MNC: Arsenal untouchable & Man Utd's defensive concerns

24:16Is four points from three games a good enough start for Manchester United, given their opponents, Chris? No, absolutely not. Not based on the way Manchester United finished last season. And I think the confidence Manchester United fans had going into the season and expectations were high based on what Michael Carrick achieved. then to lose to Hull in the manner which they did it can happen I think Hull have had a brilliant start to the season another great point at the weekend against Aston Villa they have their way of playing they haven't considered a goal yet it's an amazing start it really is from Hull and then Ipswich actually I thought were good for an hour against Manchester United but Manchester United found a way to win.

25:12I actually missed half of the second half yesterday because I was so bored watching the first half. I mean, it was such a dreadful first half ever than Manchester United yesterday. What did you do then? I took the dogs for a walk and sawed a bit of wood up for the winter. So, and then I saw the United with two and up And then I came in and Maitland Niles scored that incredible goal where United looked like they were going to do it, which would have been a big result for Michael Carrick. But I think Manchester United fans would look at the games and think, surely we should be doing a bit better.

25:53But it's not that we can judge them because it's three games. Why are they defending as badly as they are in the sense of, and maybe you'll tell me there's not a great deal you could do about what Maitland-Niles did, but they've conceded two goals in every game so far this year.

26:11Conor Coady:Yeah, of course. And you look at it from the outside and you say, a team like Man United, I agree with Chris, should be winning these games. They shouldn't be conceded as many goals, of course. It's hard to give you an answer because they are conceding the goals. What the answer is, I think Michael Carrick will know more and Steve Holland will know more when they're in it. But I think they'll want to be clean. I think the first game of the season, I think, was a tough one in a way. And of course, we'll sit here and go, Man United should win that. but I think it's one of them games as a club like Man United and being in a player's point of view and you never want to do this you never want to think like this but sometimes you'll go into that game as Man United players going we're going to win this and then all of a sudden Hull hit you with a different way of playing they're playing a back five not a different way of playing but they hit you with a back five they sit in they score off the set plays Hull were fantastic and that little kind of thing that enters your head just catches up on you a little bit I'm not trying to figure out excuses for Man United here but it was as if like they didn't expect to be hit with what Hull hit them with.

27:05Conor Coady:Do you know what I mean? And sometimes as players, that can creep into your head a little bit that it's a little bit of an unknown thing that you're coming up against. And Hull were better than them. Yeah, I was going to say, Conrad, I was at that game. And it was, I think United looked a little bit rusty in midfield. They looked a little bit, I don't know, cumbersome in midfield. But basically, that game struck me as being just like a full-on banana skin. Hull were newly promoted. They'd had this good summer where they, even at that stage, they'd already sound loads of players. But Jukirovic, who, by the way, is, a genuine star in the making as a coach.

27:35He's a brilliant coach and he's a really charismatic presence. He was giving the players who got them promoted the chance. The whole place was up for it. Everyone was in a good mood. They've got this slogan about dreaming and staying up and stuff. And I think most teams, maybe not Arsenal, but I think quite a lot of the big teams would have gone to Hull that day and sort of had a bit of a go over the coals, to be honest. And it does happen. Obviously, United should have looked at that on paper and think that should be a win or at least a draw. And I'm sure if they played them in November or February, they'd have got that.

28:05But first day of the season... You can't say that. You absolutely can't. You can because the circumstances in which you play the team is important. I think it was a much more difficult game on the Open Day season than it would be in January. That's a mindset thing. That's a total mindset thing. I think what Connor said is absolutely right. They should have been expecting that. They should have been expecting Hull to be super aggressive. and run all over them. And they should have known that, and they weren't quite at it. I mean, the goal they conceded from the free kick where Luke Shaw drops it, I mean, that's amateur hour stuff from Luke Shaw.

28:47And it's mistakes. You don't really expect that from a player of his calibre. I actually wonder, Chris, whether there's an element of... Every time somebody scores against them at the moment, that they seem slightly surprised that they've conceded. And in fact, Harry Maguire said something after the Ipswich took the lead at Old Trafford that it was something to do with feeling like, you know, you can immediately sense the next crisis coming when they go a goal down. And they don't appear very sure-footed at the moment. That's amazing, though, isn't it? Because you would naturally think, and Connor can tell me I'm wrong, but the way they finished last season, I mean, just thinking about what you say there.

