A striker who doesn't score goals, a keeper who costs us points, and a midfielder who is never fit. Our marquee Summer signings have NOT improved us.

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The fact that all of these signing had huge question marks on them was a red flag. Knowing our luck the red flags are coming to bite us.
 
We have a left footer on the right, who wants to cut inside and shoot, and never crosses into the box for the striker, because he is so one footed.

We have a right footer on the left, who wants to cut inside and shoot, and hardly ever crosses into the box for the striker.

We have been opened up most games this season, including last night against Bayern, by teams with left footers on the left (Sane) and right footers on the right (Coman) who just do that simple thing of getting into the final third and playing balls into the box for the striker.

It's something that we used to be very good at. Giggs on the left/ Beckham on the right. But we've lost our way. We can't seem to see what is staring us in the face. Wingers with no assists is unheard of in the modern game, yet we have them playing in our team week in week out.

In any other side, Hojlund would have bagged ten tap ins, but he's not even getting scraps here. He's only getting long balls from Onana, where defenders smash into the back of him.

I cannot understand why the people at the club cannot address the most obvious issues on the pitch.
 
Regarding Onana, I can't help but think about Van der Sar moving to Juventus. Onana has generally been far better than he has shown at United but for some reason, he is totally off. He will maybe settle in the future or he will have to somewhere else in order to regain form.

Regarding Mount and Hojlund, it's very difficult to judge them in isolation because their roles rely on the team having any semblance of control in midfield, we are talking about final third players and United is terrible in transition or during the ball recycling phase. We need to fix the midfield, its structure and the quality of the starters.
 
At long last, a thread to moan about the players/signings/manager/etc.
 
Not to mention our train with square wheels, a boat that can’t stay afloat, an airplane that can’t fly, a kite who’s afraid of heights, a water gun that shoots jelly, a bird that swims, a spotted elephant, a cowboy riding an ostrich, and a Charlie In the Box also populating our Misfit Island.
 
Paul Scholes called it correct in a recent interview, Harry Kane and Declan Rice were the 2 signings we should have made in the summer, shocking how standards have been severely lowered at this club, money first, footballing ambition a distant second.
 
Our wingers do not know how to cross the ball and create very few clear chances, it might help if they were not the inverted type of winger. Mount a waste of money, Onana struggling (would have been better to keep Dave or the young keeper we let go for peanuts) and spent that money elsewhere.
 
IMO they are now looking worse than they actually are, that goes especially for Mount who I do rate. Amrabat and Onana are now playing on the level I expected them to play (obviously Onana is the reason we're out of the CL, but overall he's not been as bad and we've barely utilized his ball-playing ability as we prefer to play hoofball).
I have the biggest concerns about Hojlund ant Antony.

Out biggest signing has to be DoF, but it will not affect current situation quickly so I think we're in deep sh*t.
 
Borys said:
IMO they are now looking worse than they actually are, that goes especially for Mount who I do rate. Amrabat and Onana are now playing on the level I expected them to play (obviously Onana is the reason we're out of the CL, but overall he's not been as bad and we've barely utilized his ball-playing ability as we prefer to play hoofball).
I have the biggest concerns about Hojlund ant Antony.

Out biggest signing has to be DoF, but it will not affect current situation quickly so I think we're in deep sh*t.
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I have yet to speak to a Chelsea fan who was sad to see Mount go. When watching him play for England it would be a surprise when the commentator mentioned him as he was often invisible. I dont get him as a player and I certainly dont get what he is meant to do in this current team. Antony is just not good enough and never will be, I think we need to be honest and say Hojlund for £70m was a joke. A punt at £20-30m maybe, but not a starter and not clear he has it to be one
 
Gordon Godot said:
I have yet to speak to a Chelsea fan who was sad to see Mount go. When watching him play for England it would be a surprise when the commentator mentioned him as he was often invisible. I dont get him as a player and I certainly dont get what he is meant to do in this current team. Antony is just not good enough and never will be, I think we need to be honest and say Hojlund for £70m was a joke. A punt at £20-30m maybe, but not a starter and not clear he has it to be one
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I generally agree but I do think Mount can be very useful for us if he is used properly. I think he's easier to accomodate than Bruno.

The problem is he's been deployed in role that currently McTominay is playing and that design is flawed in the first place. MM needs to be more of a Fred/B2B role.
 
