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Mocking Manchester United appears to be de rigueur this season.

The club's dominance in the Premier League era has resulted in many taking joy at their slide from supremacy, with websites listing unwanted records and countless memes documenting the misfortunes.

Players, executives and managers have all come in for a mix of mockery and criticism, and David Moyes has been a focal point.

After all, how do you take a side that won the title last year by 11 points and struggle so badly?

Crossing has become the latest proverbial stick to beat the Scot with. United lumped a historically high 81 balls into the box against Fulham on Sunday in their attempt to secure a win over Rene Meulensteen's strugglers.

The vast majority were not accurate, and it may be no surprise to learn that the Reds are also leading the Premier League in crosses this season, with 716 so far in 25 games.

Put that in the form of a graph and it's not the prettiest sight.

The danger of statistics is that they can so easily be used out of context, though.

It is simple to link United's 81 crosses against Fulham to their 716 in the season and make a point about the Reds' demise under Moyes.

How did the team win the title last year? Certainly not by one-dimensionally putting it aimlessly into the mixer like a tactical buffoon, goes the argument.

Moyes' stock falls more and Sir Alex Ferguson's rises yet again.

Yet the reality doesn't support this. When you put the crosses made in each game by United this season against last year's effort in the first 25 games, there really isn't much difference between the red and newly-added black bars.

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Yes, it should be pointed out, the 2013/14 is still higher: 716 to 649.

But at an average of 28.6 crosses per game to 26, a couple per match is not akin to a completely different style of play.

What's more, in a cumulative comparison, this game marks only the fourth time the total figure under Moyes has eclipsed Ferguson, as the graph below shows.

Effectively, the remarkable effort of 81 against Fulham appears the exception that has put this season's side firmly ahead of the title-winning bunch than the norm.

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As the Jackson 5 famously never sang then, don't blame it on the crosses.

Except of course, statistics can never tell a full story. The balls pumped in last season may have included many majestic deliveries that were converted into goals, although the crossing accuracies are not too dissimilar.

So perhaps you can blame the crosses, but only if you place responsibility on the people paid to execute them, and they - as has been well noted - are the same as the 2013 title-winners, with the addition of a £37.1m man.

This doesn't mean that so many crosses per game is either a good or a bad tactic, or that the manager should be exempt from criticism.

But as far as standards appear to have dropped since the changes of last summer, tactically the team are - as far as crossing is concerned - carrying on where they left off.