The English contingent at our club

Lay said:
Less English players the better. We haven’t had a good technical English player since Scholes. They’ve all been plodders
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Carrick? Geordies are still English, despite their odd ways ;)
 
phelans shorts said:
It just isn’t true though. There’s loads of players in history who were known for being incredibly meek and quiet off the pitch, and the exact opposite on it.
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Exactly. That's a reflection of the fight and tenacity they have, which is part of their personality. Being quiet or loud has nothing to do with how much fight you have. Khabib was an amazing fighter and very quiet behind the scenes. Mcgregor was also an amazing fighter, yet very loud.

But if you show a lack of fight and spirit on the pitch, with your head constantly dropping when things get tough, this is very much a reflection of your personality. I don't see how it can be argued otherwise. Specially after what we've seen from many of our players over the past year or so.
 
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TheGame said:
By that basis you can apply that to all of the players at the club judging from last season.
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Not really.

Ronaldo, Elanga, DDG, Varane, fred, Mctominay and Dalot all showed the correct attitude, despite some of them not being up to the level we needed.
 
JeffFromHK said:
you are just a weird triggered local fan who doesn't try to reason but to resort to Ad hominem.

the OP is just speaking facts. The current English players in Man Utd squad (with Sancho still having a benefit of doubt) are either lazy and toxic or are passive and weak. You must be blind and biased if you do not agree that Rashford, Henderson, Lingard, Greenwood, Shaw have attitude problems and Maguire Jones and awb are mentally weak. Most of the international fans criticising current English players here were fans of Beckham, Scholes, Carrick etc back in the days.
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I'm English and very much agree that many of our English players don't have what it takes in terms of attitude or quality. As to why? Think it's a combination of the hype and pampering from the UK media and them buying into it a little too much.

Also, labelling this thread as racist is a load of bollocks and is a very lazy counterargument.

In terms of your last point, you are 100% right. Most of my favourite United players of all time are English. Bias or racism has nothing to fecking do with it. We're talking about the current crop of English players we have.
 
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JeffFromHK said:
you are just a weird triggered local fan who doesn't try to reason but to resort to Ad hominem.

the OP is just speaking facts. The current English players in Man Utd squad (with Sancho still having a benefit of doubt) are either lazy and toxic or are passive and weak. You must be blind and biased if you do not agree that Rashford, Henderson, Lingard, Greenwood, Shaw have attitude problems and Maguire Jones and awb are mentally weak. Most of the international fans criticising current English players here were fans of Beckham, Scholes, Carrick etc back in the days.
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The original OP is an ad hominem. As is most of what you’ve followed with. Baseless accusations of personality deficit backed up by feels, armchair psychology and absolutely feck all evidence. There is absolutely no reason at all to suggest that Rashford has an “attitude problem”, in fact everything would point towards him not having one.
 
BuzzKillington said:
The original OP is an ad hominem. As is most of what you’ve followed with. Baseless accusations of personality deficit backed up by feels, armchair psychology and absolutely feck all evidence. There is absolutely no reason at all to suggest that Rashford has an “attitude problem”, in fact everything would point towards him not having one.
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:lol: :lol: :lol: Rashford's PR team have infiltrated the forum now?

Yes, he's an angel. What about all the games last season(there was at least 2 or 3, backed up by numbers) where he got outran by a 37 year old Ronaldo as a young winger that should be entering their prime physical years? No reason at all, hm.
 
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OP is spot on but we are finally going into a direction where the impact will become smaller. Especially Shaw and Maguire either up their game or become pure bench players
 
Baxquux said:
The fitness, yes, although this is an issue right across the team affecting our ability to counteract opposition midfielders and wide-sided defenders bursting through our lines, even when we step up the effort ( as with Southampton): however, I don't Sancho should be necessarily blamed for looking out of sorts stylistically in a team build up play is either erratic or barely-existent, dependent upon the players. He doesn't have the physical attributes to make up for disjointed team play but to return to that kind of profile as a preference risks going back to Ole ball or eve Jose's 'sit tight then sort it out yourselves' attitude to progressive attacking play, where everything was just 'moments'.

