Thank god! A decent result @ home for a change...Blanc even did some defending! They have now qualified for Phase Two, which is a great relief, but they're gonna have to iron out these defensive frailties before they go much further, or it will be a very short -lived campaign...

For what it's worth, in my opinion Fergie should move Keane back to CB with Blanc, always prefer Silvestre to Irwin at LB and leave Gary where he is ('cos he's actually been playing pretty well lately). Keane is scary figure in the midfield, so he can be the scary figure in defence that Stam used to be, plus he's a good organiser, which is what they desperately need right now.
Keane moving to the back four would mean that there's a space in CM next to Veron, which we all know Scholes can happily fill. Change the formation back to 4-4-2 (or even 4-3-3 with Scholes or Veron sitting behind the 2 strikers), and there you have it - success!
Just wish Fergie would see it that way...

eh congrats to Man Utd. Deserved the win, but I thought 3 goals was unfair. 0-0 up until what the 78th minute? We (Olympiakos) played a decent game up until then. The problem is we played to defensivly when we needed a win. Poursanidis came in for Mavrogenidis at HT why? He is a defensive mid and both Mavrogenidis and Patsatzoglou were doing good. There was no need to change them up. :mad: Lemonis was sleeping over there on the bench....AGAIN. :rolleyes: I don't understand why we can't go pick up a GOOD coach. I think with a better coach honestly we could have picked up a good result. We put up a good fight, for 78 minutes at least.


Hey how about Eleftheropoulo eh? Some keeper he is. ;) Only hime and Patsatzoglou impressed me from Olympiakos.

You really had a point there. I'm a big ManUtd fan, and I think that, with this squad we could have a real go at the Champions League trophy this season. As you stated we have one, or actually two, no 3 problems. First one is that the defence isn't good. Well at least the centrebacks aren't the LB and RB are doing ok, but the CB's are screwing it up. Wes Brown lacks confidence lately and Laurent Blanc, well.... uhmm, he doesn't defend at all! Maybe he needs more time to settle in, but he must have been playing his worst football ever recetly. I think that if ManUtd want to solve the defence problem they should either buy another GOOD replacement for Stam, or change the whole system into a 3-1-4-2 formation in my opinion.

Then the second problem is the midfield, we simply have one midfielder too much.. I mean, when all fit, you just have to play Beckham, Keane, Scholes, Veron and Giggs because they are world's best. So therefor one of thos should drop a place behind in stead of forward (which happens to Scholes at the moment).

Now onto the third problem, the third problem is actually the role of Scholes at the moment. He doesn't fit there. He doesn't play well. And because he isn't playing well, Ruud (who has been absolutely amazing) doesn't have enough support.

You could see exactly what I mean yesterday against Olympiakos, as soon as Ole came on, it started really rollin', not because of Ole, but because we had 2 strikers again. Now for me the ideal formation would be this: 3-1-4-2 whit these players:

Barthez

G.Neville Blanc/Brown Irwin/P.Neville

Keane

Beckham Veron Scholes Giggs

Van Nistelrooy Yorke

All this may be a bit controversial but I believe that Keane is the ideal player to play between midfield and defence. In this line-up you do have a strong midfield, though Scholes and Veron have to make sure that they aren't going forward both, and you have more power up front. Because let's face it at the moment the system doesn't really work.

congrats to ManU
as long as you do well in Europe you'll have the country behind you ...

shame for Piakos .. you could see it hapening really .. they caught the backfire right in the face

Well guys, for me the man of the match was definitely v Nistelrooy again, man he's on a roll over there but it's a shame that he missed that penalty but hey....us Dutch and penalty's;)
Anyway, great to see ManUnited go through and it looks like the new players that were bought are worth every penny but we allready knew that. Veron is really getting into it at the moment after some readjustments on his part anyway.

Goooooooo United

Hmmmm...interesting idea. I'd give it a go, just to see what would happen, 'cos it's gotta be better than the 4-4-1-1 system we've got now, which necessarily relegates our 3 great strikers to either the bench or the midfield - such a waste!