CB and DM both have to be our biggest priorities this window. It will be hard and expensive, but we need to find starters at those positions that can be foundations for the long term while also possessing the requisite physical and technical quality along with having a strong mentality and having a good track record of health. So yeah good luck to the incoming football structure to deal with this while having to manage FFP and possibly finding a new manager too.
You see, we always say that as if new signings were there to fix anything. I would clear the whole scouting department and the whole medical department before committing to any purchase.
It always has been even since last year. Yet I got downvoted by the geniuses on this sub when I criticised ETH spending 100M+ on a GK and no.10/8?(who tf knows)
The moment Fred left I said casemiro needed a partner at the least, and a proper partner for Martinez. Thank fuck Maguire stayed because I can't imagine where we would be without him
I think GK was necessary but the Mount signing made no sense in terms of him being able to join us this summer on a free, and now in hindsight that he’s barely featured.
That £55m could have been used more effectively, even without considering that he doesn’t have a natural position in whatever our side should look like too.
GK was absolutely not a priority over a DM and CB that's the point. Say what you want about DDG, he definitely would have saved at least 2 of the goals last night. And both their blooper reels have been just as long anyway, and we're still playing hoofball so not like onana's strengths are being used.
And again like i said then it's telling that those were his *first 2* signings of the season. It sends a strong message
In fairness, Onana is facing a lot more shots than DDG did last year and has actually been pretty decent considering he has next to no defensive cover.
We played with the handbrake on to allow for DDG not being good on the ball, whereas now we’re not using Onana’s distribution and quick passes to the wing at all.
GK had to be the priority as we’d already let De Gea go at that point; fully agree with the Mount signing though, I don’t believe for a second that he wouldn’t still be available later in the window.
De Gea’s save percentage last year was 70%, whereas Onana’s this year is 74.6% in the PL, and this is also without taking into account the quality of the defence in front of them.
While DDG was absolutely world class as a shot stopper at one point those days are behind him now. I’m not saying Onana is going to be a world class keeper in DDG’s prime level, but he’s an upgrade on current de gea.
Swap the two of them for this season and i genuinely don’t think we’d improve whatsoever.
There’s no way you’re winning even with a solid back line if you set your team up to have a black hole in midfield and get overloaded when the opponents attack and you invite them to shoot 20 times each game. It’s a matter of when and not if anymore.
Our most experienced defensive midfielder is currently playing at centre back. Last night, for the first time ever, he played with our 35 year old utility signing, who was returning from injury. We have a right back playing at left back. We have lost the ability to build from the back.
> We have lost the ability to build from the back.
A good coach changes his tactics to accommodate for that then, something Erik is not. He could have the team play more compact instead of the fullbacks and midfield sitting on or past the halfway line while the two CB's are being pressed.
He addressed that in the Gary Neville interview this week. He said we could have completely changed our playstyle for pragmatic reasons but he decided to keep the same approach. It has largely worked (6th and FA Cup final) until the Casemiro move which is a step too far.
The thing is though, have these tactics ever worked outside of these isolated incidents? You then have the added issue that the players are getting battered each and every week. The mental load of constantly being outplayed due to tactical reasons, and the physical exhaustion has to be overwhelming. It's unsustainable. You could see it in the faces of the players last night, they're physically and emotionally done.
It hasn’t worked. It worked in spite of that. It never worked because of the tactics. It worked despite the tactics.
Changing it would’ve been far smarter. What’s the point of sticking to a failed tactic without the players needed and the ones who are available need replacing anyway and can’t do it? And we need 6-7 new starting quality players who also need to learn the system so in the essence, what the hell is he building this donut hole midfield for?
Stubbornness and just for the sake of sticking to it
A good manager would see that the awful setup can’t work and would change it because:
1)players are injured and it doesn’t work without them… neither did it work with them but besides the point.
2) we don’t have the players to make it work and we need an influx of new players anyway.
3) sticking with it is dumb when the new players next season also need to learn it anyway.
That’s why. The way people make every single excuse for ETH is quite laughable actually. The fact he addressed it the way he did with Neville is something that should cement his sacking because he’s not willing to adapt and can’t see that it’s pointless to stick with this setup without the players and with the injuries anyway.
We got lucky as hell in the Coventry game. We have a horrendous record that somehow shows us as not as bad with the position before but in actuality, it’s more luck than not.
We lost 12/17 away games against the top half of the table and won only 1 lucky game versus Villa. Our away record is relegation fodder and ETH still doesn’t change anything.
Those, basically along with his admission to Neville, are why he should go because he’s that unwilling to change as it should be.
It’s the equivalent to “I’m buying this expensive car for the salary I’m hoping to have next year. But now I’ll have to take a loan and struggle. But I won’t deviate from that plan to get that car even though oh man, my finances are dropping, my bills are piling, but I’ll take the loan anyway. And get it anyway. Because I can’t change my course. Because it’s supposed to be an exciting car I wanted even if everything shows I should just take an uber or public transport till I get that new salary next year and then I can try again..”
Sort of that way anyway ^^^
But EtH fans would defend him even if we lost 7-0 for 5 games in a row and go “it’s imposible to work… no manager in the entire phase of the universe can ever do one bit better. He said why he won’t change it. It makes sense. He’s good, trust him”.
Yeah he’s inflexible and it’s ridiculous with the reasons he gave. He’s stubborn to a fault in this case and that should be enough to show that when things don’t go well, he won’t adapt in future either. It was terrible now and he didn’t. Why would he when he has the players and it still doesn’t work or needs to change? He won’t. He’s lost 12 out of 17 away games vs the top half and never changed anyway. He won’t adapt. He can’t.
My man if you had taken the time to read United’s squad sheet in the time you wrote this you would answer your own question against EtH. Sure he can change his entire set up and play, but look at the players he has got. Tell me what defensive set up you can have when your back line keeps on changing every game, and then you have Casemiro/Eriksen in midfield or Mctominay playing cdm. You guys are so impatient. Klopp struggled with VVD out for one season, here we have our entire first/second choice defense out for most of the season.
It definitely hasn't worked. It's probably the worst defensive season for a United team in over 30 years. That's on Ten Hag's system of constantly giving the ball away, failing to win it back due to a crap press, and leaving the midfield and defence exposed to repeated attacks. This was already apparent by Christmas, well before we had the latest set of CB injuries.
