I’ve never thought he goes hiding I think he’s just really shite at positioning
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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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Yeah, I agree. Saying he goes into hiding is unnecessarily pejorative. Like he’s choosing to shirk his responsibilities. But that’s not what’s happening. The issue is ability, not attitude.
His spacial awareness is atrocious. I wish people would say that, instead of "hiding". "Hiding" is such a lazy term.
Agreed. He's fine at looking for the ball but it's what he does with it that's the issue. Which is usually pinging it to the person closest.
Which no-one reasonably argues with. We need to improve on him and he should be a squad player at best, used in specific circumstances were he can offer, for example, a bit more aerial protection for the defense or a physical edge in poor conditions.
I just don't go for the dog-piling, his performance last night was perfectly adequate, he was shite against Chelsea and in numerous games before it. if his performance is poor call it poor, but too many just decide before hand what their opinion is and that's it.
I see Scott as the potential (and essential) John O'Shea figure in this squad going forward. Never the best player at the club but will always be ready to put in the effort when required and will still get a lot of games even when upgrades come in.
Which is the reason i picked out on the fact he had more progressive passes than Mata, who was getting superlatives on here for his performance.
But evidently the eyes you watch the game with appear to be tinted.
That part of the criticism I don't understand.
What's exactly wrong with that? If you have an entirely midfield who plays 40-50 yard Hollywood balls then you won't retain possession as a team.
How many progressive passes does Kante do? Henderson? Kimmich? Casemiro? Busquets?You can make a list of them from the past: Makelele, Lahm, Deschamps, Dunga.
All of the above are World Cup winners, whose teams would not have won those finals without them.
A team needs players who keep it simple. A metronome. A player who keeps things ticking over.
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The one thing ETH will definitely improve is peoples positioning. I feel Scott is someone who would diligently listen to a managers instructions, comes across as a teachers pet.
Do they appear to be tinted? I wasn't posting praising Mata for being brilliant.....
Your taking other people's words and assigning them to me
Mata should have been sold years and years ago.
McTominay should be a bench player.
Also a major reason I'm not in Mata thread or talking about him is he is leaving so he is irrelevant to our future. McTominay is relevant as he is likely to continue to play a lot more gamess than he should.
And like it or not that does hold us back.
As a Midfielder he has a responsibility to help progress play.
Those are your words. You claim to watch the game yet cannot see that he was one of the most progressive players in his play last night.
I would still disagree. Short of a lot of clips being posted from last night's games showing me "Progressive Passes" I won't be changing my mid.
Maybe I magically looked away every time he put a incisive ball through the lines or over the top? Somehow I doubt it.
A stat telling me he did X amount means feck all.
I'm sure someone will make an every touch video from the game for him. If so I'll watch it when I'm out of work and see if my thoughts are swayed.
But Scott doesn't have the other qualities that players like Kante do...he's not got a Kante engine, he's not as good defensively and I'd argue that Kante IS a better progressive passer than Scott. To compare Scott to Dunga, Deschamps and Kante is a totally pointless comparison. He doesn't breathe the same air as those players. The reason he pops it off to the person closest is that he knows his passing ability is limited and doesn't trust himself to do any more than that. Leon Britton used to make a lot of passes with a high completion rate - would you have said he was united quality?
I don't think he's anywhere near up to it to be honest. Even as a squad player who comes in under certain circumstances, I don't think he makes the cut.
We'll see what ten Hag thinks anyway.
We'll see what ten Hag thinks anyway.
Who's comparing anyone to anyone? I'm not. The players I listed were world class.
I mentioned them because one of the main things that are attributes to McTominay is that he passes backwards and sideways. Every single successful team has players that can do exactly that.
It's a completely nonsensical argument and if I were the people who say it, I would stop, as it underlines their basic missunderstanding of football.
A midfield requires a mix of players.
Yes, every successful team needs progressive passers in midfield, but every successful team requires a player who will keep it simple.
