Cristiano Ronaldo (I stay)

Status
Not open for further replies.

ClassOf'99

Full Member
Joined
Aug 20, 2016
Messages
709
Yes, the team magically went from 2nd to our worst points total in the premier league era when he came by... coincidence. Has absolutely nothing to do with building the attack against a man who can't be arsed to move around the pitch. Brilliant stuff here.
Yeah, like it has absolutely nothing to do with the teams beneath us having a blip season and underperforming, we over performed for 1 season and everyone blames probably the only professional player at the club. (Leaked pre-season meals speaks volumes around this).

Also has nothing to do with Rashfords form falling off a cliff for 18 months alongside Bruno's, martial downing tools, Pogba and Lingard stinking up the places Maguire and Shaw being found out, AWB turned out to be terrible, Sancho hadn't bedded in yet, bar De Gea, Ronaldo was the only other player that saved us from further embarrasment last season, face it we had 1 lucky season, where the rest of the top 6 underperformed and for the last 18 months we've been watching this teams true selves.

But go ahead and blame Ronaldo, 1 player can't take the brunt of this shambolic team, literally the worst United team I've ever seen.
 

saik

Full Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2016
Messages
2,773
So the leaker is still there, actually. Hmmm.. who he/she might be?
I was pretty sure of this last season and still think the same that it is one of our British core. Never thought Pogba was a leaker. So it was always one of Maguire/Shaw/Rashford/Lingard/Hendo for me. Lingard and Hendo have gone so take your guess between the other 3.
 

Isotope

Ten Years a Cafite
Joined
Mar 6, 2012
Messages
23,554
I was pretty sure of this last season and still think the same that it is one of our British core. Never thought Pogba was a leaker. So it was always one of Maguire/Shaw/Rashford/Lingard/Hendo for me. Lingard and Hendo have gone so take your guess between the other 3.
It seems like it. The club need to consult coleen rooney on how to catch this leaker.
 

phelans shorts

Full Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
27,217
Location
Gaz. Is a Mewling Quim.
He had issues with Ramos and Marcelo at Madrid. Rooney and Giggs didn't seem to like him when he was here and both omit him when they mention their all time best United x1 lists. This current United squad can't seem to stand him.
Bonucci has already spoken about his attitude when he was at Juve.
The simple fact is, his being a difficult personality was often brushed over and his crap was something put up with when he was one of the two best players in the world. Now he’s far from that player (and he is clearly struggling to come to terms with that too) it just isn’t worth putting up with.
 

Theonas

Full Member
Scout
Joined
Aug 2, 2013
Messages
4,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
@MrEleson Cristiano Ronaldo always had a reputation of being a bit self centered, mega disciplined, focused on the goal and demands the highest standards from his teammates and club to help him achieve his goals. These traits are usually double sided, when the team is functioning well and there is a strong existing culture at the club that mitigates its side effects, it's all good, it's better than good! You get a goal machine that fits in very well with a relentless winning culture which was provided by Sir Alex Ferguson and the entity that is Real Madrid. His personality was never going to have a negative effect when there were people like Sir Alex or Perez in charge and when he was backing it up with some of the best performances in the history of the game.

When his return is diminished and the environment around him is not helping either like it was in his early years with us and later on with Juventus and even worse, now us. His traits are more harm than good, much more harm in fact. He forces a playing style that no top team uses right now because of his performance decline. He gets frustrated when the team is not in the latter stages of the CL and he can't accept that he is NOT good enough to playing for such a team now. An athlete that understands these limitations would either accept being part of a rebuilding job like Zlatan, or fly off to China or America for a nice paycheck. He doesn't want either, he seems to believe that he belongs with the elite of Europe in the latter stages of the CL when none of them want him. If he doesn't believe that, he needs to make a decision: us, Sporting Lisbon or outside Europe and out of respect for any of these options, he needs to give and respect the new reality of his footballing status.

What you are doing is cherry picking examples of when something good was said about him which would be a good argument if someone here argued that Ronaldo was and is an unlikeable pest that left nowhere with any friends. The argument is his presence affects the club because of his personality and later on in his career, his status. Whereas that could one time be justified by performances and could one time be a good fit with the clubs he's been with, it can also be poisonous and toxic if you change those factors; ie: decreasing performances and a less successful environment. This is what is happening now and the man is crying all the way to America or wherever he'll end up before he spares us the tears.
 

gaffs

Full Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
12,764
Location
Moscow 08, Rome 09, London 11
Sorry, but Ronaldo is the last of our problems. Is he frustrated - yes, i'm sure he is. He came back and has played under 3 managers in a year and has to play with a total bunch of muppets. 24 goals last year. Right now, who could fill that void? Martial? The guy has a couple of half decent games in pre season and we think he is wold class. He is not - he is so bad he couldn't get games or a single goal in Seville. He has scored less goals in the CL over his career than than Ronaldo scored in one.