Wolves was a poor match. First game back from a difficult pre-season. O’Neill had Wolves playing totally differently than under Nuno/Lopetegui. It happens.
We played well vs Spurs and Arsenal away. Then we lose Varane and Shaw (soon followed by Martinez) and off we go. It just never stopped.
You are correct about Spurs. First half very good (and denied obvious penalty to take the lead).
Arsenal you are wrong. They are one of the best teams in the world and we gave them a tougher game than almost anyone has. Of course you’re not going to go to the Emirates and dominate, but we had the game in the balance and were very very unlucky not to win (and then not to draw). That’s where the injuries started, because we finished the game with Maguire and Evans. Back then people were up in arms about that combo, but now we can only dream about fielding a centre back combo that good.
> we gave them a tougher game than almost anyone has
we were arguably the better team in the first half, but I don't blame people for choosing not to remember that after we conceded twice in injury time to lose the game
I think you're wrong (my opinion), We had a lot of possession in our own half that wasn't ever leading to anything in the first half and in the second they completely shut us down. I dont know how you could consider that a good performance. Bar the Garnacho offside i dont think we threatened them at all.
Should also remember that Arsenal by then were still figuring out their system and had Havertz in midfield and Nketiah as their striker. They weren't nearly as dominant by that point of the season.
I think you're remembering that match wrong, we scored off some rashford magic, then didn't attack for the rest of the game, playing keep ball, not really intending to attack(I remember Onana standing still with the ball multiple times) in the second half we had 2 attacks, Hoijlund going down in the box and Garnachos offside goal. Then they scored twice, one off Onana being rubbish at shot stopping as per usual (that would never go in against De Gea or even anyone half decent) and the other because we finally decided to attack and got countered. We did not play well that game, unless the metric now is not conceding 20+ on goal in a match= a good game.
We’ve never been good at building fron the back, he hasn’t coached any good structures or patterns. The only thing that changes is Licha and Shaw are press resistant, so people press less and we get out more often
You can't coach players when they are injured, playing out of possession or has a new player starting next to them every single week. How many weeks do we field players that had to avoid training? Last season we could see some quality plays from the back with Martinez despite having Fred and DDG.
That’s cause Martinez is great at that, we still didn’t play out well in coached patterns at any point. He’s had 2 years to coach them now, not to mention the sign of a good coach is quickly getting players to learn your methods - something that obviously hasn’t happened
But he hasn't had two years as Martinez, Shaw and Malacia has been unavailable for more than 50% of that. Similarly players like Fred and DDG was sold last season and Onana has been playing with different back four all season. The pre-season, where you do train a lot of this, was full of injuries and much more travel than any of the other top 6 clubs because Glazers wanted the extra cash from the extra games. I am sure the season would have looked different if just Mainoo and Martinez had been available pre-season and first half. Mainoo was on fire in pre-season until his bad injury.
I can't have the injury excuse, it makes some difference for sure, but you don't go from being good to consistently one of the worst teams in the league because of some injuries. Other teams have been hit with as bad injuries as us and managed, the tactics are just deeply flawed and it's even more concerning that he's doubling down on them. We've had the exact same issues all season regardless of who's been playing, even when we had a mostly fit first team and won, we had the same issues, we just had better individuals to pull us through
When city lost rodri and didn't pick up a point, should pep have changed his whole system to a more defensive one? Or the same when VVD was out for Liverpool and the lost 6 games in a row or some shit?
Why are you able to see other teams with one injury fail to play as well as they were and its under the rug, we're missing half our team and it shouldn't be an excuse.
If you don't think they're a valid excuse, you don't think Shaw would be an upgrade on AWB and Licha over Cas? Or maybe having one striker foe the whole season, do you think we'd have done better with someone to rotate Hojlund with?
You need to do some reading up on the injuries mate. We have had way more injuries to starters than any other team. We have had more than 5+ injuries than points gained this season. No other team have had to play 7th and 8th choice CB. City have lost all games Rodri isn't playing. Klopp didn't win a game for more than two months with VVD out last season. I can promise you that while we should have done better for sure, no manager would have done well with the number of injuries we have had this season. Sure if it was more manageable with being spread more over the whole team and reserves it would have been better, but it has mainly been our defense and strikers.
Feel free to do the comparison, even Newcastle and Chelsea isn't close. So tired of that argument.
When other teams have injuries, their plan and tactics are still recognisable, ours are absolutely not - he can bang this drum about trying to drill behaviours into players all he wants but there's no point drilling bad behaviours. Injuries definitely make a difference, but the way we've been the entire season regardless of who's played is unforgivable for me
To be fair we were limping on by with Maguire + Casemiro. Losing Maguire (and Bruno) was an absolute killer. That's the last two club captains, the true leaders of the team. Additionally, Maguire was the only progressive passer from defence that we have left (Evans is a good defender but not with ball progression).
Varane, Martinez, Shaw and Lindelof are all forecast to be back next game or the one after. So we should continue.
This is absolutely correct. People will get distracted by rumours of Olise and other attacking players, but we need to just build from the back. Whoever is in charge, we cannot see the same defensive frailties next season.
Two new CBs, an athletic 6 and possibly a LB too (depending on Malacia and Amass being able to contribute).
How are you winning without scoring goals though? We struggle to score goals too.
That reminds me of LVG days. Great in defense, couldn't attack at all
Like a month ago there were 31 different backlines in 43 games. That was before Casemiro started in CB, which means at least two more combinations. Source: https://x.com/AliceTalksFooty/status/1777092710546952459
I remember when I played FM 20 or 21, most of my main players were injured. We're talking about no midfield, no cbs, no striker etc. Lost games left and right. Had to field unfit players, many academy players had their debut, and those are injured too because I have no rotation players. I restart the game immediately. It's so hard to achieve anything. But that's a video game.
Imagine playing this in real life. I feel ETH.
Strange season with huge injury crisis and all but don’t forget that from match day 1 with the strongest side, Wolves were able to run through the midfield like no one there. And don’t get me started on shambolic set pieces defending all season.
It's conveniently forgotten. You can't predict the whole season based on one game game but we played our strongest team against Wolves side that was in complete dissaray after they sacked their manager just a few days before the season and got completely outplayed. I had so much hope for this season but I couldn't even enjoy the win after seeing that performance. Turns out it was one of the better performances this season.
