Just such a waste of a spot at the moment, almost like having having a second worse fullback on the pitch, part of me thinks we'd get more with rafael and smalling paying on the flank, at least Rafael might try to carry the ball. Thing Moyes has given himself a headache because he's so low on options to change it around there with injuries and him completely neglecting Zaha and Ando, he can't replace Valencia with another winger and he can't change the system easily.
Antonio Valencia | 2013/14 Performances
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
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He was okay tonight. Void of inspiration but put a few decent balls in.
Agreed. This was one of those rare occasions when some of his "failed" crosses were actually very well defended. Still, it's gotten to the point where Valencia's continued presence in the team is a reminder that we are incapable of changing things up and turning things around. As unfair as it is to say about a player who has a lot of loyalty to the club and represents a lot of admirable values in the modern game, it'd be a positive sign if we were to sell him.
Hardly noticed him on the pitch but did okay later on I thought. He actually tried to find a man with his cross instead of smashing it into the defender, which was a nice change, but really something that you're thought at a 6 year old playing on the wing. It's like praising him for not doing as much wrong as he did before, if only because he got the ball a lot less.
You're the starting winger for Manchester United. You should be skinning fullbacks and putting good crosses in at the very least. Chipping in with 5-10 goals a season would be a nice bonus. Look at Navas for City and Walcott for Arsenal for how good United's right winger should be.
Actually, nearly every team in the league has a better RW than us right now.
Actually, nearly every team in the league has a better RW than us right now.
Moyes will probably continue to start him, just like SAF did. It's even worse now though, seeing as you know, we're fecking 8th in the league.
He must be the one fecking Moyes daughter and has the pics to keep himself in the side!
Stealing a living at the moment....
Quality player. Bite?
That's what bothers me though. That we've made seemingly little effort to deviate from that.
Our fans will try and defend Moyes by saying he's making similar decisions to SAF. The problem is, he's no SAF!
[Suarez joke]
I said it before and ill say it again, Valencia needs to stop doing bicep curls and start training on his crosses. If this pile of poo can be a starter for United then we might as well give some of our kitchen staff and security guards a try, they might teach him a thing or two.
He's such a frustrating player. So many parts of his game are a positive. His work rate, the runs he makes, the positions he gets himself into are all fecking excellent. But all of that means absolute jack if you're going to be as wasteful with the ball as he is. His final ball is fecking atrocious and I don't understand Moyes' absolute fascination with him.
He should either be dropped for Zaha (yeh right) or dropped for Januzaj and play someone else on the left. Even if it meant putting Welbeck there.
He should either be dropped for Zaha (yeh right) or dropped for Januzaj and play someone else on the left. Even if it meant putting Welbeck there.
I will cry tears of joy the day he leaves
Valencia should not be playing at the moment, but this sort of revisionism is a shame. He was at least good and often really good up until last season - well worth the money we paid.
I feel sorry for him, to be honest. If there's any player that deserves to get back into the form that he has shown for us in the past then it's him. It's reached the point though now that few are going to remember him for being one of the best wingers in Europe, the guy that sacked his agent, the model professional and the guy that kept Nani out the team in his best season. He'll just be that shit player that represented most of what went wrong with our decline (assuming that is what happens).
This is what irks me.
He's basically asked to be our one and only attacking plan. As good a winger as he was at his best, that was never going to work. As part of a well functioning attacking unit he can cause mayhem, but that doesn't mean he's supposed to BE that well functioning attacking unit.
Aside from the Valencia panic-pass, we're entirely reliant upon set pieces or someone waving their magic wand about (no I'm not talking to you mr. Giggs).
Usually it's been Rooney or Januzaj dragging us out of the mire, or at least trying to.
We need so many players in atm.
A CB, a LB, a pair of CM, a pair of wingers and a striker as Rooney is leaving in the summer...
So getting good quality players in all of these positions will cost around and above 150m!
So does anyone here thinks that the Glazers will fund Moyes with that amount after what we are witnessing from our manager??
No way they will fund a managers they have great doubts about..
A CB, a LB, a pair of CM, a pair of wingers and a striker as Rooney is leaving in the summer...
So getting good quality players in all of these positions will cost around and above 150m!
