Didn't Rafael also play in a CL final vs Barca under SAF?
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Didn't Rafael also play in a CL final vs Barca under SAF?
Sounds more relevant than winning a CL where he (Kroos) was injured from QF onwards. Winning trophies is more about the strength of the team vs a given player's ability level anyway.
Wes Brown was a CL winner at 20 and Rio, Vida won it when they were in late 20s. Just like Brown, Kroos didn't play from quarter finals onwards..
Nani won when he was 20, Anderson 19, Fletcher 23, but Ronaldo won when he was 22.
It's significant because the poster I quoted referred to Pogba's record being far better at this age than that of Kroos and Modric. Which is simply not true. He's far more popular and marketable though in regards to his celebrity status and has been for years.
Aside of winning the CL that season, he also played in the CL final the season before where he assisted Bayern's only goal by Müller and dominated Chelsea's midfield all game.
So the bold statement is wrong.
Kroos also played his first CL final at 22. He first won it at 23. He won it a second time last season.
Ah. I don't think he was far better, no. But not much worse either. Either way I don't think it's really the point - no one would be judging Pogba this harshly if he'd stayed at Juventus. The standard is higher because of his transfer fee, which he was never going to live up to on footballing reasons alone.
I understand disappointment with his first season and I've been frustrated at times too, but I don't agree with those who are saying he's a failure, or he doesn't care, or should be sold. Pretty much all our signings should be given another season before being judged.
Pogba is overrated by most.
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Would rather have a transfer muppet in charge than someone who's looking after the pennies and spending the bare minimum. Yes we overspend but I'd prefer it to be us breaking the transfer record this summer rather than any of our rivals.
Yeah Woodward vetoed our manager, not just anyone but Jose Mourinho, and bought players on his own. Even forced Mourinho to accept this pre season and announce his satisfaction repeatedly to the world. I am also purposely skipping the other laughable pretentious uninformed declaration in your post.
What a ridiculous post. We get it, you don't like Pogba. But refrain from sprouting nonsense like that in the future.
I don't rate Pogba nearly as highly as many on here, but the Ross Barkley post is piss funny.
To be fair to him I think most would agree that if Utd had signed any of his midfield partners at Juventus in the past few years they would probably have been a much better buy than Pogba so far.
No. he is long term signing. His partners Pirlo can barely walk, Marchiso was injured for 6 months and he is 31.
Vidal would have been awesome signing but he wasn't in Juventus when we signed Pogba so he isn't an option. Also he will be 30 by the time season ends. Again not a long term signing.
It is but still not half as funny as being compared to Balotelli.
I'd say they're on a par, only at least Ballo had a good euros about 5 years ago.
If Pogba is playing as badly as people make out I'm excited how good he'll be when he improves, only 24 and bosses most games(I will admit this has not being the case in most of our big game this season). Pogba is fine , will be a key player for years, and if half of the attempts that hit the post go in this season then there is not half the nonsense spouted on here. Glad he has a chance to get a bit of a breather with his injury and he will be key force in our top 4/Europa cup drive.
Dennis Rodman 
.. to be fair that was kinda funny
.. to be fair that was kinda funnyYou missed the part when I said 'in the last few years'
I can't see him as a long term signing unless he maintains the form of this season for the next 5 years. If he starts looking like a half decent midfielder then I'd give it another two seasons tops before he starts agitating for a move to Spain - which, lets face it, is where he'd be playing now if Real or Barca had been daft enough to cough up the kind of money we were flashing around!
If only you had toned down the hyperbole you might have had the makings of a decent post.
Of course the quality and dominance of Juventus allowed Pogba to shine a little brighter and it would offer the same opportunity to many talented players (including Ross Barkley, a gifted player who has had a recent resurgence of form).
Of course it is quite natural to have higher expectations when transfer records are broken and there is a fair case for Pogba having not yet met them.