29:41So were they thinking the way that they finished last season was false in the way that they ended up finishing third? And I think the record under Carrick was as good as anybody in the Premier League. So were the players thinking we are really overachieving? And then with what Maguire says, they've come back down to the level which he actually thinks that they are? Because that's a very odd thing to say.

30:12Conor Coady:I agree. It is a bit of a crazy thing to say so early, talking about crisis and talking about to say it so early. I think the after play with the nine, I don't know what you guys think. I think when you play with the nine, I remember watching the first game against Hull, and I think Cooney played as the nine and Boimo was out wide and Cooney kept on dropping and I just think it fell into Hull's way of playing with three centre-backs the ball was coming to the box no one was there Hull were editing it they were brilliant in that moment of keeping the clean sheet obviously Sesko come on and scored yesterday or played yesterday and scored I just think they need somebody to occupy centre-backs me and I watch Man United play and it just feels like without that defenders find it quite easy to play against them I don't know what you guys think when you're watching the games as well that might just be me Chris was out with the dogs Chris was chopping wood I'd take it Here you go Sorry I was just trying to find the quote I said it last week on last week's show So I found it This was when Ipswich scored first The goal knocked us back a lot When you lose at this club There's a lot of noise And you feel like you're in a crisis again I mean I've answered I think it's really fragile That whole mentality Because if you just if you just think back to Manchester United teams of old, I don't want to go too far back because Rory will get angry, but teams under Sir Alex Ferguson, would that have been their mantra?

31:34Would that have been their mentality? Had Ipswich gone a goal up? Would they be thinking about a crisis? Absolutely not. No, but that's because they hadn't had loads of recent experience of what it's like being at Man United in a crisis. So it's obvious that psychologically, psychologically they will be more fragile. They finished last season strongly. that's the point so why all of a sudden you finish the season like a train you start the next season okay you lose the hole and all of a sudden you go behind against Ipswich and you think the wheels are going to come off that you know that I find that really odd you would still feel if you had enough within the team which Manchester United did on the day but you'd still feel that okay that's a flip we're still going to win this game they ended up doing that but that's an odd thing to admit from Harry Maguire that he felt like that.

32:22But then they beat Ipswich and beat them relatively comfortably. And okay, you can say Ipswich newly promoted team. And I fully accept that from those three opening games, United would probably have thought five as a minimum, seven as a kind of good return, potentially nine. But then they'd have beaten Everton if Ainsley Maitland-Niles hadn't scored the best goal he will ever score in the 96th minute. So it feels like you can't read too much into it because the margins are so fine. We're going to talk Leicester now, who because I know this is dropping out it's dropping out of the Premier League and we've got Leicester and Burnley here who I suppose are both trying to change the directions that they are going in and styles of football that they are playing Leicester in League One beaten 4-0 at home by Oxford at the weekend they're 17th in League One they've got five points after five games Harry Suter the captain went on to say it doesn't matter what kind of football you want to play if you don't compete in the game if you don't win duels you don't win tackles you don't win headers then you're not going to give yourself a chance in the game we play some okay stuff in the first half but we didn't compete got brought up at half time and then again in the second half the cutting edge wasn't there that's solely down to the players is this is this a club that is just in transition everywhere you look a former club of yours or is it more than that

33:47Conor Coady:yeah I think it is but it's been in transition too long now hasn't it if we're going to be completely honest from the first time they dropped out of the Premier League to then when we went back up and then we went back down again it's been too long in transition now now for me to sit here and state the obvious of things aren't great and things aren't going well they've got five points in in League One it's the obvious we all know that but there's got to be something deep down that's wrong here because it's been going on for too many years now everyone will sit there and go the players aren't good enough they haven't been good enough and rightly so because the players haven't been good enough and I was there I felt it I wasn't good enough when I was there that's what it was so we can sit there but there's got to be a deeper issue and I was thinking about this before we come on and I thought to myself over the years what gave Leicester real success and it was that kind of feeling of going to that ground thinking it's going to be the hardest game in the world that's what I used to feel when I went there when you had Jamie Vardy up front you had James Madison behind you had Telemans you had Ndidi you had even going back to Wes Morgan being at centre back with Robert Huth and these sorts of players.

