If he has a guts and brain he should. If he's smart enough as a manager he knows going into the season barebone like us is suicide and he'll get the boots anyway. If he doesnt know it's going to be bad, he's a naive stupid boy. Either way.
Absolutely horrible midfield
- Thread starter flappyjay
- Start date
If he has a guts and brain he should. If he's smart enough as a manager he knows going into the season barebone like us is suicide and he'll get the boots anyway. If he doesnt know it's going to be bad, he's a naive stupid boy. Either way.
United's midfield haven't been good in nearly 10 years. We had cleverly and Anderson forfeck sake. Pogba is probably the only good midfielder they bought since Roy Keane.
Carrick, and maybe Hargreaves for a very short spell. But yes, essentially, our midfield has been trash for the longes time.
Midfield that can cover a back four is pretty easy to accomplish. Most lower table teams has no problem with it. Just put 2 dm to help mark whoever and you're golden.
Having a one man adequately screening the defence while your 2 fb overlapping is the real issue
Why don’t you stop being an ass and pray tell me who have I missed
I felt like such a idiot for being all but certain we'll bring in a midfielder (and striker when Lukaku left) in the summer.
.............
.............Smailing. Lukaku. Blind. Depay. Zaha.?
Two of our starting three midfielders had a pass accuracy of 6x% in our last game. That means they misplaced one pass out of every three, and that was in a game where we had the majority of the possession and our opponents could rarely be arsed to press.
That speaks well enough of the quality we have in that position.
That speaks well enough of the quality we have in that position.
I agree with the OP. I don't really see why Martial has been getting so much stick. He made a great run in the first 10 mins or so, peeled off the defender and would have been clean through.
Fred saw the run, made the pass and woefully under-hit it so the defender easily gathered it.
That type of thing must be so frustrating for the front three. There is no creativity coming from the mid-field whatsoever.
Fred saw the run, made the pass and woefully under-hit it so the defender easily gathered it.
That type of thing must be so frustrating for the front three. There is no creativity coming from the mid-field whatsoever.
The problem our midfield has had for years is structure of our play.
4 managers, 4 crops of signings/outgoings & 4 styles of play.
Ever since we signed Pogba, theres been a debate about what formation/tactics to use to get the best out of him. 3 seasons on and Pogba is still trash and we still have no system that works consistently (I am only referring to midfield here)
My biggest issue is our players are talented (even Periera and Fred who everyone loves to bash) yet they often look lost with the ball, bereft of confidence and slow in possession. For me, we should be coherent enough to have a gameplan and style of play whereby any of our available midfielders can come in to a CM/DM or AM role and be able to know where colleagues will be, be able to confidently use the ball and show composure/decision making.
We simply don't do that, regardless of who plays.
When I think of a Manchester united midfielder, I think of players who possess real quality, but also the mindset and workrate of a players who knows he's good, but knows he has to be a 9/10 ALL the time. None of our current lot do this.
None are big game players, none work hard enough, none have the mindset that sets them apart.
I will note that on occasions, the workrate and commitment has been extremely good but consistency is lacking. No point working so hard to beat Chelsea and then fall apart against Bournemouth, you have to be on top form all the time. Midfield dictates the tempo of every game, if you lose the midfield 99/100 you lose the game.
Part of Ole's overhaul i would say he has to replace (over time) every single midfielder at the club, bar McTominey.
Garner will probably be given a chance. The rest have already shown they are not good enough and will not improve
4 managers, 4 crops of signings/outgoings & 4 styles of play.
Ever since we signed Pogba, theres been a debate about what formation/tactics to use to get the best out of him. 3 seasons on and Pogba is still trash and we still have no system that works consistently (I am only referring to midfield here)
My biggest issue is our players are talented (even Periera and Fred who everyone loves to bash) yet they often look lost with the ball, bereft of confidence and slow in possession. For me, we should be coherent enough to have a gameplan and style of play whereby any of our available midfielders can come in to a CM/DM or AM role and be able to know where colleagues will be, be able to confidently use the ball and show composure/decision making.
We simply don't do that, regardless of who plays.
When I think of a Manchester united midfielder, I think of players who possess real quality, but also the mindset and workrate of a players who knows he's good, but knows he has to be a 9/10 ALL the time. None of our current lot do this.
None are big game players, none work hard enough, none have the mindset that sets them apart.
