No, but that's not the player's fault. There isn't a midfielder that is worth that, at the time I said that Rakitic was a better player and that Pogba was maybe top 10 among midfielders but not the best like some suggested. In general, you don't judge a player on his price, there are too many off field variables that influence it.
Pogba told the club he wants to leave
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Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) discuss United's fantastic win away against Athletic Club in the semi-final of the Europa League.
They also pick out the positives of United's 4-3 loss away at Brentford, and Nik reviews a day out at Old Trafford watching Manchester United Women qualify for the Champions League.
No, but that's not the player's fault. There isn't a midfielder that is worth that, at the time I said that Rakitic was a better player and that Pogba was maybe top 10 among midfielders but not the best like some suggested. In general, you don't judge a player on his price, there are too many off field variables that influence it.
Exactly what I thought, you haven't noticed the agenda. I think your conflicting thoughts on Pogba as a player blinds you from that.
You need ask why they would have an agenda?
- He doesn't run, run and run like the, 1980-90s technically limited English midfielders. Lets ignore the fact he actually runs.
- He plays for Manchester United and he isn't English.
- He is the most expensive player in the league and arrived to a lot of fanfare.
- The haircuts, the emojis, the adverts which absolutely have no effect on his performances.
- And much more.
He is basically a modern superstar football, and that does not go down well with middle aged men, talk of former Brit footballers.
Ah, I'm suprised you haven't noticed.
What I find strange is that I don't think he's changed his level of play for us much, if at all, since joining. From what I've seen of him in a United shirt, he's:
- Always been capable of producing a moment of absolute quality. A great pass, stinging shot, fancy turn.
- Always been capable of losing the ball cheaply. A terrible pass, tame shot, stupid turn.
- Only once produced a game-changing performance when we've been up against it (City). Other than that, he seems to get poorer individually the more desperate we become as a team.
- Always looked best for us with attacking contributions
- Always looked worst for us with defensive contributions
Yet for some reason, Pogba before the World Cup was a flawed player based on the above and yet Pogba after the World Cup - playing exactly the same way - is billy big bollocks who can do what he pleases. Even for France, he played the same way, he just happened to have Matuidi and Kante negating his weaknesses perfectly in the middle of the park allowing him more freedom to do what he blatantly does best. I dare say if we had that energy and quality around him at United, he would 'improve' in much the same way.
I think Pogba looks back on the World Cup as validating criticism that he wasn't able to play at his best because of Mourinho's tactics. Whilst there may be some truth in that, somewhere along the lines the fact that France have better players than United playing in front and behind of Pogba seems to have been missed. I agree with Carragher that Pogba thinks he's better than he is, but even so is probably our best outfield player. And you get the impression that a happy Pogba with the right players around him could be brilliant.
The way he's disrupted the club via the media from the start of the season is all on him though and is extremely annoying. I'm not convinced he's a healthy personality to have around some of the other younger players either, if he's going to make this a battle between him and the manager. Too big for his boots. Maybe the situation wouldn't come about with them in charge, but regardless I don't think any of Guardiola, Ferguson, Klopp, Poch, etc. etc. would stand for being openly undermined either.
Complete mess. I don't know if I'd be that sorry to see either leave, Pogba or Mourinho.
- Always been capable of producing a moment of absolute quality. A great pass, stinging shot, fancy turn.
- Always been capable of losing the ball cheaply. A terrible pass, tame shot, stupid turn.
- Only once produced a game-changing performance when we've been up against it (City). Other than that, he seems to get poorer individually the more desperate we become as a team.
- Always looked best for us with attacking contributions
- Always looked worst for us with defensive contributions
Yet for some reason, Pogba before the World Cup was a flawed player based on the above and yet Pogba after the World Cup - playing exactly the same way - is billy big bollocks who can do what he pleases. Even for France, he played the same way, he just happened to have Matuidi and Kante negating his weaknesses perfectly in the middle of the park allowing him more freedom to do what he blatantly does best. I dare say if we had that energy and quality around him at United, he would 'improve' in much the same way.
I think Pogba looks back on the World Cup as validating criticism that he wasn't able to play at his best because of Mourinho's tactics. Whilst there may be some truth in that, somewhere along the lines the fact that France have better players than United playing in front and behind of Pogba seems to have been missed. I agree with Carragher that Pogba thinks he's better than he is, but even so is probably our best outfield player. And you get the impression that a happy Pogba with the right players around him could be brilliant.
