Shocking. And don’t most teams slightly overachieve on their xG — so really we should be looking at around 25 goals or so?We have 11 goals from 20 xG in the last 10 games.
Not most teams. But from what I have seen, the better teams tend to overperform xG however high the xG is. Being clinical and x-factor maybe?Shocking. And don’t most teams slightly overachieve on their xG — so really we should be looking at around 25 goals or so?
We obviously need a quality striker but more than anything I feel like we’re lacking proper coaching of attacking patterns.
Watching our attacking play is incredibly frustrating. Nobody seems to know what to do - on or off the ball. No one-twos (Martial’s chance today was a rare exception), no threatening runs, no trough balls, no creative link up play etc.
IMO this is why we don’t get any tap ins or easy goals. Rather, we pass the ball around the box all day before losing it or shooting from an impossible position.
I assume this will improve once EtH gets time to drill the side properly, but I really don’t think it’s going to solve much just buying new players without working on the tactical aspects of attacking play.
Teams like Brighton, Brentford and Villa have worse forwards than us but their attacking play looks way more fluid and creative.
Not consistent is a nice word for being poor. This is just a negative spat at our season. The difficulties we have had is key players brought in this season to turn around the ship were missing when we had the momentum. Ericksen /Casemiro/Rashford/ Garancho/Varane and Martinez . That quality missing for chunks of the season on back a good period was crucial to the subsequent issues. In contrast you take KDB, Grealish,Stones Dias and Benardo out for similar stinks and no purchase of Haaland & Alvarez where would they be now?. Two out of 3 last windows have been none existent so picking players to critique is a bit too early in ETH process. Everyone and their grannies knows we need strikers. However we have to get smarter, when the likes of Caicedo was avialable to us for 4.5m and was overlooked for 36m on Amad. These mistakes need adressing in the background logistics.What for instance what would a 15m Alvarez have done for us this season playing 99% of the time.I think there are a few reasons why we don't score enough goals:
In order to solve this I think we need to bring in at least two strikers in the summer and a CM who can bring some creativity. I'd also be interested to see Garnacho and Amad get more involved in the first team as they bring someone a bit different and less predictable while also providing a good goal threat.
- Our strikers aren't good enough. Martial and Wout aren't consistent enough and not enough of a goal threat.
- We are reliant on Rashford (injured) and to a much lesser extent Bruno on scoring goals. If neither of them is firing our chances of scoring reduces massively.
- Lack of creativity in midfield, we missed Eriksen for a spell and didn't really have anyone creative enough to fill his role. You saw yesterday the goal was made from his vision to spot Casemiro (and a wonderful finish) but we don't have many players who can do that.
- Wide options are too predictable. Our opponents know Anthony and Rashford will always try and cut in on their stronger foot to shoot and Sancho will slow the play down. Even if we had a top class striker we wouldn't provide them with a lot of chances as our wide players want to shoot rather than assist.
Last season especially just after the winter window, we had the excuse. This season? No. The people above ETH messed up totally. When Ronaldo pushing to move like that, should have let him. Medical team at the club should have Martial's fitness data and advise us to look for a back up CF. Martial injury issue didn't start this year. From what he himself said, he has been struggling previous two years too. It's totally foreseeable. We should have people look at this, right (?), and have line of communication to the head coach, recruitment team? Can't just let the manager to do everything from profiling, listing transfer target, which limit us to Arnautovic, Weghorst, Gakpo.
Our goal scoring issue is simple. Rashford hot form fizzled out. We don't have enough goal in the team even though we still had period in games where we create and pin opposition back.
You'll see them vary one way or the other, most players tend to go somewhere around their xG over long enough time but some overperform by like 20% (Haaland and Messi). Higher than that and you can be sure they'll regress. But within 20% is in the normal range probably (we are 19% below for the season, 52 vs 64 xG). Even just variance and I think it's highly unlikely we would finish this poorly next season. We weren't too far off our xG most of the season, and then this last 10 games where we've struggled has really been mainly just a huge xG underperformance.Shocking. And don’t most teams slightly overachieve on their xG — so really we should be looking at around 25 goals or so?
Totally agree will take Rabiot (Free) plus a top quality creative number 8 what price for 32 year old Veratti for two seasons ?Think you can safely say even IF we do bring in Rabiot on a free we are still not going to sign another two midfielders as well. I agree that we need other profile of midfielders in there but don't see it happening this summer unfortunately
Bruno's goals have massively dried up since Ten Hag came in, which really hasn't helped.
Not consistent is a nice word for being poor. This is just a negative spat at our season. The difficulties we have had is key players brought in this season to turn around the ship were missing when we had the momentum. Ericksen /Casemiro/Rashford/ Garancho/Varane and Martinez . That quality missing for chunks of the season on back a good period was crucial to the subsequent issues. In contrast you take KDB, Grealish,Stones Dias and Benardo out for similar stinks and no purchase of Haaland & Alvarez where would they be now?. Two out of 3 last windows have been none existent so picking players to critique is a bit too early in ETH process. Everyone and their grannies knows we need strikers. However we have to get smarter, when the likes of Caicedo was avialable to us for 4.5m and was overlooked for 36m on Amad. These mistakes need adressing in the background logistics.What for instance what would a 15m Alvarez have done for us this season playing 99% of the time.
Sorry, ok then 19m on Amad when we could have had Caicedo for 4m. Brighton swopped in and figured out a way to sort out those agent payments . So Brightons staff are more capable than Utd's?. My point is, all the stories regarding who we miss are lies or we can't close deals without it being a mess. It's clear it's one or other and hopefully there is less of it going forward is my hope anyways. I do hope that we are changing that failed environment whilst also chasing players.This really isn't true though. First of all Amad only cost 19m with the rest as add ons which will only be met if he becomes an important player for us which I think he has a chance of becoming in the following seasons. Secondly the Amad deal in no way blocked Caicedo from happening which was more related to ridiculous agent fees from what I've read.