Spaghetti said:
Not really. He’s missed loads of good chances.
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Which striker hasn't? The fact is the likes of Haaland, Salah, Darwin miss so many easy chances but still score loads because of the sheer volume of chances created but at Manchester United, strikers get 1 clear chance in 2 games.
 
Borys said:
I generally agree but I do think Mount can be very useful for us if he is used properly. I think he's easier to accomodate than Bruno.

The problem is he's been deployed in role that currently McTominay is playing and that design is flawed in the first place. MM needs to be more of a Fred/B2B role.
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That's the role he did in the short time he has been here. I feel Mount is someone who does the basics, he can be a very good squad option for a Guardiola or a Klopp side but is not good enough to be specialist. He can do a job in just about any position he is deployed and that's not bad for a settled team but in team with glaring holes like us he can't do anything.
 
Its getting to the point of conspiracy with these signings. We pay double in fees and wages for players that no other team is going for. Someone is taking a cut somewhere
 
Spaghetti said:
Not really. He’s missed loads of good chances.
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He’s not had many, that’s an objective fact.

Hojlund averages only 1.81 shots per 90, that’s lower than Garnacho (highest in our team at 3.81!), Rashford, McTominay, Bruno, Casemiro (!). And less than half of other CFS like Nunez, Haaland, Richarlison.

Being a striker for this Utd team is a thankless task, literally the entire creative cast behind you prefer to shoot thân to create. He’s fluffed a few but I won’t judge him a flop until he gets comparable services to the average CF in the league.
 
I don't necessarily think Onana and Hojlund were bad signings. I think we were all pretty excited to sign them and in areas we needed.
  • Onana has had a torrid season, but shown some form recently. Jury is still out on him but lets hope he stops the calamities that have cost us dearly. Maybe bad recruitment since we don't play a high line so he's the wrong keeper for us but that could be down to injuries?
  • Hojlund we all knew is young and learning. He shouldn't be expected to start every game and his service has been awful. I don't think he's imposed himself enough but can't really blame him when he's playing in a team with such poor passing and movement.
  • Mount - everyone knew this was not a player we should be prioritising. Still baffling how we bought him when we clearly needed players with different characteristics.
Injuries have possibly prevented us playing how EtH envisioned but let's be real, our play has been shocking with no indication of trying anything new.
 
redIndianDevil said:
Which striker hasn't? The fact is the likes of Haaland, Salah, Darwin miss so many easy chances but still score loads because of the sheer volume of chances created but at Manchester United, strikers get 1 clear chance in 2 games.
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Bruno has created more chances than anyone else. Darwin, Haaland et al may miss chances, but at least they score a percentage of them. The only percentage Højlund has is 0%.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
He’s not had many, that’s an objective fact.

Hojlund averages only 1.81 shots per 90, that’s lower than Garnacho (highest in our team at 3.81!), Rashford, McTominay, Bruno, Casemiro (!). And less than half of other CFS like Nunez, Haaland, Richarlison.

Being a striker for this Utd team is a thankless task, literally the entire creative cast behind you prefer to shoot thân to create. He’s fluffed a few but I won’t judge him a flop until he gets comparable services to the average CF in the league.
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When he miscontrols, runs the wrong way or gets tackled due to his bad touch / hesitation, that is still a chance but not a shot. He looks so nervous on the ball that it even makes me feel nervous.
 
Onana was a sensible signing in fairness. Not sure why his form has been so bad but I’d guess playing in a dysfunctional team top to bottom doesn’t help.

He’s clearly better than what he’s shown so far.

Mount is a good player but not sure what he was brought in to do.

Rasmus, I’ll feel sorry for. He should have been signed along with a more experienced striker. To ask what we are asking of him is just plain daft.

So I’m not sure they were bad signings really. The Mount one was the most likely bad signing but we haven’t seen enough of him really.
 
This summer was just godawful. We signed all the players with wrong profile to what we need, except Onana.

Onana had the right profile but he's absolutely shite.
 
Spaghetti said:
When he miscontrols, runs the wrong way or gets tackled due to his bad touch / hesitation, that is still a chance but not a shot. He looks so nervous on the ball that it even makes me feel nervous.
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And Nunez who is called a donkey doesn’t have the same issue? Yet he still registers double the amount of shots.


