How much are injuries affecting us?

Le Red

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Much has been said about the lack of quality in our squad and the shortcomings of Solskjaer as a manager, but I feel that one important factor has been overlooked in those discussions, and that is the unfortunate amount of injuries we had to put up with in the last months.
Sometimes things must be put into perspective. If Guardiola's Manchester City can suffer a lot when De Bruyne is injured (lost 0-2 at home to Wolverhampton today), then it's fair to assume that a worse squad, with less depth, such as ours, will suffer way more with the injury of players such as Martial and Pogba.
I'm not trying to save the players and Solskjaer from criticism, but I'd like to hear what you think about the subject.
Do you think more luck with injuries would make a big difference in our performances so far?
 

Wumminator

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Massively.

Look at City. They look half the team they did without a few players.

Pogba/Martial/Shaw are massive misses for us. If they were all fit we wouldn’t have seen Mata/Matic or Young get many minutes. Add in players like Lingard/AWB as well and our understudies are pathetic.

Put it this way, today we could have:

Pogba,
Lingard,
Shaw,
Martial,
AWB

instead of

Dalot,
Perreira,
Young,
Mata,
Fred.

With the latter five.. we wipe the floor with Newcastle.
 

Massive Spanner

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Massively.

Look at City. They look half the team they did without a few players.

Pogba/Martial/Shaw are massive misses for us. If they were all fit we wouldn’t have seen Mata/Matic or Young get many minutes. Add in players like Lingard/AWB as well and our understudies are pathetic.

Put it this way, today we could have:

Pogba,
Rashford,
Shaw,
Martial,
AWB

instead of

Dalot,
Perreira,
Young,
Mata,
Fred.

With the latter five.. we wipe the floor with Newcastle.
Rashford is starting today though?
 

Damien

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Massively.

Look at City. They look half the team they did without a few players.

Pogba/Martial/Shaw are massive misses for us. If they were all fit we wouldn’t have seen Mata/Matic or Young get many minutes. Add in players like Lingard/AWB as well and our understudies are pathetic.

Put it this way, today we could have:

Pogba,
Rashford,
Shaw,
Martial,
AWB

instead of

Dalot,
Perreira,
Young,
Mata,
Fred.

With the latter five.. we wipe the floor with Newcastle.
Agreed, but Rashford is starting today.
 

MUFromLTU

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Of course it's impacting and it's impacting a lot. I can't understand how many examples people need to start realising that this is one of the biggest problems in our team for past years.

All underachieving teams - us, City, also Barca, Real this season, what all have in common is injuries.

Look at all previous winning teams of EPL/CL. Each one were absolutely lucky with nearly no injuries, from Leicester to Liverpool last season, hard to find exceptions in past few seasons at any league.
 

Massive Spanner

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Sorry, I’m drunk. Put in Lingard then.
We lost at home to Crystal Palace will all of those players in the team. Granted Newcastle are a worse side than Crystal Palace but it's not like we've been a much better side with those players fit.
 

Wumminator

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We lost at home to Crystal Palace will all of those players in the team. Granted Newcastle are a worse side than Crystal Palace but it's not like we've been a much better side with those players fit.
We battered Palace, missed a peno and should have had another two. Games like that happen.
 

fergiesarmy1

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Much has been said about the lack of quality in our squad and the shortcomings of Solskjaer as a manager, but I feel that one important factor has been overlooked in those discussions, and that is the unfortunate amount of injuries we had to put up with in the last months.
Sometimes things must be put into perspective. If Guardiola's Manchester City can suffer a lot when De Bruyne is injured (lost 0-2 at home to Wolverhampton today), then it's fair to assume that a worse squad, with less depth, such as ours, will suffer way more with the injury of players such as Martial and Pogba.
I'm not trying to save the players and Solskjaer from criticism, but I'd like to hear what you think about the subject.
Do you think more luck with injuries would make a big difference in our performances so far?
More than most people are acknowledging, players are also playing semi-fit which is compounding the problem like Rashford, Pogba and probably others that we don’t know about.
 