The way he's disrupted the club via the media from the start of the season is all on him though and is extremely annoying. I'm not convinced he's a healthy personality to have around some of the other younger players either, if he's going to make this a battle between him and the manager. Too big for his boots. Maybe the situation wouldn't come about with them in charge, but regardless I don't think any of Guardiola, Ferguson, Klopp, Poch, etc. etc. would stand for being openly undermined either.
Complete mess. I don't know if I'd be that sorry to see either leave, Pogba or Mourinho.
You can also add that he has been disappointing here and acts and talks like a superstar but don’t perform like one. When that’s the case the pundits have every right to criticise.
Speak for yourself buddy.
You might want to revisit his transfer thread / first performance thread buddy.
It was embarrassingly difficult to get a fair assessment of how he plays, especially after his shield the back 4 position in the Euros.
The criticism started in his first month here.
Ah now I understand. They know nothing about Pogba. Probably why he was being compared to Viera.
The criticism started in his first month here.
Same as DDG, and he is the best goalkeeper in the world now. Big players improve under pressure.
I agree. And he has.
That's the main issue, a lot of people had no idea about what Pogba was, most went with the theory that he was the best all around midfielder in the world and was Juventus best player. Both statements were wrong because Pogba was given a specific role with Juventus which is a very italian thing and he has never consistently been the best midfielder for Juventus, he was very good but Vidal, Pirlo and Marchisio have all better or as good at some point.
Fair point. I believe his stats are 66 appearances, 13 goals with 15 assists. Is that a good for a top ten midfielder? Genuine question....I'm not really a stat nerd.....
I like how you ignored the selfish bit. He's a selfish player who makes terrible decisions 75% of the time, let him leave.
What happened there ?
It's difficult to judge midfielders with stats, these stats are better than Iniesta's but it doesn't make him a better midfielder. In isolation the stats are good and he is also a good tackler and a good creator but he isn't part of a cohesive unit, the issue is to find a way to make him and others work together with him as the center piece and also tweak his game, he needs to be better at controlling the flaw of the game, he has the tools but not the software.
After 4-5 years in which he has improved his shot stopping but is still pretty much average at other things. He's a goal keeper, so you probably wouldn't notice. Pogba has been here for just 2.1 years.
De gea was just a tiny innocent young goalkeeper unlike Pogba who is a much easier target.
The problem is Pogba' is not just criticsm, but hate and double standards. Nobody would have the guts to admit he has improved since his first season here and with time, he can only get better.
He need time and an actual team, every player do.
The problem with people that actually try to be the rational is that he is expected to do his job whilst doing the job of the other three players - Marchisio, Pirlo, Vidal. That we all know is not going to happen. Midfield play is a collective effort that heavily depends on the system and the instructions. Right now, we basically have no team nor system.
He also plays in a team far worse than the teams of every other top midfielders out there, so it should be understandable that he performs worse than them.
Selfish player? Terrible decisions? 75%? Ah, where did you read that? A Manchester United fan that actually watch Manchester United wouldn't give that as an objective opinion.
Some crap in the daily mail about Lukaku distancing himself from Pogba and aligning with Jose
These aren't good reasons. Modern superstars are everywhere why it's only him ?
He didn't have problems with the media before, comes out mostly nice in his interviews and doesn't cause much problems or have bad antics on the pitch. There's actually no reason to hate him to the degree of agenda if you asked me.
Maybe that's just them rating him ?
They don't hate him. In my opinion, there are two things that happened concurrently. First, pundits misjudged Pogba's actual level and over hyped him when something like that happens they sometime try to justify it with ridiculous arguments, you just have to look at Pogba's haircuts and fashion choices at Juventus, at the time it wasn't an issue they were all convinced that he was the best CM in the world despite it, but it miraculously became a problem when he came to England. The other thing is that they were all gushing at the prospect of seeing him join every big club but United, it's not something that they predicted, he made them look like mugs until the last second. I know that I said two things but it's also worth remembering that United sell papers, Pogba sell papers, drama sell papers and United-Drama-Pogba sell a lot of papers.
He's not the only player who has weird haircuts and social media.
The problem is in Juve he was pretty good and was doing his job, so it's illogical to criticize him for trivial things like haircuts and social media. At United he has been mostly inconsistent and with question marks around him, thus these trivial things start to grow bigger in the media eyes. They see nothing except it.
