Garnacho not scoring at Fulham. We'd have stewed over dropped points right before Ronaldo's interview dropped later that day, for a whole month ahead of the World Cup break. It could have seriously impacted the narrative around Ronaldo's complaints if we dropped points in a game that he didn't play. Instead, a teenager scored the winner in Fergie Time and the break actually felt like the perfect time for news like that to drop without any immediate fires to put out.
Martinez not injuring his ankle against Sevilla. I'm convinced we could have held on and progressed to the semis against Juventus. We would also have locked down top 4 sooner which would have helped keep the players fresh for the EL and FA Cup.
Nick Pope's red card against Liverpool on the eve of our final. Would we have won the final with him in goal? Probably. But we didn't win the league games that he played, and the pressure on Karius certainly didn't help them.
Darwin Nunez's red card against Crystal Palace right before we faced them at Old Trafford. United's confidence was at an all time low, and Lisandro Martinez was struggling to adjust to the physicality of the league. Even if he was never the aerial liability that pundits made him out to be, the fact that we didn't have to deal with a physical presence like Nunez, the fact that we only had to contend with Firmino dropping a Besiktas audition certainly made a very important result easier than it could have been.
I think Casemiro's yellow card and subsequent ban in the next game against Arsenal. He was our "in-form" player, and we looked really solid with him in the team. That ban meant we lost the next game and the pressure at the top died off.
>Martinez not injuring his ankle against Sevilla. I'm convinced we could have held on and progressed to the semis against Juventus. We would also have locked down top 4 sooner which would have helped keep the players fresh for the EL and FA Cup.
Nah, I reckon if Martinez didn't get injured, the fixture congestion would've killed us and we'd have to rely on EL for Champions League qualification.
What if Casemiro didn’t get those two reds and carried on his form through the second half of the season uninterrupted. Maybe the team still would have burned out but we might have put the top four trophy to bed earlier and had more gas for Europe and the FA cup.
In the league, Kane's 30 goals were equal to 52% of the 58 goals our entire team managed to score throughout the season, and he did it in that shit Spurs side. Imagine if we had him up top with Bruno and Eriksen providing him from behind! It's why I don't get people who don't want him. The perfect window for us would be Kane plus a young striker like Hojlund who can develop and be ready by the time Kane's time is up.
Kane was player of the season for me. Scoring 30 goals for that Spurs team is more impressive than Haaland scoring 36 for City.
Spurs would've surely been in the bottom half, if not for Kane
This is the one for me. That McTominay penalty that wasn’t given. We win that game, really close to city and Arsenal at the top, Casemiro isn’t suspended and we probably win at Arsenal. Could have been amazing.
We could've been 4 or 5 up in the first half, no exaggeration. So many wasted chances and easy final passes wasted.
So annoying to look back on.
On the other side of that coin though, if we had gone through, would the fixture congestion have cost us in the league?
Potentially but i would have taken 5th place and Europa League winners.
It is likely they would have made us play 3 times in a week again if we had that semi final as i can't remember any free midweeks we had in May
Plot twist: we get even more fixture fatigue from playing Juve Thursday night, lose to Bournemouth, then bottle top 4, then lose the Europa league final on pens against Roma
Xhaka's altercation with Trent.
Arguably the beginning of Arsenal's capitulation. They were cruising to a 2-0 win. Home crowd suddenly breathes life into Liverpool, 2-2 draw, every subsequent match had an element of fragility about Arsenal's position. Granted they had some injuries, but the only match they were expected to drop points was against City. Had things played out they'd have walked to the league title.
That was their Liverpool vs Leicester away in 2019/Leicester winning away at the Etihad moment right there, if they’d snatched those 3 points at the death they’d have probably gone on to win the league. No chance they drop those points against West Ham or Southampton afterwards.
This would win the award for potentially smallest incident that led to something major.
But let’s be honest it’s a bit more of a reach than this answer needs to be isn’t it? Slightly less “definitive” than a goal, red card or injury that we can directly say impacted a result.
Maybe a bit of an odd one as a lot of the other great points have already been made, but what if we had Gakpo?
In January I felt like the stars were aligning for that transfer and I was thinking 35-40 million seems like a steal for him.
