We were primed this season to develop Greenwood at striker and play Sancho on the right. Instead we've got a 36 year old who must play every game, and relegating a £70m signing to the bench. And we have this for another 18 months.
7
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 38
- Goals
- 24
- Assists
- 3
- Yellow cards
- 9
- Status
Let's stop pretending that we needed Ronaldo. The only reason he is here is because we are business first and football club second. How many shirts were sold, how many twitter followers were added and so on. Yes, he is (or was) a legend but club that is screaming for good midfield player or two we are spending millions on Ronaldo. Was it "feel good"? Yes, but that's it. For some reason MC play great without striker because they understand two simple things - most important in game are good manager and good midfield.
Defending him is understandable (if unnecessary and perhaps a bit misguided).
Pretending that he's the best player in the world and that he can't possibly be a problem in any shape or form, however...that's bizarre.
Just an idea: why not we play Ronaldo at the LWF and sub him off whenever he runs out of energy , then he can play more naturally facing towards goal and cut inside . We have Cavani providing world-class off-ball movements as striker and pressing intensity, he can rotate with Greenwood who gradually develops into a ST role as well. Right hand side, Sancho also can play more naturally.
Ronaldo as ST seems not working as he can't hold up play facing back to the goal , nor offer pressing intensity which is the Rule No.1 for ST under RR's tactics & philosophy.
Ronaldo as ST seems not working as he can't hold up play facing back to the goal , nor offer pressing intensity which is the Rule No.1 for ST under RR's tactics & philosophy.
Without him we would be out of CL. Without him we would also be around top 8-10 in PL. People forget how atrocious we were in the games before Ronaldo. I agree he should not play every game, but blaming Ronaldo for our shortcomings is bizarre.
The most scary thing with this post is that both you and probably Ronaldo himself truly believes this is true….
I tend to believe people are looking for scapegoat. Even replace Ronaldo with Haaland nothing will change. Haaland will be starve of service as well.
But Ronaldo isn't starve of service. He got more chances than most strikers in the league. His finishing hasn't been that great this year.
Also this is the Ronaldo thread, so why do you expect people to talk about other problems here? Ronaldo is one of many issues we have, no one is blaming him alone for everything.
Ronaldo goal 8, expected goal 9.8 in EPL. he is doing alright.
https://www.fotmob.com/leagues/47/stats/season/16390/players/expected_goals/premier-league
Edit
I don't watch every Man Utd game so i don't pretend knowing more than others. I just read the stats and he seems fine as a goalscorer.
Am taking for granted that you didn't watch our first games then. Ronaldo is not a solution to our problems. But he is not the problem.
So a little bit worse than expected plus his stats on finishing:
That's overall just not that special too me especially considering he is mainly a goalscorer and doesn't do anything else on the pitch?
I think you could give Ronaldo's playtime and his position (which is more than all other attackers) to a lot of good strikers and they wouldn't do worse than him in the league.
His CL record is fine, but as a team we played like crap there too and will be most likely found out against the first top team.
He's been scapegoated here but I think he's done better than I expected, maybe people had massive expectations over him. The team has been disfunctional for waaay longer than he has been on the team but now all the previous and current problems are attributed to him. At least now their team managed to win against Villarreal and get past group stages.
My view entirely.
If he is sh1t stirring, then he should be dropped.
But it is vital that we get the best out of him because he is one of the few match winners in the squad.
I would love to have a Ronaldo problem in Arsenal but we can't afford his salary. Add another 20 goals in our team will give us a chance for top 4 finish. We have young players do the running for him.
That’s the point though...he hasnt added any goals...he has just become the focal point of our attacks...we actually have scored less.
Thing is United should have never signed Ronaldo, it was a desperate move only to prevent him going to City, there wasn't any plan at all, probably driven by business mentality as Glazers clearly prefer money over trophies.
We battered Leeds 5-1 without Ronaldo, we had enough chances to beat Southampton without Ronaldo, Wolves away yes we were lucky, so that's the 3 games before Ronaldo arrived
Never ceases to amaze me how people use the argument you have like without Ronaldo we'd of played with 10 men so we should be grateful for him without stopping to consider how much better a performance we may have put in with someone other than Ronaldo in his place meaning we may not have needed his late goals to bail us out of trouble
Fact is Ronaldo's goals to game ratio that is peddled out looks as good as it is due to a few doubles he's got in games. If you actually analyse it Ronaldo's probably played in more games that he hasn't scored in than those he has. That being said he's probably matched what I expected goal scoring wise, what I didn't expect was how he struggles to just pass the ball and constantly kills our attacks (and no he hasn't been alone in this but then it's Ronaldo so you expect more)
You think its Ronaldo that's dried up Rashford's goals so far this season? You don't think this decrease was already happening pre Ronaldo?