Of course the quality of Serie A is a somewhat debatable level and it could be argued that what we have seen of Pogba thus far are some wonderful highlights interspersed with some casual/sloppy basic play, over-complication and varying degrees of anonymity when the big games come around.
Of course scrutiny can be cast on Woodward for sanctioning a 90m transfer for a player still to reach the heights and consistency of the worlds best and the habit that seems to be emerging of seasonal coups that don't necessarily appear to be the best planned actions (Di Maria, Martial and Pogba). The same way scrutiny has to be cast on the managers that have asked for these players and then often seemed perplexed with how to utilise them effectively.
There a lot of valid questions to be posed without having to over-exaggerate or get hysterical.
Indeed
Only criticism I have of him is that he doesn't do enough defensively. Sometimes he just let's the ball pass him by too easily. His areal ability and marking in the box are poor as well especially for someone his size.
I think his offensive game second to none.
I think his offensive game second to none.
just realised hes a yellow card away from a 2 match suspension
EDIT- just realised the stats is 9 yellow cards including 2 in europe. appologies
EDIT- just realised the stats is 9 yellow cards including 2 in europe. appologies
Pirlo isn't, Marchisio wont leave Juve, so only Vidal is left whom we tried few years back.
What a waste of a post.
Mediocre rant..4/10. Wouldn't read again.
The standards this guy is held to only confirms my thoughts that he will be one of, if not the best midfielder of his generation. Has been played into the ground this season and has still been good, had he been a bit more lucky with all his shots off the post and the thousand and one chances Ibra misses that Pogba puts on a plate for him every game, his stats would be amongst the best in the league for his position
He still makes some stupid decisions like holding onto the ball for too long sometimes, trying stupid tricks when he doesn't need to and failing to dominate games he should be, but that stuff will fix itself up with experience.
How much he cost isn't his problem, stop using it as a stick to beat him with. Is he worth that money? No, of course not, no player is, but that's the price you have to pay for a player with the potential to be amongst the best of his generation.
He still makes some stupid decisions like holding onto the ball for too long sometimes, trying stupid tricks when he doesn't need to and failing to dominate games he should be, but that stuff will fix itself up with experience.
How much he cost isn't his problem, stop using it as a stick to beat him with. Is he worth that money? No, of course not, no player is, but that's the price you have to pay for a player with the potential to be amongst the best of his generation.
Barkley is good for his age but Pogba is a top class player. Pogba's problem is only in his mentality that he tends to do so many complicated and unnecessary stuff and making poor decision making especially in big games. However in term of technical attributes and physical attributes, Barkley is nowhere near Pogba. Pogba can do everything in a world class level apart from his man marking and finish his chances.
When we have post like this, and some people here have the nerve to question why some of us defend Pogba.
I think Pogba will step up to the mark,eventually.Probably next season,hopefully.
Certainly,up to now,he's only lived up to his hefty price tag in a few games,being more of a Jordan Henderson standard not an Andres Iniesta....but he's only a young lad and time is on his side.....one for the future.
Certainly,up to now,he's only lived up to his hefty price tag in a few games,being more of a Jordan Henderson standard not an Andres Iniesta....but he's only a young lad and time is on his side.....one for the future.
This thread really is more entertaining than /sp/ on 4chan or any other sport pages/pages on the internet. When you think it can't get any better, something more delusional comes around the corner
Interesting article on Pogba by statsbomb.
http://statsbomb.com/2017/03/tough-times-for-paul-pogba/
World record transfer fees demand world record performances. Paul Pogba’s first season in the Manchester United first team took turn for the worse last week after been outplayed by N’Golo Kante against Chelsea in the FA Cup then succumbing to injury in United’s perfunctory dismissal of FC Rostov. He will now get time to rest up on his bed of money, ponder new hairstyles, make videos and reflect upon his disastrous season and how he hasn’t lived up to the demands his fee placed upon him.
