TERRACE TALK: Reaction from the weekend’s top Premiership
By Richard Kurt
The science of United ticket-touting is complex and challenging. When Michael O’Leary finally quits his airline, the company could do worse than pluck a successor from the Warwick Road broking fraternity, so expert are they at judging dynamic advance seat pricing.
Sometimes, though, it’s easy to read; many days before our trip to Leicester, one realised that getting a brief was going to be much tougher than usual. The surge in excitement that has swept Red Manchester after the QPR match seemed to have dictated that those tickets that did appear on the market were snapped up in seconds. After quarter-of-an-hour’s play on Sunday, no one would have quibbled: Falcao’s assist for RVP, and then Di Maria’s chip, seemed to have justified the tout-price of any tickets all on their own. Nothing could possibly go wrong now...
Falcao’s full debut was the obvious top of the bill, but there was also fascination for the connoisseur on offer in seeing how Rooney would handle his move to the Mata slot.
We all enjoyed the hospital pass from LVG before kick-off: “I have played Rooney as a striker but he thinks his best position is behind. So let’s see if he can play behind the strikers.”
No pressure, like.
Rooney remains an unloved figure to many Reds, and one to be treated with suspicion; those fans were less than thrilled with Van Gaal’s declaration earlier in the week that the player’s captaincy made him undroppable.
It is, of course, a good job that our front-line slots are brimming over with talent, given the state of the rearguard. It was largely overlooked, amidst all the hype last week, that even the wretched QPR broke through to our last trench on at least four occasions, and Leicester took up the same baton yesterday. Reds on a high will declare, with old school bravado, that “we’ll just have to keep scoring one more than them, then”. Except we didn’t do so — and besides, we all know this won’t fly far against Chelsea and City.
Daley Blind, for example, gave one of the most hearteningly assured debuts ever last week but, even then, wiser Red heads thought and wrote that they had detected a possible flaw in an apparent susceptibility to pace. After yesterday, even the unwise can see it.
We need to keep remembering this is a work in process, and the scaffolding is very much still in situ.
It is therefore not surprising that some worrywart Reds have responded to the past fortnight of ‘Ronaldo Return?’ speculation with sarky comments like “can he play centre-half, then?” Make no mistake: the Ronaldo talk is more than just idle nattering.
I can report that this avenue started opening up behind the scenes as long ago as mid-May, and we may as well all get used to this one running throughout the season. Don’t dismiss talk of a possible Falcao/Ronaldo swap next summer either; it’s a solution to which I am told the players’ agent, Jorge Mendes, is very amenable.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, and the arrival of dinosaur Sam Allardyce next weekend. The Hammers are crowing over the victory against Liverpool, but doesn’t everyone fancy their chances of beating that lot these days, so fast are they sliding?
So much for “this does not ***** slip,” as Stevie ‘Devon Loch’ Gerrard infamously declared last spring. It’s football’s death of Little Nell: you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. Once you’ve stopped laughing at United’s defence, anyway.”
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By Trizia Fiorellino
I had an uneasy feeling when Frank came onto the field. I’m not claiming to be a psychic or anyéthing, I’m just a believer in your worst nightmare becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to football. I can’t in all conscience say we deserved to win the game but I thought Jose had pulled off another smash and grab.
I know he is a professional player, but surely Lamps could have had a little accidental slip when the ball came to him, or in his “eagerness” to score, hit it far too hard and skied it — or even scuffed the shot so it nestled safely in Courtois’s arms and stare accusingly at an imaginary divot. It would have all been so lovely.
Instead I found myself stomping back to the car giving everyone that went past a free demonstration of the swear words in my vocabulary. The cacophony of curses only got worse when fellow fans tried to reason that they would have taken a point before the game. What kind of defeatist rubbish is that?
Pellegrini (or Pellegrino as Jose insisted on calling him) has obviously learned some lessons from last season as we didn’t enjoy the complete control and dominance we witnessed in our last victory at the Etihad. What Pellegrino does need is a bit more practice with is his foray into “mind games” territory. He can call us a ‘small side’ all he likes but to compare us to Stoke is both disrespectful to them and bloody stupid quite frankly given that Mark Hughes’s team beat City so recently. If this is the best he’s got, Jose will eat him for breakfast.
