Absolutely. Would like to see Mainoo operate as a no.8 slightly higher forward to play that role at some point.
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That has been the case with this man utd team for a long while now. He is not the only player like that. Rashford post shoulder injury has also been like that. If we go over his top scoring season where he scored 30 goals you would come to the same conclusion as for McTominay. Rashford has not been playing well for long time now, not contributing to overall team effort and even in the games where he scored it did not necessarily mean he was playing well. But we did get by with his goals so we were happy. It was papering over the cracks, thats why now when he is not scoring we are seeing all his deficiencies and how he goes missing and does not contribute much. Now compare that with the current Garnacho (and maybe Rashford pre-shoulder injury), they are/was the most dangerous contributing to everypart of team play even when they were not scoring goals. Unfortunately, goals means winning games in the immediate way but its only papering over cracks. If we want to build a sustainable type of play, we might not score many goals at first, but at least as players become more and more accustmed to possession and creating chances and team play and eventually controlling and dominating games, goals will eventually follow. But building this also takes time, and you need to have everyone on board because you are sure to loose many games before attaining that which is the most difficult. As you loose games, you also loose confidence and this may affect the psych. Such a hell for a manager and team alike.
Now the same can be said for ronaldo, he did score goals but the team was not necessarily playing well. Similar to rashford.
Now lets look at Maguire. Credit to him for being a true professional and the mentality to get back from no man's land. He has also been improving recently. Similar to McTominay, he is a very good player and has his strengths. If we play to his strength then fair enough, he is going to be a top defender but that means being a defensive minded team where we cede possession. But again he is not the way forward! We need him now since we are a shit team and his strength which is to defend is coming to fore because we are being dominated and we are second best in possession. On the other way round if we were playing a high line and we are on the front foot, unless he has sufficient cover by his fellow defenders alongside him, we will be more exposing his limits (agility and speed).
Such a team of contradictions as someone said before.
Even without the goals his general play was a bit better today. Still not good or anything, but at least he wasn't absolutely terrible like he mostly has been in that more advanced position this season. Seemed to give the midfield a bit more support today. The issue is that I'm not sure if it was him actually doing better or whether it was just due to Chelsea making it easier for him.
Good goals though, especially the first. Great touch and finish.
Good goals though, especially the first. Great touch and finish.
Just looking at the stats on Fbref. It really is hard to work out how he can play 90 minutes and pass the ball so little. 24 passes attempted last night. That's less than Antony (32) a lot less than Garnacho (45) and less than half as many as Amrabat (49) and Bruno (55) The fact that Bruno is so much more involved proves this issue is not about him playing high up the pitch. I don't know how this issue gets fixed. We need him to play for his goal threat but that also means we play the match with 10.5 men, which is going to get us found out against anyone other than a shockingly poor Chelsea team.
Yes, he is obviously following ETH's instructions, and has been for the last few games.
The truth of the matter is that we need his goals at the moment, because nobody else can finish. In the short term this might mean we have a midfielder who isn't contributing as much to the build up, but what use is having slightly more control in the midfield when we have a winger who can't create or score and a centre forward who hasn't scored a single goal in the league.
McTominay is far from the biggest issue in the side at the moment. Who else even makes an actual effort to get on the end of things in the box apart from him and Højlund? Can't we just be happy that a lad from the academy is contributing in a difficult period for the club. Ten Hag would probably be gone already without his goals this season.
McTominay is far from the biggest issue in the side at the moment. Who else even makes an actual effort to get on the end of things in the box apart from him and Højlund? Can't we just be happy that a lad from the academy is contributing in a difficult period for the club. Ten Hag would probably be gone already without his goals this season.
Yep. I check his passing stats every game to see if it gets any better but it's always 20-25 passes in 90 minutes and half as many as our other players in midfield. Makes it extremely hard to ever have the necessary control of a game when we've a midfielder so little involved
It's a mystery too. How does he avoid getting on the ball? I think it has to be down to him not knowing how to make himself available for a pass. An inability to find space. And I don't think that's something he can learn at this age.
Love it !
I’m sorry, but I dont think that is true. Look at his numbers when he played for OGS. Very different. Look at the Villarreal game for instance. This is per instruction. Furthemore, he is good at finding space and making himself available in the final third and especially in the penalty area. That is more difficult.
