Boateng, Pique, Javi Martinez, Thiago Silva. Possibly David Luiz and Sergio Ramos.
His standard of passing isn't that good. He has an excellent raking diagonal pass when he isn't under pressure, but he's not some sort of ultimate libero at the back.
17
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 56
- Clean sheets
- 22
- Goals
- 2
- Assists
- 4
- Yellow cards
- 3
- Status
His standard of passing isn't that good. He has an excellent raking diagonal pass when he isn't under pressure, but he's not some sort of ultimate libero at the back.
He's quickly becoming one of my favourite players. His composure and reading of the game have definitely contributed towards Smalling's form. Aside from his defensive qualities he also starts a lot of attacks and is our best outlet for long balls out of defence. He's a really consistent, solid player who has made a valuable contribution and he keeps improving.
Behave.
Only Javi Martinez can get in the conversation here. The rest are just very good *for defenders*.
Look at our two great team goals on Tuesday. Both started with Blind, one was a great pass to Mata in between the lines and the other was a beautiful little dink between two Stoke players under pressure. He also has two assists this season, one was a great mid range pass on the floor to Depay and another from a fairly long lofted ball.
He's probably the closest thing we have to a Carrick replacement in terms of his reading of the game. He still needs to improve a great deal, but he certainly has time to.
Aye, pretty much. He probably looks better than he is because the likes of Smalling and Jones are nowhere near as good as him when it comes to passing. He's a consistent, reliable passer of the ball, but someone like Carrick, for example, is better than him.
They're just names. Non, bar Martinez, can pass the ball to the standard of Blind.
I just wish he had a touch more physical attributes, great football ability in a slightly non athletic skin.
People might hate me form it but he could be our Jan molby.
Have you seen Boateng in the Bundesliga? His raking through balls are easily as good as Blind's, I'm sure the Bayern viewers can attest to that. Likewise for Pique. It's not like Blind is infallible in his passing, he occasionally under hits short passes and puts them in silly positions.
I watch Bayern on a regular basis for a number of years. Boateng is nowhere near as good passer as Blind (especially in making the correct pass). Don't watch Barca enough to comment on Pique
Can Hummels still hit a pass?
Definitely one I forgot.
People massively under-rating Blind's passing ability here. Simply isolating him into the "good at diagonal passes when in space" group is shockingly harsh.
The amount of times he's played a gorgeous pass to our forwards on the floor this season is fantastic.
Let's not forget his gem of a pass to RVP in the WC too. Blind is in the top group of passing defenders.
The amount of times he's played a gorgeous pass to our forwards on the floor this season is fantastic.
Let's not forget his gem of a pass to RVP in the WC too. Blind is in the top group of passing defenders.
Where is he in the group of defending defenders?
I like him, but he's 7/10 at too many things, and not 9/10 at playing any position.
Put one nicely over his own keeper in the last league game but the ref felt bad for him and gave him a free kick.
what's the latter, Martial or Lingard's goal?
Nope, people are rating his passing just about right, I'd say.
He does need space in order to be progressive/useful with his passing. Playing in defence allows him time and space to play into, and means that he can receive the ball slowly to feet without the pressure of being pressed, surrounded, or having his flat feet chomped at.
You say he's not all about long diagonal balls when in space, and then mention the 'gem' van Persie pass, which was pretty much just that.
I do agree that he can play a progressive pass, and can pass into feet... but he has to play in defence to do it, for the reasons mentioned above.
To even compare him as a passer to Carrick or Alonso (who can do it higher up the pitch, under pressure, and often with two/three swift touches) is indeed overrating his passing ability.
Quality midfielders have always been underrated at OT. We've seen United buying JSV despite having the best attacking midfielder in his generation and people sneering at the idea of Keane replacing Ince and Carrick replacing Keane. Not to forget the fact that Pogba couldn't get games in a midfield filled with near 40 year olds and the likes of Cleverley, Ando etc.
I think we've got a good thing going in CM. They are not world class but they do have a mix of skills which combined and used wisely can build an excellent CM. Schneiderlin is the typical DM we lacked for years. He may not be the best passer of the ball but he's not shit in it either. Blind is an intelligent player with decent movement, good passing skills and a good shot while Ander has great movement, he's creative and he's hardworking. Not to forget Bastian whose experience will allow us time to make sure this CM gel together.
