Sorry, just found it a weird comment considering he's been our best player up until today's match and equalled a PL assist record against Leeds.
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Was thinking way beyond this season. Been here 6 of them and considering his ceiling and ability, not been the difference anyway near often enough. Not all his fault but the big games, not been consistently good enough. Even Scott outplayed him in the Europa Final.
Depressing state of affairs if that's the case.
On Pogba, he isn't a real CM and we really have realised that by now. And if you absolutely need to play him there due to injuries why not go with a back 3 and wingbacks to give you some structure? Pogba is an attacking midfielder who can't defend and we put him in a midfield 2.
Well, maybe not with Fred then! But I feel he’s far far more effective further up than deeper.
As been said before
Pogba is good on the ball but absolutely useless without it.
Dangerous to have someone like that sitting in front of the defence.
Its like having an Ozil or David Silva there...
It's so easy to run off him.. He also doesnt sense danger quick enough.
CM isnt his best position tbf.
I felt sorry for Fred yesterday. midfield for most part was given the runaround.
Pogba is good on the ball but absolutely useless without it.
Dangerous to have someone like that sitting in front of the defence.
Its like having an Ozil or David Silva there...
It's so easy to run off him.. He also doesnt sense danger quick enough.
CM isnt his best position tbf.
I felt sorry for Fred yesterday. midfield for most part was given the runaround.
With Ronaldo coming if it means pogba dropping deep, then im not sure we need him. He needs to occupy the same position and freedom as he was given against Leeds. But that means Sancho or Greenwood on the bench. Shame for either and us.
Second striker Bruno at it again
The gap between Pogba and our attackers was huge. They were all up front just waiting to make their runs, not helping at all
Pogba is just not cut out to be a player having to play with opposition teams pressing high and also having the added responsibility of being both the defender and creator. I've just said Bruno having a bad game has a massive impact on the team. The end of last season's few games also coincided with the teams' drop off in performances. Bruno in top form elevates the whole team and energises the forward line to a new level.
Obviously this is pure conjecture, but with Ronaldo joining and playing mostly as a forward with a preference to drift to the left, I can't see Pogba given as many opportunities to play in his preferred left attacking mid role, sadly. And this is maybe why he hasn't been as effusive as his team-mates about Ronnie joining us. I think he's going to struggle again if we force him to play in a more defensive role.
I hope I'm wrong.
I hope I'm wrong.
No he's not "fine" in midfield two against majority of the games. We played feckin Wolves yesterday and they dominated us start to finish.
Pogba can't play in midfield two in this team. For France he never plays without 3rd supporting player to cover for him as well. We don't do that, we are super top heavy and especially when Ronaldo comes, we will need to have hard-working midfield.
It's hilarious how every twitter account is milking that one bit of play
At least they should post video instead of image and that whole passage of play. Sancho was available for pass, which Fred and Maguire deemed risky and then went sideways to find Pogba.
Pogba tried to play Shaw in who was making the run, it would have created 4 v 4 chance if that pass was executed well. Also Wolves pushed up high when we had possession at the circle, so if that pass was executed well we would have had very good chance of scoring, Shaw would have had 4 players to pick his pass.
Also what that pic doesn't show is Sancho dropped in to exact same position few seconds before and he didn't get the pass as there was barely any space. Posting images and then drawing lines on that won't change anything, if you see that passage of play, the pass to Bruno or whichever player was never on even if they dropped deep. The passing lane was covered by the midfielder.
It's hilarious how every twitter account is milking that one bit of play
At least they should post video instead of image and that whole passage of play. Sancho was available for pass, which Fred and Maguire deemed risky and then went sideways to find Pogba.
Pogba tried to play Shaw in who was making the run, it would have created 4 v 4 chance if that pass was executed well. Also Wolves pushed up high when we had possession at the circle, so if that pass was executed well we would have had very good chance of scoring, Shaw would have had 4 players to pick his pass.
Also what that pic doesn't show is Sancho dropped in to exact same position few seconds before and he didn't get the pass as there was barely any space. Posting images and then drawing lines on that won't change anything, if you see that passage of play, the pass to Bruno or whichever player was never on even if they dropped deep. The passing lane was covered by the midfielder.