I’d imagine the City manager wasn’t happy with Mourinho’s comments about FFP — Jose of course was baiting a few traps. As fans we have had to endure dozens and dozens of pompous articles the English press about how the day of reckoning would come for Chelsea when we had to conform to the financial fair play rules. The moral indignation of our financial muscle (while ignoring that same buying power of United, City, Liverpool and even Arsenal) was always followed by gleeful musings on possible sanctions that could be meted out when we “predictably” failed to comply.
Of course now that we have complied (and other clubs have failed), FFP is suddenly unfair and should be scrapped apparently and Jose has been labelled a hypocrite given the huge budgets he has had to work with in the last 10 years. They all seem to have conveniently ignored the fact that when it became a legal necessity to comply with FFP he did so. How does that make him a hypocrite exactly?
I’m going to break my own rule about not questioning Mourinho and his tactics and just throw out there that I do not understand nor like Azpilicueta playing at left-back. I didn’t like it when we still had Ashley Cole but thought it might be a temporary measure while we looked for a younger left-back so I ran with it. And there is no denying the Spaniard has done surprisingly well, but for anyone that watches football regularly you can see that he is often wrong-footed. You can see he has to concentrate fully on what he is doing and also that opposition teams attack us more down his side than the other.
We have a young, composed, proven left-back now in the squad — we paid a lot of money for him — why don’t we use him?
But back to Lampard. He did look genuinely gutted at scoring the goal that denied us victory, but I’m not sure gutted will quite describe what I’d feel if we eventually lose the title by a couple of points. I know it’s a stretch but remember my philosophy about nightmares becoming self-fulfilling prophecies?
You have been warned.
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By Bernard Azulay
Saturday’s result at Villa Park couldn’t have possibly proved to be a more timely antidote to our abysmal midweek performance in Dortmund. This was just what the doctor ordered, both to erase the utterly indefensible memory of the referee tracking back faster than our emasculated midfield and to serve as a much-needed confidence boost in advance of difficult derbies against Spurs and Chelsea.
Motorway delays left us with more time in the motor than any of us wanted to mull over our anti-climactic Champions League opener. You didn’t need to be Einstein to know that le Gaffer should’ve set out a more conservative stall in midweek. We were fuming over the apparent arrogance of Arsene’s blatant failure to pay heed to the opposition’s customary high-octane approach.
Based on the famous German physicist’s definition of lunacy as someone who repeats the same thing over and over again and expects a different outcome, Arsene should’ve substituted a straightjacket for his default duvet coat by now.
On Tuesday night, perhaps for the first time, I found myself casting covetous glances in the direction of Jurgen Klopp, upon witnessing the stark contrast in the two sides respective motivation.
This was epitomised by the hearty hug given to the Dortmund manager by his half-time sub, as compared with Podolski’s apparent urgency to impact upon the game, when he wasted the best part of ten minutes, flaffing around on the bench searching for some shin pads.
Oh for the building of some of the “unbelievable belief” articulated in Paul Merson’s eulogies of yesteryear. If David Dein was still on the scene, I wonder whether the Arsenal’s former Machiavellian fixer would’ve long since recognised the writing on this particular wall and engineered the accession of an energised Klopp to the N5 throne?
Yet such is the fickle nature of the beautiful game that all such negative deliberations disappeared, during a scintillating three-minute spell against Villa. It was perhaps fortunate that Mezut found himself up against the hapless Senderos, as even I would appear quick compared to the oil-tanker like pace of the well-travelled Swiss defender.
With Welbeck setting up Ozil for the first and Mezut returning the compliment for the second, it was marvellous to see a rare smile spread across the face of our midfield playmaker, as his boots concocted the perfect response to all those non-believers complaining about his failure to produce an away goal. While in contrast to disparaging Mancunian mocking, as the travelling Gooner faithful exhorted our new striker, Welbeck seemed to grow in stature right before our eyes.
One had to feel some sympathy for the home fans, as the confidence borne of early season success ensured our hosts were on top for the opening 20 minutes and if Shez hadn’t stuck out a goal-saving paw moments before our brief onslaught, it might’ve been an entirely different story.
