McFred as a midfield duo heading into 2022/23 season

If you'd have said that on the opening day of the season those 3 would still be on the first 11 team sheet, people would've said you're mad.

Another transfer window where we've literally wasted the whole time, chasing an unobtainable player, for a new manager and leaving him with signing an ex player, as the only transfer of note. Remind me what happened the last time that happened (cough Moyes cough).

This doesn't bode well for the start of ETH's tenure.
 
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el3mel said:
We have fecked up the summer, again, nothing new.
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Which was expected and many had predicted as well. Our scouting and negotiation team is insanely inefficient. It is a shock that a club of our stature, cant change things quickly.
 
hobbers said:
McTominay and Elanga wouldn't get a kick for Palace but they're still first choice at Low Expectations FC.
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This, how a club like Man Utd can field such mediocrity season after season is baffling. I think we struggle to get 6th with this squad
 
There can be optimism if the coaching ability of Erik Ten Hag and his backroom staff can work with the players at our disposal and place them into a system that works.

My biggest bugbear with McTominay is how he fails to put himself into spaces to receive the ball when playing in midfield. I don't know if this is through fear or a naivety in his play but it is something that needs to be coached out of him. Fred is a good player with too many mistakes (one we saw against Villa pre-season that allows him to be dispossessed easily). This needs to be worked on also.

We have Garner who will play some role this year and Martinez may also play further up the field in a DM position in some of the games I'd imagine.

I think this season has to be consolidation but we need to be hard to unlock and our strategy should be clear in games even in defeat. Should we have the right man in Ten Hag then hopefully we can have a few surprising performances and make the top four. This will make it a lot easier to get in future talent. However, we should be looking at players ready to make the step up as noted in this thread rather than going for established players like De Jong who is unlikely to want to move to OT for obvious reasons.
 
Strootman's Finger said:
McTominay is a limited player, Ten Hag isn't a miracle worker. It's a joke a player like that starts for United, he wouldn't get into Brighton's team.
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I thought the “feel like new signings” would make it obvious I’m not serious:D

I think he will get a lot of use out of McT off the ball, but the limitations on the ball are not fixable.
 
It's possible we'll end up with Erickson playing the DM. Something like

.............Fred........Bruno
..................Erickson
Shaw...Maguire...Martinez...Dalot

If Bruno plays better this season that would be an improvement but not by much.

I might cry if I see Fred, McT and Bruno start on Sunday.
 
FatTails said:
I thought the “feel like new signings” would make it obvious I’m not serious:D

I think he will get a lot of use out of McT off the ball, but the limitations on the ball are not fixable.
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My apologies, and I agree with what you've said here
 
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Kill me now. What do we have to do to get rid of that awful midfield. We as fans don't deserve this.
 
Go on Newsnow. Look at the sources for DeJong. Its 50/50 hes coming, he isn't. I think we will buy another couple of players although it will probably be the last week of the window. TH isn't going to let on who we are signing after hes seen the shitshow in the press about DeJong.
 
Yeah, I appreciate ETH feeling FDJ is the ideal man, so worth waiting for. But there comes a time when you need to move on.

Bringing in improvements on McTom isn't going to mean FDJ suddenly has no place here anyway. We clearly need more than one addition there, so why haven't we gone for it?

Who knows. Frustrating to say the least. I'd rather see Iqbal given a game than McTom personally. Fred I've always liked, he serves a purpose.
 
Eriksen can prob fill in cm in games Vs park the bus teams.

In other games Fred and mctominay are easily good enough. Just not Vs the park the bus guys
 
el3mel said:
The squad actually looks worse than last season, believe it or not.
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I already knew that this was on the cards. I said before ETH arrived, that he was being set up to fail and take the fall for Murtough and Arnold.
The midfield which wasn't great last season is now weaker (Matic/Pogba left).
Murtough and Arnold should be nicknamed Laurel and Hardy. In most organisations, they'd either get a written warning or would be asked to step aside.
 
If this is the squad done until January then lets be real, Top 4 is not worth stressing over, if it happens great.

Just use the second midfield place to blood the kids and use one of the wide positions to do the same. Get Iqbal, Hannibal, Garnacho, Amad, Garner some game time and see if they can make it before next summer.
 
Given that we know that Fred and Scott doesn’t work, shouldn’t we start the season with Garner and one of them to see if there’s any improvement? Hopefully then somebody else comes in.
 
Either way the club is screwed if it's Frenkie or no one, at some point he's going to retire, then what? I'm lead to believe that there is no other midfielder in the world capable of improving our team.

Of course I'll be told to "name a better midfielder" to which the obvious response is that I don't get paid a fecking fortune to find them, there should be a mountain of reports on players who have the ability to play here but we seemingly only have a miniature sticky note with Frenkie De Jong written on it stuck to Murtoughs forehead.
 
Hopefully McTominay scores a brace and Fred gets a hat-trick of assists so a few people here can take a day off.
 
