Ronald Koeman sucked Louis Van Gaal into playing right into his hands and the end result was Saints first ever Premier win at Old Trafford.

The less charitable of those connected with Manchester United including their manager Louis Van Gaal and star millionaire Wayne Rooney will point to the possession that their team had and claim that Saints did not deserve a draw being pinned back for so long.

But Ronald Koeman had noticed that United were not as good going forward as some miht claim, that their play was very one dimensional and morever Saints were more than capable of dealing with it.

United's play relies on pace down the flanks, one of our strengths is the our two full backs Nathaniel Clyne and Ryan Bertrand they were going to have to excel themselves if they were to beat these two.

Koeman would also have noticed that Luke Shaw is no wing back, Shaw is an excellent defensive full back as he showed when putting in a magnificent block tackle on Pelle when the Italian looked certain to score, but going forward Shaw flatter to deceive.

Time after time United would feed the ball to Shaw who would run at Clyne however time after time the ex Saints would fail to beat his man and more often then not stop and turn back and pass it backwards.

Hen Shaw did get the opportunity to cross he rarely found a United player, poor crosses went straight to our central defenders who dealt with them easily, the same happened on the other flank where Valencia fared just as badly as Shaw.

The wily Dutch manager (and for the record here I do mean Koeman rather than the one who seems to have wasted £200 million) knew that United couldn't change their style of play and if we kept their wide men quiet then we would have a grip of the game.

In the centre of the park it was the same with our players fighting for every ball and never giving up chasing and carrying, United did not like it and it threw them out of their rythym.

Having seen his team put his game plan into effect brilliantly it only now remained for the coup de grace to be applied, the pundits on Sky agreed the game turned on the substitutions, they conveniently forgot that we lost our best player of the season so far with injury and failed to lay blame on Van Gaal who effectively only had a plan B of lumping it up the middle in the final half hour.

Koeman though was out to win the game, bringing on Tadic was perhaps not the obvious choice, with Saints conceding possession to United they might have thought that Shane Long's pace and work rate might be best employed but Koeman had other ideas and proffered the guile of Tadic and tis proved to be a master stroke with the Saints sub being instrumental in the build up to the goal and finishing cool for the winner.

From then on it was a matter of keeping on dealing with United's one dimensional play, late on there was the odd scare but the fact was that for the first time in 6 years United had not had a shot on target on their own turf and that is something to praise.

But although Saints conceded possession they did not concede much else, their 9 shots was only 1 less than United's 10, their 1 on target was still more than United's 0 and their 5 corners 2 more than United, showing that defensively Saints were not in trouble very often.

All in all it was a classic piece of managerial nouns from Ronald Koeman who again showed he has the knack of not only having plan B's C's, D's and got knows how many more, but he has the skill to put them into effect at different times in the game.

Of course Wayne Rooney and co are annoyed, they have been beaten at their own game and now know the feeling that they enlisted on many sides over the past decade or more.

Photo: Action Images

SaintDownUnder added 22:56 - Jan 11 Defensively we're disciplined and well drilled. it has to be Mata missed a sitter towards the end though and we do need to be more clinical. That said we've now restricted Chelsea and utd to scraps....... no reason why we cant get another 10+ clean sheets in this half of the season, do that and we'll likely be playing champions league football. You're right Nick about Shaw's game, what's amazing is how UTD would spend $30mil for a teenager and then ask him to do a job he's not shown much propensity to do. I think one of the reasons we're difficult to play against this year is that both our full backs can hurt you, when its just one flank the holding midfielder can double up and jam up that side, its much harder with both Clyne and Bertrand bombing forward. Great days.

2

saintstuinoz added 00:38 - Jan 12 The most important thing is the result, and what a result it was! From not beating a top 6 team, we've now seen off Arsenal and United. Kudos to Koeman for setting the team up so well, and I was particularly impressed by Gardos who is looking like an excellent backup for Jose & Toby. PS Spot on about Shaw. I think Bertrand has been an upgrade in that position for us.

2

bstokesaint added 07:26 - Jan 12 Love it Van Gaal accused Saints of "coming for the draw" and yet United dropped Falcao from the squad and had three centre backs on the bench instead. Both LVG and Rooney were made to look like spoilt little brats who'd just had that their toys confiscated by the Sky Sports interviewer. Why not just say we were beaten by the team with the best defence in the Premier League? There's no shame in that.

2

WestSussexSaint added 07:32 - Jan 12 Probably as important a result yesterday was Barcelona winning. The more they do so the less chance they come knocking on our do for the tactical genius that is Koeman.
1

TimSaint added 10:57 - Jan 12 I love the fact that both LVG and Rooney both mentioned how lucky we were, because Utd had more possession and chances than us. If you look at the facts, yes Utd had 60/40 possession, but what does this mean ? Saints fans will remember that on many occasions last season under mopo, we had plenty more possession but often didn't convert these games into victories and sometimes even draws - so get real, possession doesn't win you games. In terms of chances, we had one less than Utd at OT. The difference was that we did more with our chances - hitting the post and indeed scoring. Now Wayne, bless him, may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but surely even he knows that if you don't have shots on target, you don't score. Koeman admitted that maybe we had some luck and that that it made up for the luck that Utd had at St Marys, but the bottom line is, that in 2 games, or 100 minutes, we have restricted Utd to just 2 shots on target. LVG and Rooney have short memories when talking about luck. Utd have had many lucky wins this season, particularly at St Marys, but they were lucky to get wins or indeed draws at Arsenal, Stoke and Villa recently and to be fair to Liverpool, they battered Utd at OT, but somehow lost 3-0. I guess we must be doing something right, so let's continue under the radar and get some positives results in our next set of games.

2

SanMarco added 11:55 - Jan 12 Quite right bstokesaint - Rooney and Van Gaal's lack of grace in defeat says all you need to know about them. They should consider themselves lucky to have got 3 pts from us this season - should have been no more than 1 and probably 0
1

BoondockSaint added 14:13 - Jan 12 Koeman was fair-minded in his comments about luck in both the games. Too bad LVG couldn't be as realistic. Long instead of Tadic? I don't know why Tadic was dropped in the first place. He's the guy who unlocks defences and sets up Pelle, etc. Long has speed, but his finishing is a a coin flip. Don't scare me, Nick! Lost our best player so far? Did something happen to Tadic, Pelle, Wanyama, Fonte, Morgan, Bertrand, or Clyne????

0

thegeneral added 15:14 - Jan 12 The reactions of LVG and Rooney are the reason why its so gratifying to beat them, their arrogance is astonishing.
1

Blogs 31 bloggers

Tottenham Hotspur Polls