部分留言: GamerDudester1 month ago
Watch the United midfielders waiting for the ball to just leave their areas to spring forward in a wave of red shirts quickly and viciously. The opposing defenders made to look absolutely clueless because they don't know who to mark and look over their shoulder only to see that the man that was there a second ago is now 10 yards behind them. This is the United way.Not the LVG possession based style, which is a good style, but not for United.
David O'Connell6 days ago
Can someone please find Louis van gaal's email and send him this, how counter attacking should be done. Last night vs psv with 10 mins remaining not one player was making a forward run to try split the defence
TheDangngo3 days ago
After watching this all we can say is "FUCK LOUIS VAN GAAL"omfg, that match against Leicester last night, i turn off the tv at 70 min and go to sleep because its so FUCKING BORING. And the next day that stupid coach said " we tottally controll the match"LOL, i dont know what "controll" mean hereLeicester is even more MU than the real MU
Man United are firmly in the title race, so why are fans and pundits so upset?
BY RORY SMITH
Roy Keane has done it but now that the Irishman has become a professional "controversialist," that's only to be expected. Gary Neville has done it rather more subtly, but probably no less frequently. His brother Phil did it too, before he moved to Spain. None of them, though, have done it as much as Paul Scholes.
Players often change in retirement, but few can have undergone a transformation as remarkable as Scholes. In almost two decades as a player, Scholes barely said a word. He was, as all those around him attested, the most unlikely of superstars. He had no interest in the spotlight. He did not want to be famous; he just wanted to be a footballer. He rarely spoke to the media. He was too polite to treat reporters with disdain but his disinterest was almost complete.
How strange, then, to see what Scholes has become. He's not just a prolific pundit -- as though he spent all those years storing up all of his opinions and they're now rushing out of him in a great torrent -- but a consistently outspoken one, too, and on one subject in particular. During the past 18 months, it feels as though barely a week has gone by without Scholes offering a withering assessment of Louis van Gaal's reign at Manchester United. Keane and the Nevilles have not been backwards in coming forwards with their opinions either, but Scholes is at the vanguard.
It has become clear that Scholes does not think very highly of the Dutchman. He does not like the style of football he has inculcated at Old Trafford. He does not like his man-management. He does not like his tactics. Most recently, it was Van Gaal's talk of "philosophy" that attracted Scholes' ire.
At a charity event at Manchester's Hotel Football earlier this month, he said, "Manchester United do not need a philosophy. The fans want to see attacking football and goals -- that's the Manchester United way." Quite how a "philosophy" is different to "way" is something you would have to ask Scholes, though at least now there's a decent chance he will provide you with an answer, whether in his newspaper column or in one of his slots on television.
So sustained and consistent are Scholes' attacks on Van Gaal that you have to wonder at some point if there is something more at play than just a difference in tastes. It is hardly helpful to a club to have such a respected former player constantly sniping from the sidelines, especially one so close to Ryan Giggs, Van Gaal's assistant.
It is, in some measure, odd that either Giggs or even Sir Alex Ferguson has not asked Scholes to ease off a little and allow Van Gaal time and space in which to work. But then, not far from Manchester, there is a club that can attest to the fact that having a raft of high-profile alumni in the media is very much a double-edged sword. Not for the first time, United and Liverpool maybe have more in common than either side might care to admit.
For many years, you could barely turn on the television, wind up your radio or unfurl your newspaper without seeing the face of a former Liverpool player staring back at you. Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson, Graeme Souness and the rest were all hired on the backs of their association with and their success at Anfield. To their opponents, this gave Liverpool a distinct advantage. Jose Mourinho, for one, clearly felt that controversial decisions against Liverpool were more likely to be scrutinised on Match of the Day or Sky Sports than controversial decisions given in their favour. It was a lingering reward, in other words, for all their success.
And yet the view on Merseyside was always very different. The prevalence of former players in the media, the club felt, was a curse rather than a blessing. Their views on Liverpool were always being sought or offered, and they tended to be overwhelmingly critical. How could a present in which they were not involved ever live up to their golden past? Their shared history did not afford Liverpool a softer ride. It simply made the criticism sharper.
United are enduring the same thing now. Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in Scholes' criticism of Van Gaal is the sense that the now is not as good as then, that the Dutchman is in some way betraying a past which Scholes sees it as his duty to protect. At this stage, it should be pointed out that Van Gaal has made himself a fairly substantial target. His United team are in a distinctly curious position. They are well-placed in a fraught, unpredictable title race, they are defensively sound and they are winning games with something approaching ominous consistency. More than any of their rivals, they are rolling through the season with mechanical efficiency.
And at the same time, even the most partisan observer would have a hard time suggesting they are particularly enthralling to watch. As Ken Early noted in the Irish Times this week, attacking takes many forms: to Van Gaal, 15 sideways passes are a surer way of picking through the opposition's defence than simply slinging a ball into the box. That is true, but there are sideways passes with purpose and zest and craft, and there are the sideways passes that United play, which are too often devoid of any of those three qualities. There are sideways passes that you play because you can imagine what they might lead to, and there are sideways passes that you play because you have no idea at all.
The peerless Hugh McIlvanney (a close confidante of Ferguson, it should be acknowledged) described United's performance against PSV Eindhoven, the ninth goal-less draw of Van Gaal's tenure, as a "sedative," a display so poor that "nobody had to reach for nostalgia to condemn it as abysmal." They were better against Watford and Leicester City, though not by a vast amount.
What is most concerning about this is that there is no sense that United are improving. These sorts of troubles were forgivable in Van Gaal's first season when his players were still learning his methods. They are less so now, when he has had 18 months -- three transfer windows and hundreds of millions of pounds -- in which to mould his squad to his needs.
Van Gaal has ticked all of the boxes. He restored United to the Champions League last season; he has them in the thick of the title race now. The issue is that he has done so with all the romance, and all the historical delicacy of touch, of a man ticking boxes. United have the status that befits them but they have acquired it without looking like United. That is the issue Scholes and his former teammates have. Perhaps, as Liverpool might advise, nothing much will satisfy them; Van Gaal could have his team playing like Barcelona and they would still pick holes, their criticism stoked by envy and the resentment of time passing more than genuine footballing concerns.
Or perhaps it is simply this vision of United that does not pass muster. Perhaps they believe this is all the club can expect under Van Gaal, that they are not in the middle of a process but -- stylistically, at least -- at the end of it. It is a truism in football that the hallmark of champions is that they win when they are playing badly. If this is correct, then United will win not only the Premier League title but the Champions League crown this year. That is the way Van Gaal must see it.
If it is not, it is a reminder that the converse of that claim can be just as accurate: winning while playing badly can be the sign of a great team, but it can also just be the sign of a bad team who happens to be winning. That is Scholes' viewpoint. His vision, not his voice, always marked him out as a player. He has found the latter since retiring. We wait to see if he has lost the former.
发表于 2-12-2015 09:56 PM
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