34:46Conor Coady:It was the hardest game, it was one of the hardest games you're going to have in a season and I just feel like that identity has been lost over the years and I was part of that by the way, I was part of that team when we lost that identity and it's tough to see, it's really tough to see because my time there was tough but seeing them now in this position and where they're at and it's such a process now because Russell Martin's football, I actually really like Russell Martin, I really do and I like how he goes about his business and what he tries to do but his football is such a process that you need time to learn and learn and learn and learn over and over and over again.

35:15Conor Coady:It's just whether he gets that time or not. And he's been in situations before where it's been sticky at the start and then Southampton is the one where it turned around. But there's a pattern, as Conor says here, Rory. And actually, he's in a tough spot, Russell Martin. You actually look at Leicester's last five permanent managers. he's second on the list of win percentage not I don't mean at Leicester just over a period of time you know he's got a 29 % win percentage there are Steve Cooper below that Ruud van Nistrooy below that Gary Rowett below that Marty Sifuentes just above that it highlights the sort of turmoil I suppose of Leicester's recent appointments well yeah but also think about the style of play that all those managers would kind of prefer and it doesn't suggest there's any real strategy there's no overarching belief of what they the ownership want Leicester to be or what they feel Leicester should be and yeah I mean Conor's right it takes a while to get used to any new manager I think the issue that Leicester have got maybe is that they that you know they're obviously they're a big a very big club for league one there'd be an expectation from the supporters that even if performances were a little bit ropey and you know the the players hadn't quite figured out exactly what Russell Martin wanted, they should have the quality to be relatively competitive within lead one, regardless.

36:43You know, as much as there's a lot of youth in that team, I think they had four players who were 20 or younger in the team on Saturday and Lewis Page, the midfielder, I think Man United have been trying to sign for most of the summer. So he's obviously, I mean, I wouldn't claim to have seen him play, but he's obviously meant to be going to be good. Because you're at Hull every week. I'm constantly at Hull. I've got one of you at Hull every week, another one working as a lumberjack. I'm like, basically, Basically, I'm just going to Connor all the time. But, I mean, you know, Bobby Daycord-Over-Reed was in that team on Saturday.

37:13Alex McCarthy. Alex McCarthy was in the team. Suites an experienced player. Daycord-Over-Reed, 33. You mentioned Luke Thomas has played Premier League. Yeah, he has and was very good. I think the point Rory made about this is Leicester in League One. and the fan base, you know, can forgive, you know, they can forgive a manager. Of course they can. But if they're not going to be competitive in League One, it's going to be a huge problem. And I don't think, I like Russell as well. I admired him as a player. I think he's had, you know, he had a tough time at Rangers where it ended really quickly for him.

37:57I think, you know, some of it was his doing, some of it wasn't. but there is this perception now which is following him around of his teams just being purely possession based and all about keeping the ball and not having any thrust or cutting edge and the job he's gone into at Leicester because of the expectation this season is for them to bounce straight back at the start of the season to win the league so the youth situation and him mentioning that really isn't going to wash you cannot lose 4-0 at home to Oxford. And, you know, that's the biggest problem. And, you know, he needs to turn it around and turn it around extremely quickly.

38:37There should still be enough experience within the team. We've mentioned the players. But also, and I don't know this, Conor, and you'd be better served to answer this, but also you would think that Leicester have enough quality youth players to play at that level, wouldn't you? With what they've been through the last couple of seasons, Premier League.

