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2022-23 Performances


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6.1 Season Average Rating
Appearances
59
Goals
14
Assists
14
Yellow cards
12
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If you are responsible for coin toss, you should probably know whether to go first or second in a penalty shootout to not handicap your team.


A) People said where are the Ole and Bruno doubters now when we last reached a final… and we didn’t win that one either. Hopefully we win on Sunday and Bruno gets to lift the trophy with Maguire, but we haven’t won it yet.

B) Bruno in the Europa League final opted for United to go second in the penalty shootout, which is a pretty grave error. You are statistically significantly less likely to win a penalty shootout when you go second. You should always choose to go first.
Didn't Argentina just win the world cup going second in the shootout? Am I remembering it wrong?

Also what is "significantly less"? Can you provide numbers?
 
If you are responsible for coin toss, you should probably know whether to go first or second in a penalty shootout to not handicap your team.


A) People said where are the Ole and Bruno doubters now when we last reached a final… and we didn’t win that one either. Hopefully we win on Sunday and Bruno gets to lift the trophy with Maguire, but we haven’t won it yet.

B) Bruno in the Europa League final opted for United to go second in the penalty shootout, which is a pretty grave error. You are statistically significantly less likely to win a penalty shootout when you go second. You should always choose to go first.

I love it. People blaming Bruno for the loss in the Europa final because he chose to go 2nd in a penalty shoot out.

This is how far Bruno haters will go.
 
His assist for Rashfords first seems to be getting a hell of a lot of admiration but unless I'm missing something massively, it was just a good outside of the foot through ball. It's nothing special at all from a technical pov. If he did that with his left foot then yes that would be mad but it's a pass that any midfielder should be able to do with his right foot. He recieved the ball, one touch, looked up and spotted rashford in acres of space with Leicesters CBs attempting some sort of offside trap. I expect nothing less from someone as good as Bruno.

Not taking anything away from Bruno at all bere as I'm one of his biggest fans but surely anyone that has played football before knows what I mean?
Was my judgement as well. As you say, not going to take anything away from him but it was a pass at the halfway line in behind a defensive line who did a crazy thing in pushing up against seemingly the most inform player in England at the moment. Bruno does those passes every once in a while with a certain percentage of success and good for him that it paid off yesterday but the goal came from criminal level of naivety of the Leicester defense in that moment.


Yeah just seen the quotes:



Gonna be a lot of people on the CAF fewming about this. In their eyes, Ten Hag was meant to come in and end Bruno's career at United: Making him captain, talking about him as the best player on the pitch? Pure fume. :lol:

They'll lay low today but just watch the next time Bruno doesn't have a goal contribution in a game.

That is be a pretty weak argument against the critics isn't it? I mean, what do you expect the manager to do - talking him down, being openly critical in public after a 3-0 win? He wasn't even critical after bad games and the manager will always talk players up - doesn't mean that internally there aren't points they are working on.
We have no other viable candidate for captain and spiritwise he is definitely a good fit (even though I personally can't stand his moaning and antics). Many people who were critical about him were because he was some sort of threat to our own team because he lost the ball in stupid moments in unnecessary way (happened against Barcelona and the games before as well). Many were thinking about putting him in one of the attacking positions to place him where the team benefitted the most - in front of opposition goal and away from our own goal without the ball. That seems to be what ETH is going with these days and it seems to work so go for it. But after throwing almost 200million on two players who were supposed to make the RW their own I am sure Bruno won't stay there.

Hope he gets to lift a trophy Sunday
Thats for sure, whole team deserves a trophy for what they do this year.
 
Didn't Argentina just win the world cup going second in the shootout? Am I remembering it wrong?

Also what is "significantly less"? Can you provide numbers?
Historically, teams win around 60% of penalty shootouts kicking first and around 40% going second. There’s a reason why FIFA trialled the ABBA order in penalty shootouts and why tennis has an ABBA order in tiebreakers. The pressure of usually behind on the scoreboard and having a greater likelihood of more “must score” penalties adds up.
I love it. People blaming Bruno for the loss in the Europa final because he chose to go 2nd in a penalty shoot out.

This is how far Bruno haters will go.
There’s not really anyway of spinning it. After ET, we were roughly 50-50 to win the Europa League. At the moment we won the coin toss, we were 60-40 to win the shootout. After Bruno spoke, we were 40-60 underdogs. Bruno’s decision in the biggest game of his career threw away a huge amount of equity. Even the referee had to ask twice to confirm as he was surprised.