Would Spain have been as successful without Busquets? Would Germany have been successful without Lahm? Italy without Gattuso? Brazil without Dunga? France without Deschamps?*
Seriously. People who throw arrows are McTominay, with the words "He passes too safe", should save themselves some embarrassment and shush.
*Not that I'm comparing Scott McTominay to any of those players.
Yes, every successful team needs progressive passers in midfield, but every successful team requires a player who will keep it simple.
Would Spain have been as successful without Busquets? Would Germany have been successful without Lahm? Italy without Gattuso? Brazil without Dunga? France without Deschamps?*
Seriously. People who throw arrows are McTominay, with the words "He passes too safe", should save themselves some embarrassment and shush.
*Not that I'm comparing Scott McTominay to any of those players.
Please do teach us mere mortals, oh footballing oracle.
Actually, you are the one misunderstanding. Yes, every single team has players that pass sideways and backwards but, if those are top teams, those players usually also contribute something else beyond simply keeping the ball moving. Scott doesn't. He's bang average and will soon find his level either on our bench or starting for Southampton or everton.
People still think hes good enough? 
Be prepared to be an unhappy bunny when ETH rocks up and takes a shine to McTominay.
That's funny to me.
Have gone from thinking he shouldn’t be a starter to not even being sure he’s good enough to be a squad player, outside of cup games against lower league opposition.
Had a season ticket at Fulham for a few seasons in the late 00s, and his performances are generally about on a par with the CMs I watched there.
Had a season ticket at Fulham for a few seasons in the late 00s, and his performances are generally about on a par with the CMs I watched there.
You are comparing him to them though. Yes, those teams may have needed those players but they were good at what they did. McTominay isn’t.
You have to be very good at something else if you are the one in midfield who keeps it simple. E.g screening the defence.
You literally did just compare him to those players though. Busquests' reading of the game + passing is far superior to McSauce. Gattuso was a much stronger and better all round enforcer than McTominay.
Listen, I like the kid, and think he still has a place as a squad player here, especially considering he can fill in at CB (which I can see someone like ETH converting him into). As a starting midfielder though he offers next to nothing.
McTominay has his utilities in certain situations (esp defending),
but gosh, I have never seen a midfielder as limited as he is in terms of variety of passing. He, as a midfielder, seems to be incapable of making certain kind of passes that most midfielders can do. He is very bad at 1 touch football, so he always need at least a touch before releasing the ball. He basically can't whip in crosses, he also can't make lob passes, chip pass, backheel pass, outside of foot pass. He has no long range passses (40 yard+) and is very one footed. These all make him very predictable and easy to defend against.
Absolutely shite.
Is this the same age that Salah went from a nobody to breaking the EPL scoring record in a season? I think it's really unfair from people to attack certain attributes he has and summarise that he has no talent or is half of another average page. I view it as what can Scott offer us in 2 years and for me he screams bench back up. What he really needs is his role clearly defined to him so he can focus on just doing that when he comes off the bench. I think he can be a great asset over the next 2 years during our transition and would save some money that needs to be spent in other areas.
Well put
Be prepared to be an unhappy bunny when ETH rocks up and takes a shine to McTominay.
That's funny to me.
we shall see. If you're right and McTominay is still first choice by the season after next I will buy you a pint (or send you money to buy yourself one!)And who did we play against? The mighty Brentford. He was praised less than 4 months ago when we also played Brentford.
We are where we are because we've accumulated some absolute dross in the last 6-7 years and he is one of those players. When did the trend of praising players who give ok performances start?
McTominay was fine yesterday. I'm not going to say "he was absolutely shite" for the sake of it; he was alright. There were still a fair few instances where Brentford players had far too much space to work with (Eriksen most notably), and McTominay's poor positional sense was at least somewhat to blame.
