STOP looking for complicated problems

SER19 said:
No chance mctominay starts for newcastle. Not in a million years he starts for pool or city. I like the guy, but come on. You think Martial would start for Eddie Howe? Wan Bisakka over Trippier? Away from tonight, other than counter attacking, tell me what technical ability would make marcus rashford a target for a top class manager. Im talking technical ability.

Our squad, on paper, is a top 6 squad at best. I include an ageing and weary Varane and Casemiro there. Look past the names. Of course other things can improve, but we have absolutely no sensible grounds to expect more than top 4 with this squad, and I have very little faith we will get the recruitment right.
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You can take it further, even the praised Bruno wouldn't get away with playing how he has, or anyone outside of some of our defenders.
 
We are just not good enough. Players plus manager combined we are a mid table team
 
Mwooyo said:
Not going to lie, ETH has to take the blame for these performances. Game after game we lack control in the midfield...every game is a ping pong match. That can not be the blame of the players...the blame goes to the coach for his instructions. Its actually more obvious when you consider that no matter which midfield we select, we always lack control...whether mctominay or casemiro,its the same theme. What instructions does ETH give these players every week. Its like the previous week didnt even happen
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It has got to be very disheartening -- to every week be told to do the same thing over and over, and every week following instructions and then seeing that it doesn't work -- again. People want to throw the players under the bus, but with ETH, there's no player that's doing well.

It would also be nice to see that he got along with someone. Isn't happening.
 
Howson thinks the answer is for Erik, staff and players to get smashed until Monday
 
Marwood said:
Because we keep signing the wrong individuals. Look at their careers post United for the one's who have left. What have they done?

Or as I say, ask where would these players end up if sold today. Would Martial even get a Premier League move? The fullbacks, Maguire, Lindelof, McTominay, Antony, they're nothing more than mid table players. That's a big part of our squad.

Likewise no top four team would now come in for Varane, they all know he's done. Equally no top 4 team wants a 20 year old striker with little goal scoring record.

Rashford crap under Rangnick, as he was for Ole's last 10 month.

I could go on with other players but you're falling for names and status. Look what they're actually doing on the pitch.
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Inter literally had like 3 players from our present and past teams when they played in the CL final. Onana, Darmian, Mkhitaryan. Won the league with Lukaku, Sanchez, Ashley Young as well.

Elanga looks bright at Forest, Ronaldo for as washed as he is is still scoring a lot of goals. The recruitment is shit yeah, but in the context of creating a cohesive team. The players individually are of good quality with some exceptions.
 
slored1 said:
Inter literally had like 3 players from our present and past teams when they played in the CL final. Onana, Darmian, Mkhitaryan. Won the league with Lukaku, Sanchez, Ashley Young as well.

Elanga looks bright at Forest, Ronaldo for as washed as he is is still scoring a lot of goals. The recruitment is shit yeah, but in the context of creating a cohesive team. The players individually are of good quality with some exceptions.
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I’ve long said if you took about half of our players & dropped them into ‘good’ teams they wouldn’t look out of place. As you say individually they are good players but after so many 3-0, 6-3, 5-0, 7-0 & so ons it takes a toll as a team.

Onana has only been here months & you’ve already got Dalot, yes Dalot the circus participant, showing no trust making rash clearances. The facts are as a collective this team has been done for some time & the concept that you can tweak it then hope for better should have been dashed years ago.

Whilst a Chelsea spending spree is unlikely we need to get rid of a number of established players & shock the club, I’m talking Shaw, Bruno, Marcus levels need to go. Otherwise we’re just moving deckchairs on the Titanic again.
 
slored1 said:
Inter literally had like 3 players from our present and past teams when they played in the CL final. Onana, Darmian, Mkhitaryan. Won the league with Lukaku, Sanchez, Ashley Young as well.

Elanga looks bright at Forest, Ronaldo for as washed as he is is still scoring a lot of goals. The recruitment is shit yeah, but in the context of creating a cohesive team. The players individually are of good quality with some exceptions.
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But Elanga is at Forest. They're 15th. Ronaldo in Saudi. Mkhitaryan went to Arsenal, turned in the exact same timid performances as he did with us. Arsenal got rid of him, so dropped a level and moved to Roma. Found his level.

