Made all the more obvious by going on to buy Mahrez for around 65 million.
7
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 38
- Goals
- 24
- Assists
- 3
- Yellow cards
- 9
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I wasn't 100% serious - but still: If random fans could see that Sanchez was done for (he had looked terrible for Arsenal for months), I think Pep might have done so too.
Woodward definitely didn't see it - and considered it a triumph to land a marquee signing that City also were in for. Apparently.
That's called being polite, no manager is gonna say on camera "Nah, we don't want 37 years old Cristiano, he doesn't offer much outside of the penalty box, plus can't bench him for bad performances due to his reputation, I'll pass".
Pretty sure if you ask Rummenigge about Cristiano going to Bayern he will say that he would love to have Ronaldo on Bayern Munchen. But once he discusses it in private with Bayern board(most of them former Bayern legends), they would say "NO, thanks".
It's the way they talk about him. It's not just the text that we read with no context, I understand that coaches usually try and be polite about other players, but I took time to actually watch the videos on the questions, and it's clear by the body language, the smiles, and the mild chuckle when they hear the question that the 3 coaches probably think the whole debacle about him is plain dumb.
Yes but Cavani doesn’t get 14 goals and 3 assists in 20 games or whatever it is.
All Cavani has done is make noise about leaving since he’s been here.
Problem is the lack of good strikers in their prime or youth who are options. Someone like Haaland has a free pick and he's not coming here.
Good post.
I think he's been better than most of the alternatives in most matches. Which isn't saying much really. I'd still leave him out for a couple of matches seeing as he's played pretty much every minute of every match so far. We've been too poor for too long for anyones position to be safe, I doubt it'll benefit us much unless it comes with much wider changes to the rest of the team though.
Actually, Cavani's per 90 stats last season were considerably better than Ronaldo's this season.
Ronaldo scored 5 goals in his last 14 league games while offering nothing else as goals. People make his contribution better than it is especially considering how we mainly play now to get him on the end of our chances.
It"s not always lazy passes that don't find him, it's also United beeing easy to defend because we just want to give it to Ronaldo in the final third. Wolves had it easy to defend our "chances". But people blame everyone else and act like he gets no service when in reality we need to look at it from both sides. Our midfield is crap and we could obviously create more but I also see a very predictable side now and Juventus' attacking play changed in a similar way with him in the side.
He works a lot harder than Ronaldo, and.....
Cavani 20/21 season in the PL: 10 non penalty goals in 1355 minutes - 0,66 non penalty goals per 90
Ronaldo 21/22 season in the PL: 6 non penalty goals in 1300 minutes - 0,41 non penalty goals per 90
...and yes, he did also have 3 assists and a higher xA90 than Ronaldo.
Cavani has played 2705 minutes (423 minutes this season) in 18 months here, while Ronaldo has played 1728 in 4 months. Could explain why there's been some talk about wanting to leave...
Just checked on fbref and in Ronaldo’s last season for juventus he had .93 goals per 90 whereas Cavani had .65 in the same season.
This season Cavani hasn’t played as much so results are skewed. Ronaldo is on .54 per 90 this season but has more assists.
Why are you taking his Juventus stats into it ? we're talking about performances for United. Ronaldo was in a completely different team. He's come into exactly the same United team Cavani was in last season and has less g/a per 90 than Cavani managed last season.
Yes, but we were functioning better as a team overall last season, until the last few months. This season the wheels came off for Ole where we were getting hammered left right and center. So I think it only fair to compare full seasons.
Has Cavani not moaned about wanting to leave since his first season came to an end?
Was Cavani not woeful in the game yesterday, worse than Ronaldo?
Anyway, we could keep going in circles on this. For me, there are at least 5 players I would blame for our poor form as well as the formation before Ronaldo.
...he also scored on 9 penalties for Juve last season, so for a different team and in a different league he also has 0,65 goals per 90. Cavani har an assist rate of 0,41 assists per 90, Ronaldo had 0,12 assists per 90.
Stopp making alternative truths.
Has Ronaldo not been in the top 3 performers for us this season? Granted in what has been a shit season.
And this is why we are messed up and City won't work with the same mindset of Ronaldo.
If he would be a rotated player at United - I don't think the complaints would be that high because of how useful he can be when we need a goal. Just not useful throughout 90 mins every game just as a 37 year old predatory striker.
It's kind of a pointless argument for me. Every manager will be respectful to every legend of the game.
Also what does "Every manager would take him." even mean? For free? Yeah most clubs would take Ronaldo or Messi for free just because they would boost shirt sales and revenue to an high level even if they don't play a single game. You mentioned the managers of Wolves and Watford. Would they take a star player like him? Yeah maybe. Would they spend all their budget and wages on him to ruin their finances and not be able to sign anyone else? Probably not.
Would a top club like Bayern or City sign him? For insane wages and a good amount of further fees? Probably not. Would they play him every game and make him their focal point of attack? Probably not. Would they sign him rather than someone like Haaland? Probably not.
You see the whole "Every manager would take him." phrase is pretty pointless and doesn't take in fact real circumstances which actually affect transfer decisions.