I mean look at this:
Pogba’s outputs this season are around half that he put up for Juventus last year, where he was a big contributor and behind only Paulo Dybala for goal contribution. That’s what Man Utd thought they were signing, but instead they got half a Pogba. Would they be in sixth… sorry, er… FIFTH place if he’d have stepped up? No. Would they have meekly exited the cup if he had stepped up when his nine remaining teammates needed him against Chelsea? No. Would Ferguson have retired if Pogba hadn’t betrayed the club that nurtured him and disappeared to Italy as soon as the money got waved under his nose? No. Would Ferguson have built a new team around Pogba, with Paul Scholes playing alongside him, now able to play into his mid-40s because of the energy that Pogba brought to the midfield? Yes. Would Ryan Giggs be waiting by the phone hoping ITV call over the international break? No. Would Paul be the most popular baby name in Manchester by now? Yes.
Of course there are other narratives available and if you’ve made it this far vigourously nodding your head up and down until that last bit when it went a bit weird, then it’s possible that you’ve not read a StatsBomb article before. A bunch of ill-conceived narrative supported by surface stats isn’t our style. So apologies, but here’s the real deal.
Parts of Pogba’s game are actually thriving in Manchester. He is no longer part of a truly dominant team in a league, yet while his goal contribution has suffered, his expected goal contribution (from a-shooting and a-creating point of view) looks just fine. Even allowing for some model error, it would be hard to say that his performances have not deserved more:
How about that? Our old friend variance has stepped in. If this chart looked like the first one then perhaps we would have a problem but, well: it doesn’t.
If we break it down, he’s taking around three shots per game, which across his career is behind only his last season at Juventus, and while his expected goals per shot rate has been on the low side (0.071 per shot), he’s never hit a high rate here and that’s above last season (0.065). Indeed, he’s a player who may have a decent claim to have earned the right to deploy shots from range, as he’s notched 16 times from distance across the last five seasons, against an expectation of around eight. He’s never going to be an optimal shooter who focuses on close range–his position dictates that–and may well be good enough from further out to carry on. And he does get in the box, especially as a threat from set plays; he’s not Andros Townsend.
It is also clear enough that Mourinho is happy enough for Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to take the lion’s share of the attacking work in this side. Despite a broadly more defensive role for United than for Juventus, Pogba to Ibrahimovic (19) is the most common key pass in the league this year, and Ibrahimovic to Pogba isn’t far behind (14). This chart also reflects where he is most usually positioned.
Creatively, he’s hitting numbers ahead of his time at Juventus. His key pass rate of a shade under two per game is career high, and his passes into the final third have risen to around 22 per game ahead of no more than 16 while in Italy. At least part of this is a function of seeing more of the ball and at times being asked to play a more disciplined midfield role: Man Utd Pogba is getting through nearly sixty passes per game compared to Juventus’ Pogba’s rate of nearer forty. Both Juventus 2015-16 and Man Utd 2016-17 are 500+ pass per game teams, yet Pogba is now more involved and it hasn’t decreased his attacking involvement, the opposite is true. Oh and he’s logged more completed throughball shot assists this season than any other player in the big five European leagues too (9).
The only area in which his game has declined is in output, half of which is inevitably outside his control; he can’t affect whether his team mates finish the chances he makes. He has three assists in the league–all to Ibrahimovic– yet the chances he’s created can be valued closer to six goals. Assists can be a notoriously volatile measure and we’ve seen clear examples before. One being Christian Eriksen’s 2014-15 season in which he recorded two assists from 84 key passes in over 3000 minutes of play. Sure enough, his subsequent seasons have seen the outputs to his creativity return, and Pogba’s Italian tenure shows him consistently log assists from a decent volume of chances.
