Has Juan Mata been a flop?

This guy ball watches. Near the end, he literally had to run like 4 yards from an offside position while we were on the attack!

It looked so odd.

There must be a gif somewhere.
 
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The bloke was PotY for a 6th place team before we bought him. And he can’t run. £40m well spent.
 
Not a flop but he'd of suited the way City or Arsenal play far more than us, we don't keep the ball well enough high up the pitch.
 
Cutch said:
Unbelievable how many managers have played Mata who has the speed of a snail on the right wing. Just utterly pointless there. Should hav been moved on years ago if we weren’t gonna use him in his position
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I can bet Pep would have turned him into somebody like David Silva or Iniesta lite.
He just didn't get the combination right with United. Initially he had to make way for declining Rooney because he was senior player and wanted that position.
I think worst thing that happened with United was when we signed Mata but gave Rooney 6 years contract.
We should have built the team around him. Imagine DiMaria on the wing, Another winger like him on the other, Mata as 10, Ibrahimovic or Lukaku up top. 2 solid midfielders. But at that time we appointed LVG who insisted on possession based football with wrong set of players.
 
Worst i've seen him tonight sadly. Just seemed anonymous sadly. Looking like we shouldn't have renewed his contract.
 
Honestly, I don't remember a single thing dear Juan has done since Juanfield. A few hugs, that's all.
 
I preferred Kagawa but unfortunately Moyes preferred Mata.
I suspect Kagawa’s happy that he moved, though, given the state of this team.
 
For a club record signing, he's been underwhelming. We'll always remember Juanfield but he was rarely more than decent.
 
Jibbs said:
I can bet Pep would have turned him into somebody like David Silva or Iniesta lite.
He just didn't get the combination right with United. Initially he had to make way for declining Rooney because he was senior player and wanted that position.
I think worst thing that happened with United was when we signed Mata but gave Rooney 6 years contract.
We should have built the team around him. Imagine DiMaria on the wing, Another winger like him on the other, Mata as 10, Ibrahimovic or Lukaku up top. 2 solid midfielders. But at that time we appointed LVG who insisted on possession based football with wrong set of players.
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He wouldn't because Mata can't dribble or shield the ball at all. His first move for the last 4 and half years has been to pass or scamper backwards towards his own goals or run sideways across the pitch. Him being a creative player is a myth.
 
If only we had signed De Bruyne rather than Mata in 2014 when Jose was in selling mode, but our club wasn’t that forward thinking.
 
m1tch said:
Not a flop but he'd of suited the way City or Arsenal play far more than us, we don't keep the ball well enough high up the pitch.
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No chance. I've never seen a no. 10 (if you can call him that) this cowardly in possession. Pep would have flogged him off ages ago.
 
Bojan11 said:
If only we had signed De Bruyne rather than Mata in 2014 when Jose was in selling mode, but our club wasn’t that forward thinking.
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I know, how many times in my mind I have thought about us signing KdB and Griezmann in 2014/15.
 
I think he is when you consider his reputation when he arrived here - he was rated as one of the best AMs around. He's not been terrible but I think my memory of him is clouded by Juanfield and a good freekick here and there, overall he's not been great.
 
The only reason him and Matic are still around is no one else wanted them. Complete cack.
 
To be fair, every player signed the last 7 years have been flops, jury is obviously still out on our three newest ones.
 
Of course he has. Fellaini was the better player for us and could change matches from the bench and was sold like nothing.
Mata did feck all here, he’s been a waste of time.
Wouldn’t get a game at Leeds.
 
Won’t be missed or remembered when he does finally leave.
 
Lovely, sincere, decent guy.

Footballing wise, he's composed on the ball, can pass and always tries to be positive going forward.
However, he's too slow and more importantly, far too lightweight.

Gets bounced off the ball too often, can't defend, can't tackle, can't hustle players, weak at pressing, loses possession too easily when physically challenged. Has hardly has any influence on games, these days. Adds nothing, but then he's not the worst in the squad.

He's got another season on his contract with us after this one!
 
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He's a flop and him being a nice guy simply does not matter. Looking at him, Matic and Fred in midfield against AZ and them not being able to control that game really says it all. Play Gomes,Garner,Chong over these guys because it's a sad fact that despite getting rid of 7 players this summer we have 7 to 10 still left that have no future as United players.
 
He was never a flop. We never utilised his qualities. He was never played in the number 10 role. Whilst playing in the number 10 role for Chelsea he won their player of the year twice. For us sadly he has never hit those heights because of bad management.

David Moyes single handedly destroyed everything sir Alex built by getting rid of the back room staff and singing Fellaini and Mata. SAF would never have signed them two. We used to shoe horn those two into a team which combined with other terrible signings is why we are in the mess we are today.

Oh how things would be different if we managed to sign Kroos, Hazard, Mane and the likes of Eriksen that we were Linked with. Instead we got Di Maria, Sanchez, Depay and Falcao.
 
Weird one this. 227 games and not beeing a success tells you everything you need to know about United post Fergie...
 
McUnited said:
I preferred Kagawa but unfortunately Moyes preferred Mata.
I suspect Kagawa’s happy that he moved, though, given the state of this team.
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Van Persie and Kagawa should've been Rooney's replacement. I preferred Kagawa myself. His and RVP's United career took a big hit from Fergie retiring.

And yes, Juan Mata has been a flop. Decent guy but he's been at United for 6 years and he's done absolutely nothing of note other than that one game in Anfield.
 
Never produced a consistent run of form. Misused for most part but him being only good at the number 10 when we didn't even tried to play one did him no good.
 
Since we all love the guy anyway, how many times was he actually played in the no.10 role? I remember Jose playing him a lot on the right. LvG too?
 
Yes. We signed him for around 30 million when that was still big money. And he was average for us. Some nice moment here and there but not enough.
 
Also comparing him to Berbatov is a pretty unjustified. The Bulgarian was miles better for us.
 
I consider him a huge flop.

He was bought to provide creativity and end product but all he does is pass it backwards and sideways. Nothing footballer.
 
MadDogg said:
From memory Jose played him in the centre a decent amount when he first took over, but Mata was actually performing better on the right so ended up staying there.
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I thought Jose played Micky there consistently?

It's strange to think how multiple managers have failed at solving problem areas for us - no.10 going back to Fergie and RW with all the managers since.
 
Eric7C said:
Since we all love the guy anyway, how many times was he actually played in the no.10 role? I remember Jose playing him a lot on the right. LvG too?
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LVG converted him, along with Rooney to CM. Mata has had some spells where he would get a group of games in the 10 position, but then we'd eventually move to something else. He's never looked like the missing piece for us in that role when hes played there
 
Eric7C said:
I thought Jose played Micky there consistently?

It's strange to think how multiple managers have failed at solving problem areas for us - no.10 going back to Fergie and RW with all the managers since.
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Using transfermarkt, it says that Mata started the first three games at right wing (with Miki replacing him off the bench) but for the next few months he played a fair bit of both with the majority in the centre. It wasn't until December where Jose seemed to only start using him on the right. Miki was the opposite - played almost exclusively on the right until February where he started playing mostly in the centre.
 
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