The old Man Utd Thread

[toythatkills]

Mildly off topic, given today's events, but just what is wrong with Mike Phelan's face? He's been wearing a plaster on it for months now.

[phresh]

Wellbeck was well out of position though, although some of his touches were poor. His link up play with Macheda was excellent though and certainly bodes well for the future.

Although we lost you've got to give credit to all the players who went out there and put in what was a pretty decent performance against 6th placed side in the Prem on a fucking terrible pitch. Could Chelsea or Liverpool put out that many youth/reserve players and get the same result? I'm not even sure Arsenal could! The potential in our squad is immense and as much as other clubs fans will convince themselves they are ''catching' us after this season (win or lose the league) i'm really optomistic about this group of players and where they could go.

I though Anderson had a really good game which should help us in the run in and Vidic and Ferdinand were back to their imperious selves of old.

Anyway, BERBALOLV!

[Marzipan Travolta]

Mildly off topic, given today's events, but just what is wrong with Mike Phelan's face? He's been wearing a plaster on it for months now.

Maybe he has a brother in prison like rap superstar Nelly?

[McFly]

Man, Alan Greene and few other cunts were slating Fergie for playing a "disrespectful and disgraceful" team against the Toffs on 606. What crock of shit they were first team squad players that earned a shot for playing well, how is that disrespectful? Taking them to penalties, wow what shit performance and it was Berbatwat and Captain Cornrow that missed the pens. I used to like Alan Greene but hes turned into a right bastard.

Well done Everton and Tim Tourretes i hope you hump the blue scum.

[chalkitdown]

[phresh]

Man, Alan Greene and few other cunts were slating Fergie for playing a "disrespectful and disgraceful" team against the Toffs on 606. What crock of shit they were first team squad players that earned a shot for playing well, how is that disrespectful? Taking them to penalties, wow what shit performance and it was Berbatwat and Captain Cornrow that missed the pens. I used to like Alan Greene but hes turned into a right bastard.

If we'd have been dicked 4-0 or something then yeah, slate Fergie all you want. To slate a team that only lost on penalties to a full strength Everton is mind bendingly stupid though. Maybe they should critisise Everton for being disrespectful and playing so badly against a disgraceful United team selection.

[Reynard]

Man, Alan Greene and few other cunts were slating Fergie for playing a "disrespectful and disgraceful" team against the Toffs on 606. What crock of shit they were first team squad players that earned a shot for playing well, how is that disrespectful? Taking them to penalties, wow what shit performance and it was Berbatwat and Captain Cornrow that missed the pens. I used to like Alan Greene but hes turned into a right bastard.

You've got to admit that it was a shadow squad/reserve/weakened team, whatever. Call it what you want, but it wasn't a full-strength team and I (personally!) thought it was disrespectful to the competition, opposition and the fans that had shelled out and travelled (*insert joke here about not very far*) to watch their team in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

Like someone else had mentioned, it wasn't as if the majority of that side had reached that stage of the competition themselves. We've since that a few times in the past, where a weakened side progresses to the latter stages of the competition and the manager sends out a full-strength side. This seemed like the opposite.

[phresh]

Yeah it is a 'shadow' squad (full of internationals mind), but surely it's the performance that matters?

If a shadow squad having a decent performance is disrespectful then surely a first team having a shit performance is as bad? I agree about all the fans travelling down but thegame should never be at Wembley in the first place. Villa Park or Eastlands would have been a million times better with a decent pitch (see below) to boot. I did find it quite funny that there were more people at todays match, for two teams from the other end of the country, than yesterdays for two teams in the same city!

Fergie said himself he'd have put out a better team was the pitch not so turd so the FA can blame themselves for some of the players missing.