I will note that on occasions, the workrate and commitment has been extremely good but consistency is lacking. No point working so hard to beat Chelsea and then fall apart against Bournemouth, you have to be on top form all the time. Midfield dictates the tempo of every game, if you lose the midfield 99/100 you lose the game.
Part of Ole's overhaul i would say he has to replace (over time) every single midfielder at the club, bar McTominey.
Garner will probably be given a chance. The rest have already shown they are not good enough and will not improve
Who of these play in the midfield? Maybe Blind but he has also been playing in the defence. Not exactly proven your point, have you?
And to state Lukaku and Smalling as more successful is surely having a laugh? They are both performing at the same level as they were at United and its not even been half a season yet for them.
Solskjaer never said he wanted two new midfielders. He was happy with our midfield options in the summer and talked a lot about how he was expecting McTominay and Pereira to play more, which is exactly what has happened.
The only way I can remember the board letting Solskjaer down in the summer was the ridiculous length of time it took them to sell Lukaku. We received a good offer for him early in the window but Judge/Woodward decided to do a Levy and insist on getting every last euro we possibly could from Inter. This meant we didn't sell him until literally the closing day of the transfer window so signing a replacement attacker became impossible. Funnily enough many United fans in the transfer forum were cheering United on as they made this mistake, there was some ridiculous idea that we were 'paying Inter back' because they didn't sell us Perisic. That decision hurt us a lot but who knows, maybe those fans are still happy we have an extra 10m on our balance sheet instead of a good attacker in the squad.
It is kinda amazing how bad it is. Since the apocalypse, we bought Fellaini, Herrera, Blind, Schweinsteiger, Schneiderlin, Pogba, Matic and Fred (while promoting McTominay and Pereira) for an estimated 300m pounds and is still terrible, with only Herrera having been a successful signing.
Sure, one of the biggest mistakes we made. While not an awesome player (like Pogba is when he decides to be) he was quite good and gave us 5 good seasons while having cost only 30m and being in relatively small wages (the entire cost wasn't more than 60m when you consider both salary and fee, which is okay for 5 good seasons).And he left....on a free.
That's not my recollection at all.
As I remember it, Inter were pissing about with an initial loan offer, then something like £12M, which was then increased but was spread over a number of years, until they eventually stumped up the asking price.
If any basis to reports from that period, for once, I take the side of United's board in getting a fair price.
And I definitely remember seeing interviews with Solskjaer where he spoke about a new signing replacing Fellaini, and also needing to sign a replacement for Herrera....Although I'm buggered if I can now find it....!!!
This is why, on this occasion, I can't really blame the Glazers for this situation.
They are not footballing people, they put their faith in the football experts and have released £300m as you say, to those football experts, and look at what the experts did with all that money..!!
I don't believe anyone is saying the manager has nothing to do with who to bring in but this is pure conjecture on your part. By all accounts Ed does have a team of scouts and a recruitment department. It's been widely reported he over-ruled Mourinho on certain players based on the information he had been given.
As for LVG it's strange he was given a list which just so happened to include Blind,Romero and Schweinsteiger and Depay all of whom he worked with before.
I like Mctominay and Fred does have a few skills, even if that's accconpanied with a few mistakes, but if/when Matic leaves, their only back up is Garner. Sad state of the club.
This, a thousand times this.
We really needed Dybala in the summer, or even Dani Olmo in Jan, literally anyone technically competent and vaguely athletic who isn't an idiot or a coward.
So much has been said about Gomes about whether he is ready or not. He is 19 and needs games. I would much rather take a punt on him at number 10 than watch Andreas lose the ball every two minutes. Fred is bang average where he is playing, he should be higher up the pitch as he is not a holding midfielder (i am guessing because who knows what kind of player he is). Mctominay should be the only holding player and this is why we can never get balls to our attackers. When Ole started last year he had 1 holding and 2 midfielders further up the pitch and we were scoring for fun. Yes we conceded goals but who cares. Football is about scoring more than them. Fix that then you can fix your defence, Liverpool have proven this woth klopp. We can blame the players all we want (and fully warranted) but Ole tactics have been bizarre and for someone who claimed he wanted to attack, his set up says otherwise.
