It was. Let's not rewrite history here.
27
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 47
- Goals
- 4
- Assists
- 2
- Yellow cards
- 9
- Red cards
- 1
- Status
It was. Let's not rewrite history here.
Fellaini did well yesterday in the limited role but for a team it's not good enough. He takes way too many touches before passing the ball and can't play attacking passes. As an individual player he is doing the role but team balance is bit off because of his limitations on the ball.
Our 3rd highest rated player on whoscored last night (behind Zlatan and Bailly). Also our 3rd best overall for the season so far. The caf is biased and scapegoats him.
I think our defination of "good" is different.
He was good in breaking up play and general DM stuff but he misplaced passes. I remember him giving the ball back from the right flank straight to an opponent. Not the only one mind you. Pogba did too and one could have been dangerous if not for a last ditch tackle by Bailly.
No one is blaming him really. I am sure Robbie Savage would have done his best if he was kept with us. He wasn't good enough and he ended up being sold.
Fellaini addresses a current weakness in the team. Basically we lack a DM. He's not a DM himself. However out of the current team he's got the best characteristics for the role. He's tall, he's tough, he's got a decent tackle in him etc. Having said that I can see things changing next year with Mou bringing in a DM whose got better positioning, he's not that slow and he doesn't need 4 touches to pass the ball sideways
You would have to be pretty biased to say he wasn't good this season.
He's obedient, and managers seem to like him for it. He does as he's told, and that's where the problem lies.
It's all well and good when it's all going to plan, but when it isn't, the players need to step out of their comfort zone, take some risks and try to change the game. His skillset is admittedly low, even he knows that, but it looks like he lacks the independence to step out of his comfort zone in those circumstances. If anything it makes him more willing to stick to what he knows best. Perhaps that's why Fellaini is perceived as being more consistent than Herrera, who has a natural boldness and independence that sometimes gets him into trouble (and why LVG never trusted him). It's probably got more to do with personality and confidence than people think - sure he's limited, but so limited that he can't pass further than 5 yards or run with the ball?
At the end of the day, for where this club aspires to be, we can't have players that just stick to a game plan and hope for the best, and that's why Fellaini will never be any more than a squad player for us.
Well you gotta question who selected him in this kind of situation as like we know they will play 10 men behind the ball. I meaning playing a destroyer against that kind of set up at home is pretty weird.
So my point is that it is harsh on him because he is not a carrick or similar to it. It is not his job and not his strength. Comfort zone or not. Players can't really show you much what they don't have. It is manager's job to make sure the selection, the tactic, the game plan are mostly right.
First 2 games everyone was praising him and now everyone is slaughtering him again. Football fans...
At the time, I highlighted that he had been fine by his standards but it was still painfully obvious he isn't the required quality. His poor play actually effects Pogba, you can tell Pogba doesn't like playing with him. Teams like to aim for the right channel whenever he is playing because he is never where he needs to be and he is slow so he can't get there. Painfully average.
Why you getting snarky? Chill out.
I didn't say he fulfilled the requirement. I said fulfilling one of the requirements (tackling) a couple of times isn't enough in that position.
Not everyone....
A step slightly above shit for two games still doesn't warrant a place in the Utd XI. I cannot wait to never see this tall clown in a Utd jersey again.
What's the point of watching football when you can just check whoscored stats after the game?Opta can't analyze his movement and how he failed to provide a passing option for our defenders. It can't rate his lack of speed of thought on the ball, that cost us so many attacks. Etc.
He is right though, no bias, sure he was good....by his standards, but by Manchester United standards, decent at the most. He was good at elbowing though, I'll give him that.
As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The over the top praise Fellaini was getting earlier in the season was bordering on daft. He was putting in the sort of performances the same people would use to criticise Schneiderlin and his apparent lack of authority.
Herrera is just an all round better footballer, far superior in every aspect apart from physicality and serial ability. Schneiderlin has definitely never lived up to his potential with us but if Mou is going to play Fellaini as that anchor type player - which he isn't suited to IMO - he might as well play Carrick or Scheiderlin.
Everyone miss placed passes. But when Fellaini does it it is always treated like we narrowly survived a goal because of it....
I hope someone posts another whoscored article cause clearly they're the best way to judge a player's performance, as opposed to watching the game with your own eyes.
who scored articles easily expose the bias many have on here. 'he can't pass the ball' they rant. Yet the dude has 92% pass accuracy.....for example
WhoScored is a shite website predominantly used by people that haven't kicked a football on a park in their life.
You realise why it's so high, right, and are just intentionally goading?
Spot on. Hes been much better this season and deserves credit for that, but his contributions have largely been defensive and for a midfielder his distribution is lacking.
I might be in the wrong here, but i seem to remember his technique being better at Everton? Maybe it's a confidence thing
I think it was a better position at Everton for him. He was great at bringing the ball down and starting an attack in the number 10 role. We don't play to his strengths.