Anyway, you only wanted him to put out a full strength team to affect out league performances

[Majora]

Meh, we can argue about this til the cows come home. Of course I would have liked to get through to the final but ultimately the FA Cup was our lowest priority. If that's disrespectful to the competition then so be it. We can't afford to lose in the league and we've got three tough games against Arsenal coming up. People can go on about 'respecting the competition' all they want but our upcoming fixture list is daunting and we've already comfortably played the most amount of games out of everyone. Our second string more than matched Everton and if we had won it would have been a 'masterstroke'; such is the nature of knee-jerk reactionism.

[McFly]

You've got to admit that it was a shadow squad/reserve/weakened team, whatever. Call it what you want, but it wasn't a full-strength team and I (personally!) thought it was disrespectful to the competition, opposition and the fans that had shelled out and travelled (*insert joke here about not very far*) to watch their team in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.

Oh i do admit that it was not what would be a first XI, but the fans are travelling to see Man Utd not Ronaldo, Rooney or whoever else am i wrong? while its great to see the big names play its not why i personally go to see Utd play, I go to watch United not certain players. I just dont get this whole disrespect thing, believe ot or not these guys cant play every game, so it was a mix of young and old players all extrememly capable and we took them all the way, if the team that was picked was so awful how come that happened? As much as the FA Cup means its nowhere near as important as winning the league or EuroCup so i'm glad we're keeping our regular players for those games.

[Reynard]

Meh, we can argue about this til the cows come home. Of course I would have liked to get through to the final but ultimately the FA Cup was our lowest priority. If that's disrespectful to the competition then so be it. We can't afford to lose in the league and we've got three tough games against Arsenal coming up. People can go on about 'respecting the competition' all they want but our upcoming fixture list is daunting and we've already comfortably played the most amount of games out of everyone. Our second string more than matched Everton and if we had won it would have been a 'masterstroke'; such is the nature of knee-jerk reactionism.

See, I find pretty much everything you said there more agreeable. Yeah, I also agree that United more than matched a nervous and well below-par Everton side - if they (Everton) had performed to their recent standard, it would've been over in the 90 minutes. Also agree with it being the lower of your priorities.

phresh: you've got some messed up logic there, man. The performance of a weakened team has nothing to do with if it was respectful or not playing them in the first-place. However, I agree that the semi shouldn't be at Wembley, but that's not the point.

Agree about the support as well - good to see. There was no way Everton's allocation wouldn't have been sold out with this being their first sniff of silverware in God knows how long.

You should've had more (attacking) first-team players on from the start and took them off when the contest was over.

[Reynard]

Oh i do admit that it was not what would be a first XI, but the fans are travelling to see Man Utd not Ronaldo, Rooney or whoever else am i wrong? while its great to see the big names play its not why i personally go to see Utd play, I go to watch United not certain players.

People may not specifically go to see certain individuals, but they do want to see their most capable team. Their best team.

[phresh]

phresh: you've got some messed up logic there, man. The performance of a weakened team has nothing to do with if it was respectful or not playing them in the first-place.

Why though? Majora has it right when he says if we'd won it would be classed as a masterstroke in squad rotation.

The problem is it's easy to have two different views depending on whether you look at this game on it's own ignoring everything else or whether you look at it in the context of the next few weeks. At the end of the day every non-united fan will wave the disrespectful flag regardless of what happened in the game because they couldn't care less about our League or CL challenge. Or in the case of some fans would rather we did wear out players and pick up injuries.

[phresh]

People may not specifically go to see certain individuals, but they do want to see their most capable team. Their best team.

Didn't hear you saying that when you went out of the Carling Cup, but I suppose that wasn't a priority at the time?

[fatbob]

People may not specifically go to see certain individuals, but they do want to see their most capable team. Their best team.

I'm a United fan and and I wouldn't have minded watching the team that was there today. They played as well as our '1st' line squad have done for the last 6 weeks and we probably should have won today.

If Liverpool had 3 competitions to contest and games in hand to fit in i'm sure you would have rested players too. Would you call it disrespectful if Benitez had done it? I doubt it. In fact you guys are just as renowned for 'squad roation' as anyone.

