Yeah those two have been the definition of inspiring this season...
12
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 36
- Clean sheets
- 18
- Goals
- 2
- Assists
- 2
- Yellow cards
- 0
- Status
Point is that he has strapped Aguero on multiple occasion. Latest being the one from last season where we won 1-0 and his best was when we creamed Manchester City 4-2, though I think he scored a consolation goal(Wasn't Smalling's fault), He kept him relatively quiet that day, and this is one of the most lethal strikers we are talking about.
Agreed.
I detest the idea of giving the captaincy to recently-hired mercenaries, I'll die before we hand the captaincy to mercenaries who don't even try. Ludicrous idea.
I think he is a compromise. Evidence that we're not where we need to be. Wes Brown was a much better centre back and he couldn't get in the old United sides playing as one.
To all those who think Smalling is inferior to Evans. Please remember:
MK Dons.
thats all im going to say.
MK Dons.
thats all im going to say.
Absolute rubbish. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it was totally a kneejerk and thoughtless reaction/comment
Mourinho has said in an interview that he was carrying an injury before the Chelsea game. Hindsight says he shouldn't have played.
Caf is full of kneejerks though. Had a bad game, sure. Still probably ours (and England's for what it's worth) best CB. Main complaint is him holding shirts when he doesn't need to, it will cost us a couple of penalties a season.
People saying Jonny Evans is/was better...
Caf is full of kneejerks though. Had a bad game, sure. Still probably ours (and England's for what it's worth) best CB. Main complaint is him holding shirts when he doesn't need to, it will cost us a couple of penalties a season.
People saying Jonny Evans is/was better...
It was quite obvious from the get-go. I mean he was absolutely diabolical that game, but jesus the overreaction was/is horrible.
Mourinho has said in an interview that he was carrying an injury before the Chelsea game. Hindsight says he shouldn't have played.
Caf is full of kneejerks though. Had a bad game, sure. Still probably ours (and England's for what it's worth) best CB. Main complaint is him holding shirts when he doesn't need to, it will cost us a couple of penalties a season.
People saying Jonny Evans is/was better...
Caf logic = you're only as good as your last game. So, that's it. He's league one quality, and the worst defender we've had in the last 100 years. Not fit to lace Tyler Blacketts boots.
He had an injury during the Chelsea game? Doesn't matter, decapitate him!
One of the best defenders in the world. Chelsea game is irrelevant
I feel like a lot of the criticism Smalling's received on here this season has been unwarranted and probably a result of the massive hard-on people seem to have for Blind. I know football can be quite cut throat at times but the shift in opinion from last season is pretty amazing.
Either way, I hope the injury he had isn't too serious and he can rediscover his form. We'll need him at his best with Bailly out for the foreseeable.
Either way, I hope the injury he had isn't too serious and he can rediscover his form. We'll need him at his best with Bailly out for the foreseeable.
He's nowhere near that standard.
Not many defenders were better than him last season.
Let me put it this way, some people here are just assholes, he was absolutely amazing in the first half of the season last year and he only dropped litle bit of from in the second part but he was still very good, considering how the team changed around him, it was fecking great season he had. But there are players who doesnt look clumsy as him like Blind or Bailly and are already favourites over him... Some players just can't win you over unless they put in world class performances every game like Smalling or Lingard. Regardless of few bad games they had they are great players and in case of Smalling, established player for the starting 11 and Lingard as a nice little squad player...
there are many more other problems than the two, yet people terget them in times of criticism almost like if they played for Liverpool
Any news on his injury? Will he back for today's game?
He's better than Evans and would be a good back up CH but he's nowhere near the level required for a first choice defender at united. As most of us said on here during the summer, we needed two quality centre halves but sadly we only ended up with one and it's going to cost us all season (assuming we don't address it in Jan).
This type of shift of opinion is one of the reasons I rarely post in the football forums on the CAF these days. It's very hard to take this level of fickleness with any seriousness. Last season there was a strong contingent of posters saying Smalling was the best centre half in the league which I thought was extremely premature, overstating how good Smalling was and how long he had been playing to a high standard.
This season you get a strong contingent saying he is no longer good enough for the club and overstating his weaknesses and so called period of bad form.
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Here's ten defenders who can lay claim to having better seasons than Smalling last season:
Laurent Koscielny
Pepe
Sergio Ramos
Diego Godin
Gerald Pique
Jose Gimenez
Toby Alderweireld
Jerome Boateng
Mats Hummels
Leonardo Bonucci
All of those players had seasons when their team either won or challenged for a league or European trophy or qualified for the Champions League. Some of them also had good International tournaments as well. Smalling was in a side which accomplished neither of those and actually managed to get sent off in the one domestic cup final United managed to get to last season. There's more alternatives if you do some research as well.
Don't take this as a sign that I don't rate Smalling. I think he's a good player who has progressed reasonably well in the last two seasons and I don't think he has been particularly bad this season. I think he is a generally solid defender. However, he is yet to prove himself as one of the world's best. To do that he has to prove himself against the best players in the world at the highest level. He's not done that yet.
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It's really insane. He's been amazing for a few years now, but on the Caf he's one of those who have to play 10 great games to make up for one terrible one before people stop complaining about him. Absolute beast when he's on form, and he's been on form for long stretches now with a terrible game in between. We need to stop being so fecking rash to write off a player.
