Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

Ridiculous.

Great keeping again

Oh man, what a save. Poor keeper though.

I can only assume Vertonghen and BAE aren't fully fit?

that looked a pen for rooney- was it? terrible defending again, just letting them at it

It was. They said Dempsey should've had one if he'd gone down on breaking through, though I didn't see it.

lot of high balls going up to defoe, nice, vidic trembling there

lennon dembele and park all bright spots, nobody else seems to know much of what they're about today

carrick cleverly de gea and rafael all excellent imo

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/stars-and-stripes.jpg

THIS SEASON IT'S DIFFERENT YOU SURREY SCUM.

Deuce did WHL

Well done lads

probably a fair result, although Utd were fucked by the ref as usual. Another failed audition for Bale

idk why florentino perez would be watching a random epl game

lennon you beauty- eng rw i heard

was gonna post earlier that at least clint was working the backline/gk, even when he gets in the way of general *play*

xp think the ref didn't give utd a clear penalty and didn't give us a soft one, besides that utd players got away without yellows on maybe three or four occasions in the midfield scrap, application denied tbh

deserved that- if utd had tried to attack us more we'd have been fucked tho, that defence was ....problematic

good enough for Real but not good enough for Utd? I'll take that

Lost my satellite reception for the last ten mins or so, just about managed to get the last bit of the game on my phone. Mugged.

Yeah that was a great second half performance, De Gea had a great game but we made him work for it. I disagree on Dempsey, he's needed up there because otherwise Defoe looks really isolated. Parker, Lennon, Dembele all great today as well.

When did Spurs last not lose to United in a season? I can't actually remember it happening in 20 years at least.

23 according to Tyler

bale >>>>>> united

i like the idea he needs to audition when yr wingers are tony v and ashley young

Tyler's stats all afternoon were premier-league-only, I could hear his pain at having to dredge back 23 years for that one

only had the radio on in a vain attempt to do work, but it sounded like Parker was in the thick of 'it'

stoked

a slightly better version of Kevin Kilbane with Ronaldo's ego. I'll pass, thanks

This is dumb. Bale didn't play particularly well today but is obviously way better than any of United's wingers, especially this season when they've been so bad that Fergie has on several occasions not bothered with them at all.

it's just a bit of...bantz

bringing on Valencia cost us the win today so

not rly 'bantz' when a lot of ynahtid fans last season were saying bale was no more than a left footed valencia

Valencia was Utd's player of the season last year. Bale isn't as good as you think he is. What do you want me to say?

Hm: Roma-Inter, Valencia-Real, Bordeaux-PSG ... that's some tasty fare when I really ought to be getting the books open

i dont think bale is /that/ good

he is better than all of your attacking players other than rvp, but he is a fair distance inferior to rvp and i dont rate any of the others that highly

and yet we struggle on

ynahtid with rvp is like a dumb kid who found the cheat codes

could even call him a game genie if you shop him into the van nisty costume

i know, it's just not fair. It's not like their competitors are working with a Game Genie every season

damn

fist bump

it's mundane but bale kinda still has to fully establish a median effectiveness line imo, his bad days are such intolerable assclownery

ynahtid with rvp is like a dumb kid who found the cheat codes

Yes, after the embarrassment of last season's mere 89 points and 89 league goals it's fair to say he has transformed a lacklustre team that was going nowhere into a thing of beauty.

Kagawa looked useful today, arguably for the first time for United. Has he been played in that role before (left side of a front three)? It seemed to suit him better. De Gea is great, probably my favourite United keeper since Schmeichel - I'm relieved Ferguson has stopped rotating Lindegaard into the team. Re: the great Bale v all of United's wingers debate - when Bale's good, he's very good, but he can be anonymous. Valencia has recently been replaced by his untalented identical twin (and even when he's on form seems totally incapable of using his left foot). Young blows hot and cold - he's capable of great stuff, but more often is shit (and he dives). Nani is the most technically gifted but has no brain whatsoever and Ferguson seems to hate him.

after the embarrassment of last season's mere third place finish in a cl group featuring basel and a team almost nobody had heard of, too

i think we've all long agreed that utd can't be broken down into individual players, because most of their individual players would (indeed, do) go on to be nothing failures at sunderland.

NBS, i don't see where bale actually ranks against those guys- do you have him ahead of valencia, young, nani?

nani, apart from one burst of form a few seasons ago (tbf lasted most of that season) has been a waste of talent
young, apart from a much shorter burst at the start, has been a disappointment
valencia is more useful and consistent than either but is the kind of mid-talent-maximiser that one can't really get too excited about (but v typical, in that sense, of latter ferguson)

bale, when bad, is as bad as any of them, sure, but bale is better when better and isn't bad as often, i don't think

deems otm, and i even like a lot of mid-talent-maximizers like fletcher, o'shea, beckham etc

it's possible to see how excellent squad mgmt and motivation can turn ynahtid 09/10 or 11/12 an 85+ pt EPL team, while still finding them essentially unimpressive as an attacking team

this sense of dismay is increased when seeing high talent minimizers like berbatov and nani alongside the MTMs

the group movement today from houllebeque, rvp et al was some life of birds shit, dawson the shit-thick eagle dazzled by the flocking around him of those he'd thought his natural prey, throughout the team utd just move & pass so logically and devastatingly effectively that the concept of individual ability probably would seem like a strangely outmoded or quaint element to introduce, berbatov got et by a bear cos he was the silly cunt in the flock turning cartwheels

martin tyler actually described dawson as 'that braveheart' shortly after a homily that we ought not to forget the estimable toil of new lothar matthaus phil jones when 'giving the plaudits' to rvp

guy mowbray spends 30 seconds talking about walcott's goal without mentioning the pass by cazorla

United double-marked Bale yesterday and basically forced him out of the game/to run ineffectively through the middle and it's something he needs to learn to deal with because it will happen more and more often. I mean even Messi struggled with that throughout the last World Cup when nearly every team managed to keep him reasonably quiet.

i always thought the ideal way to deal with that is to REALLY keep a few opposition players pre-occupied and open up spaces others can use. if bale was to drag two or three players out to the left for most of the game, that could leave a big space in the middle to exploit.

What actually happened was that Fergie basically sacrificed any attacking threat down the right by playing both Rafael and Jones there, so there was no one to really get dragged out of position.

"Fernando was doing a great job. Afterwards, Demba gave us something we didn't have before."

goals?

"We cannot afford to drop points any more if we want to be in the top four."

This quote's a bit, um, unrealistic? Even if he's not actually targeting finishing with sixteen straight wins, I'm not sure his team is one you want to start heaping the pressure on.

Bale double marked out of the game, lennon destroyed them down the right. If dempsey functioned at all as a conduit (as opposed to getting shots off etc, which he's actually doing pretty well) and defoe occupied the cb's a little more consistently, then bale getting locked down like this wouldnt be a huge disaster