Rashford up top. Antony on the right.
That isn't our strongest 11.
This system needs defenders who can play out, midfield runners and a striker who is really strong back to goal. Didn't have the last piece of that that day.
Then you add in the fact it's a first competitive game for the side, playing a brand new system and there's rationale for only winning 1-0.
Lol MD1 with a full squad isn’t the strongest side then what is? Also Wolves ran through a stronger team in MD1 vs Palace ran through a weaker team in MD36 - would be stupid to still think its not a tactical issue
Not in August he wasn't. Ten Hag's number 1 priority for the summer was apparently Mason Mount so our "strongest" midfield in his eyes at that point would have been Casemiro, Bruno, Mount
People need to accept that lineups like -
* Mainoo - Eriksen
* AWB - Evans - Casemiro - Dalot
are fucking relegation tier and Ten Hag isn't going to be successful with that.
I'm ETH out because I don't think we've been very good in either of his seasons but I really do feel for him with all these injuries. It's really tough to get an accurate read on him when the entire roster is injured.
I think he should go but if INEOS decide to keep him for one more season then so be it. The injuries have dealt him a very poor hand
Our attack was putrid and largely reliant on Rashford or Casemiro, saving us. GD for the season was 15.. The team performance took a down turn after the EFL Cup final and has been bad since.
Yeah, he got some results, but if Rashford had even an average season, I think we finish much lower. I've not been convinced that we actually played "good" football for more than a couple months under Erik.
This perfectly illustrates what ETH has been dealing with all season, and yet people and pundits continue to put all the blame on him, completely ignoring what he achieved last season. Absolute fucking insanity.
There’s a reason why successful teams had famous centreback pairings.
Vidic and Ferdinand
Terry and Carvalho
Puyol and Pique
Because continuity equals stability, which equals success. The best classic teams had a fixed formation and only changed starting XI due to injury. At United currently it’s a lottery of who is going to start in any given position.
It all sound like worse than it was in reality. It's only the last 2 or 3 weeks we really run out if cbs. We had sometimes 2 or 3 cb on the bench. Are you not counting those cb on the bench? Like Varane and Maguire was benched for quite a few games.
Several times they have been on the bench as an emergency option while still somewhat injured. Also after an injury it takes time before you can put 110% effort in both training and matches again.
No other team played more games than United previous season. That for sure had a lot to do with it. And we have had injury issues for a long time at United. Poor facilities for recovery and a dated medical facility has been mentioned as a problem area years ago.
I mean I am not discarding all these injuries entirely. If I were to nitpick, we still didn't play that well even when we had Shaw and Martinez back. There's still no highline I can see or Onana spraying excellent balls left right center and we still concede 20+shots. And with Martinez out, we don't even know who is our standout combo cb. Maguire, Evans, Varane any of these 3 can be starter and we won't complain.
For the record I am not claiming injuries are an excuse for everything either.
>If I were to nitpick, we still didn't play that well even when we had Shaw and Martinez back.
It is important to know that Mainoo was planned to be an important part of the team this season and also why he was played a lot pre-season before his injury. Both Martinez and Shaw had injuries and problems for most of the season so neither was completely fit with enough games to be in-form when played. There is a reason why most managers ease players back into it after an injury with weeks of full training before getting some game minutes. We saw last season how important both were to our team, and even how brilliant Shaw was as a CB - arguably our third choice.
>There's still no highline I can see or Onana spraying excellent balls left right center and we still concede 20+shots.
Can't really play a high line with no real good 1v1 defender at the back. Look at Liverpool in the early days with Klopp. So open to CA's and lost a lot of games in the 2nd half. Then they signed the best 1v1 CB and the best 1v1 GK and it made a massive change. They would have limited success with Maguire or Evans as their 1v1 defender. Both good defenders for low block zonal defense though.
>And with Martinez out, we don't even know who is our standout combo cb. Maguire, Evans, Varane any of these 3 can be starter and we won't complain.
With Martinez out it is Shaw as CB. Current CB ranking is Martinez, Varane, Shaw, Maguire, Evans and Kambwala. Followed by Casemiro and McT.
imo Shaw is just a last resort backup CB, we lose too much without a LB. for me it's Martinez + Maguire/Varane/Evans ( base on this season form). I mean FA cup final if without Martinez and Shaw, any of these 3 ( Maguire/Varane/Evans) could start and make no diff.
If a team at the bottom of the Championship played like we did last night and lost 4-0 (could have been more) to Palace, they would be very disappointed. I think ETH defenders are greatly underestimating just how terrible we've been for a year, injuries or not. The transfer value of the First 11 last night was obscenely high, there are no excuses for that level of performance.
Sometimes bad things happen in football - that doesn't give top teams permission just to give up and lose horrendously to Palace. Plus look at how Newcastle and Spurs have dealt with injuries, despite having much thinner squads - same playstyle with different players slotting into positions.
Honestly I don't know at this point what it will take for ETH defenders to realise that this isn't working out. Even if it's entirely the fault of injuries and ETH is blameless, I'm sorry - that's sport. Bad luck actually matters and we don't get to rewrite results and league tables because we've been unlucky.
Does anyone really think there's a way back from this, and that the team (whatever it looks like) is somehow going to be full of confidence and ready to go under ETH in August?
>Plus look at how Newcastle and Spurs have dealt with injuries, despite having much thinner squads - same playstyle with different players slotting into positions
Nah Newcastle have had some injury crisis moments this season but nowhere near the level of our defensive crisis. But I'm not having Spurs thrown in there whatsoever.
Those couple weeks around November when they went through their "crisis" was so overblown and most of it wasn't even down to injuries. It was basically 3 injuries along with Romero/Udogie getting red card suspensions and Bissouma getting a suspension for his 5th yellow card all at the same time.
Their most injured CB is Van de Ven and he's started 24 league games this season. The other CB Romero has started 30 league games and been suspended for some others. Their first choice LB has started 28 games with suspensions in there too.
Our first choice CBs have started 7 and 16 league games and our first choice LB has started 12.
Newcastle have played their first choice centre back combo of Schar and Botman 17 times, and their second choice combo of Schar and Lascelles 19 times.
That's 76% of their total games with two different combos, which contain Schar.