Rashford scored 4 league goals from 1st Jan to end of season. That's 22 games. Poor. In addition his general play was terrible.
Bruno got 8 goals in 22 league games from 1st Jan to end of season. 5 of them from pens. So that's 3 goals from open play in the league in the last 22 games of the season. We also know Bruno's general play was poor from around January on.
I'm not great with stats so if any of the above is wrong by all means let me know.
But looking at what was going on just with those two im the second half of last season it seems very unfair to put their struggles this season on Ronaldo.
That is a bad logic.
Arsenal won't have extra 20 goals, Ronaldo would mostly score the goals that Saka,Rowe and Martinelli are scoring, so instead of those 3 player having 18 goals between them, they would have like 5 goals at best together, and Cristiano something like 12 or so, as Arsenal will play "pass the ball to ancient Ronaldo at all cost" so he can score a tap-in and make his legacy bigger.
Then you would be complaining about how Rowe, Saka and Martinelli are shit, and ancient Ronaldo is the saviour of Arsenal that should never be benched, because without his goals Arsenal would be in the mid table.
Not true. 2 weeks before we signed Ronaldo we comfortably beat Leeds 5-1 and our attacking play was full of energy and creativity. Imagine if we were due to play Leeds this weekend. Everyone would be saying that Leeds are favourites to win.
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We battered Leeds 5-1 without Ronaldo, we had enough chances to beat Southampton without Ronaldo, Wolves away yes we were lucky, so that's the 3 games before Ronaldo arrived
Never ceases to amaze me how people use the argument you have like without Ronaldo we'd of played with 10 men so we should be grateful for him without stopping to consider how much better a performance we may have put in with someone other than Ronaldo in his place meaning we may not have needed his late goals to bail us out of trouble
Fact is Ronaldo's goals to game ratio that is peddled out looks as good as it is due to a few doubles he's got in games. If you actually analyse it Ronaldo's probably played in more games that he hasn't scored in than those he has. That being said he's probably matched what I expected goal scoring wise, what I didn't expect was how he struggles to just pass the ball and constantly kills our attacks (and no he hasn't been alone in this but then it's Ronaldo so you expect more)
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Vs Soton we could have lost. Vs wolves we were worse than we were few days ago. And Vs Leeds was our typical battering of Bielsa's Gung and ho. And yes most of these players bottled it Vs Sevilla, Villarreal and Istanbul Bahaserkir. I am certain that they would have failed again, especially with Cavani unavailable. Who would have lead us? Rashford? A mediocre pl player would be able to lead us through CL?
We battered Leeds 5-1 without Ronaldo, we had enough chances to beat Southampton without Ronaldo, Wolves away yes we were lucky, so that's the 3 games before Ronaldo arrived
Never ceases to amaze me how people use the argument you have like without Ronaldo we'd of played with 10 men so we should be grateful for him without stopping to consider how much better a performance we may have put in with someone other than Ronaldo in his place meaning we may not have needed his late goals to bail us out of trouble
Fact is Ronaldo's goals to game ratio that is peddled out looks as good as it is due to a few doubles he's got in games. If you actually analyse it Ronaldo's probably played in more games that he hasn't scored in than those he has. That being said he's probably matched what I expected goal scoring wise, what I didn't expect was how he struggles to just pass the ball and constantly kills our attacks (and no he hasn't been alone in this but then it's Ronaldo so you expect more)
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Vs Soton we could have lost. Vs wolves we were worse than we were few days ago. And Vs Leeds was our typical battering of Bielsa's Gung and ho. And yes most of these players bottled it Vs Sevilla, Villarreal and Istanbul Bahaserkir. I am certain that they would have failed again, especially with Cavani unavailable. Who would have lead us? Rashford? A mediocre pl player would be able to lead us through CL?
and we could have been out of sight
(nice completely dismissing the Leeds game as well, well done on that)
But to be fair, everyone has battered Leeds this year.
It's one game. How much stock can you put into it?
