The Quality of Manchester United's Squad

I was having the same discussion with my brother (unfortunately doesn't support united) last night. He believed our squad was very poor, mid-table in his opinion.

I disagreed. I believe a manager is supposed to get the best out of the players capabilities. While we are still some way off the big guns, City, Pool, Arsenal etc. I think we have more than enough talent to match anyone else. There's no way you can say Palace or Twente are a more talented squad that ours and to some extent even Spurs.

Feel like our manager is making things way too complicated instead of getting the basics right. Doing nothing to amplify the talent within the squad.
 
Rossa said:
There are countless discussions on ETH and his tactics, but I also think a proper discussion on the squad as a whole, down to their individual qualities is equally important. So even if we change manager, is our squad good enough?

How good is our squad, individually? I couldn't help thinking that if we had a couple of world class players on both ends, we might have won a few more than we have. Let's take the Liverpool game as an example. If we had one of the world's best strikers instead of Zirkzee, it's not inconceivable that we would have netted two. If it wasn't for Allisson, we also might have netted two, and that asks the question, if we had Allisson, would we have conceded two less?

Most top teams with some few exceptions have world class goal scorers either as strikers or wide forwards. We have Rashford, Højlund/Zirkzee and Garnacho/Amad. How would you rate each? If you go with FC25, which isn't a great metric, but still, it's not really great, is it?

Our midfield suffers from some of the same - Bruno can be world class, but his form lately is worrying. Mainoo is a top prospect, but he's not in the top bracket yet. Ugarte needs to prove himself. Casemiro looks done, sadly, and Mount hasn't been above average for us, at best.

Our defense looks fairly decent, but there are too many mistakes yet. We also lack athleticism at the back, which may be a little worrying. I find it strange that ETH didn't go with a very fast and physical defender next to Martinez. De Ligt looks good, Martinez can be class but has struggled a little. Shaw is too injury prone. Dalot has too many maybes to his name. Mazraoui looks quite good if not elite.

Onana at the back also has so many question marks on him - although I will say he was very good last match and has been decent enough, but is he more than an average goalie? I have my concerns. Just for fun, these are the FC25 ratings this season:

  • Bruno Fernandes – 87 (-1)
  • Matthijs de Ligt – 84 (-2)
  • Lisandro Martinez – 84 (+/- 0)
  • Casemiro – 84 (-5)
  • Andre Onana – 83 (-2)
  • Diogo Dalot – 82 (+2)
  • Luke Shaw – 82 (-1)
  • Noussair Mazraoui – 81 (-1)
  • Marcus Rashford – 81 (-4)
  • Manuel Ugarte – 81 (+/- 0)
  • Harry Maguire – 80 (+1)
  • Alejandro Garnacho – 79 (+4)
  • Joshua Zirkzee – 79 (+6)
  • Christian Eriksen – 78 (-5)
  • Rasmus Hojund – 78 (+2)
  • Victor Lindelof – 78 (-2)
  • Mason Mount – 78 (-3)
  • Leny Yoro – 78 (+7)
  • Kobbie Mainoo – 77 (+15)
  • Antony – 77 (-4)
  • Altay Bayindir – 76 (+/- 0)
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To be clear, I obviously can't be arsed doing this myself, but has anyone ever totted up the FC25 ratings for all of the PL teams?

You could have a "best XI" table and a "squad" table. Be interesting to see how they tot up. If we uncover any team punching a long way above its weight, in terms of player ratings, then we know their manager is doing a great job. With crap managers identified by the opposite trend.

Just throwing this out there...
 
Fallon d'Floor said:
I don't rate most of the signings made. Lisandro is one of the most overrated players in the league, for example.

And he has clearly still had a say in this summer's window. The Atheltic (Mitten and Laurie) have even said as much.

I'd classify Yoro as a club signing. de Ligt, Mazraoui and Zirkzee clearly have some sort of ten Hag influence.
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How would they know? That sounds a bit like nonsense.
 
