Pogba and Martial were during spells our best players and highly entertaining. It makes sense that a portion of fans would like them.
10
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 24
- Goals
- 7
- Assists
- 3
- Yellow cards
- 3
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) talk about the proposed new stadium, season ticket prices, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and all things INEOS after the first year of their co-ownership.
They also discuss back-to-back victories vs. Real Sociedad and Leicester City - was this the best week for Amorim so far?
He most certainly did
Rashford is a skidmark on Garnacho's underpants.
Ffs this has made me think of White Goodman
Indeed
Rooney had a lot more natural talent and football intelligence though to make up for being overplayed since 16. Rashford is skilful, but he’s a pace and power player first and foremost and not ‘blessed’ with quite the attributes that allowed Rooney to adapt to different roles once his genetics/overplayed youth caught up with him. He played at 10, 9, on the wing or in midfield with equal competence, whereas Rashford could only really do one of these well (and another kinda alright but not as good) Hence why he keeps trying the same takeons he did 3-4 years ago with diminishing returns.
Rooney and Owen had incredible physical attributes, some of their best features as teenagers.
Rooney was one of the most naturally athletic players I've seen. Fast, agile, amazingly strong, great stamina, aside from height (he still scored headers), he had everything at a very high level. He just got lazy and started losing it and got fat.
I used to love Rooney going shoulder to shoulder, he would floor players.
If only Rashford would take the bull by the horns
So was Rashford though?
Cram it up your cramhole Rashford.
Yes and he also has a following still. Personally though I don’t think he’s ever been as talented as those two, so there’s always an element of “what if” when it comes to martial and particularly Pogba.
I'm not talking about that. It's about obsessing over players, having these Twitter profiles dedicated to Pogba od Martial (like with Ronaldo), bashing managers if they don't play those players. They came back when Ole won his first game in charge at Besiktas, obsessing over Ole as well
As I said, it's either kids or weirdos.Rooney's build was absolutely perfect for football. Owen was about as fast as can be, agile, low centre of gravity. Again, spot on for football.
Especially bald Rooney
Rooney at 33-34 was a pale shadow of what he was at his peak, he could hardly get round the pitch, Owen was a different specimen but had so many injuries he was finished by his early 30’s.
Rashford physically is similar to Danny Wellbeck and both could easily perform at 35-37 in the PL and still score and assist.
Rashford is already showing signs of physical decline. I disagree with you here
By “physically similar to Welbeck” do you mean tall, lean and black? Because there’s a whole load of footballers who fit that definition and not many of them are scoring regularly at Welbeck’s age.
I think, slightly paradoxically, Welbeck’s terrible luck with injuries is a factor in him aging quite well. He’s made a total of 355 PL appearances, aged 34. Rashford is on 292 appearances already, aged 27. He’ll have a hell of a lot more miles on the clock than Welbeck when he’s the same age (if he’s even still playing PL football at 34)
True, Rooney already had a lot of mileage when he turned 30, and he never took good care of himself. One more reason why Welbeck may be more able to prolong his PL career is that his game never really revolved around making sprints all the time.
That they didn't age well in their late 20's doesn't mean they weren't athletically gifted in the first place.
Both were exceptionally athletic.
Rooney was a shadow of himself by 27-28. While he did score a decent amount of goals in the couple seasons after that it wasn't indicative of his overall play, which was really bad and detrimental to the team. He became slow, which exposed the fact his first touch became really poor, passes would bounce off him and he couldn't recover. He also became very risk adverse, pretty much every breaking attacking move we made was killed when the ball went to Rooney and he turned and passed backwards. He physically declined and that is what his game was based on. People will disagree with me, but SAF's parting gift to the team was to try and force Rooney out to try and force the club to move on from an aging player, in decline, whose value would have still been high to other clubs because they weren't as aware of his decline.
And it makes sense Rooney was done at that age, he started playing regularly at the age of 16, he was the heart of a successful United team for the following decade. Considering most players breakthrough in their early 20s then fade away in their early to mid 30s, it's the same scale with Rooney, just shifted to an earlier starting point.
Rashford could suffer a little from similar issues, he started playing regularly at 18, but let's be honest, there is no comparison between the players and the teams they played in. Rashford isn't fit to lace Rooney's boots and you could never question Rooney's commitment.
Rooney's peak was one of the youngest I have seen.
Rashford has lost a lot already, hes lazy.
Rooney let himself go though, really had terrible work ethic away outside of matches.
