I fear you’re right on this. On the broader point, he is another player who finds himself the target of endless criticism, almost regardless of how he plays. I find it a curious thing that people wish to spend their time in this way , but there you go.
9
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How is that a case of 'my job is done here' ? After he links up the play he gets up the pitch and receives the ball from Rashford on the edge of the box. If fact he's continually moving to make himself available throughout that clip.
Yeah I don’t understand that either. Even at the end of the clip he should’ve received the ball again as he’d found himself acres of space at the edge of the box. That clip is either proffered by someone who has (to quote the tweet) a u12 understanding of football, or an axe to grind.
He was so crucial to our performance in the first half and his injury nearly killed us.
Clearly ETH is a fan. I really hope he plays some part against palace cause he'll be needed and is fit to start against arsenal
Martial is closing in on Fellaini as the player i've wanted to see leave the club for the longest time.
Fellaini previously held the record of 6 years, from the day he signed until the day he left.
Martial has been here nearly 8 years and I've probably wanted him out 5 of those
Fellaini previously held the record of 6 years, from the day he signed until the day he left.
Martial has been here nearly 8 years and I've probably wanted him out 5 of those
Good to see EtH praising Martial, it's so obvious how much better we are with Martial playing as CF.
Also good to see him praising Martial's pressing.
Erik ten Hag says Martial is good at pressing? What does he know about it? Clueless manager.... all the caf experts claim that Martial is lazy and doesnt press.
sarcasm
Everyone thinks pressing is all about running behind the ball continously. Majority of the pressing is pre-planned and the players train them on a daily basis. The timing and the patterns is pretty much pre planned.
I always laugh when people come up with some random pics to prove their thought related to pressing.
On the bold part, i think it's perfectly understandable that a proportion of fans have lost patience with him given how long he's been at the club and the performances (including the attitude that he portrays) that he puts in most of the time. With regards to the endless criticism, one good half a match for every poor five matches will mean the majority of posts about him will be critical simply based on the maths of good v bad performances - and that's not including the amount of time he's actually available to play given the injuries.
Re the underline - it's a forum where in this case we're discussing the current performance of a player - which generally isn't that good. Should he put in a good performance I'm sure he'll receive praise by those who criticise him too. But that also doesn't mean all posts a poster makes are of that negative nature and spend most of their time criticising everything as the majority could be hugely positive and complimenting of the other players / manager or whatever thread they are commenting on.
It's a real shame our manager is so blind then.
His injury record is a big concern though.
The contrast between how the manager feels about him to the fans is jarring 
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
The contrast between how the manager feels about him to the fans is jarring
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
The fact that he played without being 100% fit tells alot, normally Martial does not do that.
Also, we saw the first 15 mins of second half without Martial we did struggle a little bit. I know the fans were moaning at him not pressing them too much but I feel that was Ten Hag's plan anyway, no point pressing for pressing sake, City with Ederson are really good at beating the press.
Most sensible posters know, and are on record as saying, we play out best football when he's in the team.The contrast between how the manager feels about him to the fans is jarring
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
It does however look like his body might be fecked, which is a massive shame.
Fellaini was trusted and liked by Moyes, van Gaal, Mourinho and Martinez. Still crapThe contrast between how the manager feels about him to the fans is jarring
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
Give Ten Hag £40m to replace Martial and I'm sure he'd chew your hand off
If Martial is to be believed than he has played without being fit before. Too often maybe, could be the cause of all his injuries and not looking as agile as he did before.
He said to France Football: “The last two seasons, I have regularly played injured. People don’t know that, I couldn’t accelerate during the four months following the Covid season. Solskjaer tells me that he needs me, so I play.
https://theathletic.com/3581976/2022/09/10/anthony-martial-mourinho-solskjaer-man-utd/
Cool, glad we have someone on here who knows the managers thoughts.
What hold up play? He loses the ball 1/3 of the time on a mediocre control.
The hold up play (and pressing) that without it let City just walk over us for the first part of the second half.
