I feel like that post is the reset of the circular discussion that this thread is.
Mason Greenwood | Officially a Marseille player
- Thread starter keithsingleton
- Start date
- Status
I think its pretty clear he's been told not to track back or get involvsd with defensive work. Whether thats due to fitness (he is still struggling the later in the game it gets) or they tactically want him to stay further up the pitch I'm not sure. However his teammates will routinely press around him e.g. the CM will run and press a man Greenwood would ideally press. He only really tracks back if he is the only person on that side and its clear the coach is fine with him not pressing/defending. I think its likely he just doesn't have the stamina to get up and down the wing plus Getafe are very aggresive pressers so he'd likely be gassed by half time. So far it seems to be working for them. Although yesterday in the first half he was by far the best player but in the second half Sevilla managed to keep him quiet by blocking off passing lanes to him, their full back, winger and CM formed a wall around him most times to stop the ball getting to him.
For those saying that he's playing as a right midfielder, that must be on paper because he's got the highest shooting rate (shots per game) at Getafe and his defensive game is zero.
34 shots in the league in 1071 minutes and 3 goals. (357 mins and 11.3 shots / goal).
Mayoral has the second highest shooting rate. 36 shots in 1527 minutes and scored 15 goals. (102 mins and 2.4 shots / goal).
Greenwood's xG/shot in open play (without penalties) at Getafe is one of the lowest in top 5 leagues with 0.04 (12th percentile). He's shooting for the sake of it, low probability shots. It doesn't suggest that his decision making is good but the opposite in fact.
He's got a really low number of passes (12th percentile), passing accuracy is even worse (5th percentile) and progressive passes he's directly sitting at the bottom. He's got 4 assists but the ones I checked don't demand any kind of vision or skill. An easy pass inside the box with some terrible defending, heading a ball in the box and someone touching it, or that deflected shot some games ago. I'm not sure if he asissted also from a set piece.
Let's remember that he had 4 assists for us at United in the equivalent of 49 full games, in 4420 minutes. His passing game is what it is, and his defensive stats are close to 0 in every area.
The only thing he does apart from shooting is running with the ball and taking on players, and even then his take on success is 47,5 % (29th percentile, mediocre).
Any half decent club need less than 2 minutes to know this guy is not top club material and more than probably he'll never be. The likes of Barca and Real will never touch a player selfishly ruining attacks for fun, with an awful passing game devoid of vision and creativity, tactically careless (or clueless, or both), no defensive efforts, without the best reputation off the field.
Top clubs can attract more rounded players who are naturally gifted and can bring the full package, or something close to it. Greenwood is 22 and he still looks like a raw talent with isolated sparks here and there. The stuff he delivers throughout 90 minutes is painfully mediocre and not enough to play at the top, top level.
It's funny how the main argument to defend the guy seems to be bringing the comparisons with Antony where any Joe would look better. None of them are good enough if we want to build a top quality team. But if I had to choose I'm not sure if I'd pick the guy playing like this out of the two. (credit to statpadder for the clip).
34 shots in the league in 1071 minutes and 3 goals. (357 mins and 11.3 shots / goal).
Mayoral has the second highest shooting rate. 36 shots in 1527 minutes and scored 15 goals. (102 mins and 2.4 shots / goal).
Greenwood's xG/shot in open play (without penalties) at Getafe is one of the lowest in top 5 leagues with 0.04 (12th percentile). He's shooting for the sake of it, low probability shots. It doesn't suggest that his decision making is good but the opposite in fact.
He's got a really low number of passes (12th percentile), passing accuracy is even worse (5th percentile) and progressive passes he's directly sitting at the bottom. He's got 4 assists but the ones I checked don't demand any kind of vision or skill. An easy pass inside the box with some terrible defending, heading a ball in the box and someone touching it, or that deflected shot some games ago. I'm not sure if he asissted also from a set piece.
Let's remember that he had 4 assists for us at United in the equivalent of 49 full games, in 4420 minutes. His passing game is what it is, and his defensive stats are close to 0 in every area.
The only thing he does apart from shooting is running with the ball and taking on players, and even then his take on success is 47,5 % (29th percentile, mediocre).
Any half decent club need less than 2 minutes to know this guy is not top club material and more than probably he'll never be. The likes of Barca and Real will never touch a player selfishly ruining attacks for fun, with an awful passing game devoid of vision and creativity, tactically careless (or clueless, or both), no defensive efforts, without the best reputation off the field.
Top clubs can attract more rounded players who are naturally gifted and can bring the full package, or something close to it. Greenwood is 22 and he still looks like a raw talent with isolated sparks here and there. The stuff he delivers throughout 90 minutes is painfully mediocre and not enough to play at the top, top level.
