Certainly worth trying. Of course for him to play with pogba and herrera we'd need to drop rooney. That could be the challenging part as nobody at the club seems to want that to happen.
The search for a holding/controlling midfielder
- Thread starter bosnian_red
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Hererra has looked promising on the couple of occasions he's played there.
Might be worth sticking with. Otherwise Blind is the obvious choice.
Might be worth sticking with. Otherwise Blind is the obvious choice.
We should go for Tielemans imo.
He is in the same mould as Xavi/Verratti. Only 19 still, lots of room for improvement, but he can become a fantastic playmaker.
Pogba would have to license to go forward, while Tielemans stay a bit deeper and controls play. Then we need a beast of a DM behind them. I like how Fellaini has played so far, but he will have to show that he can maintain this form.
The fact that we could get him for a fairly decent price is also a plus.
He is in the same mould as Xavi/Verratti. Only 19 still, lots of room for improvement, but he can become a fantastic playmaker.
Pogba would have to license to go forward, while Tielemans stay a bit deeper and controls play. Then we need a beast of a DM behind them. I like how Fellaini has played so far, but he will have to show that he can maintain this form.
The fact that we could get him for a fairly decent price is also a plus.
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We should go for Lassana Diarra imo.
He is in the same mould as Makélélé/Deschamps. Only 31 still, not lots of room for improvement, but he is still a fantastic DM.
Pogba would have to license to go forward, while Lassana Diarra stay a bit deeper and controls play. Then we need a beast of a CM in front of them. I like how Fellaini has played so far, but he will have to show that he can maintain this form.
The fact that we could get him for a fairly decent price is also a plus.
He is in the same mould as Makélélé/Deschamps. Only 31 still, not lots of room for improvement, but he is still a fantastic DM.
Pogba would have to license to go forward, while Lassana Diarra stay a bit deeper and controls play. Then we need a beast of a CM in front of them. I like how Fellaini has played so far, but he will have to show that he can maintain this form.
The fact that we could get him for a fairly decent price is also a plus.
That Rabiot fella looked good vs Arsenal, young too.
I'm not usually one for suggesting a change of position but I think Shaw would make a class DM. It'd take a bit of time for him to get used to it but he's got the tools. Power, pace, defensive awareness, good enough on the ball. He just seems a bit wasted at fullback for me. On top of that he's not great in the final third. I think it would be easier for him to adapt to the DM role than it would be to develop his attacking game as a fullback.
I, too think we should go for Youri Tielemans. If not anything else, he always becomes amazing on my fifa career
Toni Kroos?
The squad policy of United is absolutely amateurish. How can someone spent 200 mio and still have such a squad with holes everywhere? And this was only the last window. Absolut Astonishing.
I think a lack of football knowledge with the people in charge is the reason.
We could really use a DOF, i don't trust managers to sign the right players after Moyes/LvG.
Some consecutive disappointing performances now enable Mourinho to bench Rooney and start building a more balanced team.
We have 4 very capable controlling midfielders but are instead choosing muscle.
The thing with Pogba is I feel he necessitates a DLP, I don't think a pure DM with a #8 playmaker would work as well as he'd still be drawn deeper. To me he needs a DLP that can feed it through the lines to him quickly and consistently, while the other #8 needs to put the hard yards in so he doesn't have to concern himself too much with dropping in defensively.
the press has suddenly decided we want Drinkwater back....
Im not sure why that myth persists. In his last season at Juve he didn't have a DLP behind him. He instead had give and go men like Khedira and Marchisio. Occasionally Hernanes
For £30m after giving him away for nothing? no thank you. He was apparently our 3rd choice behind Pogba and Matuidi though so could be something in it.
He only signed a new contract in the Summer worth £90,000 a week so we'd have to pay him huge wages too. Depending if Leicester are still in the Champions League he may not want to drop down to the Europa with us.
I didn't follow Juve much last season, but the few times I watched them, I felt that Marchisio had indeed played the role of the central build up player in front of the defence. He's no Pirlo, but he has a good build up play and can fulfill this role.
I also think there is a slight misconception about DLPs floating around in this thread. The job description is not 'genius making highlight passes and playing everyone through all the time'. It's more about the ability to provide consistent, clean, intelligent passing from the back. Even when done well, it often looks quite unspectacular (but is far from easy).