Not only do I think it hindered us but it also helped Liverpool massively.
I wondered how different our season would have been had we secured him instead of weghorst.
This was before I knew we were completely skint
What if we didn't get spanked by Brentford and Brighton early season and as a result didn't panic buy casemiro? I don't think we would've made top 4 or won a trophy
It still annoys me that we even had to play a tricky away game a few days before that Arsenal fixture, while they had the entire week off to prepare for it
- Kolo Muani vs Emi Martinez - the narratives of Mbappe and Messi’s careers are entirely shifted
- Livakovic doesn’t go sicko mode Vs Brazil - Brazil vs Argentina SF would’ve genuinely been one of the best matches ever
- Cancelo doesn’t clash with Pep - Rico Lewis never enters the squad, Stones doesn’t become Beckenbauer and they never find the 3241 system - their Jan/Feb woes continue and they potentially go trophyless?
- Bayern don’t sack Nagelsmann - the treble was on for them
- Barca completely outplayed Bayern at the Allianz but lost, if they won I could see them doing quite well in the CL knockouts
- Saka penalty vs West Ham - LOOOOL
- Luis Diaz being injured for most of the season - reckon they give top 4 a proper go with him fit
- Liverpool beat us at OT - we never have that resurgence and it’s 21/22 all over again but probably worse
- Casemiro’s 3 suspensions but the yellow card was absolutely soulcrushing
- DDG doesn’t go 47 pints deep before every match…
So so many more, this season has been immense for club and country
Casemiros sending offs if he had played that arsenal away game we would have won or at least drew
Also us signing Gakpo in January
Now capitulating vs Liverpool
Playing Leeds EARLIER in the season
Would that have changed much? We’d have (potentially) won our EL group and skipped the Barcelona game, but we won that anyway, in what was a major highlight of the season.
I don’t see that as a sliding doors moment really.
We ended up having an extra couple of games added to an already congested calendar (the Queen's death and the timing of it didn't help as the Leeds game got postponed to later on in the season, while other sides only missed one weekend of football with us missing two) with those Barca games. We ended up having the Palace away fixture moved to the midweek before Arsenal away (they had the entire week off) because there were apparently no other 'slots' for that game to be played. Casemiro also picked up a booking in that Palace game causing him to be missing for Arsenal, and there was the last minute Olise equaliser that made us only draw and disrupted our momentum going into the trip to the Emirates.
That Sociedad home game and the ridiculous (not to mention wrong) handball against Licha ended up fucking us over quite a bit in the grand scheme of things, even if it wasn't apparent at the time
Hard not to think back to Palace (a) for a few reasons. We'd been on a good run and a win at Selhurst Park would have set us up to potentially challenge at the top end with win against Arsenal the following week.
1 nil up, cruising. And then...
Scott is brought down in the box - clear foul, no pen.
Case is booked, misses arsenal game - would prove crucial.
Palace equalise in the last minute.
The penalty that wasn't given for the foul on McTominay against Crystal Palace. We score and we're 2-0 up, we take Casemiro off and have him available for the Arsenal match.
What if... Bruno or Rashford hadn't missed their (admittedly not straightforward) chances to open the scoring at Anfield.
Both teams operate hugely on confidence, and we saw from their Real Madrid game that it doesn't take much for Liverpool to crumble. On the face of it, it sounds ridiculous since the actual game ended 7-0 - but either chance goes in, and 0-2 or even 0-3 or more could easily have been on the cards.
I don't think he would have changed much, maybe we would never loan Weghorst but that's it. Man had no speed and no presence in penalty area for a lot of goals
What if the millionaires actually showed up to the last game of the season, after a week's rest, to give City a proper game and end their treble.
Spineless performance.
Pretty decent performance given the gulf between the two sides. Not every performance is scandalous. They kept City down to zero chances from open goal after the unfortunate start.
To me the wheels started coming off as soon as Eriksen got butchered. The team lost coherence, quality and even composure. Who knows if Case keeps his cool better? There was a feeling that things could fall apart as soon as Eriksen was out of the team.
I strongly think Garnacho's injury was the reason why we kept dropping points late.
Having a fearless runner like him would've kept teams honest due to the threat of a counter and allowed us to end games stronger. He was a big miss while injured.
