I am happy that Roma fans appreciate how good he is. He got a ludicrous amount of stick from United fans despite being easily our best centre back post-Ferguson.
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Not surprised he’s doing well. For his sake hopefully he gets a permanent move there, where he’ll be appreciated and gets away from the crapshow that is Utd and our toxic fan base who scapegoated the shit out of him.
To be honest we are overstated his performances for United now. He usually started well once reintroduced to the team then dropped off and made us a bit nervous later down the line. Hasn't had a solid whole season with us and was ideal as a back up. With Roma he'll be great no doubt for Serie A.
He won player of the year a few years ago
Apparently we've rejected Roma's opening bid for him.
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Roma are smart trying to buy him now. They know Ole might get the sack and the new manager might see value in a Smalling, Maguire cb pairing
We should never have let him go.
It's incredibly annoying that Maguire and Smalling weren't given a go together.
We finally bought a first choice centre back, so we shipped out our previously best centre back before even trying them together for a single minute. Classic United.
So much revisionism happening regarding Chris Smalling's worth as a player. He is a top six player, no doubt but there have been times when he has been average for us. I'm happy for him that he is doing well in Serie A, but just remember how poor that league is outside their title contenders. Let's not put him on a pedestal.
Great that he's doing well in Italy.
Never good enough to be first choice at United.
Would've been handy to have him as a backup, but he was the only CB we were able to get rid of
Never good enough to be first choice at United.
Would've been handy to have him as a backup, but he was the only CB we were able to get rid of
It's not revisionism. There were plenty in here that were stating that he's a far better defender than Lindelof and that it was a mistake to let him leave on loan when we did. Go back and look at the thread.
We're simply being proven right by Lindelof's performances and Smalling' s performances since that decision was made.
Mate, you know people on football forums don't revise their opinions. What feels like revisionism is really just those that have always thought Smalling was a good player being able to say so without being shouted down as much.
I'm hearing the bolded part a lot since Smalling started playing for Roma. But I rarely heard it when a lot of the same people wanted to spend 80 million on Skriniar or Koulibaly. Not sure what to think.
He would be playing beside maguire by now if he was still here
Apart from last season where he wasn't very good, I always thought he was one of the best in the league.
Never good enough when you have Vidic, Rio or Stam but he certainly was good enough when his competition is Jones, Lindelof, Rojo and even Maguire.
His footballing ability is bad but his defending and physical qualities are better than any of our current options.
Never good enough .
With him, we are not conceding yesterday, at Southampton,Palace at home for a start.
The kind of soft goals we concede now and people come up with these kind of shit . He is better than what we have bar Maguire.
With him, we are not conceding yesterday, at Southampton,Palace at home for a start.
The kind of soft goals we concede now and people come up with these kind of shit . He is better than what we have bar Maguire.
Not good enough to be 1st choice at United?
Revisionism at its finest.
Revisionism at its finest.
It really shouldn't because that's on Ole. He played Lindelöf, Rojo, Bailly and Jones but not Smalling in the pre-season. He already had made his mind up about his CB partner (with Maguire also coming in to play along Lindelöf) before the season and we're seeing how stupid that decision proved to be. Letting your best CB to go on loan when you have weaker options is never a good idea.
The way I saw it was that we had tried these defenders over many years and none had risen up to the challenge to make the CB position theirs so we may as well move on from this regime of failure and start again with a new defence. I felt after all these years, neither Jones nor smalling were ever going to be 1st choice mainstays so we would have to get rid of Rojo, Bailly (due to injuries) and one of Smalling or Jones. Preferably I'd have kept Smalling over Jones because Smalling is the best of our back up defenders but for some reason all our managers love Jones and he gets games. I do feel our defence needs a reset. That said he would've been one of the ones I would keep but not to start alongside Maguire. As a rotational optionNever good enough .
With him, we are not conceding yesterday, at Southampton,Palace at home for a start.
The kind of soft goals we concede now and people come up with these kind of shit . He is better than what we have bar Maguire.
He certainly is a better defender than Lindelof. Yes he is not very good when the ball is on the ground but from the fiasco Lindelof is having I would rather have Smalling back with Maguire. Smalling is certainly more quicker than Lindelof and of course is a much better header of the ball.
Smalling had one season under LVG when he was genuinely good. The rest have been as an understudy to Vidic/Rio, or injured and struggling for form. It's much the same as Evans time at United.
We're well shot of him.
We're well shot of him.
There seems to be a general consensus in this thread, that if Smalling had stayed and played, the defence would have been much better. Just curious, from a 100% result point of view how much better would United have been with Smalling? These are the conceded goals figures for last years top 6 teams:
Liverpool 9
City 10
United 11
Arsenal 15
Tottenham 16
Chelsea 17
reading here it sounds like at least 5 less conceded goals, which would mean:
United 6
Liverpool 9
City 10
Arsenal 15
Tottenham 16
Chelsea 17
What would be the goals conceded with Smalling? How much better than Liverpool would United be?