It happened many times in the game thoough. No number 10. I love Bruno but he needs to stop being a striker we need him to be an option on the ball in the middle.
We have players like Fred, Pogba to progress with the ball, wide players like Greenwood, Sancho. We need everyone to be on the ball and everyone to hurt the team without possession.
There will be many instances where Bruno will drop deep and as many instances where he will be making attacking runs, not just into the box but also out wide.
That's why individual player's heat map, pass map, team's pass map shows the overall structure of the play, which shows him in the 10 position between CMs and striker.
His heat map shows though that he was everywhere and stayed on LACM position quite often. I am not saying he couldn't have stayed behind more but still picture doesn't exactly say the whole picture. There was something wrong with our performance as a whole team.
This is genuinely ridiculous.
Do you see Pogba playing in the left attacking mid role regularly with Ronnie and Rashford coming back into the team? Where does he start?
I agree about the first sentence. Not only do we have more than enough players to play there, which means Pogba who can play in the midfield loses out, having both Ronaldo and Pogba as part of our attack would be slightly detrimental IMO as both would want a free-roaming role and our defensive press high-up would suffer specially. I can also see Bruno having to drop a bit more due to Ronaldo's presence at the top, I can see us moving closer to 4-3-3 with Pogba and Bruno being tried out in the midfield 3. But there are major question marks on whether it can still work from both Pogba and Bruno's point of views!
I think we have a lot of attackers that are capable of playing in multiple positions and providing rotations.
What's ridiculous is the second part of your post, randomly thinking that Pogba isn't as happy to play with Ronaldo as the rest of the teammates based on (i'm assuming) him not posting about it on social media.
Yup. And the concern is if we don't bring in a quality DM to enable this setup, then it's more than likely we'll stick with McFred.
I did caveat it with "maybe" and "conjecture". I'm not the only one in this forum who's noticed his non-posting and initial reaction in yesterday's interview regarding Ronaldo. I'm likely to be wrong especially on the 2nd bit but I don't find it ridiculously implausible for a competitor to feel that way.
Edit: just rewatched it (only saw it live) and in retrospect it's probable that it could be due to the booing. (around the 2min mark).
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Well the football forum is filled with a bunch of weird and hyperbolic opinions so i'm not entirely sure that's the standard you want to measure yourself against.
Despite popular opinion, Pogba very rarely posts on social media unless it's to do with a sponsorship, training sessions/matches, his family, or his friends (hence why he posted about Varane) - he's not the type to post on twitter "welcome to Manchester" like Bruno/Maguire etc, so there's really nothing to suggest that he feels negatively about another competitor joining the team.
It's just a weird thing to think up, it comes across like gossiping.
Just curious, who do you think is cut out for that role who can both defend and create at Pogba's level? I don't think buying CDM is going to solve the problem we had yesterday. If we continue to line up as 4 attacking player then we will have to sacrifice players who can create in Midfield.
Well, tbf with Pogba, we don't know what he will do after this season even before we signed Ronaldo.
He is not a prime Ronaldo and if he wants to go out after this season, let him go. It is a bit tiresome to think what if Pogba will think or will do if this happens this season. A bit ridiculous even for a club like ours.
And, I am desperate for him to stay.
It's hilarious how every twitter account is milking that one bit of play
At least they should post video instead of image and that whole passage of play. Sancho was available for pass, which Fred and Maguire deemed risky and then went sideways to find Pogba.
Pogba tried to play Shaw in who was making the run, it would have created 4 v 4 chance if that pass was executed well. Also Wolves pushed up high when we had possession at the circle, so if that pass was executed well we would have had very good chance of scoring, Shaw would have had 4 players to pick his pass.
Also what that pic doesn't show is Sancho dropped in to exact same position few seconds before and he didn't get the pass as there was barely any space. Posting images and then drawing lines on that won't change anything, if you see that passage of play, the pass to Bruno or whichever player was never on even if they dropped deep. The passing lane was covered by the midfielder.
Yeah I made the same point.