In my opinion, he is a «false ten» and Bruno a «false eight». I’m only half joking. McT in several part of the game is more of an attacking midfielder while Bruno is deeper, becoming more of a central midfielder. And that makes sense, because you would rather have Bruno on the ball than McTominay.
The Galatasaray game was one of the most open matches I've ever seen and we had a countless number of attacks, yet McTominay in an attacking midfield position somehow managed to only accumulate 20 passes in 90 minutes. Not sure if teammates are purposely avoiding him because they know he doesn't really want it or hasn't the ability in tight spaces, or if he's to blame for hiding.
Oh I don't want Us to sell him this January but come Summer both Him and Maguire should fetch some decent money and rather than be daft to hold on to them we should be actively trying to move them .
Why don't we just stick McTominay upfront as the CF? Then you can play Mainoo with Amrabat/Casemiro and we would sort out the gaping hole in the midfield and not be so easy to play through.
I dont care whether anyone else is looking for an apology or not. I have done this to Maguire too and I have done this previously with Scott when he scored 2 in injury time.
If you can't fecking appreciate when things are great but if you are the first one to abuse when our players has a bad match, then you are embarrassing as a fan.
That isn't true though. Look at their heat maps from last night. McT is in no way more advanced than Bruno. If anything he's playing a good bit deeper. Only getting on the ball a hell of a lot less.
We have to be able to get good money for him in the summer.
Why is that a problem? I think we identify this isn't his strength and bypass him in the buildup and encourage him to force high turnovers and late runs into the box and it can work where Bruno is a bit more controlled like last night
It’s a problem because there’s a giant chasm in midfield because he’s never there as a passing option.
Yeah let do this. McTom his major quality is recognizing spaces going forward, timing his runs accordingly and getting in the box at the right moment. By doing so he is - whether you like it or not - been one of the most important players for us this year in terms of contribution.. Lets get him out of this position to an position where we eliminate all those strengths by playing him as striker and play him with his back to the goal most of the game. Great idea..
FFS
I suspect his numbers on the ball aren't going to improve all that match, particularly in the build up play. I'm not sure whether it fixes the midfield problem but I think if his defensive discipline is better off the ball and he's more selective about bombing forward, we might prevent games from being so chaotic. I think you can get away with one midfielder not seeing as much of the ball provided they bring other things to the game and for McT it's being a goal threat but I think we need him to find a better balance between being a goal threat and not leaving the midfield with acres of space for the opposition. Even when he is deeper, his defensive awareness is lacking. I'm not blaming him for the goal but he allowed Mudryk to pick the ball up in a lot of space and pick out a pass to Palmer. I think he's generally okay in duels but that lack of defensive discipline from him (and Bruno) can give the DM a lot of work to do.
I can't decide if he's more like Chicharito or Lampard, but I loving this version of McT.
Let's stop thinking he's the next coming of Frenkie De Jong or Casemiro. Let's bury that idea now.
Let's stop thinking he's the next coming of Frenkie De Jong or Casemiro. Let's bury that idea now.
Pretty sure nobody with a pair of eyes has ever thought that.
His stats from yesterday has been the best attacking wise individual performance i have seen in a long time at the club. When was the last time another player of ours had 5 shots on target in a game?
exactly. A smart club would use this time to pump up the value of maguire and mctominay, knowing full well they arent going to help us become title challengers moving forward. Instead i fully expect contract extensions for both with how this club is run.
That's a good thing and I meant that we should stop talking about his performances as a holding mid or a central mid.
He'll never be any good in those positions. We've all seen enough.
Bruno does this quite often no?
He's not a midfielder but he has an eye for a goal and is the most clinical finisher at the club - the only truly competent one. How he ended up as a midfielder instead of a striker, it blows my mind...
I like how he can do a daisy cutter shot from just inside the box quite often. He's very good at keeping the ball low more often and just pinging it to one of the sides.
His first goal vs City was trademark, and it's great to see the manager unlock that asset for us.
Also, I feel like he understood the press triggers higher up the pitch better than he does if he was playing deeper.
His first goal vs City was trademark, and it's great to see the manager unlock that asset for us.
Also, I feel like he understood the press triggers higher up the pitch better than he does if he was playing deeper.
I feel like this is where Jose ended up using him when he first came in - pressing quite high and there was that run of games he was praising him a lot in interviews - he's a limited player if you just go off his on the ball skills but he's got such an engine/is a big unit it's hard to stop him - so many times he'd knock the ball past one of their players and carry us up the pitch yesterday.