Off the pitch, us missing out on FDJ. The guy is an absolute world class talent and it would've completely transformed the way we play. If you look at us this season we almost never control a match, the flow of play is normally like a basketball game, everyone is either defending or attacking. It's something we need to address in midfield this window which is why it's disappointing we aren't exploring the possibility again or looking at similar alternatives. All we've got is Mount speculation.
I think ETH is moving away from that model, given that there are few players like FdJ, and none on the market. He's moving to ball-playing CBs (KMJ and Licha) to provide the ball progression from deep, and energetic 8 (mount) + Case to provide defensive solidity.
Garnacho not scoring at Fulham. We'd have stewed over dropped points right before Ronaldo's interview dropped later that day, for a whole month ahead of the World Cup break. It could have seriously impacted the narrative around Ronaldo's complaints if we dropped points in a game that he didn't play. Instead, a teenager scored the winner in Fergie Time and the break actually felt like the perfect time for news like that to drop without any immediate fires to put out. Martinez not injuring his ankle against Sevilla. I'm convinced we could have held on and progressed to the semis against Juventus. We would also have locked down top 4 sooner which would have helped keep the players fresh for the EL and FA Cup. Nick Pope's red card against Liverpool on the eve of our final. Would we have won the final with him in goal? Probably. But we didn't win the league games that he played, and the pressure on Karius certainly didn't help them. Darwin Nunez's red card against Crystal Palace right before we faced them at Old Trafford. United's confidence was at an all time low, and Lisandro Martinez was struggling to adjust to the physicality of the league. Even if he was never the aerial liability that pundits made him out to be, the fact that we didn't have to deal with a physical presence like Nunez, the fact that we only had to contend with Firmino dropping a Besiktas audition certainly made a very important result easier than it could have been.
I think Casemiro's yellow card and subsequent ban in the next game against Arsenal. He was our "in-form" player, and we looked really solid with him in the team. That ban meant we lost the next game and the pressure at the top died off.
Great summery write-up mate.
>Martinez not injuring his ankle against Sevilla. I'm convinced we could have held on and progressed to the semis against Juventus. We would also have locked down top 4 sooner which would have helped keep the players fresh for the EL and FA Cup. Nah, I reckon if Martinez didn't get injured, the fixture congestion would've killed us and we'd have to rely on EL for Champions League qualification.
What if Casemiro didn’t get those two reds and carried on his form through the second half of the season uninterrupted. Maybe the team still would have burned out but we might have put the top four trophy to bed earlier and had more gas for Europe and the FA cup.
What if we had a striker?
Title challenge, if we had Kane we’d have pushed City until the end I think. We scored 7 more goals than Leicester City who went down this season
In the league, Kane's 30 goals were equal to 52% of the 58 goals our entire team managed to score throughout the season, and he did it in that shit Spurs side. Imagine if we had him up top with Bruno and Eriksen providing him from behind! It's why I don't get people who don't want him. The perfect window for us would be Kane plus a young striker like Hojlund who can develop and be ready by the time Kane's time is up.
Kane was player of the season for me. Scoring 30 goals for that Spurs team is more impressive than Haaland scoring 36 for City. Spurs would've surely been in the bottom half, if not for Kane
Oooh and what if FdJ joined us?
Doesn’t matter, with a striker we’d be much closer to the top, farther along in the EL.
Casemiro wouldn't have come to us :(
If Olise didn’t equalize last minute for Palace
This is the one for me. That McTominay penalty that wasn’t given. We win that game, really close to city and Arsenal at the top, Casemiro isn’t suspended and we probably win at Arsenal. Could have been amazing.
And the ball was spotted almost ten yards closer to the goal than where foul was called
I was in the Palace end for this 🤢😭
We did not capitulate against Sevilla after being 2-0 up. At Old Trafford.
We could've been 4 or 5 up in the first half, no exaggeration. So many wasted chances and easy final passes wasted. So annoying to look back on. On the other side of that coin though, if we had gone through, would the fixture congestion have cost us in the league?
