I never said a draw was good enough.

I said The shots we had on target today could have resulted in a high scoring win, Just wasn't our day. And I stand by that.

Aside from the changes and poor decisions from the Ref', I'm actually quite happy with what I saw.

I think Ibrahimovic should be rested, but replacing him with Rooney doesn't sit well with me.

Bad idea I think, I think we need to play either Rashford or Martial up front

It is great don't get me wrong, to see us creating chances, and it is of course better than the one shot per three of four games we were experiencing last season, but draws are just not called for, if we wish to climb up the league table.

It wasn't our day against Stoke, it wasn't our day against Liverpool, Watford and today, we sure as heck need one to at least to be our day (or have we had it against Leicester??!) going forward.

BIB you sound very patronising...

How many times do I need to say The shots we had on target today could have resulted in a high scoring win, Just wasn't our day?
Any other day they MIGHT have gone in. Then we COULD have climbed up the league table!

Nothing to do with the fact that his contributions have been limited.

As Ned Flanders might say 'he's done diddly done' . No scapegoating going on here. As for the jury still being out then I must be watching a different player to the one you are.

Don't waste your breath.

Win next week and he'll be back to saying we'll win the league.

We've probably got Michael Oliver pencilled in for more fun next week.

Sorry, it was not meant to come across as patronising at all, my point was that we need some of these chances to be actual goals, so whilst I am happy to see us create chance after chance, it is rather more disappointing to see us now draw our last three league games, scoring only one goal in that sequence.



Hardly, if we were to win next week, which I sure hope that we do, then that would be great, but it would only be the start that we would need to carry on, in order to move up the league table
I certainly would not think we would be back in league title contention just because of one win.
If we were to win our next five or six league games in a row, then I might be persuaded to change my mind on that.

What's he brought to the team that we didn't already have?? If he was bringing something different, something new I'd be more accepting, but he's not. People have complained about Rooney slowing play down, Zlatan does the same. I've just seen the evening news player ratings, not sure how they rated Zlatan as highly as a 5, more so they then rated Lingard a 3. Neither shone, but I'm convinced that Zlatan got and extra point or two for being Zlatan.

The thing with Ibra is that he only really works if he starts, he is not really your classic "impact sub", ala Ole, so if he isn't producing the goods by starting games, then the only other option is to not have him in the match day squad.

Some tough decisions will have to be made if we are to get back to winning matches once more, rather than turning into draw specialists.

Finishing aside Zlatan has got far more to his game than Rooney has these days.Apart from using the excuse that 'Well A B and C aren't doing any better 'tell me one good reason why Rooney should be used instead.

He should be a man on a mission to prove Jose was wrong to drop him instead he continues to prove why it was the correct decision to do so.

If you're dropping Zlatan then it certainly isn't Rooney who should be replacing him. Either Rashford or Martial should be playing through the middle.

Hopefully we'll see Martial on Thursday. May as well take the Europa seriously now considering our poor league form .

At least Miki on the bench as well.

I fully agree regarding your Europa League comment, it might be our best chance of Champions League football next season at the rate we are going, so we really need to try and secure qualification from the group asap.

Didn't see the game, and thought it might be a boring nil-nil, but then heard we had 37 shots on target. Thirty-seven!! We are really going to hammer a prem team soon. Plus, by all accounts the ref was an arse. So yeah, i'm happy with that as well.


The simple truth is that Zlatan isn't stellar right now, but he's still gives more to the cause than Rooney.


Thank you. Been saying this for a bit now. At some point Jose has to let loose all three speed merchants up front, with the slow boys (Zlatan, Rooney) as bench-back-up. The thought of how good our play could be with a front five of Martial, Lingard, Rashford, Pogba and Mata is mouth-watering.

BTW how did Darmain do?

It wasn't 37 on target, that was total number of shots, I think it was 11 on target

Ah ok. Still double figures is not too shabby. I think in our last match v City we only had three or four.

A similar 0-0 home draw last season would have involved us having no more than a couple of shots on goal and De Gea being the busier keeper.

I'm not necessarily advocating Rooney's return, people seem to think I am. What I'm saying is that Ibra just hasn't cut the mustard apart from a few goals. Those goals apart, his general play has been on a par with Rooney. I think the gamble isn't working out right now, not that I hope he proves me wrong, as much as I hope Rooney can prove everyone wrong, as that will benefit the team as I'm sure you'll all agree.

As for Darmain, it's hard to judge on this game, we were so much in control of the game that apart from 1 or 2 skirmishes into our territory, which I'm sure MOTD will include in full we weren't troubled at all. He made one great recovering tackle, but wasn't as effective as say Valencia has been going forward, but that's to be expected as he isn't a converted winger. I hope he can get a run of games under the belt right now, as I think he may be the type of player that needs one or two games to get back to his best rather than chopping and changing for 1 or 2 minutes at a time.

On a side note two stats stuck with me today, it was 95 years ago since Burnley kept a clean sheet at Old Trafford. The other was when we brought Memphis on, he's only had 15 minutes of Premier League playing time and we bring him on to change the whole game for us in 10 minutes. Whilst putting a forward on in the circumstances is better than a defender/midfielder, what really could we expect someone with so little game time in the locker to do for us??

We had 19 corners today, I think at least 12 of them hit the first Burnley defender... Blind, Mata and Rashford all to blame.

Darmian did well. As did Shaw.

They were largely in decent advanced attacking positions on the wings but were regularly missed by Pogba.

If Ibra isn't immune from criticism, then Pogba shouldn't be either. He's been underwhelming.

That's a poor stat and I hate it when the corner doesn't even beat the first man. Mind you, as we've discussed before, it's not just us. Hardly any corners lead to goals these days.


True, but Pogba escapes the rollocking he should be getting despite the fee because he still has time on his side and isn't the finished article whereas with Ibra,....well....

That's the saving grace about this result. Goals apart, the statistics are phenomenal and how we failed to win it by 2 or 3 at least I have no idea! 72% possession, 37 shots, 11 on target plus at least two off the woodwork, a sending off and our pressure continued. Those stats taken together make it a totally different situation from when Moyes or LVG were in charge and it does make me feel a bit better than I would have been.

But sadly, we are in serious danger now of irretrievably losing touch with the leaders, it's frustrating to say the least but one of these days, someone's going to get a right hammering. I just hope it doesn't come too late in the season to make a difference.

Know how you guys feel - it was worse for us as we had 80% possession, 26 shots (away from home) and 760 accurate passes to their 130 - and then to confound it our benevolent defence gifted them a goal on the two occasions they got at us so we didn't even get a point...