Sancho's profile as an interlinking player, with shades of fleeter-footed, slightly tougher Mata at times is more likely to get us results if we play to it as a team by encouraging proper overloads and one touch combination combinations around the opposition's box, , give and go transitions and so on, as opposed to thinking in terms of building around, say, Rashford's strengths (and weaknesses) , which would lead us back to counterattacking at best. That's not even about getting the best out of Sancho as 'star' but more about forcing ourselves to play a necessarily more progressive game with higher probability of creating chances without relying upon someone to come up with some feat of dribbling or first-season Bruno-worldie.
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Sure the fitness is not just a Sancho problem but I think we both agree he has to take some personal responsibility.
The better we are as a team , the better Sancho will look. A good striker would catalyse his game immensely. The talent is there and that's why I want more from him. I want him to have the fire of a Martinez or Malacia.
 
We fall into the trap of persisting with English talent due to nationality. It would be great to have a great English core like we used to with Rio/Carrick/Scholes/Rooney but the players need to actually be good instead of just hanging out to mediocre ones.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yup. It’s weird.

As is the paradox that when England were shit, the English players at United were amazing but now the national team is good the United players have gone to shite.
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The national team is not good. Massively overrated because of an easy draw in the previous competition.
 
The Corinthian said:
Bunch of bad eggs aren’t? Mixture of apathetic performances, poor attitude, laziness or just downright difficult personality.

I get the feeling they have this entitled attitude, and it could be down to us rewarding mediocrity with massive bloated contracts. This, plus relative success internationally, seems like it has gone to their heads.

I remember Steven Gerrard saying that everytime he went to England training camp, the English players from Man Utd were a cut above in terms of training, attitude and professionalism. They would stick together off the pitch too as they felt it gave them that competitive edge when international breaks resumed. Lampard and Rio have talked about this extensively when it was us and Chelsea competing year in year out. Seems like we’re so far removed from that ideal with this current bunch.

Rashford - his attitude is awful. Doesn’t look like he tries or cares anymore, and the quality is just not there. The sooner we get him to a new club and replace his minutes with Gakpo/Memphis, we’ll be better for it.

Shaw - 8 seasons at the club and we’ve had maybe, if we’re being generous, 1.5 seasons worth of genuine quality. Average, lazy in his play and doesn’t push himself to be better. I said in another thread, the way he comes across it seems like he sees football as just a job, and doesn’t really want to push himself to be better.

Maguire - he just isn’t good enough. I thought he was good in his first season, ok overall in his second, and a disaster in his third. But for a club captain, and someone that should lead from the front he should be doing a lot better. I genuinely think his overall attitude is good, it’s just his application isn’t great. Also he doesn’t interview at all well, and would be better putting his head down and improving rather than speaking.

Henderson - just a gobshite. Hope he does well at Forest though and they come in with a nice offer of £25m. I wanted him to be our number 1 instead of DdG but it seems he’s burning those bridges with the club.

AWB - I think he’s good enough to play Carabao Cup and Europa group stages, but the overall quality is just not there. He doesn’t seem like a difficult personality unlike the above 4 (seems to have a quiet persona) but yea, he’s pretty poor and the fact that we paid £45m is mental.

Sancho - no complaints. He’s a baller, and I think as this team improves in terms of cohesiveness and overall play, so will he. Also feel that as he spent most of the last 4-5 years in Germany, he‘s a bit removed from it all.

Greenwood - so promising. Wasted his talent and career.

Lingard - thank feck he’s gone.

Interested to hear what others think.
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Simply put none have the correct mentality to be an elite footballer and whilst we could say bissaka is just not good enough, he has regressed rather than improve in anyway off the back of a decent first season which comes down to attitude.
 
I don’t think they’ve collectively got an issue, I do think some have been able to hide behind the media mostly attacking foreign players for having poor attitudes. Certain players were vilified for years while others were able to avoid criticism but last season demonstrated that there’s issues throughout the squad as a whole, regardless of nationality.
 
Maguire was a leader in a team that played World Cup semis and Euro final, he even made the best Euro XI, Shaw scored an amazing goal in a Euro final.

Sancho has an amazing potential and with a decent manager he will get there, i have doubts about Marcus commitment.

So we have some very decent English players and if ETH is good enough like we think he is, he will get the best out of them this season.
 
Fluctuation0161 said:
The national team is not good. Massively overrated because of an easy draw in the previous competition.
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England finished below Costa Rica in the qualifiers at the 2014 World Cup and were eliminated by Iceland at the 2016 Euros
The national team has clearly massively improved since then and is now consistently reaching the latter stages of tournaments
Bizarre to downplay that improvement tbh. England quite clearly have a reasonably good selection of players right now
 
TheGame said:
Eh? Ronaldo has said he wants to leave the club. How is that the right attitude?
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We were specifically talking about the attitude shown on the pitch last season, but I see you've shifted the narrative to how he's behaved this summer because you're unable to argue my point.

