Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
Arteta is not responsible for Gabriel and Saliba being miles apart, watch their 2nd and 3rd goals. We pushed up far too high IMO and basically got suckered on the counter. United have done this to us for years regardless of who is in charge of us.

We have the makings of a very good team, but they are still young and IMO naive, as is Arteta. Sure with a Pep, Conte or Klopp in charge we may well have got something from the game but this team is not quite there yet IMO, though we are not far either, we basically went up there today and for large parts of the game dominated them.
They were pushed up high because they had no protection from the midfield so they had to do that and risk getting picked off. Plus they were set up tactically to do that

Listen to Arteta’s post match analysis. He’s absolutely encouraging this


I can accept us losing because we weren’t good enough, I can’t accept or tolerate us losing because the coach isn’t right in the head. These were errors in the way we set up that a non league coach could have identified. He sandbagged the players and I honestly can’t rule out that he did it deliberately.

At 1-1 we could have got a point, at 2-1 we could have got a point. At 1-1 Arteta had the option to slow the game down we had zero need to chase the game, we could have taken Xhaka off put Tierney on and moved Zinchenko to the centre. Why not play it safe, a draw at old Trafford isn’t the end of the world.

As average as our midfield was, I was utterly taken aback by how shit United were….they weren’t even premier league level. This was like being beaten away at Coventry.