If United had played to their fullest potential this season, what should we have achieved?

fastwalker

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There have been differing views expressed on this forum about how good or bad this current United squad is. Some use individual performances as the sole judge of actual player 'quality'. Some judge the quality of players in the aggregate by looking at the overall performance of the team. The fact is that it is never as simple as that. Yes, there are a basic set of metrics against which the quality and capability of a player can be measured such as a injury record, goals, assists, kilometres covered, successful dribbles, passes completed, touches, tackles etc, etc. However, none of these statistics is worth a light if players are poorly coached, deployed in tactically inept formations or lack the level of fitness or conditioning required to do what it asked of them.

Last season, United came a distant second to City, reaching 74 points, our best finish since 2017-18. This season we added Jadon Sancho, Rafael Varane and Cristiano Ronaldo and if we win our remaining games we will reach 64 points, our worst league finish since the truly disastrous 2013-14 season under David Moyes. How is it even possible to invest in better and actually become worse? Much as I hate to look in the rear view mirror, if you do not learn from your mistakes you are destined to repeat them.

Realistically, what do you think we should have achieved this season, if our players had actually played to their fullest potential this season? Close third in a three way fight with Liverpool and City for the title? Champions League semi? One of the domestic Cups perhaps?
 
4th easy. Maybe even 3ed given the players we bought and how disappointing Chelsea have been. Had we stuck with the counter attacking system we would have made it IMO, but it would have papered over the cracks. At least now we know a lot of them are not capable of playing progressive football and they have a poor attitude on top of that. It's better that we take the horrible season and get rid of all the unfit players while doing a proper rebuild for attacking possession football.
 
We should have comfortably finished 3rd. It was all there for us in January, then we just couldn’t win a game, and then injuries and loss of confidence/belief set in.
 
Van Piorsing said:
Aye. Winning twice vs Soton, Brentford, Burnley and Watford and it's job done without stealing points from City & Pool.
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Yeah. It was an easy season to get top 4. Arsenal or Spurs are getting it so you know how easy it was. We just decided it was more interesting if we implode and have almost every player look like an amateur.
 
We could've won a trophy, definitely.
 
jackal&hyde said:
Yeah. It was an easy season to get top 4. Arsenal or Spurs are getting it so you know how easy it was. We just decided it was more interesting if we implode and have almost every player look like an amateur.
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flappyjay said:
And not losing to an Everton side that looks like it's about to get relegated.
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Growing contempt for this team is absolutely wrecking my tolerance levels for any of players at the moment. Personal resolution for next season is to simply not to trust them until we'll see something substantial, for more than few opening matches of the season.

Joy of signing guy like Sancho vanished almost completely, as we couldn't even figure out how to use him in this excuse of a football system. So much potential wasted in space of just one year.
 
Don't think we can say we should have finished 3rd as Chelsea might have clicked into a higher gear should they needed it.

We should have been well clear of Arsenal and Spurs.
 
Should really have been top 4 and maybe CL semi final at a push. And definitely much better in the FA Cup.
But football is full of if, but and maybe.
We are where we deserve to be. Simply because so many of our players grossly underperformed.
Almost all of them apart from DDG and Ronaldo.
 
Van Piorsing said:
Growing contempt for this team is absolutely wrecking my tolerance levels for any of players at the moment. Personal resolution for next season is to simply not to trust them until we'll see something substantial, for more than few opening matches of the season.

Joy of signing guy like Sancho vanished almost completely, as we couldn't even figure out how to use him in this excuse of a football system. So much potential wasted in space of just one year.
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I think we all feel the same. Though I am certain we will have a much better performing team next season; if not, someone must really check if there is something in the food or water at Carrington.
 
Probably not too much better. The full potential of our back line is pretty average when compared with our peers, and the more “defensive” minded midfield players are nowhere near good enough. Every team in the league finds it relatively easy to get into our defensive third and cause problems, and I don’t view many of the squad as having much more potential as it pertains to their ability to stifle opposition. We got found out big time this season, and are very easy to set up against. Second place last year was a combination of things, one of which was Liverpools injury problems.
 
3rd, running it close with Chelsea. They had a good but not brilliant manager in Tuchel whilst we had Ole, but we have better players than them in more positions than they do us.
 
Putting aside how bad we've been this season. 74 points last season whilst playing ok but not great. Adding Ronaldo, Varane and Sancho and everyone playing to their fullest potential (the key factor)..that's potentially 15+ more points. With City/Liverpool looking at 92+ points id have said a good go at winning the title was more than achievable.
 
