Weghorst or Ronaldo?

Ronaldo could not and would not have done the job the team needed done after Eriksen's injury. The tactics of using Weghorst's pressing from the front were to counteract the issue of Bruno's weaker possession ability combined with McFred's weaker general abilities in general. Ronaldo in that same situation would have given us more individual goal threat but reduced the overall balance and threat of the overall team.

It was a good on-the-fly solution ETH and team devised to get us through a long tough stretch, while also winning a trophy, but it ran its course. Fortunately now the team is getting healthy and we hopefully won't need to rely on him in any meaningful moments rest of the season
 
Djemba-Djemba said:
City at home.

Weghorst isn't close to being good enough but he's at least been a professional off the pitch this season unlike Ronaldo.
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Yeah you're right, City at home. But as I said in another post, we have a 65% win rate in the league in games without weghorst, and only 33% in games he started. Whatever you think of him compared to Ronaldo, he does not make us a better team, in any sense
 
This season Weghorst, obviously. Ronaldo's form this season wasn't much better, his inability to press was a problem even when he was in better form and on top of that he behaved like a massive pillock.
 
You know, when we got rid of Ronaldo, I felt really relieved. 'At last we'll stop talking about him and move on', I thought.

Ah, the naivete.
 
jm99 said:
Yeah you're right, City at home. But as I said in another post, we have a 65% win rate in the league in games without weghorst, and only 33% in games he started. Whatever you think of him compared to Ronaldo, he does not make us a better team, in any sense
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I think we can all see we're a much better side when Martial plays, even with his flaws and issues, than when we played with Ronaldo or Weghorst. I would say most Utd fans can see current Ronaldo and Weghorst are nowhere near good enough.

So it's not a surprise our best run of form in the league came when Martial somehow managed to stay fit for about a month.
 
Djemba-Djemba said:
I think we can all see we're a much better side when Martial plays, even with his flaws and issues, than when we played with Ronaldo or Weghorst. I would say most Utd fans can see current Ronaldo and Weghorst are nowhere near good enough.

So it's not a surprise our best run of form in the league came when Martial somehow managed to stay fit for about a month.
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Well yeah, neither are good enough this year, but look how many people in this thread are saying weghorst improves the team when the evidence seems to indicate otherwise
 
Weghorst for sure.
Weghorst comes with no dressing room drama, no sudden relevations in the press. He contributes to the togetherness of the team and never complains if subbed or doesn't play. Even with his limitations he is a net positive in the squad or at worst, of no use, while Ronaldo and his schenanigans is definitely a net negative.
 
jm99 said:
Yeah you're right, City at home. But as I said in another post, we have a 65% win rate in the league in games without weghorst, and only 33% in games he started. Whatever you think of him compared to Ronaldo, he does not make us a better team, in any sense
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We won 0 trophies with Ronaldo in the team this year and 1 with Weghorst #facts

In 4 matches with Ronaldo starting we picked up 4pts, or 1 per match. In 9 matches with Wout starting we got 12 or 1.33 per match. That includes away matches to Arsenal, Liverpool, and Newcastle + big pieces missing from the the midfield. Not sure Ronaldo would have helped improve those performances much.
 
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shabadu84 said:
We won 0 trophies with Ronaldo in the team this year and 1 with Weghorst #facts

In 4 matches with Ronaldo starting we picked up 4pts, or 1 per match. In 9 matches with Wout starting we got 12 or 1.33 per match. That includes away matches to Arsenal, Liverpool, and Newcastle + big pieces missing from the the midfield. Not sure Ronaldo would have helped improve those performances much.
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And I haven’t said he would, I said we were right to get rid of him this year, he was decent enough last year, but obviously wasn't up to it this year.

How does that mean weghorst improves the team, when our results are much better without him in it? We seem to play best with neither of them starting
 
Neither. Getting rid of Ronaldo was 100% the right decision. He was a negative both on and off the pitch.

Unfortunately, bringing in Weghorst was not the solution.
 
It does seem there are still a lot of United fans deluded about Ronaldo's current level and that's without taking in question all the package he brings with him.
 
jm99 said:
And I haven’t said he would, I said we were right to get rid of him this year, he was decent enough last year, but obviously wasn't up to it this year.

How does that mean weghorst improves the team, when our results are much better without him in it? We seem to play best with neither of them starting
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You're assigning all the blame from the bad results to Weghorst but not giving him any credit for the good ones, nor any of the cup results where we've progressed across the board. We didn't have the same other players available in all these matches, not least of which would be Eriksen and Casemiro It's all make believe anyway but nobody is saying we should make Weghorst our #9 forever. He was brought in to do a job and he has, to the team's benefit. Ronaldo could have had that opportunity had he not decided to feck off the team and manager midway through the season. The whole argument is silly.
 
shabadu84 said:
You're assigning all the blame from the bad results to Weghorst but not giving him any credit for the good ones, nor any of the cup results where we've progressed across the board. We didn't have the same other players available in all these matches, not least of which would be Eriksen and Casemiro It's all make believe anyway but nobody is saying we should make Weghorst our #9 forever. He was brought in to do a job and he has, to the team's benefit. Ronaldo could have had that opportunity had he not decided to feck off the team and manager midway through the season. The whole argument is silly.
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He hasn't though. We won 5 in a row before he started, 2 in a row after dropping, but only 3 in 9 during the period where he was starting.

I'm sure you don't give Ronaldo the benefit of the doubt that the games he was involved in at the start of the season were ten hag still trying to implement his style, or that casemiro wasn't signed, or that the other new signings were taking time to get settled, but for weghorst you'll give every benefit of the doubt. We're worse when he plays, we took him off twice when we were losing and scored 2 goals both times, playing with a striker who can't score a goal is an enormous hindrance, there's quite a few people, who out of dislike for Ronaldo, convicted themselves that pressing is the single most valuable attribute a striker can have, but if they can't score a goal it's useless. Our results are worse in the league with Weghorst on the pitch, we were losing against Barcelona until we took him off, our results have improved again once he's been dropped
 
jm99 said:
He hasn't though. We won 5 in a row before he started, 2 in a row after dropping, but only 3 in 9 during the period where he was starting.

I'm sure you don't give Ronaldo the benefit of the doubt that the games he was involved in at the start of the season were ten hag still trying to implement his style, or that casemiro wasn't signed, or that the other new signings were taking time to get settled, but for weghorst you'll give every benefit of the doubt. We're worse when he plays, we took him off twice when we were losing and scored 2 goals both times, playing with a striker who can't score a goal is an enormous hindrance, there's quite a few people, who out of dislike for Ronaldo, convicted themselves that pressing is the single most valuable attribute a striker can have, but if they can't score a goal it's useless. Our results are worse in the league with Weghorst on the pitch, we were losing against Barcelona until we took him off, our results have improved again once he's been dropped
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This is partly true, but weren’t our results typically worse this season with Ronaldo rather than without too? I could be misremembering but we seemed to kick on results wise when he got dropped.
 
Dec9003 said:
This is partly true, but weren’t our results typically worse this season with Ronaldo rather than without too? I could be misremembering but we seemed to kick on results wise when he got dropped.
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Yes they were, though he only started 4 games and came on after 30 minutes for a fifth against Everton where he scored the winner. So it's a smaller sample size, but yes, I have said that he clearly wasn't up to being first choice striker for a club of our standard this season.

The difference is people seem to be pretending that weghorst makes us a better team when we're much worse off when he starts. Most people have acknowledged that Ronaldo wasn't contributing much, but a lot seem determined to argue that weghorst does improve us, even if he can't score and our results are noticeably worse when he starts. We've actually been best when neither player was starting, and it's quite a large sample size to go off, Ronaldo started 4 games, weghorst 9, and then thats 16 where neither started where we've had a much higher win rate
 
Not really getting the point of comparing both. Ronaldo was meant to be a central attacking outlet and Weghorst is a stopgap measure to compensate for our paper thin line up of strikers.

Both have had more downs than ups with us recently with the former bringing a putrid toxicity to the team.
 
jm99 said:
we have a 65% win rate in the league in games without weghorst, and only 33% in games he started. Whatever you think of him compared to Ronaldo, he does not make us a better team, in any sense
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Damn.
I previously said that using Weghorst is like playing with 10 men - it seems that the stats bear this out, too.
 
Gazza said:
It is true and even when quoting my post you are unable to read it properly.
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Okay you live in your version reality where a 24 goal season is ‘shit’ and running around a bit whilst having the worst scoring record for a ST at this club in memory is somehow better. Shocking take.
 
MUFC OK said:
Okay you live in your version reality where a 24 goal season is ‘shit’ and running around a bit whilst having the worst scoring record for a ST at this club in memory is somehow better. Shocking take.
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Let me shock you even further: I live in a world that understands the value of literacy. Your world might catch up some day, who knows.
 
One was a nuisance, the other is over the moon to wear the shirt. Easy choice
 
wangyu said:
One was a nuisance, the other is over the moon to wear the shirt. Easy choice
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Let's pick our entire first xi from redcafe then, the posters here would be ridiculously happy to wear the shirt
 
Ronaldo is obviously better, it's a no brainer. The issue with Ronaldo was that he didn't accept that his form was poor, and that his place on the team will depend on him recovering his top form, once he wasn't playing he became extremely toxic. WW knows his place so whenever he isn't playing it won't be an issue. I don't think it's a fair comparison anyway, because Ronaldo forced his way out of the club, and WW was the only cheap option we could find. All in all I think we're playing better without either of them.
 
They’re the opposite.

One is shite but works his arse off. The other is (was) world class but only plays for himself.

Advantages and disadvantages with both I guess.
 
Andy_Cole said:
They’re the opposite.

One is shite but works his arse off. The other is (was) world class but only plays for himself.

Advantages and disadvantages with both I guess.
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If youre including the time period when Ronaldo was genuinely world class then no there's no advantages and disadvantages, you'd pick Ronaldo a thousand times out of a thousand. Obviously though this season he wasn't close to world class, and given his obvious clash with ten hag he had to go
 
Love Ronaldo but we are talking about a player sitting on the bench and for me, Wout put in some of the finest performances I have ever seen against Brentford and Everton. The way he sat on that bench was majestic.
 
JagUTD said:
Love Ronaldo but we are talking about a player sitting on the bench and for me, Wout put in some of the finest performances I have ever seen against Brentford and Everton. The way he sat on that bench was majestic.
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Are we? Wout played 9 of the last 11 in the league, and I think all the cup games since he signed, I wouldn't really have as big as issue if he was a backup, but he seems to be first choice basically
 
If Ron was happy to embrace reality and be a squad player for us, I think he'd have been a great asset to have. Imagine him coming on in the last 20 minutes of a game at OT where we were pressing for a winner, the crowd would go mental and would lift the rest of the team (and spook the opposition!)

He wasn't willing to accept that though and became a toxic presence in the squad. For all Wout's limitations, at least he's a f*cking team player!
 
jm99 said:
Are we? Wout played 9 of the last 11 in the league, and I think all the cup games since he signed, I wouldn't really have as big as issue if he was a backup, but he seems to be first choice basically
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Not in the last 2 games, I'm hoping Eric has finally realised that we're not a goal threat with Wout up front!
 
On skill obviously Ronaldo but you can’t ignore the drama that came with it.

The fact we really could have used Ronaldo makes his tantrums more annoying for me :(
 
jm99 said:
Wout was definitely a Ronaldo replacement, we went into the season with Ronaldo and martial, then Ronaldo left, even down to the only money being available was what we saved in wages for Ronaldo. He's definitely the replacement, though as he's younger he is playing more, but he probably shouldn't be, we'd be better with neither up front
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He isn't. We will get our actual replacement in the summer. We tried other options too and ended up with Wout.

As a squad replacement in the team to get the numbers ? Probably. But it's not a Wout vs Ronaldo thing.
 
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