No strikers???

[basskadet]

I think we were heavily effected by the fact that we had no attackers on the bench today. Bent hurt his knee 5min into the 2nd half & then we had nothing going forward & dropped 20m back into our own half.

I have to say that, if we do have aspirations of being top 4 material, we need to be far more adventurous & when we knew that we had no Pav & no JD, I would have liked to see Harry stick someone like Ryan Mason on the subs bench.

Mason has been caning it in both the U18s & reserves & I would have put him on when Bent got injured & told him to go & be a hero.

Now that we are safe I would like to have seen us take a bit of a risk like that. You know that Ferguson would have . . . in fact he did & look at Macheda now. I rate Mason very highly & I believe he could have handled this game fine & playing up top against United, 2-0 up, was the perfect chance to give him a go.

However, we didn't even take him with us.

[CmonyouSpurs]

To be honest, if I had to take off Bent, I would have replaced him with a midfielder or else with Hutton. We were never 100% solid in defence today, even if the ref did screw us. I had a feeling that we were really risky in defence and United would get through Gomes eventually. If we shored up the midfield or added another man in the defence maybe things would have turned out differently.

[basskadet]

I disagree. An extra man in midfield would only have made things worse. We needed to stretch United, not sit deeper. Robbie was fairly ineffectual going forwards & basically played as a midfielder by the 2nd half anyway with Darren Bent virtually up top on his own, our only player prepared to get in behind them. However, he went AWOL after hurting his knee & I think Redknapp only kept him on the field because we had nobody else. Bringing on another midfielder would only have invited United onto us when what we needed was someone who could make runs & get on the ball & push United back into their own half. Darren was making decent runs in the 1st 45 which pulled their defenders back & created space for the likes of Modric & Lennon to run into but after hurting his knee he stopped doing that & our attacking impetus dissolved with Modders & Aaron falling increasingly deep.

[CmonyouSpurs]

I disagree. An extra man in midfield would only have made things worse. We needed to stretch United, not sit deeper. Robbie was fairly ineffectual going forwards & basically played as a midfielder by the 2nd half anyway with Darren Bent virtually up top on his own, our only player prepared to get in behind them. However, he went AWOL after hurting his knee & I think Redknapp only kept him on the field because we had nobody else. Bringing on another midfielder would only have invited United onto us when what we needed was someone who could make runs & get on the ball & push United back into their own half. Darren was making decent runs in the 1st 45 which pulled their defenders back & created space for the likes of Modric & Lennon to run into but after hurting his knee he stopped doing that & our attacking impetus dissolved with Modders & Aaron falling increasingly deep.

Think is when you go 2-0 up against Man Utd, you can only expect wave after wave on Man Utd attacks. It just happens, I dunno why. If we kept our system, which we did, as you can see it ended up badly for us (although Webb had a huge part to play in that). Maybe adding another player to help contain them would have been a better idea. Especially since they were playing with a front 4 of Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez and Berbatov.

[basskadet]

If we kept our system, which we did, as you can see it ended up badly for us (although Webb had a huge part to play in that).

But we didn't keep our system, altho not necessarily out of choice. The reason you get 'wave after wave' of United attacks is because you get deeper & deeper. You need an outlet so as to give them something to think about & pull them back a bit. With no striker they can push up & up until they are camped in your half.

Bent hurt his knee badly & he would DEFINITELY have been subbed had we had another striker with us. He stopped making those runs in behind like he had in the 1st half & we lost our shape & Keane virtually dropped into midfield.

Our system 1st half was a standard 442 but the 2nd we became more like a 4411 & then more like a 4410 (the 0 being Bent after his injury) & then more of a 451(0) as the pressure built up. If we could have kept our 442 shape I don't think United would have been able to apply the pressure that they ended up with.

[spurs2rise]

I see where you are coming from.

Pac - Injured
Defoe - Personal Leave
Campbell - Man Utd player
GDS, Taarabt - Loan

Why not a youth player? I wouldnt expect them to score a goal, but surely another striker on the bench could have helped?

[stroud_jm]

at the half, I was afraid they'd seize the initiative, and they did, I thought Scholes coming on sort of changed the tempo for them, he came out and got in a couple of scraps within three minutes...wish wilson would've just flattened his a$$ a couple of times.

we certainly played too deep of a line, and I agree that not having anyone to replace bent was a major problem. not as much a problem as howard webb, but still a problem

I don't care if you have a five-nil lead, if you sit back and invite pressure against manure, the bast@rds will eventually score, at least at old trafford. The way to deal with them is to do exactly what we did in the first half, and once DB came up lame, we couldn't keep up that pace anymore. I am still so angry about this match that I have trouble thinking about it in a rational way, but I think our lack of another attacking option, or at least someone to hold the ball up top was a major problem.

[thfcshady27]

was anyone else watching the same game as me? they never looked like scoring in my opinion till the ref gave them a life line!

[stroud_jm]

was anyone else watching the same game as me? they never looked like scoring in my opinion till the ref gave them a life line!

true, but they were getting more and more of the ball, and we were defending deeper and deeper. there's no letting Webb off the hook- a lifeline is a good word to describe what he did, but we really couldn't get much going in the second half, at least not after the first 5-10 minutes, as I recall- I don't have the heart to watch it again.

you're certainly right about Webb- now we know how poland felt in the Euros this summer

[Pitseleh]

im with you, i want to just put those painful memories out of my mind now.

lets hope we can put that defensive display behind us against west brom next weekend.

[costa_9_2]

more defenders does not allways work.in the seconed half we played to defensive and when the ball when up there was no one there.