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Was just about to say it. He also gave Carrick another year so why not play him already?
Pjanic would have been quite good.
We don't need more players, we need a system in which our current players can thrive.
It's not just the passing ability that we are missing. It's also the movement and positioning.
What becomes incredibly obvious when watching us is that when we have the ball, nobody is moving into positions to receive it. It was even worse than normal in our last match, but it's been happening all season, and to a large extent the last couple of seasons whenever Carrick isn't playing. At least he is normally getting himself into positions to receive the ball, so people can give it to him and he's then got the time and the ability to continue moving the ball to where it should be.
I can't remember if it was Pogba or Fellaini who had the ball over on the right hand side of the field last match, but he was holding the ball against two players for a good 5 or so seconds. He was looking around, trying to find someone to give it to who was in space, and not one single person was offering themselves as an option. Eventually he lost it, but I had no blame on him for doing it. There was a giant hole in the middle of the park which was the obvious position to pass it into, but none of our players were even close to it. Basically the exact position where you'd be guaranteed Carrick would be sitting in if he were playing.
We need to start playing Carrick again, and hope that he's still got enough in the tank to get us through one last season as a regular. It's incredibly sad that we're still so reliant on him after all these years. And if he doesn't have the ability to play at the level required anymore (and last season wasn't a great indication that he would be), it's a real problem for this season.
What becomes incredibly obvious when watching us is that when we have the ball, nobody is moving into positions to receive it. It was even worse than normal in our last match, but it's been happening all season, and to a large extent the last couple of seasons whenever Carrick isn't playing. At least he is normally getting himself into positions to receive the ball, so people can give it to him and he's then got the time and the ability to continue moving the ball to where it should be.
I can't remember if it was Pogba or Fellaini who had the ball over on the right hand side of the field last match, but he was holding the ball against two players for a good 5 or so seconds. He was looking around, trying to find someone to give it to who was in space, and not one single person was offering themselves as an option. Eventually he lost it, but I had no blame on him for doing it. There was a giant hole in the middle of the park which was the obvious position to pass it into, but none of our players were even close to it. Basically the exact position where you'd be guaranteed Carrick would be sitting in if he were playing.
We need to start playing Carrick again, and hope that he's still got enough in the tank to get us through one last season as a regular. It's incredibly sad that we're still so reliant on him after all these years. And if he doesn't have the ability to play at the level required anymore (and last season wasn't a great indication that he would be), it's a real problem for this season.
Blind should play in that role for us. If he can manage as a CB, he can definitely do it as a DM. Carrick was never mobile but his excellent positioning made up for it. Blind can perform a similar job for us.
I think United simply needs several players of that mould. Blind seems to be the best option for a ball playing centre back, the defensive midfielder spot and back up for left back. He's basically needed everywhere, so when he plays a certain position he's missing elsewhere. Perhaps two more intelligent defensive players who are comfortable on the ball would do the squad good.
As of now, we need Blind to only play 1 position and let the team grow from there for a few games. I really think Jose should try a team with Bailly, Smalling as CBs and Blind at CDM. Pogba and Herrera/ Mata/ Mhikitariayn as the two on both sides of the inverted triangle.
Pogba is a man who thrives on one twos. That is why Rooney's penchant for giving the ball away plus plain supplying bad passes hurt Pogba's play. For me Herrera should be given the pivot role. He thrives on give and go football but unlike Carrick he is mobile. Fellaini too suits it in attacking areas. Which should get the best out of Pogba
Well, the squad for this season is finalized in any case, so of course the task is to shape the best team possible out of the current set of players. My comment was about how the squad could be modified long term.
A CM of Schneiderlin holding, Herrera Box to box and Pogba Advanced playmaker/AM with Pogba and Herrera Alternating positions would work just fine as a high closing down CM 3 in a 4-3-3.
Is the squad really that bad?
We have Blind, Carrick and even TFM that can do a job at DM, however we are choosing Fellaini and Pogba as the 2 CM's.
This obviously isnt working and its up to Jose to sort it out. We have the players but are choosing to place them in positions that are not to their strengths.
A midfield of Blind, Herrera and Pogba should be solid enough.
@Synco pretty much said what I was going to, Marchisio from deep was excellent at orchestrating, which isn't about killer Hollywood balls, just accurate metronome play that keeps the side moving forward, none of our CM's bar Carrick are suited to this role.
