Definitely not a top 4 squad. The squad needs a massive overhaul.
We've got a Top 4 squad...
- Thread starter M Bison
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I don't know who said banging goals in left right and centre or that they are top quality.
If you bring any argument to such extremes it is pretty easy to win it. Good luck with that
5th-8th I would say, as Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and City have a better squad than us. Right now, we need a much better striker and left inside forward. Definitely need a LWB next season, but I don't think that's the main issue stopping us from reaching those spots.
But the drop in quality if we lose any first teamers is huge imo. Most of the subs are average.
But the drop in quality if we lose any first teamers is huge imo. Most of the subs are average.
this isn't a top 4 side but they can be one if they are consistent.
You have to be if you want to be a Top 4 team. None of our players can do that, I'll be genuinely shocked if any get more than 15 PL goals this season.
I'll also be shocked if any of our current squad can do it next season. None of them have the ability to be a proper goal scorer. This isn't new information, we've had it for the past 20 odd months. We stopped being a dangerous team as soon as Rashfords purple patch of form ended in ETHs first season. This notion that our squad is top 4 material is absurd, I don't know what people have been watching if anyone genuinely thinks that. It's baffling.
I’d say this squad is about 8/9th in terms of starting 11 quality. We have a large squad which might make us a bit better overall though. People judge this squad by how much they cost and are paid, but given we’ve over spent on both of those metrics for years then we are where we are.
We have starting players that wouldn’t get into the teams at the bottom of the PL and top half of Championship: Malacia, Zirkzee, Antony, and others who are just not geared up for the challenge of playing for United. Amorin has a nightmare job on his hands.
We have starting players that wouldn’t get into the teams at the bottom of the PL and top half of Championship: Malacia, Zirkzee, Antony, and others who are just not geared up for the challenge of playing for United. Amorin has a nightmare job on his hands.
I think this squad inherited from ETH is the worst squad post Fergie.
I don’t think the squad is as bad as being made out, but it’s got absolutely nothing upfront.
If Hojlund or Zirkzee were scoring goals the team would be playing with a lot more confidence and looking a lot better for it.
We can scape goat other positions but ultimately goals are what wins games, and our strikers don’t score anywhere near enough of them. If you aren’t scoring goals your putting pressure on your defence to keep clean sheets. Teams in this league are stacked with brilliant players who can score goals, it’s far from easy for sides to keep clean sheets. Average teams like West Ham, Bournemouth etc are littered with top players.
Garnacho has it in him to score goals but he’s young and going through a difficult spell. Amad too but he’s only really establishing himself as a starter now.
The rest? Garbage. Hojlund and Zirkzee are so far off the level required it’s unreal. Stick Chris Wood in this side and we’d be much higher up the table ffs.
If Hojlund or Zirkzee were scoring goals the team would be playing with a lot more confidence and looking a lot better for it.
We can scape goat other positions but ultimately goals are what wins games, and our strikers don’t score anywhere near enough of them. If you aren’t scoring goals your putting pressure on your defence to keep clean sheets. Teams in this league are stacked with brilliant players who can score goals, it’s far from easy for sides to keep clean sheets. Average teams like West Ham, Bournemouth etc are littered with top players.
Garnacho has it in him to score goals but he’s young and going through a difficult spell. Amad too but he’s only really establishing himself as a starter now.
The rest? Garbage. Hojlund and Zirkzee are so far off the level required it’s unreal. Stick Chris Wood in this side and we’d be much higher up the table ffs.
Bruno will be too old to play for your squad by the time the rest of the pieces are in place for the team to compete. These are the types of difficult decisions that need to be made.
The hallmark of a great manager is getting performances and wins from average players. With the right manager and system in place, there's plenty to be working with at Utd, but without structure and planning, no squad is going to shine.
Surely Ruben can get these lot to scrape wins like Mourinho could, but as Ruben has said we will be here in a years time seeing the same thing.
ETH did that in his first year, then tried to change to a new process the next year and flopped. If he did the change in the first year maybe his second season could have been like his first and then gone on form there. Showed his lack of experience in going to a badly run club.
Ruben is the opposite he has gone to a club where the fans beat up the players at the training ground after being so upset at them.
He turned them into well oiled winning machine, no losses this season under him, plenty of goals scored with hardly any conceded. In the CL they were up their with Liverpool.
Withbusbit will be the same blueprint, but no current manager can do miracles with these lot and fans should have patience.
