Vidal, defensive, is better than Fletcher. Vidal also offers a lot more going forward and in build up process. I strongly disagree with having anchor who's sitting in front of defense. That would limit attacking options with 4 idle players. Having player like that can be useful, thats why I wouldn't mind De Jong as backup/flexibility in formations.
21
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 31
- Goals
- 8
- Assists
- 5
- Yellow cards
- 6
- Status
I thought he was immense yesterday, a proper midfielder. Must be great for the other guys to know they can give him the ball and not worry about him losing it under pressure. We absolutely need a good partner for him though.
Think he averaged around 80% passing if im correct, which is pretty damn low for a spanish midfielder in his position where its very risky to make sloppy passes.
It's probably got something to do with the fact that he attempted the most through-balls last season.
Anyone can get 95%+ passing accuracy if all you do is pass sideways. Herrera tries a lot of risky passes to open up space.
His long passing needs work. He tends to fire them rather than float them like Scholes/Rooney. It hurts his accuracy.
Firing them is more likely to catch the opponents out of position while floating them allows the opposition to get into the right positions to deal with the danger.
Yep if we're going by stats Cleverley is one of the best passers in Europe.
In theory, yes. But Rooney's cross-field balls are almost always dangerous.
It's impossible to be completely accurate over a long distance anyway. If it were, you'd see a lot more goals scored from 30+ yards out. 3 or 4 degrees out at the point of passing can turn into 5+ yards at the point of reception, even before allowing for wind. Long passes need to take into account a margin for error as well as giving the receiving the player a chance to control it. It's a technique Herrera can learn, though.
Herrera is best at short/medium range passing.
We'll benefit hugely if whoever we sign to partner him has a good passing range. Strootman is the best and most realistic option his always playing those switch passes but can also split defences.
We'll benefit hugely if whoever we sign to partner him has a good passing range. Strootman is the best and most realistic option his always playing those switch passes but can also split defences.
He played mainly as an attacking midfielder last season so his job was to do the risky passes constantly, hence his accuracy being low. Pass % anyways means next to nothing, as you can be like Cleverley and never risk anything, or like Herrera and do plenty of through balls and quick passes that have the risk of not working out, but also is what makes goalscoring chances.
For example, Koke had a slightly lower pass accuracy then him even, at 80.5 according to whoscored. He's a very good passer just different positions require more risks.
We are 2 signings away from this
While I agree that Vidal is better defensively than Fletcher, they're different type of players. I'm not sure having two box-to-box midfielders would get the best out of either of them as both will have defensive duties. Would rather someone come in and take care of most defensive duties and allow Herrera to concentrate on going forward.
3. Strootman as backup.
I didn't make it, but the first 11 is boss.
You shouldn't compare Rooney's long passing to Scholes - Scholes was miles better. Like Gerrard, Rooney's long passes are too lofty. Scholes did in fact often fire them, just with incredible accuracy, and at times making the ball stop once it hit the ground when called for. Not even Xavi is close to Scholes in terms of long passing.
How about that Scholes/Keane partnership? They were both 'box to box', even though you can say Scholes was playmaker and Keane was enforcer. Hererra's job shouldn't be 'going forward'. His job is linking defense with attack. The fact he's good going forward is just a bonus. Vidal's main job would be providing cover for Hererra and then joining attack if needed.
You don't have to tell me, mate! I'm the guy who argued that Scholes is the 3rd best player in the last 20 years. Love him to bits.
Scholes-Keane was in a 4-4-2. In a 3-4-1-2 when there are two centre-forwards and a number 10 that are central and attacking, do we really need two more midfielders centrally to add to the attack when we're going forward? I'm not sure.
You still compared them
He was an incredible player; his long range passing really was something else. Liverpool supporters who think Gerrard's is better are mentally disturbed.
Probably the one United player from the past that I would most want back at United as a youngster, then Giggs.
First off:
- SAF didn't coach, he managed. So if you want to give credit for the way United played then give it to Queiroz, Sven and Meulensteen.
- Fans, staff and SAF knew for years that our midfield was dramatic, and that for many years we needed a large amount of transfers to make a team able to compete for the upcoming years. SAF failed to fix this problem year after year due his stubbornness to pay the "modern" prices in the transfer market while still splashing insane amounts of money on extremely mediocre players.
- SAF has done fantastic in his time at United, but don't act like no other manager could do the same. When have you ever seen Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich etc fail to achieve the same when they actually rotated managers every 2-3 years?
- SAF WAS THE PERSON TO SELECT MOYES. Without a cause there is no action/result.
Second:
- How is Moyes to blame for the countless personal mistakes of our defenders?
- How is Moyes to blame for Wayne Rooney completely messing up countless chances in big matches?
- RvP/Nani/Kagawa being injured during internationals?
Its so easy to blame Moyes for everything now that hes gone, but it wasn't and we all know that even tough we tend to blame it all on him. Moyes was given an unbearable task to sign 5-6 players in a very short window of time and turn around a squad which was destined to fail. The only reason we ended first and not 5th the season before Moyes already was purely RvP carrying the entire teams ass like crazy during our shocking displays for 75% of the season.