His peak was the season Ronaldo left, 09/10, when he was 24 years old. He had a couple good seasons after that, but that was his pinnacle.
I am not even sure you could say Rashford peaked, he was pretty consistently inconsistent most of his career. I guess the 3 months from Dec 22 - Feb 23 were his peak, but it's more so a purple patch than a genuine peak.
While my memories of Rooney have somewhat been tainted by him hanging around too long, I am starting to get over that and there is barely a player a can recall more impactful and talented in my time supporting United, a true United legend. Rashford is just a decent, patchy, player during a poor period that I will barely remember in 20 years' time, like Denny Welbeck, but at least Welbeck has proven himself outside United for a sustained period, that won't happen with Rashford.
I still can't believe they gave him a long contract after that. SAF laid it on a plate for the club to get rid of him and make decent money for him at the same time. That was the start of the decline we've been watching for a decade
Rashford won't be anywhere near a football pitch that late in life. Would be surprised if he goes past 30.
Totally different as a player to Welbeck
There was no way Moyes, already struggling to get any sort of quality signing into the club was going to let Rooney leave at that point.
I don't want to hijack the thread, but IMO some of the fans saw what SAF was doing, and some blindly supported Rooney, for all that he gave us, much like some do now with Rashford (although he hasn't actually given us much). Moyes came in and his first big move to try and endear himself to the fans was to give Rooney that contract and a promise of the captaincy. First nail in Moyes' coffin, that contract was criminal and against everything SAF wanted, SAF never gave long contracts to anyone over 30, that contract brough rooney to 34, plus he was clearly trying to drive him out of the club on his way out the door.
Some of these recent seasons have been brutal, but we barely remember what success was at this point, that season was a nightmare that wouldn't stop.
Spot on. SAF set that up perfectly. I was shocked that Moyes resigned Rooney. However Moyes did everything he could to self sabotage himself. Never seen anything like that in my life.
As for Rooney he was the most naturally gifted players i have ever seen. But the most unprofessional. Hated to train. Showed up fat every preseason. Smoked like a chimney, drank a ton of beer, and shagged old ladies. It was easy to see to us that he was done at a extremely young age. You have to wonder what would of been had he put in any effort off the field.
Do you have any data that supports a correlation between players declining earlier and faster than normal and sex with older women?
Rooney had 39 GA in Moyes’ one season. Sure, looking back, we shouldn’t have given him that contract but he was still a phenomenal player at that point. Hardly a shock Moyes relied on him heavily.
I’d say calling Rooney phenomenal by 2013 is a stretch. He was more or less spent end of 11/12 and i’m a huge fan….
Every international break, summer break, Rashford is always posting how "hard" he is working in the gym etc....
For someone who keeps posting fitness photos, his attitude on the pitch is the opposite, does not run back, jogs about the pitch...
He needs to stop posting and show it on the pitch.
For someone who keeps posting fitness photos, his attitude on the pitch is the opposite, does not run back, jogs about the pitch...
He needs to stop posting and show it on the pitch.
No I mean he’s wirery muscular nothing to do with the colour of his skin, he’s not got a heavy bone set like Lukaku so he should be able to manage his career better, however I agree that if he’s drinking take 3/4 years of that finishing age.
He definitely wasn’t. Sure, there were some signs that his best days might be behind him but 12/13 and 13/14 he was contributing a goal or assist at as fast a rate as any time in his career.
It was only when LVG arrived that the signs of decline really landed. That was, at least in part, due to the turgid football we were playing. Had Rooney been able to play more as an old-school CF in a vibrant attacking team, I suspect he’d still have been a valuable asset (albeit still declining faster than other players with better fitness management).
Currently on his longest run without scoring in a long time (11 games) since joining villa if you include the two England games. Media coverage still all positive.... funny that, because if he'd just gone 11 games without scoring at United I suspect the narrative would be very different.
Yea his assists and goals were good, but his general play had deteriorated quite a bit, we had become more 1 dimensionally focused towards him.
But his ability in and around the box meant even if he messed up a bunch, he would suddenly produce something great. Like Bruno when he's having one of those games.
Agree to disagree. I feel it was almost widely regarded within our fan base he had a poor 12/13 with Van Persie doing the heavy lifting in attack.
SAF even dropped him at home to Real Madrid.
I’m not saying he was awful in 12/13 and 13/14 - he just wasn’t near his previous standards. Granted he was better in 13/14 than 12/13 especially the first few months of the season.
By LVG time he was very poor in the main let’s face it. Punditry was embarrassing refusing to call out what the support was seeing.