We cant pass out the back and got caught doing so several times on Saturday. De Gea cant keep out a shot my grandma would save. The midfield is shocking - they cant keep the ball or win it - fundamentals for midfielders. And we have the manager seeming making some bizarre decisions.

Sure, Ronaldo showing his arms up is not helpful, but it's nothing new. He has been doing this all his career, during good times and bad.

His salary is insane, so letting him go would free up money for 3, 4 or 5 others starters. But as we are seeing from this window, we can't even get close to bringing in a good player, so why let our only world class player go?
 

phelans shorts

Full Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
27,217
Location
Gaz. Is a Mewling Quim.
Sorry, but Ronaldo is the last of our problems. Is he frustrated - yes, i'm sure he is. He came back and has played under 3 managers in a year and has to play with a total bunch of muppets. 24 goals last year. Right now, who could fill that void? Martial? The guy has a couple of half decent games in pre season and we think he is wold class. He is not - he is so bad he couldn't get games or a single goal in Seville. He has scored less goals in the CL over his career than than Ronaldo scored in one.

We cant pass out the back and got caught doing so several times on Saturday. De Gea cant keep out a shot my grandma would save. The midfield is shocking - they cant keep the ball or win it - fundamentals for midfielders. And we have the manager seeming making some bizarre decisions.

Sure, Ronaldo showing his arms up is not helpful, but it's nothing new. He has been doing this all his career, during good times and bad.

His salary is insane, so letting him go would free up money for 3, 4 or 5 others starters. But as we are seeing from this window, we can't even get close to bringing in a good player, so why let our only world class player go?
He’s nowhere near that level any more. Even Stevie Wonder can see that.
 

Irwin99

Full Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2018
Messages
9,124
Not going to the fans is a dick move and he is undoubtedly a self-centered a-hole. In fairness I didn't see any lack of effort on his part in either of the two games.

Since he came back to United he's seen us get hammered by 4 goals or more on SEVEN occasions, although some of those he didn't play in. That level of humiliation must be unprecedented in his career and to blame it on him with the line 'But this team finished second the year before' doesn't really add up for me, as if his presence suddenly exposed the defence and midfield which already had big problems.

I wouldn't be bothered if he left now but I think the people who think him leaving will magically improve the team will be in for a bit of a shock.
 

NewYorkRed

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Aug 11, 2021
Messages
1,609
Ronaldo needs to go, its no coincidence how fluid we looked in pre season without him. On top of this if he is directly affecting team morale by being a cnut he needs to go asap.
Yeah we looked real fluid without him in the brighton game. Jesus wept find a new slant
 

Theonas

Full Member
Scout
Joined
Aug 2, 2013
Messages
4,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Sorry, but Ronaldo is the last of our problems. Is he frustrated - yes, i'm sure he is. He came back and has played under 3 managers in a year and has to play with a total bunch of muppets. 24 goals last year. Right now, who could fill that void? Martial? The guy has a couple of half decent games in pre season and we think he is wold class. He is not - he is so bad he couldn't get games or a single goal in Seville. He has scored less goals in the CL over his career than than Ronaldo scored in one.

We cant pass out the back and got caught doing so several times on Saturday. De Gea cant keep out a shot my grandma would save. The midfield is shocking - they cant keep the ball or win it - fundamentals for midfielders. And we have the manager seeming making some bizarre decisions.

Sure, Ronaldo showing his arms up is not helpful, but it's nothing new. He has been doing this all his career, during good times and bad.

His salary is insane, so letting him go would free up money for 3, 4 or 5 others starters. But as we are seeing from this window, we can't even get close to bringing in a good player, so why let our only world class player go?
1) His 24 goals last year are no extraordinary achievement. Bayern are doing without a 50 plus goals a year dude. Real somehow managed without Ronaldo's 50+ goals. We did fine after we lost RvN's 30+ goals in a time where it also looked there was no one to replace it. Football fans sometimes have this weird logic that football works like maths. If you build a coherent tactical structure and supplement it with players that adhere to it, you are going to create chances for your forward players. But to do that, you need 11 players working on that! Gone are the days when you can indulge a super talent and get the others working around him, no one does it now in Europe and the fact that Ronaldo forces you to do it means that unless he gets you 50 goals, it's just not worth it.

2) Him showing his arms up is not just not helpful, it's detrimental and toxic when done THIS often. The team is not good enough, it just isn't and for it to be, it needs time. Throwing your arms up in the air when you are frustrated because you are closely missing out, is one thing. It can give that needed push and forces high standards. But when the team is nowhere, and a new guy comes in trying to build it and fix what's been broken, then it's not just unnecessary, it's really unhelpful to have someone like him whining about how it's not good enough. We know it isn't, the whole world knows, we don't need him to tell us and his winging is not going to change it because our problem is not that we just need a little push or more belief or whatever, our problem is that we need to build almost from scratch so what is he doing to help with that?

