Man Utd Thread:

[GJL]

Hard to watch at present. Thank God help is on the way. 

[Shrewdness]

The sight of Fletcher, Cleverley, Valencia and Young in the same starting line up for a Premier league game sums up how far backwards United have fallen...So much for the easy fixtures we were supposed to have at the start of the season. Two games gone, and we're already 5 points behind Chelsea, and to round it all off, Smalling may have a hamstring injury.

[rodney trotter]

United don't need Di Maria until they sign two CB's and an CM. Van Gaal is constantly talking about an unbalance team Di Maria doesn't help this. I don't understand this with all the gaps at the back.

Rojo has been signed so that is one defender, Daley Blind will be signed this  weeks probaly, can play centre back, left back or Centre mid., De Jong being lined up too, thats a few gaps filled.

[laoislad]

Sunderland should have won today, United were awful.

[Kidder81]

Moyes was getting the shellacking last year, this year it's the players deficiencies.

[rodney trotter]

Moyes was getting the shellacking last year, this year it's the players deficiencies.

It was a combination last year.

[J OGorman]

Was mostly Moyes though getting the grief.  Sure the same team of world beaters had cruised the PL the year before. Moyes was severely hung out to dry.

[orangeman]

Man U could have been beaten today. Unless things change it's looking like last year all over again.

[seafoid]

Man U could have been beaten today. Unless things change it's looking like last year all over again.

Things could get a lot worse before they get worse
League position analysis is the graph to watch

http://guardian.touch-line.com/?CTID=11&CPID=4&TEID=230&pStr=League_Pos&t=3

[seafoid]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/23/liverpool-mario-balotelli-song

Glazers are stuff of nightmares for Scholes

In happier times at Manchester United when Sir Alex Ferguson used to give out injury bulletins at his press conferences everyone in the room knew the sensible option, without access to a polygraph, was to treat every single sentence like a carefully laid trap.
These days it comes as a slight shock that Louis van Gaal likes to speak the truth about who is fit and who is not, even if there might have been a touch of exaggeration to his claim that the list of absentees, with seven injured players for their game at Sunderland and Marcos Rojo unavailable because of work-permit issues, is like nothing he has experienced in almost 30 years of coaching.

Even with Robin van Persie fit again, and their pursuit of Ángel di María gaining momentum, their squad looks chronically inadequate for a club with United's ambitions. Danny Welbeck, who previously gave the impression he might have Glory Glory Man United as his ringtone wants to leave and you know it is bad when Paul Scholes turns on his old club. Scholes believes they need five experienced signings, no matter what the cost, and says he is worried that if they don't do what he says they could end up going through years of decline. "I am scared for United, genuinely scared they could go into the wilderness in the same way Liverpool did in the 1990s."

It is pretty damning stuff bearing in mind Scholes knows all the players and is still good friends with the assistant manager but, yet again, we have one of the many former United players in the media tap-dancing around the real issue. Will anyone in that position ever link the Glazer family to what we are seeing now?


Moyes got a lot of flak for what looks like a system problem. I wonder what the odds are of LVG resigning. 

[rodney trotter]

Scholes made those comments before the Di Maria deal, he might have have eased up a bit now. And silly to be writing off Van Gaal yet, he only took over in the 15th of July? A few more signings will be made this week in areas in need of strenghten.

[AZOffaly]

Saw this from ESPN on facebook. "Is Shinji Kagawa the next person out the exit door at Manchester United? Manager Louis van Gaal has said the midfielder "did not wish to fulfil my wishes, my philosophy" in pre-season."

van Gaal seems to suffer no fools. He'll be fine.

Kagawa obviously doesn't buy into the philosophy so far. He's a good player, criminally underused at United I think. Is Mata that much better than him?

[DennistheMenace]

Big fan of Di Maria, really hope we can get him and reinforce further as it's obviously needs. Was at the Swansea game couldnt believe how lethargically we looked, passing woeful. Good to see Mata show some form.

[Shrewdness]

Van Gaal did say during the summer that it normally takes him about 3 months to get any team he has managed, to play to his style.. When he took over at Bayern Munich, they only won 5 of their first 13 games. Yet, by the end of the season, they had won the Bundesliga and lost the Champions League Final. That won't happen this season, but he has made his mark wherever he has gone, and there is no reason to believe, as of now, that his time at Old Trafford will be any different.

[rodney trotter]

I remember reading that alright. Di Maria to be in Manchester this evening for Medical