Manchester United Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread - See Mod Warning in OP, 09/11

Nuts102 wrote: »

Defenders pick up silly yellows all the time especially attacking full backs who are more likely to get caught out of position a bit more.

The thing to take from that incident is the Rafael from years ago would not have shown the discipline he did.

He sat back done his job defended well and went against his natural instinct of bombing forward. It was the complete opposite of what a reckless liability would have done.

He showed his recklessness getting the yellow card! Then he showed his experience not getting the 2nd.

Some players are reckless. Scholes was reckless and still a great player. Rafael is/can be reckless.

Edit: Just to add. There's a huge amount of defenders who don't pick up silly yellows all the time. Reckless defenders pick up silly yellows all the time. Also, the vast majority of Rafaels yellow cards have nothing to do with him being caught up the pitch or out of position, they are poorly timed or rash tackles.

Wanyama's interviw on daily mail. Was a big fan of Keane and Scholes, now Rooney's.

United are a team he relishes facing. Growing up in Nairobi, he dreamed of playing for them and it is a dream he still harbours. ‘My father Noah was a footballer and he used to talk as if he knew everything,’ he laughs. ‘He used to say “when you’ve been a footballer you can talk to me’’ so I thought that’s what I’ll become. It drove me.
‘United were my team. When their games were on we used to go to an old theatre where you had to pay to watch movies and then extra for United games. Sometimes they would stop the movies to show United’s match.
‘I had posters of Roy Keane and Paul Scholes on my wall. They were my favourite players who I wanted to be. If I could take anything from them maybe it would be Keane’s passion, his fire. I wanted to shake his hand after we played Aston Villa the other week but I didn’t find him. It’s a shame he has left.’
Today Wanyama holds up Wayne Rooney as his favourite United player. ‘He is the best English player. He is strong, powerful, he has that anger that drives his team. He lifts them, sometimes carries them. The type of guy you would always want on your side.’

I'd be confident that the people saying that Valencia has been doing well at RB are basing that opinion purely on the fact that United haven't conceded many goals, rather than watching him closely or knowing what a full-back doing his job well looks like.

Some Louis quotes on Falcao and "momentum"....


Louis van Gaal has cast doubt over Radamel Falcao's long-term future at Manchester United by claiming he is "not interested" in the Colombian forward's reaction to being held back from first-team action at the club.
Falcao, a loan signing from Monaco on the final day of the summer transfer window, has been told by Van Gaal that he will not start the Premier League game with Southampton at St Mary's on Monday night due to continuing efforts to improve his fitness following a cruciate ligament injury in January.
Having paid a £6 million loan fee to secure the services of Falcao, United also agreed a £43.2m fee with Monaco over a permanent deal for the 28-year-old following the culmination of his season-long loan at Old Trafford. But with the former Porto and Atlético Madrid player being restricted to just three starts and four substitute appearances for United this season, with one goal in return, Falcao's inability to convince Van Gaal of his readiness to start games has raised the prospect of the club looking elsewhere for a new striker next summer.
Van Gaal insists, however, that Falcao has yet to return to full fitness following a recent six-week calf injury lay-off and that he is not concerned whether the player is growing frustrated by his lack of first-team appearances.
"I'm not interested," Van Gaal said. "He has to follow my philosophy. Do you understand that? Yes, I'm here because of that."

Van Gaal admitted last month that he "hoped" Falcao would justify his signing, at the same time as conceding that he was not signed permanently because of the club's desire to ensure the player has fully overcome the cruciate injury which forced him to miss the World Cup.
With teenager James Wilson selected to start against Stoke City in midweek ahead of Falcao, Van Gaal insisted that the South American had still to prove his fitness on the training ground after returning from injury two weeks ago. "Yes, it is match fitness," Van Gaal said. "I will clarify it with more facts. He has trained now maybe two days after the Stoke match. We had the match on Tuesday, when he played for 15 minutes.
"Then we had the training sessions after Tuesday, but before Tuesday, we didn't train. We trained the box exercise and that is not a full training session. Because we had to play again within two days the Hull City game last week, I have to do a recovery session, so I cannot train him.
"After Tuesday I can train him and we trained very well on Wednesday, but then Thursday they are off. I can say to him train but, no, we have trained before that. So he has trained in two training sessions what I think is a contribution. A bigger contribution is to play in the second team for 45 or 60 minutes or even 90 minutes – what Jonny Evans has done already – but I cannot do that because Rooney was injured.
"I have to adapt to the needs of the selection [squad]. He can play only 20 minutes on that level because the rhythm of the game in the Premier League is the highest."
With Wayne Rooney, the captain, back to fitness after missing the 2-1 win against Stoke City with a knee injury and Ángel di María having a 50-50 chance of facing Southampton, United travel to the south coast knowing that a victory will lift them to third in table and within eight points of leaders Chelsea. But despite riding a storm of injuries since the start of the season, Van Gaal insists he is not happy with United's progress.
"Against Hull City I thought it was a rather good performance," Van Gaal said. "I was very pleased. But against Stoke it was not so good. So within three days, there was a big difference and we are looking for consistency.
"I have said already that we have to wait and see about the momentum. I don't think we can say we have it because when you have such a difference between two matches in three days you are not in a momentum.
"We have to dominate more. Against Hull, we dominated and that is why I was so pleased. We could have scored more goals also, but 3-0 is a very good result against a very defensive team."

https://twitter.com/ManUtdStuff/status/541830951513243648

The papers are going nuts on the Falcao stuff. "Falcao is not fit" etc etc

Its does seem that LVG is not too impressed with him and it looks like Falcao will not be starting tonight or in the next game. He'll be used as a sub unless he gets up to LVGs fitness standards.

Here is LVG talking about Falcao at the presser and although he seems mainly annoyed with the journalist I don't think everything is fine between LVG and Falcao given his tone

Tyson Fury wrote: »

He's been decent but I'd hate to be relying on him. Interesting team selection ahead tonight.

Valencia at full back reminds me of Carragher at Liverpool when he played there.Did ok but you knew he wasn't particularly comfortable plus when he was expected to push forward,he got as far as half way and laid the ball off.
Not a criticism,that's just the fact of the matter.

It's so obvious the difference when Rafael plays and not. We look so much more threatening from right flank when Rafael is our RB. He is not a liability whatsoever. Like few said there are many people who are still stuck in 2009.

Brazilian, very good at attacking so obviously he must be **** defensively and people just get on with it rather than watching him and making a proper judgement. He is good defensively, not as good as Ivanovic but still good for a full back and attacking he is just great.