Donny van de Beek image 34

Donny van de Beek Netherlands flag

2023-24 Performances

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5.8 Season Average Rating
Appearances
2
Goals
0
Assists
0
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marktan said:
That would be interesting to watch. I can imagine him doing it in the Eeredivisie where the defences are often weak, and Ajax's attack too strong, so it becomes a little bit like men vs boys.

Against good European opposition I'd be more surprised. He doesn't seem to have any actual footballing qualities other than passing to the nearest man 5 metres away and then running into space, and scoring the occasional goal for a team that is attack heavy. Unfortunately it's the goal stats that decieved us, similarly to Sancho. Mata is another player that fits this category for me, a good footballer yes but lacking the specialised quality to play any position particularly well. Mount has more about him but ultimately his own lack of specialisation will see him fit into that same category.

Which is why signing someone like Hojlund is nice, didn't have big stats but has a lot more to his all round game than what you'd glean from just looking at stats or plays against second rate players in poor leagues.
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and our ‘best’ players are incapable of playing well consistently and are reliant on conjuring moments of magic to justify their stay in the team. We need to move away from the rubbish football where we hope some players turn up and do something special each game.

Even players like Varane and Casemiro struggle to perform well consistently and that’s because we’re so reliant on the likes of Rashford and Bruno that the team is effectively playing like a man down when they’re playing like shit.
 
Our very own Danny Drinkwater. The fact we paid 135M to Ajax for Antony and Van de Beek should have cost many people their jobs.
 
SAFMUTD said:
Our very own Danny Drinkwater. The fact we paid 135M to Ajax for Antony and Van de Beek should have cost many people their jobs.
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Technically Danny Drinkwater was our very own Danny Drinkwater
 
Golden Nugget said:
United have signed quite a few of these pass and move type of players now, none of them have worked out.

The likes of Kagawa, Mata, Sancho, Mkhitaryan all fall into the bucket for me, and had they all played together, maybe we’d have a different story.

United is the wrong club for them, at least ever since Sir Alex retired, but as mentioned earlier, they’d probably work out better at a club like City or Barcelona.
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Generally I agree; our system definitely makes the weaknesses of these players stick out and doesn't adorn their talents, but most of these weren't that good anyway. Only Mkhitaryan picked it up on his exit - and he's changed his game a lot to fit a specific tactical role at Inter.

On van de Beek -- really don't get all the comments on this page. He was a dime a dozen shadow striker/off the ball no.10 that Dutch teams tend to produce all the time. See Klaassen, his original prototype, or Guus Til at PSV, De Wit etc.
 
lex talionis said:
This is a more reasoned reply than the previous post, but the point is that Donny in fact had some attributes we could have used if Ole wasn't so stubborn about not getting Grealish. Bruno is the better attacking midfielder, full stop, but the problem with Bruno is that his passing is too chaotic. There is no such as tactics with Bruno. It's all about instinct with him and while it's attractive to watch when he pulls off the perfect Hollywood ball, you can't build an attack around Bruno. On the few occasions Ole did throw Donny onto the pitch, it was in a deeper role to accommodate Bruno and no one will argue here that Donny is a natural deep lying or defensive midfielder. What he does, or I should say did before he was wrecked, was knit passes together in the final third -- the very attribute Bruno is not very good at.

Yes, if the prosecution accuses Donny for not being a proper 6 or 8 then the man is guilty as charged. He was never and will never be a 6 or an 8. His game is all about exploiting pockets of space in and around the opponent's 18 yard box and that's the one aspect of play United are uniquely and comically incompetent at. Our defensive record was fairly sound the last two seasons but the goal dried up. The lack of clinical finishing is mostly responsible for that but right behind in second place is our incompetence against clubs who sit deep against us. Bruno is not built to dismantle parked buses but we play him match after match after match, our win/loss record deteriorating to the point now where we can't even compete against clubs like Fulham, let alone City.

McTominay is no passer of the ball, not even in the same universe as Donny. McTominay is the better finisher, but how he is best deployed as a last resort when chasing the game late in the second half.
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Pretty sure Donny played more often in an attacking position than he did in a deeper position for us. Indeed, the only time he looked like he might have a future here was when he was played in the deeper position a few times towards the end of his first season and start of his second season. He had a few good performances there where he was one of our best players (albeit some of them were against weak teams), and it was the only time in his career here where I felt he was unfortunate not to get more game-time (especially considering both Fred and McTominay started that second season terribly).

Whenever we played him in an attacking role he was just a non-entity, even more than Scott is.
 
I really wanted it to work but it hasn’t, aside from the transfer fee we’ve paid Donny north of 30m it’s never going to work and Mason Mount is probably headed in the same direction.
 
foolsgold said:
I really wanted it to work but it hasn’t, aside from the transfer fee we’ve paid Donny north of 30m it’s never going to work and Mason Mount is probably headed in the same direction.
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Mount has been injured for most of the season. I don't know how people are writing him off after such a small sample size of games. I wasn't the biggest fan of buying him but even I recognise you at least got to give a player a decent amount of time to adjust to a team, ideally a season.
 