Well, in 4-4-2, you usually have 2 defenders back whole time, so not sure why do you think playing with two 'b2b' midfielders would be too attacking.
Formation is irrelevant, it's all about shape. Eh, you could argue it's the same thing, but anyway, you already have 3 central defenders who are not going anywhere, they will sit deep all the time. Then you have another midfielder to protect them, like you said, to sit back and brake attacks. That leaves United with 4 idle players, doing nothing offensively, and that's very bad when you have to attack with 6 against 9 men behind the ball, which is doomed to fail pretty much every time. Also, defensively you lose nothing with number '10' on the pitch, because he'll help defense as well. Whole point of this, it doesn't matter what you're best at, it matters how you do when you get specific task. Everything else is a bonus. Vidal is excellent in defense, his part would be to protect defense and midfield, just like he's doing it at Juventus, shielding old man Pirlo, and I think we all know how influential Pirlo can be when allowed freedom.
Nah, honestly I believe the altitude or heat made a difference. Mata was missing pretty much all of his cross field balls too, and he is usually bob on. Against LA Galaxy Herrera hit a few switch passes which were perfect accuracy.
For whatever reason against Roma players mishit a lot of passes. I think we will see in the next game it will be fine.
Ye i guess, but someone at his position shouldn't always risk that. Iniesta/Xavi/Modric all do the same and still have 90+ passing.
Bilbao doesn't play with a AM's.
They do with Valverde in charge.
They did last season, Herrera the season before played as a central midfielder but last season he was very much an attacking midfielder.
Its becoming difficult to believe your claim that you watched Herrera week in week out last year. Its very common knowledge that Valverde changed Bielsa's system. In fact, when the Herrera deal got made public, people on the caf were debating whether signing 'another number 10' was a good idea. The fact you claim Bilbao don't use attacking midfielders makes me wonder just how much you saw of them in 2013/14.
From what I have seen of Herrera I've every confidence he'll be a star for us once the Premier League begins. The claims you make about his sloppiness, as I said, I've never seen with my own eyes. Van Gaal has already declared that, along with Shinji and Mata, Herrera is the best passer at Man Utd. Given Van Gaal gave players like Xavi and Iniesta their debuts at Barcelona, I'd say the manager's a good judge of passing ability too.
Herrera takes risks with the ball but that's not a bad thing. Top class midfielders need to have courage, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes had a long discussion about this before and after we lost to City. Sometimes you need to have the guts to gamble if you're gonna win big. Herrera has that in him and it will be a help not hinder United as we try to get back to where we belong: at the top of English football.
Last edited:
What silly and clueless post coming from a Moyes apologist! Especially the two highlighted parts.
So we need to add 5-6 players to the 2013 title winning team, haha good joke. All we really needed last season was 2 CM's and a left back, Your homeboy Moyes couldn't even get Baines to hand in a transfer request and flopped on Coentrao as well. Moyes also bidded for Fabgregas weeks after Barcelona let Thiago go, why on earth didn't he bid earlier? Was he that stupid, that he thought a team like Barca would sell 2 top centre mids in 1 transfer window. Why did he buy Mata in 2014? It's because he was clueless and had no idea what he was doing. Let me give you a list on how many players your Deity dithered on last summer, De Rossi, Khedria, Fabregas, Thiago, Baines and Coentrao. Yep not his faut, ffs/ The second part is just as funny! RVP won us the league? If you take RVP's goals away , we still would have won the Premier League, assuming you take away every other teams top scorer as well (which is fair)
What silly and clueless post coming from a Moyes apologist! Especially the two highlighted parts.
The second part is just as funny! RVP won us the league? If you take RVP's goals away , we still would have won the Premier League, assuming you take away every other teams top scorer as well (which is fair)
Lol, so when we didn't buy De Rossi, Khedria, Fabregas, Thiago, Baines and Coentrao it's Moyes fault but when we didn't buy Kroos, Vidal, Di Maria it's not LVG's fault? Unfair that.
Some people forget who exactly was the player with a best passing accuracy in top european leagues like 3 years ago. That was Leon Britton. Yep, in front of Xavi and everybody else. Pretty much speaks for itself, this fact.
Herrera has looked good from what I've seen so far. Nice skills, good vision, and not afraid to take players on. Think we might have a winner here.
Wow, what a load of rubbish!
Seeing that you're from the Netherlands, you probably started to support United when RvP joined United. Were you a goober before he joined us? lol
By the sound of it, you did not rate Sir Alex and regarded him as not knowing much about football. Can't take you seriously. My serious question to you is: did you cry when Moyes was sacked? Are you still crying? lol
If you're talking about the couple of diagonals out towards Valencia, there was a pretty clear altitude thing going on there. Over long distances the ball moves quite differently in such thin air, which is why it beat Valencia by exactly the same distance with both passes. Mata had the same problem a couple of times, as did a number of Roma players with those long balls looking for Destro. Wouldn't read anything into it, as it's not a problem I've ever seen him have at normal altitude.
