LarsErikKjell wrote:

Tek wrote:

SuperMario wrote:

 
The one thing I detest, is when someone is having a go at anyone players staff etc, is when they tag the person

At end of the day there human beings like us

I don't condone that myself. Though i have personally never seen any vitriolic stuff tagged towards Tony.

There was some really horrible stuff tagged to players in the relegation season, that i thought was out of order.

Particularly to Blair Spittal.

It's curious timing from Mr Asghar deleting his account. Now that his role is being put under scrutiny.
 

 
If every decision I made or didnt make was under the microscope as much as his is I'd never be on Twitter in the first place. For every nice comment he got, he got 5 sarcastic, snidey, moany ones. Some might come out with shit like "be a man and handle it" but I think at the start he was on there to communicate, but I think as time has gone on its probably become more and more difficult for him to get any good feeling from Twitter. Most United fans are genuine, lovely people. But you get a little bunch of keyboard warriors who think its ok to hide behind their phone or laptop and be arseholes. Good decision on his part. The guy has done a lot for our club and I think some forget that at times.

He got a lot of praise on Twitter. A lot of praise.

Only fairly recently have i witnessed criticism and scrutiny of him. And some may not have been nice. But i haven't really seen anyone tag him in the more prickly posts.

So he would have to go out of his way to find them. Just as he would posts like my original one here (which is an honest, from the heart post of a Utd supporter of 35 years).

Fwiw i think he is correct to bin Twitter. It's the timing that is curious.

Anyway the thread is getting derailed somewhat.
 

Thing is, points wise we are not that badly off.

11 points with one game of this round left is far from disastrous. If we can repeat that in each of the next two rounds of games then 33 points going into the split and even 5 points should keep us up comfortably. Even as recently as 3-4 weeks ago against St Mirren and the first half against Hamilton we looked like we'd have more than enough about us to achieve this.

The worry is that if we continue to drop off performance wise like the last 3 weeks then we'll be sucked right in to a relegation fight which we don't look up for. Mickey Mellon's interviews and body language have been horrendous recently too which can't be helping anyone.

What do we need?

1. A settled defence. A back four (imho) that we stick with for a number of games. Until Mellon needlessly decided to change to a 3 against Hamilton we looked ok with Edwards and Reynolds. Edwards is limited but is clearly better in a back four as the right cb. I always feel better with Reynolds as a natural left footer in there. Personally, I'd try Butcher and Reynolds though. So:
Smith-?-Reynolds-Robson

2. Getting someone in midfield who can dictate play and shows for the ball from the defence. Hopefully Fuchs does this. I'd like to see Powers in there too. I strongly suspect if Robbie Neilson was still in charge Powers would have played most games. Butcher doesn't look like he wants the ball and Mellon seems to want to push Harkes further up the park which is having no effect other than leaving us really exposed when play breaks down.

3. Working on crossing in training. I have NEVER seen a football team put in so few crosses as we do despite having a striker who is the best at finding space in the box between defenders and finishing in Scotland. When we do cross it, it is woeful. Having McNulty there will only exacerbate this problem since he is basically Shankland MK2. Bolton, McMullan, Chalmers and Sporle. Which two play needs to be dictated by which ones can actually start putting accurate crosses in. This extends to the full backs as well.

If you had told me at 3pm on Saturday 1st August as we prepared to kick off v St Johnstone that that after the first round of games finishing at 4.50 pm on Saturday 17th October that we would sitting in the top six of the Prem I'd have been a very happy chappy.

But there is a but.....
Our top six position is sixth & by the slimmest of margins.
We are just 5 points better off than the relegation/play-off places.
Our improvement curve is downwards. (Granted Fuchs & McNulty might alter that).
 

It's always good to come to this forum for a more balanced opinion on things.

If you go by social media, United fans want Micky Mellon OUT. Which baffles me. These are the same people who were screaming for us to make 10/11/12 signings in the summer, why are they now surprised that we are a difficult watch at times this season?

We have the bones of a Championship squad with Bolton, Fuchs, Edwards and McNulty the only additions. All good players who will start most of of our games, but are they miles ahead of what we had already? No.

