More possession but no goals again
Now I haven’t seen much football from the weekend just gone as I was in France so I missed the game. I did see a couple of highlights however and we looked pretty crap again. All the possession and nothing to show for it. I will say it yet again… No Carrick, no win.
The starting line up again was a pretty strong one but obviously Carrick was missing. Rooney is probably the best player to replace him for the moment but even he doesn’t have the same effect there as Carrick does and with him there we don’t have his threat further forward. The good thing was the RvP had returned after scoring two for the u21s earlier in the week so we had a striker that could at least threaten their goal. We keep controlling the possession in every game we play but nothing seems to be coming from it so even RvP up top was pretty meaningless. I’m not sure what exactly is stopping us from getting goals but it is starting to become more and more concerning. Where we used to go wide and get the ball in the box we seen to be getting wide as then just going back and repeating that until there is no way of getting through. The speed of our attack is not quick enough and it is allowing the opposition to organise their team and defend as one instead of being caught out by quick counter attacks and quick rotation of the ball.
Both of our main strikers have missed penalties this year, when Rooney missed he was stripped of penalty duties and they were handed to RvP until he got injured. Now RvP is back he was given the duty against West Brom and when we needed a goal to equalise, he couldn’t deliver. In fact he took what is widely seen as the worst kind of penalty you can, it was the right height for the keeper to comfortably save and not powerful enough to get past him before he got to it. Unfortunately van Persie let us down when we really needed him but with a penalty anything could happen. But now van Persie has also been stripped of penalties so who will take them now? In my opinion the person who should have had them all year is Mata and he should now be called upon for the last few games if needed. Mata has the composure but also the skill to take a good penalty and in the past his consistency with penalties has been good. Hopefully if we earn a penalty he will take it and score when we need him to.
At this very moment in time we have put ourselves in a bad position, while we have lost our last three games the teams above us have won and made it much tougher to catch them. Below us Liverpools form has not been consistent but they have gained points on us and we are only four clear. With two away games and one at home to Arsenal we can not afford to lose again. Hopefully we can win this weekend, rediscover our scoring form and go on to finish our season strong finishing in the top four.
Have a good week. Forever United.