It's funny how the main argument to defend the guy seems to be bringing the comparisons with Antony where any Joe would look better. None of them are good enough if we want to build a top quality team. But if I had to choose I'm not sure if I'd pick the guy playing like this out of the two. (credit to statpadder for the clip).
Much better all round game from him against Sevilla. Hopefully that will get some people interested in him.
i think you're reading too much into
stats here rather than actually looking at his performances in context. Watching all the games a few things are clear:
- Greenwood is by far and away the most technical player they have
- Along with Mayoral he is the most threatening from an attacking perspective
- He is also easily the most creative player
He is playing a dual role of being an attacker and also being creative. Out of the entire team of Getafe the only player who can pretty much beat a man and provide any form of individual attacking input is Greenwood. Getafe are a team that press high and try to initiate turnovers. Outside of that their creative and build up play is incredibly poor, to the point that their main form of attack is launching balls to the striker. Greenwood pretty much forces oppositions to double mark him, if they don't you end up like Atletico with their fullback being beaten constantly (something no player in Getafe can do). Sevilla pretty much resorted to 3 men marking him (the fullback, CM and winger). He very rarely gets into good attacking zones e.g. at united he would consistently get into the box to get shots off, at Getafe he very rarely gets a chance to get a shot in the box mainly because he is either starting moves off deeper or his driving to the byline. Getafe are not able as a team to work the ball into Greenwood into those areas as they simply aren't technical enough.
Regarding Greenwood still being Raw, again I'm not sure whether you've actually watched him play for Getafe as its pretty much been the opposite. He has played with a lot of maturity and his link up play has been very good. It still seems that he has stamina issues and it remains to be seen whether he can get up and down the wing consistently. Having said that his future is not going to be as a wide midfielder or a winger. Whoever gets him will play him in a very attacking role. You can easily see him fitting in at a Barca for example where he has the technique to play their style but would also consistently find himself in the box and once he's there there is no doubting his ability.
Not only social media though, our women’s team played a major part in our change of stance we will have to ignore them too.
I thought this was the official Sevilla page at first . Looked to me that Greenwood played well
It’s their official English page
This line of reasoning is absolutely mental. He’s out there building his career. He’s been given a second chance very few people get all while earning tens of thousands a week. I’m sorry but assault isn’t a mistake it’s an active choice.
He could do better than United football-wise and in terms of not getting hounded by the media.
The insane thing is we'll be letting an £80m academy prospect leave for (probably) nothing. Again.
The insane thing is we'll be letting an £80m academy prospect leave for (probably) nothing. Again.
Well, there's something to be said for not having a fully formed prefrontal cortex when taking into account juvenile actions.
So much wrong with this post...
Domestic assault as a 'mistake' ffs. Also, why should any fresh start he get be back at his 'own club's? He's not in prison and still playing the sport that pays him hundreds of thousands. He should consider himself extremely lucky.
Also...the fawning use of 'starboy' (cringe at the best of times) for Greenwood of all people. Ugh.
Firstly, domestic abuse, or anything else, was never proven, the case was thrown out.
That said, many young men make mistakes, but most of them don’t come to light in this way. I just firmly believe that people deserve a second chance, and he’s been at United since he was a young kid. I’d like to see his redemption arc play out here.
He'll be back at United. First Ratcliffe move with big PR push.
Would you honestly describe what you heard in that audio recording as a ‘mistake’? I find that incredible, personally.
we’re not talking an 8 year old stealing a mars bar. he was 20 odd when he was arrested for something that anyone normal should know is wrong by that age.
Oh my god.
What do you think continue to playing football in Spain at a very high level at a very high salary is?
What a disgusting post. If the first-hand evidence we have seen publicly happened to any of the females in your family I doubt you would be calling it a 'mistake'. Shocking.
Again, it's not a 'mistake' ffs, please stop referring to alleged domestic abuse as a mistake.
You're lying to yourself if you don't think it happened though. He either did that or you actually believe she 'faked' all those images.
I honestly don’t know, only the police / CPS know the details
Must have missed the post I made to you a few days ago about how you are comparing his percentiles against all kinds of midfielders and that successful take-on percentage is not necessarily indicative of the quality of a dribbler? I mentioned several other high-profile players who have worse take-on percentages like Vini Jr and Saka.
I guess by your logic Vini Jr is not even 'mediocre', he's an awful dribbler who only ranks in the 19th percentile for percentage of successful take-ons:
https://fbref.com/en/players/7111d552/scout/365_m1/Vinicius-Junior-Scouting-Report
Let's humour your claim he's not a wide midfielder and treat him like an attacker instead.