If you'd followed any of the previous games we'd played in the domestic cups this season you would know that all of the playerd that player today (aside from Kiko) had been playing regularly in all of the previous legs. So players who had won one final and got to a semi of another, not exactly a shit team not capable enough to play Everton with the desire to crash out? We have a big squad, why is it disrespectful to let the fringe and younger players to get some games in the cup? They play enough games in the league too, Rafael has player something like 23 games this season, Macheda has won our last two league games for us. Its not as if they weren't trying to win it, they gave their all and want to impress. If we had put out a tired side from the Porto game and they had had given a lame performance then i'm sure SAF would be slammed for that.

As an aside, it seems that people are always talking about how the big clubs don't care about the domestic cups anymore, not minding if they go out because of fixture pile up. Surely by playing your younger players you are giving more respect to the cups by trying to stay in them? If teams were for example compelled to play their first XI for 15-20 games a season by trying to get to these finals, do you not think the games would be less contested by the clubs? If you are going for league and Champions league then comitting fully to the League and FA cups its a stretch.

The team that was out there today wanted it as much and probably more than the team that would be deemed respectful by you.

[fatbob]

Giggs wasn't there. Scholes was. I'm not sure why Tevez didn't go, I guess he would have been after Anderson.

I don't begrudge the youngsters not wanting to take them too much.

Vidic's penalty was hilarious.

The Wellbeck one could have easilly been given without too much complaint. The ref was also quite card hapy today I thought, didn't give any warnings. Rafael's card for example.

[Reynard]

Didn't hear you saying that when you went out of the Carling Cup, but I suppose that wasn't a priority at the time?

If Liverpool had 3 competitions to contest and games in hand to fit in i'm sure you would have rested players too. Would you call it disrespectful if Benitez had done it? I doubt it. In fact you guys are just as renowned for 'squad roation' as anyone.

If you'd followed any of the previous games we'd played in the domestic cups this season you would know that all of the playerd that player today (aside from Kiko) had been playing regularly in all of the previous legs. So players who had won one final and got to a semi of another, not exactly a shit team not capable enough to play Everton with the desire to crash out? We have a big squad, why is it disrespectful to let the fringe and younger players to get some games in the cup? They play enough games in the league too, Rafael has player something like 23 games this season, Macheda has won our last two league games for us. Its not as if they weren't trying to win it, they gave their all and want to impress. If we had put out a tired side from the Porto game and they had had given a lame performance then i'm sure SAF would be slammed for that.

As an aside, it seems that people are always talking about how the big clubs don't care about the domestic cups anymore, not minding if they go out because of fixture pile up. Surely by playing your younger players you are giving more respect to the cups by trying to stay in them? If teams were for example compelled to play their first XI for 15-20 games a season by trying to get to these finals, do you not think the games would be less contested by the clubs? If you are going for league and Champions league then comitting fully to the League and FA cups its a stretch.

The team that was out there today wanted it as much and probably more than the team that would be deemed respectful by you.

This situation isn't like the Carling Cup, though - it's a competition in which you've played near enough a full-strength side up until now and historically normally have done. You can say that most players in the starting line-up today had figured in certain sides at different stages of the FA Cup, but not all together. Check back and you'll see that up until now, the sides have been generally strong with a sprinkling of fringe.

Fans turning up today would've expected to see a stronger side out there at this stage of the competition and going off previous rounds. I do agree that most 'big-picture' fans should have appreciated that you're in the hunt for three trophies, but you normally go for it, so why not now or so late on in this competition?

People have low enthusiasm of Carling Cup progress and accept weakened teams from the top four sides. I didn't give a toss when that weakened side of ours went down at WHL as we'd put out a weakened team in the previous round. It's not really what you'd call 'rotation' either (which Fergie does almost as frequently as Benitez and possibly more this season in the league).

Anyway, I'm not having a go - I just originally tried to explain why people who believed that it was a bit of disrespect to whatever or whoever wasn't a cunt. I shall respectfully leave this thread.

