Worrying Times at Old Trafford

 Today is Saturday 23 January 2016 and for the fans who missed the early game between Manchester United against Southampton, I am sad to report that the final results of the game read Manchester United 0 – 1 Southampton. The game which, I want to strongly emphasize, was played at Old Trafford started off with Southampton dominating vast majority of the game and the Red Devils played like a team who did not put in anytime at all in the training ground before the game. I mean, I am honestly trying not to be too critical of the team but, it seemed like the strategy the team had coming into the game was to deliver long balls into the opponents penalty box and hope that a player like Marouane Fellaine would be able to do something with the ball but the strategy backfired because all the long passes that came from a Manchester United player either went out of play or the ball was delivered straight into the hands of the Southampton Goal keeper, Fraser Foster or the ball would find its way right to the feet of one Southampton player.  The game was so bad for Manchester United that our captain Rooney had to leave his position upfront and drop deep into the midfield in other to retrieve possession of the ball for a large portion of the match and, I don’t know if their are other Manchester United fans who would agree with on this but for me, whenever Wayne Rooney decides to drop to the center of the pitch to retrieve possession of the ball for the team that is the first sign for me that the team is not playing well.
                                                                                                               sports.ndtv.com
         Let me just shift my attention from the teams, obvious, lack of fire power upfront and just discuss a little bit about our incredibly weak defense.  After today's game against Southampton here is the official stats

Manchester United           Game Statistics                       Southmpton
8	Goal Attempts	7
1	On Target	2
4	Corners	4
11	Fouls	8
0	Yellow Cards	0
0	Red Cards	0
56	%	44

                                                   www.southampton.vitalfootball.co.uk
 From the stats above it clearly shows that Southampton had more shots on target, more possession and more chances created. In other words, Southampton controlled the game from kick off. Correct me if i’m wrong but is it not the job of the defense to prevent the opposition from creating a lot of shooting chances at our goal post?  However,  if the statistic of the game show that our opponents created more chances and got more shots on target then Manchester United did at Old Trafford then am I wrong to put some of the blame center back who is the leader in defense? I watched the whole game today from start to finish and just like games against Leicster city, Wolfs-burg, Norwich city and, most notably,  against Newcastle, I caught Chris Smalling either loosing his man, grabbing an arm full of his mans jersey, out of his position or literally wrestling his man to the ground while the game is going on. I’m going to guess the coach Loui Van Gaal must be frustrated to see that coming from his main Center Back because as a fan, while watching the teams  recent games my disappointing towards the defense reaches a stage where it becomes very difficult to control my emotions.  On the matter of attacking, from what I saw today, the team struggled a lot to create any goal good scoring chances and that might have had something to do with the fact that our Attackers, Rooney, Martial and Jesse Lingard, were forced to drop back deep to keep the ball in our possession, preventing the team from creating any strong scoring opportunity. However, I was expecting one of our midfielders to possibly take control of the ball and attack the Southampton defense or at least put Southampton under pressure. It Never happened. If your midfield has a list of quality players like Schneiderlin and Herrera  you would expect to see quality plays to be delivered but to play a full 90 min game and little to no clear goal scoring chances were created, not only should you credit the other team but you also turn and question Manchester United midfielders.
   I don’t what is going on with the team but the management better come up with a solution quickly because, if the team keeps moving at this rate, our Red Devils club might be staring at the next two or more seasons without a trophy or a chance to compete in the Champions League.