I guess the problem here is that yesterday was a pretty standard McTominay performance, and it was just OK. He has the occasional great performance but generally speaking his game awareness is just nowhere near good enough for him to regularly and significantly impact games in a positive manner.
I don't mind him sticking around as a Fellaini-type option to have on the bench but I can't see why anyone would want him starting regularly at United.
I guess the problem here is that yesterday was a pretty standard McTominay performance, and it was just OK. He has the occasional great performance but generally speaking his game awareness is just nowhere near good enough for him to regularly and significantly impact games in a positive manner.
I don't mind him sticking around as a Fellaini-type option to have on the bench but I can't see why anyone would want him starting regularly at United.
I dont really get the arguments on threads like this.
Pretty much everyone agrees McT is not the answer for Utd going forward but even though we all agree, we argue about how bad he is. People are trying score points by proving he is bang average instead of really crap.
Who cares. He is either good enough or he isnt and he honestly isnt. This from someone who is glad he is in the Scotland squad because he is good enough for us at the moment.
Pretty much everyone agrees McT is not the answer for Utd going forward but even though we all agree, we argue about how bad he is. People are trying score points by proving he is bang average instead of really crap.
Who cares. He is either good enough or he isnt and he honestly isnt. This from someone who is glad he is in the Scotland squad because he is good enough for us at the moment.
You can dislike a player, want them moved on and still give an honest appraisal of their performance. He played alright last night, admitting that doesn't mean wanting him starting regularly.
Should we only ever point out the negatives once a consensus has been reached on a player?
Last nights game and all the ones till the end of season are best to be ignored when it comes to player performances.
I don't think we all do agree though do we? @Chripper seems to reckon he is, for example.
Same as with Jones and Lingard all these years. He needs just one average performance to become "good enough".People still think hes good enough?
Rinse and repeat.
Imagine if EtH doesn't take a shine to McT. Im not sure how @Chripper will cope.
The thing is, Salah started his career in Egypt, and had to make many breakthroughs to get where he is right now.
He had to prove enough to get to Basel, learn new language and completely new culture, on top of which he had to play in much stronger league than the Egyptian one.
After that he had unsuccessful stint at Chelsea and once again through Fiorentina and Roma he had to prove he belongs to top European level. It's not even comparable to McTominay and his position.
Salah was great wherever he played, apart from obviously Chelsea, even though it should be said that he hardly played there at all.
And also about Salah being nobody at 25, he was Roma's best player along with Dzeko. That doesn't really sound like nobody to me, but fine.
I didn't compare anyone. If I was comparing I would've said "McTominay Is like Busquets or Deschamps, etc". Or "McTominay is our Busquets or Deschamps, etc"
Are those players better than McTominay? Of course. Those players are better than the majority of anchorman today, let's be honest.
I didn't say that. I said "every successful team has to have a player that keeps things simple". Which Scott McTominay does, and yet he gets lambasted for that very thing.
I'm a Scotland fan, so I've seen him more than most United fans, so trust me, I know his shortcomings and I know where he should work on his game. Is there things that he can develop? Yes. Players can work on spacial awareness. That's the biggest flaw in his game. Apart from that, he's not nearly as bad as people claim.
Might seem otherwise, but I'm not defending him. I'm just not having him being the scapegoat while the majority of his teammates are giving equally as bad performances, or even worse.
I'm not going to criticise any player till we have a real manager on the training park.
Oh yeah, if such an event happens, McTominay and I will totally do a Romeo and Juliet. (The poisoning, not the marriage or the sex... Well... maybe the marriage.
)
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Nah. I'm in that camp of "decent squad player". But that category doesn't work at a major club if you're being paid anything more than a decent squad player. We couldn't wait to pay Williams 50K, we bumped Lingard up to 100K as soon as we could, Rashford's hardly had to prove himself before getting a mega deal. McTominay's rumoured to be on 90K a week. Fred 120K.People still think hes good enough?
Squad players are necessary, but we pay them what other clubs pay their top stars.
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