The players you mentioned all dropped to a lesser league. Some of them still doing very little. Where are all the players who left United and smashed it at the top level? Di Maria I reckon is about it.

We don't need to guess at this, we've got hindsight, very few of the players who've left United have gone on to play at the top level. They've all either done nothing or dropped to a lower standard of football and produced ok stuff at best.

Exact same thing will happen with the majority of the current players. Some of this lot wouldn't get interest at all from the Premier League.

I'm not defending ETH here. It's his job to sort this out.
 
Superden said:
Wish we'd stop this nonsense...most of us would take our squad over theirs, on paper. Just look back at the mass turning up of noses when Trippier was linked with us. Its tactics and coaching. Swap the management teams around, give it a few weeks and I'd put my houses and kids on us stuffing them.


Also a top 6 squad should he performing a zillion times better than we are...were playing like a team in the lower third of the table.
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I'd take Newcastle squad over ours, it's not even close.
 
United squad has 1) lots of players that have finished 2nd and 3rd in the league before, 2) players who were successful at their former clubs, some of those big clubs like Chelsea or Real Madrid, 3) players who are important for their national teams.

It's not a squad that should be struggling to win against anyone good. Big gap between winning a league (90ish points) and being 4th-6th (70-60 points).
 
The biggest issue at United is recruitment 100% and the speed of player turnover.

70% of the squad should not be playing for us. Maguire, Lindelof, AWB, Dalot, McTominay, Rashford, Martial. This is a core of players that failed under Ole, all of them bought over 5 years ago. What other top club would keep these players for 5 years? They’re not good enough. United really need to learn when to sell players. We were offered the chance to sell Maguire and McTominay to West Ham last summer and didn’t take the chance, why?
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
United squad has 1) lots of players that have finished 2nd and 3rd in the league before, 2) players who were successful at their former clubs, some of those big clubs like Chelsea or Real Madrid, 3) players who are important for their national teams.

It's not a squad that should be struggling to win against anyone good.
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But that was the past. Players don't stay the same forever.

Your opponent doesn't care how good you were five years ago.

United also have a lot of players who've struggled for years, missed CL qualification, got several managers sacked, been unable to get a move elsewhere.
 
Marwood said:
But that was the past. Players don't stay the same forever.

Your opponent doesn't care how good you were five years ago.
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The last United league finishes are 75, 58, and 74. That's not five years ago that was five months ago.
 
Josep Dowling said:
The biggest issue at United is recruitment 100% and the speed of player turnover.

70% of the squad should not be playing for us. Maguire, Lindelof, AWB, Dalot, McTominay, Rashford, Martial. This is a core of players that failed under Ole, all of them bought over 5 years ago. What other top club would keep these players for 5 years? They’re not good enough. United really need to learn when to sell players. We were offered the chance to sell Maguire and McTominay to West Ham last summer and didn’t take the chance, why?
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Yep. It's criminal how long we allow players who aren't good enough and never will be to continue here for so long. Ten Hag in 2023 nearly 2024 shouldn't be having to get a tune out of the likes of Martial, Dalot, Lindelof etc. for other clubs they'd have been booted years ago when it was crystal clear they're not the required standard. Ten Hag is far from blameless, but the slop that has been allowed to build up in this squad for 7-8 years is mind blowing.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
The last United league finishes are 75, 58, and 74. That's not five years ago that was five months ago.
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But you're referencing Madrid, in other words Varane and Casemiro. How long ago was their peak? Are they the same players now? If not, what they've done previously is irrelevant isn’t it. Saying you played for Madrid when your legs have gone doesn't help.

Our goal difference was 15 last season. Newcastle outscored us and conceded less. No idea how we finished above them or Liverpool. We all know without Rashford out of nowhere hitting that goalscoring run of form last season would have been a real struggle.

I'd love to know the last time a team finished third with a GD of around 15.

As you've pointed out, two seasons ago we finished with 58 points. It's why two managers were sacked that season.
 
