Steve Thompson the World Cup winner rugby player has early onset dementia. He was a hooker and therefore had lots of contact but he reckons it wasn’t the games that may have caused his brain damage but the intense training which was full on for hours a day. Perhaps this is also a contributing factor to the injuries and lack of energy which is clear in recent games, not only physical but mental. The mental side is probably underestimated, being ‘up for a game’ sort of thing. We all have been involved in local derbies either playing or supporting and the effort always seems greater when the mind wants it to be. I hate SAF comparisons cos he’s gone but he did used to put out some duff teams in the league cup and early stages of the FA Cup to rest the stars. ETH maybe hasn’t got that attitude yet.
Players are fecked & it seriously highlights our severe lack of depth.
- Thread starter UnitedSofa
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In the price yes, not in the quality. That's what I meant.
Yup,
People on here are far too concerned with fatigue.
With the multitude of physios, masseuse's, recovery experts, doctors etc that each club has, fatigue this little into a season will not be so much of an issue.
Ten games in a four week stretch is a lot however, but after game week 5 Ten Hag had already used 20 different players in the league.
Which to me shows that rotation is there and players have been used and rested, Eriksen played his first full 90mins v Villa in 5 games for example.
Steve Thompson was a hooker who did scrums day after day. That's a daft comparison. Players spend very little time heading a football in comparison to rugby players banging their heads.
Two in January, three in the summer. And injury prone has to be a no no.
Ralf tried it too though, they were tired. Not every player has the fitness or is built to run like certain systems ask for. Pep knows how to utilize players like that for holding positions.
We need a different style of player, Dalot, Malacia, Martinez, casemiro works if he has the legs around him. We are close.
I normally feel the same but a Antony would hav even what -45 million less of they got him in the beginning? They over paid cause they waited, and they only bought becuase they messed around and looked desperate. That is poor management. Imagine the company you worked for knowing they needed a resource, workers begging for it and they don’t purchase it only until the very end after necessity. Then people yelling, they paid for it! They paid so much!
Lazy feckers getting rid of a day in the office
OopsRubbish, and partly the reason we are where we are. The standards need to be high and from a footballing perspective we need a centre forward, midfielder and defender. The Glazers have always been reactive as opposed to proactive and we have had plenty of poor transfer windows under them.
If for nothing else, we need to be demanding they spend again in January to add to the pressure on them to go and give the protests more leverage.
If you see wanting high standards for the club as spoilt then fair enough.
It happened because of Brighton and Brentford didn't it?
The problem is - he is likely to have exactly the same non-negotiable clause in his contract as all the others since SAF: get top-4 (or win the EL) or lose your job....
My evidence for this? Well he blew next summers transfer budget this summer, why save it for the next guy assuming a 7th or 8th finish, which is what it was looking like before the Liverpool game. ETH will be gone if United don't get into the Champions League.
Depends on how you define squad depth I suppose. I don't think we lack depth necessarily, we just have a ton of deadwood. Donny, Maguire, AWB, Elanga for example aren't good enough to play for this club.
Apart from another DM and a CF that actually wants to be here, I think it's a quality problem.
Apart from another DM and a CF that actually wants to be here, I think it's a quality problem.
We are rubbish because of poor spending not from a lack of spending. 2 I live in reality and unless we are an oil backed club there is no expectation to spend another 100m come January.
I think this is true. Your squad is 2nd only to City in terms of assembly cost (about 1 billion euros). You have definitely spent and have just spent over 200mil over the summer. I think the issue has been that there has been no clear transfer or team building strategy - it seems there is no cohesion between the manager/coaching staff, DOF and the board about what type of team you want to build. There's been a good example of that just over the summer - you stuffed around waiting for FDJ instead of just moving on to other targets, then end up somewhat panic buying Casemiro and Antony after your poor start to the season. There's a good chance you would have gotten both for cheaper if you hadn't waited til the last minute.
He says that yet it's obvious by looking at the minutes that Saka is playing that Arteta is managing him to avoid Injury/fatigue (256 minutes from a possible 540' in the Europa league for example).
He is doing this with the rest of the Arsenal squad too with Odegaard doing 219', Martinelli 283', Partey 89', Saliba 180', White 193' etc in the Europa League vs Uniteds Ronaldo 531', Fernandes 465' , Eriksen 418' , Antony 340' (who missed the last game through injury but probably would have started if fit) , Martinez 449', Dalot 448' etc so it's no wonder the Uniteds key players look more fatigued at this moment than their Arsenal counterparts.
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We only have a couple of games left in Europe so that should ease the burden
A lot can be said about our recruitment (most of it bad) but we need to admit, we are also extremely unlucky club.
Look at our attack, and with some luck it could be flying. Just think about people who we are paying BIG money and yet are unable to use:
1. Greenwood - in jail
2. Ronaldo - went to trash a year earlier than what we had hoped
3. Martial - always injured
4. Sancho - flopped
5. Rashford - inconsistent
6. Antony - injured
With some luck, all of them could be playing their best football for us, and honestly - we'd be unstoppable.
