The Pre-Season Friendly Thread

[ancelotti]

Been an up and down pre-season for us so far.

First off we lost 2-1 to Brondby and one of our new signings (Emre Can) had to go off after 20 mins with an injury. Not good.

Then we beat Preston 2-1 which was a promising performance from our youngsters. Suso with a peach of a goal.

Last night we lost 1-0 to Roma with a last minute Agger OG. Was an extremely dull game and Borini injured his shoulder after about 15 minutes, but on the bright side we created a little bit more than they did, Coutinho and Can looked very good, and a few youngsters played well again.

Next up we've got Olympiakos in this International Champions Cup thingy. We should see some more of our first-teamers come in now like Sturridge, Gerrard, Sterling and hopefully we get to see Lallana and Markovic, and maybe even Remy depending on how quickly we wrap that up.

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Have been watching a fair bit of MUTV these last few days and watching an interview with Eric The King. He says he left Leeds because the relationship between the manager and the players changed and because they started playing the long ball a lot more. Didn't mention anything about him shagging the captain's, Lee Chapman's, wife lol

Mind you, that was when she was a right hornbat, before she had the cosmetic surgery cock up and ended up looking like a trout lmfao

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Blackett and Cleverley are the two players that are playing for 90 minutes this time around. I can see Blackett playing center back for half of the game and as a wing back for the other half. Blackett is a great defender, part of the reason why I wasn't too worried about Evra and Buttner going. He's ideally a center back but is a pretty good left back too.

Think we'll also be seeing Hernandez playing 45 minutes too.

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Johnstone

Jones Evans Blackett

Valencia Herrera Cleverley James

Mata

Roonster Welbeck

Much tougher opposition this time and playing at a mile above sea level in hot and humid conditions. The winning side gets 3 points, 2 points for a win on penalties and 1 point for losing on penalties with penalties happening if it's level after 90 minutes.

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Roma have had the better chances, United's chances were few and far between. Roma trying to exploit our back three with pace but most of their runs have been poorly timed resulting in offside decisions.

The Roonster has one chance from 25 yards or so and bungs it in the top corner. A great strike. And a few minutes later the Roonster plays a 20 yard through ball from the center of midfield to Mata, a great first touch and a great finish.

2-0.

We don't really deserve to be ahead on the balance of play but the difference is that we've put our chances away.

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The Roonster makes it 3-0 with a penalty.

That's 4 goals in 2 matches, or rather two 45 minute halves lol

He's been the real difference between the two sides.

Really haven't been expecting us to be playing as well as we have been so far during pre-season, we may concede a goal or two in the second half as Van Gaal makes 9 changes though.

We weren't really in the game that much during the first half hour but after the water break we just seemed to turn it on, mainly due to our passing in the middle third of the pitch improving. The movement was there but most of the passes were going astray for some reason. Looking at the highlights of the first half I've just noticed that one of the Roonster, Welbeck or Mata dropped a little deeper, probably why our passing improved. Interesting that they rotated that, made things less predictable and kept possession.

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5 minutes to go. Roma got one back with a Beckham/Roonster type lob from inside their own half. Looked like about 3 yards further out too.

Now they've got a dodgy penalty and got another one back. 3-2 with a minute to go

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That's 3 points in the bag, 3-2 final score. Just about deserved the win. Young and Smalling both look like they're putting last season behind them so far. Nani is still a waste of space lol Cleverley had a good game but played 70 minutes instead of 90...think Van Gaal did that just to shut the fucking Mexicans up lololol

Not a bad performance at the end of the day, certainly reinforced the importance of discipline and concentration for defenders playing with 3 central defenders and wing backs as well as the importance of one of the 3 forward players dropping deeper to retain possession in the middle third when the wing-backs are pushed back.

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Just seen that first Roma goal again, absolutely outstanding, although not too sure what Amos was doing so far off his line. Oh well, he made up for it with a fantastic save about 5 minutes later though.

A good test for United though and with the altitude a great help with improving fitness and sharpness before the season starts. Next up is Inter on Thursday and then Real Madras on Saturday.

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Here's the starting selection for United:

Linda

Smalling Jones Evans

Valencia Fletch Herrera Young

Mata

Roonster Welbeck

Looks like Van Gaal is happy with using Young as a wing back after all. Not so sure about that myself.

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0 - 0 at halftime, quite a tight game but United have had the better chances. Inter are doing the same thing that Roma tried the other day - trying to catch our back three out with long balls over the top but, as with Roma, it isn't doing them a lot of good. Am quite confident that if the same sides were to come out for the second half that we'd end up winning the game.

Fletch is doing a great job of directing the play and is captain again. Wonder if he's going to end up in the back three again for the second half..?

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0-0 fulltime, penalties it is. Good performance from United, had the best chances and kept Inter's chances to a bare minimum. Think De Gea was the only United keeper that had a save to make. Could have had a penalty in the second half too. 2 points for a penalty win and 1 point for losing on penalties.

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Nice! United won 5-3 on penalties. We deserved 3 points from that though tbh.

Quite like the way these fixtures have turned out, they've been getting progressively harder as they've gone along - LA Galaxy<Roma<Inter Milan<Real Madras.

All of our matches so far have been pretty comfortable, we've been good at keeping possession and when losing possession we've been pretty quick winning it back by pressing quickly. Not sure what the other table is looking like but it would be great to make it to the Final and win it.

[ancelotti]

It's looking very possible that the winner of tonight's game between us and City will face your lot in the final. That'd be some pre-season game!

[harv]

Yup, although we've got to get some sort of result against Real Madras first though. Very happy at the way we've been playing so far under Van Gaal. Our fast-paced attacking game is back, we're keeping possession well, when we lose possession we tend to win it back by pressing well, we're playing with plenty of width and are defending well again.

Roma and Inter have both tried, and failed, to exploit our back three with high balls over the top of the back three but they've held their line very well despite multiple changes to our defence. A bit of a daft way to play against us tbh, bunging those long balls in allows the keeper to sweep the ball away without much of a problem. You're better off attacking us using width and crosses into the goal area or through the middle with one and two touch passing and one-twos to get past our defenders...just the way that we played against Inter last night in fact.