Andre Onana made another mistake. Ohnono.

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In the rush to sign a ‘modern keeper’ we forget we are a team that is poor in possession, doesn’t control games and concedes multiple good quality chances every game.

other teams that play with this type of keeper dont expose them like we do.

whoops.
 
I don’t think he’s the best shop stopper around but I think he’s just going through a rough patch. Once we start controlling games more and playing to his strengths he’ll be fine.

Wasn’t DDG pretty crap in his first year?
 
Jezpeza said:
In the rush to sign a ‘modern keeper’ we forget we are a team that is poor in possession, doesn’t control games and concedes multiple good quality chances every game.

other teams that play with this type of keeper dont expose them like we do.

whoops.
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How would you evolve us into a team that can play that way then? I think it's a bit like did the chicken or the egg come first, you need a gk like Onana to control games and you need to control games in order to accommodate a gk like Onana.
 
Thom Merrilin said:
How would you evolve us into a team that can play that way then? I think it's a bit like did the chicken or the egg come first, you need a gk like Onana to control games and you need to control games in order to accommodate a gk like Onana.
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nah. Onana definitely wasn't the missing. Piece. We couldn't play in the way that justified this type of keeper last season
 
Thought he mad some good saves but OP maybe right. United didn't need to pay 50m for goal keeper
 
I don't understand how goal looks so much wider when he is in our goal.
 
Jezpeza said:
nah. Onana definitely wasn't the missing. Piece. We couldn't play in the way that justified this type of keeper last season
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I didn't mean to imply that Onana is the missing piece by any means. We've already improved at playing from the back this season compared to last. Surely you have to start somewhere?

Put it this way, swap Ederson and Onana and I bet Onana would fit right in at City while we'd all be complaining that Ederson can't save anything.
 
Jezpeza said:
nah. Onana definitely wasn't the missing. Piece. We couldn't play in the way that justified this type of keeper last season
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We couldn't, you're right. But we have purchased players with a view to playing the game in the opponents half of the pitch this season far more than we did, or could have done last season. We saw in the very early games the idea was for Martinez to step into midfield to support Casemiro (we were even setting up for that from goal-kicks, whereas last season Martinez was taking the goal-kicks) and Mount & Bruno to play high, with the full backs coming inside and the wingers staying high and wide. We obviously didn't have our centre forward which was a large part of the problem and didn't fix the balance during pre-season, hence the Wolves game where the were able to run through us at will. The Spurs game it was working more in the first half but we didn't take our chances or get given a blatant penalty & the game turned when they did take their chance. Forest was a freak game as they scored two very early goals and defended deep for the entire game so we didn't really have any press to play through and we played a much tighter, slower paced game at Arsenal. We've gone away from the very early blueprint since missing players who were critical to that plan and while it wasn't really working, it also wasn't *not* working as we did at least win the games against Wolves & Forest and should have been well ahead at Spurs but for missed chances. Hopefully once one or two players are back we can get back to the plan, I'm specifically looking at Varane and Mount, but Amrabat and Antony come into it as well.
 
Plant0x84 said:
Thread is about Onana being poor. If you look at my OP DDG wasn’t even mentioned.
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I know, but other people mentioned De Gea. I was just responding to them.

In regards to the OP, I still have faith in Onana. It has only been 6 games, and practically the entire team is playing poorly. If he continues to let in a tonne of goals all season, I will happily say he's not good enough. Still, we're going to concede a lot of goals if we keep letting teams have multiple shots on target every game. This shouldn't be happening.
 
These issues were mentioned by a few of us when we signed him. But apparently he was the missing link to suddenly seeing ETHs true plans being born.

I'll be honest, I don't even think he's that good with his feet. The last two games alone he's passed the ball along the ground straight to the opposition and his longer passes are mostly straight to a defender of the opposition. There were cheaper alternatives mentioned at the time, such as Raya or Sanchez, and I'm now wondering if they're not only cheaper but better at the whole passing the ball shtick too.
 
Jack-C20 said:
I don’t think he’s the best shop stopper around but I think he’s just going through a rough patch. Once we start controlling games more and playing to his strengths he’ll be fine.

Wasn’t DDG pretty crap in his first year?
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First year and his final five.
 