[Majora]

It's just a matter of changing circumstances. When we were putting a stronger FA Cup squad out we were winning consistently, not conceding many goals, we had a nice points lead over Liverpool. If we still had a 4-7 point lead with a game in hand I'm sure we would have seen a stronger team out there today. Now we're struggling for form, a loss in the league could put us in all sorts of trouble, players are starting to look a bit tired. I'm sure in the back of his head Fergie has some records in mind (equalling Liverpool's league record, being the first team to retain the Champions League) and it's just necessary to prioritise what's most important. It was undoubtedly a weaker team but Ferdinand, Vidic, Park, Anderson, Tevez and Rafael have all played regularly for the first team this season, it's not like we just tossed a load of unexperienced nobodys out there.

And let's be honest, we all know perfectly well that the Big 4 teams prioritise the League and Champions League over the FA Cup nowadays.

[ckny]

It was a clear penalty.

Welbeck and Macheda looked very good going forward.

Welbeck was rubbish on left wing and should have been switched well before Park went off.

Berbatov is a joke.

Rio and Vidic are the best defenders in the world.

Foster looked shaky.

Nani is probably on his way out of the club.

Fuck any 'fans' that were there today and wanted to see the marquee names. You support the club, not the players. I didn't leave the pub when I saw Ronaldo wasn't on the teamsheet.

Our last visits to Wembley/Millennium Stadium:

vs Everton 0-0 AET FA Cup Semi Final

vs Tottenham 0-0 AET Carling Cup Final

vs Portsmouth 0-0 Community Shield

vs Chelsea 1-1 Community Shield

vs Chelsea 0-1 AET FA Cup Final

vs Wigan 4-0 Carling Cup Final

vs Arsenal 0-0 AET FA Cup Final

Throw in the 1-1 draw AET with Chelsea in the Champions League final and it's a pretty dismal set of results in the showpiece games.

[AndyB]

Stupid pitch

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8006546.stm

[phresh]

For some of the second half Wellbeck went up top with Macheda and they looked dangerous. I'd have rather seen him on the right with Park on the left, not entirely sure why they didn't do that.

Disagree completely on Foster though. He had a couple of dodgy kicks from back passes but other than that he made soemdecent saves and was commanding in the area.

[DC Lemon]

I was willing Everton to score in the final moments of extra time. I'd already had enough of penalty shoot outs even before we ended up losing one. You could see the difference in the fans and on the two benches. Even after Cahill blasted over, there was an air of 'one shoot out too many'. But NOTHING prepared me for how shit Berbatov's take was. He is not a Man U player.

I can't see any side ever doing the quadruple. Certainly not the quintuple. There are just too many matches. Sir Alex did the right thing yesterday and now it's up to the first team to back him up by winning the next two home matches in the league.

[DC]

How disappointing. Berbatov I have defended to the hilt, here and offline, but yesterday he showed his true colours. The lazy twat couldnt even be bothered to take a penalty! He's a fucking striker! Anderson stood out as our best player for me. I was extremely drunk.

It was good to see the team play though and I've managed to arrange a potential couple of tickets for OT in the future. I dont think the FA Cup is worthless by any stretch of the imagination but out of what we are still in for it was the lowest priority. Onwards!

[bowser123]

This situation isn't like the Carling Cup, though - it's a competition in which you've played near enough a full-strength side up until now

Incorrect. I'm guessing you missed it when the commentator said they'd used 27 players in the FA Cup in 5 games?

Anyhow.

Foster, Rafael, Vidic, Ferdinand, Park, Anderson and Tevez. That's 7 players that are undisputed first teamers, arguably all starting XI who started yesterday.

That was Wellbecks third start in the competition this season and he came off the bench in the other two.

Which leaves Gibson and Fabio, both who have started games in the FA Cup this season, and appeared as subs in more.

That was Macheda's first game, though his league form kinda warranted him a place.

Rooney and Scholes have started once, Ronaldo and Giggs twice.

Personally I couldn't give a shit what people think about devaluing competitions, pissing people off.