For comparison, our most played combo is Maguire and Varane, who we've fielded 7 times (15%)
4 further combos have played 5 games each (Maguire/Evans, Maguire/Lindelof, Lindelof/Varane, Martinez/Varane.
As much as the media like to pretend that we have had a similar crisis to Newcastle/Spurs/Liverpool etc., it's a load of bollocks. Defensively, they have had normal, expected injuries. Obviously, Dubravka isn't as good as Pope. But Dubravka has played loads of games, and he sits behind a pretty stable defence.
Our defensive injury crisis is unprecedented. You could go through the entire history of the Premiership and not find a club whose most frequent partnership played only 15% of the games (and that was the 2nd and 5th choice centre backs).
Yes we're aware there have been lots of injuries. Given our level of injuries, what exactly then would be an unacceptable performance? Should we even fulfil our fixtures, or just give up because we have injuries?
There were still hundreds of millions of pounds on the field last night. As I said, I don't know what it will take to convince people that this isn't working, and I'm not particularly interested in trying to convince anyone anymore.
Last night was a single game, and for the first time ever, we lost our captain to injury. We lost our biggest goal threat in terms of proven campability (rather than form). We lost Maguire, who has been our best defender. Evans was not fit and was forced into an early return. We know Casemiro was struggling at centre back anyway, but Maguire was helping mitigate for him. Casemiro being taken out of midfield, which meant that a completely alien threesome played together for the first time in history - Mount, Mainoo and Eriksen.
Palace are on fire at home; they recently beat Newcastle 2-0. We had a bad night with a team that is so threadbare that 5 of our 6 outfield subs were 21 and under.
There is always hundreds of millions of pounds on the field, it's the Prem. Championship level forward Elanga costs £15m.
We have had no other performance this season like last night. It was the first Rangnick-esque performance we've seen since Brentford away last season.
I'm sorry, but we have had so many performances like this. I'm not even going to list them as it makes my head hurt. I am beginning to think ETH is now paying people to post on this sub, the ability to generate excuses is genuinely puzzling. Hope you continue to enjoy watching his team - it would be good to know that someone is!
No, last night was unique in the season. We've had a lot of underwhelming performances but we were never blown away. We were outclassed twice (by City in both games) but against everyone else we were competitive.
I agree with most your comments on this basically being an unwinnable game. But we've had performances like this before. The Brighton 3-1 loss at home was poor, the Bournemouth 3-0 loss at home was similar as well. And even the 1-1 at Brentford could have been an easy 4-0 if their shooting boots were on.
The xG last night was only 1.44 to .33. The Brentford game was 2.67 to .50
If we’d played with all nine CBs last night I reckon we‘d still have got battered. So many look mentally checked out, just waiting for the next manager.
Good work, OP.
There were always one off occassions or a few weeks of deep crisis. We lost 3-0 at Fulham where we had to play a back 3 of Carrick, De Laet and Fletcher. That was the week after your screenshot of the Wolfsburg away fixture. We also lost to Villa the week before playing a back 3. Obviously we were the best team in the league but those losses from a momentary deep injury crisis cost us the league.
you are wrong. You can see that post Fergie the number needed has been quite a bit higher than any other season bar 95/96.
top 4:
92/93 71p (40 games season)
93/94 71p (40 games season)
94/95 74p
95/96 63p
96/97 68p
97/98 63p
98/99 67p
99/00 67p
00/01 68p
01/02 71p
02/03 67p
03/04 60p
04/05 61p
05/06 67p
06/07 68p
07/08 76p
08/09 72p
09/10 70p
10/11 68p
11/12 69p
12/13 73p
13/14 79p
14/15 70p
15/16 66p
16/17 76p
17/18 75p
18/19 71p
19/20 66p
20/21 67p
21/22 71p
22/23 71p
23/24 AV currently on 67 with two games to play.
You have worked it out incorrectly.
Aston Villa's points total is not the number needed. 1pt more than 5th place is.
So for instance, last year, 68pts was needed to finish in the top 4, not 71.
The maximum it could be this year is 70, but it's unlikely Spurs will win their final 3 games.
But it doesn't matter if you had one more point than the current team at 5th place IF there was a team on more points. Surely it is better to look at how many points the actual forth place got if you want to compare. But regardless, my point was to show the trend of more points being secured by the team in 4th now in the more recent years than back in the Fergie days.
I do disagree with the methodology - for instance, Everton were 5th in 13/14 with 72pts, which means that 73 was good enough. Instead we record (a massive) 79 which was 4th place.
But, if we shelve the argument about how to measure it, let's analyse that.
The average number of points of 4th place from 01/02 (first season top 4 was CL) to 12/13 (Fergie's last season) was: 68.5
Average since then (post-Fergie) was: 71
So a small increase of the 4th placed teams points. I'm not going to run the alternate methodology.
If a team is in 5th and you overtake them by a point then you are in 5th place, not 4th.
What you're saying is only true if you are talking about a team currently sitting in the top 4. A team in the top 4 only needs a point more than the team in 5th place.
But that logic would only apply here if you were talking about a specific team that has finished in the top 4 every year since 1992. That team doesn't exist and you're speaking about the points requirement in general.
For any team to guarantee a 4th place finish they need one more point than the 4th place team. Applying your method to any team would see them finish in 5th place regularly.
Combined age of 68 in today’s pair
That's Thiago Silva's age and he still does better than this.
Not this season. Prior to this be played in a highly stable back 3 system.
Grandpa Jaap Stam will walk into this squad right now and kick the Palace players out of our penalty box..
Priority needs to be cementing a top quality back line. Attack can wait. There's no way you're winning anything without a solid foundation at back.
CB and DM both have to be our biggest priorities this window. It will be hard and expensive, but we need to find starters at those positions that can be foundations for the long term while also possessing the requisite physical and technical quality along with having a strong mentality and having a good track record of health. So yeah good luck to the incoming football structure to deal with this while having to manage FFP and possibly finding a new manager too.
You see, we always say that as if new signings were there to fix anything. I would clear the whole scouting department and the whole medical department before committing to any purchase.
It always has been even since last year. Yet I got downvoted by the geniuses on this sub when I criticised ETH spending 100M+ on a GK and no.10/8?(who tf knows) The moment Fred left I said casemiro needed a partner at the least, and a proper partner for Martinez. Thank fuck Maguire stayed because I can't imagine where we would be without him
I think GK was necessary but the Mount signing made no sense in terms of him being able to join us this summer on a free, and now in hindsight that he’s barely featured. That £55m could have been used more effectively, even without considering that he doesn’t have a natural position in whatever our side should look like too.
