MEN: Raiola says Pogba/Mou relationship repaired
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
It's difficult, as that trio have only played together once this season. Away win at Juventus.
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I have been reading your posts on Pogba and I feel you. I am a fan of Pogba myself but frankly, Pogba has always been an inconsistent genius of a footballer and trust me, that did not start at United. The only difference is that at Juventus, not much was made of his vulnerabilities after all, he was just a talented footballer with a bright future. At United, he was bought to lead the team back to glory days. Massive difference. We can blame the manager, Matic and everyone else for his woes, but Pogba really needs to take responsibility for being consistent. One other thing: he needs to really shut his agent up. They can work out his exit more discreetly.
In general you cannot have Pogba with one other midfielder but pairing him with Matic is just bad management.
Playing With 3 CB and having Matic in occupying the same space isnt either. I think Pogba would have won 2 tackles and intercepted 2-3 like Matic did. The workload and grinding fell to Herrera and if Pogba and Herrera would have played would still have fallen on him.
Pogba won´t work while we have Mou in charge and continue to play Matic every game.
No because they defend from the front. I don’t know how that then becomes a double negative like Mourinho’s tactics.
If only he would, and make this his personal goal...then we would have some player!
Those stats are bullshit - he may not gave away the pen for the Everton goal, but that was completely his fault for fecking about in front of our box. Plus, is there any context to those figures?
He’s benched because he doesn’t like him and quite honestly good. Keep the same energy if that’s how he feels about him.
Mo Salah cost £30m. I don’t see why we should be slacking on Matic because he only cost £40m and not £80m. Are players as good as there transfer fee now?
So in 3 years why is this not fixed?
Could this Raiola guy just feck off. If anyone's a virus...
If he is not going to dictate play and will not be our most creative, why should we be searching for some intangible balance in the hope that he can be a catalyst to 'amazing ' football. That just proves what i said, he needs someone else to do the hard work i.e. win the ball, dictate play and be creative, while he can add the gloss at his leisure.
pogba s lackadaisical given how he often loses the ball while doing unnecessary fancy flicks (e.g. against everton). pogba being the most dispossessed midfielder in PL is a big part of why the opposition has the ball more than they should. When our best talent can't retain the ball what do you expect the other midfielders to do.The
Nobody should doubt his talent, but his mentality leaves much to be desired and we cant afford his kind of luxury at the moment.
This all the way. Hope he doesn’t hate the fans too much. They just are blind followers. They will love his haircuts and dancing again.
Some player yes...in an otherwise average squad that would still at best be a top 4 contender. Club and manager can't match his ambitions. Matching the ambitions of Fellainis and Youngs and Lingards quite well though.
The 0 errors leading to a goal, was in his tweet.Why does a mistake against Everton make the stats 'bullshit'?
I agree with the bolded that we should play the three, we usually do play a midfield three in away games/difficult games and a 4231 away teams we should be winning comfortably against (and we aren't). I don't agree with the notion that Jorginho is some kind of defensive liability though, it's just that his playmaking skills are overshadowing his other qualities that he's shown under Sarri especially for Napoli. He reads the game very well and isn't shying away from tackling either. He's just a much better player than Matić, simply put. And Kante is still pretty much the best midfielder in the league, their midfield is probably the best in the league anyway, with or sans Kovacic/Barkley.
Yeah, it's from 2018, try from 2018/19 season and see what happens when you compare Matić and Pogba. Mind you that one's apparently garbage and the other one should be the focal point of our team as he's the best player.
Look at the passing stats (apparently Matić always plays it backwards), number of times disspossesed (fun fact: in the first 20 of the most often disp in the league Pogba is 6th, most of the names are either wide forwards or strikers) and bear in mind that Matić is the one who's garbage this season and Pogba is a victim of Mourinho's mindgames and the fans are racist because they criticise him. There's no distance covered unfortunately but if I were to have a guess I know on whom I'd bet. Matić is always on the left. Matić played roughly 4 minutes more than Pogba iirc.
All of which suggests that Pogba is not a team player and that is part of the problem.
So boring now. For his national team, you know the best team in world football. The only creative midfielder is him. He had a work horse in Kante, what many would call a defensive midfielder and either Matuidi or Tolisso. Neither of which are really Of world class level. The creative spark is Griezmann. I don’t think it’s a hard ask to match that midfield. All we need is a Kante. Mourinho has had 3 years to find one and apparently from the red cafe scouting network on here we brought one in Fred. But we don’t use him. Who’s fault is that.
There is nothing spectacular in what Mourinho has asked of him. Any midfielder should be positionally disciplined and being asked to dictate play when deep or be creative when in an advanced role is not outrageous for an expensive, highly paid and highly talented midfielder. Yet it cannot be said that Pogba has delivered consistently on any front.