We were architects of our own downfall with sloppy mistakes and too many players strolling about and not taking accountability. If you just remove the goals we conceded due to players being absolutely brain dead or lazy, I’m sure we would have been 3rd
 
3rd or 4th. Our fall has been completely self inflicted. I wish I knew why our defenders have forgotten how to defend and attackers forgotten how to attack. The club needs a psychologist in there ASAP.
 
FriedClams said:
Probably not too much better. The full potential of our back line is pretty average when compared with our peers, and the more “defensive” minded midfield players are nowhere near good enough. Every team in the league finds it relatively easy to get into our defensive third and cause problems, and I don’t view many of the squad as having much more potential as it pertains to their ability to stifle opposition. We got found out big time this season, and are very easy to set up against. Second place last year was a combination of things, one of which was Liverpools injury problems.
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And playing a much deeper line of defense that protected our poor attacking full back and slow center back. We changed tactics and it was a disaster, both under Ole and RR (and even Mourinho). Who made our signings? This is the one area I think Mourinho was right: our set up does not identify the best players for a position and a style of play but rather bought players based on god knows what (IMO it was agents in Woodward's ear convincing him). There is no other explanation why Mourinho was desperate for a CD despite of getting 2 (plus Pogba, Mkhitaryan), Ole getting DVB and not playing him, and I could go on. Woodward was a puppet to agents IMO, thinking he can play real life FM.

That seems to be over now with a new set up, so I'm exited that at least the players we bring in will be what the manager wants.
 
Is this a thread for people to delude themselves that we're a great team that just needs the right manager?
 
Full potential, with a midfield of McT, Fred, Matic and Pogba, would be 4th. City, Liverpool and Chelsea were always finishing above us.
 
Rozay said:
There is no ‘big 3’. We have been consistently better than Chelsea in the league for the last 3 years or so before this one.
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Chelsea was reigning CL champion. We are no way near to that level, no matter how you want to spin it.
 
elnorte said:
Is this a thread for people to delude themselves that we're a great team that just needs the right manager?
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Nah we are mediocre. But should have still been better then Arsenal and Spurs.
 
Impossible to know what the full potential of this squad is. Better than Spurs & Arsenal, beyond that is anyones guess
 
RedRonaldo said:
Chelsea was reigning CL champion. We are no way near to that level, no matter how you want to spin it.
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It isn’t spin at all. We play in the same league as them, and have regular finished above them since Conte left. Obviously, a Cup win does not negate all of that. We should have also finished above them this season really. They are not as good as people like to make out.
 
Ability wise? Probably neck and neck with Chelsea for 3rd.

But Ability doesn't matter when you have no spine or pride, which means we need to gut the majority of this squad.
 
RedRonaldo said:
Chelsea was reigning CL champion. We are no way near to that level, no matter how you want to spin it.
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There is no spinning. We were on top of them last year and now we are closer to them then they are at challenging. Winning a cup competition, even the CL, does not change that. They are better then us by far, but they are also far from competing for the title. Chelsea last year was one of the worst CL winner in recent times.
 
Rozay said:
It isn’t spin at all. We play in the same league as them, and have regular finished above them since Conte left. Obviously, a Cup win does not negate all of that. We should have also finished above them this season really. They are not as good as people like to make out.
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jackal&hyde said:
There is no spinning. We were on top of them last year and now we are closer to them then they are at challenging. Winning a cup competition, even the CL, does not change that. They are better then us by far, but they are also far from competing for the title. Chelsea last year was one of the worst CL winner in recent times.
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Sure, but that's without taking into account the fact that they have to keep focusing on latter stage of CL and the league fixture at the same time.

And they finish higher than us this season too, didn't they?

We can't just assume we played to our fullest potential while other teams don't. Has to be on fair ground.
 
Rozay said:
We should have comfortably finished 3rd. It was all there for us in January, then we just couldn’t win a game, and then injuries and loss of confidence/belief set in.
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Was this when Ole was in charge? All I remember about his time here us getting slapped every week by elite teams like City, Liverpool and Watford. Don't quite remember when anything was "all there for us" this season?
 
The league is really poor this year. By virtue of that, there's absolutely no reason we couldn't have been contesting for 3rd. We've played rivals for the top 4, and outside of the top 2, they were very beatable indeed, even in our current state.

As far as what this squad was capable of, I'm not really sure anymore.
 
Assuming Chelsea didn't play to their full potential then third place would have been achievable for this side with no injuries; maybe a strong cup run too.
 
Too many below average players, even if they played at their maximum potential, they would've been found out in tough cup games (CL & FA), in the league they could at best be 3rd or 4th.
 
I said at the start of the season we had 4th place written all over us. I felt the other 3 were significantly stronger and we were a fair bit stronger than Arsenal and Tottenham. Not getting 4th with this squad is a feck up of mammoth proportions.
 
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