Its becoming difficult to believe your claim that you watched Herrera week in week out last year. Its very common knowledge that Valverde changed Bielsa's system. In fact, when the Herrera deal got made public, people on the caf were debating whether signing 'another number 10' was a good idea. The fact you claim Bilbao don't use attacking midfielders makes me wonder just how much you saw of them in 2013/14.
From what I have seen of Herrera I've every confidence he'll be a star for us once the Premier League begins. The claims you make about his sloppiness, as I said, I've never seen with my own eyes. Van Gaal has already declared that, along with Shinji and Mata, Herrera is the best passer at Man Utd. Given Van Gaal gave players like Xavi and Iniesta their debuts at Barcelona, I'd say the manager's a good judge of passing ability too.
Herrera takes risks with the ball but that's not a bad thing. Top class midfielders need to have courage, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes had a long discussion about this before and after we lost to City. Sometimes you need to have the guts to gamble if you're gonna win big. Herrera has that in him and it will be a help not hinder United as we try to get back to where we belong: at the top of English football.
Oke to be fair, i don't watch Bilbao's full match every week, who does. I mean i follow la liga every week very closely and if Madrid/Barca plays i always prioritize it above anyone. The thing is, most people see everyone who is creative and in midfield as a 10. Valverde always played with a 3 man midfield with Itu as CDM and 2 CMs in front of it. Herrera being the most attacking one in most cases specially when he brought in the other defensive guy in big matches (forgot his name). But that doesn't mean Herrera is a CAM lol. Its like saying Iniesta is a CM just because hes there on paper in a 433.Or saying Rooney was a CAM under moyes (like every website suggested).
And Herrera takes risk, i know its awesome that he tries. But he doesn't have the experience to know when not to risk. Im the type of guy who doesn't care where the ball is lost, as long as it is lost. because that means the opponent gets his chance to recover and build up again.
How old are you? Because either your a 5 yr old kid, or you are a 35 yr old who thinks hes cool for acting like internet youth nowadays.
I don't give a shit about Moyes, never did and always disliked him. But i got a fecking brain and i don't blame a sole person for an entire season of madness when there is obviously 11 players on the field failing, an entire staff not going against him, a board who signed him and a legendary managed who only wanted him as his successor. So stop acting like an idiot and use your brain for once.
By the sound of it i don't rate Sir Alex? Lawl, i think hes the best manager who has ever set foot on this earth. And considering we are starting the radials slurs, but you probably don't know what the feck a manager does and what a real coach is. Open your fecking eyes and look at Louis van Gaal and learn this year. Then you can start talking with the rest of the world and you can start judging if someones strategies are good or bad.
No.
It was all Moyes' fault. We won the league the season before, so we didn't need anything more than minimal, Champion-style ("if it ain't broke...") signings. The team was perfectly balanced and our passing game was superb under Sir Alex.
City and Chelsea were at the top of their respective games, and we still managed to win the league in the most balanced way possible. Had Van Persie joined City instead of us, we'd have replaced not only his goals but his match winning ability, no questions asked - so the whole 'Van Persie carried us' theory is easily debunked.
For example against Southampton, we'd have surely scored the three goals that Van Persie scored to win us the game. It's not like Van Persie's a player who can score goals that others can only dream about. If he wasn't there, somebody else would have been there to score his goals.
We wouldn't have played with ten men after all. We definitely weren't over reliant on him.
Moyes took a perfectly balanced team and completely destroyed it on his own. The warning signs were never there that this side lacks urgency, lacks the ability to control games, and generally lacks balance.
We all know how great and unique Sir Alex is as a manager, but there's no chance that he got way more out of that squad than anyone else could have done. Guardiola would have had Cleverley (for example) playing like Xavi within weeks.
Last edited:
A better example would be the Keane/Ince partership. Worked a treat although in later years Ince was apparently starting to get egoistical and started to disobey SAF's tactical instructions. I can't think of any other midfield duo with both of them being genuine box-to-box players. Fernandinho and Toure are most certainly not a box-to-box midfield duo as most claim. They are both capable of playing such a role but in City's team Fernandinho is the defensive midfielder and Toure is the more attacking one. With the trend of a midfield trio and specialisation of roles (holding mid/midfield metronome/attacking midfielder) genuine box-to-box midielders are rare to find nowdays. I remember Zico and Tostao saying that even Brazil Post 1982 stopped producing/favouring midfielder who could both attack and defend, and started to focus on more specialized midfielders with extra tactical responsibility.
Yet SAF couldn't manage to make him half decent.
Tbh this whole SAF thing is looking creepy much like a cult nowadays. Everything against him is false, a big lie, crazy and not true (even tough our play has been shockingly bad for the past 3 years and pretty much every analyst has said so also). And everything pro SAF is exaggerated 100x more.
Not going to respond to this anymore, cba discussing with fanboys (extreme fanboys), because there is no point as you are to ignorant to actually understand an argument not in favor of your vision.
- Status