I agree. My issue is we shouldn’t be building for that. Which is why we are going backwards.
Just reset the thing or create from our fullbacks and be solid in the middle. Something has to give.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
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Just reset the thing or create from our fullbacks and be solid in the middle. Something has to give.
It’s so hard to know, once we think something is sorted and a player is playing well he turns round the next match and is shocking the inconsistency must be a nightmare for a manager.
Maybe a rock solid midfielder who gives aleast 7/10 every week is what we need.
Don’t ever tag in some stuff that you can back up.
Are you really trying to compare Ronaldo to Salah? Not only does Salah score more, he's more efficient. He's scores a higher percentage of npg per xg and has a higher conversion rate than Ronaldo WHILE OUTSCORING him.
That's not to mention the wide chasm in their overall play. Ronaldo offers very little other than goals, and can't score as well as Salah.
Yeah, salary is a big restriction for him. Barcelona and Juventus got rid of Cristiano and Messi respectively and it isn't like their thriving without them but being the best players in modern era make them easy targets to scapegoat. I just think Manchester United has been a disfunctional team for quite a while and as for Ronaldo I wouldn't play him every single game as they're going to run him to the ground but at the moment they don't have the luxury to rest him or not utilize him.
All Ronaldo does is score goals FFS.
Yeah I actually feel pretty bad for Greenwood. He was in very good form got voted United Player of the month in August. He was also nominated for the PL Player of the month but lost to Antonio.
Spot on.
But stops the other players doing so aswell - especially when playing in a position he wasn't even the best at in his prime.
The problem is not the passes or creating goals for Ronaldo. The problem is that he gets into good positions and the ball is not passed to him. If others score when they refuse to pass to Ronaldo it is not going to be an issue. Ronaldo looks frustrated not because he is not scoring goals. He looks frustrated because we have been crap. I am sure he would rather win games and trophies rather than him scoring all the goals and not winning anything. Yes ideally he would like to score more goals and then also win everything.
For me the same could be said for the others.
The other players are getting to good positions whilst Ronaldo isn't making passes to them because he can't even hold on to the ball and has minimal ability to bring others in to play. Never mind his first touch losing the ball aswell.
You’s boys just read what you want to read and not what people are saying, if Ronaldo was in a team creating twice as many big chances his numbers would be significantly higher.
He got 3 goals from open play in the final 22 league games of last seaaon. 1 in 14 since Ronaldo arrived.
Is that a huge drop? Or is this season in fact just a continuation of the second half of last season.
The stats and eyes say the latter.
Funny as I seem to remember Ronaldo dropping as far back as midfield, beating a man, spreading play to Sancho, making a run into the box, heading a ball squarely at Cavani’s feet who the hits the keeper fair in the mouth.
Like for every other forward in the world.
Ronaldo gets the 3rd/2nd best service in the league and his goal output is underwhelming compared to the chances he gets. Give an average finisher (just an average finisher from one of the 5 best leagues in Europe) the same chances and he would have scored a couple of goals more than him this season, put a good one in there and he would have scored 4/5/6 goals more than him given the same chances. There is no other way of reading the numbers.
I don't know. Is 50% less per 90 minutes huge?
He did also score 4 goals from open play in the first 4 games this season and 3 in the Europa league against Spanish and Italian teams vs. 0 in the CL group stages this season, so...
If you don't think that is a huge drop, I wouldn't hire you as my stockbroker.
I find that extremely hard to believe that any striker would be scoring 6 more goals in a team barely creating 4 shots on target against the like of Newcastle.
A hat trick against a struggling Leeds side, 2 against Real Sociedad and 1 against Granada.
Hardly blistering form is it?
That's axiomatic because its true of any player. Not sure how that's a rebuttal to the facts mentioned. Ronaldo isn't a great finisher and offers very little besides goals.
Well XG isn’t going to win you matches.
For me it's kind of an unknown whether we would be a better team without Ronaldo. Simply because we've been wank this season doesn't mean he's at the heart of it. His goal record in the CL so far has been great. In the league he's not been great at all in general.
Bollocks. He’s the 2nd or 3rd goalscorer for the club in the entirety of 20/21 despite joining some months ago. Bruno was the topscorer for us in 2021 so clearly the issues for the other forwards have run deep long before he arrived.
