That applies to a lot of the players.
The problem for Ole is that I am not overly confident that all our players actually care enough for the club to rise to the opportunity.
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The problem for Ole is that I am not overly confident that all our players actually care enough for the club to rise to the opportunity.
I don't think I'm being naive. Everything you've just listed is conjecture. Even if half of it was true, the suggestion that the club should sell one of (if not the) it's most valuable assets, because a social media post upset a few fans, is quite frankly ridiculous, and anyone who actually runs an elite football club just wouldn't operate in that way.
When I think bad attitude I think of missing training or matches for reasons other than injury, being out of shape, partying etc - things that will actually affect the club negatively. Falling out with a manager that has now been sacked for poor results/conduct is irrelevant so far as the owners of the club are concerned. By all account Pogba is very popular among the players, and has displayed great leadership skills whilst playing with his national team. He is also freakishly talented. To me he seems exactly the type of player we should be desperate to keep. But it seems a few of our fans seem to think he's too big for his boots, and think he should be sold.
As I said, I'm still waiting for a real reason for the club to sell it's most valuable player. If you were going to meet the Glazers tomorrow to convince them to sell Pogba, what would be your pitch?
Even as I’ve become very irritated with Pogba in his tango with Jose, I agree with you. The only thing that worries me with the Pog-Ole connection is Solskjærs affinity for asking his players to shoot more often ...
At some point you need to consider that it might be more than performance levels. It would have been easier to drop Lukaku or Matic as everybody can see they're struggling and aren't of the same talent as Pogba anyway. So why does Pogba get dropped? Jose's most expensive signing here, it's worth pointing out. It seriously undermined Jose too.
None of us know for sure and can only make opinions based on what we know. But I just don't see this idea that Jose made Pogba a scapegoat. Even when he stripped him of the captaincy, he still said Pogba had been working well in training and played him in the next game. No song and dance, just took the captaincy and moved on. These aren't the actions of somebody trying to make Pogba public enemy no.1. He could have made a lot more out of that but he chose not too.
Based on all this I think it's very foolish to rule out that Pogba is a problem. He's like the kid that gets everything without having to work and develops an entitlement complex. That's how I see him right now, until now he's never been through the tough side of football when he has a dip in form or his team is struggling and it seems he doesn't accept any type of criticism as he thinks he's so good that his flaws should be hidden by other players around him.
I disagree, 100%. If a player was laughing in the stands whilst his team lost at the likes of Bayern Munich etc, then they'd feel the wrath of the fans and the real footballing guys at the top that genuinely love the club and would consider themselves supporters too. Just because we have a chief exec that wants big names that sell shirts and get twitter likes at his new Disney Land franchise, no matter the cost or how they conduct themselves, doesn't mean that we should accept it.
I'm not going to say we should sell him, because I don't have a clue what's happened behind the scenes, as do you. But if all of Pogbas 'accidental mistakes' were done on purpose, then I'd convince the Glazers to sell tomorrow no problem. No manager can operate whilst being undermined by a player, who is in turn defended by those higher up. What are you supposed to do when they aren't following orders on the pitch or are stirring up trouble in the media? What would you do if you were managing Pogba and he was making a mockery of you every day (hypothetically)?
Interestingly there have been reports that claim we will now sell Pogba in January. If that's true or his 'messed with the wrong baller' story is true, then it doesn't look good for Pogba.
And just to point out, an ideal world outcome right now for us is that Pogba starts performing like he's capable of. United play well, the players are happy and we can all laugh at Pogba and Lingard dicking about. And hopefully Jose has been the one instigating all the media to go against Pogba, though I doubt he has the likes of Paul Scholes in his pocket.
Even if he does poorly in any match now the excuses will be shifted to his teammates and people will say he needs better players around to perform. I'm sure with Pogba you'll never run out of ways to excuse him.
I'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons he got the job.
If you say so
Its already happened mate. We were supposed to see the real Pogba with a midfield 3. We changed the team just for him last season and we got about 3 good games from him.
More often than not when we played a midfield 3, Herrera was better than him as a no.8. In fact Herrera has been better than both Matic and Pogba in their respective positions in my opinion. I would genuinely take a midfield of 3 Herrera's each doing a specific job.
First seaaon it waa the lack of DMF, even though Herrera won POTY.
Second season it was playing in 2 men midfield and he needed 4-3-3.
Third season it was Mourinho.
Next time he won't play well it'll be we need to buy a whole new squad that fits his style. Actually people were already sying similar things anyway.
By the time he leaves I think people will be asking for him to put the game plan and lineup as well.
Can easily be the contrary to that though. When Pogba does perform well many will find a way to discredit him, or if the team is playing poorly then Pogba will be the one who gets the majority of the flak.