But to be fair, everyone has battered Leeds this year.
Chelsea didn't, Spurs didn't but yeah Arsenal did
when someone is talking about the grand total of the 3 games before Ronaldo arrived it's all I've got. Don't reply to me reply to the person bringing up the daft point in the first place
of course that is up to Arteta how to setup his team, but i get your point. If it is true that City/Pep wants ronaldo back in summer, i am sure they have a plan how to utilize his strength and mask his weakness. It is not a secret that Ronaldo is only a penalty box striker nowadays. He is 37.
And and and. Similarly, we outplayed the mighty Newcastle with Ronaldo. Maybe we would be 4 points better without Ronaldo. Who knows? In the long run does it matter? No. We would fail to challenge for the league anyway and we would certainly be out of CL. Again Ronaldo is not the solution, but he is not the sole responsible for this mess. Not even close. Do you honestly believe that with Cavani unavailable, we would be victorious Vs Villarreal? Sure we can make a 36 years old a scapegoat, while we have AWB, Matic, Rashford and the demolisher of Albania in our team.
I find it a bit ironic and funny that everyone of our attackers are being 'blamed' and called 'selfish' apart from Ronaldo. Even though we've tried every single combination possible with Ronaldo and it hasn't worked any game this season, the one constant in all our attacking combinations we've tried this season ? Yes, it's Ronaldo.
Also it grates me how people keep saying where would we be without Ronaldo. If that was the case idk how we finished 2nd last season and as someone mentioned earlier the 2 times in the league we started without Ronaldo we were winning until Ronaldo came on.
Also it grates me how people keep saying where would we be without Ronaldo. If that was the case idk how we finished 2nd last season and as someone mentioned earlier the 2 times in the league we started without Ronaldo we were winning until Ronaldo came on.
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Some people can understand things even in a small sample. You are obviously not one of them.
That’s not how it works. Goalscoring vacuums like him, epic Zlatan etc. take those goals from others, they don’t add. He’s had 58 shots in the PL this season, next closest is our former 20-goal-a-season midfield dynamo on 35, whose entire goalscoring prowess seems to have dissolved in siu’s vacuum.
I guess the only way to find out is bench him for 3 to 5 games and see what happen.
Interestingly, this stat by itself suggests Ronaldo is underperforming compared with the other FWs in the league : Salah / Maupay / Son are all scoring more goals than expected, which means they seized opportunities and converted into goals than expected. In contrary, Ronaldo scored less than what he supposed/expected to, which means "wasting chances".
Ironically, this is under the context that Ronaldo saved his energy by not participating the group pressing up front and instead focused on goal conversion. Mane / Salah all pressing like crazy and they still managed better goal conversion than Ronaldo.
You may say Ronaldo is doing OK, but definitely not at the level his salary / fame suggests to be.
You don't think there could be any other contributing factors to Bruno's goals drying up. You're sure it's just Ronaldo?
Yes, he's also scored 2 penalties which makes it worse. He has a 9.8 expected goals but 6 open play goals. Penalties are not included as far as I remember.
Also compared to the other attackers check the 'big chances created', you have to go to the bottom of the 5th page to find Ronaldo.
No. It’s quite clearly just Ronaldo, because that’s what my post explicitly said.
Exactly, when Maupay has scored as many open goals as Ronaldo from fewer chances, then he's definitely not doing alright.
Maupay is striker people make fun of constantly in the matchday threads, he's also someone who averages 20 presses/game. That's probably why Potter hasn't found it easy replacing him despite his finishing problems.
So how do you explain his league goals drying right up second half of last season?
Of course it could be other factors (as well). But having Ronaldo in the team will lead to other potentially high scoring players scoring...less. Look at Dybala at Juventus for an obvious example.
This isn't a problem in itself. It certainly wasn't a problem for Real Madrid that Ronaldo's presence meant less goals for the likes of Benzema.
But that was prime and close-to-prime Ronaldo.
The question isn't who gets the goals - but rather what Ronaldo brings to the table ultimately. In short, focusing on his goals - and nothing but that - isn't what we should be doing.
Juventus scored more goals in total the season before Ronaldo arrived than in any of his three seasons at the club. That too isn't something you can simply take as proof that he isn't worth having around - of course not - but it's a, let's say, good starting point for a discussion about what sort of player he has turned into as he now nears the end of his career.
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