Snak

Battlegoat

I lang tid har United savnet en igangsætter af spillet helt bagude.
Som spreder bolde og gør Uniteds angreb uforudsigeligt for modstanderne
Hidtil har defensiven kun spillet enten lange bolde fremad, eller korte bolde til midtbanen, som straks var presset.
Det ændrede Lindelöf på i går, ved at variere og fremstå sikker i afspillet, hvilket tvang Newcastles midtbane lidt baglæns og gav ro i "vores" eget fremspil.

Vi skal se bort fra den lidt håbløse indledning, hvor hele holdet var som hovedløse kyllinger, men efter at 4-3-3 var blevet til 4-4-2, var det Lindelöfs ro i afspillet, der lagde grunden for at offensiven kom til at fungere.
Pogba kunne finde plads til at søge fremad og Matic fik frataget det åg det ofte har været for ham. at skulle være igangsætter samtidig med sikringsspiller

Helt rigtigt, der var ikke mange deciderede guldafleveringer, men Lindelôf gav holdet ro i boldbesiddelsen og det er uvurderligt.
De korte 5-6 meters pas ser ikke ud af meget, men er de rigtige fratager de modstanderne initiativ og skaber ro i egne rækker.
Det har vi i den grad savnet og det tilførte Lindelöf i går

Nu var det Newcastle, indrømmet, men tegningen til en offensiv struktur tegnedes. Som også vil kunne bruges til at spille bold i de store kampe og ikke parkere bus

For Lindelöf må det have været en kærkommen succesoplevelse, som han kan bygge videre på. Til værdi for ham selv og især for holdet.

Det er bare et mysterium hvorfor Shaw aldrig får chancen på den venstre back

Hvis han træner, som han spiller kampe for reserveholdet, så er det intet mysterie, for der har han godt nok være ringe. Den engelske reserveliga har endda et uhyggeligt lavt niveau. Tuanzebe har eksempelvis for længst "outgrown" den liga.

Rojo har alle dage været en katastrofe på venstre back i PL. Det er faktisk utroligt hvor stor forskel der er på ham, når han spiller CB og VB - især fordi det jo tilsyneladende går fint for Argentina. Jeg tvivler stærkt på, at han er løsningen derude.

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Jeg synes ikke Lindelöf opfandt den dybe tallerken i går. Som sagt mener jeg Young, Matic, Smalling og til dels Pogba (han kan dog være fritaget gennem de indbyrdes aftaler) efterlod ham i stikken ved Newcastles mål, men ellers var både han og Smalling meget passiv i duelspillet i 1. halvleg. I pasningsspillet synes jeg han var meget konservativ og bidrog ikke med ret meget andet end simple afleveringer til Smalling og Valencia. Jeg så ham i hvert fald ikke frigøre nogen andre medspillere. Jeg gider ikke bidrage i en heksejagt af ham, men så var han altså heller ikke bedre i gårsdagens kamp. Usikkerheden lyser stadig ud af ham hver gang han skal i en defensiv aktion.

@fynbo:

Jeg er enig med de andre der skriver, at Lindelöf ikke rugtigt gjorde noget offensivt i går, som Smalling ikke også gjorde.
Jeg sad og ventede på at han netop skulle glide af den første mand der pressede ham, og derved frigøre andre spillere, men som regel spillede han den til Smalling eller Valencia eller Pogba eller de Gea - det frigører altså ikke ret meget de andre til andet, end hvad de andre forsvarsspillere normalt gør derinde.

Mht målet skriver du:

Den bevægelse, hvor han glider, ville have været helt unødvendig, hvis ikke især Matic. men også Smalling havde kigget bold. Og hvis ikke Pogba havde fritaget sig selv for tilbageløb.

Jeg bed ikke mærke i Matic og Pogba, og der manglede helt sikkert folk i vores felt i den situation. Men Smalling skulle altså ud og agere back i situationen, så ham kan du altså ikke klandre i den situation.

Var der nogen som så Valencias kamp? Periera fik 80 minutter, så det er umiddelbart positivt.

Lyder som om han ikke havde nogen stor kamp. Især defensivt havde han lidt problemer, men altid positivt, at han er en del af et hold, der har vundet 9 kampe i streg og er Barcas nærmeste udfordrer. Så kan det jo ikke være helt skidt.