El Zoido said:
It’s incredibly hard to judge the individual merits of players when the system is such a mess. We don’t set up to get the best out of anyone. Cole Palmer would struggle in this ETH team.
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Agreed. There's much poorer squads in the league who play nice football because they have a manager capable of doing so. Its not a title winning squad, but I think a better manager could have this group playing good football.
 
The squad is good. Able to get to ~75-80 pts with an optimal tactical approach. Probably only needs 3-5 quality additions in order to challenge for the league.

We heavily underperformed both in the 2021/22 and 2023/24 seasons, and this season so far as well.
 
Probably 5th best in the league on paper. City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea all have better squads on paper, but i think we are right behind them. I don’t think Spurs, Villa and Newcastle have better players than us. They have better managers, better setup and not dragged down by 10 years of bad decisions.
 
Fallon d'Floor said:
I don't rate most of the signings made. Lisandro is one of the most overrated players in the league, for example.

And he has clearly still had a say in this summer's window. The Atheltic (Mitten and Laurie) have even said as much.

I'd classify Yoro as a club signing. de Ligt, Mazraoui and Zirkzee clearly have some sort of ten Hag influence.
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Zirkzee clearly doesn't. Only 2 out of our 5 signings do, and they're two quality defenders.
 
Rojofiam said:
Zirkzee clearly doesn't. Only 2 out of our 5 signings do, and they're two quality defenders.
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In your opinion.

Zirkzee is a player ten Hag has admired for a while. INEOS might have given him the green light, but he was clearly involved.
 
Fallon d'Floor said:
In your opinion.

Zirkzee is a player ten Hag has admired for a while. INEOS might have given him the green light, but he was clearly involved.
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Can you provide a reliable source that backs this claim up? Unless Zirkzee being Dutch is the only thing that makes you think this.
 
Rojofiam said:
Can you provide a reliable source that backs this claim up? Unless Zirkzee being Dutch is the only thing that makes you think this.
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I might have, but seen as you were made a little dig with your last sentence, I think I'll go back to not posting. I forgot how insufferable some of you are.
 
Craig Ward said:
Talent wise i think we are fine.

We just lack that fighting spirit, the togetherness. We dont work together as a team. Individuals dont make teams - it cannot work. Even Messi, for all his brilliance individually, was part of a Barcelona team which worked together - they had a brilliant team alongside the immense talent.

Talent and ability without the right mentality is worthless.

Teams with a lot less individual talent than us have outplayed us on the pitch as a team, both home and away. That's damning

We dont have a team identity and spirit. We do not do the basics well enough for our individual talents to produce any form of consistency.

Yes, we have a young pool of talent. But would we do any better with other players into replace ours? I doubt it. Until we have a style of play, and every member of the squad starts to work harder, make better decisions and play for the team we will be in the same boat as we are now.

Rashford can either give you 20+ goals a season or 2. His talent is there. His application to making the most of his talent is woeful. Its worse than that, its We are so lacking in identity talent doesn't even matter for our team.
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This is 100% bang on the money. It's like tying yourself up in knots talking about a 20 billion pound black hole in the economy but failing to address the elephant in the room which is the 400 billlion and counting shaped hole caused by Brexit. if you don't address the real problem, the other stuff is just incidental / a rounding error. Someone needs to come in and be absolutely ruthless with these guys. But such big personalities are in short supply and are all managing top teams already. Would be interesting to see if Pep could get more out of the squad than Ten Hag. Probably, but could he completely transform the culture? Who can do that / who is charged with that? The manager? Coaches? Who else?
 
redshaw said:
It's potential and mediocrity.

We haven't got a good cycle of ages or profile of players to rely on, so much money spent as always and nothing much to show for it. In a few years we might have some of these produce.

We need to be rotating in and out established scorers, potential and experience much better. We're kind of fecked if Marcus purple patch is not scoring and Bruno resembling a flogged horse with nothing left but insists on carrying on. Casemiro was a 4-6 month respite, expensive and risky transfer, brilliant for a short time.