I don’t hate Bruno. That’s just accountability for your preparedness and decision-making. I’ll criticise anyone who makes such a boneheaded decision. He would surely never make the same decision again now. He must surely know now.
 
Historically, teams win around 60% of penalty shootouts kicking first and around 40% going second. There’s a reason why FIFA trialled the ABBA order in penalty shootouts and why tennis has an ABBA order in tiebreakers. The pressure of usually behind on the scoreboard and having a greater likelihood of more “must score” penalties adds up.

There’s not really anyway of spinning it. After ET, we were roughly 50-50 to win the Europa League. At the moment we won the coin toss, we were 60-40 to win the shootout. After Bruno spoke, we were 40-60 underdogs. Bruno’s decision in the biggest game of his career threw away a huge amount of equity. Even the referee had to ask twice to confirm as he was surprised.

I don’t hate Bruno. That’s just accountability for your preparedness and decision-making. I’ll criticise anyone who makes such a boneheaded decision. He would surely never make the same decision again now. He must surely know now.

Are you able to provide evidence of this 60% and 40% ? When was it carried out, how many games was it ?

Please provide a link or something so we can have a look at this.

Accountability? The accountability is on the players who take the penalty to score.
 
Are you able to provide evidence of this 60% and 40% ? When was it carried out, how many games was it ?

Please provide a link or something so we can have a look at this.

Accountability? The accountability is on the players who take the penalty to score.
There’s been some books and larger studies on the subject, but here’s one snippet in tweet form for easy linking:

 
I just had a quick look at the list of Fifa and Uefa world cup/euro cup penalty shootouts and it's something like 11-11 in european championships and actually 18-17 in favour of second shooters in the world cup. Basically dead on 50-50.
 
I just had a quick look at the list of Fifa and Uefa world cup/euro cup penalty shootouts and it's something like 11-11 in european championships and actually 18-17 in favour of second shooters in the world cup. Basically dead on 50-50.
Good example of why you don’t use a minuscule sample.
 
Just gotta love how he seems to be adored by every United player. Proper leader out there. I really like him out wide too. Sancho as a 10 is quality and way more controlled, while Bruno out wide is more like a front 3 player where his main and only role is chance creation which is never an issue with him. Puts him kind of in that TAA channel like for Liverpool where he can pump balls into the box too. That second half yesterday was phenomenal.

This way we still get that work rate out wide and control and composure through the middle. Antony I really like, but it gives us a different option which is potentially even better and just depends on the form of players. Proper competition for places between Sancho and Antony essentially.

Now if only Martial could be fit for a run of games to play up top and have Rashford on the left with these guys like yesterday... Huge potential.
 
If you are responsible for coin toss, you should probably know whether to go first or second in a penalty shootout to not handicap your team.

You think Bruno made that decision on the spot without any discussion in the team meeting?
 
There’s been some books and larger studies on the subject, but here’s one snippet in tweet form for easy linking:



So when you look at the European Championship, World cups, its closer to 50%.

Also, I dont know if you know this but its not a sole captains decision, they speak about this with the team and management.

In finals there are 2 things, one decides to chose when to shoot, the other choses what side, so maybe Bruno wanted to shoot on a different end.?
 
It's two of the biggest competitions with the most pressure. I'd say it's good enough sample for me to call this whole thing nonsense.
Anyway, I don’t want to completely derail this thread, so I’ll leave the pen discussion here.

TL;DR: Bruno’s playing great, but let’s not celebrate his having won United silverware before we actually get the Carabao won on Sunday. I remember a very similar mindset before we faced the minnows Villarreal winning their first ever major trophy in the Europa League final. We need to actually deliver now.
 
Historically, teams win around 60% of penalty shootouts kicking first and around 40% going second. There’s a reason why FIFA trialled the ABBA order in penalty shootouts and why tennis has an ABBA order in tiebreakers. The pressure of usually behind on the scoreboard and having a greater likelihood of more “must score” penalties adds up.

There’s not really anyway of spinning it. After ET, we were roughly 50-50 to win the Europa League. At the moment we won the coin toss, we were 60-40 to win the shootout. After Bruno spoke, we were 40-60 underdogs. Bruno’s decision in the biggest game of his career threw away a huge amount of equity. Even the referee had to ask twice to confirm as he was surprised.

I don’t hate Bruno. That’s just accountability for your preparedness and decision-making. I’ll criticise anyone who makes such a boneheaded decision. He would surely never make the same decision again now. He must surely know now.