3) If Salah, Benzema and Lewandowski are the level we call world class now, Ronaldo is just not.
 

Ted Lasso

Full Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2021
Messages
1,929
He is not a scapegoat for unjust reasons.

His performances have been subpar and slowed down our attack/made it extremely predictable.

I went for the most recent because it's the most recent.
There's no denying we should be looking at a different profile of forward for a modern style. So it goes back to the reasoning behind bringing him to United. It was most definitely driven by commercial interests. Whether or not it was sanctioned by Ole also a moot point to me. Glazers did the same with Tom Brady which worked out nicely but it wasn't a stroke of genius. It was parasites doing their usual thing.

Back to Ronaldo, there were no pretenses then about what Ronaldo would and wouldn't bring to the club. Almost everyone agreed then:

- petulance when not getting good service and scoring tons of goals
- less flexibility with style and inability to press effectively
- an ego and salary that would cause discomfort in the ranks
- reduced opportunities for younger forwards
- the negative and dark story of the sexual assault case

+ Goals
+ Winning ethos
+ Better example of lifestyle choices
+ Commercial revenue

None of the complaints or issues now are or should be a surprise. It just strikes me as such a huge waste of time and effort to be arguing about a symptom when the disease is the ownership. The same that apparently nixed the chance to move Ronaldo on earlier this window.

It's not an excuse for Ronaldo, but seeing players ten and fifteen years his junior displaying apathy in the game, just as visible signs of frustration and severe lack of drive is a much more worrying on-field problem to address. And the noise about the dressing room drama is all too familiar from driving out Jose, Ole, etc. I just don't have patience for this lot anymore.
 

Lebo

Full Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2016
Messages
379
Well in July many predicted that Ronaldo’s return after his tantrums are going to affect team morale . I’m not trying to excuse anyone but we can’t ignore the predictable pattern .
 

MrEleson

Full Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
2,524
Buddy I literally just posted Giggs omitting him.
Marcelo being a close friend now doesn't change the fact that Ronaldo threw a tantrum because Marcelo dared to say that the other guy was simply better. It's in Diego Torres' 2013 book.

It's available on amazon. Read up.
Did you watch the video I just posted?
Giggs includes Ronaldo from his own mouth.

And who’s Diego Torres? I’ve never seen anywhere Marcelo declared Messi the best in the world although I check this book you’re talking about.
 

simonhch

Horrible boss
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Messages
14,368
Location
Seventh Heaven
Supports
Urban Combat Preparedness
Well in July many predicted that Ronaldo’s return after his tantrums are going to affect team morale . I’m not trying to excuse anyone but we can’t ignore the predictable pattern .
I promise you that this is exactly what’s happened. A few know what I know now, as they’ve PMd me. Ronaldo’s return was always going to destroy morale and the dressing room. Since he came back we’ve lost to Atlético, drew with Rayo, and lost to Brentford and Brighton. Pressing has evaporated, confidence plummeted. It cannot be underestimated how toxic his presence is. The club simply have to move him on. There is no unity there with him present.

It doesn’t mean that everything will be hunky dory when he leaves, because we have issues, but his presence is making everything worse. I just hope it’s not true that Glazer is preventing his sale. That is tantamount to sabotaging our season. The club really needs to reach a mutual termination agreement with him for the good of everyone. I cannot stress more strongly how detrimental he is to everything Ten Hag is trying to do.
 

tomaldinho1

Full Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2015
Messages
17,372
Well in July many predicted that Ronaldo’s return after his tantrums are going to affect team morale . I’m not trying to excuse anyone but we can’t ignore the predictable pattern .
True. The caf is a real melting pot and there are lots of different opinions but generally the blindly obvious stuff everyone gets right (Maguire will be too slow, Ronaldo will cause issues, DDG can't play sweeper keeper) What's worrying is our club doesn't seem to see these things.
 

MrEleson

Full Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
2,524
same thing happened at Juventus ... they went from 86 to 70, with him scoring the bulk of them (21). Not saying you can put all of that squarely on Ronaldo, but it's hard to completely dismiss this either. Every single one of our attacking players has regressed after we brought him back.
Check the seasons before they scored 86. It was around the same average as when Ronaldo was there. You can go back almost 10 years.
 

gaffs

Full Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
12,764
Location
Moscow 08, Rome 09, London 11
1) His 24 goals last year are no extraordinary achievement. Bayern are doing without a 50 plus goals a year dude. Real somehow managed without Ronaldo's 50+ goals. We did fine after we lost RvN's 30+ goals in a time where it also looked there was no one to replace it. Football fans sometimes have this weird logic that football works like maths. If you build a coherent tactical structure and supplement it with players that adhere to it, you are going to create chances for your forward players. But to do that, you need 11 players working on that! Gone are the days when you can indulge a super talent and get the others working around him, no one does it now in Europe and the fact that Ronaldo forces you to do it means that unless he gets you 50 goals, it's just not worth it.