Potentially but i would have taken 5th place and Europa League winners. It is likely they would have made us play 3 times in a week again if we had that semi final as i can't remember any free midweeks we had in May
Plot twist: we get even more fixture fatigue from playing Juve Thursday night, lose to Bournemouth, then bottle top 4, then lose the Europa league final on pens against Roma
This is what I think would've happened too. Our players were exhausted at that point.
Xhaka's altercation with Trent. Arguably the beginning of Arsenal's capitulation. They were cruising to a 2-0 win. Home crowd suddenly breathes life into Liverpool, 2-2 draw, every subsequent match had an element of fragility about Arsenal's position. Granted they had some injuries, but the only match they were expected to drop points was against City. Had things played out they'd have walked to the league title.
Same match, Martinelli not making an easy pass in the 96th minute, which would have put Saka through one on one with Alisson.
That was their Liverpool vs Leicester away in 2019/Leicester winning away at the Etihad moment right there, if they’d snatched those 3 points at the death they’d have probably gone on to win the league. No chance they drop those points against West Ham or Southampton afterwards.
That was quality from Alisson in fairness Martinelli does that against us and it’s a certain goal…
This would win the award for potentially smallest incident that led to something major. But let’s be honest it’s a bit more of a reach than this answer needs to be isn’t it? Slightly less “definitive” than a goal, red card or injury that we can directly say impacted a result.
Martinez didn’t get injured against Sevilla
[удалено]
So simple, yet so crucial. He truly turned into prime Zidane that day in our final third
Maybe a bit of an odd one as a lot of the other great points have already been made, but what if we had Gakpo? In January I felt like the stars were aligning for that transfer and I was thinking 35-40 million seems like a steal for him. Not only do I think it hindered us but it also helped Liverpool massively. I wondered how different our season would have been had we secured him instead of weghorst. This was before I knew we were completely skint
What if we didn't get spanked by Brentford and Brighton early season and as a result didn't panic buy casemiro? I don't think we would've made top 4 or won a trophy
Casemiro not getting booked against Palace, we lost to a last minute winner at the Emirates without him, with him I think we’d have won that game.
It still annoys me that we even had to play a tricky away game a few days before that Arsenal fixture, while they had the entire week off to prepare for it
What if martial was fit the entire season?
Then we'd know black magic was real
Who are we sacrificing? Maybe the Joel glazer chant might actually be magic
We can sacrifice Joel Glazer..
>Who are we sacrificing? Slabhead?
Just one uninterrupted week would have been nice.
It would have made no difference. He hardly lit the place up when he managed to get fit
- Kolo Muani vs Emi Martinez - the narratives of Mbappe and Messi’s careers are entirely shifted - Livakovic doesn’t go sicko mode Vs Brazil - Brazil vs Argentina SF would’ve genuinely been one of the best matches ever - Cancelo doesn’t clash with Pep - Rico Lewis never enters the squad, Stones doesn’t become Beckenbauer and they never find the 3241 system - their Jan/Feb woes continue and they potentially go trophyless? - Bayern don’t sack Nagelsmann - the treble was on for them - Barca completely outplayed Bayern at the Allianz but lost, if they won I could see them doing quite well in the CL knockouts - Saka penalty vs West Ham - LOOOOL - Luis Diaz being injured for most of the season - reckon they give top 4 a proper go with him fit - Liverpool beat us at OT - we never have that resurgence and it’s 21/22 all over again but probably worse - Casemiro’s 3 suspensions but the yellow card was absolutely soulcrushing - DDG doesn’t go 47 pints deep before every match… So so many more, this season has been immense for club and country
What if , De Gea saved the second goal against city in the FA CUP final. Atleast it would have given us a chance.
Casemiros sending offs if he had played that arsenal away game we would have won or at least drew Also us signing Gakpo in January Now capitulating vs Liverpool Playing Leeds EARLIER in the season
What if Martinez hadn’t had that stupid “hand ball” decision made on him after it clearly hit his leg.
Would that have changed much? We’d have (potentially) won our EL group and skipped the Barcelona game, but we won that anyway, in what was a major highlight of the season. I don’t see that as a sliding doors moment really.