I wanted us to get Diarra (especially if he was available on a free transfer) in the summer. He's defensively solid, strong on the ball, decent passer and can dribble through midfield.
In terms of what we currently have, I feel like we need a passer in midfield, as currently all of our creativity from deep is expected from Pogba. This problem is accentuated when we play with Fellaini, Smalling and Bailly, where none of them are particularly good passers. I've personally wanted us to play a 3 man midfield for over a year now, as I don't feel like we have the balance from the midfielders in our current squad for a 2 man midfield. Imo, Carrick should play CDM alongside Schneiderlin and Pogba. With Carrick in the team, we'd have more passers in midfield and fans wouldn't expect Pogba to control the midfield like Scholesy, Schneiderlin would play a more defensive sided box to box, giving Pogba more freedom to roam about in the other box to box role. Schneiderlin could well be switched with Herrera or even Fosu Mensah (who I think should really be given more first team football) but the problem would be the CDM position as effectively, for the passing quality required, only really Schweinsteiger could replace Carrick and we all know that Bastian's not going to get a chance.
For the future, I would like us to get some technically sound midfielders who can control the game. Gundogan was the perfect Carrick replacement imo, but we didn't take the risk with him and he's at City.
In terms of what we currently have, I feel like we need a passer in midfield, as currently all of our creativity from deep is expected from Pogba. This problem is accentuated when we play with Fellaini, Smalling and Bailly, where none of them are particularly good passers. I've personally wanted us to play a 3 man midfield for over a year now, as I don't feel like we have the balance from the midfielders in our current squad for a 2 man midfield. Imo, Carrick should play CDM alongside Schneiderlin and Pogba. With Carrick in the team, we'd have more passers in midfield and fans wouldn't expect Pogba to control the midfield like Scholesy, Schneiderlin would play a more defensive sided box to box, giving Pogba more freedom to roam about in the other box to box role. Schneiderlin could well be switched with Herrera or even Fosu Mensah (who I think should really be given more first team football) but the problem would be the CDM position as effectively, for the passing quality required, only really Schweinsteiger could replace Carrick and we all know that Bastian's not going to get a chance.
For the future, I would like us to get some technically sound midfielders who can control the game. Gundogan was the perfect Carrick replacement imo, but we didn't take the risk with him and he's at City.
Amen, we can keep buying players...but the same thing I said about LVG applies to Mourinho. He needs to work on our current team to improve it and get them to play better before buying more players.
We actually have some young talent who can do the job well, but are probably not quite ready yet. Andreas Pereira has qualities we could use, and Angel Gomes has Iniesta like qualities I think.
Verratti if we're being really ambitious (which by all accounts Woodward is). But Jorginho at Napoli is a good shout, mobile, good passer, and excellent positioning. Until we can get someone in, I would play Blind there, with Pogba and Herrera around him to make up for his lack of mobility.
Was just thinking this during the match seeing how much better we play with a DM that can pass the ball.
What about William Carvalho? I only really got to see him in the Euros and thought he was pretty good.
Some other poster mentioned a guy from Dortmund, who was supposed to be good.
But even tonight and I understand it was Northampton, but you could see the difference Carrick made, as a pose to Fellaini. Fellaini just passes to the closest man to him (statistically). With Carrick, he tries to pick out more creative passes.
Some other poster mentioned a guy from Dortmund, who was supposed to be good.
But even tonight and I understand it was Northampton, but you could see the difference Carrick made, as a pose to Fellaini. Fellaini just passes to the closest man to him (statistically). With Carrick, he tries to pick out more creative passes.
Pereiras on loan and gomes is 16 and isnt really suitable for holding. Herrera would be my choice.
Carrick and Fellaini haven't reality played the same position this season.
Fellaini played the most defensive mid of a midfield two while Carrick is the pivot of a midfield 3.Carrick would struggle if he played in such a midfield 2.
We can play both instead.Carrick as the dictator and Fellaini as the ball winner just upfront.Schneiderlin seems to be cover for Fellaini with Herrera competing with Pogba for the third spot.
He's a huge United fan so I'd expect him to jump at the chance of an Old Trafford return, he also seems to have improved hugely over the last twelve months.
His range of passing and workrate, would be brilliant for us.