Judge Red

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We had many an injury crisis under Fergie too and there were concerns about our medical staff in his later years but he always found a way around it. Largely because he’d never go into a season with the forward line we have now.
 

Massive Spanner

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What?

We did batter them. They should have had red cards and penalties against them.

Was a shit result. I enjoyed the game though.
Apart from the Chelsea game, our results have been consistently shite regardless of who is and isn't injured.

I'm not saying injuries don't play a part but some posters on here have a tendency to completely over blow them in order to shit on our team to make excuses for the manager when we get poor results.
 

Wumminator

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We had many an injury crisis under Fergie too and there were concerns about our medical staff in his later years but he always found a way around it. Largely because he’d never go into a season with the forward line we have now.
Largely because he was in control of the squad. He wouldn’t have been able to make anything of the shambles that has been the last five years of transfers.

Fred,
Dalot,
Matic,
Di Maria,
Bailly,
Depay,
Darmian.

There’s 250 million pounds of absolute dross there.
 

Idxomer

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Almost as much as lack of coaching and bad management of games.
 

LoneStar

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So injuries are the reason why we struggled to beat league one and Europa teams at home ?

We have no style of play, and we are still better than most teams in terms of players. It's clear that the manager is out of his depth.

No amount of injuries can justify this relegation form or 10 away games without a win. Just heard that this was the 4th game City lost at home since Pep took over.
 

Smores

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Ah the new excuse now that fitness has gone. Suddenly it'll be how could he have won games we had 200 injuries
 

BlueHaze

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Largely because he was in control of the squad. He wouldn’t have been able to make anything of the shambles that has been the last five years of transfers.

Fred,
Dalot,
Matic,
Di Maria,
Bailly,
Depay,
Darmian.

There’s 250 million pounds of absolute dross there.
Agree with everyone except Bailly and Depay. I swear when we had just got Bailly he looked like the CB we had been crying out for all these years but then he went on international duty and fecked up his ankle and then he became the ivorian Jones. With Depay I feel like we gave up too fast. He still had room for improvement in him just like Zaha. We let the both of them go too soon.
 

spiriticon

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We have an injury crisis every year. It's par for the course for United to have half the team out at some point in the season.

I'm hoping the new physio can improve things.
 

Leftback99

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Significantly. Particularly when we aren't even that good at full strength.

It gets underestimated. With most title winners over the last few years you can name their first 11-13 barely having to think about it and they had them on the pitch nearly every week. City did well last year to overcome the De Bruyne injury.
 

Toddler

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Largely because he was in control of the squad. He wouldn’t have been able to make anything of the shambles that has been the last five years of transfers.

Fred,
Dalot,
Matic,
Di Maria,
Bailly,
Depay,
Darmian.

There’s 250 million pounds of absolute dross there.
That is such a sad sad thing to witness. Recruitment at its best :D.
 

DevilRed

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Injuries are a huge huge huge factor for us since we have almost no squad depth.

It doesn't help that Pogba, Martial and Shaw have basically played a grand total of 3 or 4 premiership matches before going down. Now even AWB is out.

We really can't afford to have ANY injuries, let alone long term ones to our best players.
 

hobbers

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Not as much as the absence of any sort of tactical set up, or attack coaching, or defense coaching.
 

FootballHQ

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Given the way he started the season Martial injury been huge turning point in the season as I thought you played pretty well at Wolves and he took his goal very well.
 

jackal&hyde

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Injuries are a huge huge huge factor for us since we have almost no squad depth.

It doesn't help that Pogba, Martial and Shaw have basically played a grand total of 3 or 4 premiership matches before going down. Now even AWB is out.

We really can't afford to have ANY injuries, let alone long term ones to our best players.
I think many of us are underapreciating how poor this squad. I can think of maybe 6, 7 players that are good and with injuries to 4, 5 of them the back up is championship level. We've seen it before unde Mourinho, we are seing it again.

Criminal not to spend more in the summer. F woodword and the glazers.
 

ken11

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It'd have been 1-1 today if we had all our players back.
 

