What? He has been brilliant since the Return of football . Last night he looked a bit tired but say Goodbye ? We look a completely different team with him and Bruno on the pitch together did you not see the drop in Quality when he left the pitch? Greenwood wasnt his usual explosive self either last night should we say goodbye to him too ?
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For example ?
He did play the key pass for Rashford's goal, taking him and Bruno off largely blunted us creatively. One or the other should've remained in order to push for a third goal.
KDB but he is better. And an unrealistic target I admit.
Requires tactics from the coaching staff to implement this
Read the thread. I won't quote but I have seen KBD mentioned as someone who doesn't give the ball away and I have seen a few posts saying goodbye and saying Pogba isn't good enough.
This after one poor game from him since his return
How is it knee jerk when he always does these stupid mistakes.
He did it three times in last nights game and made a similar mistake in the game against Villa.
And he has done this numerous times throughout his time here, but yeah it just knee jerk reactions.
Agreed that is too much.
But I don't think it's wrong to say Pogba's awareness is not good enough to play as a deep playmaker against strong pressing opponent.
Off night for Paul yesterday. He was too isolated in midfield against the Soton press to be effective, with Matic playing as a CB and Fernandez as a FW. But aside from that that he was quite casual in possession, and in dangerous areas, which cost us a goal.
He’ll bounce back, I’m sure.
He’ll bounce back, I’m sure.
Not sure about that.
I will point out that Pogba isn't the only player to make this mistake in our squad under Ole and even before Ole arrived. Its an issue we have with dealing with the press tactically.
It was the wrong pass to make number 1 and secondly (this is a bit on conjecture) but it didn't seem like he was told he had a player on when he was given the ball.
Now Pogba ultimately made the mistake and he should do better. However, this issue is more indicative of the team being ill-equipped to beat a highly aggressive press as it has happened to Pogba Fred Matic and even I believe Herrera in exactly the same position.
Not only that due to Matic dropping deep between the CBs and Fernandes moving high up the pitch we at times left a single CM vs 4/5 Southampton pressing players in the middle of the park. Overall this is something we need to fix and replace Pogba with Busquets we will still have the same problem with our current setup
Has one bad game and is back to being the villain?
Even got “shupt up and dribble” comments. Yikes
He was always the villian. It was just that some posters were avoiding posting here when he was playing well. Usual suspects will turn up in Martial thread when he has a bad game.
How about shut up and not give away possession on the edge of your own box. He was poor yesterday, sorry if it's a crime to say so.
At no point was it implied that criticising his performances is a crime. I'm struggling to understand how you negotiate you thinking Pogba should "shut up" while you're out here banging your keyboard with asinine correlations between performance and interviews.
Not really. I have watched him for nearly 4 years and these mistakes aren't that rare. He gets caught on the ball in bad areas a lot.
Superb in attacking half. Don't like him being near our box and never have. The poster above saying how Pogba fan boys seem immune to seeing the truth is dead right. He continues to amaze one minute and frustrate the next. He's not world class in a Utd shirt because he doesn't do it most weeks still. Has it in him to do it but I think he's lacking a bit mentality wise.
Apart from the countless transitions and attacks he has started from this same position where when he isn't playing and we get pressed like we did we crumble and create very little.
It's really hard to notice that even if your teammates trying to tell you. Your focus is on the ball and the situation is just too fast to notice what your teammates trying to tell you and react accordingly. I guess you haven't played football much. I mean no offense but if you've played enough you'd understand that. That's why players with superb awareness like De Jong are rated really high. If that's easy we don't need such awareness to play there, any player can play there you known.
And no, if you replace Pogba with Busquet we won't have any of such problem. Imo Busquet is one of the best DM with the best awareness, game reading and pressing resistance in the last 20 years. He made it so simple but it's not simple at all.
Agreed on the part with Matic though, we definitely need a better DM. Someone like Busquet would be fantastic but I known I'm day dreaming
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This is the thing though. He can knock a 60 yard ball over the top like no other player but he can also do what he did vs Cardiff and last night. You have to take the rough with the smooth with him.
People who act like he does nothing wrong on here are delusional. You can see the great stuff he does and the absolute ridiculous stuff too.