Couldn't agree more-Just a shame we have an incompetent board who are unable to be ruthless in the window and sign more than a couple of players. I think Ole will focus on improving the midfield next summer. Defence seemed a priority the past transfer window so i wouldn't be surprised if we sign 3/4 midfielders this summer (Paid for by the departures of Pogba/Matic).
In games where we need to unlock defences I agree with you - but in games like Chelsea away and Liverpool, Andreas is much more suited than Gomes. You can say a lot about Andreas but he is hard-working and is good at pressing. But against established defences, yeah Gomes is better
The midfield has not been good since Scholes left. We meed to keep Pogba and sign one player maker as well.
Would not make a difference against low block defences. Rest of the team is set up and seemingly told to play counter attacking football. OGS and his coaching team are either not interested or able to make the team control the ball against a team sitting low. And before one begins to try to unlock a balanced defence, one needs to be able to retain possession around their compressed defensive unit. Since we are struggling to string 3 good passes together without almost losing it we are a long way off, tactically and technically, to even begin to talk about how to unlock an established defence.
That's not my recollection at all.
As I remember it, Inter were pissing about with an initial loan offer, then something like £12M, which was then increased but was spread over a number of years, until they eventually stumped up the asking price.
If any basis to reports from that period, for once, I take the side of United's board in getting a fair price.
And I definitely remember seeing interviews with Solskjaer where he spoke about a new signing replacing Fellaini, and also needing to sign a replacement for Herrera....Although I'm buggered if I can now find it....!!!
Inter's opening offer for Lukaku was reported to be 70m Euro. You are right that it was a loan offer with a small fee (10m) but there was an obligation to buy for 60m Euro included in the deal. These loan first buy later deals are quite popular in Italy when buying expensive players due to their clubs relative lack of income compared to the PL. This offer was reported in the final week of June. If we had accepted then we would have roughly six weeks to buy the best quality attacker on the market. Or we could have negotiated for a week or two and gotten a marginally better deal but still left plenty of time to sign a new player. Instead we insisted on 80m Euro and no loan and we got it... on transfer deadline day. This left zero time for a new attacker to be brought in. If you think that was smart then ok but imo Woodward & Judge screwed Solskjaer in exactly the same manner that Levy screwed whoever was Tottenham's manager all those years ago when he sold Berbatov on deadline day.
I don't recall ever hearing Solskjaer say anything about making a signing to replace Fellaini. He rarely played him and sold him asap so I think he just deemed him surplus. He did talk about replacing Herrera in the summer but it was with existing players:
"Andy (Pereira) I expect a lot more from, Scotty I expect a lot more from. Those two between them had maybe 15, 20 starts last season. You expect them to have at least 20 each this season, maybe even more. That’s maybe two players into one that can replace Ander."
You might be thinking of this quote of his which he also made in the summer:
"If we sell players we will have to replace them.”
However this was in reply to a question that was specifically about Lukaku leaving. Which goes back to my earlier point, the higher-ups at United didn't let Solskjaer down with regard to our midfield, they let him down by taking too long to sell Lukaku meaning we couldn't get a replacement attacker. A #10 I believe would have been our main target given we definitely tried for Dybala and probably also asked about Eriksen.
That's not my recollection at all.
As I remember it, Inter were pissing about with an initial loan offer, then something like £12M, which was then increased but was spread over a number of years, until they eventually stumped up the asking price.
If any basis to reports from that period, for once, I take the side of United's board in getting a fair price.
And I definitely remember seeing interviews with Solskjaer where he spoke about a new signing replacing Fellaini, and also needing to sign a replacement for Herrera....Although I'm buggered if I can now find it....!!!
Inter were pissing about and offering very little money up front and all that loan nonsense. The last week of the transfer window was taken up by the Dybala swap shenanigans and I don't think Inter came back in with a vaguely acceptable offer til transfer deadline day.
Ole did say a number of times that the club were working on bringing in a few more players and according to the rumours they were actively trying to recruit a midfielder at that stage. He also said if any players left they would be replaced which just didn't happen.
Regardless of Ole saying he was happy with the squad which is just PR, you'd have to assume that Ole expected a MF and replacements for Sanchez/Lukaku.
We could have Pogba, Maddison and Ndidi in midfield, and we would still look disjointed.
