Our bench yesterday

That is perhaps the worst bench in Utd history.

If we took that bench to someone who restores benches they would say its totally knackered and beyond repair.
 
Real Madrids bench in their last match was:

D Ceballos
Fran (G)
A Lunin
Joselu
N Paz
V Tobias
A Tchouameni

And they're missing about 3 or 4 less players than we are.
 
Even though there are about ten absences the only ones who possibly would have made a difference are Shaw, Martinez and Casemiro. The rest don't change a thing.
 
JB7 said:
City have invested as heavily as we have as an example. Out of interest how would their bench look if they had Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez out?
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As I said, my point relates to the overall state of our squad.
 
Robbie Boy said:
The state of our squad in general after such heavy investment is more my point. Yes, that bench yesterday was particularly bad, but overall, our squad is poor and disjointed.
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All down to the ownership model.
Hopefully the new football team can resolve that, bit pointless discussing it until they have people in place and we get a vision of how it's going to go.
Thing that really worries me is getting rid of players that are no longer wanted and not having them stink up the dressing room, as they hang onto their contracts and refuse to budge.
 
Robbie Boy said:
As I said, my point relates to the overall state of our squad.
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Yeah that's fine - but on the issue of the bench yesterday, City have one of the strongest squads in the world, so how would their bench look with those eleven players out?
 
JB7 said:
Yeah that's fine - but on the issue of the bench yesterday, City have one of the strongest squads in the world, so how would their bench look with those eleven players out?
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Ask the op. I'm talking specifically about the overall squad we've assembled. Cheers.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
  • Bayindir
  • Reguilón
  • Diallo
  • Pellistri
  • van de Beek
  • McTominay
  • Gore
  • Mejbri
  • Kambwala
In terms of potential game changers, can anyone list a bench from another top half PL team which is worse than what we had available yesterday? Can anyone name a worse Manchester United bench at any time in PL history?

I don’t really know how we ended up here but our lack of firepower on the bench is really quite something. PL teams aside, the gulf in quality between our subs and those of top CL sides is astonishing.
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Injuries

We also aren’t a top CL side
 
Robbie Boy said:
Ask the op. I'm talking specifically about the overall squad we've assembled. Cheers.
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Fair enough. @Pogue Mahone, how would City's bench look with Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez out?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
  • Bayindir
  • Reguilón
  • Diallo
  • Pellistri
  • van de Beek
  • McTominay
  • Gore
  • Mejbri
  • Kambwala
In terms of potential game changers, can anyone list a bench from another top half PL team which is worse than what we had available yesterday? Can anyone name a worse Manchester United bench at any time in PL history?

I don’t really know how we ended up here but our lack of firepower on the bench is really quite something. PL teams aside, the gulf in quality between our subs and those of top CL sides is astonishing.
Click to expand...

I think this is a point that could well have been made way earlier in the season.

I remember us bringing on Hannibal and Martial when 2-0 down against Brighton in September. They brought on João Pedro and Ansu Fati at the same time. Fair play, Hannibal scored, but not before Pedro had already made it 3-0 and killed the game.

Since then, we've had more injuries and barely any returnees. It's pretty incredible really.
 
Robbie Boy said:
Over a billion spent over the past decade and this is the squad we end up with.
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Not really though, most wouldn't be on the bench without extreme injuries. Our squad is terrible for what we've spent of course, but look at the list of who was unavailable
 
SER19 said:
Not really though, most wouldn't be on the bench without extreme injuries. Our squad is terrible for what we've spent of course, but look at the list of who was unavailable
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I'm not talking about the bench in particular, as we obviously have a tonne of injuries. My overall point is how fecking terrible our squad is vs money spent.
 
Some of Newcastle's have been far weaker than that recently. Against Chelsea they had: Martin Dubravka (GK), Loris Karius (GK), Mark Gillespie (GK), Paul Dummett, Matt Ritchie, Alex Murphy, Amadou Diallo, Michael Ndiwani, Ben Parkinson
 
Robbie Boy said:
Since then, Jose, Ole and ETH have spent about a billion, so we might expect a slightly better squad in general.
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They've spent horribly for certain. But a lot of the players bought in that billion have long gone. Pogba, Lukaku and so on. It's not like we have 1b of players on the pitch.

I'd be surprised if we didn't have more money injured than playing at the moment too.
 
Sniper007 said:
For various reasons the bench could also have been:

Martinez
Casemiro
Mount
Maguire
Martial
Shaw
Hojlund
Sancho
Lindelof
Amrabat
Malacia

We can’t use it as an excuse but we really are suffering from absentees.
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It's a non thread.
11 first teamers out, and people are surprised we have to dip into youth teamers on the bench!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’ve no idea. Here’s their bench from their last match though.

  • Rúben Dias
  • Phillips
  • De Bruyne
  • Ortega
  • Gómez
  • Nunes
  • Bobb
  • Lewis
  • Hamilton
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To give you an idea then, if they had 3 centre backs, 2 left backs, 3 midfielders, a winger and 2 strikers out, ie Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez, their starting eleven would likely look something like;
Ederson; Walker, Ake, Gomez; Phillips, Nunes, Doku, Bernardo, Foden, Bobb; Hamilton

The only senior players listed in the first team squad on their website left to be on the bench would be Ortega (gk), Carson (gk), the rest would be youth players so pick any 7 players from this lot. Eleven first team players out is a killer for most squads.
 