The disconnection we have from midfield to the forwards is real in my opinion(whoever plays striker for us gets very few touches) but that one freezeframe is an extreme example. Folk are acting we did that all game.
The overall set up was fine I thought, it just lacked individual quality all over the place.
You won't get a good performance if you're 10 and wingers are rubbish.
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Problem with heat map is that it is not time stamped. We needed Bruno to drop deep when we were being slaughtered in midfield. He didn't do it for most part as far as I can remember. His overall heatmap also suggest he had a free role which I don't think we can afford with Ronaldo in the team. So either Ole restrict Bruno and play him deep or we will have more games like yesterday this season.
He would of covered alot of areas. But he spent most of the time trying to run in behind instead of realising we are struggling in midfield and dropping to help control the match.
When Ronaldo plays, many things will change. Now we don't have Ronaldo. Also Ronaldo plays as 9, so lets see what all will change.
Also heat map is not time stamped but few said Martial also played as striker (4-2-4), he came on as a sub, check his heat map and it's a proper LW heat map. Also why do we need time stamp if for most part he didn't drop deep? Anyways use the combination of heat map, individual pass map, team's pass map and you will see he wasn't a striker/second striker.
They'll survive - no problem.
Not only will they survive, but they'll both get plenty of minutes if they perform well (and Ole rotates well, I should probably add).
Anyway - you play your best team if you intend to challenge - it's as simple as that.
We certainly can't play Pogba deep just to accommodate Sancho/Rashford/Mason/whoever - that makes no sense whatsoever.
Wolves did very well, they squeezed the space between defense and midfield and play compact game. We didn't know how to cope with that.
Tbh, Bruno is a part of problem like everyone else for last game. But, it is letting off both Fred and Pogba shite performances easily to take control of what they were supposed to do.
In the end, we had 2 quality players who should have done a lot better in that area of the pitch against a feckin Wolves. Anything else was ridiculous and that was it. At least for the first half.
Wrt his performance yesterday: I didn't think he was particularly bad - he actually initiated some good moves which could've paid off with some rub of the green. It's just that he really isn't suited to that role - not at United and not alongside Fred. It's not going to work - forget about it and try to come up with alternative solutions.
No player is cut out to do both roles. Bruno’s had many many bad games that we’ve won. He’s often benefited when having a mare by getting to score a penalty that someone else has won who isn’t having a mare. Our performances in general aren’t great but in January and February when Bruno had a two month shocker we topped the league….the dropped off from there really. I don’t think Bruno had a sustained period of good form in the second half of last season when as a team we turned in results that secured second place. So I don’t get your point at all.
I find this bizarre too. You rarely find him in the comments of posts not involving himself. He's got a social media label despite being all that active.
we played him deep yesterday before Ronny even arrives. It’s the obvious move. Unfortunately I haven’t seen it really work in around 10 attempts bar I think afew performances under Mou.
Yeah - but it really shouldn't be.
Ole should know better - to put it like that.
I really hope he does.
'This is the strongest Man Utd team I've played in' - Pogba 'happy' at Old Trafford as he targets silverware in 2021-22
https://www.goal.com/en/news/strongest-man-utd-pogba-happy-at-old-trafford/md5l2mb9dlb817lt93ibjiv41
https://www.goal.com/en/news/strongest-man-utd-pogba-happy-at-old-trafford/md5l2mb9dlb817lt93ibjiv41
Back to that out of context picture posted above, these one were where Bruno broke thru with Pogba's passes. I would think that Bruno and Pogba have been practicing that move a lot on the same side. If one of those two where Bruno broke thru were right, we would be hailing how both did it great and how we feked their high line. Small margins and all.
And, it is how we should try against high line press teams with those two players.
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And, it is how we should try against high line press teams with those two players.
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What does Ronaldo joining have to do with Pogba's role? We should clearly be playing with Pogba on the left and Ronaldo will play in front of Bruno. The right is up to Greenwood and most likely Sancho eventually. With our set up, it's important our wide players can help the team play through the phases and Sancho and Pogba are the best options for that. McFred will be needed to defend. If we persist with Pogba deep in midfield this season is likely to go down in flames.
Can't believe we've got ourselves in a position where we are going to lose him for free.
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