If the decision was left up to Bruno to make, at the end of an exhausting 120 minutes of football, then really that’s just another black mark against Ole. These things should be thought about and planned in advance. Details like that matter. If the data is compelling as you say then it should have been made perfectly clear to Bruno what call he should make before a ball was kicked. At the end of the day, he’s paid to kick a ball, not analyse penalty shoot-out data. There are other people at the club who should have been doing that.

Not to mention that a bad decision after a coin toss is an insane piece of evidence to use to support the misguided claims that we can’t win trophies with Bruno in the team.
 
If the decision was left up to Bruno to make, at the end of an exhausting 120 minutes of football, then really that’s just another black mark against Ole. These things should be thought about and planned in advance. Details like that matter. If the data is compelling as you say then it should have been made perfectly clear to Bruno what call he should make before a ball was kicked. At the end of the day, he’s paid to kick a ball, not analyse penalty shoot-out data. There are other people at the club who should have been doing that.
Somewhat agree, but I would have assumed that it was engrained knowledge at this stage, like opting to be in the centre lane for sprinting or swimming, that you should elect to go first in a pen shootout. At best, you have a good advantage; at worst, you are losing nothing.

Maybe there is isn’t general awareness though.
 
Somewhat agree, but I would have assumed that it was engrained knowledge at this stage, like opting to be in the centre lane for sprinting or swimming, that you should elect to go first in a pen shootout. At best, you have a good advantage; at worst, you are losing nothing.

Maybe there is isn’t general awareness though.

Maybe, maybe not. Ole still should have briefed his captain. If he didn’t. That’s on him.
 
Maybe, maybe not. Ole still should have briefed his captain. If he didn’t. That’s on him.
I’m fairly certain that it was acknowledged that someone in the coaching staff gave that information to Bruno before the coin toss and told him if he wins the toss to go first.
 




Small things like this are why he's our best captain since Vidic in my eyes. He's absolutely in tune with just about everyone in the dressing room and he shows his leadership on and off it constantly.
 
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Are you able to provide evidence of this 60% and 40% ? When was it carried out, how many games was it ?

Please provide a link or something so we can have a look at this.

Accountability? The accountability is on the players who take the penalty to score.
Me and my mates playing one man Wembley circa. 1998
 
Didn't Argentina just win the world cup going second in the shootout? Am I remembering it wrong?

Also what is "significantly less"? Can you provide numbers?
Statistically it's around 55-45. It's common knowledge you always choose to shoot first.
 
His fitness level is insane.

Runs a full 90 every match non stop without letting up, while still maintaining a near perfect injury record.

I still hope Sancho as a 10 will allow us to rest him a bit more though.

He's so crucial to our team. Though I can't see it happening, I'd prefer we didn't take the chance that he may burn out as he gets older, or start to pick up regular niggles and knocks.


Also, nobody cares about a random penalty shootout ages ago. It's over. Stop crying about it. We're in a final soon and in the most exciting time for the club, but some of you can't help yourselves crying about an opportunity from a few years ago to fuel your dislike.
Be less pathetic.
 


Made more starts than any other player in the big 5 leagues since his debut for us. He's an absolute legend. Does anyone have his total minute splayed this season, including international? I'm sure it must be something ridiculous.


That’s ridiculous. What a guy.
 
His fitness level is insane.

Runs a full 90 every match non stop without letting up, while still maintaining a near perfect injury record.

I still hope Sancho as a 10 will allow us to rest him a bit more though.

He's so crucial to our team. Though I can't see it happening, I'd prefer we didn't take the chance that he may burn out as he gets older, or start to pick up regular niggles and knocks.


Also, nobody cares about a random penalty shootout ages ago. It's over. Stop crying about it. We're in a final soon and in the most exciting time for the club, but some of you can't help yourselves crying about an opportunity from a few years ago to fuel your dislike.
Be less pathetic.
You would think we could give him a rest for West Ham in the cup but are probably unlikely to.
 
B) Bruno in the Europa League final opted for United to go second in the penalty shootout, which is a pretty grave error. You are statistically significantly less likely to win a penalty shootout when you go second. You should always choose to go first.

Right. Sorry, I thought you meant HE went second in the shootout. Which seemed like the most arbitrary criticism ever.... This makes more sense. Though it still seems like a harsh thing to hold against his character, I can at least see the logic in it.
 
Him passing the ball to Sancho on the third goal when he was clear to shoot should be highlighted.

Our players never pass in that kind of situations. I mean never. Just see the chance Sancho missed when clear on goal. Was so easy to square it.
 