Yes, but in 2 years time we get there. We are in process of tearing down the whole squad and building it from 4-6 core players up again.
I hope he gets the time to rip it up, because if it goes wrong, we'll be back here again in 2yrs time, like we have been doing since SAF
The discussion wasn't regarding Bruno's age, but what you're saying isn't true anyways IMO. The current squad probably needs 3-5 major additions to compete and a few minor ones. That's doable in 2 windows.
Knockwood, nothing happens, but Bruno is the player who could remain in the top leagues as long as Modric has. He has the body and will to look after himself.
Yeah, if this was 2004
It is not so much about the players. We have a lot of players, that would/could be great at other clubs in functioning systems. It is just, that the squad is overpriced and badly put together. Take Rasmus as an example. I have absolutely no doubt, that he would be great for the Scousers or Arsenal. He is clinical, and he would get much more chances there, resulting in more goals. He could start there. That goes for other players as well. We are simply lacking the right people for the Amorim-System, and we did not have them for EtHs system either. Ugarte works as an enforcer, but we are playing Bruno, Mainoo or Eriksen next to him to be the ballplaying 8, connecting midfield and attack. All three can do the ballplaying part, but neither is defending well enough to be Amorims 8. We need a KdB or FdJ kind of player here, and that is crucial. We also need wingbacks, who can and will take a man on and get crosses in. Someone has to feed the 9, or else the system won´t work. That is not Dalot, Malacia or Mazraoui, and it is certainly not Garnacho or Rashford. Anthony could actually work here, but he is not ideal either, just the closest fit we have at the moment, and he should btw. play left. We have a new manager, and we need a great overhaul to make his system work. We are not even a top 10 team as of right now.
I agree with the above but recently we had a discussion (below) if we are good enough for top 4/5th. Do I understand you correct that recent performances have changed your mind? Or are we good enough for 4/5th but need 3-5 major signings to compete for titels?
Don't even know where we are.
Sacked ETH for not producing results of a certain standard. Appointed Amorim who is seemingly saying we can't expect results. What are we? Feck knows.
Combine that with what sort of talent I think we have plus staus or financial firepower we definitely do have, the latter of which hs proven to have a strong correlation with success when it comes to wage bill. I don't know anymore.
Trying to watch us like I was a kid again, no exepctation, cheering the good things, not happy about the bad. If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.
Sacked ETH for not producing results of a certain standard. Appointed Amorim who is seemingly saying we can't expect results. What are we? Feck knows.
Combine that with what sort of talent I think we have plus staus or financial firepower we definitely do have, the latter of which hs proven to have a strong correlation with success when it comes to wage bill. I don't know anymore.
Trying to watch us like I was a kid again, no exepctation, cheering the good things, not happy about the bad. If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor.
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We've never ripped it up though. We have clung to the same old failures, despite it being obvious to realists and people on the outside that they're not good enough.
Lads like Dalot, Rashford, Martinez...even Bruno, are talked up way beyond their abilities on here because we WANT them to be great...the reality is, they all fall short of what is required.
It is in no way a top 4 squad.
There is a severe lack of quality in the squad, which can come through good development and a few more additions.
Delusion will only ever serve to elongate the post-Fergie issues.
There is a severe lack of quality in the squad, which can come through good development and a few more additions.
Delusion will only ever serve to elongate the post-Fergie issues.
Yes, I still believe that we are somewhere between the 4th and 6th best team in the league, based on the talent available within the squad.
Maybe not "comfortably" 4th or 5th, as I said a few weeks ago, but at the same time, if Amorim was appointed in the summer and was given a whole pre-season, and possibly some different players than the ones we ended up signing, I think we could've easily been on level with the 4th-7th placed teams right now in the table. As bad as we have been, and all the disruptive stuff that's happened to us mid-season, we're still just a few points off of where United probably aim to be internally within the club, for this first full season under the new leadership.
As I've mentioned in this thread before already, we obviously have some issues, though, but these can be solved and ironed out with time IMO. And with money, of course.
The biggest one for me is the squad not having a high enough physical flooring. However, one or two new athletic wide CBs, and at least one LWB signing with a similarly good physical profile would instantly be a big help for us. I have no doubts that these signings will be made in the summer at the latest.
Long-term, we should aim to do something similar to what Arsenal have done under Arteta, and focus a lot on the physicality side of things until the required levels across the squad are achieved. ETH was incredibly naive with some of the players he bought, like Martínez to be one our starting CBs.
