Comments on: The Manchester Derby: Through Red Eyes http://backpagefootball.com/the-manchester-derby-through-red-eyes/28079/ Fri, 24 May 2013 16:15:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Jamie http://backpagefootball.com/the-manchester-derby-through-red-eyes/28079/comment-page-1/#comment-75944 Jamie Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:06:04 +0000 http://backpagefootball.com/?p=28079#comment-75944 Hmm… how different would they have been with Sneijder, you ask? Well considering he’s not a central midfielder, I doubt he’d have changed very much at all. Plays in a sort-of-Rooney-when-he’s-with-Hernandez role, linking midfield and attack. He’s not the type of player United need and he’d have had no impact. It’s useless people lamenting United not signing him.

What they really need is a deep-lying playmaker. They have a really strong squad, and given their and their manager’ character should finish top two and be looking for Champions League semis. But they have a real weakness defensively, for a number of reasons, but one must surely be the lack of defence and mettle in the first choice central midfield. They are a deep-lying playmaker away from being a top side.

I still think, for now, Carrick and Giggs is their best balance in central midfield. But it’s good that they have more options than last season. Cleverley and Anderson, strangely an attacking-minded pairing just like yesterday, tore into City in the Community Shield. But something different was called for here, something I’m not sure United yet possess. (But it’s definitely not Sneijder)

And after the Arsenal and Chelsea games, it’s quite odd that despite those ending in victories you could tell in both games that a defensive flop like this was on the cards. True, nobody expected City to win 6-1, but the warning signs were definitely there.

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