A change of tactics can help though, ETH resists a compact midfield. We go into games with one or no midfielders, two are pushing too high trying to force transitions and turnovers that statistically for most teams don't even produce goals. A new manager can create a compact disciplined 3 man midfield that can control and create better. Mainoo and Bruno performed brilliantly in the FA Cup final by being close to each other and controlling the space to limit the other team and launch attacks. ETH wants to play like there's 5 mins left most games. To make it work we'd need too many top players in their prime and it would still be an exhausting way to go about it.
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Yep, it says it all that in a game he genuinely wanted to win, ETH completely changed his tactics, and the players put in a great performance. He goes into every other match with a devil may care attitude, where everything's made up and the points don't matter. He is lackadaisical in his role of managing a team so that they collect points from football matches.
 
Fallon d'Floor said:
I might have, but seen as you were made a little dig with your last sentence, I think I'll go back to not posting. I forgot how insufferable some of you are.
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Not sure how you interpreted that as a "dig". I've not seen anyone provide any real proof that ETH ever brought up Zirkzee's name or that he identified him as a target for United. The first time we were reliably linked with him was in June, way after Ineos took control of the club.
 
Onana, De Ligt and Martinez are fine but our full backs are far worse than Arsenal, Spurs, City, and Liverpool full backs especially if we take into account Shaw being an injury prone.

In midfield we seem to lack balance. We don’t have proven defensive midfielder who is on the same level as Rice and Rodri because Casemiro is on declined while Ugarte is unproven. Mount doesn’t seem to be fit to our team because we already have Bruno. Eriksen is decent for squad player. Mainoo and Bruno are the only ones good enough for at least in top 5 PL teams

Our attackers consist of young, raw, and inexperienced players.

Overall, our full backs aren’t top 5 level, our midfield still lacks of balance, while we don’t have proven goal scorers in attack especially with Rashford being poor for long time.
 
JE-365 said:
Onana, De Ligt and Martinez are fine but our full backs are far worse than Arsenal, Spurs, City, and Liverpool full backs especially if we take into account Shaw being an injury prone.

In midfield we seem to lack balance. We don’t have proven defensive midfielder who is on the same level as Rice and Rodri because Casemiro is on declined while Ugarte is unproven. Mount doesn’t seem to be fit to our team because we already have Bruno. Eriksen is decent for squad player. Mainoo and Bruno are the only ones good enough for at least in top 5 PL teams

Our attackers consist of young, raw, and inexperienced players.

Overall, our full backs aren’t top 5 level, our midfield still lacks of balance, while we don’t have proven goal scorers in attack especially with Rashford being poor for long time.
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Mazraoui is definitely one of the best in the league
 
Team has all the correct attributes and characters as seen by the FA cup final win, one of the best performances of the season. They are capable, I think it’s the tactics that are lacking. Being asked to high press and low block is midfield suicide. Ugarte looked like he was swimming in the ocean he had that much ground to cover.
 
Its not only ability its their skillset to fit into a system. De Light and Martinez will look great in a low block team but can they play a high line? Mazroui looks good from a technical point but would he be any good for a team that wants its RB to overlap? Bruno will always work given a free reign in a counter attacking team. Rashford suits a counter attacking team where the opposition plays a high line. You can go on and on about all our players. They don't seem to fit any top teams system. If we got Pep how many players will fit that system? If we got Klopp how many players will fit that system. Even Tottenham's system. Anyone's system. Thats why Bayern got rid off De light. He didn't fit the system. We just buy players because they are good but never consider if they can actually do the job we want them to do.
 
We’re at the point where people rate the players because they play for a big club, when in fact that big club is doing terribly because they have those players. It’s 90s- early 00s Liverpool.
 