Cissokho’s own-goal for our third seemed to knock any remaining stuffing out of Lambert’s side, leaving the Villa fans dumbstruck and wondering what had just hit them.
Despite our criminal defensive negligence, in repeatedly leaving the opposition unmarked at the far post, Villa proved sufficiently impotent for us to come away with our first clean sheet. Hopefully we can build on this, so that we don’t look quite so fragile at the back by the time we head to the Bridge.
Before our date with the Blues and next weekend’s North London derby, we’ve Tuesday’s Carling Cup encounter against Koeman’s in-form outfit. I’m eagerly looking forward to an opportunity to gauge the progress of the likes of Akpom and the impressive talents of Dan Crowley, the latest prodigy from the Gunners’ teenage production line.
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By Steven Kelly
Football fans are the cheekiest of the lot. They’ll happily mock others for precisely the same faults their own team possesses or label players “fat” when they themselves haven’t exercised since Noah wore a Speedo.
Yes, Liverpool were the only English team to win their Champions League match. Well spotted. It was done in such ham-fisted fashion (against so-called cannon fodder, remember) that mockery of others, Arsenal especially, felt like poking old Father Hubris with a stick. Can’t wait to face the Villa, they look absolutely… oh wait…
It was the first time I’ve seen one of those behind-the-goals ‘assistants’ make any decision. Don’t tell me the Kop’s a myth. Anyway, the resultant penalty and win didn’t save Simon Mignolet from microscopic scrutiny. Of all football positions it is the goalkeeper who seems most sensitive. Maybe it’s just Liverpool but the moment you try to get someone half-decent in as back-up they seem to go to pot.
Like a possessive lover, never think of looking at somebody else or you’ll get the dreaded 3am phone call and a list of tablets they’ve been storing up: “I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t!” “What’s that Valdes got that I haven’t got?” etc.
That’s how it looked at West Ham. It was a harsh return to old times. During the ’90s me and a few pals would dig a trench in a pub near Victoria and almost forget we’d come for the togger. By the time the Tube wound its clackety way to east London we’d already be a goal down.
It was never 2-0 though. The infamous crick in Mignolet’s neck that locks his brain when he has to look upwards had cost us before anyone could say “this’ll be a breeze”.
Maybe he’d claim it helps if you have something resembling a defence in front of you, and he’s got a point. You’re losing by two goals, can’t string two passes together and make a substitution changing the entire formation after 20 minutes? That smacks of getting it completely wrong in the first place.
Not that cohesion followed. Blood flowed instead and it didn’t look like Lovren could return for the second half. That nobody was much bothered if he hadn’t spoke volumes. It’s not the first time he and Sakho have shouted “mine!” in almost admirable synchronicity.
Sterling’s goal still gave Liverpool an hour to come up with another and make the afternoon marginally less appalling. It rarely looked likely and that gives cause for concern, more so than the defensive lapses which, let’s face it, we’d better get used to.
Rodgers gives off a zealot’s vibe. Success will come his way without compromise. His initial distaste for how Mourinho bested him in April was understandable amidst the horrific disappointment of a whole year’s work up in smoke, but it also felt like someone who wasn’t prepared to learn one of the cornerstones of the job.
Teams have to defend. End of story. It’s fair enough when people say, “it’s a new team; it’s going to take time”. It’s also fair to ask, “what do they do all week?”
Have we become so brainwashed by football’s fiscal annihilation that we watch so many players costing €20m and are immediately urged to expect so little? Suarez and Torres cost that, and you knew immediately there was quality to come. Keane and Aquilani, not so much. Don’t even get me started on Downing and Carroll.
Early impressions they may be, but how often are they wrong? Fans were pleased that Balotelli got off the mark in midweek and it was a skilful finish, but anyone speaking about “our Cantona” has been at the crazy juice.
Three defeats already. You knew it’d get tricky but as usual being right doesn’t bring happiness.
Suarez is looking cheap at €93m, but then he couldn’t have helped us anyway could he? We’ll be getting our money’s worth out of that new drawing board, at least.
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