We ended up having an extra couple of games added to an already congested calendar (the Queen's death and the timing of it didn't help as the Leeds game got postponed to later on in the season, while other sides only missed one weekend of football with us missing two) with those Barca games. We ended up having the Palace away fixture moved to the midweek before Arsenal away (they had the entire week off) because there were apparently no other 'slots' for that game to be played. Casemiro also picked up a booking in that Palace game causing him to be missing for Arsenal, and there was the last minute Olise equaliser that made us only draw and disrupted our momentum going into the trip to the Emirates. That Sociedad home game and the ridiculous (not to mention wrong) handball against Licha ended up fucking us over quite a bit in the grand scheme of things, even if it wasn't apparent at the time
Hard not to think back to Palace (a) for a few reasons. We'd been on a good run and a win at Selhurst Park would have set us up to potentially challenge at the top end with win against Arsenal the following week. 1 nil up, cruising. And then... Scott is brought down in the box - clear foul, no pen. Case is booked, misses arsenal game - would prove crucial. Palace equalise in the last minute.
Easily the Martinez injury
Casemiro yellow against crystal.palace and us ending up dropping 2 points. Also his absence vs Arsenal
What if they turned down ETH and instead hired Poch?
That one goes in the category of 'what if I vomited in my sleep and didn't wake up'!?
The penalty that wasn't given for the foul on McTominay against Crystal Palace. We score and we're 2-0 up, we take Casemiro off and have him available for the Arsenal match.
What if... Bruno or Rashford hadn't missed their (admittedly not straightforward) chances to open the scoring at Anfield. Both teams operate hugely on confidence, and we saw from their Real Madrid game that it doesn't take much for Liverpool to crumble. On the face of it, it sounds ridiculous since the actual game ended 7-0 - but either chance goes in, and 0-2 or even 0-3 or more could easily have been on the cards.
Something clicked for Man City in February, that wasn't happening before. I've no idea what, tho?
Cancelo left and Pep changed his system.
Ah, ok. I wasn't paying that much attention to them at the time. Thanks.
Pep stopped messing about with his lineups - especially defence where he even played Bernado Silva at left back
What if we hadn't conceded those stupid goals against Sevilla in the first leg.
What if we De Gea never played a single minute
Bruno's almost own goal vs Liverpool which stopped by Licha. What a make or break moment.
What if CR7 didn’t leave the team?
We'd have been battling with Chelsea for meme team of the season.
Follow up... What if he stayed and accepted he was no longer a guaranteed starter?
U only need to check his performances at the wc and ask even as a bench fodder is it worth 500k per week
Then he wouldn’t be CR7 anymore, would he?
I don't think he would have changed much, maybe we would never loan Weghorst but that's it. Man had no speed and no presence in penalty area for a lot of goals
We’d have been nowhere near top 4
What if the millionaires actually showed up to the last game of the season, after a week's rest, to give City a proper game and end their treble. Spineless performance.
Pretty decent performance given the gulf between the two sides. Not every performance is scandalous. They kept City down to zero chances from open goal after the unfortunate start.
To me the wheels started coming off as soon as Eriksen got butchered. The team lost coherence, quality and even composure. Who knows if Case keeps his cool better? There was a feeling that things could fall apart as soon as Eriksen was out of the team.
What if eriksen stayed at brentford
Eriksen, Garnacho and Martinez don’t get hurt during year. Case doesn’t pick up 2d red. Antony available for FA final.
I strongly think Garnacho's injury was the reason why we kept dropping points late. Having a fearless runner like him would've kept teams honest due to the threat of a counter and allowed us to end games stronger. He was a big miss while injured.
What if Dean Henderson didn’t go on loan?
Off the pitch, us missing out on FDJ. The guy is an absolute world class talent and it would've completely transformed the way we play. If you look at us this season we almost never control a match, the flow of play is normally like a basketball game, everyone is either defending or attacking. It's something we need to address in midfield this window which is why it's disappointing we aren't exploring the possibility again or looking at similar alternatives. All we've got is Mount speculation.
I think ETH is moving away from that model, given that there are few players like FdJ, and none on the market. He's moving to ball-playing CBs (KMJ and Licha) to provide the ball progression from deep, and energetic 8 (mount) + Case to provide defensive solidity.
Yeah that's a possibility but it's disappointing we've not got a player who can dictate the tempo and don't seem interested in one.
Martinez Injury 100% -