Redderp said:
Probably 5th best in the league on paper. City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea all have better squads on paper, but i think we are right behind them. I don’t think Spurs, Villa and Newcastle have better players than us. They have better managers, better setup and not dragged down by 10 years of bad decisions.
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That's fair. I would say we are quite close to Chelsea, we just need a better manager.
 
Yes, our squad definitely has room for improvement. Some quick technical feet in the middle of the park would be nice. A new first choice LB would help us a bit as well. But all in all there is of course no reason at all to get rinsed by Spurs and to look so toothless against teams like Palace and Twente.
 
We have 3 genuine quality players: Bruno, Martinez (arguable) and Shaw. The first two have started the season poorly. The latter lives in the infirmary and should be sold asap, so he should not count.

Then we have those who are "just fine", which means that they can be a part of a United starting XI as long as they aren't too numerous: Dalot, Onana and Mazraoui. The latter is supposed to be our backup RB.

Then we have those with potential: De Ligt, Yoro, Mainoo, Ugarte, Amad, Garnacho, Højlund and Zirkzee. Now this is a pretty healthy number! But potential doesn't help us right now.
 
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I actually think we have a very good squad but we are still lacking a proper left wingback and a proper striker, if we can get those along with decent replacements for Casemiro and Eriksen we'll be in a good position to at least challenge for the title.
 
I think you have a squad full of good players but what has been a huge issue for you over the years is having a balanced squad that functions well together. In some areas I think you have the same type of player rather than needing something a little different etc.
 
The squad is lacking in many ways but one of the most obvious for me is pace and strength.

We're almost constantly outpaced by other teams, and the odd player we have with a modicum of pace is easily muscled off the ball. And this is against even low to mid ranked PL teams, let alone the big boys.

We've signed Ugarte and he looks like he running in treacle already. Plus already in midfield we've got Bruno, Cas, Eriksen and Kobbie, none of whom can run either. So we've somehow assembled a midfield selection of 5 players who can't run! Madness.

Edit: I forgot to mention Mount who looks like he can run a bit but is always injured and will never get in the team ahead of Bruno anyway, so it's practically a moot point!
 
The problem with our club is that its consistently a bad place for people to thrive. That makes it hard to judge how good players are. You could take any one of our players and put them into a settled environment, with a clear game plan and reliable teammates around them, and they'd perform much better.

Our ambition shouldn't be to try and get players who can come in and perform in the midst of chaos, but create that settled environment. That way we're judging people having got the most out of them, rather than sabotaging them with bad decisions and then blaming them for it.
 
I personally think we have regressed since 2021. We had a decent squad back then and always felt with 3 quality additions we could of potentially been where are arsenal are now. Oles last window was a disaster and we have been playing catch up since. Ten Hag has blown £600 million on fairly average players . Martinez, Antony, Malacia, Mount , Hojlund are never going to anything more than squad players for a top 6 side. Bruno and Rashford have regressed which hasn’t helped us because looking back both guys purple patch papered over the cracks during ETH first season. With the FFP laws and PSR we have to pray Ashworth and co can find us some players on the cheap which turn into world beaters. Things can change in football but right now we look miles away from City and Arsenal. I would say Spurs and Newcastle probably have a better starting XI than us now.
 
This is a waste of time because it's just going to quickly descend into people squabbling and arguing over essentially nothing when the basic fact that must be acknowledged is that far, far weaker squads than ours manage to look like competent football teams week-in, week-out.

Ipswich have only lost two games this season. What's the value in going through their squad man for man and comparing with ours? Forest won away at Anfield and have 9pts...again, are we going to go back and forth on whether De Ligt, Martinez, Ugarte, Bruno, Garnacho etc...would get into their XI?

In fact, it's not even worth talking about results and who has picked up points and who has not. When a team like Brentford faces Spurs, they don't get cut to ribbons and concede an XG of almost 5. When a team like Bournemouth play Spurs, a relatively solid but unspectacular player like Dejan Kuleveski isn't creating 9 chances in a single game.

