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Football: Sheikh your Money Maker


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2 hours ago, Calibandar said:
  • Pogba has been utterly mundane so far and continued that trend as well. He and Herrera both were extremely lazy in allowing Konte to just walk away from them on that 4th goal. 

I just went back and watched that goal again just to focus on Pogba and it's pathetic. He just jogs the entire time when he has multiple opportunities to get in there and disrupt Kantes run. 

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I don't recall any United player having a decent outing yesterday; they were all shit, particularly the defence (even DDG had an off day). I don't think it unreasonable to be questioning the attitude of some of the players after an abysmal 1st half showing against City and then the shitshow yesterday (these are the sort of games where you'd expect the players to be fired up). Add in the display against Watford and it becomes clear that this wasn't just a bad day at the office - the problems go much deeper.

One thing that really concerns me is that we don't have an identity. I've no idea how the team will set up and play from game-to-game. Contrast that with the current top 5 - all of those sides have a clear identity and style of play where every player knows his role. Performances will need to improve if we are to have any chance at fourth place. My preseason prediction was that we would be battling it out for 4th spot. Now I am not so sure as the team has not progressed nearly as much as I thought they would.

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1 hour ago, Mark Antony said:

I just went back and watched that goal again just to focus on Pogba and it's pathetic. He just jogs the entire time when he has multiple opportunities to get in there and disrupt Kantes run. 

I know. He couldn't be bothered, at all.

If this were Fellaini the press and fans would be all over him; Pogba still has the credit but he is losing it every week.

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Pogba's your biggest signing and your second-biggest star (after Zlatan, of course ;) ). He joined the team last summer for an insane fee, has shown very little that would justify such a price tag since he hasn't really played great in any of the big games.

So, where does the credit come from?

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I don't know. But he's new, he's a big name, and he starts out with a lot of credit.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have a lot of credit to begin with, that's fine. But it's being eaten away week in week out by his performances. I've seen him play 1 really solid game this season and that was for France vs Holland. Which in itself could be a sort of indicator that he too is feeling the effects of a team that has no idea what it is doing and has no offensive flow to find any refuge in. 

On top of him there's the ongoing disappointment with Mikhitaryan, which I sort of feared might happen in a worst case scenario when he was signed. 

 

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As much as I like to heap scorn on United, they have a huge squad of expensive, talented players and have the spending capacity to add more.  If a manager can't build a decent team out of DeGea, Bailly, Shaw, Schneiderlin, Herrera, Pogba, Martial, Mata, Mikhitaryan and Zlatan plus all the others -- Valencia, Blind, Darmian, Smalling, Young, Rashford, Lingard and even Schweinsteiger are all serviceable players if coached and used correctly, and Rooney and Fellaini can collect the cones after training -- then it really looks like the fault lies with the manager.  Klopp, Pep, Conte, Koeman, Puel, Pochettino are all currently showing him exactly how to coach and reinvigorate an inherited squad of players by giving the team an identity and playing to the strengths of the players.  Mourinho just goes out to negate the opposition each week.

They got praised for stymieing Liverpool last week, but that was Liverpool missing two starting midfielders and Coutinho & Firmino fatigued from long travel.  And even then United had to play their best defensive game of the season so far, waste time, resort to 6-3-1 and rely on a couple of great saves to eke out that draw.  If we repeated the game 10 times over the next several weeks, I'm pretty sure Liverpool would win five or six and United would win only one.

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2 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

then it really looks like the fault lies with the manager.  Klopp, Pep, Conte, Koeman, Puel, Pochettino are all currently showing him exactly how to coach and reinvigorate an inherited squad of players by giving the team an identity and playing to the strengths of the players.  Mourinho just goes out to negate the opposition each week.


Yeah but it's also the fault of the board and club that we've got Mourinho in the first place and not one of those guys or someone like. We should never have hired Mourinho in the first place.

I don't think it's fair to say he goes out to negate the opposition every week, that certainly hasn't been the case apart from a couple of games despite my fears, but he hasn't so far been good at getting cohesive, creative attacking football out of them.

Also he's ostracising Schneiderlin for some reason and I'm really not happy about that. You can bet your bottom dollar that we wouldn't have been as open through the middle yesterday if he'd been an option. And you'd have thought he'd be the perfect Jose player too.

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33 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Also he's ostracising Schneiderlin for some reason and I'm really not happy about that. You can bet your bottom dollar that we wouldn't have been as open through the middle yesterday if he'd been an option. And you'd have thought he'd be the perfect Jose player too.

Yeah, this makes no sense. But that's what he does now. Comes into a club and pisses all over the reputation of his players just to show that he's The Boss. 

I've said it before, but his treatment of Schweini was appalling, and probably the first step towards losing the dressing room. 

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

So 18-year-old Milan starlet Manuel Locatelli has managed two shots on target in his eight-game league career so far. This was the first and this was the second.

Don't even support Milan but I freaked out when I watched that second one live. Donnaruma also made an incredible last second save to keep the three points. Future could be bright for Milan. 

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20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, this makes no sense. But that's what he does now. Comes into a club and pisses all over the reputation of his players just to show that he's The Boss. 

I've said it before, but his treatment of Schweini was appalling, and probably the first step towards losing the dressing room. 