So does anyone here thinks that the Glazers will fund Moyes with that amount after what we are witnessing from our manager??
No way they will fund a managers they have great doubts about..
He's black ffs
He's one of the most one dimensional professional players I can think of, add to that, he's somehow one of the main players in one of the biggest clubs in the world. it sort of makes no sense really. I mean, before it was ok, cause somehow he still managed to beat his man and grab assists galore, but now I'm genuinely starting to think that was because the full backs he was up against were probably so fecking bemused that they were up against a winger with one foot who could either only knock the ball past them or swivel 270 degrees. Maybe they were so shocked at this that they couldn't actually figure him out cause he was beyond all levels of comprehension for a professional footballer. Maybe that's why he somehow bested Ashley Cole, the best left back in the world, because Cole was so used to coming up against technically proficient wingers in the PL and CL that he literally had no clue how to deal with this one footed bag of pace.
I wonder for the next year did Chelsea train Cole to deal with him by having him play against a one legged jaguar with a football attached to its leg in training? Just have it run up and down the field chasing a zebra teddy attached to one of those speed rails and ask Cole to get the ball off it. That's literally the only completely logical explanation I can think of for all of this.
I wonder for the next year did Chelsea train Cole to deal with him by having him play against a one legged jaguar with a football attached to its leg in training? Just have it run up and down the field chasing a zebra teddy attached to one of those speed rails and ask Cole to get the ball off it. That's literally the only completely logical explanation I can think of for all of this.
It saddens me to say this since I've been a huge fan (I have this name on the back of my 10/11 jersey), but I think he's one of the players we should look to get rid of in our inevitable summer clearance. He holds us back with his predictable play and he seems to be every premier league leftback's favourite winger at the moment.
I think half the problem is we miss any real penalty box threat.
Sure if we can put the ball directly onto Rooney's head he will score, or if the ball lands at Hernandez he will tap it in. But when against a team that is defending like their lives depend on it, we have nobody really that will out jump or out muscle a defender to get the header first. Not since RVN have we had a true target man to aim these crosses at.
I'm not saying we need to sign Andy Carroll, but if we are going to persist with the tactic of getting the ball wide and just chipping crosses into the box and hoping for the best, somebody like Dzeko / Mandzukic would be ideal.
Yesterday for instance Welbeck just got nowhere near any of the crosses, hell even Januzaj got on more cutbacks and had more chances in the box.
Sure if we can put the ball directly onto Rooney's head he will score, or if the ball lands at Hernandez he will tap it in. But when against a team that is defending like their lives depend on it, we have nobody really that will out jump or out muscle a defender to get the header first. Not since RVN have we had a true target man to aim these crosses at.
I'm not saying we need to sign Andy Carroll, but if we are going to persist with the tactic of getting the ball wide and just chipping crosses into the box and hoping for the best, somebody like Dzeko / Mandzukic would be ideal.
Yesterday for instance Welbeck just got nowhere near any of the crosses, hell even Januzaj got on more cutbacks and had more chances in the box.
He can fill-in at right back though (we can debate how successfully another time) and I can't imagine that given where we need funds spent in the next two windows that the position of RB will be a priority so for that reason alone I can't see him going.
He shouldnt play on current form but Moyes' thinks we dont have an alternative. Maybe it could have been beneficial to build up Zaha since the younger players are doing much better than the senior ones
I never said he wasn't good, he had an impressive 09/10 season as well as parts of 11/12 but he isn't a top player and isn't a player good enough for Manchester United, perhaps this message has been misconstrued in what I was saying.
For me he is a one trick pony and it appears defenders have cottoned on to what that one trick is thus he is no longer effective. His inability or refusal to use his left foot sums him up in that in the modern game, players like him are outdated and on their way to being obsolete.
After we lost the Champions League to Barca, Sir Alex said that his job was to close the gap on the Spanish side, that gap will NEVER close as long as we have a player like Valencia starting and being relied upon.
According to a recent quote he works on crosses a lot. With De Gea, the goalkeeper. Which makes little sense.
Maybe he doesn't work with anything representing defenders, or anything representing attackers for that matter. Just him hitting it accross the pitch to no one. Would certainly explain a lot.