The fact that Pogba's performances are inconsistent point more to the player's mentality than the coach. He is exceptional when tuned in and is poor when not. Unfortunately he struggles to be tuned in on a consistent basis.
It might not be spectacular. It’s just clearly not working which is why we are crap and why he looks crap.
Let's disregard entirely that the team's performances have been inconsistent. Good call. He's paid a lot so whatever is happening around him, whatever his boss is doing to negatively influence the team, however inconsistent all of his teammates have been, let's point to Paul Pogba as the inconsistent one. This has gotten ridiculous, just as Jose would have hoped for.
@Buster15 to your point below...what are the dynamics of the team that Paul should be fitting into? The manager has used 45 different lineups.
Maybe Paul should have known not to join a mess like this...
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Yes. Agreed which is a shame.
As I have mentioned before, a very important thing to consider when signing players for such a high transfer fee has to be the individuals character.
How well will he fit into the dynamics of the team.
United should have known all about Pogba's character.
He also hahad a solid defence behind him and th Mbappe upfront to cause imbalance. To mirror that French squad requires the kind of money only psg and citeh can afford. You want us to spend all that money all in a bid to get the best of Pogba? Not worth it in my opinion. There have been less talented midfields with better production.
Sorry mate. I didn't see that in the post!
In fairness that goal was a combination of errors. Pogba for the silly pass, and then Smalling's awful attempt at a tackle. But I take your point.
How much did Juventus spend for it to work? How much did Liverpool spend for it to work? You’ve got some crap excuses mate. You sound like our gaffer. Filled with silly excuses to mask over obvious frailties.
Is it Mourinho that asks him to be doing fancy tricks and lose the ball? or to lose his man on a set pieces?
The problem is people like you who see Jose's shadow behind everything when in truth a lot of things are down to the player's themselves.
Against Fulham, the midfield was less talented but they worked hard. Everything was simple and for once this season we looked like a PL side.
Just get on with the football already, these petty news are tiresome.
You should go and look at the quality of juve squad vs the rest of serie A and come back and post when Pogba played for liverpool?
How does the 0 errors leading to goal work? If Pogba misplaces the ball to opposition player and puts Smalling in a very tight situation. But Smalling slips and falls, leading to a goal. So does Smalling get the error leading to the goal or does Pogba get it.
Please stay on topic
Guys, this is not a Pogba performance thread. The post that bumped it was deleted by the poster itself — please, move to the other threads if you're not discussing Mourinho/Pogba relationships anymore.
For a midfield player to "dictacte play" he needs the forward players to make runs and create space and our front players are obviously not doing that. How can you dictate play when you don't really have "where" to dictate the play?
I am not saying that it's not Paul's fault, because, at times, it is. At times he's too slow, takes too many touches and is not tactically disciplined. But there are also a lot of situations where he is forced to take the extra touch, the extra dribbling only because our forward players are so so immobile and because Matic is too far back between our CB's .
He is inconsistent and not really motivated because we're playing badly. If we start to string a few results together he'll look much better, like the rest of the team.
The issue is that we don't have a stable lineup, Matic is too slow and players are not moving upfront . I think it's all about cohesion, he lacks cohesion with the rest of the lineup and that's partly Jose's fault.
In 2 years we have no stable lineup and no stable position for Paul which is quite worrying.
I'd like to see him with Herrera and Fred/Andreas in a midfield 3.
This stat is bull. He was directly responsible for giving away goals against Wolves as far as i can remember.
If Paul loses the ball in front of our area, the opposition player recovers the ball, shoots and puts it in the net, it's Paul's fault.
If Paul loses the ball, the opposition player recovers the ball and when he shoots our defender slips/falls/is shite, then it's the defender's fault.
I think the fault lies to the last player that makes an error.
So if the manager is not asking for something spectacular then why is it then the manager's fault? should the entire team be molded to fit pogba?
People have thrown 3 more pages into this and still don't know the reason of the bump.
So what’s our excuse for being midtable with the second best squad in the league? Paul Pogba being ‘lazy’
No clearly it’s all Paul Pogba’s fault. His lack of running is costing us from winning the league. Once he starts running again we can switch back to the fact we have no decent Center backs.
At the moment Paul's ambition is to regain his place in that otherwise average squad...He is a long way off being the player we thought we had bought, he needs to stop blaming others and "get the lead out"!
On the contrary those of simple minded nature are incapable of hating mourinho and taking any validity from the managers opinions even if widely discusses prior to the manager expressing them.
It's not even about Pogba, the support for Pogba's form considerably increased after he was dropped like a moth to a flame