Ten jag gets too many excuses, ange can walk into to spurs and have them playing far better football than us in just 6 months and without kane, if that happened at united with losing the start striker you just know our fans would be using this excuse for that whole season for ten hag terrible coaching
Possession
- Thread starter goldenballs
- Start date
There is boring possession and there is no possession. We are in the no possession bracket.
We never scored from open play, so the counter attack argument is weak.
It's the simple passes that are going astray the most. This is basic football that gets taught at school, let alone a player on £150,000 plus a week.
What? Sigh.
Our biggest problem is that we sign players that can play at the highest level of football but not for the same team. KDB has average ball retention but playing with someone like Rodri, Gundogan, Bernardo Silva and Foden compliments that. Fernandez will do better in a city setup because he will be the only one losing the ball.
Casemiros job was to break up play and give it to the guy 5 meters from him. He was surrounded by Ramos, Calvajal, Marcelo, Modric and Kroos. So his ball retension problem was nicely compensated by his teammates.
That’s why our best football has been with Martial in the last 5 years because he adds to the few players who can keep the ball. Pity he can’t stay fit for 5min.
From the list of Shaw, Martinez, Mainoo, Hojlund and Martial(fit and bothered), the more we have of them the better the ball retention a specially if they are joined by players who are not bad on possession like Dalot, Eriksen and Onana. It becomes a huge problem when the 11 is dominated by other players.
Weird enough whenever we play Fulham, Andreas Parreira looks better on the ball than most of our players. I honestly would have preferred him over Eriksen, Ambrabat and Mct.
Casemiros job was to break up play and give it to the guy 5 meters from him. He was surrounded by Ramos, Calvajal, Marcelo, Modric and Kroos. So his ball retension problem was nicely compensated by his teammates.
That’s why our best football has been with Martial in the last 5 years because he adds to the few players who can keep the ball. Pity he can’t stay fit for 5min.
From the list of Shaw, Martinez, Mainoo, Hojlund and Martial(fit and bothered), the more we have of them the better the ball retention a specially if they are joined by players who are not bad on possession like Dalot, Eriksen and Onana. It becomes a huge problem when the 11 is dominated by other players.
Weird enough whenever we play Fulham, Andreas Parreira looks better on the ball than most of our players. I honestly would have preferred him over Eriksen, Ambrabat and Mct.
This is a transition that was needed after SAF era, if we wanted ‘control’ in the Barca/Pep way; LVG laid a lot of groundwork for this. It was not easy on the eye and yes, sometimes boring. Like having a teenager who takes up trumpet in a small apartment, (watching that United side change their spots) asked a lot of the audience.
This is an interesting topic after watching Pool/Abu Dhabi City at the weekend. It was a great game. I had to admire the Klopp way more, purely from a passion and bravery and commitment perspective. Those bust-a-gut qualities show there’s more to being successful than just systems and possession - these qualities were there in the SAF, Keano era. Stirs the blood, moves the soul.
Of course you need a lot of both of these things in a long modern season, in a super competitive league and the various other competitions, to compete at the top table.
Some poster, earlier in thread, giving lists of which players he thinks can pass the ball. Clueless … and wrong
This is an interesting topic after watching Pool/Abu Dhabi City at the weekend. It was a great game. I had to admire the Klopp way more, purely from a passion and bravery and commitment perspective. Those bust-a-gut qualities show there’s more to being successful than just systems and possession - these qualities were there in the SAF, Keano era. Stirs the blood, moves the soul.
Of course you need a lot of both of these things in a long modern season, in a super competitive league and the various other competitions, to compete at the top table.
Some poster, earlier in thread, giving lists of which players he thinks can pass the ball. Clueless … and wrong
I enjoyed this post
But we definitely created opportunities where we could and probably should have scored at least another goal.
Which has zero to do with the fact most of our fans consistently lie about desiring controling possession. They don't. They desire heavy metal ball with match control. Which only Klooo types provide aho we are yet to hire. LVG for example attempted to lay the foundation for progressive modern possession football, which takes patience and at least 3 to imstall at a club that has NEVER been based on it. Yet they gladly hounded him out a season before fruition. Because "they got bored"
Last edited:
So either the coaching curriculum at United is teaching players to mishit passes with five-year-olds as role models - or the analogy itself is misplaced, and the issue is about something else.
The sigh is because you think we have more good passers in the team?
This is what you get when you put together a squad that is poor at retaining the ball. How many players are excellent at it, like by way of natural talent? Just Mainoo, Shaw and Martinez. Says everything you need to know about our shit recruitment.
I said awhile back that the manager and club need to make sure that every signing from that point on has to be a possession suited player but it didn’t happen.
I do.
Go back to 442, start attacking the space instead of watching it.
Like who from the team at the weekend?
Van Gaal's last season we scored 49 league goals and finished 5th, and couldn't even get out the CL group stage.