Liverpool 9
City 10
United 11
Arsenal 15
Tottenham 16
Chelsea 17
reading here it sounds like at least 5 less conceded goals, which would mean:
United 6
Liverpool 9
City 10
Arsenal 15
Tottenham 16
Chelsea 17
What would be the goals conceded with Smalling? How much better than Liverpool would United be?
Evans? That player in that team who are above us 10 points ahead after 11 games and with conceding less goals? Interesting that hes not good enough for us up there in 3rd place.
Last season was a freak season defensively with Mourinho sabotaging them. Playing midfielders in defense and undermining their ability to defend for themselves.
The season before with the same players we had a much better defensive record than this season. So thats what we should look at too
Dr Gea faced more shots than any top 6 keeper that season. He just happened to save them all
Because they werent the hardest shots to save
He was absolutely fantastic but also the defence was solid that year. There was also a midfield and attack that gave some respect. Today any weak team come to OT trying to dominate United.
Nah. Never in the 2018 season did I feel secure defensively. If we cast our minds back, De Gea was outstanding and was many of our PoTY hence the lack of goals let in. He won many individual awards. He was the lynchpin but teams could definitely get at us. They have been able to get at us since 2011. There were many falsehoods. Under Van Gaal we did not concede because we kept the ball and passed it around robotically but then lost to newly promoted teams because once sides got at us we were fragile
Agree. It would be interesting to hear figures from those who believe it would have been much better with Smalling. Just curious. Would it be the best defence in PL?
At the time many on here were complaining about how much we rely on De Gea and how unconvincing our wins were. The consensus was we only got so many points because De Gea was superman and unbeatable. We had the least shots in the top 6 and faced the most shots but somehow stole in at 2nd. Going into the 2019 season, despite finishing 2nd I wasn't that excited as you could see the flaws and the performances were never convincing as our players were not good enough from top to bottom. Jose called it his greatest achievement and made signing Maguire his priority because our defence was wank. He tried to sign a CB in EVERY window so that should tell you something. The ones we had were decent back ups but were not levels
I disagree.
And there's two issues here.
First of all, Smalling isn't all that intelligent on the pitch, the opposition scored plenty of goals against us last season where Smalling was nowhere to be seen.
Secondly, another flaw is that he lacks the ability to play out from the back, his lack of skills on the ball is a major issue. In the long run, opting for a defender that's comfortable to receive the ball in tight situations will, in my opinion, serve us better.
Another one of Ole's brilliant ideas
He's was consistently our best centre back since 2014.
Getting rid of Evans another bad decision I didn't agree with at the time. To buy Rojo and also play the likes of Blackett and McNair instead. You couldn't make it up how badly wrong we've got things.
Exactly this. I always liked Smalling. He was by far our best defender before Maguire came along. Behave if you think Lindelof is better.
Never good enough .
With him, we are not conceding yesterday, at Southampton,Palace at home for a start.
The kind of soft goals we concede now and people come up with these kind of shit . He is better than what we have bar Maguire.
We conceded many of soft goal with Mike Smalling in the team as well. What is stupid is that he doesn't suit a team that wants to build from the back and places an emphasis on passing because that's his real glaring weakness but that's not what we do. We have talked a lot about it but we don't actually really do much from an offensive point of view with our CBs, the occasional pass from Maguire will find it's way to whoever is playing 10 but him and Lindelof are both pretty normal on the ball.
For the style of football I want to see, Smalling is a poor choice but for the style we play he's great. AWB-Smalling-Maguire-Shaw is offensively pretty limited but it's fecking solid defensively physically, aerially and it's pacey. Put a half decent DM in front of that and we'd be a nightmare to score against, even with Ole.
Dunno depends how good their chemistry is together whether it was one of the best defences or the best. It wouldnt be any worse, that I'm sure of
It doesnt matter how you feel. What matters is that we had a defender who likes defending and defended well in front of De Gea. You can defend well by taking power off a shot or putting the attacker in an uncomfortable position where they cant finish how they would want to. Those still count as shots. So no, averaging less than 1 shot more per game than Arsenal doesn't mean our defense was worse than theirs.
Its also a matter of where the shots come from. Matic wasn't good at tracking back and providing a shield in front of the defense. So unless we can seperate how many of those shots were from midfielders and players on the edge of the box that the midfield should be tracking back with, then your numbers dont mean what you think they mean
It does matter as I watched every game that season so my eyes can be an indicator and De Gea winning so many awards suggests his heroics were not down to saving tricklers and pea rollers. Our manager's have always tried to sign new CB despite having Smalling and Jones in the squad. EVERY manager we have had since Moyes but I guess they could not see we had the world best CB already here. I think he is solid but as a back up or at best alongside a better CB.
Yes they all tried to sign new CBs and the new CBs were outperformed by Smalling. He's currently out-performing the latest one we spent £80 million on. Makes you wonder how much we need to spend to actually get someone who performs better at United
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