Manchester United- v - Leeds United *** Matchday Thread ***

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

When they beat us last season, for the return match, Phillips man marked hernandez out of the game, if Koch was playing Phillips role why did he not do this?

He is a CB mainly so likes the game in front of him and not all around him it would seem. when he has played there for Germany he is surrounded by much better players so they can cover for him.

[cherrypie7]

Positive,astute & correct as was your excellent comment post 87 of this thread.
Collect your gold star & login to Waccoe.

Thank you for your kind comments. I did check out the Waccoe forum many years ago. I found that almost all the Leeds fans on there were much younger than me. They are a different generation. This of course is great, but it means that it is difficult to talk about the skill of Clarke, speed of Cooper, and the greatness of Madeley. Some might only know Gary McAllister as a Leeds manager. And have no idea who is Jeff Astle to Leeds. Some may not realize that Aaron Lennon was a Leeds product not John's son. Of course one can also (correctly) point out that many here are argumentative, inflexible, curmudgeons. So, there are pros and cons (at least for me) to joining Waccoe.

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

I love the word curmudgeon

[WTF11]

When they beat us last season, for the return match, Phillips man marked hernandez out of the game, if Koch was playing Phillips role why did he not do this?

Easy peasy....he's not Phillips and he's not good enough, and he's not a CB.

[Tichi1]

When Phillips isn't fit or playing is Koch really the best alternative we have in that position???

Crazy really, Koch is the only right footed player oin the back three - so having him mark Frenandez and leaving Cooper and Struijk - both left footers at the back is not a good ploy, I still can't see why we didn't deploy Philips to man mark Fernandez as we did at ER last season, he may not be AS fit as Bielsa wants but can't see why not really. as I've mentioned elsewhere Maguire was deemed fit enough - and looked it - to last the full 90 minutes.

We need him and Llorrente back asap

The only consolation being we are unlikely to come up against a team playing that well very often this season. As last season, stay up and I will be satisfied

[george_kaplan]

Yeah they were on song yesterday and a good crowd. We had 51% which not many teams will, although we did nothing with it!
Lessons learned? Hope so! One thing MB will not dwell on this and fingers crossed have us ready for the next challenge. Hate losing and especially to that scummy bunch but we move on. Be interesting to what Andy has to say.

[YEBOAH01]

Totally agree, I'll be good with staying up and taking the Premier League coin. Phillips should have started, Rice has managed minutes today as hammers win 4-2, at Newcastle, bringing Costa and Roberts on was soul destroying MOT

[Tichi1]

Good news is the goals were scored in quick succession, when the defence were in some sort of disarray. Bad news is its not going to be that easy to remedy. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th goals were all designed plays that bypassed the defensive midfielder Which would have been Phillips. 2nd goal - where was Ayling? With Firpo at left back, surely Ayling should have been at right back. Instead we had a line of 3 left footers as Greenwood made his run. I think this can be remedied. Not the 3rd goal. There Fernandes runs into the right channel in the penalty area, firpo correctly doesn't make the challenge, Fernandes cuts back, Cooper is now covering firpo but firpo doesn't commit to anything. He doesn't go closer, nor does he tackle, nothing, just tucks his arms behind his back daring Fernandes to shoot. Alioski would not have done this. Once he knew Cooper was covering him he would have committed to something. Alioski was many things, uncommitted was not one of them.

Good post lad - the only thing I would say is that for their second goal Ayling was caught marauding forward when we lost posession, a feature of the whole match was how frequesntly. and easily we did lose possesion which inevitably lead to them hitting it long and catchimg us on the break, they did the same several times in the first half where we basically got away with it due to their poor finishing. It is Bielsa'a style for the wing backs to get forward at every opportunity - but the risks with that where there for everyone to see yeasterday. Problem was we continually lost possession due to their high press when we had commited players forward.

We won't be playing teams anywhere near that good every week.

[bathlad61]

One positive from yesterday, we didnt concede from a corner or free kick, mind you, we conceded from everywhere else.
One forward , two back i suppose.

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

One forward , two back i suppose.

If only Koch and Ayling had been on that wavelength