The main current problem, players or formation ?

This system is unworkable without proper wingbacks.
Also we don't have a good striker.
Amad is new to his position but is a bright spark at least.
Onana is woeful.
Our CBs are learning a new system also.
Our midfield isn't great either. Mainoo seems to have regressed and Ogarte isn't great on the ball.

I'm not a fan of 3 at the back anyway. There's a reason over 90% of teams play 4 at the back.

Amorim obviously thinks he's found an advantage in playing it so we should trust him I guess.
I've a feeling this time next year we'll be taking about replacing him.

I bet Iraola will have joined a bigger team by then and we'll be wondering why we didn't get him.
 
Most weeks I look at the other teams lineup and would have at least four players of the opposition in our strongest 11. For some teams it’s more than half. This is not including teams like Arsenal, Liverpool and City which is close to a clean sweep.

Even in some of our bad years I’ve always felt we had better players but we were just performing worse. We had players like Pogba, Mkhitaryan, Sanchez, Di Maria, Schweinstiger and many others that would be inconsistent but their talent was obvious. This batch that we have now, has so many hopeless players that wouldn’t get games in mid table clubs.

The system is only making these issues even worse. Mediocre players in a system that doesn’t fit them.
 
The biggest problem is mentality., so I’m choosing players.

Southampton Thursday was a good indicator. A promoted side on a hiding to nothing. They rock up at OT and controlled the game. I know United have been excremental for how long, but promoted sides generally beat or put in a performance versus us. Check out plummeting relegation fodder and the results during our halcyon best aren’t much either.

There are many malefactors at play. Switching off after scoring. Being incapable of converting chances. Goalkeeping errors. Misplaced passes. The list is metaphorically endless.
 
Gandalf Greyhame said:
Senior Management. Decision makers above the manager in charge of keeping/sacking EtH, sanctioning transfers, and prioritizing squad 'upgrades'. We're just a spectacularly poorly run club that wastes money on the pitch while accruing debt off it.
Click to expand...

I'm going with this, too. We have wasted a sickening amount of money on players who are well below the standard that we need, and that includes their eye watering wages, too. We've backed ourself into a hole where we have accumulated an expensive in cost, but poor in value squad, many of whom can't do the fundamentals of the game. Strikers who can't or don't score, goalkeepers who can't save, midfielders with poor technical skills and/or appalling stamina and mobility for a Premier League team. And these are just the ones who are playing. Let's not even get into the likes of Mount and that debacle of a signing.

Our senior management have made terrible decision after terrible decision. There's no thought process behind any of this and there's no joined up thinking.

The players need to be offering and doing a lot more, too. Where's their sense of professionalism? Where's the elite mentality? They have to perform much better than they are.
 
The problem is that our manager has a style of play that relies on competent players, and the right players for the role. Our management knew this when bringing him in, but didn't consider the fact that we're completely skint, so this wasn't going to work.

The reason we're in this mess is completely incompetent running of a football club over many years. Getting in the wrong players, and having them choose the players to sign instead of hiring decent recruitment staff.

Now we're in the position where we've brought in rubbish players on extortionate wages, who we can't shift and who can't play the system of the manager we brought in.
 
I tend to swing towards the players as a lot of these players go back to Ole and some even as far back as Jose but it’s clear Fernandes wants to drop deep and dictate then you add that to us playing a back 5 with two defensive minded midfielders we’re left with 1 of the 10’s and the striker up top.

This isn’t an Amorim bashing thread as like I said in the OP he hasn’t brought any players in and is left with a clusterfeck of a squad that ETH, Murtough, Arnold and Woodward threw together but Amorim seems intent on forcing a formation that most of these players won’t be around for going forward and some simply seem to refuse playing it.

At home we should be looking at playing Garnacho and Antony (simply because he’s left footed) as wing backs because their natural instinct is to go forward, Fernandes could have played alongside Ugarte to give creativity in the middle (especially seeing as Fernandes keeps dropping deep anyway) then play Amad and Zirkzee behind Hojlund but instead it was a back 3 with 2 full backs and 2 defensive midfielders and Fernandes dropping deep.

It’s heartbreaking watching the years of mismanagement come back to bite us and play out like it has over the past two years (post League Cup final against Newcastle) but refusing to change things and letting us pick up loss after loss will only make Ineos less likely to back Amorim in the summer, coming in and things looking on paper worse than before wouldn't inspire Ineos into funding a squad overhaul.
 
The main problem is our players and it's compounded by the system and setup because what players we do have aren't good at it.

Our main attacking strength is quick wide players that are quick in the transition. Since we now don't do this we go from an ok counter attacking team who can't defend to a all round crap team that can't score or defend.

