes but this season we've lost no more than anyone else and are top of the league. This constantly blaming him for every single draw and defeat just means we tend excuse other guilty parties. It also starts to lead to the unrealistic scenario that we should win every match.

It just seems to be that since the online red community has spent the last three years casting Fergie as an Inspector Clouseau figure they have trouble seeing past him as the source of United's inevitable woes. The man isn't senile,or a bumbling buffoon..we need to get it all in the correct perspective so we can apportion blame more fairly and analyse in a slightly more sophisticated manner..imo.

Originally Posted by Lazarus

Well I don't think any of us are fans of 4-5-1
.

I'm a fan of it. Pity some of the players have taken so long to get to grips with it, really. I'm glad we're finally sussing it. We don't play a rigid 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 and it's madness to claim we do. And we don't play a rigid 4-5-1 either. The team pattern is fluid, and our pattern of play is a joy to watch.

As for Arsenal and Celtic away showing 4-5-1 up? Nonsense. Evra and Scholes fell over for RvP, the defence knocked off for Henry, and the Celtic result was a joke.

Originally Posted by Sparky6899

a bit like newcastle in 1996. they were a far better team to watch than us - but we came from behind grinding out 1-0s every week.

I think we're going to be like Blackburn in 1995.

Not really the best team in the league that year but did enough, consistently enough to win it.

A lot of tough away games to come but the sort of side we are, I'm not sure we're that much better at home than away anyway.

I just hope it doesn't boil down to the game at Stamford Bridge, I wouldn't fancy us in that situation.

Originally Posted by celtbion

I think we're going to be like Blackburn in 1995.

Not really the best team in the league that year but did enough, consistently enough to win it.

%@#$&!s. We've consistently played the best football in the League this year. chelsea are £#%&!ing dire to watch. Arsenal put in one great performance a month against shite like reading and liverpool and the press declare them the greatest thing in the Universe!

If we win the title, it'll be because we're the best team in the Land. If we don't, we'd still have had a season of great football.

Comparing us to blackburn in 95, get a £#%&!ing grip

Originally Posted by Carrick

Just saying it's no coincidence we have lost those games but Fergie has persisted with the 4-5-1 nonsense.

yeah there's a bit of truth in what you say there but i think if you plan on being one of the best teams in Europe you cant have the same approach to every game or you become too predictable and the best teams will simply deploy tactics that will expose that predictability.

My point though is that in recent seasons gone by the team would be tinkered with against teams like Portsmouth and we would end up dropping points - thats not happening any more though or at least much less these days.

IMO it's impossible to attack ferguson in general terms as a football manager because even his worst teams are still better than most of the others best. He's consistently kept united at, or close to, the top of the premiership even through the lower quality periods of trying to use players like kleberson and djembax2.

Having said that though he does sometimes make tactical mistakes and to be honest it would be really interesting to see how he would make out in a european super league with clubs like barca, ac milan et al week in week out, it would be very interesting indeed.

I think the reason these issues get raised with fergie is often the games we drop points in are frustrating to watch - we all see after 20 mins whether things are working or not and when no changes occur even after half time we get frustrated. Or when we have a lead and we end up getting scored on because we've tried to defend it too deep for too long, it's frustrating. But thats football, things are not always going to go as planned and thank god, the game would be shit to watch if it did.

Originally Posted by Tumescent Throb

I'm a fan of it. Pity some of the players have taken so long to get to grips with it, really. I'm glad we're finally sussing it. We don't play a rigid 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 and it's madness to claim we do. And we don't play a rigid 4-5-1 either. The team pattern is fluid, and our pattern of play is a joy to watch.

As for Arsenal and Celtic away showing 4-5-1 up? Nonsense. Evra and Scholes fell over for RvP, the defence knocked off for Henry, and the Celtic result was a joke.

There is no doubt in my mind that Fergie's ambition is to have a team that is flexible and comfortable switching between 4-4-1-1 and 4-5-1. Potentially this would result in a team that was capable of overwhelming the lesser sides with a high tempo attacking style and being a bit more thoughtful against top opposition in the league and prem.

I don't believe that we have reached that point yet. I'm not as optimistic about 4-5-1 as you (I take your point completely about us not being as rigid with our formation(s) as some may think) but I also remember that we've produced some remarkable away performances with it..

It's not as if some of the great continental sides can't switch between formations.

The real key is the mentality we approach games with. 4-5-1/4-3-3 can be dreadful Peter Reid style stuff or dazzling Barca style.

That said,and to be fair to the critics, we did go through a long spell where we were patently underperforming and struggling with the variation we played. The fooball was stagnant,stale and we weren't scoring goals. However, I don't think Fergie was the inept fool who couldn't/can't see it - I think he just felt we had to battle on until the players became familiar with it.

The fact that teams in Europe -and the prem- started packing the midfield and picking us off with clever counter attacks probably added to his determination to stick with it.

There is no doubt though that since the Blackburn defeat at home and the switch back to 4-4-1-1 as our default formation we've been a million times better to watch and mounted a real title challenge for the first time in a few seasons.

I have mixed feelings about 4-5-1 ..I honestly think it could be a very useful weapon in our armory..I just find the learning process a bore.

Agree with all that Laz. Hopefully the boring learning curve is mostly behind us now. Rooney has looked as if he is much more comfortable drifting around this season to me. And now his form is back orgasmic football will flow - Wembley and Athens will be begging us to make an appearance in May!

Its not hard, Giggs plays better on the left and Rooney plays better behind the main striker or in a free role dictating play.Fergie has to see it by now. Im baffled why he plays them the opposite way around.Rooney obviously looks frustrated stuck out on the left when the best left winger of this generation is playing up front, when his best attributes are beating his man and crossing for someone like Rooney. Why should we be worried about the way the opposition play when we are in great form being the top scorers in the P.L. and the best defensive record, its just showing that we're more worried about the opposition than playing our own game.Which is not showing eneough confidence in our own team.With Larsson up front our movement is frightening we should play to our strenghts instead of trying to nick a goal and trying to hang on to it e.g. Benfica and arsenal

United's strengths are their passing, their movement, their skill on the ball and their teamwork.

Their weaknesses are their concentration: sloppy goals let in, careless passing at times, and missed chances.

It's a total waste of time having their strengths if they aren't clever enough to shift the opposition around to take advantage of their superior ability.

And it doesn't matter what tactics they use if they lose focus during games, allowing centre forwards free headers from 10yds out, for instance.

that for some the formation we see is dependent on how well rooney plays. if he has a blinder then clearly he was playing up front; if he's off form he was wide on the left.

most of the time rooney's role is to float between m/f and attack so he sometimes pops up wide. when we lose the ball he pulls back into m/f - yes, wide on the left. against the better sides we don't dominate possession so much so he spends more time there.

against the arse we played a fantastic match and fully deserved to win, away, against an in-form team in their cup final (lose and the season's over). it was a superb performance and the tactics were spot on. we lost concentration in the last minutes, as s/side said, and made elementary errors at the back. that has nothing to do with the formation. the only match we were truly awful in was copenhagen away, and i think it was just an awful, unmotivated display where the victory was taken for granted and we paid the price, deservedly so.

O'Shea and Rooney missing total sitters at 0-0 didn't help in Copenhagen, either.