Not good enough for your country. Not good enough for Utd.

Not sure you can say Smalling isn't good enough for his country when Kyle Walker is playing at centreback for England and Phil Jones is in the squad. That'd be a bit like deciding a racing car isn't fast enough because your friend thinks his bicycle is faster than it, and then also claims that your other, slower car, which you know for a fact is slower, is also faster than it.

I think Shaw is a better left back than either Young or a hopelessly unfit Rose too. I also think Martial would be quite a useful player for France to have in their squad considering Giroud is their go to back up option when any one of their many inconsistent attacking players decides to have an off day.

It's dangerous to presume that national team managers actually know who their best players are. They don't watch every United game and compare it against every game from every other team. They probably know less about players at specific clubs than the fans of those clubs do.

With Mata and Herrera Spain obviously have better players, but Spain have a pretty ridiculous selection of midfielders to choose from. They also sacked their manager who chose the squad, so you know, it's a bit void.

We should be concentrating on improving on what we have, not worrying about what national team managers are doing.

The whole premise is nonsense.

Just because you're a good player who doesn't fit into your national team's system doesn't mean you wouldn't flourish in our system.

Well generally I would disagree with that as a player at the level required should be able to adapt to different systems playing for both club and country.

I thought the thread was going to be about Rashford.

With all the talk about him not starting enough for united he then doesn't start for England.

As it is, I think it's been covered already but the actual opening post doesn't make too much sense, I'd prefer to keep Herrera over fellaini, one's at the World Cup, one isn't.

So if you had an international team that wanted to play with a good old fashioned number 9 who would get his head on the ball and put himself about, partnered with a number 10 just behind him...where would that leave Andy Cole for example?

He was neither of those and in general, he didn't fit into any England set up. True, there was competition for places but given what England had up front at the time, he was usually something of a square peg in a round hole.

Just because you don't fit in at international level doesn't mean you can't fit in at a top club.

Someone cited Steve Bruce as example. What about Carrick? Consistently overlooked or at best underused by England.

Personally, I couldn't give a shiny shit if someone isn't deemed by their national team manager as not good enough, it is how they fit in to United's system that would be of interest to me.

I'd agree with all those except Shaw: he's certainly at least be in the squad if Jose had given him game time

Silly thread.

Isn't there already something like that in England regarding non european players?

Anyway I agree most top clubs have squads filled with players that represent their nations but is usually club performances that make players get selected for their countries, and it will the players from the lesser nations (in terms of football) that could jump to a bigger club after a good World Cup.

So the statement is partially right but there are many things to consider and you can't forget is always nice for a big club to develop their own players before they go big for both club and nation.

One of the dumbest OPs recently. Nothing much more to add.

You can't base decisions from whether or not a player is picked for their nation.

With our wage structure back then? Not a chance!

Tactical naivety and the English rule cost us in Europe back then

This thread is silly lol. There are reasons other than quality (or lack thereof) why a player may be left out of a World Cup squad. Hell, wasn’t Icardi left out of Argentina cos he was fecking his teammate’s mrs or something?

As much as I agree to arguments from both sides here, it really should be said that Martial is not a good example for either case:

* Great debut season for United, makes the Euro squad but barely plays and is far outshined by West Ham's Payet in the French side that makes the final

* Topsy turvy 17/18 season with United, misses the World Cup squad for a French team that has so far looked appalling and might actually have benefited from Martial's strengths (many games to go of course)

Well, Javi Martinez is definitely good enough for us, even though he never is called up for Spain.

tbf he was hardly the best defenders United ever had.

No I agree but him and Pally were one of the best partnerships we had.

Extremely flawed rationale behind this thread. That said, I must admit that I found it disturbing that Lindelof can only make the bench for Sweden. If he isn’t even amongst the best 4 for a poor team like that, then it does beg the question.

He was a starter for them before he came to United... probably on the bench due to lack of game time at United.

I accept, but it’s still Sweden. There are many teams of similar level who play players at big clubs who barely feature. If you play for England or Spain, I think the rule of ‘you have to be playing well and regularly’ applies more to players at big clubs. Like, Elneny obviously starts for Egypt despite not starting for Arsenal, for example. For Sweden, I would not have thought a United-level player at 23 wouldn’t start for them. He is just likely to be much better than any other option. As it is, the other options for Sweden are no-marks.

@Rozay I'm quite sure Lindelof is Sweden's certain starter. If this is referring to the recent WC game where he is awol, then he wasn't even on the bench, he was ill last minute.. Sweden NT team found out the morning before the game, something like that.

This makes sense to me, and makes the whole thing less alarming. Thank you.

Look at the top European clubs: International players throughout. Atletico Madrid a level under the top clubs have 2 midfielders in the Spanish WC squad. Where are our 2 Spaniards? Not even in contention!

Laughable thread

Nonsense.

Herrera as an example would walk into plenty of WC teams. As an Australian I am certainty he would be a starter for us if we could change his passport! He might need to grow a beard though.

Or maybe we should sell Martial and buy that LW from the South Korean team? He's at the WC.

But why are we happy with just making the group stages? Let's wait until the final and pick from the starters from the two teams.

But we probably don't want losers either, so let's just buy the WC winners. And completely refresh the squad in 4 years, unless they win the WC again.

He's easily better than Witsel for starters.

I'm not saying we should not be competing for the best players, but at this point we are not going to get them. We don't have a positive manager and it seems there is no long term plan.

If I was wrong then Griezmann or Bale would already be here.

What player have we gotten lately that you would consider one of the best in his position?

Exactly.

Check how many players are in world cup from Bayern, Madrid, Barca, City, ManUtd.

Yeah sure, Fellaini is better than Nainggolan.

Not sure why you brought Willian into discussion when OP is talking about Sandro, a LB.

Exactly. Sums up the OP.

RM = 14
Barca = 14
City = 16
Bayern = 11
Utd = 11 (12 if we include Fred)

Most goals have been scored by player in La Liga.

Wouldn't want either at United, though. Nainggolan is a good player, but a difficult personality, as evidenced by his problems at the nationlevel
nation
nation
nation level
national level
national level

So we have nearly as many as most of the clubs. This is also excluding Romero who is #1 for Argentina but was injured.

Clearly then Carrick stayed too long....

We won a European Trophy with Steve Bruce at the back so do not see your point. Also remember there was the foreigner rule back then so could not play our best team. So what a ridiculous statement.

You're saying we should be looking to offload players who are not in their country's squad. Martial isn't. Fellaini is.

You've mentioned that we shouldn't talk about Steve Bruce or Cantona because that's all in the past but why shouldn't we? Just so we can't poke holes into your post? Now you say I shouldn't be mentioning Fellani because he has "nothing to do" with the argument. Why? So we can't, again, poke holes into your post?

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I think it's mental that Martial didn't go to the World Cup.

I think you can make an argument for taking him instead of Fekir, and even failing that, definitely him over Thauvin.

Not good for United, not good enough for United. Need to take squad players into consideration though and there's an argument to be made for Mata/Herrera there.

Terrible thread, can’t believe so many people is bothering to reply the OP when he’s clearly just shit posting whatever suits his bullshit and denying everything that doesn’t.

I'd love to see Julian Weigl at Old Trafford, but if he can't get into the Germany squad.....

Yeah, Scholes and Carrick were never good enough for us.

You absolute tit!