Spaghetti said:
Bruno has created more chances than anyone else. Darwin, Haaland et al may miss chances, but at least they score a percentage of them. The only percentage Højlund has is 0%.
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Any pass that ends in a shot is a ‘chance created’. So Bruno registers highly on that count because our wide forwards like to shoot, not saying a portion of them aren’t good chances that they fluff but the stat itself is misleading. It’s a closed loop, they have high shot counts because anytime Bruno passes to them they shoot, and Bruno in return has high chance creation stat from that, while the CF feeds off scrap. One of the reason we tend to play our best football with an in form Martial over anybody else is because he almost works as a pseudo 10/false 9 to generate actual chances for other.
 
The Mount signing was bad from minute one, he made no sense at the time and he still doesn't now, it's December and he's started about 5 games. Most range inducing comments was highlighting your fears that he was a very poor signing only to be met with "won Chelsea player of the year two years in a row, can't be that bad! Can he? Heh heh!". Yeah he absolutely can be.

I was intrigued if not somewhat sceptical about the Hojlund signing when he was linked for £35m thinking it was an exciting but slightly pricy punt, we then went on to spend £72m for him and I thought I'd woken up in an alternate reality. We're now in December and he hasn't got a league goal ... talk about service all you want, Martial's abysmal and even he's managed to pick up a league goal.

Onana signing made sense, he's just been disappointing but that's the same with most of our signings.

You know you're absolutely fecked when you're signing players like Reguilion, who Tottenham fans couldn't believe we were signing, and Evans, who wasn't even good enough for relegated Leicester.
 
Because our recruitment for the last 10 or more years has been so good, it must all be EtH's fault this summer.
 
RoadTrip said:
It’s a failure of the club if ETH is deciding who to sign unilaterally. ETH signs who he feels he should sign if the club give him that power. It’s not how any big club is run and is destined for failure. The problem here is bigger than just ETH signing shit players.
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You're preaching to the choir here. I've consistently maintained, since long before he joined us, that the club shouldn't be run this way.
 
astracrazy said:
Because our recruitment for the last 10 or more years has been so good, it must all be EtH's fault this summer.
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It isn't Ten Hag's fault, these are all signings he identified and wanted though. Like all our previous manager's we need the recruitment team to save the managers from themselves. He shouldn't be the one having ultimate say on everyone we target / sign which is indicative of the failure of the club.
 
JohnnyKills said:
The problem isn't this year's signings. It's last year's.

We paid Real Madrid 60 million for Casemiro's injuries, and we signed a one-footed winger with no pace for 80 million. Two shocking bits of business even by our standards.

Too early to call any of this summer's signings IMO.
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Casemiro was an absolute baller last season though.

Hojlund is a fancy Weghorst at this point. If he isnt scoring goals his presence here is pointless.
 
Our core last season was built around Varane/Martniez/Casemiro/Eriksen - arguably Shaw. This provided the base for Bruno and Rashford to really lead our attack. It meant we were solid and able to attack in phases last season.

I feel like our signings this summer were supposed to build on this, and instead we've had the entirety of that core dismantled due to injury. We've had to then rely on panic signings to fill gaps (Amrabat, Reguilon, Evans) and none of our main signings have contributed in any meaningful way.

I do fear that even with the core in place our signings this summer would have struggled (didn't understand Mount, felt we weren't ready to move DDG on, and Hojlund was due to us not being able to compete for Kane).

We've now ended up with an incompatible squad made up of players who haven't or don't have the quality to settle in, those who have are either horribly out of form or injured, and then on top of that all it seems we have an awful morale/culture where player power is rife.

It's hard not to feel like the club needs to really fall off in order to build itself up. We are just dying a slow death right now.
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
And Nunez who is called a donkey doesn’t have the same issue? Yet he still registers double the amount of shots.



Any pass that ends in a shot is a ‘chance created’. So Bruno registers highly on that count because our wide forwards like to shoot, not saying a portion of them aren’t good chances that they fluff but the stat itself is misleading. It’s a closed loop, they have high shot counts because anytime Bruno passes to them they shoot, and Bruno in return has high chance creation stat from that, while the CF feeds off scrap. One of the reason we tend to play our best football with an in form Martial over anybody else is because he almost works as a pseudo 10/false 9 to generate actual chances for other.
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Nùñez scores goals and I think he’s Liverpool’s top assist provider this season too. If Højlund was at least productive sometimes, he could get away with some of his bad touches, spurned chances, and standing offside.
 
AltiUn said:
It isn't Ten Hag's fault, these are all signings he identified and wanted though. Like all our previous manager's we need the recruitment team to save the managers from themselves.
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How do you know this, especially for every signing? Surely a number of players would be identified for any target position.

