Mason Mount's Many Misfortunes (please don't make another waste of money post)

el3mel said:
No he wasn't. First year at most.
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Except he was. From stats alone 3 seasons ago he had 12 goals and assists and then he followed up with 21 goals and assists.

Objectively speaking that's decent enough, and then superb. That's before we consider his best assets which is off the ball work, retaining possession and positional intelligence.

He was also among the highest in chance creation. You can try your best to rewrite history but you can't.
 
Better these injuries happen now than later in the season. For us though it seems they just happen at all times. Wonder when our 1 game will be where we have our strongest XI.
 
VP89 said:
Except he was. From stats alone 3 seasons ago he had 12 goals and assists and then he followed up with 21 goals and assists.

Objectively speaking that's decent enough, and then superb. That's before we consider his best assets which is off the ball work, retaining possession and positional intelligence.

He was also among the highest in chance creation. You can try your best to rewrite history but you can't.
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"Stats". Unfortunately people actually watch games rather than tracking stats on websites.
 
It's hard to care about him being injured. It's hard to care about this season at all with the Glazers still here. Feels like we're treading water.
 
el3mel said:
"Stats". Unfortunately people actually watch games rather than tracking stats on websites.
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Oh trust me, we've alll seen his games. I specifically said even if we just look at stats the output justifies successful season logic.

The eye test just makes your evaluation that much more questionable.
 
RedDevil@84 said:
Not really. Bruno and Rashford are getting more I think.
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No they aren't that's criticism for their perceived weaknesses or attitude, Mount was being written off before he had even kicked a ball, two games in he might as well be on a plane to rwanda.
 
Newtonius said:
No they aren't that's criticism for their perceived weaknesses or attitude, Mount was being written off before he had even kicked a ball, two games in he might as well be on a plane to rwanda.
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How much is it to Rwanda, anyway? Surely a whip-around can be organised?
 
We're trying to press teams higher up, I know it hasn't fully clicked yet but first half vs Spurs was the blueprint. Do we switch system because Eriksen can't do it, maybe bring in Hannibal?
 
hobbers said:
One might have to question the positional intelligence of a creative midfielder if he keeps averaging 18 passes in an entire game of football.
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Not at all - if he's adding value to the system then you don't hang your hat on isolated stats like these.
 
Trex said:
We're trying to press teams higher up, I know it hasn't fully clicked yet but first half vs Spurs was the blueprint. Do we switch system because Eriksen can't do it, maybe bring in Hannibal?
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It wasn't a great blueprint if we can only do it for half a game, during which we score 0 goals and the opposition hit the post twice.

I remain extremely unconvinced. At the moment its up there with pretending Roy Keane was a centreback and Alan Smith a midfielder.
 
noodlehair said:
It wasn't a great blueprint if we can only do it for half a game, during which we score 0 goals and the opposition hit the post twice.

I remain extremely unconvinced. At the moment its up there with pretending Roy Keane was a centreback and Alan Smith a midfielder.
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It's the second match, Jesus, give it time. We've seen a glimpse.
 
hobbers said:
Have to keep our eyes out for when he starts to add value
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And maybe until then don't make premature evaluations. Because he's not performing any more poorly for us than any of his peers bar Onana.
 
noodlehair said:
It wasn't a great blueprint if we can only do it for half a game, during which we score 0 goals and the opposition hit the post twice.

I remain extremely unconvinced.
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We score zero goals but Bruno miss a sitter, Rashord was through on goal and we should have had a penalty. Like I said it hasn't fully clicked but we were the better side that half. The idea would be to do it for the entire game which will come. Have some faith bro/sis!!
 
Ah he'll be useless. Part of the post Fergie curse, dreadful owners, awful managers, terrible players, bad luck etc
 
GlasgowCeltic said:
this is quite funny, him being a poor signing because he’s not good enough has been rebuked with “he was brilliant the seasons before being injured all last season”, and now “he’s a poor signing because he’s injury prone” is being rebuked with “he was fit for most of last season”….when he was largely rubbish
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There are people here who just want to be moany cnuts about everything. They saw someone in YouTube bitch and moan, so they think that’s how discussion works.
 
I've only just caught up on this. Thought he was just out for two games, but seen the updates. How annoying.

Can't remember Fred spending too much time on the sidelines. So, we've moved him on and replaced him with Mount, who now isn't available. Can't help but think we've downgraded...

At least this will give us an excuse to get more signings.
 
Nobby style said:
It's the second match, Jesus, give it time. We've seen a glimpse.
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Its the second match of the manager's second season. Its an odd time to suddenly throw a new system at the players based on 1 signing (who is now injured anyway). Especially when said signing is being asked to play a role he literally never played at his former club and has shown little to no evidence he is suited to.

Its firmly under the category of "completely bonkers" until proven otherwise, which I highly suspect it wont be.