United CM had seen better days of course but it had seen much worse days too. I think it would serve us well in the future if we use it wisely. Meanwhile money should be spent in other areas especially on the flanks and in the defense
I think we've got a good thing going in CM. They are not world class but they do have a mix of skills which combined and used wisely can build an excellent CM. Schneiderlin is the typical DM we lacked for years. He may not be the best passer of the ball but he's not shit in it either. Blind is an intelligent player with decent movement, good passing skills and a good shot while Ander has great movement, he's creative and he's hardworking. Not to forget Bastian whose experience will allow us time to make sure this CM gel together.
United CM had seen better days of course but it had seen much worse days too. I think it would serve us well in the future if we use it wisely. Meanwhile money should be spent in other areas especially on the flanks and in the defense
But it really isn't, Carrick has played centreback plenty of times, how many times did he play a killer pass from there? Blind takes a little longer on the ball because he's waiting for the movement to make a positive pass, if it doesn't come he plays a simple one. It's crazy how dismissive people are of his passing ability.
I rewatched the highlights last night. It was actually Carrick that made the beautiful dinked pass out of defence for Martial's goal. Blind did start the move with an intelligent tackle in the box. Blind's pass to Mata between the lines was for Rooney's goal.
Exactly. Ramos, Silva are all obviously superior defenders but to say they're better passers is absolutely ludicrous.
pretty sure Carrick delivered those passes from the defense plenty of times last season, both of them have that ability
Did he? I can't remember putting strikers through as regularly as Blind has done.
blind is a natural defender. Carrick is a CM. That's a big Difference
Im sure van gaal likes for the team to defend with 5 at the back. Blind would be fantastic if he is able to dictate when to drop in to defence & when to step forward to midfield.
Him dropping back to CB from CDM would allow him to start are attacks off as he occasionally does now.
Saying that, we have much bigger problems than focusing on that currently & he himself needs to come to terms with the CB role a bit more him self.
Attack= 433
Defence=541
Intermediate= 352
I think a large part of our troubles have been because of trying to find a stationary formation to work from. The above 3 have had there benefits & negatives. Let's see if the 4321 works better.
Him dropping back to CB from CDM would allow him to start are attacks off as he occasionally does now.
Saying that, we have much bigger problems than focusing on that currently & he himself needs to come to terms with the CB role a bit more him self.
Attack= 433
Defence=541
Intermediate= 352
I think a large part of our troubles have been because of trying to find a stationary formation to work from. The above 3 have had there benefits & negatives. Let's see if the 4321 works better.
Have any of you actuallly paid attention to his defending in games?
His positioning is poor...he drops back when the rest of the defence push up. He goes for balls he has no chance of getting. He often gets caught 30 yards too hig up the pitch for some unknown reason and then ends up being muscled to the ground. It happens in pretty much every game he plays. At Anfield the other week he kept cropping up the wrong side of Smallling and then getting the ball played past him, then when I looked on here Darmian was getting blamed for this because he was the one who had to try and cover two Liverpool players by himself as a result.
He loses his man too often, when people run at him he looks vulnerable and is often bailed out by Smalling or a covering fullback.
We have to play Fellaini in large part due to Blind's lack of physicality which is a problem at set pieces...and people can sneer at that all they want but height and physicality ARE a large part of being a centreback...unless you're Barcelona and just aren't going to let the opposition out of their own half...which we kind of try to do, badly.
He's a burden on our other defenders too often. Try watching the Bournemouth game again when he ended up next to McNair and so had to take responsibillity for defending upon himself...it did not end well, at all.
But hey ho he can play a good pass once every other game so lets just ignore literally everything else that happens. When you're arguing that someone is good at centreback because they're good at attacking, maybe have a think aboout how much sense that makes...especially when it's in relation to a team that have been god awful at attacking all season.
THe problem with this forum is that people decide whether they like a player or idea very early on and then base their opinion entirely around that iniitial assumption, rather than paying any attention at all to what the player or idea actually does to help the team during a game...and then when some kind of differing opinion comes along it's "what absolute nonsense", "you WUM", "utter bollocks" etc...just empty denials. Then six months or so later after it's gradually become more and more difficult to ignore the faults, everyone starts changing their tune.
I don't mean to call you all idiots but redcafe is quite possibly the worst place in the universe to get an accurate opinion on the performance of any footballer, so I just can't take the nonsense comments seriously. This is the forum that took a whole year longer than the rest of the world to accept that David Luiz maybe wasn't the best defender in history. As recently as earlier this season I was getting the "utter nonsense" comments on here for suggesting hoofing the ball to Fellaini to try and score goals was a bad idea.
