United coaching staff wasn’t prepared for Watford game
One cannot unconditionally blame the players alone for not getting close to their opponents for 90 minutes in Saturday’s game against Watford.
I don’t think I have ever seen a match where we were all over the pitch, until the final third, (Watford) players had themselves so much space and time.
In my opinion then, the coaching staff were entirely unprepared for today’s opponent and sent their players out to the slaughter with the set-up.
It ended with the likes of Nemanja Matic and Paul Pogba suddenly engaging an opponent metres away from him, because it suddenly became apparent that ‘who’s man is that’ had no answer.
We set up to counterattack, so they were redundant offensively (although it could be argued that Pogba was crucial to our counterattacking play in previous games when he set our attackers off – he didn’t do that today).
Defensively, our midfield duo offered zero either. So much space between Matic and the defense meant he wasn’t there to offer any real protection, but he also wasn’t offering anything going forward either. Energy from all three CM’s was just gone today.
They are no doubt excellent players but I just wish we could get a level of consistency with them. Currently, it seems that when one has a bad game, it is contagious and the rest follow suit.
This happened pretty much all over the pitch. It was worrying that nothing changed for the entirety of the game.
It is fine to ignore an opponent’s threat should you be able to impose your own more consistently. But ask yourselves what really was our consistent threat today? I would not call our counter a consistent threat. There was no out-ball, no comfortable transition.
So in converse manner…the coaching staff got it wrong today, yet yielded three points anyway. Run this match ten times and I firmly believe we do not come away with three points more often than not.
With that said though, this is the business end of the season and you have to give the players credit for at least getting the points and keeping us very much in the top four battle.
http://www.fanchesterunited.com/united-coaching-staff-wasnt-prepared-for-saturdays-game/