Because the manager actually understand what football is about and how valuable each of his players are to his team and plans while your usual moaners love moaning and couldn't care less about context.The contrast between how the manager feels about him to the fans is jarring
I'm glad for his sake that he's playing under a coach with true belief in him, his attitude this season has certainly reflected that
Take the City game for example, it was pretty obvious that Martial was not 100 fit and him lacking energy and not breaking into sprint wasn't due to laziness rather because of his circumstances with fitness in that particular game. But moaners don't need anything to get in the way of their crying so they completely ignore the context and paint it as Martial just being lazy, as if Ten would repeatedly pick him to start when available if he wasn't working hard for the team.
Ten Hag comes out and spell it how important Martial is to how we can play better and control game which was obvious in the City game after his substitution but you'll always have those pretending he's a net negative and we should rather rid of instead of hoping he stays fit. Then again this is the Caf and it wasn't long ago Rashford was a pariah, Casemiro was a fraud who came to retire here and earn himself a massive paycheck, etc. People will always moan I guess.
Needs replacing, no way good enough to be a starter for us. Would he accept being 2nd or 3rd choice though?
Will be interesting if like what he did for Varane in the summer, if they can come up with a program that will help him from breaking down and with a good option to rotate as needed, again like how he is managing Varane, then he will continue to be a key piece to his team going forward.
Unless you mean not good enough due to his fitness issues but, ETH has just flat out just said he is critical for how we want to play and he needed him to start for the City game, he is obviously more than good enough to be a starter when fit.
Unless you mean not good enough due to his fitness issues but, ETH has just flat out just said he is critical for how we want to play and he needed him to start for the City game, he is obviously more than good enough to be a starter when fit.
Ten Hag's a liar pal, keep up.
Isn't it strange that Rashford generally plays his best football when Martial is on the pitch - it could be a coincidence....or not
Weird how this applies to most of our attackers over the last few years. Can't fathom why.
On a serious note, I'm glad to hear it was Martial begging to start instead of ETH gambling. Anyone can see that Martial wasn't sprinting at all really during the derby. Good to see ETH trust the player and good to see that Martial didn't do anything daft that would have kept him out for weeks.
Speaking ahead of the midweek clash with Crystal Palace, Ten Hag discussed Martial's fitness and provided an insight into the forward's start against City: “I hoped to avoid that he was getting injured but he was complaining. That’s why he also didn’t train in the week and was a question mark.
“We decided, and he decided as well, to start. He begged to start. I knew the start would be so important in this game and he is really good at pressing and he is a really big element in our pressing.
“But I needed to re-evaluate at half-time as you saw he was not capable to go 100 per cent and this is what you need. And also to avoid him getting injured so we took him off but it also had a negative impact on our game after half-time.”
“We decided, and he decided as well, to start. He begged to start. I knew the start would be so important in this game and he is really good at pressing and he is a really big element in our pressing.
“But I needed to re-evaluate at half-time as you saw he was not capable to go 100 per cent and this is what you need. And also to avoid him getting injured so we took him off but it also had a negative impact on our game after half-time.”
Longer I've been around here the more I realize most posters general knowledge of football is very basic: "He's quick" "He's aggressive" "He creates" "He scores goals"
Pretty hilarious how much a dichotomy there is between ETH and a majority of fans on Martial. Just shows how biased people are once they make up their mind about someone
I actually thought he had a decent first half. Hopefully he is OK for Palace.
I'll play devil's advocates but outside of a few lunatics it's pretty clear that the issue that some have with Martial is that he doesn't match with the idea that they have of an ideal striker. The only issue with that view is that these people seem to refuse to see anything beyond their preference, there is and has always been a lot of different strikers and people should just accept it and move on.
Martial is far from perfect, his striking technique is suspect, he should run behind the defense a bit more often even though it's not his game and that it shouldn't be his first option but most importantly he is made of glass, those are his flaws. Now he is also very good when it comes to linking up, to offer pass options through the middle, he is very good at cutting pass angles and put opponents in tough positions when they are on the ball, someone like ETH will appreciate what Martial provides especially since it matches very well with Rashford who is a goal firts wide player, if Rashford was more of a playmaker then I would totally understand people issues with Martial but he isn't. I would also worry if United end up with a goal focused striker when we have Rashford and Bruno around him, that's too many shooters and not enough passers/playmakers, it's basically a 17-19 Lukaku situation.