I'm sitting here with my team 5th in the Premiership after experiencing the worst 4 years of my time supporting United and I'm absolutely delighted with that. I would prefer to be watching better football. But I'd also rather watch us draw 0-0 with Aberdeen and St J whilst playing defensively and creating few chances, than watching us getting pumped 4-0 off Killie because we opened up too much.

We are getting there. Last night was encouraging in a lot of ways and I believe we have more than enough to finish 10th or above (which is really all that matters right now).

I thought Fuchs, making his first start for us after 2 weeks isolation and still getting up to speed, looked good in my eyes. One or two sloppy moments but I can see him being a more rounded player in that position who has all of the capabilities that Harkes and Powers have combined. I think he will be a good addition.
 

Lilley01 wrote:

Agree with those sentiments, broadly behind Mickey but a couple of questions. How can anyone be sure Mochrie is the answer? We've seen him very fleetingly at the tail end of games where impact has been non-existent (as much through time than readiness). 

I'll take this one first. Watched a fair amount of reserve/youth games over recent years and I've always felt Mochrie was comfortably our best youth prospect. I mentioned him several times on my (now defunct) twitter account and I was surprised to see him go out on loan this season considering how poor we were going forward the tail end of last season. 

Straight answer, we can't be sure, and I'm not claiming for a second to be any kind of scout, just I see our needs in this squad and from what I've seen of him he fits the bill.

Lilley01 wrote:

​Secondly, the squad is lower premiership standard, when wil the championship view stop? The team finished top of the championship, it was assembled at cost, we're holding our own and winning points against premiership teams. Dunfermline, QoTS, Morton, etc have championship squads. Agree midfield is an issue but each of them can play a part if the right balance was struck with other selections. We need the odd additional piece of quality to optimise the current players. 

Maybe I was a bit harsh, I'll change what I said about the 'Championship Squad', it's not. It was a squad designed to get out the Championship, therefore it's gritty, it's not pretty, but it's effective to that end. We're seeing more of the same, but this time our lower end players can no longer control possession in a way in which we will always get that half chance that Shankland nearly always got, and buried, last season. 

You make a good point, and hopefully I've changed my description to be more fitting.

Last edited by Morphman (11/11/2020 2:48 pm)

Enjoying the synopsis.
But just a quickie...what were we doing right v St Mirren at Tannadice before they got a man sent off?
That was our joyful hour, thought we'd cracked it.
It was more or less the same team that we're fielding 7 weeks later.
Chalmers was in for Pawlett, that's about all.

When's the last time in our history 4 out our last 5 results were 0-0? (And the 2 before that were 1-0 & 0-1).
So we've lost 2 goals in 7 games and scored 3 but if that sounds like a shit-hot defence it ain't. Credit to the goalies tho.
Clogging nothing, just rank bad football & oppo missing chances, St J last night should easily have scored two last night.
Is it to do with the wierd season, everybody's work is affected just now, should footballers be any different?
Contradicting myself a bit, just confused about the lack of joined-up football.
Would all these 0-0 games be happening with fans in?

League position is pretty good so far, I think we would all have taken that. Priority is to stay up no matter what.

However, this is some of the worst fitba I have endured in 45 years plus of following United. Awful. Keech to watch. Plus that's on top of the last few years of, in the main, s.hite on and off the pitch. Very strange situation this covid season though and can't be easy for players, managers, coaches and owners. OR SUPPORTERS.

I am reasonably confident things will improve. Certainly friking hope so.

In the thread at the start of the season about where we thought Utd would finish in the league this season I said as long as we were competitive and finished above the relegation battle I would be happy ( also said I would be delighted with a top 6 finish ) so can't really complain as we are competing but I would like to see more goals.

Lilley01 wrote:

Fair play, not being critical of the view on Mochrie, just more have seen a lot of calls for him to play/start, even on certain podcasts, week in week out. I'm not saying he wasn't deserving of a chance but it appeared there was a view that he was the answer to our questions. This to me was unsubstantiated or wrong at worst. Also a lot of pressure to put on him. 

page has a couple of vids on Mochrie at Montrose.