Here is my official preview of today’s champions league showdown between Manchester United and RB Leipzig:
United’s form and line ups have been all over the place. It doesn’t help that the manger is ending our weird mixed messages. This has been Ole’s pattern since taking over though. Every time he puts together a stretch of great managerial performances, he has to follow it up with head scratching ones.
He started the same line up that he used against Newcastle against Chelsea, reasoning that it was a reward for their performance in the previous match. But the truth is the starters did not win the Newcastle match. The final three goals came after Ole had smartly brought on the likes of Pogba and DVB, and removed dead weight like Dan James.
*Interlude: I don’t think Dan James is as useless as most United fans seem to. But he’s trying to be a more of a complete footballer than he is. His best stretch for United was when he just put his head down, used his pace to go by defenders, and rip shots. Now he’s trying to play tricky passes, slow up play, and work through tight spaces. That’s not his game. End interlude*
When DVB was an unused sub against Chelsea Ole explained that he is happy to have so many good players competing for places, and that he has these difficult decisions to make. This would make sense if United were smashing teams and cruising, but we’ve had two ok matches and the rest have been poor. Plus DVB has made an impact every time he’s come on. Something weird is going on there.
This is neither here nor there, and I don’t want this to be all about the crazy things Ole has been saying, but he also said Fred is still adjusting to the style of the Premier League. Wut. This is his third season in the league. There is no way he should still be adjusting to the league at this point.
RB Leipzig are top of the Bundesliga, and have a lot of players bigger clubs are linked to (see United and Upamecano), and their coach seems pretty good too. End opponent analysis.
LINE UP PREDICTION:
This might be more predictable than it seems as Ole has a tendency to form specific XIs for different competitions, and repeatedly utilize regardless of other competition matches that happen in between. I think he used the same XI in back to back League Cup matches that were 4 months apart. If I was gonna bet on a line up it would be the same one that faced PSG, but I could see Ole moving away from the back 5 for a more attack heavy line up at Old Trafford.
SCORE PREDICTION: 2-2
ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS FROM A LICENSED REFFEREE:
This is a foul
This is also a foul. You can’t complain about one without acknowledging the other. If these happened in one of my games I would absolutely call them, but for whatever reason professional soccer has decided to take an anything goes approach to what defenders can do in the box on corners. I personally would like to see them crack down on this stuff so that fans will stop crying about it (mostly Chelsea fans to be honest) but for now these happen every game (not just United games) and never get called, so get over it.
Madd About... 