Until the players are system changes or given time where SOME may adapt then we will be worse.

Amorim said this and that is what is happening.

He either needs time and players or we need to sack him and never change. If the former there's no point jumping the gun and moaning about it - 2 years on then yes.
 
Both but the players are an obvious issue. With no attacking wingbacks, you have just three attacking players who are realistically likely to score or create, and of course we have two forwards in Hojlund and Zirkzee who aren’t scoring many goals anyway. It’s a recipe for disaster.

If you drop Bruno deeper and bring in someone else for the 10 role it might look a little better but the firepower doesn’t look formidable. It seems like we’ve taken a problem we all anticipated at the start of the season in the lack of goals and made it worse.
 
Freak said:
100% the players. It should be fairly obvious to everyone by now that whichever formation you place these players in they are going to feck up
Click to expand...
Exactly it, these players have failed in countless systems, they’re shit
 
The players mainly. Amorim, however, must have known when he took the job that he wouldn't have the quick, intelligent, technically adroit players he needs to play his preferred system. Nor, in the short term, would there be funds for the wholesale changes necessary and he would be expected to get a tune out the collection of huddies he's been bequeathed.

If the rumours are true, that's probably why Ashworth opposed his appointment and left.

The rest of this season is not likely to be enjoyable. Maybe something can happen in the summer but there's little cause for optimism
 
Performances are on both the players and the coaching staff but overall senior management have to take the blame for allowing the organisation to be run so badly.

These are better players than they have shown and clearly are at an all time low. They should be individually playing better as all are making mistakes regularly. They have also had enough time to understand and practice their new position and know what is expected from them. Their individual mistakes are killing the coaching team.

The coaching staff need to look at themselves also. They have had enough time to inspire and get these players on board and coached to perform to a reasonable standard consistently. We should be able to see patterns of play in the new system and look like a well coached team. Clearly they haven’t been able to do this enough to improve the teams performances or to raise confidence and cut out the constant mistakes.

Overall the senior management have to take most blame for allowing this squad to be put together at the cost it has been, but we also have to bear in mind the injuries, the players who have downed tools and the ones we’ve had to jettison.

Injuries & Attitude
Shaw - constantly injured
Malacia - injured for so long
Mount - constantly injured
Sancho - downed tools
Rashford - downed tools
Greenwood - had to leave

Poor squad management
Lindelof - should have left years ago
Maguire - frozen out, tried to sell him, still not good enough
Antony - worst signing for me ever, truly terrible player
Casemiro - too expensive for his age and a drain on resources
Eriksen - free (iirc) but we should have replaced in the summer
Hojlund - massive cost for a very unproven player (hope he eventually comes good)
Zirkzee - had a couple of half decent cameos but where does fit in, what does he actually do

That covers half a first team squad just of the top of my head.

All in all, it’s the perfect storm that has got us to this point.

1. Poor senior management decisions in squad management
2. Terrible Player attitude both on and off the pitch
3. Continuously Poor Coaching and decisions
4. Pure Bad luck
 
davidmichael said:
Simple question as I can’t work out which seems to be the main problem right now between the players or the system that Amorim is hell bent on implementing in his 5-2-3/3-4-3 ?

The thing I’m most annoyed about is that when Ineos were coming in they said that they’d install a ‘best in class’ ‘footballing structure’ that would identify a style and tactical approach and the head coach would coach the squad in said style.

We’ve gone from 4-2-3-1 under Ole to 4-1-4-1 under ETH to 5-2-3/3-4-3 under Amorim and no set style or tactical approach put in place by our supposed footballing structure, even RVN during his brief run played a different style to ETH and Amorim.

I get Amorim hasn’t spent any money to bring in players he’d like but already he’s showing a serious amount of stubbornness in playing certain players in positions that they can’t play or players in different positions each week and refuses to change the tactics even when like today they weren’t working.

Brighton knew we would play 2 men in midfield so outnumbered us playing 3 men in midfield although Baleba could have played on his own and dominate our midfield, we have zero width as the two behind the striker are both 10’s and the wing backs are full backs so offer nothing offensively.

On the flip side though it’s clear that a lot of the players are simply not good enough and when the ones that are passable are off form the difference in quality is so big that subs hurt us more than helping us a lot of the time.

When you look at the core group that are passable to good enough in Maguire, Yoro, De Ligt, Martinez, Mazraoui, Mainoo, Ugarte, Fernandes and Diallo you see that’s half of a match day squad yet we’ve spent over half a billion in the last few years on recruitment.