Plant0x84 said:
There was a period under Ole/Rangnick when Maguire made a ‘sorry we’re shite, we let you down, it won’t happen again’ speech to the media every week. I’m sure there was a thread about how tiresome it became on here. ‘Stuff your words to the media lads, how about you do your talking on the pitch, capische?!’
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There's a difference between "we're shit as a team and it's not good enough" and "I fecked up and it's completely my fault we lost"
 
De Gea has let plenty of shots in like that.
Onana has never played at this level - Premiership I mean. Italian league is a lot slower and poorer than a lot of our teams. Its a learning curve and at least he realises it and has the guts to come out in public with it. If hes still the same in 2 months time thats when you worry.
 
Still early days to judge. But he has the kind of start which is 2nd only to Taibi, who was probably the worst ever start in history of the club.
 
Thom Merrilin said:
How would you evolve us into a team that can play that way then? I think it's a bit like did the chicken or the egg come first, you need a gk like Onana to control games and you need to control games in order to accommodate a gk like Onana.
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A goalkeeper like Onana is the cherry on top a functioning team and not the other way around, (other way around = too high concession). You need a chicken to lay an egg and you need the chicken to roost the egg. The egg isn't immaculate conception and will rot. The chicken evolved from som other proto chicken. A good team evolves from a lesser good team by evolving so many individual aspects, and keeper is just one of those many needs. Arguably many good teams compensate just as well with a good ball playing and fast CB.
 
Mercurial said:
A goalkeeper like Onana is the cherry on top a functioning team and not the other way around, (other way around = too high concession). You need a chicken to lay an egg and you need the chicken to roost the egg. The egg isn't immaculate conception and will rot. The chicken evolved from som other proto chicken. A good team evolves from a lesser good team by evolving so many individual aspects, and keeper is just one of those many needs. Arguably many good teams compensate just as well with a good ball playing and fast CB.
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I can't disagree too much. Sensible post. To stick with that chicken and egg analogy though, evolution comes in great leaps followed by long periods of slow progression. I was wondering whether Onana could be a part of our great leap forward into being a ball playing team. Before we signed Onana we brought in Martinez, Eriksen, Antony, and Malacia who we all thought would help guide us towards being comfortable on possession don't forget.

It's not insane to think it was a good time to progress even further by bringing in a ball playing gk.
 
One issue with him is teams are just letting him have it, and getting themselves organized to stop passing between the lines. Everyone respects how good he is on the ball and don’t bother trying to aggressively press him.
 
Jack-C20 said:
I don’t think he’s the best ____________ around but I think he’s just going through a rough patch. Once we start controlling games more and playing to his strengths he’ll be fine.

Wasn’t DDG pretty crap in his first year?
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This applies to most of our signings over the past decade.
 
Do people need a reminder of De Gea making a similar mistake away to WBA in first league game.

Would have been interesting to see if we had gone for him if the takeover was sorted. My first choice was always Maignan but with our restricted budget that was never gonna happen.

I saw a poster mention Raya/Sanchez but don't think we had any intention of going for them over Onana,that maybe a mistake but I guess we will just have to see on that one.
 
Thom Merrilin said:
I can't disagree too much. Sensible post. To stick with that chicken and egg analogy though, evolution comes in great leaps followed by long periods of slow progression. I was wondering whether Onana could be a part of our great leap forward into being a ball playing team. Before we signed Onana we brought in Martinez, Eriksen, Antony, and Malacia who we all thought would help guide us towards being comfortable on possession don't forget.

It's not insane to think it was a good time to progress even further by bringing in a ball playing gk.
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ETH probably 110% believes this. Many here have however called for a more skilled and fast CB for a very long time, and that would in hindsight have been more sensible investment towards the squad's evolution. More and more ETH is the stubborn purist like Pep but without the experience and without the Pep tailored recruitment department behind him.
 
I'd give him more than 5 games before I judge how good he is. He definitely isn't as good a shot stopper as De Gea is (or was) and watching him, I think he sticks to his line too much in 1 v 1 situations. Today he made a bad error on the 1st goal but not much he could have done on the rest. In terms of his distribution he is light years ahead of De Gea, at least we can pass the ball out from the back far more comfortably.
 