Well, to be honest, I don't have too much sympathy for Schweini. He has no place in the squad (well, it's him or Carrick) and Mourinho made that clear to him well before the transfer window closed. I'm fairly sure he'd be gone by now if he wasn't on such a high wage for us, he had offers. Ostracising him entirely from the first team squad still is harsh, it served to make the point to start when the window was still open but is probably counter-productive now, but it's not one I'm looking at like 'wtf Jose what are you doing'.

Unlike Schneiderlin and his recent treatment of Shaw. Blind's not a bad left-back but for fuck's sake man, Shaw's one of the most promising players in his position in the world, he made one mistake and you're shafting him. 

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21 hours ago, StefCurry said:

again Jose is talking too much.. there was no red card for Chelsea's defender.

Actually, I said that while the game was still in progress. I think around the time United conceded the third. And I just wanted to have some fun predicting what Mourinho would say in the post game presser. 

Apparently guessing what Jose would say was kinda credible enough. But in fairness he did not say my predicted line. Instead he attacked a journalist who asked him about the foul by Luiz.

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29 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, this makes no sense. But that's what he does now. Comes into a club and pisses all over the reputation of his players just to show that he's The Boss. 

I've said it before, but his treatment of Schweini was appalling, and probably the first step towards losing the dressing room. 

No. With regards to Schweinsteiger, I think Mourinho is spot on. Schweinsteiger has been injury plagued for well over the last 2 or 3 seasons. The fans at Bayern were kinda mad, when Guardiola axed him, because he was a fan favorite and a homegrown player. So getting rid off Schweinsteiger was kinda tricky business, that Bayern even received some transfer fee was probably a bonus on some level. And it wasn't particularly good business for United signing him, but van Gaal wanted him as one of the players to lead the squad. And it didn't work out. I don't know Schweinsteiger's standing in the united locker room, but there were some rumours that he wasn't that popular, spending too much time in Germany during his recovery from injuries etc. So Schweinsteiger is really a problem he inherited from van Gaal. If United gets lucky, they will get an offer from the MLS, otherwise there's a fair chance Schweinsteiger will let his contract run out.

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I feel a bit sorry for Schweini (being a huge fan of him for many years) but I don't think that Mourinho has treated him unfairly - he was informed early on that he was not part of the plans, had other offers and turned them down. A fully fit Schweinsteiger could be useful backup but his fitness has been a problem for several years now.

I agree with Polishgenius - freezing out Schneiderlin and Shaw makes no sense and you can add Mkhitaryan to that list. Even before his injury he was barely given any game time including during preseason and now that he has recovered, he cannot even make the bench. Why bother signing him in the first place then? And then there's Fellaini - with all due respect to him, while he can be useful in certain situations, for a club with United's ambitions he isn't good enough to be starting.

I really think that Mourinho needs to switch to a three-man midfield (Pogba-Schneiderlin-Herrera with Fellaini and Carrick as backup). I don't know why he is so reluctant to switch to a midfield three when he used that formation to great effect during his most successful period as a manager. It would be a different matter had we a world class/in-form specialist #10 but we don't.

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19 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

I really think that Mourinho needs to switch to a three-man midfield (Pogba-Schneiderlin-Herrera with Fellaini and Carrick as backup). I don't know why he is so reluctant to switch to a midfield three when he used that formation to great effect during his most successful period as a manager. It would be a different matter had we a world class/in-form specialist #10 but we don't.

I think the problem is Zlatan doesn't really look mobile enough to be playing as a lone striker in the Drogba mould so he seems to ending up very isolated. If Pogba's going to be as lethargic as he's looked recently I'm not sure who's going to be getting up in support out of that midfield.

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8 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I think the problem is Zlatan doesn't really look mobile enough to be playing as a lone striker in the Drogba mould so he seems to ending up very isolated. If Pogba's going to be as lethargic as he's looked recently I'm not sure who's going to be getting up in support out of that midfield.

I think that the issue with Pogba is that his role in the side has not been clearly defined (when he's not being overburdened with defensive responsibility, he's being shoehorned into the #10 position). At Juve he had two players alongside him to handle most of the defensive work while he had the freedom to do what he does best. Add to that, the entire team has been underperforming generally. While I agree on the point about Zlatan's mobility, I think that the likes of Rashford, Martial, Mkhitaryan, Lingard and Pogba are more than capable of supporting him and running into the space he vacates when dropping deep. Mkhitaryan in particular was very good at this last season.

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17 hours ago, Calibandar said:

I don't know. But he's new, he's a big name, and he starts out with a lot of credit.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have a lot of credit to begin with, that's fine. But it's being eaten away week in week out by his performances. I've seen him play 1 really solid game this season and that was for France vs Holland. Which in itself could be a sort of indicator that he too is feeling the effects of a team that has no idea what it is doing and has no offensive flow to find any refuge in. 

It's just funny to see difference in fans' attitude towards Pogba and Rooney.

One is a newly-signed player who's made more headlines with his hairstyles than with his performances on the pitch, hasn't played a good game in well over two months and cost the club 100M in the process. Plus he's left the club as a youngster, saying he'd never come back because the club hasn't recognized his talent.

The other's been part of every success the club has had over the past decade, has been played out of position and poorly utilized for years now (like pretty much every other player on the squad), hasn't complained for a moment (from what I've seen/read, though I do not and is still doing everything asked of him to the best of his abilities, such as they are.

Still, one is having "a lot of credit" and the other should be chased out of town, according to most fans.

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