Jeg ville gerne kunne have delt den her, så I havde lidt til morgenkaffen, men det er nok lidt sent nu. Tag en formiddagspause i stedet, for det er en skøn artikel om Rashford og hans oprindelse med fokus på Fletcher Moss Rangers - en af Uniteds samarbejdsklubber, hvor klubben meget succesfuldt har rekrutteret fra i de senere år. Mange af de største akademiprodukter kommer herfra, herunder Wes Brown, Danny Welbeck og ja, Rashford selv. Selvom den historie efterhånden er fortalt adskillelige gange, så er det her en af de mere vellykkede:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/marcus-rashfords-roots-bwk2z6wp2

Siden der er pay-wall på The Times, så får I lige en god gammeldags copy + paste

Marcus Rashford’s roots

As Manchester United face Basel, Marcus Rashford hasn’t forgotten where it all started for him

Stick football on television and that was him. His brothers won’t forget: Marcus, in his baby bouncer, tiny eyes following the ball on screen. You could leave him for hours. His dad, a good cricketer, dreamt that would be his sport. No chance. The baby and the football — Marcus was hardwired, a natural-born player.

And here he is, now 20, the natural footballer back in his natural habitat. It’s a cold night and breath steams under floodlights at five-a-side pitches in Withington where Marcus Rashford has come to kick about with 11-year-olds.

They’re from his old boys’ club, Fletcher Moss Rangers. McDonald’s have organised this, but Rashford’s charisma and groundedness take things beyond your standard PR event. He joins a game — popping off passes, flicking the ball round corners, standing on top of it then touching it away just as tackles arrive, laughing at his trick.

Soft feet, massive smile, he’s the Pied Piper of a contest played in street-style and word gets around because suddenly there are 200 people pressed against the fence, shouting “Rashy!” and filming with phones.

His protective mum, Melanie, is understandably keen that things don’t get out of hand — as are security — but he’s enjoying himself, obliging when a woman rushes on, clutching a baby, for photographs. You should see what happens to Marcus at the Trafford Centre, brothers Dwaine and Dane smile.

Marcus must feel like a superstar. “No I don’t,” he scoffs. Tonight thrills the youngsters he meets but also “it’s exciting for me. I trained on these pitches myself. We actually went back about a year ago.” Dwaine adds: “We go back to the start quite a bit.”

Dwaine, 14 years older than Marcus, is the wise-headed one. Dane looks and is often smiling, like Marcus, and studies the game. The pair manage their brother and play significant parts in shaping him. Going back to the start is about keeping Marcus connected to his roots, both as a person and as a player.

Being grounded is the springboard for achieving, Dwaine observes and Marcus nods, and they recall how when he was 15 they set a target of him playing at Euro 2016 and discussed what to work on to get there. In February 2016, Marcus duly arrived like a comet, scoring on his United debut against Midtjylland and against Arsenal in his first Premier League appearance. By June he was England’s youngest debutant-scorer since 1938 and, indeed, aged 18, at Euro 2016.

Other Fletcher Moss alumni include Wes Brown, Danny Welbeck, Jesse Lingard and Ravel Morrison. Marcus was six when Melanie paid £2 to enter him in open trials and he stayed until joining United aged eight. Legend is, he once scored 12 in a game. “And the rest,” Marcus smiles. I credit my teammates. We had a really good side. RoShaun Williams [also at United] was a striker and we played up front together. We used to score a ridiculous amount of goals.” Twelve? “That was a regular kind of thing.” We’re now in the Fletcher Moss clubhouse in a corner of the soggy Mersey Bank playing fields, West Didsbury. Marcus initially lived nearby before moving two miles away to Northern Moor.

“It feels like yesterday,” he says, looking at the wooden benches and rails of pegs. “This sort of atmosphere and environment, you never forget it. This is where everything started. This changing room alone has massive memories. We got 40-45 players in here, from different age groups. We played our own little games of football on these benches, head tennis over the rail but we broke a few lights and had to stop. This was our own little den. We created a lot of relationships I still have now.”

To get to training, “I did it all. Bus, walked, biked, just got here any way I could. My brothers’ friends and mum’s friends helped, whether giving me lifts here, or over to Salford [when he began training with United at The Cliff].”

Why have Fletcher Moss been so productive? “In this area so many kids love playing football. There were some at the club not as talented as others but they knuckled down because they love the game and everybody improved.

“It meant that there was always huge competition and as soon as one player went to an academy, it was an eye-opener to the rest. It showed what was possible,” Marcus says.