Mercurial said:
ETH probably 110% believes this. Many here have however called for a more skilled and fast CB for a very long time, and that would in hindsight have been more sensible investment towards the squad's evolution. More and more ETH is the stubborn purist like Pep but without the experience and without the Pep tailored recruitment department behind him.
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I think the verdict on Martinez is that hes been an undeniable success. Or were you talking about Lindelof? What would you have done then? I said this at the start of last season as well but if we're ever going to challenge City Arsenal and Liverpool, we need to make these changes. Those changes will have growing pains. Just look at how many duds Pep signed trying to get it right at City. Now I think about it, all those clubs had growing pains to varying degrees.
 
Jack-C20 said:
Wasn’t DDG pretty crap in his first year?
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Not really, I think it was overblown a lot. His first competitive match was a horror-show (letting in 2 saveable long-range shots vs City in the Shield - not as bad as today, but not good). But the run of games after that was excellent - reflex saves, 1v1s, and the famous RvP penalty save.

It could have got much worse - because of that first game, teams decided that his weakness is long shots rather than strength on crosses, which they figured out later. So (IIRC) Spurs and others early that season peppered him with shots and got absolutely nothing from it.



The save from RvP's volley at 1:18 is probably the best one (check the replay angle), but I remember the Stoke game (2:05-3:01) that made me a believer.
 
Mercurial said:
A goalkeeper like Onana is the cherry on top a functioning team and not the other way around, (other way around = too high concession). You need a chicken to lay an egg and you need the chicken to roost the egg. The egg isn't immaculate conception and will rot. The chicken evolved from som other proto chicken. A good team evolves from a lesser good team by evolving so many individual aspects, and keeper is just one of those many needs. Arguably many good teams compensate just as well with a good ball playing and fast CB.
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Wait.maybe we should have got Arsenals goalie ..
But if you watched the game today.. you will realize he made some smart passes to casemiro , midfield beating the Bayern press.. With de gea, once they start pressing , he would have kicked it long ..
We will ship some goals with this keeper .. but this is the way to go forward .
 
I'm not having Onona. His first memorable action as a United keeper was to stick the knife in Maguire, who needs his confidence building up, not bringing down. He needs to get his own house in order before he starts digging out other players because as it stands now he's just a laughing stock.
 
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Huddsred said:
I dislike Onona. His first memorable action as a United keeper was to dig out Maguire. Well he needs to get his own house in order before he starts digging out other players.
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Nothing wrong with digging Maguire or any other player out. Just like there's nothing wrong with a player digging Onana out.
 
Onana made several world-class saves even yesterday. As for the blunder - it sucked, but de Gea had plenty of those, on a regular basis, as well.

So emotions aside, this thread gets the only thing right - replacing de Gea should not have been a priority - but gets everything (title included) wrong
 
Remember the geese said:
Nothing wrong with digging Maguire or any other player out. Just like there's nothing wrong with a player digging Onana out.
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If you're going to make a point of very publicly digging out one of your teammates you better make sure you've got your own game in order, something that Onana clearly hasn't
 
Compared to de Gea I always have a queasy feeling whenever the opposition is in or around our box.

On the other hand I think that oppositions realize that our GK now is quite comfortable with his feet and primitive pressing is not that successful. Right now it does not help us going forward that much but there is hope once the starting 11 has settled in (whoever this will be in the end) we will get profit out of that.
 
Huddsred said:
If you're going to make a point of very publicly digging out one of your teammates you better make sure you've got your own game in order, something that Onana clearly hasn't
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No, I don't agree with that at all. As usual people have made far too much out of this nothing incident. They aren't babies. They are incredibly driven, ambitious individuals who want the best fot the team. Can't be all hugs and kisses all the time.
 
croadyman said:
Do people need a reminder of De Gea making a similar mistake away to WBA in first league game.

Would have been interesting to see if we had gone for him if the takeover was sorted. My first choice was always Maignan but with our restricted budget that was never gonna happen.

I saw a poster mention Raya/Sanchez but don't think we had any intention of going for them over Onana,that maybe a mistake but I guess we will just have to see on that one.
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How much more expensive would Maignan have really been? Milan sold their best midfielder to Newcastle for just over £60m, goalkeepers tend to be cheaper and we paid £50m for Onana. If anything Maignan may have cost slightly more or the same, ETH clearly preferred Onana for obvious reasons, it was never a choice. Given the quality of our signing I doubt we are even aware Maignan exists.

Signing Onana for £50m because the budget is tight makes no sense. He’s literally one of the most expensive goalkeepers ever.
 
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