I can't see Mount and Hojlund being number one targets. He doesn't seem to know how or where to play Mount and Hojlund seemed like a last minute signing for a position that should have been a number one priority and first through the door. I'd say these two seemed very much last choice options - maybe because of money, lack of interest or both.
 
redIndianDevil said:
That's the role he did in the short time he has been here. I feel Mount is someone who does the basics, he can be a very good squad option for a Guardiola or a Klopp side but is not good enough to be specialist. He can do a job in just about any position he is deployed and that's not bad for a settled team but in team with glaring holes like us he can't do anything.
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No it isn't. We THOUGHT this is going to be the case, but once Mount joined Bruno was pushed deeper into #8 and now they both play quite advanced position (often Mount was the more advanced of the two, just like Scott is now).
Mount doesn't need to be a specialist, he needs to perform more traditional B2B role with license to push forward, but his default position can't be behind the striker. Makes even less sense to shift Bruno, this is actually criminal idea.

IMO Mount can easily be very useful in this team if we stop this ridiculous experiment. The only advantage of this setup is that McTominay is like fish in a water, doesn't need to do anything but wait for the ball to fall to his feet or head.
 
Spaghetti said:
Nùñez scores goals and I think he’s Liverpool’s top assist provider this season too. If Højlund was at least productive sometimes, he could get away with some of his bad touches, spurned chances, and standing offside.
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He was productive sometimes though, he was CL joint top scorer in the group stage.

Again, he’s registered a total of 16 shots, if his next 3 shots all go in, he would have a better conversion rate than both Solanke and Watkins (8/48), who trail only Haaland in total shots (54). That’s how finicky stat can be with such a low sample size. He can do better, but the main question we need to be asking is how and why our CF gets to shoot so much less than his counterpart at other clubs?
 
Imagine if we didn't act like snobs towards mid table teams and brought tried and tested premier league players like mitrovic, watkins or even rodrygo for a forward or mcginn, ward prowse or madddison for midfield and either martinez, raya, pickford or sanchez for goalkeeper.
 
Lee565 said:
Imagine if we didn't act like snobs towards mid table teams and brought tried and tested premier league players like mitrovic, watkins or even rodrygo for a forward or mcginn, ward prowse or madddison for midfield and either martinez, raya, pickford or sanchez for goalkeeper.
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You're saying some of those names tongue in cheek....surely?
 
Borys said:
No it isn't. We THOUGHT this is going to be the case, but once Mount joined Bruno was pushed deeper into #8 and now they both play quite advanced position (often Mount was the more advanced of the two, just like Scott is now).
Mount doesn't need to be a specialist, he needs to perform more traditional B2B role with license to push forward, but his default position can't be behind the striker. Makes even less sense to shift Bruno, this is actually criminal idea.

IMO Mount can easily be very useful in this team if we stop this ridiculous experiment. The only advantage of this setup is that McTominay is like fish in a water, doesn't need to do anything but wait for the ball to fall to his feet or head.
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Bruno was pushed deeper due to injuries of Eriksen and Casemiro. Mount has never played the b2b role at Chelsea, he has either been an advanced midfielder or played in the wings.
 
Bad recruitment just like the previous summer. Martinez aside I think all of ETH signings are all a load of mediocre shite.
 
astracrazy said:
You're saying some of those names tongue in cheek....surely?
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All better than what we are now left with, I know mitrovic was a hated figure but he did score goals and we could do with more sh**housery players like him, we use to have them like keane and Cantona but in this day and age of people getting offended by the slightest thing these characters are now forced upon and just want bland technically gifted system players
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
Striker wise, Hojlund was the best we could have gotten.
99% of the CAF could have told you that Mount would be a failure even considering 99.99% of us are idiots.
Onana is a mystery to me. He single handedly took us out of the CL and he is also responsible for that non-penalty decision in the beginning of the season which has cost us so many points already. How did we get that one so wrong?
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There were many, many posters stating he wasn't ready before we'd even purchased him. Turns out they were bang on the money so I'm not sure the bolded is true in the immediacy of the proceeding season. Whatever the kid is destined to be won't be revealed for a couple of seasons, if not more, so the onus should have been on getting support in or moving for a different profile. The burden of scoring should not be on a 20 year old, we didn't even do that to Rooney or Ronaldo, infinitely superior youngsters.
 
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