Martial is far from perfect, his striking technique is suspect, he should run behind the defense a bit more often even though it's not his game and that it shouldn't be his first option but most importantly he is made of glass, those are his flaws. Now he is also very good when it comes to linking up, to offer pass options through the middle, he is very good at cutting pass angles and put opponents in tough positions when they are on the ball, someone like ETH will appreciate what Martial provides especially since it matches very well with Rashford who is a goal firts wide player, if Rashford was more of a playmaker then I would totally understand people issues with Martial but he isn't. I would also worry if United end up with a goal focused striker when we have Rashford and Bruno around him, that's too many shooters and not enough passers/playmakers, it's basically a 17-19 Lukaku situation.
Some people are just incapable of divorcing themselves from heat of the moment passion and watch the game analytically. Before the match, EtH mentioned how Rodri was the key player for City, so what did he do? Put Martial on pressing duty. Now, Martial was half fit at best and couldn’t run full tilt, but if you watch him very closely, instead of just assuming he was ambling around, he always shadowed the movement of their CBs while they were on the ball to cut off the passing lane to Rodri, so they either passed it around to each other, or put it on Cancelo to bring it out of the defense, at which point Bruno/Rashford would pressure him and create numerical advantage to win the ball in the middle 3rd and initiate a counter, at which point Martial was often the focal point who held up/progressed the ball while we broke out and got up the pitch. It got so bad for City at points that Bilva came into their own box to create more options instead of maintaining their overload in midfield, yet apparently that has nothing to do with our striker. The moment he went off for Antony, we instantly got hemmed into our own box because the latter couldn’t shadow their CBs effectively and couldn’t hold the ball up under pressure, so the ball kept on coming back and De Gea exacerbated the problem by hoofing it up in a panic with dreadful accuracy.
Now, the impact of his pressing may be dubious to some, and you can argue that other strikers can easily replicate/surpass that with their work rate (and I’d say it’s not so cut and dried, given that Antony was a workhorse yet he was hopeless in that instance). However, whatever you may think of him, there are not many players around with Martial technical ability/hold up play, and those who do tend to cost a lot of money. And without those qualities, a frenetic goal hanging striker may turn out to have a detrimental impact on our offensive output, requiring EtH to tweak his system. He most likely will have to anyway, because current Martial is made of glass, but as long as he plays, best make peace with it and try to understand his role in this system, instead of flooding this thread and the Match Day threads with the tired same old ‘lazy’, ‘don’t want it enough’, ‘body language’, ‘useless’, ‘nonexistent’, because the one who matters most clearly disagree with you, and has spelled it out multiple times.
Now, the impact of his pressing may be dubious to some, and you can argue that other strikers can easily replicate/surpass that with their work rate (and I’d say it’s not so cut and dried, given that Antony was a workhorse yet he was hopeless in that instance). However, whatever you may think of him, there are not many players around with Martial technical ability/hold up play, and those who do tend to cost a lot of money. And without those qualities, a frenetic goal hanging striker may turn out to have a detrimental impact on our offensive output, requiring EtH to tweak his system. He most likely will have to anyway, because current Martial is made of glass, but as long as he plays, best make peace with it and try to understand his role in this system, instead of flooding this thread and the Match Day threads with the tired same old ‘lazy’, ‘don’t want it enough’, ‘body language’, ‘useless’, ‘nonexistent’, because the one who matters most clearly disagree with you, and has spelled it out multiple times.
Yeah, except we scored the goals that won the game in the second half. Someone else can easily do the job he supposedly does at the same level.
Yes , ok. On reflection I think you’re right.
Tbh the post was more of a mood post for me- I just get a bit fed up sometimes with the slagging off that some players get- I’d just like a bit more balance. But yeah, fair point.
Anyone except 90% of posters on the match day thread, what a cesspit that was (not sure why I expect differently mind)
Who? certainly not Antony
reminds me that some know it all in the match day thread was claiming ETH instructed him not to press
He will be benched in a month by Wout.
Is he the new Lingard? Presses/holds up the ball well? Which is good enough to play for Manchester United? What happened to the days when you wanted your CF to be prolific in front of goal, or am I being spoiled? This is a guy who's scored 8 league goals in the last three seasons and some of you make out he's the new Pele.
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Let’s not forget he was the most expensive teen in the world when we signed him.
He’s not lived up to the promise. Simple.
He’s not lived up to the promise. Simple.
I think we have to shoulder some of the responsibility on that one
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