He had plenty of good games (and admittedly plenty of bad ones aswell).
From the top of my head he was good against Arsenal (both times); Spurs (both times); Brentford at home (I was there) and a couple of others on top of his scoring.
Cristiano Ronaldo (I stay)
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From the top of my head he was good against Arsenal (both times); Spurs (both times); Brentford at home (I was there) and a couple of others on top of his scoring.
When we signed Ronaldo last year we thought that we had made a major coup but turned out there were actually no club wanted him except us. Really think the City link was made up for us to sign him. This is so evident now that even with cut price no one is interested.
I think this is dipping into revisionism now.
Yup. Even if we discount everything someone like Salah does better than Ronaldo and just focus on pure production: Salah had 46 goals+assists last season. Ronaldo had 27 while contributing nothing in terms of overall play.
I love how Martial, who has had utter dog's abuse for years, is suddenly used as some kind of beacon of consistency and picking the right option, seemingly based on a couple of decent pre season games.
31 goals compared to 24.
Not sure on the assists.
But the ever so small difference you missed out was one was playing for a team who almost won 4 trophies and one was ensconced in our mess of a season.
You last sentence makes no sense.
Should Ronaldo have been scoring 20 a season when the entire team was set up for Ruud to score?
Ruud did score, an awful lot. Weirdly when he left Ronaldo scored over 20 and hasn't scored less than that in a season since. Football is a team game, stick Bramble in a defence with Maldini, Nesta and Cafu and those 3 world class defenders will look lower than their level because a vital part of their unit isn't contributing what is needed.
If Ronaldo's job is purely to get goals then he absolutely did his job to a degree (Bruno scored more when he was our talisman). It is no real insult to him to say we are a better team without him though, not when he is 37 years old.
Rooney's best ever season - Year Ronaldo left
Benzema's best run of his career - When Ronaldo left
Rashford's worst scoring season since he came through - When Ronaldo arrived
Bruno's worst season in 5 - 6 years - When Ronaldo arrived
Sancho's worst season of his career - When Ronaldo arrived
Dybala goes from 26 goals to 10 goals - When Ronaldo arrived
Do you honestly not see any trend?
He needs to be the talisman and everything needs to be about him. This was absolutely fine when he was scoring 50 goals a season. He no longer has that in him no insult, he is approaching 40, the fact he can even contribute at this level is brilliant. He is just no longer worth it.
Only some blinded naive fools thought that. Rio style
As I remember Ronaldo has a 2+1 year contract, right? Is it the player's decision or the club's decision to activate that extension; or do both parties have to agree?
City refused to even submit a fee. And they laughed their way all season while watching United plummet from 2nd to 6th after signing Ronaldo.
You're never sure about anytjing. It was 15 assists to 3. 46 goals contributed to 27. While offering 10 times more than Ronaldo in overall play.
Your second point is as inane as your first. Ronaldo is a big part of the reason the team regressed.
It makes plenty of sense if you read it correctly.
Note: I didn’t say score, I said they should’ve done better. Your RVN and Ronaldo comparisons doesn’t even apply considering A). The tactical dynamics of football back then was completely different. United used a traditional 4-4-2 system where Ronaldo was playing the role of an orthodox RM. Sancho’s role is intrinsically different and he played more inverted on the left for the majority of last season.
Even if you were to make the parallel; In RVN’s last season: Ronaldo managed 12 goals and 10 assists which is almost treble the contribution Sancho made last season despite not being an €85M+ marquee signing like the latter.
Sancho came as an established player with a big price tag while Ronaldo was still a young developing player for most of the time he played with RVN and was younger than Sancho was last season for the entirety of their time together.
Sancho managed just 3 assists last year so if Ronaldo is really just a vacuum absorbing all the team’s goals to himself, surely the other attacking players would have pretty good assist numbers? The only player who a had decent record with that was Bruno who tries about 10 Hollywood passes a game.
So clearly Sancho and Rashford were just poor full stop.
And the rest of your post, you’re again doing a very superficial analysis.
If you dug further you would see that Benzema’s best scoring rate or 2nd best (not sure if last season eclipsed it now) was actually with Ronaldo in the side. In 15/16 he managed 24 league goals in just 27 games but was injured a lot. Not to mention, the 11/12 season where he scored over 30 all comps. So clearly he can get good numbers with Ronaldo in the side.