It's really hard to notice that even if your teammates trying to tell you. Your focus is on the ball and the situation is just too fast to notice what your teammates trying to tell you and react accordingly. I guess you haven't played football much. I mean no offense but if you've played enough you'd understand that. That's why players with superb awareness like De Jong are rated really high. If that's easy we don't need such awareness to play there, any player can play there you known.
And no, if you replace Pogba with Busquet we won't have any of such problem. Imo Busquet is one of the best DM with the best awareness, game reading and pressing resistance in the last 20 years. He made it so simple but it's not simple at all.
Agreed on the part with Matic though, we definitely need a better DM. Someone like Busquet would be fantastic but I known I'm day dreaming
It isn't if you are playing a pass to your teammate who has someone on their blindside it is your duty to let them know as the one playing the pass. In this case when you watch certain teams a wall pass is given straight back
You should watch Busquets more you would have seen he has made the exact same error before.
In any case if you leave Busquets in the midfield against 4/5 opposition players pressing, he will have a difficult time. Go and watch how Bayern pressed the crap out of Barca in the UCL in 2013 that was Busquets in his prime
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Also what Matic Fred Herrera have all done in this setup when we get pressed aggressively, I wonder if it may be indicative of a tactical issue...
That wasn't a tactical issue last night. Pogba just needs to be aware of his surroundings better. If you are going to dribble the ball out at the edge of the box you have to be ready for pressure.
He got caught out 20 mins later too but luckily their attack didn't lead to a goal that time.
He shouldn't have been given the pass in the first place, let alone (if he isn't told he has a man on its criminal) if as a team we have see the same thing happen countless times with different players its indicative of a wider issue not specifically related to the individual.
Thats not absolving him as he does need to be more aware, but the point I am making is that as a team we have an issue with that sort of thing happening when we get aggressively pressed and it isn't just a thing with Pogba
I have come to the point that I accept him as a package (if he has desire to be with us long term of course), in the way that while he's producing world class moments in attack that excite us all, we will have to take the lapse in defence because of his risk taking. As long as one outweight the other I really have no issue with it. The problem is the whole midfield underperformed yesterday and not just him, so you can see he's not the type of midfielder that steady the ship but need a good back up system to flourish. this is the issue with playing both Pogba and Bruno, we need a machine of a DM that consistently performs week in week out to balance the squad.
It's really hard to notice that even if your teammates trying to tell you. Your focus is on the ball and the situation is just too fast to notice what your teammates trying to tell you and react accordingly. I guess you haven't played football much. I mean no offense but if you've played enough you'd understand that. That's why players with superb awareness like De Jong are rated really high. If that's easy we don't need such awareness to play there, any player can play there you known.
And no, if you replace Pogba with Busquet we won't have any of such problem. Imo Busquet is one of the best DM with the best awareness, game reading and pressing resistance in the last 20 years. He made it so simple but it's not simple at all.
Agreed on the part with Matic though, we definitely need a better DM. Someone like Busquet would be fantastic but I known I'm day dreaming
Agreed that Busquets was exceptional in that sense but of course he makes mistakes like that. Here's a similar one just from earlier this season:
De Gea's choice of pass and communication to the receiver is very poor. That doesn't absolve Pogba, Fred or Matic for making those mistakes multiple times this season, but the common theme has consistently been De Gea. He's the instigator in putting them in a bad situation, and while they don't recover from it as well as Busquets, against a very effective pressing unit with a well-timed swarm of midfielders pushing up absolutely every player will make mistakes like that every now and then. It's one of the hazards of playing it out from the back.
Tbh I've never heard of this. You have a link or something to confirm this please ?
I can't recall any tbh. Can you give me a link to watch ?
And when Pogba lost his ball, he was not against 4-5 players. And that Bayern, well that Bayern is not any of this Sou mate.
I watched that too and of course anyone can make mistake. But you can see that he knew there's a player going behind him and he tried to quickly move the ball instead of holding on it. Like in this clip:
You can see many times he knowns that a player is coming from his blind side without looking.
This is where I don't agree. City and Barca pass to their players in tight areas. You can argue they have better players but this is Pogba here not Fred we are talking about.
Passing to players under pressure takes skill but it also creates space elsewhere. This is why Barca n City are so good because they aren't afraid to give the ball to a player who is marked.
Not without telling the player he has a man up his ass is the key point. Pogba receives plenty of passes in tight areas if you had not noticed.