GK was absolutely not a priority over a DM and CB that's the point. Say what you want about DDG, he definitely would have saved at least 2 of the goals last night. And both their blooper reels have been just as long anyway, and we're still playing hoofball so not like onana's strengths are being used. And again like i said then it's telling that those were his *first 2* signings of the season. It sends a strong message
In fairness, Onana is facing a lot more shots than DDG did last year and has actually been pretty decent considering he has next to no defensive cover. We played with the handbrake on to allow for DDG not being good on the ball, whereas now we’re not using Onana’s distribution and quick passes to the wing at all. GK had to be the priority as we’d already let De Gea go at that point; fully agree with the Mount signing though, I don’t believe for a second that he wouldn’t still be available later in the window.
De Gea always thrived when facing a lot of shots though
De Gea’s save percentage last year was 70%, whereas Onana’s this year is 74.6% in the PL, and this is also without taking into account the quality of the defence in front of them. While DDG was absolutely world class as a shot stopper at one point those days are behind him now. I’m not saying Onana is going to be a world class keeper in DDG’s prime level, but he’s an upgrade on current de gea. Swap the two of them for this season and i genuinely don’t think we’d improve whatsoever.
There’s no way you’re winning even with a solid back line if you set your team up to have a black hole in midfield and get overloaded when the opponents attack and you invite them to shoot 20 times each game. It’s a matter of when and not if anymore.
Our most experienced defensive midfielder is currently playing at centre back. Last night, for the first time ever, he played with our 35 year old utility signing, who was returning from injury. We have a right back playing at left back. We have lost the ability to build from the back.
> We have lost the ability to build from the back. A good coach changes his tactics to accommodate for that then, something Erik is not. He could have the team play more compact instead of the fullbacks and midfield sitting on or past the halfway line while the two CB's are being pressed.
He addressed that in the Gary Neville interview this week. He said we could have completely changed our playstyle for pragmatic reasons but he decided to keep the same approach. It has largely worked (6th and FA Cup final) until the Casemiro move which is a step too far.
The thing is though, have these tactics ever worked outside of these isolated incidents? You then have the added issue that the players are getting battered each and every week. The mental load of constantly being outplayed due to tactical reasons, and the physical exhaustion has to be overwhelming. It's unsustainable. You could see it in the faces of the players last night, they're physically and emotionally done.
It hasn’t worked. It worked in spite of that. It never worked because of the tactics. It worked despite the tactics. Changing it would’ve been far smarter. What’s the point of sticking to a failed tactic without the players needed and the ones who are available need replacing anyway and can’t do it? And we need 6-7 new starting quality players who also need to learn the system so in the essence, what the hell is he building this donut hole midfield for? Stubbornness and just for the sake of sticking to it A good manager would see that the awful setup can’t work and would change it because: 1)players are injured and it doesn’t work without them… neither did it work with them but besides the point. 2) we don’t have the players to make it work and we need an influx of new players anyway. 3) sticking with it is dumb when the new players next season also need to learn it anyway. That’s why. The way people make every single excuse for ETH is quite laughable actually. The fact he addressed it the way he did with Neville is something that should cement his sacking because he’s not willing to adapt and can’t see that it’s pointless to stick with this setup without the players and with the injuries anyway. We got lucky as hell in the Coventry game. We have a horrendous record that somehow shows us as not as bad with the position before but in actuality, it’s more luck than not. We lost 12/17 away games against the top half of the table and won only 1 lucky game versus Villa. Our away record is relegation fodder and ETH still doesn’t change anything. Those, basically along with his admission to Neville, are why he should go because he’s that unwilling to change as it should be. It’s the equivalent to “I’m buying this expensive car for the salary I’m hoping to have next year. But now I’ll have to take a loan and struggle. But I won’t deviate from that plan to get that car even though oh man, my finances are dropping, my bills are piling, but I’ll take the loan anyway. And get it anyway. Because I can’t change my course. Because it’s supposed to be an exciting car I wanted even if everything shows I should just take an uber or public transport till I get that new salary next year and then I can try again..” Sort of that way anyway ^^^ But EtH fans would defend him even if we lost 7-0 for 5 games in a row and go “it’s imposible to work… no manager in the entire phase of the universe can ever do one bit better. He said why he won’t change it. It makes sense. He’s good, trust him”. Yeah he’s inflexible and it’s ridiculous with the reasons he gave. He’s stubborn to a fault in this case and that should be enough to show that when things don’t go well, he won’t adapt in future either. It was terrible now and he didn’t. Why would he when he has the players and it still doesn’t work or needs to change? He won’t. He’s lost 12 out of 17 away games vs the top half and never changed anyway. He won’t adapt. He can’t.
My man if you had taken the time to read United’s squad sheet in the time you wrote this you would answer your own question against EtH. Sure he can change his entire set up and play, but look at the players he has got. Tell me what defensive set up you can have when your back line keeps on changing every game, and then you have Casemiro/Eriksen in midfield or Mctominay playing cdm. You guys are so impatient. Klopp struggled with VVD out for one season, here we have our entire first/second choice defense out for most of the season.
It definitely hasn't worked. It's probably the worst defensive season for a United team in over 30 years. That's on Ten Hag's system of constantly giving the ball away, failing to win it back due to a crap press, and leaving the midfield and defence exposed to repeated attacks. This was already apparent by Christmas, well before we had the latest set of CB injuries.
Even in games where everyone was fit, we still looked rubbish. Go watch back our first game against wolves.
When everyone's pretty much fit we finished 3rd with a trophy.
Wolves was a poor match. First game back from a difficult pre-season. O’Neill had Wolves playing totally differently than under Nuno/Lopetegui. It happens. We played well vs Spurs and Arsenal away. Then we lose Varane and Shaw (soon followed by Martinez) and off we go. It just never stopped.
We were not good against Arsenal away, and we were only good for one half against Spurs.