Look at our attack, and with some luck it could be flying. Just think about people who we are paying BIG money and yet are unable to use:
1. Greenwood - in jail
2. Ronaldo - went to trash a year earlier than what we had hoped
3. Martial - always injured
4. Sancho - flopped
5. Rashford - inconsistent
6. Antony - injured
With some luck, all of them could be playing their best football for us, and honestly - we'd be unstoppable.
Good post....when it is not going your way it is not going your way.
Yes he is rotating of course but his response was more to a question that asked about injury worries, where he basicallly said yes he has to manage minutes but ultimately injuries are a part of the game and will happen. Saka ended up getting injured (though briefly) anyway vs Forest, which kind of proves his point. The top players do play 2-3 games a week at the top level. It's what it takes if you want to compete, and it will only get harder if we go back to CL as we will have to play our better players more often. For example, he's been able to get away with not playing Partey (who has been injured a lot since he arrived) much in the EL so far, but has had to bring him on when we've looked in a spot of bother (eg vs FC Zurich when we hung on for the 1-0 win), as Lakonga has been underwhelming and Elneny just back from injury.
What positions in January?
The good thing is: Ten Hag will learn from it.
I like that about him. We started the season badly and he learned + changed things based on it.
I like that about him. We started the season badly and he learned + changed things based on it.
Exactly, my issue with the glazers is not money but rather mismanagement of the club structure. If it wasn't obvious after Moyes that the structure needed to change it was definitely obvious after Lvg. Yet we still went through Jose and Ole whilst spending more than half a billion before finally making a half arsed attempt at getting a proper football structure. You would think business men would have been pissed off after spending close to 300m on lvg and have nothing to show for it, instead we kept on going.
I agree we have spent poorly. And the reason for that was mainly the Glazers. Fellaini last minute for more than his release clause is just one glaring example.
I also agree we can’t really compete with City’s oil money but we should have been spending 200 m in a summer before now, not just when the protests get intense or results are in the gutter.
And if not for the glazers debt and dividends we would be able to afford a fair amount extra per season to stay competitive with the best.
If we sack him because of that I actually think it will cause problems with the fanbase. I don’t know a United fan that doesn’t want to stick with him and give him time. (Other than fans you see on here I guess)
It’s also not about just buying massively expensive players with big names, it’s time we are smarter with our squad. When players are coming towards the end of their contracts or the last year we should be all over it. You never see us make agreements for players like other clubs do in advance. You never really see us flirt with players and get in their heads, like other clubs do. Sometimes you got to be a little ruthless and flex your muscles a little bit. Something feels too nice or like we don’t want it enough. It’s always we’re monitoring someone or preparing a bid. We like a player. For example gakpo, we could of got him. He publicly wanted to come.. We didn’t make it happen despite meetings with his agents. He will have a good World Cup and suddenly 5 other big clubs will be in for him.. we got to pull the trigger on this stuff and stop fecking about. Our squad is nothing near good enough, playing nice won’t get us to the top, unfortunately.
If we are dreaming anyway, bring-in Osimhen and Kvara and let's see us fly
Of course, we won't be able to get even one of them. So maybe we need to be more realistic.
Of course, we won't be able to get even one of them. So maybe we need to be more realistic.
I understand that sentiment now, because despite the awful start (and the Villa game) in between were some good results against top-6 contenders. However, what would be the mood if late-April/early-May United are in 7th or 8th and out of the Europa Cup?
Furthermore, despite what 'football people' may think, it does seem that the lawyers and the accountants take precedence as MUFC is first and foremost a business these days. Look what happened to Moyes: the very day, I think, it was a mathematical impossibility for CL qualification, he was fired - to have done it one day earlier would have cost x millions more in severance pay.
I don't think its any different now, even though I have admired some of the things your manager has done - especially for example when he got them in to do a 14km run (after the Brentford game) he also did the run with them to show he was part of the 'team'. But sadly, if the spreadsheets say "bye-bye" he will be gone.
That is a very very very real possibility. If anyone thinks we’re guaranteed CL football they are insane, we’re really not. Even if we make the CL, what are the chances we will win it yet for a long time? Small (not impossible) but small.
what the fanbase wants is for us to play good football first and foremost. For years we haven’t done that, let’s be totally honest. The fans chanted attack attack attack for years after fergie left, because that’s what we were accustomed to. I don’t think we even shout that anymore, we are slowly unlearning the old united way and coming to a realisation that we have to be different. We have to come up to 2022 and play in the modern world of football, if we want to compete. ETH isn’t a old school manager but a modern one, who will get the team playing a certain way. He did it at Ajax with far less resources, so if united back him and allow him to flex his footballing muscles there is no reason he can’t build a exciting team here.
if they don’t believe he can turn it around and will need time, what is he even doing here in the first place? Go get a conte or short term manager because ETH isn’t that.
There we have it
Squad depth is an issue, but it’s not the issue that worries me. What worries me is the collapse in form of Ronaldo, Sancho and Maguire.
Martial being always injured and Rashford being inconsistent, is not bad luck. These players have been in the club since 2015 or so, we already know that being injured/inconsistent for Martial and inconsistent for Rashford are their default modes.
Ronaldo was bad long-term management, Greenwood was indeed a black swan event. Sancho flopping, to some degree, scouting problem.