Trex said:
We score zero goals but Bruno miss a sitter, Rashord was through on goal and we should have had a penalty. Like I said it hasn't fully clicked but we were the better side that half. The idea would be to do it for the entire game which will come. Have some faith bro/sis!!
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How do you know it will come? 45 minutes of looking just about ok and 135 of looking a complete and utter shambles might not be enough to fully condemn something as a crazy idea, but its certainly not enough to indicate it isn't crazy.


I would feel a lot more comfortable if we still had Fred and didn't have Mount, and that's nothing against Mount, but he very obviously doesn't pay the same position as Fred, and we needed Fred 56 times last season. There were very few games we were crying out for a second no10...but we did need to emergency loan another midfielder when Eriksen got injured.
 
noodlehair said:
Its the second match of the manager's second season. Its an odd time to suddenly throw a new system at the players based on 1 signing (who is now injured anyway). Especially when said signing is being asked to play a role he literally never played at his former club and has shown little to no evidence he is suited to.

Its firmly under the category of "completely bonkers" until proven otherwise, which I highly suspect it wont be.



How do you know it will come? 45 minutes of looking just about ok and 135 of looking a complete and utter shambles might not be enough to fully condemn something as a crazy idea, but its certainly not enough to indicate it isn't crazy.


I would feel a lot more comfortable if we still had Fred and didn't have Mount, and that's nothing against Mount, but he very obviously doesn't pay the same position as Fred, and we needed Fred 56 times last season. There were very few games we were crying out for a second no10...but we did need to emergency loan another midfielder when Eriksen got injured.
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Fred and Mount actually play the same role within this system. The system isn't new either, you should rewatch our fixtures with Barca especially when Fred was on the pitch. We played with similar set up a lot after Eriksen injury last season. Football is about doing the basics right, if we do the basic things within the idea of the manager for 90 mins every week things will be alright
 
sebsheep said:


Four four two did a video on what we at least seem to be trying to do. I'm not sure any of the players coming in for Mount will be able to replicate his role, Fred was probably the best fit.
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I’m baffled we’ve sold Fred.
 
Skills said:
Well, Mount doesn't even get on the ball enough to do that.

He made 21 passes against Wolves and 14 against Spurs. Fred averaged 53 passes a game per 90 last season.
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I think it’s obvious that we need Amrabat. Someone to keep the ball and knit the defence to the attack. He is in the top 10% for passes made I believe, the opposite to what Mount has provided so far, and similar to what Eriksen can offer.
Youd hope that he has more stamina than Eriksen too, which is I guess why Ten Hag wanted Mount.
Once again, I would blame the ownership situation on the lack of transfer movement. If the Glazers were gone we’d have undoubtedly had a much better transfer window.

The hope of course is still that we can get Amrabat in before deadline.
 
Maybe Missing Much Maligned Mason Mount Means More Magical Memories Made Medially Mainoo Moreover Malacia.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
With half of those being to the other team.
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To be honest I'd rather a player gets on the ball and does something, even if it doesn't materialise into anything decent (not that Fred was always bad). Getting involved and being proactive in the game is a prerequisite for good performance levels for a United midfielder.

So in my opinion I think just kind of hiding and not getting on the ball is worse because we don't even know if he'd be any good if he was getting it more often. All we know is he's putting in a VDB impression which has no prospect of going anywhere good until he firstly makes himself available in the game.
 
hobbers said:
It's also factually correct that in the same two fixtures last season, both only around 3 months ago, we dominated one, drew the other and scored 2 goals in each. And since then both of those teams have been in major flux, lost their key players and have new managers.

How many points and goals conceded do you think we'd be on right now if we'd started this season against Brighton and Brentford?
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Difficult to answer that last question as that'd be hypothetical but I'd imagine we'd be on three or four points, which would have been a massive improvement on last season's start also.

As starts go, we have had a better start than last season despite apparently being weaker, seems a bit of a contradictory statement.
 
Mount will always be up against it simply because many did not want him here in the first instance. He is not the type of player akin to the type of football we fans wanted to play under ETH especially since he chased De Jong. Mount's signing is the final nail in the coffin against our dreams of playing a controlling style of football.
 
Champ said:
Difficult to answer that last question as that'd be hypothetical but I'd imagine we'd be on three or four points, which would have been a massive improvement on last season's start also.

As starts go, we have had a better start than last season despite apparently being weaker, seems a bit of a contradictory statement.
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Why is last season's start so important? The baseline performance is what we achieved over the season. I don't find the opening 2 games to be very compelling as an argument, if there was a 2 game trophy for that maybe it would be, but if there was we wouldn't be winning it on points or performance levels. I don't see a high player churn within the XI's we've fielded for me to want to go back to Erik ten Hag's first two competitive fixtures as a Man Utd manager and directly compare them to this season. It seems very artificial to put forward that argument.