It requires both to be honest. There was a point in the game were lindelof had the ball and needed to make the right pass in order to bypass Southampton who had 6 of their players pressing us deep in our half. He goes on to pass straight to pogba who is surrounded by 3 players. You would expect him to make a switch across the field which would see us hurt them in the counter.
It’s common sense and a lot of our players lack it. What he did is something I would have expected from a player like AWB because he lacks the technique to make the pass but not lindelof.
Pogba was crowded out by so many of their players. This game required us to move the ball quickly and switch it from side to side because Southampton are very compact and press as a tight unit.
I think you’re right and wrong. Pogba loves to take extra touches when under pressure and also backs himself to not get dispossessed. That sort of arrogance has always worked against him in big games for us. He knew there was a player unto him because he looked before receiving the pass.
What he should have done was release the ball quickly and move into space but not try and dribble out of possession so carelessly. He does this kind of shite all the time and still hasn’t learned his lesson.
Ugly drop off...
We really need to work on our squad depth so that things don't always fall of a cliff once either Pogba or Bruno aren't out there
If certain users don't like Paul why come into this thread at all, more so why come into the thread to lie. Both passes were great in fact the second one could have eliminated Fernandes completely and still be good, the first was the best pass of the game; a ball into Martial so well postitioned that the defender could not get it. Anyone who has played the game would appreciate subtle details like that.
More diatribe, he was playing a role that was requested of him but Ole, albeit a nonsensical one.
Fernandes was worse than Paul and if we was such a leader why not shout to tell him there was a man on or come back to help when there is goalkick.
It has nothing to do with being casual, the man was given the ball with four Soton players around him and the one he could not see nicked it. It was a bad decision to pass it to him on both occasions but you can see even after he went off they were then looking to do it to Fred so it is down to Ole's tactics. I back the coach wholeheartedly but I do not understand how he could have Paul surrounded and continue to have him play there, made no sense. Definetly why I say 4:3:3 is the better formation and stop this nonsense of Matic playing like a third CB and Fernandes playing like a FW.
Utter folly. Paul is the best in this league and while he had off colour day I can't look past the idiotic role he asked to play. He was the only one showing for the ball for those passes out from the goalkeeper and the soton players read it like a script. That is something by the way that does not happen at Manchester City especially not with a team that presses like that and by the way their team is better than ours.
De Gea, Linedelof and Ole were lazier.
You don't achieve what he has by being weak mentally but I do think he needs to mature and improve his awareness. It is something I have always noticed about Paul and his only obvious weakness is that he struggles with a 3+ man press, when he is surrounded like he was most of the game he seems not to like it but he needs to figure it out. I understand if he feels annoyed at it though because it does not happen to many players, but he should take that as a compliment that rival managers always identify him as the main threat to be neutralized. When he can improve that fascet of his game and starts scoring regualrly again then the Ballon d'or would be his.
He did not hold onto the ball too long when he lost it. Watch the highlights or something.
Right... ok then. He doesn't actually
Very hard to attack the post and not the poster with nonsense like this.
It was Brunos fault for not shouting man on
. Of all the excuses I have read for Pogba since last night, of which there are many, that's the best one yet.Fair play mate, I actually enjoyed that one.
He had a terrible game. It's bound to happen from time to time. We are still a much better team with Paul Pogba than without him.
Great illustration and such weird tactics from Ole. It was evident to anyone who could see that no player in the world would thrive like that, soton hounded Paul extremely well and Ole instead of changing formation replaced the only player creating. That was the wrong move to compound our incorrect tactics.
Is he talking with your mouth?
It very much was.
Paul needs to improve the awareness witin his game absolutely but in no way should his teammates give him the ball with 3 or 4 men on and Lindelof and De Gea in particular do it all the time. Paul I also think he is overly nice as I have said before he really needs to develop an edge to his game and be more agressive.
Pogba knew there was a player there, that's why he turned the way he did. He thought he was going away from trouble but Ings had changed direction.
It is the job of the passer to tell the receiver if they're being closed down like that. You take a look over your shoulder if you can but as the ball comes in you have to concentrate on controlling it and players closing fast can catch you out. It's his fault for turning the way he did but somebody should have told him Ings was gaining ground so quickly.
Goodbye. Hope you stay safe.
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