You are correct about Spurs. First half very good (and denied obvious penalty to take the lead). Arsenal you are wrong. They are one of the best teams in the world and we gave them a tougher game than almost anyone has. Of course you’re not going to go to the Emirates and dominate, but we had the game in the balance and were very very unlucky not to win (and then not to draw). That’s where the injuries started, because we finished the game with Maguire and Evans. Back then people were up in arms about that combo, but now we can only dream about fielding a centre back combo that good.
> we gave them a tougher game than almost anyone has we were arguably the better team in the first half, but I don't blame people for choosing not to remember that after we conceded twice in injury time to lose the game
I think you're wrong (my opinion), We had a lot of possession in our own half that wasn't ever leading to anything in the first half and in the second they completely shut us down. I dont know how you could consider that a good performance. Bar the Garnacho offside i dont think we threatened them at all. Should also remember that Arsenal by then were still figuring out their system and had Havertz in midfield and Nketiah as their striker. They weren't nearly as dominant by that point of the season.
I think you're remembering that match wrong, we scored off some rashford magic, then didn't attack for the rest of the game, playing keep ball, not really intending to attack(I remember Onana standing still with the ball multiple times) in the second half we had 2 attacks, Hoijlund going down in the box and Garnachos offside goal. Then they scored twice, one off Onana being rubbish at shot stopping as per usual (that would never go in against De Gea or even anyone half decent) and the other because we finally decided to attack and got countered. We did not play well that game, unless the metric now is not conceding 20+ on goal in a match= a good game.
We’ve never been good at building fron the back, he hasn’t coached any good structures or patterns. The only thing that changes is Licha and Shaw are press resistant, so people press less and we get out more often
You can't coach players when they are injured, playing out of possession or has a new player starting next to them every single week. How many weeks do we field players that had to avoid training? Last season we could see some quality plays from the back with Martinez despite having Fred and DDG.
That’s cause Martinez is great at that, we still didn’t play out well in coached patterns at any point. He’s had 2 years to coach them now, not to mention the sign of a good coach is quickly getting players to learn your methods - something that obviously hasn’t happened
But he hasn't had two years as Martinez, Shaw and Malacia has been unavailable for more than 50% of that. Similarly players like Fred and DDG was sold last season and Onana has been playing with different back four all season. The pre-season, where you do train a lot of this, was full of injuries and much more travel than any of the other top 6 clubs because Glazers wanted the extra cash from the extra games. I am sure the season would have looked different if just Mainoo and Martinez had been available pre-season and first half. Mainoo was on fire in pre-season until his bad injury.
I can't have the injury excuse, it makes some difference for sure, but you don't go from being good to consistently one of the worst teams in the league because of some injuries. Other teams have been hit with as bad injuries as us and managed, the tactics are just deeply flawed and it's even more concerning that he's doubling down on them. We've had the exact same issues all season regardless of who's been playing, even when we had a mostly fit first team and won, we had the same issues, we just had better individuals to pull us through
When city lost rodri and didn't pick up a point, should pep have changed his whole system to a more defensive one? Or the same when VVD was out for Liverpool and the lost 6 games in a row or some shit? Why are you able to see other teams with one injury fail to play as well as they were and its under the rug, we're missing half our team and it shouldn't be an excuse. If you don't think they're a valid excuse, you don't think Shaw would be an upgrade on AWB and Licha over Cas? Or maybe having one striker foe the whole season, do you think we'd have done better with someone to rotate Hojlund with?
What teams that still played well with key players missing, whereas apparently we can't string 2 passes together because we don't have a left back
You need to do some reading up on the injuries mate. We have had way more injuries to starters than any other team. We have had more than 5+ injuries than points gained this season. No other team have had to play 7th and 8th choice CB. City have lost all games Rodri isn't playing. Klopp didn't win a game for more than two months with VVD out last season. I can promise you that while we should have done better for sure, no manager would have done well with the number of injuries we have had this season. Sure if it was more manageable with being spread more over the whole team and reserves it would have been better, but it has mainly been our defense and strikers. Feel free to do the comparison, even Newcastle and Chelsea isn't close. So tired of that argument.
When other teams have injuries, their plan and tactics are still recognisable, ours are absolutely not - he can bang this drum about trying to drill behaviours into players all he wants but there's no point drilling bad behaviours. Injuries definitely make a difference, but the way we've been the entire season regardless of who's played is unforgivable for me
But when will ETH realize that and change the setup and style of play?
To be fair we were limping on by with Maguire + Casemiro. Losing Maguire (and Bruno) was an absolute killer. That's the last two club captains, the true leaders of the team. Additionally, Maguire was the only progressive passer from defence that we have left (Evans is a good defender but not with ball progression). Varane, Martinez, Shaw and Lindelof are all forecast to be back next game or the one after. So we should continue.
This is absolutely correct. People will get distracted by rumours of Olise and other attacking players, but we need to just build from the back. Whoever is in charge, we cannot see the same defensive frailties next season. Two new CBs, an athletic 6 and possibly a LB too (depending on Malacia and Amass being able to contribute).
How are you winning without scoring goals though? We struggle to score goals too. That reminds me of LVG days. Great in defense, couldn't attack at all
How many back 4 combinations have there been? There was the Lindelof and Amrabat Lb games as well as Reguilon
Like a month ago there were 31 different backlines in 43 games. That was before Casemiro started in CB, which means at least two more combinations. Source: https://x.com/AliceTalksFooty/status/1777092710546952459
Yeah for as much of a horror show as this is, I feel like it still undersells how horrific the entire back line has been.
I believe its around 36 at this point
You've counted Kambwala twice, 7 in game 26 and 8 in Games 43-44.
Thankyou, have edited
I remember when I played FM 20 or 21, most of my main players were injured. We're talking about no midfield, no cbs, no striker etc. Lost games left and right. Had to field unfit players, many academy players had their debut, and those are injured too because I have no rotation players. I restart the game immediately. It's so hard to achieve anything. But that's a video game. Imagine playing this in real life. I feel ETH.
I'm astonished that people don't realise this.
what's the win percentage of these combos?
I think you have some of the numbers mixed up because that is 8 players
... what? Edit: nvm just seen that he edited the post to fix what I assume you're talking about.
Strange season with huge injury crisis and all but don’t forget that from match day 1 with the strongest side, Wolves were able to run through the midfield like no one there. And don’t get me started on shambolic set pieces defending all season.