JB7 said:
To give you an idea then, if they had 3 centre backs, 2 left backs, 3 midfielders, a winger and 2 strikers out, ie Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez, their starting eleven would likely look something like;
Ederson; Walker, Ake, Gomez; Phillips, Nunes, Doku, Bernardo, Foden, Bobb; Hamilton

The only senior players listed in the first team squad on their website left to be on the bench would be Ortega (gk), Carson (gk), the rest would be youth players so pick any 7 players from this lot. Eleven first team players out is a killer for most squads.
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Yet people expect us to handle it like we are a Man City level of machine team.
 
Sandikan said:
They've spent horribly for certain. But a lot of the players bought in that billion have long gone. Pogba, Lukaku and so on. It's not like we have 1b of players on the pitch.

I'd be surprised if we didn't have more money injured than playing at the moment too.
Click to expand...

Our squad vs money spent is horrible.
 
The lack of quality is evident even when you pick our best possible side, which is a fairer way to make the same point.

Onana
Dalot Martinez Maguire Shaw
Mainoo
Casemiro Bruno
Garnacho Hojlund Rashford

It's a good side but it is top four at best. I'm not even sure if it picks itself, either. Is Martinez truly better than Varane if Varane is on form, and is Mount more likely to be part of a winning side than Bruno, who is defensively suspect? What about Onana? Has he performed better than Bayindir or even Heaton would have? He's cost us so many games and it's not even 2024.

There will be people convinced that Amad improves this side based on a decent 15 minute cameo against Forest and a productive spell in the Championship. That's how unspectacular our best side is. Then there's Diogo Dalot, there because he's the best of a bad bunch.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
I don’t really know how we ended up here but our lack of firepower on the bench is really quite something.
Click to expand...

This is the biggest concern. Even with everyone fit we do not have goals off the bench (or strikers for that matter).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
  • Bayindir
  • Reguilón
  • Diallo
  • Pellistri
  • van de Beek
  • McTominay
  • Gore
  • Mejbri
  • Kambwala
In terms of potential game changers, can anyone list a bench from another top half PL team which is worse than what we had available yesterday? Can anyone name a worse Manchester United bench at any time in PL history?

I don’t really know how we ended up here but our lack of firepower on the bench is really quite something. PL teams aside, the gulf in quality between our subs and those of top CL sides is astonishing.
Click to expand...
I presume someone (the club?, ETH?) want a team filled with the dullest people they can find and that makes Utd the dullest team to watch ever. ETH doesn’t seem like a people person, so my bet’s on him.
 
Robbie Boy said:
McNair was even rated at one point.
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Hilarious how many random academy defenders LVG shuffled through, most of them because they were left footed and he had that weird "only lefties at LCB" obsession that ETH also seems to have.

(I realize that doesn't apply to McNair, who is right-footed and played on the right side, but still...)
 
Big Ben Foster said:
Hilarious how many random academy defenders LVG shuffled through, most of them because they were left footed and he had that weird "only lefties at LCB" obsession that ETH also seems to have.

(I realize that doesn't apply to McNair, who is right-footed and played on the right side, but still...)
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Tyler Blackett was the worst of the lot. Christ, he was bad.
 
Robbie Boy said:
Our squad vs money spent is horrible.
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It is, but it's also the way money has gone.

When you look at 100m for Rice and the 2 Chelsea mids, it's worrying to think how much a rebuild will cost.
 
Big Ben Foster said:
Hilarious how many random academy defenders LVG shuffled through, most of them because they were left footed and he had that weird "only lefties at LCB" obsession that ETH also seems to have.

(I realize that doesn't apply to McNair, who is right-footed and played on the right side, but still...)
Click to expand...

Blackett, McNair, Borthwick Jackson and then Donald Love too.
Glorious days.
 
Sandikan said:
It's a non thread.
11 first teamers out, and people are surprised we have to dip into youth teamers on the bench!
Click to expand...
JB7 said:
To give you an idea then, if they had 3 centre backs, 2 left backs, 3 midfielders, a winger and 2 strikers out, ie Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez, their starting eleven would likely look something like;
Ederson; Walker, Ake, Gomez; Phillips, Nunes, Doku, Bernardo, Foden, Bobb; Hamilton

The only senior players listed in the first team squad on their website left to be on the bench would be Ortega (gk), Carson (gk), the rest would be youth players so pick any 7 players from this lot. Eleven first team players out is a killer for most squads.
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree
 
Sandikan said:
It is, but it's also the way money has gone.

When you look at 100m for Rice and the 2 Chelsea mids, it's worrying to think how much a rebuild will cost.
Click to expand...

Anyone with a pair of eyes could tell you Rice was a terrible signing at that price. I'm just glad we dodged that bullet, as I was full sure it would be us.

Prices are massively inflated, but it still doesn't negate how badly we've spent. With the money we've spent, we should have a far better squad.
 
JB7 said:
To give you an idea then, if they had 3 centre backs, 2 left backs, 3 midfielders, a winger and 2 strikers out, ie Dias, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol, Lewis, Rodri, De Bruyne, Kovacic, Grealish, Haaland and Alvarez, their starting eleven would likely look something like;
Ederson; Walker, Ake, Gomez; Phillips, Nunes, Doku, Bernardo, Foden, Bobb; Hamilton

The only senior players listed in the first team squad on their website left to be on the bench would be Ortega (gk), Carson (gk), the rest would be youth players so pick any 7 players from this lot. Eleven first team players out is a killer for most squads.
Click to expand...

That doesn’t actually surprise me. City have the leanest squad of all the CL contenders this season. So probably the most vulnerable in the event of an injury crisis. Although I’d still swap our squad for theirs in a heartbeat, obviously.
 
Robbie Boy said:
I'm not talking about the bench in particular, as we obviously have a tonne of injuries. My overall point is how fecking terrible our squad is vs money spent.
Click to expand...

that's fair. it's been a mess
 
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