Point being, all this discussion is entirely and utterly pointless because there is obviously something so terribly wrong with the foundations that it makes judging the individual components completely redundant.
 
JeffFromHK said:
Antony is very slow as a ball carrier as well.
Rashford's burst of pace is losing.
Amad got a nice small burst of pace but he is not very quick at winger's standard.
Garnacho is our only pacy player.
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You’re both forgetting Yoro. He’s not slow
 
Which one of our players would start for Arsenal, man city, or Liverpool current team?
 
We have very good squad. It is all about having top class coach.
If you judge players by teams performances than Brighton, Leverkusen, Atalanta, Lazio and many, many other teams have better squad than us. Which obviously is not true.


Manager is 50% of success.
 
Our squad is a paradox. It has both a high ceiling and a low baseline. Any attempt to
play pro-active modern football with this lot (and the previous squads) has failed so far.

That baseline level has to
be raised one way or another.
 
First 11 is fine, if it was a one off game, and not getting shagged playing every game.

The squad isn't deep enough to rest the first 11, leaving the first 11 looking poor.

We thinned the squad out alot over the summer and we're now paying for that. It was a calculated risk but if we were thinning the squad we needed to speed up the recruitment of a left back and a second CM.

Only in January/Summer can we now address having those players in that we need to keep the starting 11 rotating enough to be performing.

Good LB to replace Shaw/Malacia
Good CM to replace Eriksen
Good winger to replace Rashford, Sancho and Greenwood finally.

Those additions will make a difference irrespective of who the manager is. LCB cover, CDM replacement of Casemiro in the squad, Bruno being replaced by Musiala.....

They are all also desirable moves in the market to improve the squad.

Lots to do, to get to two good players in each position.
 
The-Mezzala said:
I personally think we have regressed since 2021. We had a decent squad back then and always felt with 3 quality additions we could of potentially been where are arsenal are now. Oles last window was a disaster and we have been playing catch up since. Ten Hag has blown £600 million on fairly average players . Martinez, Antony, Malacia, Mount , Hojlund are never going to anything more than squad players for a top 6 side. Bruno and Rashford have regressed which hasn’t helped us because looking back both guys purple patch papered over the cracks during ETH first season. With the FFP laws and PSR we have to pray Ashworth and co can find us some players on the cheap which turn into world beaters. Things can change in football but right now we look miles away from City and Arsenal. I would say Spurs and Newcastle probably have a better starting XI than us now.
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Not even close to the truth IMO.

We have a much better squad now, and Ole was overperforming with our 20/21 team. Pogba, Martial, Greenwood and Cavani would improve our current side (their 2021 versions), but other than them, every important player from back then that should be an important player today is still here. Fred and McTominay rightly lost their first XI status so I don't think their departures can possibly mean we regressed.

Maguire, Bruno, and Rashford are still the same players, but they play in a much worse tactical setup than in 2021.

Martínez, Eriksen, Malacia, Hojlund, Mount, Onana, Yoro, Ugarte, de Ligt, Mazraoui, and Zirkzee would all either walk into the XI or be important players in that team.

And then you need to consider that we didn't have Garnacho and Mainoo back then. Amad and Dalot were nowhere near the players they are today, either.

And Newcastle? Their first XI or squad are nowhere near ours mate.
 
As previously mentioned, we have a reasonable starting 11, but cover is vital for the following. An additional GK would be preferable too.

LB - replacing Shaw and Malacia
CM- to replace Erickson
DM-Replaces Casemiro
LW- Alternative to Rashford
 
RopersReturn said:
As previously mentioned, we have a reasonable starting 11, but cover is vital for the following. An additional GK would be preferable too.

LB - replacing Shaw and Malacia
CM- to replace Erickson
DM-Replaces Casemiro
LW- Alternative to Rashford
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Our goalkeeper situation is fine with Onana and Bayindir as first 2 and Radek Vitek good enough to replace Heaton as 3rd keeper once he returns from loan.
 
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