If you take a look at our team vs Bournemouth in the last game, we had Martínez LCB, Malacia LWB, and a double pivot of Ugarte and Mainoo in the midfield. 4 players from our back 5 plus midfield duo didn't have the required physical flooring IMO. That's not good enough for a PL team with top 4 aspirations, especially against such a well-drilled side with enough quality to push into the top 10 this season, like Bournemouth are currently.
I'm not saying that Ugarte or Mainoo cannot be good players for us, or that Malacia or Martínez can't be decent squad players, however all 4 of them shouldn't be starting at the same time if we want to win most of our duels in a game.
The last time we had a good enough physical level across the squad IMO, it was probably the 17/18 season under Mourinho. I think Rangnick mentioned how we suffer from it 2 years ago after Ole was sacked, and even though a lot of time has passed since then and we signed dozens of new players, this is still an issue that we haven't solved since then.
Another glaring issue is a good number of the players seemingly having a weak mentality with a tendency of losing their heads when things start going bad. This can probably be worked on as well, to a certain extent.
We've also misused and didn't platform many of our players correctly in the past, and then wondered why they don't look as good as in their previous clubs or previous roles. Maguire, Pogba, Onana, Rashford, Zirkzee all come to mind instantly. It's important to put your players in their best positions where they can maximize their strengths and not have their weaknesses exposed.
A few examples of what I mean by this:
-Don't play Maguire as a wide channel defender where his lack of pace is exposed. Play him as CCB. Same with de Ligt.
-Don't play and waste Pogba in a double pivot with not enough attacking responsibility and too much defensive responsibility, when he's one of the most talented left-sided 8s in the last 20 years that have excelled in a 4-3-3.
-Don't play an inside forward like Rashford as a touchline hugging winger like what ETH did to him after his first season.
-Don't play Zirkzee as a target man. Why buy Onana and then decide to not care about possession and play a chaotic style of play, etc.
As soon as we start signing players with a good enough physical level, into roles they are suitable playing in, we will rapidly improve.
I think with ~3-5 major signings, provided we get them right, we should be finishing on at least 75 points, but probably over 80 tbh. Finishing over 80 points in 3 of the last 4 seasons meant that you were in the title race at least until April, and the same thing will probably be true for this current season as well. Building an 80+ point team can be done even for next season. If that's good enough to be able to say we are "competing", then I stand by my statement.
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Completely agree. The only time, I think, it makes sense to lable it as "ripped down" was when LVG came in. Back then, he really ripped the team apart, unfortunately getting rid of a few players that at least could have done a job for us as they were rather young and approaching their physical peak. He also brought in a few duds and a fair few amount of them failed after all but that is to be expected when you bring in many players.
The idea, that ETH ripped up the squad is weird to me. First and for all - he definitely sticked to players that were key players before, Rashford, Bruno and Shaw and it paved the way for his downfall at the end. We got rid of players who everybody should have known, aren't good enough - DDG was done, when he left, AWB everybody realized isn't suit for a team striving to compete, Greenwood, McTom, DVB, Fred, Varane, Sancho and so on... just look through the list of exists and there aren't many, that weren't overdue to go for whatever reasons, but mostly because of their inability to contribute for United any longer. Only exceptions I'd say were Henderson, Hannibal, Kambwala, Garner and Iqbal who were sold, and don't get me wrong, not saying that it was a mistake selling them, but that hardly counts as a rip-down of the current team.
I think, the idea of a full rip-down sounds better than it actually is, replacing a big number of players all it once has its own challenges, even transfers for the right profiles can fail for multiple reasons. I think, the main part is not clinging onto players we know have no real future here anymore but are kept for the bit of output they generate right now. We see people jumping on Maguires "redemption storyline", we've seen people coming up with hundreds of reasons for Rashford and we've seen bigging up other players to levels that most people without United-glasses will never understand like Bruno, Martinez, Dalot, Garnacho and Mainoo. We are desperate to see world class potential and we want to see it more than we actually do.
I am sure, all the struggles and the failing systems we tried to execute play their fair share in how bad the squad can look but I think, it is fair to say that we aren't close to something yet. I don't think we are on the up yet as a team and we aren't a few good additions away to compete. We may fluke something here or there, sure and who knows what will happen with rival teams and their potential decline will improve us in a relative way. The key is to finally update the Manchester United OS to something up-to-date and to bring in the right players now to be able to compete in 1 or 2 years time. When that means, selling some assets right now to generate cash, I am happy to and I am also happy to see us not getting all the results we want on the way.