Dybala’s 26 goals was pretty much a one off as his other seasons he didn’t get close to that with or without Ronaldo and he actually won Serie A MVP (in the 19/20 season) playing alongside him. So at least even though he wasn’t scoring, he was playing some of his best football next to CR. And he got plenty of assists unlike Sancho and Rashford, So no excuses for those two.
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Sancho was no more of an established player last year than Ronaldo was in 2006.
Dybala a 1 off? He averaged over 22 goals for the 3 seasons before Ronaldo got there?
Unsure if Benzema bettered it? He has. He has gone from scoring 19 then 12 to averaging over 32 goals a season (which had been his best ever seasons total years and years ago).
No I do not believe Sancho would have a good number of assists because our attack slowed down nearly every time the ball touched Ronaldo. These are players who do better when things are happening quickly which we saw twice on Monday where suddenly they looked a lot more like the players they have for most of their careers.
Are you really going to act as if players like Rooney and Benzema did not sacrifice individually for him because the team was better with Ronaldo's 40 - 50 goals? Do you think players have suddenly stopped having to do that now that he has turned 37? Only difference is that he isn't good enough to be worth it anymore.
Hopefully he leaves and takes some of his fanbois with him.
I am sure should Benzema or Rooney playing in same team as peak scoring Messi or Lewandowski their numbers will drop abit too. Isn’t this just common case which applies to every lesser player giving way to main talisman of the team? When younger Ronaldo was the main talisman his club has enjoyed greater success too. It works for us back then, it works for Real Madrid too. It works both ways.
I would argue that Messi has more ability to transition from a side set up directly for him and become a facilitator.
Sure, Messi being a great playmaker/goalscorer in a great setup can only be good thing to the team. But back then Ronaldo has also also formed great attack trio with Rooney and Tevez at United, and BBC at Real Madrid too. Those were the best successful era for both clubs, so it really does work best for the team back then. Although you could argue Ronaldo at 37, or even Messi at 35, just isn’t worth all the fuss to sacrifice others and build the team around for nowadays, which is probably true.
He somehow also picked the worst summer for a player of his type to be moving. Last summer everyone was either desperate for one or both of a scoring striker or a CL performer and they didn't necessarily care about fit or cost. Maybe that is what gave them false expectations this summer. Read the room Mendez. Many clubs already got burned or are looking for an identity shift.
Absolutely Ronaldo was an incredible player, one of the best players to ever live and one of my favourites to watch at his peak.
Of these 2 attacking trios, not a single one of the 5 other players ever had their best season playing with Ronaldo (You could make an argument for Bale but I think his best season clearly came at Spurs).
But we are in agreement in that Ronaldo is not the first talismanic player who's teammates sacrifice for him. It is fairly common, issue is it should not be happening for a 37 year old with young exciting players sacrificing for him (as you rightfully said).
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While I think its clear that we play better without Ronaldo in this new system, I never bought the idea that he was an issue in the dressing room.
Excellent post I fully agree with everything you’ve written.
That’s not true. Ronaldo was still branded a one-trick pony up until early 2006. There’s probably threads you can find here comparing him to players half as talented. Sancho came as one of the brightest talents in world football for an eye watering sum of money and was supposed to hit the ground running.
A bit of revisionism with regards to Rooney. Naturally he took a backseat when Ronaldo rose to prominence after being initially groomed himself to be the team’s main man after RVN’s departure. I don’t think he actually sacrificed that much for Ronaldo (well not for most of their time together anyway). His natural game was to be all over the pitch. Only in Ronaldo’s last season here in 09 did you see Rooney being shifted out wide to accommodate CR on occasion but you could probably count how many times that happened on one hand (latter stages of the CL).
Ronaldo actually assisted Rooney more times than vice versa.
And if Ramos was scoring more goals than Benzema some seasons, surely that should indicate that it couldn’t all be Ronaldo for his low scoring numbers in some years. He certainly wasn’t anywhere near the level he is now in, say in 17/18 for example. And that had nothing to do with Ronaldo.
I will admit that Benzema was a facilitator to him though but his form was genuinely shocking at times irrespective of who was next to him.
Can't remember how to multi post.