I said this in the match day thread, he is the Portuguese Ji Sung Park. Three Lung Bruno, man has unlimited energy.

He is without question the best player we've signed since since RVP.
 
It was discussed after the EL final that Bruno made a mistake and should have chosen to go first instead.
But we don’t have the details anyway.
Was he told by someone during preparation to go first?
Is it that common knowledge among players that it doesn’t need to be told anyway?
Etc. etc.

And we don’t know how it would have turned out anyway.
Same way everyone blamed Ole for not subbing on Henderson for the shoot out, only for Henderson to look as much of a clown as DdG when he faced a shoot-out a few months later.
 
Him passing the ball to Sancho on the third goal when he was clear to shoot should be highlighted.

Our players never pass in that kind of situations. I mean never. Just see the chance Sancho missed when clear on goal. Was so easy to square it.

The reason why he is Ten Hag's captain, he gets it.

He has broad shoulders and will accept not scoring for 10/15 games but when he sees a fellow colleague struggle, he knows how important goals are to them.

He has done this for Rashford in the past, giving him penalties so he can score and get confidence, he knew Sancho needs goals so passed it to him.

This is what Bruno does, he puts his team mates first.
 
Him passing the ball to Sancho on the third goal when he was clear to shoot should be highlighted.

Our players never pass in that kind of situations. I mean never. Just see the chance Sancho missed when clear on goal. Was so easy to square it.
I am probably too harsh on our own players, and I also probably don't watch other teams enough to make this comment accurately. But I noticed that our players don't seem to pass much in front of goals in general. When they have to pass, it is usually too late to get a goal. Rashford (along with others including Bruno), despite his hot goal-scoring form, can be guilty of it at times. Teams like City seem to pass more in front of the goal to make sure the player who has the final strike will have the cleanest possible chance. It might be the reason they were able to play at the highest level without a very good 9.

It could be one of the factors separating a +20 goal differential from a +60 goal differential at the end of the season.
 
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I am probably too harsh on our own players, and I also probably don't watch other teams enough to make this comment accurately. But I noticed that our players don't seem to pass much in front of goals in general. When they have to pass, it is usually too late to get a goal. Rashford (along with others including Bruno), despite his hot goal-scoring form, can be guilty of it at times. Teams like City seem to pass more in front of the goal to make sure the player who has the final strike will have the cleanest possible chance. It might be the reason they were able to play at the highest level without a very good 9.

It could be one of the factors separating a +20 goal differential from a +60 goal differential at the end of the season.
That's exactly what I mean. Pep's Barca was truly amazing at it, attackers scored shitload of those tap-ins. It requires a high level of confidence, I think our players are encouraged to shoot because they literally never go for a pass in that situation - that's why I mentioned Bruno here.
 
Him passing the ball to Sancho on the third goal when he was clear to shoot should be highlighted.

Our players never pass in that kind of situations. I mean never. Just see the chance Sancho missed when clear on goal. Was so easy to square it.

Similar assist to Rashford earlier in the season. Can’t remember against who. Gave Rashford an unmissable tap in at the far post.
 
Just watched the highlights back for the Leicester game. His assist for the first goal is just ridiculous. Imo out of everyone in world football only he would even attempt such a pass, let alone pull it off.
 
Similar assist to Rashford earlier in the season. Can’t remember against who. Gave Rashford an unmissable tap in at the far post.

eriksen assist for rashford vs arsenal?
martial tried and failed a "similar" (unselfish) assist to rashford in his last match
 
eriksen assist for rashford vs arsenal?
martial tried and failed a "similar" (unselfish) assist to rashford in his last match
Yeah it’s quite a normal and common play and certainly overloading the wide areas and playing one twos is a Ten Hag tactic, we do it all the time. Shaw probably more than most. Bruno wasn’t in a great position to shoot in any case. The ball back to Sancho was the correct and easiest option and something we are clearly working on tactically.
 
There has got to be a 10 minute highlight video of his teammates missing sitters and ruining his assist numbers. Some would have been beautiful goals too, like Dalot ruining a peach of a cross.
 
There has got to be a 10 minute highlight video of his teammates missing sitters and ruining his assist numbers. Some would have been beautiful goals too, like Dalot ruining a peach of a cross.
We’ve always seemed to do that, miss simple chances to score unbelievable goals. I remember Ronaldo in his first stint away to Villa beating two players all ends up and putting a perfect rabona cross in that Ruud missed the header from 5 yards Centre of goal. I’m sure it’s the same for other clubs but it’s what makes goals like Rashfords against Palace really enjoyable.
 
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