Erik ten hag has a very low ceiling for being a capable manager. He's proved that much in his career with reaching a semi final in Europe by way of assessing his success with what's transitional to United. Poch was deemed not got enough and he had consecutive top four finishes and a UCL final.

Injuries are relative but this team has underperformed since the cup final last season. There are tactical defects and the struggles this season has come from the basis of inept managerial influence. The away record last season, the current record against the top 10, I'm absolutely convinced that Erik isn't going to bring United to any respectable level of competitiveness but a medium of mediocre decency around the 6th - 4th position. There are better managers than him domestically (to compete against), better coached teams, it's sink or swim in this league environment.

Those hoping for an Arteta like timescale are dismissing the size of the club.
 
Marwood said:
But you're referencing Madrid, in other words Varane and Casemiro. How long ago was their peak? Are they the same players now? If not, what they've done previously is irrelevant isn’t it. Saying you played for Madrid when your legs have gone doesn't help.

Our goal difference was 15 last season. Newcastle outscored us and conceded less. No idea how we finished above them or Liverpool. We all know without Rashford out of nowhere hitting that goalscoring run of form last season would have been a real struggle.

I'd love to know the last time a team finished third with a GD of around 15.

As you've pointed out, two seasons ago we finished with 58 points. It's why two managers were sacked that season.
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Yep. Last season was a case of everything going our way despite performances and underlying numbers screaming otherwise.

I see that teams like Palace get mentioned above as teams we should be easily beating but even they have 3 players minimum that would walk into our lineup (Guehi, Eze, Olise) and the rest there isn't as much in it as many think.
 
Oh joy we're at the position where blind faith in the manager turns to simple conclusions like 'it's all the players'. Every fecking time.
 
Judas said:
Yep. It's criminal how long we allow players who aren't good enough and never will be to continue here for so long. Ten Hag in 2023 nearly 2024 shouldn't be having to get a tune out of the likes of Martial, Dalot, Lindelof etc. for other clubs they'd have been booted years ago when it was crystal clear they're not the required standard. Ten Hag is far from blameless, but the slop that has been allowed to build up in this squad for 7-8 years is mind blowing.
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I’d be far more forgiving of EtH had his players come in & shown a sign of changing the mentality/quality.

You won’t change a club overnight but bar maybe Martinez, who of EtHs signings look to be standard setters?

We’ve all seen this team for years & remarked on it attitude. Maybe Casemiro & Martinez of his signings can be used as an example of addressing that issue.

This team is not league winning but to be in December & genuinely not have played a good 60minutes in any one game [maybe Palace in the League Cup sorry] is unacceptable. This team shouldn’t be challenging City week in week out but to not muster a fight against that Newcastle team for me is on the manager, if they’ve not bought in after being battered there last year he’s never winning them over.
 
Leftback99 said:
Yep. Last season was a case of everything going our way despite performances and underlying numbers screaming otherwise.

I see that teams like Palace get mentioned above as teams we should be easily beating but even they have 3 players minimum that would walk into our lineup (Guehi, Eze, Olise) and the rest there isn't as much in it as many think.
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Agree. Lots are still kidded by the United badge, the players status. To be fair I think a lot of national coaches are. Some United players have had more caps than they should.

Yeah if you want to easily beat a team you need a considerable gap in quality. We don't have such a gap over a team like Palace. As you say three of their players easily get in our XI. I don't think Palace would climb over hot coals to sign some of ours.
 
The culture of the club is one of laziness, entitlement, and mediocrity. Players like Rashford and Martial should have been disposed of some time ago. Instead, they are awarded with fat contracts and keep starting. Others are nowhere near good enough. McTominay doesn't start for any other top 6 club, yet he does week in, week out for us. We are hoping for greenhorns like Garnacho and Mainoo to save us.

We are just not a serious football club. That's all there is to it. I don't believe for a second Ratcliffe is changing that either. If he ever comes to power, that is.
 