The team proved it was good enough to win, they contained a top 6 Premiership side very well and looked dangerous going forward, though didn't quite have that final bit of composure to finish good moves off. They did themselves proud, especially the linking play of Wellbeck and Macheda though Well needs to strengthen up his weaker foot. Fullbacks looked awesome again, Gibson looks neat and composed though maybe not flashy enough to push past the more senior players. Andesrons return to last seasons form these past few games is perhaps the most encouraging thing of all, besides Rio and Vidic looking unquestionably solid again.

The really important bit though is we've played Everton twice this season before yesterday, both really close, tight, tiring games. There's absolutely nothing to say the theoretical strongest XI would have won in normal time when remembering those games, you'd have been crowing even more had they all played 2 hours in that heat, on that pitch and got themselves fucked for the future.

[Mr Do 71]

Man, Alan Greene and few other cunts were slating Fergie for playing a "disrespectful and disgraceful" team against the Toffs on 606. What crock of shit they were first team squad players that earned a shot for playing well, how is that disrespectful? Taking them to penalties, wow what shit performance and it was Berbatwat and Captain Cornrow that missed the pens. I used to like Alan Greene but hes turned into a right bastard.

Well done Everton and Tim Tourretes i hope you hump the blue scum.

Another vote for Alan Green is a cunt.

[phresh]

Excellent post.

I actually think i'm falling in love with Anderson, he was brilliant last season and now he's fit and had a few games he's looking excellent again. He can pass the ball brilliantly (his pass to Rafael on the wing in the first half was world class) and he has the pace and strength to take the ball past players with ease. I suspect we'll see him a good few more times before this season is out.

I didn't think Fabio did especially well, he looked a little off the pace to me although that could have been the pitch as nobody looked particularly quick. Did have some lovely touches and the potential of himself and Rafael is there for all to see.

I though Gibson did really well in midfield and only started to go out of the game when he was moved onto the right to accomodate Scholes. If you have Carrick in there then there may be a tendancy to not go into challenges knowing the teams priorities but Gibson threw himself into challenges and did a great job of complementing Anderson.

I mentioned it before but Vidic was a different player yesterday. He looked back to his old self and even with the danger Everton had at set pieces they never once looked like scoring from one. A clean sheet on Wednesday would be nice now!

I still have no idea what Berbatov was thinking with his penalty. Ferdinand's penalty was OK, just the keeper went the right way. I'm loath to criticise Berbatov too much this season as the entire team has been short of form for most of it and it's difficult to say how much effect that has had on him.

[Liamness]

Welbeck was rubbish on left wing and should have been switched well before Park went off..

Nani is probably on his way out of the club.

Yeah, I have no idea why Park stayed on the right. Welbeck was clearly struggling there, at least we know Park can play on the left. Yes, I was very surprised Nani didn't come on, especially as penalties approached. He clearly isn't in favour.

[Trigg]

I was proud of the young players yesterday, did themselves no harm whatsoever and didn't look out of place in a FA Semi Final, which is very reassuring for the future. I was really excited when I saw the team, and we could have easily won the game.

A fair few positives to take from the game despite not making the final the main one being another clean sheet and Rio and Vidic looking like they have their game head on again. If they defend like that until the end of the season we'll be there or thereabouts when the trophies are handed out.

Thought Rafael and Fabio were both great too. Both disciplined in their play and defended very well against some awkward opponents. Hopefully Fabio's injury isn't too serious.

Anderson is another plus point for me, looks like he's finding his form from last season. He ran non stop for a 120 minutes. I've often felt that he faded and become tired in games but he seems to have addressed that and he looked fit as a fiddle yesterday. Hopefully he'll get more games in the run in, his form deserves it.

[Trigg]

Yeah, I have no idea why Park stayed on the right. Welbeck was clearly struggling there, at least we know Park can play on the left. Yes, I was very surprised Nani didn't come on, especially as penalties approached. He clearly isn't in favour.

Or he was saved for the midweek match.

[Chooch]

You can't really believe that.