MadDogg said:
Pretty sure Donny played more often in an attacking position than he did in a deeper position for us. Indeed, the only time he looked like he might have a future here was when he was played in the deeper position a few times towards the end of his first season and start of his second season. He had a few good performances there where he was one of our best players (albeit some of them were against weak teams), and it was the only time in his career here where I felt he was unfortunate not to get more game-time (especially considering both Fred and McTominay started that second season terribly).

Whenever we played him in an attacking role he was just a non-entity, even more than Scott is.
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It’s been so long ago since we saw Donny play a full 90, and even longer — if ever — that we saw him play two full 90s back to back that it’s hard to remember where he played when he did get starts, but I have no recollection of Donny ever getting a start over Bruno.

What typically happened on those few occasions when Donny came on is it was really late, we were chasing an equalizer and Donny was chucked onto the pitch with Bruno, who is rarely subbed off no matter how shit his play is, and nothing would come as there really isn’t much one can do coming on that late unless your name is McTominay and your sole positive attribute is preying on the box for a loose ball.

Maybe Donny is shit, but it cannot be argued that we ever gave him a proper chance to play in the role he’s best suited at. I fully acknowledge that Donny is no deep lying midfielder or destroyer.

Edwin Van Der Sar asked us to look after Donny. We failed to do so.
 
lex talionis said:
It’s been so long ago since we saw Donny play a full 90, and even longer — if ever — that we saw him play two full 90s back to back that it’s hard to remember where he played when he did get starts, but I have no recollection of Donny ever getting a start over Bruno.
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He started most of the cup games as a #10 in his first season while we rested Bruno. From memory a lot of his sub appearances were also coming in to play as a #10 while Bruno moved out wide.

I certainly do agree we didn't see a great deal of him, but he did get enough game time that he could have earned more time. It's not like he's in a situation like Amad is at the moment where he's barely getting any time on the field at all (even after good performances).
 
SAFMUTD said:
Our very own Danny Drinkwater. The fact we paid 135M to Ajax for Antony and Van de Beek should have cost many people their jobs.
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Makes for horrendous reading. Even worse is, when I criticised the transfers at the time, everyone defended them.
 
Yagami said:
Makes for horrendous reading. Even worse is, when I criticised the transfers at the time, everyone defended them.
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Yeah I remembered the times. I thought it was clear we were going for him because we ran out of options, rather than someone that Ole thinks will truly strengthen the team; but many on the CAF somehow think differently back then.

Our transfers and negotiations team are truly horrendous.
 
125 PW at us. Crazy. Hopefully we now see a better policy in terms of getting players or more so alternatives when first choice isn't available or a crazy price
 
Dutch papers reporting Frankfurt wants to send Donny back to United.
 
Unam333 said:
Dutch papers reporting Frankfurt wants to send Donny back to United.
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At first I was confused about him. Then I was angry at him. Now I'm just sad for him. What in the world has happened to his career..

Anyway, we could use a striker for our amateur team here if he's up for giving it a go. Our #10 is decent and a good lad so he'd have to play the #9, but I know the manager well and could probably get him in if he's really keen. £5 a week subs, tour kitty is shaping up well this summer.

Let me know Donny.
 
Seems to be the kinda player who just needs to play a lot to maintain strength and confidence. May just have to return to the Eredivisie and play for a smaller club and hope he plays himself back into the spotlight of a step up for final years of his career. Surely he himself recognizes he is flat out wasting his time not playing at all, even if the pay check is a bit higher.
 
Redplane said:
Seems to be the kinda player who just needs to play a lot to maintain strength and confidence. May just have to return to the Eredivisie and play for a smaller club and hope he plays himself back into the spotlight of a step up for final years of his career. Surely he himself recognizes he is flat out wasting his time not playing at all, even if the pay check is a bit higher.
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Yeah, agree. Can see him becoming a solid Erdevisie player again. He'll be 27 in less than a month, time flies so he has to get his career back on track soon.
 
Another one of these many players we have had over the years where we’re just waiting for their never ending contract to end

When does it end anyway?
 
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He was really unlucky to get that injury last year from that wild tackle when he was starting to find a bit of form. Even when it was sort of looking like it might work for him, he got injured for challenging for a ball. That basically derailed any chance he had here. Shame.
 
Just needs to accept his Davy Klaasen status, head back to Ajax and start afresh.

I wonder if Everton fans had as much delusion around Davy as some Utd fans built around Donny.
 
Hasn't left the bench in the last 2 games (5 of the last 8).

We'll probably need to release him on a free with his wages.
 
Feels a bit like he dropped even further in the rankings. Shkiri injured today, so a place in midfield is open. What does Toppmöller do? Keeps all his usual midfielders on the bench, moves Tuta from CB to DM and gives Collins his debut at CB. So despite Shkiri's injury all other midfielders who were subbed on before Donny lately are also all on the bench now.
 
Shame, really hoped he'd enjoy a bit of success at Frankfurt so he could find himself a decent club this summer.
 
NotChatGPT said:
Shame, really hoped he'd enjoy a bit of success at Frankfurt so he could find himself a decent club this summer.
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When does his contract expire?

Pretty sure he’d have never been offered a new one or had an option triggered but it feels like he’s been here 4 years or more
 
This is partly what made me excited about having Ten Hag come in as our manager. The fact he can take players like Van De Beek, Haller and Tadic and turn them into world beaters.

Turns out it’s probably just the Dutch league :lol:
 
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