Also even if some clubs would have signed him it doesn't mean it wouldn't have been a mistake either way. PSG went for Messi glamour, we went for Ronaldo glamour. It didn't turn out well for either team so far.
He could break records over there let’s not kid ourselves. We can’t progress the ball from defense to midfield or combine three passes in the middle of the park. That’s somehow Ronaldo-related according to RedCafe. The problem is deeper than that.
I concede that with the fragile personalities we have at the club at all levels, adding Ronaldo might have upped the pressure and they crumbled as they always do when there’s expectations. They crumbled after that immense run when we first got Ole. They crumbled after we were top for a couple of days last season (if Liverpool and Chelsea weren’t unusually bad for a variety of reasons we wouldn’t have touched second).
Varane and Sancho are top players too, apparently they are average and bad signings now.
Appointing Rangnick is proving the wrong decision though, as the players haven’t responded to him at all. It’s everybody’s fault. We need a manager who’s at the same time a great tactician as well as a real motivator.
And this is the point that most of us are making, If you can't see how we're a better functioning team without Ronaldo then there's nothing to talk about here really.
I think you hit the nail on the head there : We were functioning better as a team overall last season, until the last few months...
Denial, denial, denial
Nice data backed post! assuming the numbers are right of course.
The pressing stats are awful, and based on this, he's not even delivering goals/finishes as much as we hoped.
I agree that this would all be better if we had a more cohesive team who creates more chances. But it's like a chicken egg problem at this point. Does Ronaldo cause the team to regress or are we so shit that Ronaldo is regressing due to that? I would be inclined to say it's the former based on this.
That's a seriously weak argument. Why would any manager risk saying that Ronaldo is shit and wouldn't get into their team? It's obvious that's not happening anyway, so why make the front page, especially when it can backfire if Ronaldo scores of they lose?
Most managers would say the absolute same for any superstar, or even most players. That's like asking Max Verstappen his view of Serena Williams while she was in front of him.
But, we went to shit months before Ronaldo came in?
Has Ronaldo not been in the top 3 of our performers this season? De Gea, Lindelof and Ronaldo.
Rashford, Shaw, Wan Bissaka, Maguire, Mctominay, Fred, Sancho, Matic, Martial, Fernandes, the list goes on - all have been crap.
I'm sorry! I don't know where to start on this. Read my post above for the deeper analysis (the long one). Please also think about what it means to lead the line and try to figure out why all our players suddenly turned to shit at the same time....
We were better last year. We also started the season with a big win and a hattrick from a player, who looks like a shadow of himself with Ronaldo for United and Portugal.
And again Ronaldo isn't our only problem. We weren't amazing without him either way but I don't see how Ronaldo improved us in any way.
I also don't agree on this whole "He has been our best performer" thing, especially in the league. Maybe if you only look at goal stats but most of his games were pretty average to bad. I don't even want to do a Top3 for our team, because they have all been pretty underwhelming but I don't see how Ronaldo has been better than any of them.
We've always been inconsistent, nobody said we didn't have problems and we were champions elect. There's a big difference however, from finishing second being inconsistent to being completely shit and devoid of ideas like we have this season.
This season all our attacking players have been worse than last season, in terms of numbers and performances. Bruno, Rashford, Greenwood (despite his impressive start to the season without Ronaldo), Pogba (another impressive start to the season till Ronaldo showed up). Do you think it's coincidence when watching us play that these players have all suddenly turned to shit when Ronaldo turned up ?
Do you think it's coincidence that Madrids attackers all saw an increase in output when Ronaldo left ?
Do you think it's a coincidence that Dybala/Morata decreased their output when Ronaldo joined ?
Our style of play without Ronaldo was a lot more evenly distributed in terms of our attackers, with players finding each other when they were in better positions, it was a lot more natural now we constantly try to feed the ball to Ronaldo even when he's not in a particularly good position, whenever he gets the ball near the area he tries to score with no appreciation to any other player in a better position, like someone mentioned he's taken the third most shots in the league this season but has scored 6 open play goals.
His goal conversion is 19% which is worse than the 20 top scorers in the league and his shot accuracy is 50% with only Maupey and Raphinha having a worse accuracy in the top 20 scorers.
EDIT: I've just rechecked the stats after last nights game, he's taken the 2nd most shots in the league.
A lot of people mention his off the ball work and that is also a fact, however, I wouldn't mind sacrificing that as long as the performances are up to match, however, quite simply the sacrifice we are experiencing in terms of off the ball and on the ball is not worth his output. It's very simple.
It's all good and well sacrificing for Ronaldo when he's in his prime as he was in the Madrid team and he's winning you UCL's the current Ronaldo however, doesn't offer enough for the sacrifice to be worth it. It's not prime Ronaldo anymore people need to stop with the romanticism, he's 37 years old next month.
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Ronaldo is actually very poor all round.
It feels like everytime the ball goes up to him he loses it. As a striker, he cannot bring players into play, cannot hold the ball up.
When he gets it on the wing, he cannot put a good cross in.
The only thing Ronaldo does now is tap ins.