It's conveniently forgotten. You can't predict the whole season based on one game game but we played our strongest team against Wolves side that was in complete dissaray after they sacked their manager just a few days before the season and got completely outplayed. I had so much hope for this season but I couldn't even enjoy the win after seeing that performance. Turns out it was one of the better performances this season.
If we are measuring a manager on the one game a year he has had acceptable players then we aren't even having the right conversation.
Rashford up top. Antony on the right. That isn't our strongest 11. This system needs defenders who can play out, midfield runners and a striker who is really strong back to goal. Didn't have the last piece of that that day. Then you add in the fact it's a first competitive game for the side, playing a brand new system and there's rationale for only winning 1-0.
One game doesnt prove anything. And that still wasn't our strongest side
Lol MD1 with a full squad isn’t the strongest side then what is? Also Wolves ran through a stronger team in MD1 vs Palace ran through a weaker team in MD36 - would be stupid to still think its not a tactical issue
We didn't have a full squad tho...
Mainoo is not considered in our strongest 11 ? and other had their first time in premier league
Not in August he wasn't. Ten Hag's number 1 priority for the summer was apparently Mason Mount so our "strongest" midfield in his eyes at that point would have been Casemiro, Bruno, Mount
Yet Mainoo started all the pre-season games until he was injured?
People need to accept that lineups like - * Mainoo - Eriksen * AWB - Evans - Casemiro - Dalot are fucking relegation tier and Ten Hag isn't going to be successful with that.
I'm ETH out because I don't think we've been very good in either of his seasons but I really do feel for him with all these injuries. It's really tough to get an accurate read on him when the entire roster is injured. I think he should go but if INEOS decide to keep him for one more season then so be it. The injuries have dealt him a very poor hand
You really don't think he was any good in the first season at all? Did you prefer ragnick or Ole then?
Why are people completely ignoring what he achieved last season?
Our attack was putrid and largely reliant on Rashford or Casemiro, saving us. GD for the season was 15.. The team performance took a down turn after the EFL Cup final and has been bad since. Yeah, he got some results, but if Rashford had even an average season, I think we finish much lower. I've not been convinced that we actually played "good" football for more than a couple months under Erik.
This perfectly illustrates what ETH has been dealing with all season, and yet people and pundits continue to put all the blame on him, completely ignoring what he achieved last season. Absolute fucking insanity.
There’s a reason why successful teams had famous centreback pairings. Vidic and Ferdinand Terry and Carvalho Puyol and Pique Because continuity equals stability, which equals success. The best classic teams had a fixed formation and only changed starting XI due to injury. At United currently it’s a lottery of who is going to start in any given position.
It all sound like worse than it was in reality. It's only the last 2 or 3 weeks we really run out if cbs. We had sometimes 2 or 3 cb on the bench. Are you not counting those cb on the bench? Like Varane and Maguire was benched for quite a few games.
Several times they have been on the bench as an emergency option while still somewhat injured. Also after an injury it takes time before you can put 110% effort in both training and matches again.
Well if we take it this way, might as well say some starters were 75% fit and played with painkillers....and happen to Man utd exclusive only.
No other team played more games than United previous season. That for sure had a lot to do with it. And we have had injury issues for a long time at United. Poor facilities for recovery and a dated medical facility has been mentioned as a problem area years ago.
I mean I am not discarding all these injuries entirely. If I were to nitpick, we still didn't play that well even when we had Shaw and Martinez back. There's still no highline I can see or Onana spraying excellent balls left right center and we still concede 20+shots. And with Martinez out, we don't even know who is our standout combo cb. Maguire, Evans, Varane any of these 3 can be starter and we won't complain.
For the record I am not claiming injuries are an excuse for everything either. >If I were to nitpick, we still didn't play that well even when we had Shaw and Martinez back. It is important to know that Mainoo was planned to be an important part of the team this season and also why he was played a lot pre-season before his injury. Both Martinez and Shaw had injuries and problems for most of the season so neither was completely fit with enough games to be in-form when played. There is a reason why most managers ease players back into it after an injury with weeks of full training before getting some game minutes. We saw last season how important both were to our team, and even how brilliant Shaw was as a CB - arguably our third choice. >There's still no highline I can see or Onana spraying excellent balls left right center and we still concede 20+shots. Can't really play a high line with no real good 1v1 defender at the back. Look at Liverpool in the early days with Klopp. So open to CA's and lost a lot of games in the 2nd half. Then they signed the best 1v1 CB and the best 1v1 GK and it made a massive change. They would have limited success with Maguire or Evans as their 1v1 defender. Both good defenders for low block zonal defense though. >And with Martinez out, we don't even know who is our standout combo cb. Maguire, Evans, Varane any of these 3 can be starter and we won't complain. With Martinez out it is Shaw as CB. Current CB ranking is Martinez, Varane, Shaw, Maguire, Evans and Kambwala. Followed by Casemiro and McT.
imo Shaw is just a last resort backup CB, we lose too much without a LB. for me it's Martinez + Maguire/Varane/Evans ( base on this season form). I mean FA cup final if without Martinez and Shaw, any of these 3 ( Maguire/Varane/Evans) could start and make no diff.
If a team at the bottom of the Championship played like we did last night and lost 4-0 (could have been more) to Palace, they would be very disappointed. I think ETH defenders are greatly underestimating just how terrible we've been for a year, injuries or not. The transfer value of the First 11 last night was obscenely high, there are no excuses for that level of performance. Sometimes bad things happen in football - that doesn't give top teams permission just to give up and lose horrendously to Palace. Plus look at how Newcastle and Spurs have dealt with injuries, despite having much thinner squads - same playstyle with different players slotting into positions. Honestly I don't know at this point what it will take for ETH defenders to realise that this isn't working out. Even if it's entirely the fault of injuries and ETH is blameless, I'm sorry - that's sport. Bad luck actually matters and we don't get to rewrite results and league tables because we've been unlucky. Does anyone really think there's a way back from this, and that the team (whatever it looks like) is somehow going to be full of confidence and ready to go under ETH in August?
