Stop making so much out of xg.
Ruben Amorim - Manchester United Head Coach
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
Stop making so much out of xg.
Eye test. You expect us to go to Arsenal and go play all out attacking play?
There was obviously a plan, to keep it tight and frustrate Arsenal, so we are in the game, then make attacking subs and go for it.
We did the first bit right, Arsenal were happy for us to have it but when they had it they didn't do much either.
You are quick to bring up ETH on xG but what about the 20+ shots on goals we were conceding. Arsenal only threatened with set plays.
It is more important what Dan and company think. They hired him to coach team and i doubt that they will be interested in investing in new striker while having already 3 in team. One is young and paid 70 mil, other is bought by INEOS and third is Rashford.
I think they will insist to make players of them instead bringing "his" players.
Isn't it? Title contender created one chance from open play in whole game. Without us parking the bus and playing long balls. Yes, we didn't create anything too but that will come. As i said; finally we will not play big games as underdogs. That is so refreshing to know.
CF for sure. If you watch the Arsenal game back Rasmus' first touch and back to goal play scuppers a lot of our moves resulting in us on the back foot for longer. I've no doubt he will improve but we need someone for the here and now.
Based on what happened in Sporting, he´ll start with the back 3+2.
So I would bet on a LWB ( WB is most physically demanding position in his system)
xG backs up with what I observed during the game, which is why I brought it up. However, even if you disregard the xG, the rest of my points remain valid. At no point did we realistically threaten Arsenal, even when their defense was missing three first-choice players and we had opportunities to attack.
Did people really expect us to get thrashed against Arsenal and hence treating it as a good performance? It was a shit performance, and I hope and expect Amorim to improve and get us playing better.
Ye I agree. That position definitely needs addressing as soon as possible to help us progress further.
Mount is the most obvious guy to play that role but he's got zero confidence right now
Rashford and Garnacho just don't have the tactical nous to play the position as they want to be wide, put their head down and run at defenders 1v1 with no other thought in their heads
Most analytics teams across Europe's top leagues use it, but if it doesn't suit "our" narrative, we shouldn't make much of it.
Perhaps you should clarify that it has nothing to do with Amorim, so early in his tenure. But the underlying statistics were telling us when Mourinho, Solskjaer and ETH were all at their peak at United that our position isn't sustainable and that it's more likely for things to get worse than better. Certainly more reliable than the Caf's eye test.
Anyway, for the record, it was the lowest xG a team has managed to generate against Arsenal thus far in the PL. And despite our pragmatic approach and control, the vast majority of models have Arsenal's xG > 2. But i forgot, set-pieces don't count.
Yea eye test. There a difference between what I'm saying and what you're saying. I said we didn't attack at all even when we got into good positions to do so and we rarely threatened. That doesn't mean all out attacking play.
I remember one phase of play from the first half where we did so well to beat their press and then eventually did feck all with it and the ball ended up with our defence again. That was the theme of the first half.
Arsenal still managed 14 shots, had 13 corners, 36 touches in our penalty box and accumulated 2.1 xG. We couldn't even muster 0.5 xG nevermind 1. For all the criticism of Arsenal scoring from set plays, we didn't even threaten them enough to get a single corner out of that game.
People are giving way too much credit for that performance. Lesser teams than us had more of a go at Arsenal than we did and 3/4 of their first choice defence was missing. As I said earlier, I don't for a second think that performance was anywhere near good enough and I hope Amorim can get us performing better.
I mean you're acting like we should have done something different tactically than what we did though?
Just saying "we should have attacked" is a such a blanket statement that can mean anything, especially when we clearly DID try to attack but we simply have very little quality in the final third to actually threaten a top defensive side like Arsenal. That's all there is to it.
There’s a world of difference between using xG as part of your analysis and using it as your only analysis.
Because anyone who actually watched the game saw United put in a decent performance in the first half. Almost completely nullified Arsenal as an attacking threat, dominated possession and got into decent attacking positions a few times (only for a lack of real quality from our front three to let us down) That was one of our most evenly matched 45 minutes of football against a legitimate top team of the last several years.
Second half was obviously less impressive. Our subs played very poorly and our attempt to be more attacking allowed Arsenal to get on top. Shit happens. We’re a work in progress.
Oh and nobody said set-pieces don’t count. But when a team is accumulating the vast majority of its xG from corners bouncing around inside the six yard box then that’s a great example of why analysing the overall pattern of a game by xG alone is a mug’s game.
Yeah I think the non set piece xG ended up at something like .48- .04. Arsenal hardly created from open play which was nice to see (although the second half and later was far more daunting and required some brilliant individual defending).
It's just strange how many are moaning about us not "attacking" or having a go at them when we pretty clearly tried and had opportunites. But when you roll out an attacking unit that's probably one of the worst in the league (seriously, I'd take Delap and Hutchinson from Ipswich to play better than Hojlund and Mount), you just aren't going to threaten a top level defensive side like Arsenal. Saliba was basically laughing at Garnacho and Hojlund trying to get past him.
It was the single biggest worry I had for the rest of the year under RA, because even if he drills a quality structure and gets the overall team playing and functioning far better as a unit than they were under ETH, if you don't have players that can execute and make quality decisions in the final third consistently it's going to be very hard to get a bunch of good results in a row (considering some think that top 4 is possible or a Europa final).