I kind of agree with this. We can get away with playing him there in games where whether he's good at being a centreback isn't that important, as he does have enoough abillity to assist us in possession. Whenever it does become important to defend though (i.e. when the opposition are able to attack us), it becomes a pretty big problem.
I remember the Wolfsburg game specifically because I missed it at the time, came on here and read loads of comments praising Blind, and thought "that's odd, we lost 3-2...all our other defenders must have had shockers then"...then I watched the game and, without any exaggeration, Wolfsburg had been clean in on goal 4 times within 20 minutes as a direct result of Blind's errors or unsuitability. You just read stuff on here sometimes, and think "what the feck are you people on?" it's so baffling. We had no chance of winning because of this, in what was at the tiime our most important game of the season. Which makes it a pretty big fecking problem, really.
Now we've had to resort to playing Fellaini in midfield to, in part at least, compensate for a lack of physicality and height from set pieces, which again is quite a big problem when you consider that it also means having Fellaini in the team, doing passing and stuff.
None of this is a viable solution for a team that reckons it wants to win trophies and finish at the top of the league and stuff. It's a make do/stop gap solution and I dont even think a particularly good one. Just a forced one due to injuries and poor squad management.
Unfortunately coming on a forum and stating things like "best ball playing centreback in the league" can't force this to either be true or an actual thing.
What? How?
Also we didn't go with Blind over Otamendi. We went with no one over Otamendi. Either that or tried to get him and failed. Though agree he hasn't looked great so far either.
See, the Vidic/Torres thing all came from that one game where Vidic slipped over and then got sent off for being an idiot (something he did on occasion regardless of the opposition striker). Somehow this translated to Torres "always giving hm a torrid time"...when these numerous occasions were on which this happened I'm not sure. There was one other game where Torres was a difference maker against us and that was at Anfield when he skinned Ferdinand to score...not Vidic.
The problem with saying "if Blind was a few inches taller" is that he isn't. It's like saying "if we'd won a few more games we'd be top of the league"...it's just fiction.
You also start your sentence by basically admitting Blind isn't a natural centreback due to his height, then end it by claiming this is a "moronic narrative"...So are you saying that he's doing well for someone who isn't a natural centreback or claiming that the whole idea he isn't one is moronic? make up your mind
In the games we have defended badly - Wolfsburg, Newcastle, Arsenal - Smalling was definitely the worst centre back in each of them.
@noodlehair
Blind goes up for the ball because smalling works best as the last line of defence. In the last couple of games- our goals against have been predominantly caused by Smalling going for balls that he has no chance of getting - in return leaving blind as the last line of defence which is nowhere near as poignant as it is the other way around.
Blind almost plays in front of smalling because he reads the game well & he can also pass the ball from deep predominantly in to forward positions.
Again, when we have the majority of the ball the need for a Rio/vidic type defence is not needed half as much.
Blind goes up for the ball because smalling works best as the last line of defence. In the last couple of games- our goals against have been predominantly caused by Smalling going for balls that he has no chance of getting - in return leaving blind as the last line of defence which is nowhere near as poignant as it is the other way around.
Blind almost plays in front of smalling because he reads the game well & he can also pass the ball from deep predominantly in to forward positions.
Again, when we have the majority of the ball the need for a Rio/vidic type defence is not needed half as much.
@noodlehair agenda-driven posting has reached a new level, but that doesn't surprise me at all.
Making the blasphemy in this forum, I think that Blind is actually a better CB than Smalling, or at the very worst case, he has been better than Smalling for the majority of this season. Of course, he isn't English, isn't 7 foot tall and doesn't put the ball in Row Z everytime a player is 50 yards near him, so he isn't good in the eyes of many.
Making the blasphemy in this forum, I think that Blind is actually a better CB than Smalling, or at the very worst case, he has been better than Smalling for the majority of this season. Of course, he isn't English, isn't 7 foot tall and doesn't put the ball in Row Z everytime a player is 50 yards near him, so he isn't good in the eyes of many.
People want us to become Barcelona, so care more about having technical players in defence rather than actual defenders. Blind is a below average defender. Noodle is spot on.
Yup, far too many hipsters in our fanbase now.
Just as many of our supporters who want us to be chelsea
Hopefully Mourinho's arrival will purge at least one set of them - and Blind from our starting CB position.