On top of that, the whole team has been struggling to hit a positive skew from it’s shooting. United take a ton of shots–17 per game–but are the lowest scorers of the big six with just 42 goals compared to Man City’s next worst 54. Nobody in the team is running super hot with goals, not even Ibrahimovic who is only slightly ahead of expectation. Antony Martial and Henrikh Mkhitaryan are slightly ahead too but each has played limited minutes. Jesse Lingard’s net-busting effort at the weekend finally saw him break his league duck this season and it feels like Mourinho’s inability to settle on an attacking unit beyond Pogba and Ibrahimovic–except perhaps to reject Rooney–may have had an effect on the impact of his support men. Other teams have enjoyed the hot form of their attackers; Chelsea have Diego Costa and Eden Hazard, Tottenham have Harry Kane and Dele Alli, Liverpool have Sadio Mane, Arsenal have Alexis Sanchez and Olivier Giroud. All have shown great form this season but have each landed a mile over their expected goal rates. Nobody at United has to that extent. That’s football.
Paul Pogba turned 24 last week. United paid the premium to get an all round midfielder for his prime years and at a new club with a new manager, his first season has been solid. Expectations of huge output may go alongside his fee, but fail to understand his strengths and what type of player he actually is. He isn’t a one man attack like typical world record transfers and he never will be.
The squad is still in transition and it’s likely that the summer will see another rash of big money talent through the door. Ibrahimovic may have been a sticking plaster for their attack, but central midfield is locked down with Ander Herrera looking a good bet to continue alongside Pogba in the seasons to come. Next time an outlet runs a negative Pogba piece, or some stats get listed and distorted, recall that it’s probably not his actual performance that is driving the hit, but a wide variety of prejudices.
The truth is he’s doing just fine.
http://statsbomb.com/2017/03/tough-times-for-paul-pogba/
Being a good footballer is more than about Goals and assists. Sigurdsson and Eriksen have plenty goals and assists. It is about all the other non recorded elements as well
Pogba has shown good quality and will improve. He's shown he's got much of what he had growing up at United still. He's been unlucky not to have a fair few more goals - which could have made a bit of a difference in where we stand. I think he can attack the box well BUT for me our width isn't good enough. We don't have wingers who are capable of getting 15+ assists a season. Our crossing and sometimes passing in the final third can be erratic. So Pogba can play a a great long ball out wide, but do we make the most of situations? With better players, it will become easier for people to appreciate what you do. He could be up there with Scholes in a few years. Different passer to Carrick, more like Scholes in that regard. We are just short of quality in other key areas to make it effective.
When Scholes pinged it out wide, who was there? We had quality out wide. I don't think we have it and that's the problem. Martial has great potential on his day out wide but he's not a traditional winger really. Rashford similar is similar to Martial. Young? Inconsistent crosses. Valencia? a handful of good crosses on a good day. Too many hit the first man on a bad one. The full backs don't really help either. Rafael offered better quality as did Nani on his day - we need to correct this and then that helps players like Pogba.
In terms of his attitude, we know what he can do. The price isn't an issue. It was never about buying Pogba and then everything was fixed. If we still had Hernandez, Nani, Rafael and maybe welbeck but not so much - we'd be close to the top I feel but we let go of quality and have a few hard working players who lack the quality week after week to be effective.
When Scholes pinged it out wide, who was there? We had quality out wide. I don't think we have it and that's the problem. Martial has great potential on his day out wide but he's not a traditional winger really. Rashford similar is similar to Martial. Young? Inconsistent crosses. Valencia? a handful of good crosses on a good day. Too many hit the first man on a bad one. The full backs don't really help either. Rafael offered better quality as did Nani on his day - we need to correct this and then that helps players like Pogba.
In terms of his attitude, we know what he can do. The price isn't an issue. It was never about buying Pogba and then everything was fixed. If we still had Hernandez, Nani, Rafael and maybe welbeck but not so much - we'd be close to the top I feel but we let go of quality and have a few hard working players who lack the quality week after week to be effective.
I like Pogba
according to the cafe, these guys were considered "dead wood" that LVG tossed into the fire
Good article that, great use of sensational and contrived narratives to lure in the crowd too.
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