Old Trafford Lounge

Smalling and Jones will replace Rio and Vidic, along with Evans.

Was not expecting that accent out of him

Jesse Lingard scored for Birmingham

Twice.

Hatrick now, great stuff.

13 minute hat trick!

Macheda just scored for Doncaster too

Lingard with a fourth, Macheda with a second.

Robbie Brady is doing very well for Hull City so far this season, looks like we should have kept him and got rid of Young.

Robbie Brady was class last season too

By all accounts we were reluctantly letting him go for first team football, but he looks as good a winger as Cleverley is a midfielder.

Birmingham had only scored 4 goals all season in 7 games before today.

Lingard looked like a first-team player for us in pre-season, he'll definitely be one for the first-team when he returns.

That doesn't sound very good.

Well, that's an easy joke to make, but the fact is that they were both rated highly by the management, that's all.

Honestly, I wasn't even making a joke.

Cleverley is currently in his ''he's shit'' phase of development. He's too old to have his mistakes overlooked, but he's still young enough to not be at his best. Darren Fletcher, Rio Ferdinand, John O'Shea, Michael Carrick etc. all had this phase and came through it all the stronger. Danny Welbeck is the latest one to come out the other side.

Cleverley is hardly a bad player.

I just don't think he's really good enough at anything in particular to stand out in a 2 man midfield at United. I think if he was at a team that played him in a 3 he'd do well at moving the play along and keeping the team ticking over without having to be burdened by the responsibility of being particularly creative or that key defensively.

At any rate, he's a local lad probably content with being a squad player and about good enough to fulfil that role

There's nothing particularly exciting about that, but if Lingard came in and was about that level (set the bar as low as being better than Ashley Young) thats £18m saved if nothing else and if he's any better than that then great.

Aaron Ramsey had that for months but has been one of the best midfielders in the league this season. Give him time and I'm sure he'll come good.

I'm going to caveat this post with saying that I'm not 'turning on him' or saying I don't think he's the man to take us forward or whatever but...

Has anyone else just been a bit pissed off with Moyes so far?

These are mostly minor issues but they've irked me.

Firstly, the excuses. They're doing my nut in. From day one nothing has ever been his fault, we were shit in the transfer window because he didn't start until July so he was a month behind everyone else. We've not beaten any of the top teams we've played against so far because of the fixture computer and so on. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the excuse sounds, there's always one lined up.

Fair enough probably Fergie has told him never to admit to anything because the media will crucify you, but it would be nice to see him hold his hands up to something and just say 'Yeah I need to do that better next time' he's learning on the job to an extent and we all know that its kind of annoying seeing him act like he knows it all and that he is Fergie, because he isn't.

Secondly, team selections. Fuck me you'd think Ferguson is still picking the teams. Young is the worst player I can ever remember seeing wear a United shirt and he's a coward and a cheat to boot, no one can give you a reason whatsoever as to why he's playing but there he is, week in week out taking up a space and keeping two of our better players in Kagawa and Nani out of the side. Even Zaha would be a better pick, but he's got no minutes. Fuck it even Bebe would be at this point. He's stealing a living at this point. Valencia is not much better on the right, but at least he's actually done something of note in a United shirt.

Then theres Rio Ferdinand, not only has he been gash but he's playing every game, something he hasn't done for fuck knows how long. Is there any surprise he looks leggy against an attack like the one City possess if he's played against Leverkusen and fucking Crystal Palace in 2 of the last 8 days. Evans is probably at this point a better player, and if he's not, he is certainly good enough to stand in so that Ferdinand isn't a human statue by the time he's needed for games.

As I said, I think these are teething issues rather than anything else but it would be nice to hear something from Moyes about how he's positively improving the team, it just seems like he's sucking Fergie's cock and doing everything he did, rightly or wrongly, but is a worse manager so therefore doing worse.

I think he'll grow into the role, but I'd like to see him managing the team and making decisions because it feels at the minute every thought he has is followed by a 'what would Ferguson have done in this situation thought'

I agree with you on Ferdinand, before the City game they said it was the first time he had played 6 games in a row in about 3/4 years. There's a reason he hasn't played that many games in a row beforehand and it showed yesterday, he was awful. Evans hasn't played at all yet and I'd hate to lose him.

On Young, I could actually see why he chose him. I don't like him but he is excellent at tracking back. If people want to see that as defensive or whatever then fine, but away at City, if we're playing a 4-4-2 then I can understand why he chose Young. Personally, knowing RVP was out, I would've stuck Welbeck on the left in a 4-5-1/4-3-3, we played miles better once he did that but it was obviously too late and also I don't know how much of that was down to City easing off.

I think he's been trying to take "safe" options with these big games and sticking to players that he knows better than others. Our next few games in the league are West Brom, Sunderland, Southampton, Stoke and Fulham so hopefully he will feel more obliged to take a risk. I'm quite worried that Zaha has not even been making the bench.

I can't believe he didn't make further changes yesterday though, the game was gone at least give some minutes to a few other players.

I really think thats an overstated point. Ashley Young's ability to track back is almost completely negated by his cowardice. Can anyone remember Ashley Young competing for a header, let alone winning one? And his tackling is basically non existent, he might win the ball if someone takes a poor touch but he's not going to put his body on the line or make a tackle where he might get hurt.

I actually think thats probably why he dives so much and makes all these really unusual movements, he's scared of getting hurt so takes the action that will result in him not getting hurt i.e. anticipating the contact.

Not to mention the fact that he cost us at least 1 goal yesterday by giving the ball away stupidly when Evra was doing his job for him and trying to give us some attacking clout on the left which allowed Navas the freedom of Manchester.

I think you both hit the nail on the head for me with your comments but two other things that annoyed me are the lack of attacking play in the team recently and the backroom staff factor. He did too much, too soon and it is showing. I still think he will be the right man for the job though and I also think Fellaini will fit in soon as well but a lot needs to be changed seeing as so far he has been playing it safe.

I was going to include both but couldn't be arsed to write any more.

It's spot on, if we had wanted to we could have stuck 2 or 3 past Chelsea, they had no intention of playing football and were set up for the draw. We were similarly dour and lacklustre against Liverpool and yesterday as well.

Losing against Liverpool and City away and drawing with Chelsea at home is not the end of the world but it would have been nice for us to have even pretended that we wanted to win those games.

Chelsea were set up to counter whatever you had (which was nothing).

The incredibly poor match was down to neither team wanting/being able to do anything.

You were toothless with Schurrle and De Bruyne being especially guff and then looked even worse when Torres came on. The only time you remotely threatened was when Hazard got at Jones. Oscar had a good game as well, but never really threatened to do much.

We had a lot of the ball outside your 18 year area and were pretty sloppy with it, too, but you never really looked to counter with any actual intent. Obviously the game would have changed if we had scored and you'd have been forced to play, but it was disappointing we didn't go for it.

If you could have put two or three past Chelsea if you wanted to, why didn't you?

Because Moyes was happy with the draw and didn't want to risk anything going for the win.

Fine, but saying you could have put two or three past Chelsea at a whim seems somewhat naive.

It's not really worth me offering my opinion of Cleverley's talents but I can't let that comment go... He was born in Hampshire and raised in Braford ffs!

Amazed Carrick has escaped criticism. He was anonymous.