2) Him showing his arms up is not just not helpful, it's detrimental and toxic when done THIS often. The team is not good enough, it just isn't and for it to be, it needs time. Throwing your arms up in the air when you are frustrated because you are closely missing out, is one thing. It can give that needed push and forces high standards. But when the team is nowhere, and a new guy comes in trying to build it and fix what's been broken, then it's not just unnecessary, it's really unhelpful to have someone like him whining about how it's not good enough. We know it isn't, the whole world knows, we don't need him to tell us and his winging is not going to change it because our problem is not that we just need a little push or more belief or whatever, our problem is that we need to build almost from scratch so what is he doing to help with that?

3) If Salah, Benzema and Lewandowski are the level we call world class now, Ronaldo is just not.
1) All good points but as you say...

If you build a coherent tactical structure and supplement it with players that adhere to it, you are going to create chances for your forward players
Where is United "coherent tactical structure"? There is non. Which is exactly why i say taking Ronaldo and his 24 goals out of this team would be massively detrimental.
No issue for Bayern or Madrid because they are/were well oiled machines. We are a basket case.

We have shown that we cant attract players, so what is the point in cutting our best player?

2) Agree, doesn't help. But that is Ronaldo. He was doing it when scoring 50 for Madrid. He was doing it during his first spell at United. If others are too thin skinned to be offended by it, then it's time to man up.

3) There is no dictionary definition for "World Class" but i would argue the category is wider than just 3 players. Maybe you could use the Ballon d'Or list as a starting point. Ronaldo is named in the 30 man shortlist. I doubt another United player would get in a shortlist of 100!
 
Last edited:

AndySmith1990

Full Member
Joined
Oct 2, 2021
Messages
5,892
Check the seasons before they scored 86. It was around the same average as when Ronaldo was there. You can go back almost 10 years.
Okay so before he joined Juventus they had one season where they scored more, and the rest they scored more or less the same as when he was there. So he essentially made no difference to the overall goals and his presence only resulted in the rest of the team scoring less, correct?
 

gaffs

Full Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
12,764
Location
Moscow 08, Rome 09, London 11
He’s nowhere near that level any more. Even Stevie Wonder can see that.
The guy has played 180 mins in total this season. He has hardly had a kick.

Is he as good as he was, clearly not. But he was the third highest goal scorer in the Premier league last year. Scored more than players who many would say are "World Class" such as Kane or Mane. And he is playing for a dreadful team.

Put him in the City or Liverpool side last year, and he could have scored 30.
 

royboy16

Full Member
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
8,178
Location
The moon gave me flowers for funerals to come.
I promise you that this is exactly what’s happened. A few know what I know now, as they’ve PMd me. Ronaldo’s return was always going to destroy morale and the dressing room. Since he came back we’ve lost to Atlético, drew with Rayo, and lost to Brentford and Brighton. Pressing has evaporated, confidence plummeted. It cannot be underestimated how toxic his presence is. The club simply have to move him on. There is no unity there with him present.

It doesn’t mean that everything will be hunky dory when he leaves, because we have issues, but his presence is making everything worse. I just hope it’s not true that Glazer is preventing his sale. That is tantamount to sabotaging our season. The club really needs to reach a mutual termination agreement with him for the good of everyone. I cannot stress more strongly how detrimental he is to everything Ten Hag is trying to do.
Feel free to PM but not sure why you cant share here ?-Thanks.
 

NotQuiteManc

Full Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2014
Messages
1,928
Apologies to the fans at the end of games is like the polar opposite of Liverpool's hand holding and swinging celebrations. As corny as it is, I rather United started winning and doing that "celebration" instead of being Apology FC.
 

gaffs

Full Member
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
12,764
Location
Moscow 08, Rome 09, London 11
I promise you that this is exactly what’s happened. A few know what I know now, as they’ve PMd me. Ronaldo’s return was always going to destroy morale and the dressing room. Since he came back we’ve lost to Atlético, drew with Rayo, and lost to Brentford and Brighton. Pressing has evaporated, confidence plummeted. It cannot be underestimated how toxic his presence is. The club simply have to move him on. There is no unity there with him present.

It doesn’t mean that everything will be hunky dory when he leaves, because we have issues, but his presence is making everything worse. I just hope it’s not true that Glazer is preventing his sale. That is tantamount to sabotaging our season. The club really needs to reach a mutual termination agreement with him for the good of everyone. I cannot stress more strongly how detrimental he is to everything Ten Hag is trying to do.
Promise us?

You speaking with Ten Haag?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.