To be fair that's hardly Fellaini's fault. He isn't the best passer around so he gives it to people who can pass like Pogba mata and all. It's similar to what Smalling does when he plays with Blind. Why risk something you aren't good at when you play with people who are very good at it?
He wasn't right though. He was very very good in the first games. By United standards means what exactly? Compared to prime Keane and Scholes? Then you will be hard pressed to find a single performance of that level this season.
As I said in my post, everyone misplaced passes including Pogba, whose mispass was more dangerous albeit. I also commented the same in zlatan's thread. The fact was that he did misplace passes and anyone else doing it doesn't make it right he does it either.
Out of interest what was very very good about Fellaini in the first few games? He plays pretty much the same way every match so I'm interested to know what you think he done differently in those games.
He was tackling the ball well, intercepting well, screening the back 4 well too.
Our manager also singled out his performance vs Bournemouth and said he is vital to our performance. That match he started alongside Herrera and Pogba came in instead of Herrera so surely Fellaini would have impressed the manager more than Herrera did?
http://www.manutd.com/en/News-And-F...e-Fellaini-is-vital-to-Manchester-United.aspx
Unless you think mourinho is not a judge of performance to see how 'awful' Fellaini really is.
Ah Mourinho, the man who said Rojo is a very good player. Yes I definitely believe everything Mourinho says.
It was just another typical Fellaini performance. He went in hard on a few Bournemouth players and slowed down our play by dithering on the ball. Sorry if I'm not impressed, but I expect a bit more from a United midfielder.
if anything whoscored is a loads of bollocks indicative of the 'modern' fan who's more obsessed with statistics than actually watching the game and seeing the player's performance.
For example, whoscored has Zlatan as comfortably the best player on the pitch last night, for example, and aside from him goal he was mostly terrible.
it's a load of bollocks and using it to try and prove something about a player other than "he made x amount of passes" or "he has x amount of assists" is stupid.
You seemed pretty impressed here in this post on Aug 20
And this after on Aug 27
Pass accuracy is a meaningless stat, for example the counter that Rooney fecked up is a pass completed as per stats but anyone who watched the game knows Rooney messed up very good chance of scoring a goal.
Likewise Whoscored won't tell you how much time Fellaini takes to release the ball or how many extra touches he takes to control the ball or even how he can't pick right pass instead just pass the ball to the nearest player (Sometimes).
That is myth. Whoscored.com includes stats of whether the accurate passes were long, short, crosses and how many of them were key. So sifting through them one can tell whether a player is strictly passing to the nearest player or attempting more risky ones. The simple truth is Fellaini will get slated no matter how well he plays on here.
Almost every pass he makes is backwards or sideways, his pass completition will always be better than those who are trying to do something with it further up the pitch. As an example, last season compared to these players his average pass length was the shortest and he played the fewest forward passes
The simple truth is that Fellaini is, through no fault of his own really, utterly incapable of performing what is needed of a Defensive midfielder for Manchester United.
The fact we're still talking about this despite the fact it was abundantly clear in his first season at the club sums up the mismanagement of the past few years.
At least Van Gaal quickly recognised Fellaini's only use is further forward as some sort of target man but now, thanks to Ibra, we even have better options to lump the ball forward to as well.
Not really. Like I said as per stat Rooney completed Long pass to Pogba but everyone knows what it was in reality. Also there is no stat which highlights how slow Fellaini was to release the ball.
What is stupid rather is persistently pretending statistics don't matter because of the lies some people prefer their eyes to tell them. Statistics have never been stand alone. But they never lie. They are factual data and must always be accompanied by proper context. One for example cant declare a said player cant pass or only passes to the nearest player and bemoan the statistics when they don't tally with the claim made. Or claim a player is crap in the air and can't tackle yet statistics show the opposite. Its fairly obvious statistics can never be relied on to tell the whole story. But they can definitely be relied on to identify definite bias and fiction in almost any analysis
All he does is raise the average height of our team. That's it. Nothing else.
The frustration is that with Smalling, Bailly, Pogba and Zlatan, we don't need his height.
We need energy, technical ability, quick transition, creativity and an eye for a pass.
By selecting Fellaini we just compound that problem. He makes us a little bit taller but a hell of a lot slower, duller and predictable.
Even when he's at his very very very best, he still cant us what we need, he just wins a few more headers and concedes fewer fouls.
The frustration is that with Smalling, Bailly, Pogba and Zlatan, we don't need his height.
We need energy, technical ability, quick transition, creativity and an eye for a pass.
By selecting Fellaini we just compound that problem. He makes us a little bit taller but a hell of a lot slower, duller and predictable.
Even when he's at his very very very best, he still cant us what we need, he just wins a few more headers and concedes fewer fouls.
They also don't tell the full truth
- Status