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ManCHEATER United - cycnicism on an industrial scale under Van Gaal?

Spur of the moment

Spur of the moment

Frederic Kanoute
Reflecting back on Sunday's game it suddenly came to me the number of times United cynically, clinically and seemingly systematically fouled us whenever we posed a threat. We could easily have had at least a couple of pens.

Not saying we didn't do a bit of it ourselves, notably shirt-pulling by Vertonghen, but it did seem like United were playing to a specific set of instructions from above to stop us at any price.

Some of their more blatant efforts included:

Rooney - resolutely grabbed hold of Kane to bring him down in the box, thus preventing him from going up for a corner. No pen given

Smalling - cynically wrapped his arms around Fazio as he went up for a header in the box. No pen given.

Young - crafty trip on the blindside of Townsend to prevent him latching onto a quality through ball from Eriksen. Nothing given.

McNair - trip on Kane in the box, could have been a pen

Rafael - yellow for cynical trip to stop Eriksen getting through on goal

Rafael - went through Mason from behind. Nothing given - probably because he was already on a booking and ref would have been obliged to send him off

Falcao - clever little trip on Lamela from behind to prevent him getting away in space down the right. Michael Owen reckoned it might have been inadvertant - pah!

Young - booked for cynically bringing down Chadli

Mata - brought down Eriksen as he attempted a tasty pirouette to get past him in front of the box

Van Persie - calculated foul on Vertonghen


Cheating on such an industrial scale may well help them win trophies - but what worth do such trophies have when everyone despises their cynical tactics on the way to winning them?

(Note to mods - this is a discussion not so much about Sunday' game as about cheating on an industrial scale. With Cheatski due to arrive on Thursday it will be interesting to see how they compare.)
 
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That's why they call themselves, Devils. You can't expect them to show real sportmanship, can you. Funny thing is, when they had a goal disallowed despite it crossing the line, thought the ref had made a mistake. And I was thinking back to the wonder goal by Mendes which was not given at ManU in 2005. It would have been nice karma if the ref had made the similiar mistake here.
 
I'd like us to do the same. There, I said it. As far as I can see it, either we assemble the most expensive team of superstars ever and then simply blaze our way to glory playing beautiful football and acting chivalrously and fairly throughout......or we accept that we (for whatever self-inflicted reason) are a team of intensely limited means compared to the others, and try and make the best use of tools like the ones mentioned above to win games and ultimately win trophies.

Our remit as a team has since the days of Arthur Rowe been to be an attack-minded, relentless side. Fouling to stop breakaways and minimise danger doesn't exactly contradict that, imo.
 
DubaiSpur said:
I'd like us to do the same. There, I said it. As far as I can see it, either we assemble the most expensive team of superstars ever and then simply blaze our way to glory playing beautiful football and acting chivalrously and fairly throughout......or we accept that we (for whatever self-inflicted reason) are a team of intensely limited means compared to the others, and try and make the best use of tools like the ones mentioned above to win games and ultimately win trophies.

Our remit as a team has since the days of Arthur Rowe been to be an attack-minded, relentless side. Fouling to stop breakaways and minimise danger doesn't exactly contradict that, imo.
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How very sad.
 
It's not just Van Gaal's United. There was one example under Fergie that I remember for the strategic cynicism, but not for the game (I forget which, sometime near/before the League Cup final). It followed a previous matchup where Lennon ran circles around Evra. It was Lennon at his best, sadly something we saw so inconsistently over the years, and Evra was unable to cope.

In this game the whole defence serially fouled Lennon in the early part of the game, spreading them out so the free-passes and yellows were spread around. They kicked him out of the game. Lennon never had another game where he showed up Evra. Either Evra worked him out or got the help he needed, but this particular game was one of the best examples of team effort to take out a player. Revie's Leeds would have been proud.
 
jts1882 said:
It's not just Van Gaal's United. There was one example under Fergie that I remember for the strategic cynicism, but not for the game (I forget which, sometime near/before the League Cup final). It followed a previous matchup where Lennon ran circles around Evra. It was Lennon at his best, sadly something we saw so inconsistently over the years, and Evra was unable to cope.

In this game the whole defence serially fouled Lennon in the early part of the game, spreading them out so the free-passes and yellows were spread around. They kicked him out of the game. Lennon never had another game where he showed up Evra. Either Evra worked him out or got the help he needed, but this particular game was one of the best examples of team effort to take out a player. Revie's Leeds would have been proud.
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But this is where we need to be more cute back. They may have tried to share the yellows around, but as soon as one of them got a yellow i'd have been shouting at the players to try and get the ball to Lennon so he's isolated versus that defender. The defender is now caught between him being on a yellow, facing a pacey player and his manager's instructions to foul Lennon at every opportunity. Happy days.
 
milo said:
This reminds me of this study that I was reading about recently

https://explorable.com/selective-group-perception
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Assuming the quarterback injuries tell the tale, Dartmouth did start it and most people attributed some all blame to Dartmouth. I don't think the shift to blaming both by Dartmouth is particularly dramatic and is probably partly true if they started playing dirty after the injury, which could have been bad luck.

If it was a Spurs Arsenal game where first Henry and then Berbatov were taken off injured in a dirty game, I'd attribute the first injury to back luck and Henry playacting and the latter to Arsenal thuggery. None of this both started it nonsense.
 
jts1882 said:
Assuming the quarterback injuries tell the tale, Dartmouth did start it and most people attributed some all blame to Dartmouth. I don't think the shift to blaming both by Dartmouth is particularly dramatic and is probably partly true if they started playing dirty after the injury, which could have been bad luck.

If it was a Spurs Arsenal game where first Henry and then Berbatov were taken off injured in a dirty game, I'd attribute the first injury to back luck and Henry playacting and the latter to Arsenal thuggery. None of this both started it nonsense.
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The lesson from it was that peoples' judgement is clouded by what they want to see.
 
jts1882 said:
It's not just Van Gaal's United. There was one example under Fergie that I remember for the strategic cynicism, but not for the game (I forget which, sometime near/before the League Cup final). It followed a previous matchup where Lennon ran circles around Evra. It was Lennon at his best, sadly something we saw so inconsistently over the years, and Evra was unable to cope.

In this game the whole defence serially fouled Lennon in the early part of the game, spreading them out so the free-passes and yellows were spread around. They kicked him out of the game. Lennon never had another game where he showed up Evra. Either Evra worked him out or got the help he needed, but this particular game was one of the best examples of team effort to take out a player. Revie's Leeds would have been proud.
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And that is exactly what they did with Townsend and young, as soon as Townsend got booked young became their main man. It was a really dumb booking, if you are going to get booked make you hurt the player.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
 
milo said:
The lesson from it was that peoples' judgement is clouded by what they want to see.
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For sure it's probably nigh on impossible for a fan to watch a game from a totally neutral standpoint. Looking back at the Leicester match it's pretty clear that Vertongehn got away with being every bit as cynical, so hands up, we can hardly crow.

That said, would you not agree that United's tactics were more systematically and calculatingly cynical?
 
Bullet said:
Not much more than ours, we are working on it and players like Big Faz are used to it.
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It's true we can be pretty disreputable at times and I don't like it one bit. I'm sad that you and so many fans want to see us sink even further down to that level.
 
It IS incredibly rude of us to not simply bend over when the mighty Manchester United come visit.
 
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