38:59Conor Coady:I completely agree and I actually think over the summer the club done a good job and listen Leicester fans won't hear this and they'll probably turn the radio but I actually think they've done a good job in shifting the energy so the last couple of years it's been tough because the club's been in such a spiral and dropping down the same players were involved in that so they had a big summer in terms of changing the energy so a lot of people wanted to see the younger players coming through so they've got Sammy Braybrook who by the way is a fantastic footballer they've got Louis Page linked with Man United they've got Will Alves who's been around the first team for years he trained with me really really good footballer you have players who can come in set Badia Luko who plays right back I think he scored against Ipswich in the Cup last week when I watched the game some real good young players and they've done well in the summer to really change the energy of it because the last couple of years have been tough and I think a big part of when it's tough is shifting the energy away from the players who've been there but keeping that little bit of a sprinkle of experienced players and whatever but for whatever reason I go back to it and again with Russell I just think it's deeper than just it's got to be deeper it can't just be now oh the manager's not good and the players are it's got to run deeper than what we're doing because they've decided to bring Russell in so you decide to tie your flag to the mast if you want to say and go right we are going to go with this because this is a way that has got to have time to improve if they're going to make a decision after four or five games there was no point in bringing Russell in because that's not the sort of manager he is Do you know what I don't like disagreeing with Connor but I really don't like agreeing with Chris and the one thing that I think is really interesting Russell Martin does come with a reputation and a lot of fans won't like that reputation.

40:29I mean, I like him as a bloke. He came across really well when we had him on the show. But there'll be a lot of fans who think his football is, as Chris described it, it's kind of possession for possession state. But how many of those fan bases will have watched a lot? Or does the myth then just build? The myth is what's important. It's the perception. You get it a lot when players who've been rejected by Man City are linked with a team in the Championship or lower down the Premier League. And you will genuinely see fans saying, well, he's not good enough for us. And you think, well, hang on, just because he didn't make the road at Manchester City doesn't mean he can't play at that step down.

41:08He'd probably be, you know, he'd be perfectly good. And I think Russell Martin's reputation and the fact that the nature of his football is perceived as being divisive makes him a much riskier appointment than he probably should be. Just look, for Leicester, and all right, it didn't work out at Rangers, Russell Martin got Southampton promoted and got them promoted in style. Like he is, in fact, did he take them up twice? Did he take them up from League One to the Championship and then the Championship to the Premier League?

41:33Conor Coady:Who, Southampton? I can't remember. Yeah. No, no, just the Premier League. Just the Premier League, in the playoffs. So he's got a track record of doing this, like he's good at this, or it didn't work out at Rangers. A lot of people don't work out at Rangers. But there will be a perception of Martin that means that the fans are less willing to be patient with him than they might otherwise be. And that's totally fair. I think the noise surrounding his exit at Rangers and how everything was piled onto Russell hasn't been fair. I mean, you know that Rangers are such a big club. But because him being sacked in such a short space of time there, I think that Leicester fans have maybe sort of cottoned on to what happened there.

42:21but you know that wasn't that certainly wasn't all Russell at Rangers but this this uh perception of him uh as a as a manager and you know he it was it was the same at Southampton where you know when he got them up to the Premier League I think they played was it Newcastle second game it was the first or second game of the season under Russell they ended up losing 1-0 but played Newcastle off the park and then you know there were sort of signs things would you know would go okay it's always going to be a difficult job but you know he's he's a principled manager but I just I just he needs a result or two quickly to sort of turn turn that turn the tide because I think Leicester fans have made their mind up with him and that's you know that is unfair if there are a lot of young players within the squad they need they need time to breathe and evolve but Leicester fans expect the team to go up and that's his biggest problem I also remember Chris mentioned about

43:18Conor Coady:results kind of from previously. I also remember when they went up in the playoffs in the championship with Southampton, I'm sure right at the start of that season he conceded five against Sunderland, he conceded four against our Leicester team at St Mary's. He was conceding goals and he still ended up going up in the playoffs. Now I'm not saying it's the right way to go, the wrong way to go, but I go back to what I was saying about it being a process with Russell Mann. Some managers aren't, some managers come in and they go, boom, this is how we play, we go longer, we play on the counter, we're solid with this.