Him wanting to leave this summer is him being selfish, which is something we've all known forever. But his attitude in terms of wanting to win, no matter the game or circumstance, remains.
 
I don't think it's just the English players.

Look at the squad. If you could rip it up and start again, there are probably only a handful of players you would want to keep.

There is literally question marks over every player we have, be it injury, age, commitment, years of bad form etc etc.

We have what we have though, and i just hope ETH can get something positive out of them in the near term then build for the long.
 
I think it’s more lack of ability, with the exception maybe of Shaw. Maguire is not quite good enough and seems mentally shot, AWB is nowhere near good enough and Rashford is a player who has not kicked on from a promising start. Anyway, it seems harsh to call out the English players when 90% of the squad has been rancid. Which national group grouping comes out smelling of roses from the last few years - France with Pogba and Martial (attitude ranking E-), Portugal with the disruptive Ronaldo and the ridiculously over-rated Bruno, Spain with a keeper who seemingly won’t adapt his game and a semi- retired Mata? Obviously there are more English examples of ineptness because United is an English club and has to meet homegrown player targets.
 
santeria13 said:
We were specifically talking about the attitude shown on the pitch last season, but I see you've shifted the narrative to how he's behaved this summer because you're unable to argue my point.

Him wanting to leave this summer is him being selfish, which is something we've all known forever. But his attitude in terms of wanting to win, no matter the game or circumstance, remains.
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No I believe your point is bollocks. You are singling out certain players based on no evidence. You refer to poor performance over a period of time yet Shaw had his best season prior to last season. All the other players also played well. You are focusing on certain players due to having an agenda when the whole team was poor last season.
 
Foreign players have hardly been great, have they?

- Fernandes is the biggest whinger since Martial - useless for over a year.

- Martial has turned into this great player suddenly - he is the definition of lazy - seems like the past five years have magically been forgotten because of his scintillating loan at Sevilla. Oh wait....

- Ronaldo - don't need to say much more. Petulant man baby.

It is also a myth these players put in more effort than the English players last season. They were equally lazy. The only player who matched up to the mileage of other teams was Fred. That was all.

People have their narratives, though.
 
BuzzKillington said:
My take away from this and some other similar threads is there seems to be a weirdly large group of fans who support our English club that seem to actively hate the English, somebody above even seems to have a problem with Mancunians. You guys are fecking weird. Or there must be some place in the world where which club you support is mandated rather than you being able to choose one for yourself.
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They could try supporting their local team? Or the one where they hail from?

They might feel that connection they keep banging on about
 
lysglimt said:
Who managed to take these players to 2nd in the table ?
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Due to Liverpool's injuries. Very few of his signings can be described as successes and are best suited for a low block counterattacking tactic. We overpaid for most of the signings.
 
Goldbridge has been hating on the British contingent so that may have rubbed off on some. I agree that some of the criticism and tone have gone overboard. It’s only natural that the English (media, fans and so on) back one of their own and give them greater leeway.
 
Pronewbie said:
Goldbridge has been hating on the British contingent so that may have rubbed off on some. I agree that some of the criticism and tone have gone overboard. It’s only natural that the English (media, fans and so on) back one of their own and give them greater leeway.
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its natural but not accurate
 
Classical Mechanic said:
It doesn't really matter what I think of those opinions. Imagine if someone started a thread last season saying 'the black contingent at our club' decrying the performances of Fred, Pogba, Varane, Rashford etc' I'm sure that you'd be rightly outraged. You're implying that there's something implicit in that immutable characteristic that is making them a bad player.
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To be fair, although nationality has been mentioned in the op, he/she then focused on attitude and effort, as have most of the responses. Racism is so utterly contemptable because the colour of your skin is unchangeable (unless you are Michael Jackson!) whereas attitude, effort, fitness, footballing technique even, can be worked on and improved.

Having said that, there might be an underlying reason why the English lads are set in their ways (to put it mildly) to do with the high wages they are on and possibly the quota system giving them a sense of 'job security' which their performances haven't merited.

They can also earn significant money from other areas too, not linked to the trophies won at Man United. Just being a Man United player, despite the lack of success recently, is a license to print money.

The quote below caught me eye however, in defence of the English contingent:

TheGame said:
Prior to last year they have all played fine. The whole team was a shambles last year so why single out those players? How about Ronaldo and Pogba’s antics in the media?

Shaw had his best season for club and country prior to last season.