It feels like everytime the ball goes up to him he loses it. As a striker, he cannot bring players into play, cannot hold the ball up.
When he gets it on the wing, he cannot put a good cross in.
The only thing Ronaldo does now is tap ins.
I mean it's obvious aswell. If he was good at all that in his prime then he would have been a striker and not a LW where he had to rely on the hold up play/link up play of Rooney or Benzema. He isn't suddenly going to be able to do that at the age of 37 when he couldn't do it in his primer either.
Our link up play and hold up play has completely gone in our front line.
@troylocker is doing the lords work in this thread - picking all comers off with data one by one 
The most annoying thing about Ronaldo is not on the pitch. It's outside. It's just a matter of time to see his beloved sister trowing shit to the Club along with all his PR.
And his body language hasn't change a bit since he was a feckin' kid when things are not going well. This is simply amazing, i mean, he's 37 years old and he acts like an idiot. Like the time he left the field saying things that could be perfectly understood. I don't see any leadership in that, it's not a captain material either.
And his body language hasn't change a bit since he was a feckin' kid when things are not going well. This is simply amazing, i mean, he's 37 years old and he acts like an idiot. Like the time he left the field saying things that could be perfectly understood. I don't see any leadership in that, it's not a captain material either.
He had a deleterious impact, didn't he?
United without him were second place and much better placed last season. If the team has regressed badly as soon as he joined, it doesn't say much about him.
"But but goals...."
I agree. But he is the one starting as the ST for us.
We are very quick to criticise the defence but its not their fault that the attack is creating nothing all game.
Since Rangnick took over we have created 1 goal the newcastle one.
The rest of the goals have been outside the box, deflection or a pen. Its frustrating watching us play without players who can keep the ball.
It's remarkable to watch a 37 year old behave as childishly as this man does. Flo Perez once described him as a "sick man" in a leaked audio convo, adding that normal people don't behave "the way he (Ronaldo) does".
Brilliant post btw and needs to be highlighted. A lot of those things were already mentioned here but good to see it backed up with a good amount of data.
I'm comparing Cavani last season with Ronaldo this season.
Granted, league only - and Ronaldo obviously has impressive stats in the CL that will boost his overall numbers.
Another way to look at it is to forget what Ronaldo has or hasn't done this season and instead to project ahead.
Imagine we create a title-challenging team asap from the bones of where we are now, one on par with the likes of Liverpool & City. Imagine what that team would likely look like given the attributes those sides share. And think about how Pep/Klopp brought them to that point and the degree to which they did/didn't compromise their approach early on to cater for the players at their disposal when they took over.
With that in mind, is Ronaldo a starter in the side we'd built? If so, how? Given his very short remaining shelf-life and the weaknesses he already brings I find it hard to see how he would be.
And if he won't be a starter in that side for those reasons, to what extent would continuing to start him in the first team going forward slow our ability to progress to that point? Because if you play a 36 year old poacher up front ahead of younger players better able to adapt to a pressing game, you invariably have to compromise the way you play.
My suspicion is that if Pep/Klopp took over our side they would start implementing the style of play they're looking to build towards from day one. And if they were faced with a choice between compromising that approach early-on to keep Ronaldo's goals in the short term or jettisoning Ronaldo's goals entirely in favour of players who better fit the approach they're building towards, they would choose the latter.
Imagine we create a title-challenging team asap from the bones of where we are now, one on par with the likes of Liverpool & City. Imagine what that team would likely look like given the attributes those sides share. And think about how Pep/Klopp brought them to that point and the degree to which they did/didn't compromise their approach early on to cater for the players at their disposal when they took over.
With that in mind, is Ronaldo a starter in the side we'd built? If so, how? Given his very short remaining shelf-life and the weaknesses he already brings I find it hard to see how he would be.
And if he won't be a starter in that side for those reasons, to what extent would continuing to start him in the first team going forward slow our ability to progress to that point? Because if you play a 36 year old poacher up front ahead of younger players better able to adapt to a pressing game, you invariably have to compromise the way you play.
My suspicion is that if Pep/Klopp took over our side they would start implementing the style of play they're looking to build towards from day one. And if they were faced with a choice between compromising that approach early-on to keep Ronaldo's goals in the short term or jettisoning Ronaldo's goals entirely in favour of players who better fit the approach they're building towards, they would choose the latter.
I remember when Pogba was THE reason we were shite. Then Martial. Then Rashford. Then Bruno.
Now it's Ronaldo's turn.
Now it's Ronaldo's turn.
That is because he cannot do it on a regular basis, he doesn’t have those skillsets on an elite level now. It is not only now, but in his last 2nd season with Real, he was already then a GOAT goal scorer but an otherwise okish footballer. Now at 37 and in the EPL, it is even more apparent.
It is also the reason why his fanboys only present his GOAT case using goals and some random things like clutchness and mentality, which also only rely on goals to paint the picture. Some even suggesting dribbling and passing as useless stats. Because, goals were his only constant productions for the past 6-7 years, not dribbles, passing and now, even trapping the ball. Therefore, all other stats are useless except goals, because its the only thing he was GOAT level at for most of his career.
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