Is it the players that are making us look so bad ? Is it the formation that Amorim is hell bent on installing which in his own words he will “play until the very end” ? I know Amorim said it would get worse before it gets better but it seems to be getting worse every game outside of the game raisers like Liverpool, Arsenal or City and if it continues getting worse you wonder if Amorim will even be properly back in the summer.
Click to expand...

Feel like this is a really dumb question considering the same players were playing just as shit under the last manager, who played a different system.

I do think this set of players are more suited to a more typical 433/4231 but they're still shit. Can't wait till loads of them are booted out tbh.
 
The players, with 2 at the back we would get demolished with more goals.

These players are just mentally and technically weak apart from Diallo.
 
Firstly… there is no doubt that the players are lacking in quality, athleticism, tactically flexibility, and effort.

Regardless though, the league position, both now, and the last 18 months under ETH falls mainly on the managers.

Like it or not, the make up of this squad is capable of playing one way.

Deep, compact 4231 out of possession, with attacks focused on quick counters. That is all they can do well.

ETH tried to play them in another system after year 1 which they simply weren’t capable of. He failed spectacularly.

Reuben is now finding out the same.

We are 5, 6, maybe 7 starters away from looking competent in this system, with a squad full of unsuitable players no one wants on long, bumper contracts.

Why not just play to our strengths for the remainder of the season, play some of these unwanted players into some form so someone actually might buy them, and then implement the changes needed for this system from a position of comparative strength in the summer??
 
We haven't had the defenders to play expansively, but we have been able to achieve 3rd and 2nd placed finishes and great cup wins with some of these players, playing compact counter-attacking football.

So while the players aren't world class, they aren't relegation or even mid-table level either.
 
We really need a third central midfielder every game. It is so obvious. Most team do not find it difficult to create chances against us, and they can almost walk trough our midfield with Ugarte and Mainoo. Therefore I think this formation is a big part of our problem under Amorim.

This team should be among the 6 best in the league.
 
It's both, the players are crap but the formation isn't suiting them so it's pretty even in judging the problem.

One thing is for certain though, we can't change the players as quickly as we can change the formation. Make us harder to beat and scrap through the season being scruffy scraping results. That's what Ruud was doing before Amorim arrived.
 
Its the players mostly we have somehow assembled a team which is technically inept and unathletic in equal measure .
 
A bit of both. There's a real lack of quality but we don't have the personnel for the system Amorim wants to play either.

I can forgive us looking a bit impotent in attack because we're extremely light on forwards but we absolutely shouldn't be conceding the number of goals that we do, particularly since there's an extra defender in there.

I'm pretty confident we'd see improvement with new signings, I'm just not 100% convinced it would be significant enough to justify moving to the new system. We've made our bed with that one now so we'll have to lie in it.
 
First and foremost it's the players.

The quality in our squad has regressed so much under ETH it's a joke. He's legitimately done so much damage to our club while spending a ridiculous amount. Not to leave out the likes of Woodward/Murtaugh too.

Martial wouldn't crack top 20 Utd strikers, yet he was comfortably better than Hojlund and Zirkzee. Maybe even combined. Only a few years ago we had Cavani in our squad alongside him. Go a bit further back and we used to have Zlatan, we used to have even Lukaku.

We used to have a midfield that featured Pogba AND Bruno now look at what we have.

This isn't even going back to when we had a front three of Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez.

We've somehow let teams like Newcastle/Villa/Tottenham (when they had Son and Kane) have better strikers/attack than us.

Our club is a joke. We've let standards hit the floor.
 
We are a bunch of overpaid, has beens, teens and midgets getting over runed and bullied week after week.

We have signed zero players fitted for the PL of today. The players we have signed is players not wanted by other clubs. (Guess why).

Even if the lot of them are leaving we still have a billion in debt and a new arena to build. Can’t see much money to invest in coming year.

Better to acknowledge the situation and celebrate the few things worth celebrating and shift to a lower table fan perspective.

Growing up I was always told that it was more fun to root for a lower table team cause the win were more fun then being irritated with a loss.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
80% the players. Amorim will not change his way or tactics. 4231 lowblock would get us more points than whatever it is Amorim is trying.
Click to expand...
Not sure this makes sense. I mean, we could play the 343 as a lowblock as well. There is just nothing indicating that we would fare any better with the other formation. Especially after having seen us struggle with this for a very long time at this point.
Ollie Derbyshire said:
Performances are on both the players and the coaching staff but overall senior management have to take the blame for allowing the organisation to be run so badly.

These are better players than they have shown and clearly are at an all time low. They should be individually playing better as all are making mistakes regularly. They have also had enough time to understand and practice their new position and know what is expected from them. Their individual mistakes are killing the coaching team.