He should have turned to Zaha....
Why is he so different now to Valencia from 11/12? He was a battering ram. He wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary back then. He just ran at the full back, beating him for pace, and whipping in mostly decent crosses. Now he looks for any other option than to take on the fullback, and his crosses have turned to shite. He was my favourite player up until last season. Even after that horror injury, he somehow came back stronger. Off the ball he still looks lightning quick, so why is he a shadow of the Valencia of 09/10 and 11/12? Even at Wigan, he was always a problem for alot of teams. I remember the home game against Wigan where he turned Evra inside out, and back then Evra wasn't the carthorse he is now.
It really is a mystery, how such a simple and effective player can regress so rapidly. I don't buy into the whole "defenders have figured him out". Have they figured out how to run faster than him? He played for Wigan for 3 years, and then 3 years for us before he really become ineffectual. Did it take defenders 6 years to figure out that he knocks the ball on, chases it, and crosses it in?
It really is a mystery, how such a simple and effective player can regress so rapidly. I don't buy into the whole "defenders have figured him out". Have they figured out how to run faster than him? He played for Wigan for 3 years, and then 3 years for us before he really become ineffectual. Did it take defenders 6 years to figure out that he knocks the ball on, chases it, and crosses it in?
He's lost half a yard of pace and it's often the difference between him getting a cross in and not.
On top of that, he had Scholes switching the play which meant that it was difficult to double up on him as Scholes would spread the play and find the spare man. Right now we are so predictable in using him as our attacking outlet that he get's doubled up on often and all that happens when he passes inside is he finds Cleverley who passes it back to Smalling or vice versa and the opposition holds space and manages to control that area of the field.
This is what I was responding to:
CLK_FPC said:
Unless I've misinterpreted what that means. Regardless, a few things: 10/11 was also excellent for him on a personal basis. Nani rightly earned a lot of plaudits that year yet, contrary to what people believe, he was not actually outstanding throughout. Valencia took his place in the team and was not only an integral part of that unit, but also fantastic individually.
Secondly, Valencia at his best was good enough. It's unreasonable to use that Barcelona team as some sort of yardstick to judge whether a player is worthy of a place in a great team - we could build 10 teams from hereon in and have 9 of them get slaughtered by a team of that quality. One might put up some sort of fight, but most would not - that Barcelona team was a freak occurrence as far as I'm concerned. Regardless, it's worth remembering that we had Owen Hargreaves playing for us in 2008 on the right in our double winning year towards the back end - a player who merely 'did a job' and was not top class in that position. He was nowhere near as good as Valencia really, yet no-one at the time had a problem with him playing for one of the best United teams ever in the very same position.
As for everyone sussing Valencia out at once, I'd say that's unlikely. Everyone knew what he was about anyway at his best, so the idea of every single full back in the league and Europe simultaneously developing the ability to cope with his speed and directness doesn't sit right. It's clear with him that it's a mental situation more than anything, and he needs to move elsewhere whilst he's still got his athleticism.
Dont think pace has much to do with it.
He still beats his man, the issue is that he cant cross to save his life. All he does is bang the ball full hilt to either the LB or the LCB. They must really have a sore limb for all the crosses banged straight into them,
Its an extremely good question to which there is no real answer, I feel, other than he's totally lost his confidence. It was quite clear last year that he was crushed by the weight of the number 7 shirt and the expectation that went with it. Now he seems to think he's in the spotlight all the time, that people are judging how he recovers from his unsuccessful stint as our number 7 and he looks like he's got stage fright.
I'm convinced he only plays because of his defensive work rate. That can be the only explanation. Can't think of any other reason why SAF and now Moyes would persist with him despite his abysmal performances.
Valencia's very much a confidence player, dropping him would essentially obliterate any slim chance we have of seeing him recapture any sort of form. Having said that, I'd still sell him, among a good few others, in the summer.
We've been saying this for 18 months. I'd rather we didn't give him another 12 months to "find his confidence" personally.
Well we've been playing him more or less in every game which has resulted in zilch, it might do him good to rest him for a few weeks.
That's brilliant, Valencia is playing shit but we can't drop him because that means he'll lose confidence and play shit 
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