I didn’t agree with Henderson but clearly he felt slighted at his treatment here.

Maguire, out of form but that’s it. No accountability, WTF does that even mean? Did anyone have any accountability last season?

Just the same old slagging off our players with the same names involved. Getting tiresome.
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Image in your own work if someone came into the organisation, someone who worked there 15 years ago and was a legend at the coffee machine for their productivity and results but somewhat disloyally had moved onto work for other firms and while there, did even better. But they come back and are praised to high heaven, but you then find out that a) they are earning 3x what you get and b) are actually not very good anymore. You and your mates might start to feel aggrieved and it might impact on your performances. That star employee soon has his mates all fussing around him - passing him easy opportunities to add to his own record, consequently you and your mates get more and more peed off, soon there is a massive morale issue amongst the whole workforce. It hits results, a kind manager who has supported you gets sacked and the shareholders appoint a new guy who comes in and tries to crack the whip by saying you are all sh1t, even the star guy on the biggest wage!

That's basically what happened at Man United, so perhaps it isn't the English who are to blame at all - its a Portuguese prima donna who thinks he is still a King, recruited by a Scotsman who who used to rule the Kingdom.....
 
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The Corinthian said:
Nonsense. Some of our best players have been the English ones.

We're lightyears away from a team that had Rio, Rooney, Scholes, Carrick, and even Hargreaves. Leaders on the pitch, the right attitude and a cut above their peers.

Even going back a few years before that our English group with the Nevilles, Beckham, Butt - again, quality on the pitch, the right mentality, and players that would put in a performance worthy of the shirt week in week out.

These are the players that Gerrard alluded to when he spoke about how they were a cut above.
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It is not nonsense; he is actually quite correct. There is an anti-English sentiment amongst fans on here.

Case in point, I remember in one game last season we fielded no English players and won. There was a thread created about it and people were getting giddy about; it was filled with people not wanting to play English players. They were trying to put all the blame for the season on the English players - and there were quite a lot of posters that displayed this anti-Englishness. Funnily enough, though, we played the same team again and got battered the second time, but people don't learn and we are back to trying to pin all the blame on the English players.

There was all that nonsense about Brexit FC that one transfer window, also, even though we tried to sign Dybala in that same window. It was a weird thing to get upset by and does show signs of anti-british sentiment.
 
We used to have a strong English core in our team. The likes of the Nevilles, Butt, Beckham, Keane, Scholes, etc but no more. Pity!
cmon, bite. It’s right there.
 
Shaw for me is the most annoying. He has shown that he has the quality but for some reason or another he decides to turn crap. I know it's probably an easy stick to beat him with but he does look overweight for a footballer too.

Rashford just seems to have become a different player mentally. Was never a HUGE fan of him but he was good at what he did once upon. A time. These days his workrate has fallen off a cliff.
 
There are so many players who were sleepwalking on this roster that it's hard to see that and then think that all of them individually are shit.

Take Maguire for example. It's not like the guy doesn't try. He just plays stupid. In the wrong position given the circumstances around him. Can't read the play or anticipate. And he was the Capo so he probably got a bit too full of himself and forgot that you have to fight to sustain your place in this league.

Mental errors can be fixed so it would not surprise me if he were to get his game back on track under this manager. EtH is a weird dude personality-wise but he's genuine and seems to care about his players. It doesn't feel personal with him. He probably knew Maguire would struggle but put him out there in the first two games to see how the team played and that's important if you want to rebuild him. Because had he just sat him there would be more questions and maybe Maguire wouldn't fully buy in to having his game rebuilt from the basics. Because that is what he needs, as he was making errors that you would see in much lower leagues.

Rash and Sancho the problem has been how timid they play. Kept saying it looked like Sancho had his balls removed but he's not the only one. Both of them are basically projects now which means maybe one or both regain some of that promise and start playing with aggression and fight.

I am wondering right now how many of these guys can rebound or build their game enough to stick around. This season has to be a proving ground in some ways for that. You can't just move all of them. So you have to play them and see which ones take to the new play style and rules. Would be nice too if some of the English players rebound. I like Maguire's size on that line so I am hoping they get him back on track and he's not the only holdover that applies to.
 
OmarUnited4ever said:
Tuanzebe & Williams ?
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I don’t have complaints with either to be honest. Both try hard everytime I’ve seen them play. With Williams the quality is not quite there and with Tuanzebe he’s just had too many fitness / injury issues. I think a move away from the club would be best for both in any case for the sake of their careers.
 
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