If Pogba performed here like with Juve and put on great consistent performance, no one would have cared about these things. It's his performance on the pitch that affected this, not movement to United imo.
So you just ignored most of the post and also missed the lack of logic from the media outlets.
I'd say pundits don't get him because they're all from the previous Generation of footballers that never had social media. They don't 'get' him, so throw the unprofessional comment about, hence why they often bring up when he has a new hair style etc. I mean how can Gary Neville for example understand a player like Paul Pogba when he had Roy Keane throwing players around in the locker room?
Adding to that, I think the ultimate problem with Pogba is that he had such a solid platform at Juventus alongside two very, very good midfielders which meant he could play and be inventive and if he did lose possession it wasn't such a big deal. At United we don't have the same quality in midfield so when he does lose possession it shows up because the opposition then walks through our midfield and heads directly for our defense. Pogba also takes the most shots in our squad (that amazes me personally) and gets a third of his shots on target. He and Sanchez are the only creative players in our team capable of producing key passes every game but unlike Sanchez Pogba can actually score goals on a semi consistent basis.
But again just like Sanchez he gifts the ball away to the opposition the most because he's trying to be creative. He's also our most played player outside of De Gea, which means he's had no rest since the World Cup. What he probably needed was to be rested for the first 1/2 games of the PL season. But we don't have the quality to cover for him and here we are.
The only person speaking sense about this is an ex Liverpool player:
Spot on! Sell him while we can recoup a decent fee. He really isn’t worth the trouble
You're calling him selfish not me. I gave you evidence which points to the contrary. What terrible decisions does he make? How did you come to that conclusion? If it's giving the ball away then players better than him do it all the time. Difference is that he is the only creative player we have so it's easier for teams to focus on shutting him down.
Whilst I agree somewhat, the big elephant in the room is that there isn't a single player bar DDG that has done so.
I didn't. Media focus on his haircut and social media because he's not performing. As simple as that. If he starts performing consistently for us and win us titles, do you think the media will talk about his hairstyle ?
He's not the only one with haircuts yet he's the only being talked about it. Reason is he's not performing, so media focuses on trivial things. You mentioned it yourself no one with talking about this with Juve.
United has nothing to do with it.
Don't disagree.
yes and consequently the mood swung from "Jose is the best manager ever. How can anyone possibly dare to criticize the messiah." to "Meh. please leave.".
I think JPRouve is spot on about what kind of player Pogba is. I just think there is a question about responsibility to some extend. He was shifted around a lot in an desperate attempt to find a role, where he would consistently play well. Jose didn't just push him only into one specific role, that didn't suit him. I guess the minimum that I personally expect (and I think many here would agree), is to see that he gives his best. At least in my opinion, he frequently doesn't seem to do that. All the noises of the pitch - not his haircut, but him seemingly giving an interview every week or so - just add to this picture.
Now I don't think that United should sell Pogba, but as someone else said: He is the spoiler, not the engine, wheels or any other crucial part that makes a vehicle drive. Focus on building a functional team and see if he fits in. Don't do it the other way around and don't expect that the spoiler is pushing the car, when the engine is broken.
The problem is he is our engine, we don't create much without his involvement
So you ignored my post again. I mentioned three things, I didn't link the one you are focusing on with United, I linked it to Pogba not being as good as they initially claimed and pundits justifying their failure with ridiculous arguments. At the very least read the post or don't respond.
Not sure what you're on about. This bold part I replied on it 2 times already now.
And this part is ridiculous and has no evidence on it, coming directly from conspiracy theories books.
Only logical part I agree with.
The sentence starts at "First" and isn't linked to the following point about United which is why I used a full stop. As for the rest it's my perception maybe I'm wrong.
Ok then. No problem.
Messi the bundle in the Barça: the signing that demands for January (and the three heads that cuts)
https://www.donbalon.com/noticia/de...-barca-fichaje-exige-enero-tres-cabezas-corta
"Messi has hit the table. The '10' has made it clear that he wants signings in the winter market. This team needs reinforcements. And the name he has put on the agenda of Barça is one in which he has been insisting for a long time: Paul Pogba."
https://www.donbalon.com/noticia/de...-barca-fichaje-exige-enero-tres-cabezas-corta
"Messi has hit the table. The '10' has made it clear that he wants signings in the winter market. This team needs reinforcements. And the name he has put on the agenda of Barça is one in which he has been insisting for a long time: Paul Pogba."
Amazing reliablee sources..
Yes but people will still choose to believe that and say get rid.