Don't disagree with any of that. But my point was more around many people in the online football community saying that Amrabat was this all action, all tackling, answer to all of our midfield issues during the transfer window and when we had just signed him. Then there were other 'experts' saying he was like Carrick. He clearly doesn't fit either of these descriptions.
Sofyan Amrabat | 2023/24 Performances
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They are the result of lack of investment and the Glazers are still involved at that level.
To be honest, it's more a result of poor investment rather than a lack of investment.
We've spent an absolute shit-ton of money on recruitment. More than almost anyone else. It's just that it's almost all been spent terribly, and there's only so much any club can do that before it starts having a negative impact on further investment, especially when it's combined with being terrible at making money from sales.
It's shit investment by a commercial first owner followed by subsequent poor investment when the money tap got turned off.
Did a nice tackle and had 100% passing
Free yes, for a fee no.
For Morocco he looked all-action, but it was in a fairly tight space since their other CMs and fullbacks ran a ton and they defended tightly. And we've seen that over wider spaces/gaps he's too slow.
For Fiorentina he looked like a very tidy passer and organizer a la Carrick, but Carrick was just a better overall player and less limited athletically and just smother.
And in both situations he was flanked by hard-working #8s. Without those beside him, he's sort of crumbled. Not sure where he'll go next, but my guess is it will be a Europa league sort of level club that plays 4-3-3 (no #10 like Bruno) and doesn't press particularly high.
I didn't realize Weston Mckennie (too slow to play for Leeds and cover big gaps) is doing well again in Serie A. Different type of midfielder obviously, but there seem to be parallels in how they didn't fit here.
Why does he look like he's running in treacle?
I genuinely feel for him, man's barely had a chance to get any sort of thing going here and basically has 5/10 minute stints in high-tempo games - generally when we're up against it - to try prove himself.
Sabitzer was better
We gave Sabitzer more of a chance! despite being here for not even half the time.
We shouldn't even be thinking about having him in the squad next season. He has looked completely lost most of the time. It must be possible to get a better squad option in some other way.
Sabitizer fit Ten Hag's "midfield" system as a secondary advanced 10. Basically an upgraded Donny with many of the same weaknesses.
Him getting so many games last season as Ten Hag moved away from playing the more orthodox Cas-Eriksen or Cas-Fred pairings should have been a warning sign for the nonsense we would see this year.
The best way to get a better squad option is to sign or promote another potential young starter and let them phase Casemiro or whoever else into a squad role. We could have picked up many players like Amrabat or Sabitzer on a free over the years but seem to be happy to be loaning these guys and you can see why. Hopefully that’s the end of that now under INEOS as it’s poor practice. We should only ever be putting our time and energy and minutes into our own players so we can maximise our investment into them or they are in the shop window if they don’t make it
I still think he'd be an improvement on what Casimero is serving up currently.
It might be, but our manager loves to play the same players over and over, hoping for a different outcome
Forget sabitzer, Fred was better. This amrabat signing has been a disaster, at least sabitzer and Fred were trusted, amrabat clearly is seen as last resort
Sabitzer put in a motm performance with 2 assists and a goal to send Dortmund to the champions league semi finals this week. What has Amrabat done again?
Sabitzer seems to be more of an advanced midfielder. Fred either box-to-box or advanced as well. Amrabat was supposed to be another defensive midfielder option so wouldn't compare him to them in that sense. But both definitely looked better players for us.
He was motm for Fiorentina against West Ham in the Conference League final. Anyway it's a pointless discussion, both were terrible for United and there would have been a lot of moaning had we signed Sabitzer permanently.
He wasnt man of the match, they lost with Bowen winning the cup for West Ham
And its the exact opposite of fruitless. It shows that we didnt get the best out of Sabitzer for reasons and hes bounced back straight away and doing some of his best stuff in an already pretty good career, having already done very well in previous years. He wasn't the problem else he wouldnt be able to do what hes doing and he currently has 3 goals and 2 assists in his last 2 games, 1 in the bundasliga and 1 in the champions league. Doing more than any of our players at this moment.