As I said several times no one questions his quality, he's just inconsistent and loses his focus way too much. I see nothing suggesting anything will change. He'll still escalate from 9/10 to 4/10 performances in the same week, and people now will blame his teammates.
On his day he's unplayable, but you never know which form he's going to put in while approaching a match, do you ?
Gerrard ?
This is just a flat out lie. When Pogba plays well virtually everyone goes crazy over him because he is unplayable when he plays well. He has supreme technical and physical qualities.
Pogba should get the majority of the flak, because he's our best player. He's the one that has the ability to drag the team to a win. If a player of Pogba's quality needs the stars to align to show his quality against the likes of West Brom and Newcastle then something is wrong. These games should be the bread and butter of top players, they use their quality to beat inferior teams through persistence.
You may be right, but that in itself is a bit worrying.
I'm not sure how much credence should be given to The Sun's report on Pogba's reaction to the Mourinho sacking, but if it's true we have a problem if Pogba has come to see himself as more important than the manager. My issue with the report wasn't that Pogba had expressed his delight at Mourinho's departure, which I could understand, but at the implication that Pogba believed he had somehow brought it about.
When I pondered whether Solskjaer would still have such a positive view of Pogba at the end of the season, I was thinking mainly about whether Pogba would be a positive or negative influence in the dressing room: would he respect the new manager and give his total commitment to the cause, or would he carry on in the same vein.
He better shape up.
Agree. I have never seen Pogba get criticized on his best days.
You accepted that performance against Southampton? Because that wasnt a 'I dont like the manager performance' That was a I dont give a c*ap about the club or the fans performance. Give me hard work and good attitude over talent any day of the week
Deserves a chance to redeem himself in the eyes of the fans. If he does, we have earned a great player. If he doesn't he will moan and make his way out of here regardless. If he does that now, I hope we just give him to Sbragia in the reserves until the summer and keep him away from the first team.
I still remember his first game for us against Southampton. I was absolutely buzzing watching him play, no pre-season yet made everyone else look like boys on the pitch. I thought we were going to get some sort of Scholes/Keane hybrid. He could pick a pass with his eyes closed and could drive through midfield in a flash.
He's been a massive disappointment for me because he still plays like a 21 year old coming through from the academy. Seriously, watch the highlights of his games for us under SAF and in the youth setup. He looks like basically the same player.
To quote Gary Neville's tweet to Pogba.....
Does Ole have previous history managing Pogba ?
And if so what was Pogba's role and form like ?
And if so what was Pogba's role and form like ?
Once again a lot of these points do come down to conjecture ‘if it turns out he was lying about an Instagram video’ ‘if he really said what the Sun has quoted’. Obviously an extreme example, but Neymar is far worse than anyone else in this respect, but PSG would avoid losing him at all costs as these things aren’t that important in the grand scheme. I realise that Neymar is obviously a superior player, but I still think the point stands.
What really matters is whether the player is a) contributing on the pitch and b) (whether we like it or not) are they contributing from a commercial stand point? With the first point I think Pogba will get a pass as the entire the team has performed poorly, and he has displayed good form historically elsewhere. Regarding the second point, I think we both know how valuable players like him are commercially.
In my opinion, if the teams starts to perform and we see the best of Pogba, all of these silly little stories will disappear. They largely exist because there is a market for them due to disgruntled fans who want to take out their anger some way. If United were winning and playing good football we would never hear half of this shite about Pogba sharing a video from the stands etc. Likewise, if the manager sets the team out in a way that gets more out of the team, you won’t have players telling the media that we need to attack more.
Pogba on his day can be a great player, he can pass, score, he's very quick when he wants to be, I just don't seem him being a team player. If he goes on now and plays well till the end of the season well we'll know it was just down to jose effecting his form, unlike my theory of him now he's won the world cup he doesn't have to listen to anyone or put a hard shift in, soon see
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I'm not sure why so many people say things like this.
You can't just put three randoms in there and say it's a midfield three so he should be excelling. Sure, technically it is, but if the balance is all wrong then it won't matter. From the moment he got here we've basically done nothing but played immobile, uncreative midfields with little movement ahead of them, no matter what formation it has been.
It also annoys me that many talk as if the goalposts keep changing in terms of what people say we should have to get the best out of Pogba. The reality is that right from the moment we bought him there were a significant amount of people (I know because I was one of them) who were saying we should go to a three man midfield with another playmaker being the main one controlling us around. It's what he had at Juventus. It's also what makes sense when you look at his strengths and weaknesses. And wanting a three man midfield with two of them working together to really control the team around (a fairly basic combination over the last few decades) isn't exactly asking for something special. And yet we've somehow gone three years without a single other midfielder in our squad that is even capable of playing that role (other than maybe Pereira this season, but he hasn't been seen).