I am sure you watched at least 8*20 games in bundesleague, premierleague, la liga, seria A excluding all United games to make a nice opinion about players who play for comfortably more settled clubs who dominate the leagues.
Plenty of time to invest into watching other players, hmm.. I wouldn't definitely say that some players had better seasons than other esepcially when I don't watch them every 90 minutes in 5O games per season, and don't see every little mistake they make, because everybody makes mistakes and it's quite hard to see them when you only see highlights or a gem here and there.
Smalling for his first half of the season can be no doubt classified as a world class performer without really need to compare him to other players in different leagues playing again for more established squads, unlike when you have to play with Donald love one week and Rojo the other in a system which doesn't really suits you, meaning the possession system, Smalling was wonderful under all circumstances.. But people create some irrational dislike for some of our players and rate other players they rarely see play for no real reason
With all due respect, I completely disagree that Smalling was a world class performer last season. I'd describe Smalling's performances as like I stated in the post you quoted. Generally solid performances from a player who has progressed reasonably well in the last 2 and a bit seasons.
IN all my time watching United I have seen 3 genuinely world class centre backs in 32 years those being Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand and Jaap Stam. Those players were world class because they played to a consistently high standard and did it against the best players in the Premiership and the Champions League. That's my own standard of a world class performer. They perform over the course of a whole season, not just for half a season. I'd be inclined to also put Paul McGrath in that category as well but he had well documented injury and off field problems but when he was fit and motivated he was a magnificent centre half. That leaves players like Bruce, Pallister and Johnsen who were in my opinion very good players who I would not describe as world class.
I regularly watched all those players I referred to above. La Liga is very readily available in the UK as is the Champions League and Europa League to anyone as was the European Championships.
I don't really understand how Donald Love could have caused Smalling that many problems considering he only made two appearances, one as a sub and another a start in the Europa League both in the second half of the season. Not really a highly significant factor. As far for Rojo, when fit, he was our first choice left back last season but missed a fair few games with injury.
The idea of a world class half a season is a fairly odd concept. To me what makes a world class performer is the ability to consistently put in top class performances at the highest level which means doing it over the whole season not just half. Personally I'd be looking for at least two top class seasons before placing anyone in that category. Even during this first half of the season run United lost to Swansea, Arsenal, PSV, Wolfsburg, Bournemouth, Norwich, Stoke, and were knocked out of both the League cup and the Champions League.
You are going have to describe to me your idea of a world class performer as our ideas seem very different.
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Smalling was superb throughout last season, more noticeably in the first half but what did he really do wrong in the second? He quietly went about his job and remained solid and crucial to the team. Smalling and Blind as a pairing had more clean sheets than any other defence in the league, and United conceded the joint least goals (with Spurs). Vidic had some nightmares against Torres and got sent off twice because he couldn't keep up with him. Also, one thing that many United fans forget about Vidic is that he was also a shirt puller, the same thing Smalling gets a lot of stick for. Vidic was notorious for dragging players to the ground when they outpaced him and he got away with it a lot
Was he injured last night, or did we simply choose to have Blind and Rojo as our centre back partnership?
He was injured even before the Chelsea game but chose to try and play. Explains why he looked so out of sorts. Still injured now.
Injured.
Smalling injured with a broken toe - Dailymail
Out for a month with broken toe according to the Daily Mail. Just what our defence needed.
It's absolutely baffling that Mourinho was having a go at him for actually being injured. Is it more proof he's losing his touch? Mourinho was normally spot on with this sort of stuff back at his best. It's not Smalling is some lazy git either, he and Blind started and played the most games out of everyone in our team last year - I think it was like 50 odd matches.
I'm lazy and cba to read the dailymail, did he get the toe injury before the Swansea game or has it happened in the last couple days?
That may be a wrong assumption from our side then. I think he never said Smalling explicitly, we just assumed. Just as we're doing most of the time.
feck off Mourinho 
I'm fairly sure he made specific remarks about Smalling and Shaw to the media prior to the Swansea game. Poor judgement on his behalf.
Yeah I agree if thats true. I must have missed it if he said that, which wouldn't be a first tbh. Only remember the general remark.
"Smalling doesn't feel that he can play 100 per cent with his pain...I have a friend who is a big tennis player and he tells me when he remembered more the times he plays with pain than the times he plays without pain. To compete you have to go to the limit. It is cultural for some – and that is not my culture. More than me, it is Man United. We have players with ‘problems’"
It says he played the last two games (Fenerbache and Chelsea I guess) with injections in his foot, which sounds like it was already injured.
This is going to get out of hand I think.
I see, that makes sense.
Even if it hadn't been the case, I thought it was a very weird move for Mourinho to go public in the first place.
Makes no sense that he was getting painkilling injections in a toe that turned out to be fractured in two places, yet only gets an x-ray several weeks later. Most likely a new injury.
Could perhaps explain the BBC article last night regarding changes (amongst other things) in the medical department mind.
This isn't subtle stuff though. Any eejit can read an xray of a toe and any eejit would take an xray before injecting fecking cortisone into an unknown toe injury. And that's when you're treating any random punter, never mind an elite athlete!
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- Status