I get he is only looking to sign the right players aka de Jong but christ surely signing a an alternative 2nd or 3rd choice has to be better than playing with mctominay because I doubt he would even be ten hag's 100th choice of an alternative option to ten hag if he was playing elsewhere, same with martial.
 
gerdm07 said:
It's possible we'll end up with Erickson playing the DM. Something like

.............Fred........Bruno
..................Erickson
Shaw...Maguire...Martinez...Dalot

If Bruno plays better this season that would be an improvement but not by much.

I might cry if I see Fred, McT and Bruno start on Sunday.
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No it isn't. Also I have never seen someone spell Eriksen quite that wrong
 
I was certain that this would have been the first area upgraded on in the transfer window. Can't believe it's happened, again. The club really shits the bed repeatedly when it comes to upgrading the midfield. They just can't do it. It really is quite remarkable.

Can't say that I'm anything other than disappointed.
 
Superunknown said:
I was certain that this would have been the first area upgraded on in the transfer window. Can't believe it's happened, again. The club really shits the bed repeatedly when it comes to upgrading the midfield. They just can't do it. It really is quite remarkable.

Can't say that I'm anything other than disappointed.
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It's an ongoing problem since Fergie. We can't find proper midfielders that actually want to join us to save our lives. To think that Fred has been our best business in that department since Fergie left (and probably quite some time before that) is quite amusing.
 
I'm not even considering what our season-long lineup will be until 13th August has come and gone. That'll leave a bit over two weeks to sign players. No panic stations here.

Also, McT isn't star quality but I'd say he's a Fletcher-level squad player and that's nothing to scoff at. I'd still prefer we have someone starting ahead for the big games, though.
 
Loony BoB said:
I'm not even considering what our season-long lineup will be until 13th August has come and gone. That'll leave a bit over two weeks to sign players. No panic stations here.

Also, McT isn't star quality but I'd say he's a Fletcher-level squad player and that's nothing to scoff at. I'd still prefer we have someone starting ahead for the big games, though.
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Yeah McT really isn't on Fletcher's level. Not even close. He's quite poor in CM. Fletcher was quite good. That's the main difference. Also I'm for a ban for anyone who thinks McT is even anywhere near to what Fletcher offered
 
What is Carrick up to these days? Surely his legs aren’t totally gone yet?
 
gerdm07 said:
It's possible we'll end up with Erickson playing the DM. Something like

.............Fred........Bruno
..................Erickson
Shaw...Maguire...Martinez...Dalot

If Bruno plays better this season that would be an improvement but not by much.

I might cry if I see Fred, McT and Bruno start on Sunday.
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Who?
 
el3mel said:
The squad actually looks worse than last season, believe it or not.

If Ronaldo ends up leaving and we don't sign anyone else, that means both our midfield and attack are both far worse than the last few years under Ole.

We have fecked up the summer, again, nothing new.
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And some people here thought that not getting CL would magically sort things out at the club.

I believe FDJ would have joined us already if we were in CL. Ronaldo's drama probably won't happen.
 
Not mad if we miss out on Frenkie, it's just disappointing that there's a lack of ideas or targets after that. You just know a club like Bayern would have signed 2 quality CM's for the price of Frenkie.
 
Godfather said:
Yeah McT really isn't on Fletcher's level. Not even close. He's quite poor in CM. Fletcher was quite good. That's the main difference. Also I'm for a ban for anyone who thinks McT is even anywhere near to what Fletcher offered
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100%.

In the calendar year 2009, Fletcher was incredible. That season after Ronaldo left, Fletcher, Evra and Rooney carried us. I can still remember Fletcher dominating Milan in the last 16 of the 2009-10 Champions League. I would love to see McTominay hitting that level.

With McTominay and Fred it's not personal, it's simply a fact that they are not good enough. Go back 10 years and you would have Cleverly and Anderson starting over them, nevermind Carrick. Honestly, they both seem like great lads who give their all. I'd love them to have the talent to match. Cos you wanna see guys like that succeed.

It's just a fact they aren't good enough. You can go a significant way down the table before you hit a partnership that isn't better than them.

West Ham aren't swapping Soucek and Rice for them. Leicester aint swapping Ndidi and Tielemans for then. Wolves ain't swapping Neves and Moutinho for them. I don't even think Saints would swap Ward-Prowse and Romeu for them. When you look at it like that, expecting us to overtake City and Liverpool on the back of McFred seems a pipe dream.
 
James Garner must be getting game time given the shambles of a sumner so far and his outstanding loan at Forest last season.
 
el3mel said:
The squad actually looks worse than last season, believe it or not.

If Ronaldo ends up leaving and we don't sign anyone else, that means both our midfield and attack are both far worse than the last few years under Ole.

We have fecked up the summer, again, nothing new.
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We lost Greenwood and Pogba other than that there isnt anyone else missing. Cavani was always injured , Matic/Mata were okay.
Eriksen is a decent replacement of Pogba going by latter's last couple of seasons.
If Eth uses youngsters like Garnacho, Iqbal and if there turned out decent , I think season might be a little exciting. Lot of Ifs but that is the only excitement we have this season.
 
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