Issue with Pogba is because of his price tag, he was viewed like we were signing a peak CM, in their prime and be someone to build a team around. As it happens, we bought a kid who had been part of a phenomenally strong Juve team - it's not like Pogba was carrying that team, he was just a part of their winning machine.
Our failure is we've not allowed him to develop because we brought him in and essentially went 'there you go, you're our guys'. His failure is having the ego to think that was a good idea/possible despite coming back when he was 22 and joining a pretty bog standard United team. Now he should be starting to get to that level where he is controlling games but he's not in a settled midfield and, in honesty, he's not playing with a strong enough team across the park - we've been lacking at RW, full backs, CF for ages - so it's a constantly unbalanced setup.
Our failure is we've not allowed him to develop because we brought him in and essentially went 'there you go, you're our guys'. His failure is having the ego to think that was a good idea/possible despite coming back when he was 22 and joining a pretty bog standard United team. Now he should be starting to get to that level where he is controlling games but he's not in a settled midfield and, in honesty, he's not playing with a strong enough team across the park - we've been lacking at RW, full backs, CF for ages - so it's a constantly unbalanced setup.
I am not bothered with this whole Pogba thing but wondering what are the issues for people. It seems like hits coming for all kinds of different reasons.
I’ll always support people who care about their organisation and will put that organisation and it’s needs before themselves. I’ll support people who put a shift in and will give everything they’ve got no matter what the circumstances are.
I’m less supportive of people who care more about their own needs than they do the organisations. I’m less supportive of people who give more to the cause and to the organisation when it is convinient for them.
In all walks of life, people in the latter catagory will get found out eventually.
I’m less supportive of people who care more about their own needs than they do the organisations. I’m less supportive of people who give more to the cause and to the organisation when it is convinient for them.
In all walks of life, people in the latter catagory will get found out eventually.
Doesn't count. He's not just a player. He's a God. for Liverpool, and United.
If Pogba starts against Cardiff, I am ready to bet that he will have a good game. We will attack, move the ball faster, the players will express themselves without being worried of being benched if they make a mistake. Overall, we will see more desire from everyone.
He played excellent at the world cup, but you'll find lots of people that reckon he wasn't that great.
Add in the season when Zlatan was here. There was no midfielder with more goal scoring opportunities created, however you'd struggle to see him rated anywhere near the other creative midfielders when you ask people who were the best players that season.
If he starts tomorrow, I'm hoping he plays in the deeper role in a 4231.
Up to this day, I still think one of his best games for us was his debut against Southampton as the left sided midfielder in a midfield two.
The Paul Pogba I want to see tomorrow
Up to this day, I still think one of his best games for us was his debut against Southampton as the left sided midfielder in a midfield two.
The Paul Pogba I want to see tomorrow
Think he'll have a great 2nd half of the season tbh. It was blatantly obvious how many problems he had with Mourinho, and no matter how hard you try, if you don't get on with a manager to that extent and just aren't happy, he's never going to play well consistently. Soslkjaer will at the very least get a much better and positive mentality out of everyone, and that alone should make him happier and make things work out better. Hope he starts off with a screamer tomorrow.
Remember that game like it was yesterday.
He was man-handling their midfield the entire game.
After that game, I thought our midfield was sorted at last. How wrong I was. Still he has time to turn it around.
I will give him the benefit of the doubt. The social media and massive ego will always be a problem for us fans and sometimes the club but we have to allow him to let his football do the talking. If he tries to undermine Ole or fails to drive the team by playing for his YouTube highlights the club should get rid asap. But if he takes that maturity displayed at the World Cup to wisely use his skill and talent for the betterment of the team then he will be amazing, not just for United but for the league. It's his choice, let's hope he takes the example from all the great midfielders he's been around.
All quite easily explained. Mbappe was the most noticeable player for France, while Pogba kept his game much more simple than normal which ended up improving France's midfield. It's quite common for fans to not appreciate things other than goals, that's just how the game is. You'll also find lots of people that think Messi is overrated, but that is rather meaningless since it's not a popular opinion, there are millions of fans around world and some of them are bound to have an opinion that doesnt make all that much sense. Pogba was praised by the vast majority of fans and media for his performances during the world cup.
Him not being rated in his first season is also not true. Pretty much everyone rates Pogba , not only based on what he has done throughout his career but also based on his ability. The quality is very obvious to see. But team performance influences the perception of a player. We were not good in his first season, so midfielders playing for better teams were given more praise.
I'm talking about on this forum. People will slate Pogba for every little thing, yet praise someone else that had a worse game. Just watch how quickly this thread blows up when he has a game that isn't eye catching.
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