Okay then - suddenly his 'low number of passes' which is 12th percentile for *midfielders* is around the 32-34th percentile for attacking midfielders, as Takefuso Kubo has a slightly less 'pass attempts' amount per 90 and he ranks in the 31st percentile when compared against other attacking mids. His percentiles would be even higher when compared against forwards as they average less touches per 90 than other types of players.
What about his passing accuracy? Well Kubo has a pass completion percentage of 70.1% in Liga this season, which is lower than Greenwood's and is ranked in the 49th percentile against other attacking mids, so Greenwood would be ranked roughly around the 50th+ percentile when compared against attacking mids in La Liga this season. Greenwood has the same pass percentage completion rate as Vini Jr, incidentally.
As for his progressive passes per 90 - again that's compared against midfielders. If you look at Vini Jr's progressive passes, he has less per 90 than Greenwood whereas Kubo averages slightly more (2.99 per 90). Using Kubo's percentiles as a guideline, Greenwood would be ranking somewhere from 45th to 50th percentile when compared against attacking mids, and using Vini Jr's stats as guidelines, extrapolating would be around the 80th percentile plus when compared against La Liga's cohort of forwards.
Suddenly, everything looks quite a bit different now. I wonder why that's the case?
Well as already explained in a previous post, that's because he's being compared against midfielders, with the overwhelming majority of them playing through the centre of a pitch, so naturally many of his passing stats will look far worse when compared against that cohort, as opposed to 'only' wide midfielders (such a category does not exist on fbref), or against other kinds of attackers.
And to help corroborate this - let's look at how many touches he has.
Well, he only averages 44.24 touches per 90 which puts him in the 16th percentile against midfielders, which clearly demonstrates he is not getting the ball very much compared to the overwhelming majority in his statistical cohort.
But when compared against Kubo and Vini Jr, he averages similar touches per 90 (Vini Jr averages 48.48 per 90 and Kubo 44.01 per 90).
It's true he is taking lots of low percentage shots and is not doing much defensive work, but why is there no mention of any other aspects of his game like shot-creating actions, goal-creating actions, expected assisted goals, progressive carries or basically anything that would attempt to cover the full gamut of his game?
Just cherry-picking a couple of statistics to try and drive home your pre-existing agenda.
Having read through a few of your posts, it seems like you're so biased against this player that you're not even willing to acknowledge anything positive about him *as a football player*.
Last edited:
You started out by saying that he made a horrible mistake but should get a second chance, and then pivoted straight to "never proven, don't know what happened".
What horrible mistake do you think he made?
It’s remarkable how much he has bulked up and added power in the last 4 months are so. He also seems quicker than I remember him at United. Supremely dangerous on the counter attack and also got the vision and intricacies to unlock packed defences. Whoever picks him up on the cheap is getting the bargain of the century
Looking better every game. He has always had a good strike but now seems to be improving his passing and chance creation. I think Bordalas (his current coach) will be good for his career, whether that is with United or elsewhere.
Well, the audio didn’t sound too clever did it, assuming it’s genuine, without knowing the context. But if we assume it is genuine and take it on face value, I’d say that was a horrible mistake on his part, even if the CPS deemed it short of domestic abuse.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. What’s your gut feeling on what happened?
He isn’t worth the hassle this guy. Don’t get me wrong he’ll have a decent career but hardly worth risky our reputation on when there are better players out there in his position.
United will have more than enough people to sell (this guy included) and cash brought in from many other areas to replace Mason.
I wouldn’t worry and let him enjoy his football abroad. His dribbling is pretty good but I’m not seeing a whole lot else.
Considering the guy he’s not the profile of footballer we need. Mbappe I’d argue you can overlook it but not Mason.
United will have more than enough people to sell (this guy included) and cash brought in from many other areas to replace Mason.
I wouldn’t worry and let him enjoy his football abroad. His dribbling is pretty good but I’m not seeing a whole lot else.
Considering the guy he’s not the profile of footballer we need. Mbappe I’d argue you can overlook it but not Mason.
A reminder of just a couple of the "mistakes" he allegedly made.
Is there a need to keep posting pictures of his partner? I doubt there is anyone here who has not seen them more than once so constantly posting them is pretty silly.
I wouldn’t like to speculate based on limited evidence, I’ll leave that to the people who have looked at it properly.
But you already did speculate when you said he had made a ‘mistake’.
My apologies - “assuming he made a mistake”
So he’s not on his ‘final’ chance then?
I’d say he was personally because if something similar was to happen again it would remove any doubt in my opinion and/or show that he hadn’t learned from his mistakes
Actually Greenwood has admitted that he made 'mistakes' so it's not speculation. The problem is that we dont know what exactly those 'mistakes' are.
Not sure why there was such a pile on due to the word 'mistake' being used but then pile ons, putting words in other poster's mouths and thinking an opinion is fact is the standard for this thread.
- Status