Good post. I think 2 quality signings (LWB, striker or CAM) are needed NOW to compete for 5th spot, otherwise it will be a terrible season. Another 2-3 signings are needed to mount a serious title challenge. My main worry is that we have to get each transfer right and we are not awash with money.
Cheers. I have no idea what to expect in January, but I do think we will spend a lot next summer. Hopefully, though, at least 1 new player is going to be doable in January too.
First of all, I agree mostly with the things you said about athleticism and tend to agree also with the mentality. Even though I am not sure whether mentality is the correct word for it. I think, what we are missing is intensity and workrate. This is missing more often than not, mentality to me sounds like we lose things when stuff happens on the pitch and it "shakes" or "rattles" us too much - I see your point there but I think, this is only part of the issue. Bigger and more overall issue in my eyes is workrate.
Overall point, yes, agreed but probably a bit overstated in its significance.
Whether you put him wide or in the middle, Maguire will remain a player that is rather cumbersome, slow and not agile. The setup he probably thrive the most in is us keeping a deeper line and keeping it nice and compact in front of him so he can focus on keeping the distances to his team mates well and deal with aerials. But this applies to more or less every CB out there and not just for Maguire. If the idea is to play more advanced, with a higher line, there is just no point in wasting time and resources to find a way to "make him work" slightly better.
He never was a DM and shouldn't have played in the double pivot, I agree, but he also wasn't your normal 8. Pogba was the posterboy for lacking intensity and workrate and given that an 8 player is expected to contribute offensively and defensively, the player was always one that needed the whole team to balance out his weaknesses. Also Pogba is gone since years and the time, he looked like "one of the most talented 8s" are gone even longer...
It definitely wasn't a good idea to have Rashford that far on the wings, no question but at the same time, how do you do it differently? All our FBs were next to useless in terms of offereing threat on the wing and without width, attacking becomes an even harder job for everybody. Also Rashford didn't really excel in tight-spaces so while it sounds good to "just play him as an inside forward" it is easier said than done, given that he turned into a player that seeming only played to get on the end of chances without contributing much outside of that.
Agree with this. Even though I guess, we don't play any striker as a target man to be honest, them being the furthest up is part of the job description of more or less any forward out there and teams trying to find them with the odd long ball is also part of the game. Totally agree on the Onana part though, this part of the players game is underused which leads to him not being able to show his strength. It is odd.
All in all - every player "might" work better in these or those conditions. Thats always the case. But when you build a team, you have to make sure that those conditions align and not half the team is thriving in one way and the other half in another way. And we have to be honest to ourselves in terms of "is it really worth it, clinging to a player just for the pure hope of him flourishing". The list of players you listed is a good set of players we sticked way too long with ,trying to bring the best out of. More or less all of them (bar Onana) also fall short in one or even both of the dimensions you named before: athleticism and mentality/workrate. It is just something we have to accept, every player has a certain set of conditions that help mitigating his weakness and emphasizing his strength. No matter who the player is or how "good" he is. But not every player is worth the effort to adjust the team for it.
For what it is worth, many players suffered from the complete incompetence of our club in terms of squad building and squad composition because it made them look worse players than they probably are (were) and it is the single-most important thing we have to fix. But that doesn't mean, that we shouldn't get rid of players that reached the end of the road with us.
My advice would be to finally sign a real difference maker. One who makes all the other players around him better.
You used to have players like that in the past, Kean, Giggs and Scholes - they had these skills. Without at least one player like this, you can hire 20 more managers and it still won't get any better.
Admittedly, you tried Pogba, he should have been the one, but he just wasn't what he promised. But you have to try it again.
You have all the money in the world to get a player like that. Just do it.
For example: Wirtz would probably cost you 150 million, but he is someone who can change everything. You need someone like that, otherwise you will never get out of this downward spiral.
You used to have players like that in the past, Kean, Giggs and Scholes - they had these skills. Without at least one player like this, you can hire 20 more managers and it still won't get any better.
Admittedly, you tried Pogba, he should have been the one, but he just wasn't what he promised. But you have to try it again.
You have all the money in the world to get a player like that. Just do it.
For example: Wirtz would probably cost you 150 million, but he is someone who can change everything. You need someone like that, otherwise you will never get out of this downward spiral.