Marwood said:
But you're referencing Madrid, in other words Varane and Casemiro. How long ago was their peak? Are they the same players now? If not, what they've done previously is irrelevant isn’t it. Saying you played for Madrid when your legs have gone doesn't help.
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The evidence that their legs are gone is that they are not playing well for Manchester United. But almost no one is playing well for Manchester United right now, so I don't think that's very solid evidence.

Not that it matters much. In my opinion, when a squad isn't good enough, but well-trained, what you can expect are inconsistent results. They will play well, be capable of important victories and solid results... just not consistently. That is what you see with teams like Aston Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Spurs. They won't all finish in the top 4, they'll have 10+ defeats, they'll lose or draw winnable games. But they'll impress often enough.

The issue with United this season is that they're not an inconsistent team. They're consistently poor. That indicates an issue with the training, the management of the team.
 
Marwood said:
But Elanga is at Forest. They're 15th. Ronaldo in Saudi. Mkhitaryan went to Arsenal, turned in the exact same timid performances as he did with us. Arsenal got rid of him, so dropped a level and moved to Roma. Found his level.

The players you mentioned all dropped to a lesser league. Some of them still doing very little. Where are all the players who left United and smashed it at the top level? Di Maria I reckon is about it.

We don't need to guess at this, we've got hindsight, very few of the players who've left United have gone on to play at the top level. They've all either done nothing or dropped to a lower standard of football and produced ok stuff at best.

Exact same thing will happen with the majority of the current players. Some of this lot wouldn't get interest at all from the Premier League.

I'm not defending ETH here. It's his job to sort this out.
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Elanga scored more times this season than all of our forwards put together. James Garner outplayed our midfielders last week and plays for a shite Everton team. The players that ''dropped down" a level just played in a CL final where they should and could have beat the treble winners. Bruno, Amrabat, McTominay, Eriksen and Casemiro are all mainstays and key players for their national teams and look like they can't kick a ball in ours.

It's the cohesion that is missing, not individual quality. I bet if we signed De Jong, Rabiot and Gakpo instead of Weghorst, Casemiro and Antony last season we would look just as shite as we have so far. Would you say they are poor players as well?
 
The problem is the basic workrate/aggression is a very big part of the problem.

The Newcastle starting 11 last night isn't good enough either. Probably not a single player in it who'd last more than 5 minutes at City. The main difference between the teams also had nothing to do with quality or technical ability.

When we get passed off the pitch by city this argument holds some weight. When we can't get a kick against Newcastle because most of our players aren't interested in matching their commitment levels, it doesn't.
 
I agree with the sentiment OP.

Guardiola would fail here due the level of players and restrictions on recruitment we have.

The only good enough senior players we have are Bruno, Shaw and Martinez. That's it.

We could and should have added to that list with Kane and Kim Min-jae over the summer.
 
I dont disagree entierly. We really have pissed away an astronomical amount of money on dross, both in terms of transfer fees and inflated wages. That being said though, ETH's transfers have been really poor. Casemiro, Anthony, and Onana have costed us almost 200 million pounds and have not really improved us that much

Additionaly, even considering the mediocre quality we are right now far worse than the sum of our parts.
 
AFC NimbleThumb said:
I’d be far more forgiving of EtH had his players come in & shown a sign of changing the mentality/quality.

You won’t change a club overnight but bar maybe Martinez, who of EtHs signings look to be standard setters?

We’ve all seen this team for years & remarked on it attitude. Maybe Casemiro & Martinez of his signings can be used as an example of addressing that issue.

This team is not league winning but to be in December & genuinely not have played a good 60minutes in any one game [maybe Palace in the League Cup sorry] is unacceptable. This team shouldn’t be challenging City week in week out but to not muster a fight against that Newcastle team for me is on the manager, if they’ve not bought in after being battered there last year he’s never winning them over.
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I don’t disagree. I’ve no attachment to pretty much the entire squad including the manager and his staff. Or the board. I’d happily start from scratch.
 
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Judas said:
I don’t disagree. I’ve no attachment to pretty much the entire squad including the manager and his staff. Or the board. I’d happy start from scratch.
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Exactly.

Until the club as a whole are willing to start a proper roots rebuild we’ll continue in this spiral.