43:41Conor Coady:That is not him. They've got a horrible game on Saturday. I've just checked, They're away at Stockport on Saturday, who are third. Now, Stockport have been a bit hit and miss at home this season, lost at home to Blackpool, but Stockport away is not an easy fixture for Leicester. This weekend, another club who are having a very difficult start to their new season are Burnley, who are bottom of the Championship, host and editor of the No Name Never podcast and a regular on the Monday Night Club, Natalie Bromley joins us are you worried? are you fearful? yeah all of the above that conversation that you've just had about Leicester just save that and in 12 months time we'll just have the same conversation about Burnley it's just going to be exactly the same thing yeah I am I am concerned I'm concerned with just problems from top to bottom at the club we have gone from being a club that maintained its Premier League status for a good number of consecutive seasons albeit at a struggle but that's understandable we're not one of the rich powerful teams in the Premier League and having stability and having an identity and having just a consistency in our approach to going up and down changing a managerial cycle every single time we do the new promotion push changing our squad inside out and this season we have started all over again except this time We've spent three months appointing a new manager who's not had a pre-season.

45:13We had a disastrous summer transfer window. And as great as the Jamie Vardy signing is, we're scrapping around after the transfer window's closed in the free agent market. And we're a side that's got parachute money from the Premier League. And we're one of the wealthiest clubs in the championship on paper anyway. And I don't understand how we have got to this stage so quickly. and the collapse on Saturday at home to Bristol City, Burnley fans are a very patient set of fans. I think you see this across East Lancashire, actually. A lot of the Lancashire clubs, the fans are pretty patient and we will stick with our clubs.

45:49And it just turned, the relationship and the anger turned towards the board and the chairman on Saturday. I was going to say it went towards the board, did it, as opposed to the new manager. There's sympathy towards him, is there? There's sympathy, but there is also mixed reports as well. I think, listen, on one side of it, Nicky Hayen came in very, very late and he's been handed the most impossible of tasks. He's not had a chance to strengthen his squad. He's lost some key players. We sold Zian Fleming, our only recognised striker at the club, who's got any sort of talent or game time and didn't bring a replacement in.

46:27And he's had very little time to jelly side. He's got players who have not got match fitness and he's not worked with them pre-season. So there is sympathy for that. However, he isn't helping himself either. We have got very muddled team selection, players playing out of position, players who clearly are not performing well and not working in certain structures, still being picked again the game after. He made six changes on Saturday talking about fitness and squad rotation. We're in September. It's game, what, five? And then just what he tells us in his press conferences is that he likes to play with intensity.

47:04He's very famous for a very high press. We haven't seen any of that yet. The players look like they don't know what they're doing. The shape and the tactics look disjointed and there's no energy. and when we went 1-0 up on Saturday, I was expecting to see a game plan. How do we see this out? How do we get our first home win since last October and our first win of the season? And there was just nothing. They were worse after they conceded the goal and the winner was inevitable. I know you wrote on the BBC Sport website after the draw with West Ham about the level of joy you experienced at that, coming back late on in a pulsating game.

47:48Yeah. Was that because, do you think that that performance happened because it was just the opening weekend? Because it still, or because it maybe still had a slight Premier League feel about it because of the two teams and you both coming down together. Is that why that had the energy and maybe some of the other games haven't had? Probably. Probably a bit of both, to be honest. It was a cracking fixture to start the championship weekend. It was very hyped. It was a TV game. Both sides who were battling the Premier League last season. We had players playing who hadn't yet been sold, so our squad was, generally speaking, better.

48:26It was a home fixture. I think the fans played their part that day. We, not this one, but we usually love championship seasons because it's the season we get to win and we get to win titles and it's great. And you don't have VAR and it's just a wonderful footballing experience. So all of that all came together and it was a really great weekend and we came from behind. But that is the only half this season where we've shown any sort of fight or desire at all. And it just has gone from bad to worse since then. The cup games were really quite pathetic. We're already out of the Carabao Cup and our league forms just...

49:03But again, it's a completely different set of players and a different system. And yeah, you know, we're stumbling across really good things. Elaine played last week against Middlesbrough. He came on for the second half and he put him sort of in a defensive midfield position just in front of the back four. And he played absolutely brilliantly. And then this week he puts him back as centre-half. Kyle Walker's just having an awful, awful time of it. Just doesn't look like he wants to be there. He gets dropped. Conor Roberts comes back in. We look so much better. He gets dropped and Kyle Walker comes back in again.