We aren't winning many matches with Ronaldo, and our points totals have reflected how we regressed when he joined. So there's that.
Yet the team was scoring much more last season, and playing better as a whole without him.
Yeah I agree, you never know maybe he underperforms in a fully firing team we’ll have to wait and see. I just find it a little annoying the levels some people are going to discredit him in this thread it’s borderline obsessive.
I don't think it helps our forwards have been trash this season. If any of them were on fire, it would make sense to drop Ronaldo, but most of them have been so bad they should be sold. I'd still like to see Greenwood as our main striker for a string of games and see how that works out.
Nothing is really a constant. In Mourinho's 2nd season we finished 2nd and in his 3rd season we imploded just like we did in Ole's final season. Trying to put all of that on Ronaldo is a bit simplistic to be honest. But I do think that Ronaldo is a conundrum in our current squad. I think the fact that he has the highest wages in the PL and his stature means that his bad performances gets extra attention compared to players we know have been average for a long time.
Everyone has been bad, but sometimes it's a matter of chemistry. Everyone flourished when RVN left and our entire attack went to an entirely different level with everyone performing better.
When everyone is curtailed to build attacks through one player, it's inevitable that we'd see a deterioration in the other attackers' play. Like you, I would like to see someone like Greenwood with an extended run, but I'm not sure how likely that is.
Were we that good though? I mean in the biggest game of the season, we bottled. I’m sure Ronaldo is responsible for the diabolical form and brainfarts of maguire and AWB’s inability to play football.
In any case, there’s little point discussing with you. Your agenda against Ronaldo is clear from the MessivsRonaldo threads.
Good or bad is subjective. What isn't is that we were better than this. We were 2nd place without him and have regressed to 7th spot with him. We scored 73 goals last season and now are on pace to 60 goals this season (only true because we scored 5 against Leeds when he didn't play).
Ronaldo isn't responsible for others' performances but he most certainly is responsible for his own awful performances.
Love the last bit. You did "discuss" with me, Sherlock. And it's ironic that you of all people are talking about an agenda.
I know but we had Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo to step up. And great overall team. Fergie considered the 2006/2007 team the strongest he'd ever assembled at the time. At the moment we have an interim manager and hardly anyone performing at all.
It's a hell of a lot better than 1 goal in the last 20 games hes had now.....
Well, the numbers tells us that would probably be the case.
Instead of comparing him with average strikers in the premier league, because I've already done that, let's compare him to some top strikers this season:
All these numbers are from the players respective leagues:
Shots per 90 minutes/Shots on target per 90 minutes/Shots on target %/npxG per 90 minutes/non penalty goals per 90 minutes
Ronaldo - 3,80sh90 / 1,29sh-t90 / 33,9% / 0,58 npxG90 / 0,41 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Underperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 29,3%
Benzema - 3,81sh90 / 1,62sh-t90 / 42,4% / 0,54 npxG90 / 0,81 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Overperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 50%
Salah - 3,94sh90 / 1,62sh-t90 / 41,0% / 0,67 npxG90 / 0,71 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Overperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 4,5%
Lewa - 4,66sh90 / 2,30sh-t90 / 49,3% / 1,14 npxG90 / 0,99 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Underperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 13,2%
Haaland - 4,10sh90 / 1,80sh-t90 / 43,9% / 0,65 npxG90 / 1,00 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Overperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 53,8%
Vlahovic - 3,35sh90 / 1,27sh-t90 / 38,1% / 0,34 npxG90 / 0,58 non penalty goals per 90 minutes - Overperforming his non-penalty expected goals by 70,6%
If you take out Lewandowski who is the extreme when it comes to service and being available to service, and Vlahovic who is in the other end of the scale and makes a lot out of the little he gets, you see that the other examples here get similar amount of service and chances in their respective teams.
Benzema has scored 98% more non penalty goals per 90 minutes than Ronaldo this season despite having and npxG90 that is 7% lower.
Haaland has scored 144% more non penalty goals per 90 minutes than Ronaldo this season despite having and npxG90 that is just 12% higher.
Salah scored 73% more non penalty goals per 90 minutes than Ronaldo this season despite having and npxG90 that is just 16% higher.
It's not hard to believe at all that we would score a lot more goals if we had a more efficient striker up top.