The coaching staff need to look at themselves also. They have had enough time to inspire and get these players on board and coached to perform to a reasonable standard consistently. We should be able to see patterns of play in the new system and look like a well coached team. Clearly they haven’t been able to do this enough to improve the teams performances or to raise confidence and cut out the constant mistakes.

Overall the senior management have to take most blame for allowing this squad to be put together at the cost it has been, but we also have to bear in mind the injuries, the players who have downed tools and the ones we’ve had to jettison.

Injuries & Attitude
Shaw - constantly injured
Malacia - injured for so long
Mount - constantly injured
Sancho - downed tools
Rashford - downed tools
Greenwood - had to leave

Poor squad management
Lindelof - should have left years ago
Maguire - frozen out, tried to sell him, still not good enough
Antony - worst signing for me ever, truly terrible player
Casemiro - too expensive for his age and a drain on resources
Eriksen - free (iirc) but we should have replaced in the summer
Hojlund - massive cost for a very unproven player (hope he eventually comes good)
Zirkzee - had a couple of half decent cameos but where does fit in, what does he actually do

That covers half a first team squad just of the top of my head.

All in all, it’s the perfect storm that has got us to this point.

1. Poor senior management decisions in squad management
2. Terrible Player attitude both on and off the pitch
3. Continuously Poor Coaching and decisions
4. Pure Bad luck
Click to expand...
Thats a pretty good summary
Carl said:
Feel like this is a really dumb question considering the same players were playing just as shit under the last manager, who played a different system.

I do think this set of players are more suited to a more typical 433/4231 but they're still shit. Can't wait till loads of them are booted out tbh.
Click to expand...
I agree. I honestly don't get why anybody would come to the conclusion that the 343 is the culprit here. I mean, if this would be situation where we are at 2001 and we wanted to take away the 442 from SAF, then I'd say ok I get it, very successful formation, don't shred it in the sake of change. But we are struggling since years in all sorts of formations. Most of our players didn't use their chances to show something in other formations as well.

One of the difficult realizations has to be that we didn't change much since oles caretaker phase. Under Mou we were setup rather compact and defensive but Ole increased that and turned us into a counter attacking weapon. To good effect for a while. But until today we haven't really gotten away from that. ETH made the axis Bruno and Rashford his go to goal source, just as it was for Ole. And today we have seen that our players still go back to long balls in behind. The formation isn't the issue here. I would agree stating that the formation doesn't help at this point in time. But the hope is that it will do so the better the players understand it. Watching it against Liverpool was encouraging, so in principle there is something there but we have to be ready to give 100% in every game and not just in the top games. Our players simply aren't good enough to get away with not giving anything.
 
Someone post a line-up in a different formation and explain why it would yield better results.

No matter what I come up with, I always think “Where will the goals come from?” and “That midfield looks easy to play through”.
 
M Bison said:
Combination of both. There’s no way this set of players should be playing like relegation contenders.

Something needs to change, style/formation not sure, but an adjustment is needed.
Click to expand...
100% of the blame is on the manager. He needs to implement a system that gets the best out of the players.

Over time, we can get new players in and play a Amorim’s system.

What transfer targets will come to this disaster of a club?
 
Mike Smalling said:
Someone post a line-up in a different formation and explain why it would yield better results.

No matter what I come up with, I always think “Where will the goals come from?” and “That midfield looks easy to play through”.
Click to expand...
Rooney out of work and so technically a free agent. He couldn't be worse.
 
I think unfortunately our players (discounting the fact they are lazy and apparently stupid) are just not athletic enough for the tactics. Mazraoui for example, is technical enough and intelligent unfortunately he's not really that athletic, especially at wing back.

We also don't have enough movement in the top half. It's a bit of a mess up there. Patterns are not being learned.

But still, there should be enough talent in the squad to get some sort of tune from them. The way it's going there's still at least another six or seven losses coming this season. That said, I would prefer Amorim to maintain his style and not change just to get results. This season is essentially over league wise, we are mid table at best even if we get an upturn in performances. I've seen more in certain areas from Amorim's tactics than I ever saw with ETH. And Amorim hasn't even bought one player yet.
 
Players. We don’t have the runners and pace to be a good counterattacking team so low block won’t work. We don’t have the athleticism for a pressing game so we can’t push our team too far up.

We’re decent technically so can keep possession but we’re not outstanding good enough to deal with a team pressing us properly like Bournemouth or the first 60 or so minutes vs Southampton.

Formation means nothing. We can’t have a coherent tactic when we don’t excel at anything in particular.