Was at the game yesterday, sat bang on the halfway, right at the very top of the north/sir Alex stand.
Perfect view to assess movement, shape, and positional awareness of the whole team.
Me and my mate spent the majority of the game pulling our hair out at the gaps McT was leaving all over the place. Despite the goals, his overall play yesterday was really quite poor. I thought he was the worst of the midfield 3 by some distance.
But his knack for timing those runs into the box is really bloody good.
The reality is, playing an attacking McT and Bruno in the same team means we are going to concede so many chances every game. And against the best teams, that most likely means losing
You can tell that ETH is trying to nullify the impact by having Shaw and Dalot fill the gaps in midfield… but it takes away their own strengths of width and overlapping runs of the wide forward.
The long term fix for me is still finding a true elite box to box 8 to play between the 6 and Bruno.
Perfect view to assess movement, shape, and positional awareness of the whole team.
Me and my mate spent the majority of the game pulling our hair out at the gaps McT was leaving all over the place. Despite the goals, his overall play yesterday was really quite poor. I thought he was the worst of the midfield 3 by some distance.
But his knack for timing those runs into the box is really bloody good.
The reality is, playing an attacking McT and Bruno in the same team means we are going to concede so many chances every game. And against the best teams, that most likely means losing
You can tell that ETH is trying to nullify the impact by having Shaw and Dalot fill the gaps in midfield… but it takes away their own strengths of width and overlapping runs of the wide forward.
The long term fix for me is still finding a true elite box to box 8 to play between the 6 and Bruno.
Yeah I feel like his footballing brain isn't suited to playing deeper. You need to have a different type of positional awareness for that.
I think McTominay needs simple instructions which is why he's adapting well to the clear press triggers high up the pitch rather than improvising on chaos further back.
He also is one of the players that really cares for the club and the badge, contrary what cnuts like Goldbridge will peddle on their channel. Ten Hag has said he cares for the club a lot and that when the banner came up saying play like you care, it was apparently him that pointed to it to the team mates and said this matters etc.
Running it back again after outing people for defending his worth in the summer
We would have been suckers to allow a player of his impact to leave for sub £30million.
We have a lot of poor deadwood in the squad, McTominay is not it.
exactly how i feel. He is just such a weird player, no idea how he can fit into this team and us be consistently controlling things. Maybe back when teams played old school 4-4-2 and he could be next to the other striker and roam around a bit and make those late runs without worrying about his midfield duties. Him and bruno as 2 of the 3 midfielders just leaves a shitton for whoever it is in there as you said.
We should play him as a false 9 and play Mainoo with Amrabat. This will take the pressure off Hojlund who can be subbed on later.
I’d rather keep Maguire with his current form, he’s never relied on pace he’ll get better as he gets older as we are seeing right now plus he won’t complain if he’s a squad player.
Rather sell Marcus Rashford. PSG of Barcelona will pay the £75m and we should only sell Scott if we get £50m this summer. Use that £125m to rebuild ?
Why do we end up with these really strange midfielders?
Pogba, Fred, McT, Bruno, Mount and even Casemiro to an extent. Can't we just get an actual DM (Rice mould), a box to box 8 and a #10?
Pogba, Fred, McT, Bruno, Mount and even Casemiro to an extent. Can't we just get an actual DM (Rice mould), a box to box 8 and a #10?
He took his goals very well yesterday and he could have had a hat-trick. Fair play to him, he's always been a goal threat up the pitch.
That said I still feel a better drilled team would have exposed the gaps in our midfield yesterday. It's not a McTominay issue as much as it I think it is a tactics issue, but my gut feeling is that this is nothing but a false dawn and if we set up this way in 10 days at Anfield then we'll get battered.
Never mind seeing it from the pitch side, it's even obvious on TV.
That said I still feel a better drilled team would have exposed the gaps in our midfield yesterday. It's not a McTominay issue as much as it I think it is a tactics issue, but my gut feeling is that this is nothing but a false dawn and if we set up this way in 10 days at Anfield then we'll get battered.
Never mind seeing it from the pitch side, it's even obvious on TV.
He reminds me so much of Fellaini, nowhere near good enough to be a midfielder and clearly better in a more advanced role where he can use his physicality around the box, might as well grow an afro at this point.
Love this guy and most of all for one specific reason, that being SAF cherishes him so much. In his own right, Mc Tominay is someone this squad needs. Pretty much always healthy and with a great attitude.
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