Tactically? Maybe. Mentally? Definitely yes. There were definitely situations in the first half where we got near their box but didn't threaten a cross or a shot or a run into the box or anything. It was passed back harmlessly. And I mentioned this a few times in this thread, but if every one of our players is doing it then that's down to the ultra negative mentality we started the game with, rather than their own individual quality.
Yeah, they count, but let's downplay their importance to support our narrative. Well, Arsenal have scored 30 of those in the calendar year. Wish we can do the same under Amorim by next season. Anyway, i don't think the other poster is denying the "pragmatic" aspect of the performance (if he does, it's his fight). He's pointing out that it came at a high cost on the other side of the pitch. And it's exactly this balance in our game that needs fixing.
Nonsense.
A CL winner and a guy who had one of the best conversion rates last season are part of worst attack in the league? Everyone agreed ETH was the problem and fired him. Time may tell if they are not good enough for where we want to be but they are definitely not as bad as you are making it out.
It's upto Amorim to get better performances and have a cohesive attack going.
I mean that goes back to the players though, which is my point. If a player like Garnacho is already feeling like he's being dominated by Timber or Saliba, he's not going to keep aimlessly trying to go past them (especially not when as a team we are trying to value the ball more). Sure I guess we could have tried some hit and hope passes or a random shot from nothing, but my overall point is that if players don't have the quality where they believe they can make a certain pass/dribble/run/shot, then they won't attempt it.
It didn’t come at any cost. As I said we dominated possession and created promising situations but lacked quality in and around their box. We’re desperately short of quality up front and this is going to make us look toothless against any team that is as strong defensively as Arsenal.
If we’d kept up that level of performance over 90 minutes it would have been one of those games where two top teams nullify each other in a game of few chances. Which would be an incredible achievement from a new manager so early on, with a squad he had no part in building.
That’s all ifs, buts and maybes because we eventually fell apart but trying to downplay the quality of our first half performance is as misguided as it is annoying.
He’s just anti Rubinyou’re really not helping yourself here..:
Been like this since he arrived. Agenda merchant.
Yup. I can't call that a good performance when we barely threatened them.
Mount won the CL almost 4 years ago... don't start using disingenous arguments. Hojlund is a great finisher but poor striker currently as he has very little else to his game if he's not shooting. Garnacho's general play has almost regressed from a year ago as well.
We can say it's "up to Amorim" 4 games into his tenure but the bottom line is we don't have enough quality to consistently hurt teams even if his structure and coaching is the best in the world.
You reckon zirkzee would fit in that role? He’s got the nice link up play. Showed some good touches against Everton in the central areas.
Nope. I'll call good performances when I see one. I'll call shit performances when I see one. I posted when we won against Everton and I didn't felt that we were that troubled by the opposition in that game and it was a decent win and got both our strikers scoring braces in their first games under him.
I obviously don't feel we played well against Arsenal so I'm going to bring it up. Nothing to do with me anti Ruben or anything. You are just making things up in your head.
Your history suggests otherwise
Is it wrong? He was a key player in a team that won CL, sure he may not be the same player now but are we really saying that he's become so useless that he's now part of the worst attack in the league? There's no hope Amorim can make something out of him? I mean it's a coach's responsibility after all.
My history suggests what I said in my post. I'm cautiously optimistic about him. That doesn't mean I'm going to fawn over that performance against Arsenal nor does it equal to me being anti Ruben.
It came at the cost of generating xG 0.05. You may find this annoying, but it is the truth. Domination should amount to something, otherwise it's not really domination.
I won't argue against your glass half-full version of the match. Again, in the first 20 minutes of the second half, when Arsenal moved up a gear, they enjoyed more than 60% possession, they had decent rhythm in their game, and they looked like scoring (which we, at no point, did). That's the glass half-empty version. You are allowed to have that, too.
I don't understand what the fuss is about and why the new guy needs "protection" on here. I am not judging him. #10s able to receive the ball in the half-turn, creators on the wings, centre-halves that can defend the wide areas and midfielders able to carry the ball through the lines are the abc of modern tactics. It's a cultural shock to arrive at one of the biggest clubs in the world and find so few options to implement a modern approach.
I thought so too, but looks like large part of the caf finds it very easy
The rumour mil seems to be leaning towards a LWB at the present.
We've supposedly shown interest in Davies and the Bournemouth fullback is coming under consideration too now.
It is factually true and if it's disingenuous then so is you're statement saying they're worst attack in the league. Im not saying we have a title winning squad but top 4 challenging definitely. Outside of Arsenal, City and Liverpool only Chelsea have begun to show some consistency in their performances.
It may take time for Amorim to get us clicking ? Sure, I agree. I don't agree with the mentality and our performance against Arsenal nor the statements about how our attack is the worst in the league.
I’m not fussing and Amorin doesn’t need “protection” I’m just disagreeing with the posts you made to defend someone who has an irritatingly negative take on a performance that had some very obvious - to me, anyway - positives. Specifically I’m making the point that using xG as a way to analyse games will often mislead, with your xG fuelled analysis of this fixture a good example of exactly that happening.
Alright let's remove the xG part and let me know what do you disagree with my post? That we couldn't have threatened more against Arsenal's 2nd choice defence ? Or that we started the game with ultra defensive mentality?
Because of those things, I can't call it a good performance and if you disagree then fair enough.
Couldn't agree more. We actually managed to maintain possession for more than 5 seconds. It will take time but there are clear signs to be positive about.
Excellent post
No one is asking you to fawn. Try to enjoy things a bit. The constant negativity must be tiring.
Yeah, both of those. That’s what I disagree with. Especially the second one.