Get some mikels, ramires on the way. Some wingers who cant attack ( do we need any more of them), half of the belgium squad & a striker who cheats & spits. We can look forward to 14th after a maximum of one or 2 trophies.
Special one for sure.
Love it.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about if that's what you believe.
Even Baresi wouldn't make for himself English fans. Too short, passes instead of panic, etc etc.
Not that I am comparing Blind to Baresi, or anything like that. Just that I think that a lot of people criticize Blind here for not being the stereotype English CB.
Btw, I thought that I am crazy for rating Blind higher than Smalling, and apparently they have identical rating in squawka. It doesn't mean much of course, but I guess it agrees with me that they are in quite similar level. I prefer Blind because of his style, but really, I think that neither of them is a very top defender, while both of them are quite good. Eventually, I think that Smalling would become a better defender, and by eventually, I mean soon enough.
For what is worth, I think that up to November, Smalling carried Blind, but since then, Blind has outperformed him.
This here is so very true, and something of a common mindset among people, especially on the caf in players threads, they just repeat common misconceptions about a player non stop, sometimes it makes me wonder, surely if they are fans, they must be watching the players surely. Its like no one is capable of forming their own opinions nowadays, just go with the common consensus regardless of the truth in the origin of the statements
People often talk about Smalling being as poor as Blind, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to Blind's performance. For what it's worth, I actually do think Smalling's been quite disappointing since around November/December, but his poor moments often seem to be individual moments where he'll have a brainfart, make a poor clearance/pass, grab onto someone's shirt, or whatever. For the most part, he's positionally quite sound, is strong, and can play well defensively.
Blind just looks quite uncomfortable in general when he's not having a good game, and can have entire games where he's dominated by opposition players. Where Smalling makes some errors, and has some poor games, Blind can sometimes just look out of place in his position, positionally, physically etc.
Blind just looks quite uncomfortable in general when he's not having a good game, and can have entire games where he's dominated by opposition players. Where Smalling makes some errors, and has some poor games, Blind can sometimes just look out of place in his position, positionally, physically etc.
@noodlehair
Nonsense. Blind is not the reason why Fellaini is in the middle. From 21 conceded premier league goals, we have only conceded 5 from corners or free kicks delivered into the box.
In contrast, Blind has to step up so often, because midfield has gone missing. It's basic level defending, anyone who has ever played in a half decent football team should know this.
If a player looks as if he is about to receive a ball around the 30 yard mark (the "hole") without being challenged, one of the two defenders must step up. If one of them didn't step up, a striker would turn to find two back peddling defenders and 10 yards of space to run into. It's not a case of Blind winning the ball, the purpose is to step up and stall the player whilst midfield and fullbacks tighten the gaps.
It happens on a regular basis as it is an obviously practiced routine.
Blind has is physical vulnerabilities, no one can deny that, but some of the claims on here are absurd, especially when the stats are proving he is a extremely capable defender.
Nonsense. Blind is not the reason why Fellaini is in the middle. From 21 conceded premier league goals, we have only conceded 5 from corners or free kicks delivered into the box.
In contrast, Blind has to step up so often, because midfield has gone missing. It's basic level defending, anyone who has ever played in a half decent football team should know this.
If a player looks as if he is about to receive a ball around the 30 yard mark (the "hole") without being challenged, one of the two defenders must step up. If one of them didn't step up, a striker would turn to find two back peddling defenders and 10 yards of space to run into. It's not a case of Blind winning the ball, the purpose is to step up and stall the player whilst midfield and fullbacks tighten the gaps.
It happens on a regular basis as it is an obviously practiced routine.
Blind has is physical vulnerabilities, no one can deny that, but some of the claims on here are absurd, especially when the stats are proving he is a extremely capable defender.
Are you making up stuff? We played with Schneiderlin schweini and Carrick for most of the games til October and played Fellaini only due to injuries. We also never 'hoof it to fellaini'. If hoofing means keeper kicking the ball and him winning it at halfline (which again doesn't happen that often) then I donno what pulis and Klopp (with caulker) do.
You seem to have these cliched opinions. If Fellaini plays 'we good it to him' irrespective of the reality. If blind has a bad game then 'he is the worst player of the season' and 'his height and pace limitations have cost us lots of points'. Try actually watching matches for a change maybe?
You seem to have decided he is shit at the beginningand remain in denial irrespective of his performances
Edit - Bournemouth game? We had McNair CBJ and varela in the back 4. He had a mistake in the game but with that back 4?
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