Ronaldo had over 40 caps for Portugal by 2006, had scored winning penalties and had good tournaments. When the issue happened with Rooney there was talk of 30 million pound moves to Real Madrid, he had scored in multiple cup finals for Man Utd. Look back to the Fulham game when we beat them 5-1 and listen to the commentary and tell me he was not already viewed as a very important player. 12 Million for a teenager was an eye watering sum 3 years prior, in fact the most expensive teenager of all time at that point.
Benzema's form hasn't been shocking since Ronaldo left, 4 seasons and every one has been more stellar than the last.
I made a point earlier. He played in 2 great attacking trios and not a single one of the other 5 players had their best season whilst playing with him.
That is no coincidence, players individual level often go down a a degree when playing with Ronaldo because he needs to be the main man. That is a common thing with talismanic players. The problem is that at 37 he is not quite good enough to be worth it. You say Rashford, Sancho, Bruno's form have nothing to do with him. Bloody hell that is some coincidence and flies in the face of multiple other players he has played with historically.
Also what happened to Dybala being a bit of a one off?
How credible is this source, they claim its an actual quote ?
Pretty sure it’s a joke mate
No BBC then
Was it Ronaldo's fault when Rashford missed the absolute sitter against Brighton after a perfect delivery? The amount of passing the buck is ridiculous.
I said early 2006 (until around February time). He exploded after that (which ties in with a good 06 WC and start to 06/07 season)
Before then, he was largely branded a one trick pony despite his incredible talent. And there are threads here asking him to be swapped with some player most people probably can’t name today (can’t remember who it was).
He was always great for Portugal btw from the very beginning. But at club level he was still largely overlooked until just after his 21st birthday.
Anyway, we’re deviating from the point.
That’s not what I said. I said it was shocking at times when they played together and it wasn’t just because of Ronaldo’s presence. Obviously he was great after CR’s departure.
Their numbers do go down but not for different reasons and not necessarily their form. Dybala’s numbers went down but he was also injured more often. In 19/20 he didn’t score a lot but Ronaldo’s presence didn’t really affect his general impact as he was fantastic throughout. So Sancho, who’s actually a player that should compliment Ronaldo relatively well (more of an assist man than scorer) shouldn’t be struggling as much as he is.
I know, it is what I said in response to what you said.
How do you know it wasn't in part due to stifling his game to help Ronaldo's?
So Ronaldo is the one common denominator but has absolutely nothing to do with it? Even when there is proof of multiple players being better without him?
Okay seems a bit delusional to me and I love Ronaldo overall but sure carry on.
Nope.
Playing in a broken attack that had to constantly slow down probably didn't help a player like Rashford's confidence levels and he is definitely a confidence player but he still needs to take some personal responsibility.
If we can build a fast, incisive attack (which 37 year old Ronaldo is unlikely to be the spearhead of) then hopefully that will get some confidence back into them and we will see the results.
I admitted he did impact their numbers due to them adjusting the way they played but I’m saying it wasn’t necessarily for the worst and was usually for the better most times.
My primary point here is that Rashford and Sancho were just plain bad last season and I doubt Ronaldo not being there would have made a night and day difference which seems to be what you’re suggesting.
Okay well we entirely disagree with your second sentence. You are right in your first sentence that it was a net positive for the teams whilst he was scoring 60 a season (he isn't doing that anymore).
I am not saying they could not have possibly done better but they were playing in a slow, broken attack that was centred around one 37 year old man.
Suarez and to a lesser extent Neymar put up insane numbers next to Messi. In fact people used to downplay Suarez’ numbers because ”he played with Messi” and Messi was such a creative force on top of his goals. People thought Suarez’ goals were inflated by Messi, not the other way around.
Not sure there’s a single player in any of Ronaldo’s teams you could say that about.
I think the times he dropped too deep were out of desperation that we weren't getting the ball up to him further forward.
Nope.
Playing in a broken attack that had to constantly slow down probably didn't help a player like Rashford's confidence levels and he is definitely a confidence player but he still needs to take some personal responsibility.
If we can build a fast, incisive attack (which 37 year old Ronaldo is unlikely to be the spearhead of) then hopefully that will get some confidence back into them and we will see the results.
So even when it isn't his fault it is
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