What form have Utd hit? Played off the Park by Saints and relying on the official to buy them a win.
Have a look at how many goals we have scored, you might be surprised!
Look I agree Firmino needs to score more goals but it's a team game and we have scored a sh*t load if goals when our best 11 is available.
Unfortunately our issue is the drop off in quality when one of the first teamers is missing.
Manchester United: 10 wins, 3 draws, 1 loss (2nd leg of the League Cup).
Liverpool: 2 wins, 4 draws, 5 lost games.
Arsenal: 8 wins, 1 draw, 2 losses.
Manchester City: 7 wins, 2 draws, 1 loss.
These are the results since the turn of the year.
Secondly, at no point in time will one have their best eleven available most of the time, and that is where quality depth comes in. Look at Klopp, he resorted to playing the kids in the cups to help manage fatigue and even that has not had the desired effect. I assume that with the lowered workload, and a return to a less congested fixture list might be one of the positives going forward. Chelsea are the one team that has not lost a key player for a prolonged period, but that has to do with the fact that they are not in Europe, and both teams are not in the business of pressing and covering huge distances in a game.
That said, goals have not dried because Mane and Coutinho were missing, they have dried up because teams have started sitting deeper and ceding possession and the inability to break such down. In games where teams came to play, goals and chance creation has not been as much of an issue.
In the last 6 games, the team has managed a total of 8 goals since the turn of the year, and 10 in 11 games. Goals have become harder to come by while defense has managed to do worse.
Kane, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Cazorla, Xhaka, Ozil, Bellerin, Mustafi, Iwobi, Walcott , Gundogan, Fernandinho, Kompany, Sagna, Sane......all these have missed multiple games for one reason or another and their injury lists go far deeper than this.