link.

Tuesday 7 January 2014

Hard To See The End Of The Tunnel For United


The most depressing thing for Manchester United fans at the moment must be that defeats like this just aren't a surprise anymore. It's the nature of the defeats, more than the defeats themselves. Limp, lifeless, the sense that they just aren't going to score after going behind.
Perhaps winning the FA Cup would not have proved David Moyes is a worthy successor to Sir Alex Ferguson, but it at least would have been something tangible for him to hang onto. And perhaps you shouldn't place too much significance on one game in which several first-choice players were rested.
But that would be valid if this was an isolated incident, and if Swansea themselves were at full strength. This was United's fourth home defeat in the last six home games. Four in six! That's embarrassing for a team that used to have visitors half-beaten before they'd even arrived at the ground.
The game against Swansea was an exaggerated version of sterile domination. United had the majority of the ball, but not only didn't score in the second half, but didn't really look, at any stage, like they were going to score. In the Ferguson years, even when they didn't get that last-gasp goal, they always looked like they were going to do it.
United rely far too heavily on a handful of players - and not players a team of United's stature should be relying on, either. Robin van Persie seems to be regressing to the perma-crocked version Arsenal fans saw in the first five or six years of his time there, Wayne Rooney also has his fitness problems and his form has a habit of dropping off alarmingly, while Adnan Januzaj is just 18.
As a side point, this game provided further evidence that patience with Shinji Kagawa won't be rewarded for Manchester United. The Japanese midfielder is clearly a good player, but one that appears to need the team built around him, and he simply isn't good enough to justify such a construction at United. This was a game in which he should have excelled, playing largely in the middle, allowed to dictate the tempo against a team that were never going to kick him up in the air at every turn, and he was utterly anonymous. The brave decision for United would be to find someone who can accommodate him properly and sell as soon as possible.

No comments: