We've been playing second string

[Redstain]

Villa have been without their first choice CB, LB, LW, and CM all season and don't seem to be having any problems playing good football.

People are massively overrating the effect Shaw and Martinez have on our performances.

Also Unai is for all intents and purposes a good manager, might not be at the level of the top clubs but he's proved his standard especially I'm Europe. The reality that's stark to come across is that Eth isn't as good as we all perhaps thought he was. This possession based, Ajax integrated manager is now along the lines of find out how things work out as we go along calibre.

 

[baskinginthesun]

Imagine, if you will, a striker closing in on goal; if the striker is confident, scoring is easy and fun, and is performed like an instinctive action. If there's no confidence, by contrast, the player is watching him/her self from the outside, expecting to fail, worrying how stupid he's gonna look if he does fail, and finally...Failing! Confidence is absolutely central. Look at Rashford at the moment for a study in the lack of confidence. We, at least to an extent, have made him that way.

How? He just came off a 30+ goal season and was awarded a new contract. He should have been the most confident, most fired up player when the season started. But, he has really struggled to get going.

 

[el3mel]

"We need a full ready, fit and fresh team with no injuries at all just to play well" excuse is so tiresome.

Injuries and fatigue are part of the game. That's why you have a squad. Get over it.

 

[Rozay]

We’ve got a second string manager too.

 

[Bwuk]

Villa have been without their first choice CB, LB, LW, and CM all season and don't seem to be having any problems playing good football.

People are massively overrating the effect Shaw and Martinez have on our performances.

Spot on. Fed up with the excuses.

If we are playing shite because our squad players are shite, then they shouldn’t be at the club.

 

[MadDogg]

It definitely is a contributing factor.

In the match against Sheffield United we didn't have a single one of our first choice players in the defence or deeper midfield. Lindelof, Evans, Maguire, Dalot, Amrabat and McTominay. Six players and not one of them, with the possible exception of Dalot, makes our strongest 11. Some of them don't even make our second choice 11.

In other games we had more of our first 11 on the field but the injuries we did have (or players out of contention for other reasons) were clustered in certain positions so we had players massively out of position to cover. For instance we were down to our 5th choice leftback, and before Antony came back we were down to 4th or 5th choice right wing. Central defence obviously had big issues, and at the start of the season we had no actual striker since both Hojlund and Martial weren't available. The latter is somewhat our own fault of course.

It doesn't excuse all the issues (ETH seems to be refusing to adjust to the problems that we're having), but it'd be ridiculous to say it's not a significant factor.

 

[AaronRedDevil]

A defender doesn't stop our attackers from scoring. The defence is mostly good. It's just our attack don't push team back or even score to effect anything.

 

[Smores]

The players who are being called second string here are mostly decent players who have achieved top 4 multiple times themselves. It's another made up excuse like fitness was last season.

The players available have been good enough to put in top 4 form. It's the whole point of a squad.

 

[Lost bear]

How? He just came off a 30+ goal season and was awarded a new contract. He should have been the most confident, most fired up player when the season started. But, he has really struggled to get going.

I would suggest that it’s other factors that are affecting him, not last season’s goal tally. As well as the issues at the club that I mentioned, it might easily be relationship problems, the state of the world ( enough to do anyone’s head in), etc. who knows. But, I’d argue that you can see the lack of confidence, plain as day.

 

[Fortitude]

Villa have been without their first choice CB, LB, LW, and CM all season and don't seem to be having any problems playing good football.

People are massively overrating the effect Shaw and Martinez have on our performances.

Weren’t Sheffield United seriously depleted when they played us, too?

 

[Borninthe80ts]

I agree that we have had a crisis in the sense that the injuries have affected our first 11 and players that most influence how our team plays. I wonder how other teams would fair with in similar circumstances and with the outside chaos too.
I wonder how many times we’ve played with out first 11, not to mention bedding in new key players too. No wonder Onana was struggling to show his best. Regardless of the whys, or blame to be attributed, it will affect how we play. That has to be acknowledged.

 

[horsechoker]

A defender doesn't stop our attackers from scoring. The defence is mostly good. It's just our attack don't push team back or even score to effect anything.

I think part of our cautious attack is the fear that losing the ball will result in being countered and scored against. At the beginning of the season the defence was crap and Onana was letting in every shot.

It doesn't excuse the attackers misfiring but part I'd wager it's part of the reason we are so ponderous in attack.

 

[SER19]

Coming back to this, again while aware of genuine problems and concerns, it is just frightening that yesterday we started with:

Dalot..Maguire..Evans..Lindelof..

..........McTominay...Amrabat....

Let's be honest, if that started an away league cup tie v Palace or West Ham, you wouldn't be massively confident. So injuries to Shaw and Martinez aside - as teams get injuries - I think the problems we have can't yet be laid at Ten Hag's door.

Take it position by position:

Right Back. Pre Ten Hag we spent about 70m on AWB and Dalot. Both are performing fine, if not good enough, and AWB had clear improvement under Ten Hag. He was much better last season and is our first choice.

Central Defence - Pre Ten Hag, we spent huge money on Varane, who is a fantastic player with a known injury record that we should have avoided. His best partner, Martinez, is excellent, and unfortunately injured. Maguire, while slowly improving again, was another pre ten hag disaster -80m and a huge contract and captaincy that led to more problems that it could justify. Evans, pre ten hag, was let go for a pittance and resigned a decade later and a decade too late and while a great guy, is absolutely not anywhere near a top 4 defender now. Perhaps no player demonstrates the post Ferguson mess than how Evans was dealt with.

Left back. Shaw has been worth his transfer fee and is a huge loss. No huge issues here, Malacia - also injured is a capable understudy for whoever Shaw is eventually replaced with. One other note on Shaw is that he was very good last season both at left back and central defence and played with real confidence under ten hag.

Defensive Midfield is where Ten Hag can be criticised. Casemiro was excellent for most of last season and everybody thought he'd be useful again once we had some more energy beside him. De Jong was the top target and presumably Ten Hag thought/thinks he can do something with Mount. This is a transfer decision that will rightly be used to assess his judgment.

All in all though, we are seeing that whether people like it or not, we are still in a stage of poor planning with simply too weak an overall squad to cope with any injuries, without a huge drop off of form. Everything in football now is dictated by this 'back 6'. What is listed above is probably not good enough to finish top 10, no matter who the coach is.

 

[glazed]

Defensive Midfield is where Ten Hag can be criticised. Casemiro was excellent for most of last season and everybody thought he'd be useful again once we had some more energy beside him. De Jong was the top target and presumably Ten Hag thought/thinks he can do something with Mount. This is a transfer decision that will rightly be used to assess his judgment.

This is where the injury argument falls apart. Neither Casemiro nor Mount are fit for purpose. Without a quality defensive midfielder we cannot play the way ETH wants and so the football will be a mess. Not chasing Rice was a massive error.

That said without this level of injury we could probably scrape top four. Which is all the Glazers care about anyway

 

[eire-red]

Also Unai is for all intents and purposes a good manager, might not be at the level of the top clubs but he's proved his standard especially I'm Europe. The reality that's stark to come across is that Eth isn't as good as we all perhaps thought he was. This possession based, Ajax integrated manager is now along the lines of find out how things work out as we go along calibre.

I think Emery was looked on a little harshly at Arsenal, when you consider how bad it was under Arteta for a long period and the club stuck with him.

To be honest, I wouldn't be opposed to Emery at United. Not saying I'm EtH out, I'm happy enough to see if he can weather this storm, but I wouldn't be sad to see the back of him and see someone like Emery in charge.

 

[SER19]

This is where the injury argument falls apart. Neither Casemiro nor Mount are fit for purpose. Without a quality defensive midfielder we cannot play the way ETH wants and so the football will be a mess. Not chasing Rice was a massive error.

That said without this level of injury we could probably scrape top four. Which is all the Glazers care about anyway

Ya its definitely an area that will define him over the coming months, but we undoubtedly wouldn't have gotten CL football without Casemiro last season, and while it's easy to dismiss the league cup, we won a trophy that he was instrumental in too. It felt like a good springboard and at the start of this season Casemiro didn't seem like an issue. Mount, at the moment, looks like badly misjudged signing, but we can only hope he's one of those players that comes good. Not that we've had many of those at united for a decade.

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

From 13 games this season, number of starts:

Onana 13

AWB 4
Varane 7
Martinez 6
Shaw 2

Casemiro 11
Mount 6
Fernandes 12

Antony 6
Hojlund 8
Rashford 12

Any team would struggle.

I can compare this to my team, Real Madrid.

Our most likely starting lineup, along with their number of starts (from 14 games), is:

Courtois - 0
Carvajal - 11
Rudiger - 13
Militao - 0
Mendy - 4
Tchouameni - 12
Valverde - 12
Kroos - 7
Bellingham - 13
Vinicius Jr. - 9
Rodrygo - 14

That comes to 95 starts out of 154, which is 61%. For United's players, it comes to 87 out of 145, which is 60%. So the numbers are comparable.

Real Madrid's record this season is 12W1D1L. So we haven't struggled after losing a comparable number of starts.

The issue would have more to do with your squad not being good enough overall, not with missing starters.

 

[SER19]

I can compare this to my team, Real Madrid.

Our most likely starting lineup, along with their number of starts (from 14 games), is:

Courtois - 0
Carvajal - 11
Rudiger - 13
Militao - 0
Mendy - 4
Tchouameni - 12
Valverde - 12
Kroos - 7
Bellingham - 13
Vinicius Jr. - 9
Rodrygo - 14

That comes to 95 starts out of 154, which is 61%. For United's players, it comes to 87 out of 145, which is 60%. So the numbers are comparable.

Real Madrid's record this season is 12W1D1L. So we haven't struggled after losing a comparable number of starts.

The issue would have more to do with your squad not being good enough overall, not with missing starters.

Yes it's both. Missing starters and poorer replacements. There are some other things that arent like for like. Madrid's core is simply better in key areas. For example, Bellingham, Tchouameni, Valverde have been almost ever present together. And even Rudiger, a first choice centre half has been almost ever present too, which we havent had with either of our first choices. Lastly, not to underrate the importance of a goalkeeper, but theres a 13 game swing between onana and Courtois, which you could arguable get over sooner if you have a solid defence. For example, last season, de gea won the golden glove with a reasonably solid core in front of him. For outfield players the rate is more like 67% for madrid, to 56% for united.