Bubz27

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When everyone's fit, our squad is one or two injuries away from crisis. That's because our squad composition is absolutely piss poor.

Who do we blame for that?
 

TheReligion

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We are missing our two first choice full backs, our main midfield player and our number 9.

Anyone would struggle but the issue is the style of play with what we have. Mistake after mistake, over and underhit passes, poor running and positioning.. why is that happening time and time again? Footballing basics.
 

momo83

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Massively.

Look at City. They look half the team they did without a few players.

Pogba/Martial/Shaw are massive misses for us. If they were all fit we wouldn’t have seen Mata/Matic or Young get many minutes. Add in players like Lingard/AWB as well and our understudies are pathetic.

Put it this way, today we could have:

Pogba,
Lingard,
Shaw,
Martial,
AWB

instead of

Dalot,
Perreira,
Young,
Mata,
Fred.

With the latter five.. we wipe the floor with Newcastle.
We’ve been shit and losing to shit teams even without injuries. So let’s not ignore the past 20+ matches just because Ole’s a nice guy and legend of a player.
 

GlasgowCeltic

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The football never really changes much whoever is playing, but obviously the better players are more likely to bail out the bad performances with a goal from nothing
 

Snafu17

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They obviously are, but we made our own bed in the summer. Injuries happen, they're a part of the game, not planning around that is ridiculous.
 

VeevaVee

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Certainly more than a few injuries should be, but that’s because we play so garbage and don’t have a decent squad.
 

charlenefan

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They're not effecting us as much people are hoping they are

Reminder we had our first choice XI out when we lost at home to Palace and could barely create a chance on goal
 

tomaldinho1

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Massively.

Look at City. They look half the team they did without a few players.

Pogba/Martial/Shaw are massive misses for us. If they were all fit we wouldn’t have seen Mata/Matic or Young get many minutes. Add in players like Lingard/AWB as well and our understudies are pathetic.

Put it this way, today we could have:

Pogba,
Lingard,
Shaw,
Martial,
AWB

instead of

Dalot,
Perreira,
Young,
Mata,
Fred.

With the latter five.. we wipe the floor with Newcastle.
Injuries always have an effect but aside from Martial who is a loss as he can properly play as a striker &AWB is a loss defensively but otherwise...not really given Pogba is all over the shop/waiting for the transfer window and Lingard/Lindelof out actually improves us in my opinion.

Difference is it's not like City suddenly stopped playing their style of football, they still had a lot of chances against Wolves and on another day they might have won. They are weaker at the back but the philosophy and how they play is the same. We have injuries mixed with the fact we don't really have a playing style, it's like Ole has said go out there and 'make it happen' it just seems off the cuff and it's a recipe for the disaster that is happening right now...
 

Rozay

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Massively. Our squad is obviously not good enough, but the injuries haven’t even given us a chance.

Our first XI has a load of ‘do a job’ players who supplement a very small amount of actual quality. We are so unfortunate to have lost pretty much all of that quality, at the same time, and for a long time.

If you list the whole squad, AWB, Martial, Rashford, Pogba, Shaw, Maguire and maybe Lindelöf are our only outfield players who have tangible quality. Aside from Maguire and Lindelöf, the rest have all been unavailable for large parts of the season.
 

Adam-Utd

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A little. But not that much.

Even fully fit we still rely on individuals. That can only last for so long, it relies purely on form.

the best teams dig themselves out with team work and trained patterns.
 

pascell

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They're not, it's the tactical aspect of our game that's letting us down. Rogers and Potter have been managing their clubs since the summer and they already have their teams playing the way they want. Ole has been managing us for nearly 7 months, no one knows what our system is and if this is how he wants us to play, it's just not good enough I'm afraid. At no point in today's game did we force the issue and make their goalkeeper work for his clean sheet. With United I always go to games and no matter how bad we were I'd always think there's a goal in us, unfortunately I can't say that how we're set up under Ole.

I'll still love him for what he did as a player, as a manager he's out of his depth.