The other thing that all these strikers have in common is that they bring a lot more than goals to their team, like :
Creating more chances for others (except Vlahovic):
Ronaldo - 0,11 expected assists per 90
Benzema - 0,21 expected assists per 90 (91% more than Ronaldo)
Salah - 0,31 expected assists per 90 (182% more than Ronaldo)
Lewa - 0,21 expected assists per 90 (91% more than Ronaldo)
Haaland - 0,31 expected assists per 90 (182% more than Ronaldo)
Vlahovic - 0,10 expected assists per 90 (9% less than Ronaldo)
Pressing a lot more (Benzema, Lewandowski and Vlahovic less than most forwards, but still a lot more than Ronaldo):
Ronaldo: 6,28 pressings per 90 / 1,69 successfull pressing per 90/ 2,84 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90 (!!)
Benzema: 9,42 pressings per 90 / 2,43 successfull pressing per 90/ 5,38 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90
Salah: 13,84 pressings per 90 / 3,74 successfull pressing per 90/ 7,93 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90
Lewa: 8,14 pressings per 90 / 2,80 successfull pressing per 90/ 5,09 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90
Haaland: 12,6 pressings per 90 / 3,6 successfull pressing per 90/ 8,5 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90
Vlahovic: 9,04 pressings per 90 / 2,45 successfull pressing per 90/ 5,43 pressings in the attacking 3rd per 90
His pressing is historically bad, that is why it is an issue and why we talk about it. If he just did the minimum, maybe the story would be different, but he doesn't even do half of the minimum in the attacking third. When we lose the ball he moans and throws his arms up in the air instead of chasing the ball. Most chances in football are created when you catch the opponent when it is unorganized, and the closer you get to the opponents goal when you gain possession the more unorganized the opponent is. The same goes for the faster you gain possession after you lose it the more unorganized the opponents are. Now look at the numbers above and explain to me how his workrate when we lose the ball or when we in general do not have the ball doesn't affect our general play and chance creationrate.
Playing a striker like him means the following:
- We win the ball when the opponent is unorganized less often
- We play against organized defenses more often
- We let our opponents enter our half with the ball more often
- All our outfield player except Ronaldo gets a higher workload and must cover larger areas to cover for him, which leads to more room for our opponents and our players getting more pumped and plays worse football.
We have better finishers, harder workers and better teamplayers in this squad that is ready to step in up front. Let Ronaldo come in as an impact sub when needed.
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Rooney and Ronaldo of 2007 were better than anyone we have today, but the point was that they looked better when RVN left. The very same players didn't look anywhere near world beaters in 2006. He didn't really challenge for the league and were derided as a joke in December of 2005. One year later, we were the strongest team that Ferguson assembled despite doing nothing but get rid of Keane and RVN and buy Carrick.
It wasn't new signings that catapulted us to the next level, but the improved play of our existing players
Beautiful simple post.
We were never curtailed to build our attacks through one player last season. Cavani is a traditional striker - where was the complaining of him not getting enough chances last year? I didn't see it because we have different players scoring at different times.
Now we have to build towards Ronaldo being our main and only goalscorer - & if he doesn't score, either he is not given enough chances or he isnt scoring from the chances he are given.
I never believed we should have brought Ronnie back. No way that Pep would sign him, look at his general play and it so far from a Pep player. Remember how he benched Aguero for an extended period until he did what he wanted. We were played yet again by an agent. Why Fergie was gettign involved in the transfer business undermines the club's lack of structure and coherent transfer strategy, despite all the bull that it was now sorted. Woodward remain a useless decision maker and needs to be sacked, not resign and allow to drift off when he wants. The main thing we need Ralf to do is bring structure and coherence to our recruitment and clear out the deadwood. Flether may surprise us but was zero qualifications for the quasi-DOF role he now seems to have.
Rooney and Ronaldo were generational talents. I'm not quite sure I can say that about Greenwood. And Rashford and Martial have already proven how inconsistent they are. And sancho has been gash so far despite looking great at dortmund like the rest of the players we buy from the bundesliga.
The problem is the lack of great strikers available in their prime. There used to be a lot 12 years ago. Now you've got strikers like Lukkaku being hot goods. Haaland will move for massive wages and not to United. Mbappe is going Real Madrid. There are no Rooney/Augero/Torres/Villa/Zlatan/Benzema types available.
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