What should be expected is that taking our average level of performance from last season, you'd hope for signs of improvement early on based on learnings from last season, preseason training time, and signings because it is supposed to be progressive development expanding on what we are building. That's fairly straight forward and intuitive and basically the point of management, incremental improvement at the least. Sometimes it doesn't happen early in a season, but let's call that for what it is, it has been pretty poor and so far Mason Mount in exchange for Eriksen hasn't yielded anything good.

The worry being that there isn't much to fall back on. It would be nice to think we could point to Mason Mount's great recent form for club or country. Or for his history of solid performances in the role we're playing him. But we can't do that, we basically have to go for these hopeful notions of "he'll improve" etc. It's good you are concentrating on two games because honestly that is about the one saving grace with Mount at the moment because the logic behind it looks very strange.
 
Abraxas said:
To be honest I'd rather a player gets on the ball and does something, even if it doesn't materialise into anything decent (not that Fred was always bad). Getting involved and being proactive in the game is a prerequisite for good performance levels for a United midfielder.

So in my opinion I think just kind of hiding and not getting on the ball is worse because we don't even know if he'd be any good if he was getting it more often. All we know is he's putting in a VDB impression which has no prospect of going anywhere good until he firstly makes himself available in the game.
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Dude, he created 3 chances in the last game, it's not his fault we can't finish a ham sandwich. Fred is/was nowhere near good enough for United. Mount is not experiencing his best form, but if (and maybe that's a big IF) he gets back to his form 2 seasons ago, he will be far better for us than Fred. I do not share the Fred-love that many on here do. I never rated him, never wanted to see him play, and on the few occasions when he made it through a match without something braindead and calamitous happening, I only felt exhausted.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
Dude, he created 3 chances in the last game, it's not his fault we can't finish a ham sandwich. Fred is/was nowhere near good enough for United. Mount is not experiencing his best form, but if (and maybe that's a big IF) he gets back to his form 2 seasons ago, he will be far better for us than Fred. I do not share the Fred-love that many on here do. I never rated him, never wanted to see him play, and on the few occasions when he made it through a match without something braindead and calamitous happening, I only felt exhausted.
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Did he? Must have slipped past me, I don't remember him doing all that much but maybe I missed it. His overall performance levels were not very good.

I think it's fair to ask what is form and what is Mount's usual. He has never excelled at international level, and he has one or two good seasons in a Chelsea shirt at 24 years old. I don't know what to make of that, even the good stuff was in a more attacking role and we're asking him to do something else which makes that form even harder to extrapolate and think we're going to get something like that. The chances of never getting the best out of him are pretty high if you have a set of form in an attacking role and then you're asking for him to get back to it in a completely different one. I also don't see what the skillset is that is going to transition, at least when Eriksen was pulled back into midfield you have a midfielder of undoubted technical skill.

Well, I think you feeling exhausted is more a you thing and how you're processing the match because I never really felt that when Fred was in a team. Fred had a lot of good games for United. Overall he wasn't good enough, no - but it remains to be seen whether Mount is going to be better. Not that Fred v Mount is especially important, the more important thing is going to be improving this squad - but it doesn't help when you buy players and there isn't a clear pattern of form or an obvious role that would give any confidence because you can end up chasing your own tail and not obviously improving. When we bought Onana you saw absolutely clarity of thinking on the signing and the profile, we had a weakness, we had a set of skills we wanted with a keeper and we went out and did it - and we seem to be getting what we bargained for. With Mount it is very hard to make heads or tails of it and we essentially have to just trust the manager because whatever has gone into that thinking isn't very clear and for me that's putting this signing into a danger zone at an early stage. Hopefully that is wrong.
 
A player we didn’t need and whose fee together with the Højlund fee, would have gotten us Harry Kane. I support Erik, but can’t understand his reasoning here.
 
Trex said:
Fred and Mount actually play the same role within this system. The system isn't new either, you should rewatch our fixtures with Barca especially when Fred was on the pitch. We played with similar set up a lot after Eriksen injury last season. Football is about doing the basics right, if we do the basic things within the idea of the manager for 90 mins every week things will be alright
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The issue being that Mount isn't counted to that role and has never played as a second no10 or advanced CM for Chelsea or England, so again to sign him just to do this I would file as bonkers. Especially when we've sold Fred.

The other issue being that we didn't often look that convincing last season after Eriksen got injured
 
noodlehair said:
The issue being that Mount isn't counted to that role and has never played as a second no10 or advanced CM for Chelsea or England, so again to sign him just to do this I would file as bonkers. Especially when we've sold Fred.

The other issue being that we didn't often look that convincing last season after Eriksen got injured
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We hadly missed Eriksen. We had probably our best spell around the time we beat Barca in the second leg up to the cup win in Eriksen absent, that period was the best we had last season. It was actually odd ETH dropped Fred after the international break which Scott and Sabitzer scored some goals, we lost momentum after that.
The advanced 8 role is one which Mount considers to be his best role and it was the role he played initially under Lampard so its not true he hasn't played the role before.
 
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