Amorim is on the right track of wanting us to keep more possession, press higher, and have the CBs push up. If they don’t, the midfielders will have too much space to cover. It was literally the same problem under ETH and a different formation.

We need better athletes in a lot of positions. Amad, Bruno, and Dalot, everyone’s favourite punching bag, might be literally our only players with enough pace and stamina for a full 90, or two 60 minute games in one week.
 
It's the players. A combination of shite and mercenaries.
It's the same lot that played under ETH in a different system.
 
He's come out and said Amorin he won't change the way he sees the game! Well that means he needs the players to play his way. So far this lot can't do it every game.
 
The system will never work with these players as they are just not good enough.

The problem is it will take so many new players to make this system work and are we going to be able to do this.
 
The squad is a mess. Add to that that most of our best paid players are not contributing (Casemiro, Rashford, Mount, Shaw), which puts a hell of a lot of responsibility on our young players, and they are (understandably) struggling to cope with the pressure.
 
Mike Smalling said:
Someone post a line-up in a different formation and explain why it would yield better results.

No matter what I come up with, I always think “Where will the goals come from?” and “That midfield looks easy to play through”.
Click to expand...


-————onana————
Maz-Deligt-Licha-dalot
——Mainoo-Ugarte——-
—Amad-Bruno-Garna—
————Zirkzee———-

Play deep and compact out of possession to protect the lack of athleticism in central areas (as we did in ETH season 1)

Traditional overlapping FBs… no inverted nonsense, to create 1 on 1 overloads (as we did in ETH season 1)

Play on the break utilising Zirkzee mainly for hold up to play balls back to Bruno so he can release the inside/wide forwards in behind from his free role at 10 (as we did in ETH season 1)…

rashford and Cas probs even better suited than Garna and Mainoo, but either way has square pegs in square holes.

All this rubbish about no way of getting tune out of the squad… it ain’t winning the league, but 3 years ago we played this way and did more than alright. It would be infinitely better than this and what ETH was trying to do for his last year or so.
 
sammyhol said:
-————onana————
Maz-Deligt-Licha-dalot
——Mainoo-Ugarte——-
—Amad-Bruno-Garna—
————Zirkzee———-

Play deep and compact out of possession to protect the lack of athleticism in central areas (as we did in ETH season 1)

Traditional overlapping FBs… no inverted nonsense, to create 1 on 1 overloads (as we did in ETH season 1)

Play on the break utilising Zirkzee mainly for hold up to play balls back to Bruno so he can release the inside/wide forwards in behind from his free role at 10 (as we did in ETH season 1)…

rashford and Cas probs even better suited than Garna and Mainoo, but either way has square pegs in square holes.

All this rubbish about no way of getting tune out of the squad… it ain’t winning the league, but 3 years ago we played this way and did more than alright. It would be infinitely better than this and what ETH was trying to do for his last year or so.
Click to expand...

Or to put in another way….

Exactly like Forest… who are currently in the top 4
 
sammyhol said:
-————onana————
Maz-Deligt-Licha-dalot
——Mainoo-Ugarte——-
—Amad-Bruno-Garna—
————Zirkzee———-

Play deep and compact out of possession to protect the lack of athleticism in central areas (as we did in ETH season 1)

Traditional overlapping FBs… no inverted nonsense, to create 1 on 1 overloads (as we did in ETH season 1)

Play on the break utilising Zirkzee mainly for hold up to play balls back to Bruno so he can release the inside/wide forwards in behind from his free role at 10 (as we did in ETH season 1)…

rashford and Cas probs even better suited than Garna and Mainoo, but either way has square pegs in square holes.

All this rubbish about no way of getting tune out of the squad… it ain’t winning the league, but 3 years ago we played this way and did more than alright. It would be infinitely better than this and what ETH was trying to do for his last year or so.
Click to expand...

I'm not particularly concerned what formation we play but we do need to get some natural width in the team. Inverted wingers like Garnacho or Amad backed up by Dalot inverting and Maz not really getting forward leaves us so easy to defend.

At times we should be switching Amad and Garnacho to their natural sides to stretch play. Garnacho or Amad getting to the byline and squaring the ball on their stong foot is much more effective than constantly cutting inside to a congested area and having a shot blocked. It doesn't have to be all the time but it adds variety to the attack. So many attacks die as the inverted winger runs into traffic.
 
Tyrion said:
For the people blaming the system, I'd ask what system does suit these players?
Click to expand...
Most won’t be able to answer the question because terms like “formation” are invoked with little to no context to back it up, as if formations are static and immutable through the course of a match. I don’t know how someone watches a match like today and thinks seriously that a different formation effects a different result. We were getting bent over in every type of formation going back to Moyes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.