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Midweek Football 1/4 November


andykeenan

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6 minutes ago, villa89 said:

Ronaldo isn't the probelm. The probelm is a manager who hasn't a clue and dumb and dumber trying to play in central midfield.

He isn’t the problem, he’s a problem.

Man Utd have become a soft side with world class players, rather than a world class side. 

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He's a big problem. They're like a mid table team in the 90s. "If we can just get this guy in to score 10 -15 we will be safe. He doesn't run. Contribute in any way. He makes everyone's job harder and makes the team function worse but if he scores 10 - 15 we will be alright."

Except they are Man Utd. With actual aspirations.

2 goals last minute winner, great. Man United were abysmal and should have lost. Again. They are a far worse team with Ronaldo in it.

Wouldn't be so bad it you could bring on for 20 and get these last minute winners now and again...but you can't. It's Ronaldo. You have to play him.

 

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47 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

I’m no expert, but I watched a Tifo podcast earlier this season that explained how Sancho’s minutes/touches were similar at Man Utd to what they were at Dortmund (at the time), and how less effective he is at Man Utd, largely down to how Ronaldo’s lack of pressing means that the space in front of Sancho is reduced, compared to when he was at Dortmund and would run down the channels and create/assist/score from it. They touched on how Sancho playing with Cavani up top would actually, likely work better, because Cavani is a harder worker than Ronaldo, and this chasing and pulling of defenders results in gaps on the wing for Sancho to exploit. (As I say, I’m no expert, and I’m probably explaining it wrong, but I’ve read and watched a few pieces explaining similar CR7 problems).

Have they even played together yet? I see that Sancho has only had 3 starts 

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United have bigger problems than Ronaldo, if anything his goals are papering over the cracks. 

Maguire, McFred, Pogba, Shaw are much bigger problems for them. Ferguson wouldn't have put up with them especially Maguire

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1 minute ago, Zatman said:

United have bigger problems than Ronaldo, if anything his goals are papering over the cracks. 

Maguire, McFred, Pogba, Shaw are much bigger problems for them. Ferguson wouldn't have put up with them especially Maguire

Maguire definitely. He has at least 2 mistakes in him a game, just now he's getting punished for them.

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2 minutes ago, Zatman said:

United have bigger problems than Ronaldo, if anything his goals are papering over the cracks. 

Maguire, McFred, Pogba, Shaw are much bigger problems for them. Ferguson wouldn't have put up with them especially Maguire

That’s where I am at, Ronaldo is papering over the cracks elsewhere at the club. They occasionally look ok but often the issues at CB and CM keep showing themselves.

They could replace Ronaldo with Sancho and have Cavani doing more pressing but I can’t see how that would make this step improvement over what they have now. Ronaldo is smashing in goal after goal, and many are proper top drawer goals too. Sancho or Cavani aren’t consistently scoring the quantity of quality of goals Ronaldo is scoring.

I have some sympathy for Sancho (as much as you can have for a filthy rich young man being paid millions to watch football matches). He’s clearly the collateral damage for the unplanned last minute signing of Ronaldo.

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defintely balance and i think we suffer from the same problems but with lower quality players

the midfield unit isn't good enough, you can look at their problems in defence or attack and both will stem from the middle

not a clue how you spend a billion on a football team and have mcfred + matic still getting games, when you throw in the woes of VDB, pogba's fondness of turning up when it suits him and juan mata's semi retirement they have 6 midfielders where pogba a t a push would make a bench at another top 4 team, the others wouldnt make the match day squad, we could have a good argument here about who makes our starting 11 and again only pogba would be an instant starter (and you can imagine what his thread would be like after a game every week...)

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42 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Have they even played together yet? I see that Sancho has only had 3 starts 

Crudely looking at flashscores, it’s roughly 310 minutes playing together. (Of 594 mins Sancho’s played for Man Utd in total). 

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40 minutes ago, Zatman said:

United have bigger problems than Ronaldo, if anything his goals are papering over the cracks. 

Maguire, McFred, Pogba, Shaw are much bigger problems for them. Ferguson wouldn't have put up with them especially Maguire

I don't think that's true.  Man Utd had all of Maguire, McFred, Pogba and Shaw playing last season - and they looked a better side last season than they do this season.  What they had up top was either Rashford or Cavani or Greenwood, all of who would move off the ball either into channels or drop into midfield allowing Bruno Fernandes to move forward and exploit that space.

When you have a more stationary striker up top (hi Ronaldo), Fernandes' role becomes far, far less effective.  Instead of making breaking runs through into space, he'll be running into a "crowded" area so is more reliant on having to sit deeper and playing through balls et al.  It's stifling their entire attack.

Man Utd have scored 19 goals in 10 games in the league this season.  Before Ronaldo, they had scored 7 in 3.  Since Ronaldo joined, they've scored 12 in 7.  Small sample size, obvs, but that's a shift from a ratio of 2.3 goals every game to 1.7 every game.

To suggest Ronaldo has improved them or is papering over the cracks is just wrong.  They have issues elsewhere in the team, for sure, and they should have fixed them.  Instead, they've signed a world class finisher who they just didn't need.

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Just now, fightoffyour said:

Red card for Atletico is ballsy from the ref, but that’s exactly the kind of cynical fouling bullshit that for too long has been a definite yellow and no more when it’s actually disgusting behaviour.

Sent him off for dissent and has since booked two more - it's crooked.

 

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