Amrabat will go back to Italy or wherever and will resume being just a guy. He wasnt even one of Fiorentina's best players
Would still trust fred even as defensive midfielder over amrabat
I watched the match and thought he was the best player on the pitch and West Ham were lucky to win the game. Just my opinion though.He wasnt man of the match, they lost with Bowen winning the cup for West Ham
And its the exact opposite of fruitless. It shows that we didnt get the best out of Sabitzer for reasons and hes bounced back straight away and doing some of his best stuff in an already pretty good career, having already done very well in previous years. He wasn't the problem else he wouldnt be able to do what hes doing and he currently has 3 goals and 2 assists in his last 2 games, 1 in the bundasliga and 1 in the champions league. Doing more than any of our players at this moment.
Amrabat will go back to Italy or wherever and will resume being just a guy. He wasnt even one of Fiorentina's best players
The same people who thought he was man of the match thought Rice wasnt great and went on about how Amrabat is better than Rice. Hows that worked out for them/you this season?
Jarrod Bowen won a penalty, though didnt take it but it did score West Ham's first for Benrahma. Then Bowen scored to win it at the end. A penalty won and the winning goal - obvious man of the match
Though if you want to exclude West Ham's game winning moments, Bonaventura was Fiorentina's best midfielder. He took his goal extremely well. And their best attacker was Gonzalez on the right wing.
Pacqueta sent Bowen through after Amrabat tried to win the ball and it broke to him and also sent Antonio through who missed. So he had a good game too, which is playing directly against Amrabat who was ineffective defensively. All Amrabat did was play a few cross field passes including one that led to the goal, but it was due to an amazing jump and head down to Bonaventura who had a good first touch and finish. Any normal player struggles to make much of the ball he played because he got too much underneath it. Regardless its a contribution and the best thing he did.
What a waste of £10m. Horrendous signing.
At least we can feck him off next month.
Was invisible today
With all the economic problems hitting the country and how broke the NHS has become, 10m quid could have made a difference to my local hospital
For the 8 minutes he was on the pitch. I get he isn't good enough for us and will go back, but let's not moan about everything at every opportunity.
All in all a rather pointless loan signing.
Such a tragedy of a loan. I still think he's a much better partner to Mainoo than the Casemiro we have now, simply because he takes much better care of the ball and still has an engine. Unfortunately it looks like we will never know.
The loan fee was around £8.5m, up there with some of our worst signings.
Really strange from ETH this one. Makes no sense from start to finish.
??? I've yet to see this. However I have seen players ghost past him due to his immobility.
Even Casemiro of this season is head and shoulders above Amrabat. He isn’t even premier league quality.
I think its a lot worse than that. He was a much needed and pointed signing, but he was the wrong player and performed poorly so played less than might be expected and less than we needed. A poor signing rather than a pointless one.
For all those years we had to watch Fred and McTominay as Manchester United's midfield... Yes of course we got Casemiro to improve things last season. But we obviously still needed to add more. And after like 4 years we were finally signing another new first team midfielder to help Casemiro. And we chose this guy.
Fiorentina are 8th like they were last season with him there and Duncan, Arthur and Bonaventura in front have all done better than Amrabat ever did for Fiorentina. So he probably wouldnt even be playing there if he goes back.
mainoo injury forced the extra body. people forget that. mainoo was excelling in preseason, then got injured. Fred was on the way out, so we were left facing half the season with casemiro as the only defensively minded midfielder in our squad, which would have been madness. we simply needed an extra man and while amrabat has underwhelmed, he looked a reasonably decent and attainable target. A loan also made sense as we didnt need or want anyone who would block mainoos role. The real problem was not signing a top quality defensive midfielder but I think we thought casemiro had another year in him
Sofyan Averagetobat.
If McT had been sold Amrabat would have been a permanent transfer.
If McT had been sold Amrabat would have been a permanent transfer.
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