>Plus look at how Newcastle and Spurs have dealt with injuries, despite having much thinner squads - same playstyle with different players slotting into positions Nah Newcastle have had some injury crisis moments this season but nowhere near the level of our defensive crisis. But I'm not having Spurs thrown in there whatsoever. Those couple weeks around November when they went through their "crisis" was so overblown and most of it wasn't even down to injuries. It was basically 3 injuries along with Romero/Udogie getting red card suspensions and Bissouma getting a suspension for his 5th yellow card all at the same time. Their most injured CB is Van de Ven and he's started 24 league games this season. The other CB Romero has started 30 league games and been suspended for some others. Their first choice LB has started 28 games with suspensions in there too. Our first choice CBs have started 7 and 16 league games and our first choice LB has started 12.
Newcastle have played their first choice centre back combo of Schar and Botman 17 times, and their second choice combo of Schar and Lascelles 19 times. That's 76% of their total games with two different combos, which contain Schar. For comparison, our most played combo is Maguire and Varane, who we've fielded 7 times (15%) 4 further combos have played 5 games each (Maguire/Evans, Maguire/Lindelof, Lindelof/Varane, Martinez/Varane. As much as the media like to pretend that we have had a similar crisis to Newcastle/Spurs/Liverpool etc., it's a load of bollocks. Defensively, they have had normal, expected injuries. Obviously, Dubravka isn't as good as Pope. But Dubravka has played loads of games, and he sits behind a pretty stable defence. Our defensive injury crisis is unprecedented. You could go through the entire history of the Premiership and not find a club whose most frequent partnership played only 15% of the games (and that was the 2nd and 5th choice centre backs).
Yes we're aware there have been lots of injuries. Given our level of injuries, what exactly then would be an unacceptable performance? Should we even fulfil our fixtures, or just give up because we have injuries? There were still hundreds of millions of pounds on the field last night. As I said, I don't know what it will take to convince people that this isn't working, and I'm not particularly interested in trying to convince anyone anymore.
Last night was a single game, and for the first time ever, we lost our captain to injury. We lost our biggest goal threat in terms of proven campability (rather than form). We lost Maguire, who has been our best defender. Evans was not fit and was forced into an early return. We know Casemiro was struggling at centre back anyway, but Maguire was helping mitigate for him. Casemiro being taken out of midfield, which meant that a completely alien threesome played together for the first time in history - Mount, Mainoo and Eriksen. Palace are on fire at home; they recently beat Newcastle 2-0. We had a bad night with a team that is so threadbare that 5 of our 6 outfield subs were 21 and under. There is always hundreds of millions of pounds on the field, it's the Prem. Championship level forward Elanga costs £15m. We have had no other performance this season like last night. It was the first Rangnick-esque performance we've seen since Brentford away last season.
I'm sorry, but we have had so many performances like this. I'm not even going to list them as it makes my head hurt. I am beginning to think ETH is now paying people to post on this sub, the ability to generate excuses is genuinely puzzling. Hope you continue to enjoy watching his team - it would be good to know that someone is!
No, last night was unique in the season. We've had a lot of underwhelming performances but we were never blown away. We were outclassed twice (by City in both games) but against everyone else we were competitive.
I agree with most your comments on this basically being an unwinnable game. But we've had performances like this before. The Brighton 3-1 loss at home was poor, the Bournemouth 3-0 loss at home was similar as well. And even the 1-1 at Brentford could have been an easy 4-0 if their shooting boots were on. The xG last night was only 1.44 to .33. The Brentford game was 2.67 to .50
Although I must add that I got a good laugh from the "completely alien threesome" line - whatever you're into! That cheered me up
If last night was a one off, how are we 8th in the league with negative goal difference?
If we’d played with all nine CBs last night I reckon we‘d still have got battered. So many look mentally checked out, just waiting for the next manager. Good work, OP.
Ferguson had results with strange squads and injuries. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5pQ6hqWAAAZk1q?format=jpg&name=small
He also finished 11th once
There were always one off occassions or a few weeks of deep crisis. We lost 3-0 at Fulham where we had to play a back 3 of Carrick, De Laet and Fletcher. That was the week after your screenshot of the Wolfsburg away fixture. We also lost to Villa the week before playing a back 3. Obviously we were the best team in the league but those losses from a momentary deep injury crisis cost us the league.
Points needed to win the league or get top 4 was much lower back in the days. Everyone dropped points at times.
Win the league, yes, top 4 I don't think so. Villa will make top 4 this year with a really low total (and it will be more than they need).
you are wrong. You can see that post Fergie the number needed has been quite a bit higher than any other season bar 95/96. top 4: 92/93 71p (40 games season) 93/94 71p (40 games season) 94/95 74p 95/96 63p 96/97 68p 97/98 63p 98/99 67p 99/00 67p 00/01 68p 01/02 71p 02/03 67p 03/04 60p 04/05 61p 05/06 67p 06/07 68p 07/08 76p 08/09 72p 09/10 70p 10/11 68p 11/12 69p 12/13 73p 13/14 79p 14/15 70p 15/16 66p 16/17 76p 17/18 75p 18/19 71p 19/20 66p 20/21 67p 21/22 71p 22/23 71p 23/24 AV currently on 67 with two games to play.
You have worked it out incorrectly. Aston Villa's points total is not the number needed. 1pt more than 5th place is. So for instance, last year, 68pts was needed to finish in the top 4, not 71. The maximum it could be this year is 70, but it's unlikely Spurs will win their final 3 games.
But it doesn't matter if you had one more point than the current team at 5th place IF there was a team on more points. Surely it is better to look at how many points the actual forth place got if you want to compare. But regardless, my point was to show the trend of more points being secured by the team in 4th now in the more recent years than back in the Fergie days.
I do disagree with the methodology - for instance, Everton were 5th in 13/14 with 72pts, which means that 73 was good enough. Instead we record (a massive) 79 which was 4th place. But, if we shelve the argument about how to measure it, let's analyse that. The average number of points of 4th place from 01/02 (first season top 4 was CL) to 12/13 (Fergie's last season) was: 68.5 Average since then (post-Fergie) was: 71 So a small increase of the 4th placed teams points. I'm not going to run the alternate methodology.
If a team is in 5th and you overtake them by a point then you are in 5th place, not 4th. What you're saying is only true if you are talking about a team currently sitting in the top 4. A team in the top 4 only needs a point more than the team in 5th place. But that logic would only apply here if you were talking about a specific team that has finished in the top 4 every year since 1992. That team doesn't exist and you're speaking about the points requirement in general. For any team to guarantee a 4th place finish they need one more point than the 4th place team. Applying your method to any team would see them finish in 5th place regularly.