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78 Posts
Taggart is deluded......
Excellent article you may be interested in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football/champions_league/newsid_1961000/1961503.stm
Text as below:-
" Sir Alex Ferguson has pulled the full range of brave faces after Manchester United's Champions League disappointments - but he wore the full mask of self-delusion in Leverkusen.
Ferguson reacted to the deserved loss against Bayer Leverkusen by clutching desperately at straws and failing to grasp reality.
Manchester United, he claimed, were still as good as any of the European elite.
Nonsense.
Manchester United, he claimed, had been the best team in the Premiership since Christmas.
Nonsense - unless we have all been very much mistaken and it has been a team other than Arsenal who have put together a stunning sequence of form to stand on the brink of a league and cup double.
And, it has to be said, the biggest nonsense of all was Ferguson's tactical masterplan in Leverkusen.
Ferguson has presided over magnificent success and leads a group of players that can stand comparison with many of the European elite, but they were a mess in their ill-fated Champions League defeat in Germany.
Fortune favours the brave - but it can also desert the foolhardy and Ferguson got his game plan horribly wrong.
The gods can only smile on Ferguson for so long. Remember how he got away with puzzlingly playing Jesper Blomqvist in the 1999 Champions League win against Bayern Munich?
Ferguson, on a night when he needed goals, detailed a natural midfield marksman in Paul Scholes to tramp uneffectively down the right side of midfield.
He isolated Ruud van Nistelrooy and left Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on the bench, only introducing the Norwegian talisman when it was too late for him to produce another miracle.
Scholes and Blanc fail to hide their disappointment
And, once again, Ferguson's whole set-up appeared tailored to allow Juan Sebastian Veron to fill a mystifying role behind Van Nistelrooy.
The consequence was that Van Nistelrooy was barely given a pass worthy of the name and Scholes saw his effectiveness reduced to almost nil.
Manchester United's best set-up is a pure and simple 4-4-2 - and the brilliant Scholes was reduced to a figure of burning frustration on the periphery of the action.
They ended the game in a desperate shambles, with Veron almost filling in as an auxiliary central defender.
Veron has been the dilemma at the centre of United's season, and Ferguson has spent so much time putting his most expensive item at the front of the display that he has forgotten things were falling apart at the back of the showcase.
Laurent Blanc was careless and fortunate to get away with a series of sloppy errors, while Wes Brown's distribution was abysmal.
If there is a man waiting to replace Gary Neville in England's right back slot, it is certainly not Wes Brown.
Veron has been a United misfit
United's defence is one of their weaknesses, as proved by the fact that they led three times against Bayer in two legs and never retained it.
And their problems were made even worse with the manager's unnecessary tinkering with midfield and attack.
Sir Alex Ferguson has rightly claimed glorious credit for Manchester United's successes - he must now take a share of the blame for another disappointing fall near the Champions League finishing tape. "
I believe that we can all say " AMEN" to that can't we ?
Excellent article you may be interested in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football/champions_league/newsid_1961000/1961503.stm
Text as below:-
" Sir Alex Ferguson has pulled the full range of brave faces after Manchester United's Champions League disappointments - but he wore the full mask of self-delusion in Leverkusen.
Ferguson reacted to the deserved loss against Bayer Leverkusen by clutching desperately at straws and failing to grasp reality.
Manchester United, he claimed, were still as good as any of the European elite.
Nonsense.
Manchester United, he claimed, had been the best team in the Premiership since Christmas.
Nonsense - unless we have all been very much mistaken and it has been a team other than Arsenal who have put together a stunning sequence of form to stand on the brink of a league and cup double.
And, it has to be said, the biggest nonsense of all was Ferguson's tactical masterplan in Leverkusen.
Ferguson has presided over magnificent success and leads a group of players that can stand comparison with many of the European elite, but they were a mess in their ill-fated Champions League defeat in Germany.
Fortune favours the brave - but it can also desert the foolhardy and Ferguson got his game plan horribly wrong.
The gods can only smile on Ferguson for so long. Remember how he got away with puzzlingly playing Jesper Blomqvist in the 1999 Champions League win against Bayern Munich?
Ferguson, on a night when he needed goals, detailed a natural midfield marksman in Paul Scholes to tramp uneffectively down the right side of midfield.
He isolated Ruud van Nistelrooy and left Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on the bench, only introducing the Norwegian talisman when it was too late for him to produce another miracle.
Scholes and Blanc fail to hide their disappointment
And, once again, Ferguson's whole set-up appeared tailored to allow Juan Sebastian Veron to fill a mystifying role behind Van Nistelrooy.
The consequence was that Van Nistelrooy was barely given a pass worthy of the name and Scholes saw his effectiveness reduced to almost nil.
Manchester United's best set-up is a pure and simple 4-4-2 - and the brilliant Scholes was reduced to a figure of burning frustration on the periphery of the action.
They ended the game in a desperate shambles, with Veron almost filling in as an auxiliary central defender.
Veron has been the dilemma at the centre of United's season, and Ferguson has spent so much time putting his most expensive item at the front of the display that he has forgotten things were falling apart at the back of the showcase.
Laurent Blanc was careless and fortunate to get away with a series of sloppy errors, while Wes Brown's distribution was abysmal.
If there is a man waiting to replace Gary Neville in England's right back slot, it is certainly not Wes Brown.
Veron has been a United misfit
United's defence is one of their weaknesses, as proved by the fact that they led three times against Bayer in two legs and never retained it.
And their problems were made even worse with the manager's unnecessary tinkering with midfield and attack.
Sir Alex Ferguson has rightly claimed glorious credit for Manchester United's successes - he must now take a share of the blame for another disappointing fall near the Champions League finishing tape. "
I believe that we can all say " AMEN" to that can't we ?