It wasn't a case of a manager being successful but the fans hounding him out. His team did not even attempt to try create chances which meant we never scored and so results are shit. You can't get results if you don't score goals.
I'm sure United fans would be delighted to be City, Liverpool or Arsenal right now - because they're all good in possession and convert that possession to goals/points.
Van Gaal failed to get us anywhere near the level of the current City, Liverpool, Arsenal teams.
You're absolutely spot on.
They don't want to have the ball. They don't like to come close to receive a pass. Combined, that means passes into opposition. It's like the ball is poisonous, and they want to get rid of it as soon as possible. Leading to loss of possession like 10 times for each time they get into final 3rd.
Without Garnacho and Højlund (young spirited players who want the ball and want to attack) it would be even worse. Lacking a bit of experience to be the backbone though.
Without Garnacho and Højlund (young spirited players who want the ball and want to attack) it would be even worse. Lacking a bit of experience to be the backbone though.
I like Garnacho but at the moment he's one of the biggest culprits in giving away possession. His biggest strength is running at defenders but his close control (in terms of holding up the ball) and passing is not good enough for a team with aspirations of being "possession based".
He's 4 years younger than Foden, do we think he can reach Foden's level in 4 years time? I'd like to think so, but he really needs to improve this aspect of his game.
Possession? What would this team even do with more possession? The objective is to score goals, in general teams that have more possession are usually trying to play their striker in. Now ask yourself who is that with Rasmus out injured? How much money is tied up in useless attackers or forwards, some of whom aren't even here.
Possession, that's funny, great we kick the ball a bunch more and make a number go up. We'd still be a mid table side because we don't have enough players that can put the ball in the back of the net reliably. Maybe even concede more when Mctominay misplaces a pass while playing tippy tappy in the opposing half leaving Maguire to defend 1 on 1.
Possession, that's funny, great we kick the ball a bunch more and make a number go up. We'd still be a mid table side because we don't have enough players that can put the ball in the back of the net reliably. Maybe even concede more when Mctominay misplaces a pass while playing tippy tappy in the opposing half leaving Maguire to defend 1 on 1.
Last edited:
Because it would take to, we are so far behind that you cannot make that change in 1 season.
I’m too old and tired to debate this with you. But thanks for following up. United have problems. Ratcliffe et al appear to be addressing some of these. I’d say there is more to be learned from watching Pool and City last weekend than our game vs relegation threatened Toffees. Dyche is a clever old dog.
But ability to pass the ball is all round pretty decent (one or two have a way to go, I’ll grant you that), and you can see that players have been working on this. It’s a process. Keeper is pretty good for instance. Bruno made some stunning forward passes.
But it’s a cultural rework. LVG did the initial heavy lifting. Problem was lack of vision and support structure. Applies to all managers since Glazers, I’d even include SAF.
van Gaal's football wasn't remotely progressive.
It was men behind the ball, maintain your shape, low risk, posession at all costs.
It wasn't the foundation for anything.
What does ‘progressive’ mean to you? Just curious.
The primary aim being to progress up the pitch and create goalscoring opportunities.
That was not the aim of van Gaal's tactics. It was sideways, backwards, keep the ball, only go forward if it's low risk.
That's not progressive, it's possesion-oriented but still conservative.
I wish ! That was a really good team.
You can make excuses of injuries but players in the squad should be capable of passing a ball to a team mate rather than the opposition which is a constant theme with this team. If they cant do that why are they at United earning obscene money.
mainoo who is the new wonder kid is doing it more and more, Casamiro is doing it so is Varane and its a spreading epidemic through the team. The only one who passed well at weekend was Amrabat when he came on. Hes obviously had the vaccine.
mainoo who is the new wonder kid is doing it more and more, Casamiro is doing it so is Varane and its a spreading epidemic through the team. The only one who passed well at weekend was Amrabat when he came on. Hes obviously had the vaccine.
I very much agree with this. If you want to reshape the way the team plays and it needs an overhaul of a lot of the playing squad, the best way is to overhaul the areas of the team one at a time. At the moment it's clearly the midfield that's weakest, just about every player we have struggles either physically or ability wise. You don't have to sell them all, get rid of two or three, bring in better options and keep a couple for the bench. McTominay for example I'd keep to come off the bench as he has a knack for finding a goal, Mainoo should still be there and everyone else could go, provided they were replaced as far as I'm concerned.
Next season, you do the same for the defence, then the attack in order of importance. If the club feels it's in a position where we only need to change two attackers and two defenders for example, we can probably do that in one window.
What shouldn't have happened is we make high value signings of a keeper that didn't exactly need to be a priority to replace, a midfielder who's best position is probably the same as one of our better (and always fit) first teamers, and 80 mill on a winger when we've already got young players (and Sancho) that could play there.
The Hojlund signing gets a pass as we desperately needed a focal point for the attack with Martial being injured all the time.
Nailed it, spot on.