So cause differential Xg isnt good we should say he's doing good things at the club and improvement is there for all to see?
When we conciede from a header Im gonna qoute this. Look Shaw is a LB and thats his
In all honesty I think we gathered more points than we deserved judging on the quality of football and some rightfully questionable ETH decisions. I hoped for a bit more entertaining football under ETH with a top 4 challenge which we are in currently.
I agree. xG and differential should be one of many factors when reviewing performance. The xG isn’t in his favor but so many other things are… I don’t like using just xG either and we shouldn’t.
Yeah, I see what you're getting at, fair dos.
Fair enough fella
Smart owners will build on ETH. You can see he is building up somethibg special, and 2nd, you dont want to upset the fans as they clearly love him already
Good post. Agree with everything. As for our forward play its still a work in progress and as you said not only scoring but creating chances is a problem but that is on a upward trajectory too. As for striker, its more the fact we need backup to Martial then the overall forward play imo, in the sense that our depth in forward line is not really good. Add that kind of player and a backup or a starter instead of Eriksen and its automatically a lot better picture.
We are low on goals because we lack consistently goal scoring striker, not because ETH set up the team incorrectly. Given this situation we still have a healthy win ratio. And that credit goes to ETH and his staff.
Gakpo can play left winger , cf and striker. He is tall, developing him into a world class striker is definitely possible.
Blaming fan protests for us not signing Gakpo is weird.
I agree. The only similarities are probably the no nonsense approach. Do as you’re told or you’re gone! Can’t say they have same tactics as football as changed massively since fergies time. Football nowadays is more about tactics and the small details that can win you a game. Fergie was a manager that would set you out to win in whatever way he could. Obviously Ten Hag wants to win every single game but he’s mentioned time and time again that there’s a certain way he wants to win and wants to play. It won’t always be pretty wins but he’s trying to implement a good style so we blow teams away more often.
Guardiola wasn’t exactly full on attacking on his first season with city. He didn’t have the players. He had to sell the majority and buy his own. Seen something before that shows Ten Hag has done a lot better in his first 15 games in the prem then what guardiola did by playing more of the top 6 teams aswell. Once Ten hag has got the players required to play his style of football then we’ll see it a lot consistently.
It’s only an elephant in the room if you ignore context all together. We needed a right winger. Gakpo isn’t a right winger. Antony is. Ergo Antony was more important.
I was gonna post that latter bit, too, but held back.Yes.
Never criticized ETH on setup, team selection or tactics. Merely pointed out that our Goal difference and xG are low given where we are in the table and the points we’ve managed. I tend to agree with you, the reason is because we aren’t creating a lot of high quality chances and we aren’t finishing those chances. Some would say it’s because we don’t have a world class no. 9, and sure, that would solve a lot of our problems, but there are plenty of examples in world football where a team doesn’t have a class no. 9, but the team manages to score a lot of goals. Liverpool for one, Bayern being another. We just need to score more goals.
Crazy how opinion has changed on him. He was performing quite well before his injury and one bad game he's suddenly a concern.
Rashford has all of those qualities as well, yet 9 is not his best position. Still. At this point, wouldn’t we rather cash our chips in on Ramos or another true no. 9? Osimhen, Vlahovic, hell even a flyer on Icardi or Jovic, possibly Leao…. Frustratingly, Julian Alvarez goes to City for 20m to back up Haaland, and we are left with the oft-injured Martial.
I would argue that Martial, when fit and on form, actually DOES operate as a classic 9. His hold up play is excellent, his movement in the box is decent, and his passing / balls into space to Rashford and the RW are borderline sublime at times. You could argue for a Firmino type, more of a withdrawn striker, I think that could work too. But let’s be honest, putting a Kane or a Haaland or a Lewandowski or a Benzema in at 9 in our team and everyone would score bags of goals. Those are complete 9s, conventional 9s, whatever you want to call them. I think the key thing is to get another quality option besides Martial, be it a true 9 or a Firmino type.
A loans alright but if it’s only a stop gap loan then the player it self isn’t gonna be motivated or be bothered about his performances if he knows he won’t be here next season. Loan with option to buy is a good one. Keeps the player performing well to try and get us to sign him permanently… the only player I’ve seen us linked with though is Felix and we ain’t paying what they want for a short loan.
Maybe promote a youth player or utilise a long forgotten player and say "it's like a new signing". That would be trying to be creative