Until the likes of Bruno, Rashford, Maguire, Shaw who are seen as senior members of the squad leave, we won’t actually improve imo.
 
slored1 said:
Elanga scored more times this season than all of our forwards put together. James Garner outplayed our midfielders last week and plays for a shite Everton team. The players that ''dropped down" a level just played in a CL final where they should and could have beat the treble winners. Bruno, Amrabat, McTominay, Eriksen and Casemiro are all mainstays and key players for their national teams and look like they can't kick a ball in ours.

It's the cohesion that is missing, not individual quality. I bet if we signed De Jong, Rabiot and Gakpo instead of Weghorst, Casemiro and Antony last season we would look just as shite as we have so far. Would you say they are poor players as well?
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I'd argue the specifics you've said there(Garner dominated us?) but it'll drag on. You are a bit fixed on Inter reaching a Champs League final though. I'm not sure why that means anything about United to you. It's two or three players, featuring in a lesser league. Or why Elanga scoring three goals means anything.

Ultimatelu why do you think we improved last season compared to previous season? What was the primary factor?

Iker Quesadillas said:
The evidence that their legs are gone is that they are not playing well for Manchester United. But almost no one is playing well for Manchester United right now, so I don't think that's very solid evidence.

Not that it matters much. In my opinion, when a squad isn't good enough, but well-trained, what you can expect are inconsistent results. They will play well, be capable of important victories and solid results... just not consistently. That is what you see with teams like Aston Villa, Newcastle, Brighton, Spurs. They won't all finish in the top 4, they'll have 10+ defeats, they'll lose or draw winnable games. But they'll impress often enough.

The issue with United this season is that they're not an inconsistent team. They're consistently poor. That indicates an issue with the training, the management of the team.
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No the evidence is how they're moving around the pitch. What shirt they have on won't make a difference to that. We've all watched football for years, we know when a players body isn't upto it anymore not matter how the team is playing. Varane is stiff as a board.

I don't know how often you watch us but we are inconsistent. We're inconsistent even within single games. How many games have we thrown away this season? A consistently poor team doesn't keep surrendering leads. They don't go two nil up in the first place.

What we have is a bunch of players who are extremely inconsistent. No United fan knows what AWB, Dalot, McTominay or Rashford will produce week to week. We've seen them play very well and like last night, we've seen them terrible.

Could even extend that to Shaw, Casemiro, Eriksen. They all fluctuate massively.
 
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Marwood said:
No the evidence is how they're moving around the pitch. What shirt they have on won't make a difference to that. We've all watched football for years, we know when a players body isn't upto it anymore not matter how the team is playing. Varane is stiff as a board.
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I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. My experience is that lots of players get called finished, especially when clubs are having a bad season, and it is only sometimes true. They quite often have lots of football left in them.

Maybe Varane is finished, maybe he isn't, I don't know. What I do know is: he's 30, the same age as Maguire, one year older than Lindelof, and younger than 3 of Real Madrid's 4 CBs. He's played a similar amount of football as Maguire/Lindelof and was healthy for the four seasons before he signed for United. He was your 11th most used player last season. Those facts do not scream "player whose body has broken down" to me.

But anyway that's not my main point, the point is inconsistency. What I would call inconsistency is something like Aston Villa. They've beat Everton 4-0, Brighton 6-1, West Ham 4-1, Spurs 1-2. Those are big results. But then they've gotten obliterated 5-1 by Newcastle and lost 2-0 to Forest, a bad team. United this season only have 1 result like that, against Everton.
 
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slored1 said:
Inter literally had like 3 players from our present and past teams when they played in the CL final. Onana, Darmian, Mkhitaryan. Won the league with Lukaku, Sanchez, Ashley Young as well.

Elanga looks bright at Forest, Ronaldo for as washed as he is is still scoring a lot of goals. The recruitment is shit yeah, but in the context of creating a cohesive team. The players individually are of good quality with some exceptions.
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But you can't look at players like that though. Lots of teams balance our deficiencies with other players, we have a full squad of deficiencies and very very few able to make up for someone else's.
 