49:37So that's when Nicky Hayen's not helping himself. So he's got, he won't escape liability for criticism for very long. He has to pull something out of the bag here. In terms of the board then, has there been no sign of any kind of plan at all? Does Burnley, like not patronisingly at all, but Burnley have been, they've done this before. They know what it kind of, they know what it involves, like going up and down. This should sort of be meat and drink to Burnley to an extent. Yeah, it should. And that's what we were expecting. I say this with a little bit of tongue in cheek, but you guys have heard me say this before.

50:11We almost get excited. We have the reverse of the relegation. When we get relegated to the Premier League, it's like, hooray, we get the championship seasons back. And then we go up and you're like, oh, Premier League. It's got to that stage. So we were really excited coming into this season. The problem that we've got at the moment is that there doesn't appear to be any progress being made under this current board. We seem to be going backwards. And if you analyse, which I did on our show recently, if you analyse the three relegation seasons since ALK took over, the Dyche season when Dyche got sacked and Mark Jackson took over, Vincent Cumley's relegation, Scott Parker's relegation, they've gone worse.

50:48So every single season we've had less points. And I think the biggest concern for me, for fans, sorry, at the moment are two things. Number one, we are in a lot of debt. The club is highly leveraged and it has been since the takeover. We have historically sold all of our assets within the club to pay and service the interest on our loan payments. I don't necessarily have a problem with that as long as you keep churning that over. but right now we don't have a sellable asset at the club. I can't tell you one of the Burnley squad who will go for 17, 18 million like Zian Fleming did. He was the last of our talent to go out and be sold and a lot of our players that we're getting in are loan signings or loans with an option.

51:29Do you worry, sorry finally Natalie, given everything that you've said there, you talked about the patience of East Lancashire but do you worry that you could be the next one caught in the malaise that has hit Blackburn, Preston and maybe, I know it's not Eastland but maybe Bolton as well? Yeah, of course we do. We've been riding a wave of success recently and we've been using our Premier League money. Outside of the top sides in the Premier League, our source of revenue isn't from multi-million pound commercial deals, It's from TV rights and you need to go up into the Premier League in order to survive.

52:08And we've been using our Premier League seasons in order to service the debt on the club and also to survive as a business. If we go down to League One next season, that obviously sounds dramatic right now after five games, but we're not looking good. Or we don't get anywhere near playoffs. We've got one more season of parachute money and nobody's investing in Burnley. Can I just give Natalie a tiny bit of hope? I think you've found a really bad just when you thought every single episode I get back with this at the end I thought I got away with it just when you thought your season hadn't started badly enough go on Chris just want to give you a bit of positivity I think the guy you signed from Celtic if he Rio Atati I think he's an excellent player I think he lost his way a little bit at Celtic when he first went there I thought they'd play Premier League football easily but I think he's an outstanding footballer and that's something for Burnley fans to be happy about.

53:02There you go, Natalie. What happened then? Look at that. You end for once. You know it's bad when you're getting sympathy after we're sitting at the end of the segment. Make sure you clip it up. That's just a little bit of the example of the power of his motivational speaking. That's what that is. Thank you, Natalie. See you soon. Natalie, probably with us from the No No Never podcast. That's it. Thanks to Rory, Chris and Connor. Champions League back this week. 5 Live has commentary of Porto, Manchester City on Tuesday, followed by Liverpool against Atletico Madrid on Wednesday.

53:52The EFL has a brand new home. Hello and welcome to 72 Plus, the home of the EFL. From Five Live Sport. Aaron Paul and Joby McEnough tackle the biggest stories from across the championship. League One, League Two and beyond. A minimum of one week's wages fine. And we may be even right to your wife and tell you what you've been fined if you carry on. And the biggest talking points from across the football league. Well, we spoke well at Joby and enjoyed working with him. It's my show too now, but yeah, thanks for that. Sorry, Aaron, I'm here to go.

54:28There's nothing like the American Express Platinum card. Find out your welcome offer after you apply,

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