If the players dont know what to do and arent coached, they wont improve. We wont win trophies with that midfield, but they looking like Championship players has a lot to do with our coaching/confidence. Some people keep blaming individual players all over the pitch or team blocks like defenders/strikers/attackers. At the end, we fail as a team and we failed in the transfermarket as well. Ole is at least as much to blame as any player
If the players dont know what to do and arent coached, they wont improve. We wont win trophies with that midfield, but they looking like Championship players has a lot to do with our coaching/confidence. Some people keep blaming individual players all over the pitch or team blocks like defenders/strikers/attackers. At the end, we fail as a team and we failed in the transfermarket as well. Ole is at least as much to blame as any player
But with Pogba gone we would have needed maybe £100m or £150m. We just don't have people with football vision in the club.
Honestly Neves recently has been far from impressive. He would probably cost a fortune as well. Why not just trigger Partey's £45m clause? Oh yes, I forgot, anything that makes sense the jokesters of this club will always go against.
It’s terrible by our standards.
Mctominay is probably our strongest option atm and he is a very limited player. He has grit and passion in abundance and gives the team something at least but should be surrounded with much more talented players. We need so much more in midfield it’s painful to even think about. Let’s pray Garner and Mejbri can grow quickly.
Mctominay is probably our strongest option atm and he is a very limited player. He has grit and passion in abundance and gives the team something at least but should be surrounded with much more talented players. We need so much more in midfield it’s painful to even think about. Let’s pray Garner and Mejbri can grow quickly.
That's a very expensive and worrying list which explains why we are where we are basically. A success rate of 2 in 9 is pretty miserable.
Everybody is focusing on the names alone. However there is clearly also a systematic issue that has plagued our teams in their inability to pass in between the lines and retain the ball and move it forward through congested spaces. I do believe there's an issue here that exists aside from having poor players.
Remember Guardiola saying he doesnt want him if he costs £100 million. You could probably talk them down a little bit, but not much. I said £250 million on Ndidi, Maddison and Neves with the idea of £80 million for each of Leicester's midfielders - which if you wanted to take 2 of their best players at once, they'd probably want more than that tbh. And £90 million haggling down from £100 million for Neves
I don't agree. They are ultimately responsible for everything in the club, including hiring and firing the football people. Don't remember anyone being fired, when in fact Ed should have been fired (or demoted to only doing non football things) years ago, and the entire football board should have been replaced.
I don't blame for 'not spending money' which a lot of people blame for (cause they have spent money), but their management has been very bad, and ultimately they are responsible for that.
I felt like such a idiot for being all but certain we'll bring in a midfielder (and striker when Lukaku left) in the summer.
To me it seemed impossible that we would not buy a midfielder yet here we are
Always had this feeling that Ole will copy Sir Alex. But not to this degree of refusing to sign better midfielders and relying on academy players.
Our midfield options suck so why not play a formation that limits their importance and exposure. I still think that if we used a 3-4-3 which only requires just 2 CMs not only are less exposed to their limitations but you can also carry someone like Garner who is an elite passer to play with McT.
When you are playing teams with low blokes then you can have a player like Matic/AWB/Shaw as overlapping LCB or RCB. It's just pointless to moan about the midfield without trying something else to help us get to the winter window and even then murmurings from the club indicate that they don't want to do business in January because it's too hard.
When you are playing teams with low blokes then you can have a player like Matic/AWB/Shaw as overlapping LCB or RCB. It's just pointless to moan about the midfield without trying something else to help us get to the winter window and even then murmurings from the club indicate that they don't want to do business in January because it's too hard.
I'd take Maddison tbh but would stay away from Neves and Ndidi. Just a personal opinion but if you are going to splash those amounts on midfielders you need absolute top quality in return. We do need a DM and Partey is literally the perfect fit both age wise and cost wise. Not saying Neves and Ndidi ain't good but only Leicester players I'd take is Chilwell and Maddison.
I think the only midfields that are considerably better than ours are City and Liverpool. The average age of City's players who have played centrally is 27.2 and for Liverpool its 28.1. In contrast, Ours is 25.4, and I think its fair to say that our midfield could be performing to a much higher standard a few years from now even if we kept the same players.
Love him or hate him but we may be 6 points better off this season if we had Fellaini in the team this season. I would take him in as the number 10 before Lingard/Mata/Perreira right now.
I would rank Chelsea's midfield higher than ours and even Liverpool's. Liverpool's midfield is also very much lacking in creativity. Mind you it's still better than ours.