Hammondo said:
But you can't look at players like that though. Lots of teams balance our deficiencies with other players, we have a full squad of deficiencies and very very few able to make up for someone else's.
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It's why I said cohesion is the overarching problem, not the individual quality. We sign good players that have no use in our system - case in point for Mount, Amrabat and Sancho, or we sign players that are completely one-dimensional and try to expand their game - case in point for Antony, AWB or Wout fecking Weghorst. The end product is a complete lack of identity, achieved through spending millions and millions of pounds.
 
slored1 said:
It's why I said cohesion is the overarching problem, not the individual quality. We sign good players that have no use in our system - case in point for Mount, Amrabat and Sancho, or we sign players that are completely one-dimensional and try to expand their game - case in point for Antony, AWB or Wout fecking Weghorst. The end product is a complete lack of identity, achieved through spending millions and millions of pounds.
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But I don't think our players would get picked by any top teams. Top teams don't go for players with deficiencies until they are absolutely amazing at something else.
 
Tactical and recruitment problems are absolutely basic issues. Those are 2 of the first things you look for with a manager. There seem to be gaping holes with these areas - no different to the previous managers, but with worse results and possibly performance (with Ole we had 2 good runs of results and the performances were quite good too, but between and after them both results and performances were poor)
 
To be honest I think it's a not fair to say that our deepest midfielder lacking support and getting overrun all season is a complicated problem.

EtH persists with this set up, it didn't work with Casemiro, now you could reasonably assume he doesn't have the legs for it any more. He tried it with Amrabat, you could argue Amrabat simply doesn't possess the athleticism. He has tried it with Mainoo, you could argue that Mainoo is too inexperienced.

But ultimately those are the tools he has to work with, so he needs to do something to improve the set up so they aren't stranded. There has to be some pragmatism if you don't have the player you want to play the way you want to play. I do not believe Mainoo and Amrabat in deeper midfield would have done worse yesterday than Mainoo with McTominay playing higher, and probably would not have allowed the Midfield to be entirely swamped by Newcastle.

It seems, to me, incredibly naïve to play a team that plays with such energy as Newcastle does, with Mainoo on an island. To let that play out for 45 minutes and not adjust is really baffling. To see the team concede and again not make a significant change in central midfield is even more baffling. The forward press was not offering any shield to the midfield, so the midfield got butchered. The only saving grace was the defensive line managed to keep Newcastle far enough away from the goal that they didn't convert more opportunities.

The Galatasaray game descended into a farce at the end, no midfield to speak of, instead of trying to control the game whilst two goals up, he just threw caution to the wind. Even the good result at Everton has the caveat that a more clinical team would have scored some of of those 5 shots on goal and 21 shots total.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. My experience is that lots of players get called finished, especially when clubs are having a bad season, and it is only sometimes true. They quite often have lots of football left in them.

Maybe Varane is finished, maybe he isn't, I don't know. What I do know is: he's 30, the same age as Maguire, one year older than Lindelof, and younger than 3 of Real Madrid's 4 CBs. He's played a similar amount of football as Maguire/Lindelof and was healthy for the four seasons before he signed for United. He was your 11th most used player last season. Those facts do not scream "player whose body has broken down" to me.

But anyway that's not my main point, the point is inconsistency. What I would call inconsistency is something like Aston Villa. They've beat Everton 4-0, Brighton 6-1, West Ham 4-1, Spurs 1-2. Those are big results. But then they've gotten obliterated 5-1 by Newcastle and lost 2-0 to Forest, a bad team. United this season only have 1 result like that, against Everton.
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Players age differently. The players you've compared Varane to, they're not constantly struggling with injuries. Varane clearly has some serious physical issues.

Re inconsistency:

Surely last season, a very good home record but a very poor away record is inconsistent?

Followed by half a season where the home form randomly goes terrible.

De Gea getting golden glove but shipping massive amounts of goals in the big away games.

Good form upto League Cup final, struggling from then on.

Playing well, taking good leads in games, then collapsing.

I could go on with examples of inconsistency but no United fan watches us week in week out and thinks good or bad, this is a consistent team.
 
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