His game with the under-11s is high-speed, high-skill, and physically-committed, and what characterises Rashford is how differently he plays to many coached-by-numbers academy products; how flair is always central to his game, but so too resilience.

He’s one of the last United products shaped personally by Sir Alex Ferguson, and Fletcher Moss “have similar fundamentals to what I found at United. They wanted fair play. No back-chatting to referees. Always shaking hands. These were big things that, when I went to United, you had to show every day. Then there were other things like, if you have the ball and you get fouled, to bounce back up. Don’t be rolling around.”

Expressing yourself was drummed in at Fletcher Moss “100%. Because when you come in through the door they never tell you to play a certain way. They never look to restrict you. They want you to be in control of what you’re doing.

“Being given freedom is massively underrated and without coaches who do that, players would all be the same. The same footballer, the same type of person, of character,” Rashford says.

Natural-born player? In Northern Moor, “me and my friends would go out with the ball wherever we could. That’s where the street football started. I still sometimes have kickabouts with my friends in the old park where we used to go, but it’s more difficult now…

“When we lived here [Withington], I was young and it was the garden. My brothers would be playing football in the street and I’d ask my mum and she’d say no. So I’d be in the garden playing on my own — then I’d jump over the fence and get in trouble. ‘Play in the garden!’”

Dwaine laughs. “He wanted to be Tim Howard…”
Seriously? “Yeah,” says Marcus. “My first season [at Fletcher Moss] I went in net. The thrill of scoring a goal, you get that same thrill when you save a good chance. Howard was my idol. I used to have a little Tim Howard shirt.”
Dwaine: “He still thinks he’s got a bit now . . . ”
Marcus: “Yeah, you watch, there’ll be a game . . . I’m going to get the gloves one day!”

He’s already approaching 100 United games. Under Jose Mourinho he feels big progress, both team-wise and personally, and understands the value to his football education of being played wide.

“It’s all happened so fast but the lessons I’ve learned from each situation are the reasons I wouldn’t change it,” he says of his United career to date. For someone who was a teenager until 19 days ago, his take on England is mature. On national duty it’s easy to “get caught up in wanting to win and wanting to please everyone.” He cites the composure his young England side showed against Brazil. It’s about wearing that shirt lightly, learning to “relax”.

But never mind Brazil, he wants to talk about Urmston Under-8s, whom he appears to have still not forgiven for defeating Fletcher Moss in his last cup final here.

No, say Dwaine and Dane, their kid brother hasn’t altered. “I think your upbringing and the people around you are what set you up,” says Marcus. “My mum, my brothers, my sisters, my friends . . . The person you are is down to them. The environment I’ve come from — I wouldn’t change for anything.”

Super artikel LaPioche. Jeg bider især mærke i denne:
Being given freedom is massively underrated and without coaches who do that, players would all be the same. The same footballer, the same type of person, of character,”
Kunne ikke have sagt det bedre selv.

Enig, det er alfa og omega for talentudvikling. Personligt synes jeg, det er det skønt at høre den slags, med tanke på hvor kønsløst seniorholdet har spillet til tider i de senere år. Så er er det rart at høre, at den slags ikke bliver fortrængt for så vidt angår de unge.

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Kamp i aften i Basel. Zlatan starter på bænken, Smalling spiller fra start, Jones og Bailly er fortsat ude med skader. Det er hvad vi ved.

Jeg håber på at se nogle af de unge i aften (især Tuanzebe), men det er nok naivt, nu hvor flere af de rutinerede spillere er på vej tilbage fra skader og har brug for kamptræning.

I det mindste håber jeg, at en Martial får lov til at starte igen. Han er simpelthen elektrisk i øjeblikket.

Jeg håber Mourinho får roteret godt rundt i aften.

Romero
Darmian-Tuanzebe/Rojo-Smalling- Shaw
McTominay-Herrera
Martial-Mikhi-Lingard
Rashford

Alternativt Lukaku ind for Mikhi og Blind for Shaw, hvis det skal være. Lad nu for guds skyld Pogba sidde over. Husker stadig da Vidic gik i stykker i Basel. Selv hvis vi taber de sidste to, er det sandsynligt vi vinder puljen, så lad det nu være to kampe hvor marginalspillerne holdes til ilden.

Jeg ved ikke med jer, men jeg er blevet helt vild med "Tony Martial"-hymnen efterhånden!

Btw, nogle der bed mærke i, hvilken hymne der kørte de sidste næsten 10 minutter af kampen mod Newcastle? En melodi der gentog sig, som var rigtig fed.