If he had such skill set Chelsea would have paid what Mount demanded a long time ago.
Mason Mount | Confirmed
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
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Ah yes - silly me for being in the same boat with other apparent dipshits such as Erik Ten Haag, who only have superficial understandings of Manchester United's midfield needs.
Is it true or not that Mount always played in combination with Kante/Jorginho/Kovacic?
Really really strong candidacy to be cited as the textbook reductio ad absurdum in the next edition of Miriam Webster's
With the 3 of them? No.
And I'm sorry, since when is playing with another central midfielder disqualifying? You have a hard on for FdJ but you may be shocked to hear he sometimes played alongside Busquets - Shock! Horror!
So basically you are always going to agree with whatever a manager says. I have seen enough of Manchester United spending boatloads of money and waste year after year signing crap players, players that we didn’t need and players that were not a good fit just because the manager said so.
Uh no - I'm pointing out how ludicrous it is that someone on an internet forum is claiming that the fecking manager of their club has a "superficial understanding of Manchester United's midfield needs"
He seems to play his best in Bruno's position. Obviously he's not as good as Bruno, I would mind having him as a squad option. But you don't spend 50M (nevermind 70M) on a player to be a squad option. Not in our position at least.
I don’t have time nor interest in scouring the internet looking for Chelsea’a lineup under Tuchel. I did check the CL final lineup against City, he played in front of Kante and Jorginho. I’d hazard a guess that’s how Chelsea pretty much lined up in important games.
Why does this keep getting repeated? He's quite clearly not being signed as a backup to Bruno.
Yeah so you just admitted you have a superficial understanding of how the team worked. It's fine - I wouldn't expect people to be experts in other teams' tactics.
Chelsea in that final played a 5-3-2 - Mount was the left sided 8 in that system, with Kante as the right sided 8. This took Pep by surprise, because often Mount had been the right sided 8/10, but Tuchel switched things because he thought Havertz could physically dominate Zinchenko and Mount would do better exploiting space on the left side. Again - this is one of the hugely valuable things about Mount - you can list him on a teamsheet and then he can play a number of different roles so as to best exploit the other team tactically. I'd argue that this is part of why he was worse this year under Potter - Potter was very very obviously worse tactically than Tuchel, who devised creative ways to get Mount into free areas to let him cook.
So where would he play?
Mourninhos toenail has more football knowledge than me but it didn’t stop him wasting half a billion for us in signing unwanted players. Mourinho had such a hardon for Lukaku whom I didn’t want us signing. Should I have kept my mouth shut and agreed with Mourimho? Lukaku failed with the same problems that I saw would happen - he’d be average without space in front of him, he had a poor touch and not good aerially.
this example is not to say that I’m correct on assessing footballets. I wanted us to sign Alvaro Morata instead of Lukaku which would have been an equally disastrous signing. But blindly agreeing what a manager needs doesn’t sit right with me. They are not infallible. SAF thought Moyes could handle us here.
About Shaw - it’s possible he hasn’t been getting to the byline as often as he did under Ole but he has plenty of games where he is heavily involved in attacking play, puts in some beautiful crosses, underlaps into the box sometimes - he is still an excellent attacking full back imo.
Shaw still has pace to burn, his technique is probably the best at the club. If we want our left back to be more attacking, we don’t need to sign a new one - we’d just have to ask Shaw to play that way. Whether that is the best plan is, probably, another debate.
Obviously, one individual opinion isn’t worth much but the times the majority of the fan base is against a signing and it turns out great will be minimal. If we have £400m to spend this summer, I’m fine spending £50m of it on Mason Mount. Otherwise, it’s large slice out of the budget on a player who isn’t a definite to play in our first eleven.
But it's not just about dropping deep, I believe we need a midfielder who would be the first to get on the ball in the buildup. Mount didn't do that at Chelsea, it was mostly Jorginho or Kovacic. I don't think he's compatible with Bruno either because he already does most of the stuff you attribute to Mount.
I would argue there's an important distinction to be drawn here - managers can be fallible when it comes to specific players, but I don't think there is anywhere near the same failure rate when it comes to managers identifying what type of player they want to fill a role in their system.
Maybe Mount isn't the guy - who the feck knows. I do think it's absurd to imply that only someone with a superficial understanding of United's midfield needs would be interested in Mount given your hierarchy clearly is interested in buying him.
So he had Jorginho and Kante to help carry the midfield. We just have Casemiro. Bruno is nowhere like Jorginho or Kante.
I agree that Shaw still can be excellent - but to your point I also think Shaw is well-rounded enough to add value even when not overlapping, if that makes sense. If anything, this is an even bigger reason to get a versatile and intelligent left sided 8 like Mount who can combine with Shaw, ease some of the physical burden by covering for him, and also help put Shaw in positions to succeed without the latter having to necessarily carry the ball.
And you will have Shaw, Martinez, Varane, AWB, and Casemiro to cover him defensively. Modern football teams set up with 5 defending and 5 attacking - if you are replacing AWB with a gung-ho attacking force at RB then yes, perhaps Mount isn't the best fit. But as currently constructed for your team, you will be much better with a more attacking player at the 8 than another defensively-inclined 8/6.
Bruno / Mount / Casemiro is plenty of legs to cover an entire midfield - both in terms of pressing and recovery. I don't understand this critique of Mount - unless you think Tuchel played the likes of Jorginho and Kante to mask Mount's deficiencies? Which seems a colossal stretch.
Again the bolded is just incorrect. Mount regularly dropped deep to pick up possession opportunistically. Most of our worst performances under Tuchel correlated with Mount being stuck too far up the pitch and not dropping deep to help create. Is he some sort of wizard at playing with his back to the opposition goal - no of course not. Is that really what United are lacking right now? I'd also argue no - you need someone to reliably progress the ball from midfield into the final third, and that's where Mount is undeniably excellent.
You are arguing for the sake of it now. I can’t dig examples of transfer failures or failure rate of transfers of all managers to prove a point on a fan forum. Our midfield has been nonexistent since SAF left us, I have seen four managers trying to address our midfield and fail utterly. All those managers had an understanding of what their midfield needed to do and yet failed to make correct signings. Casemiro has been one signing that could be deemed a 100% success.
Do you have any idea what players like Scholes, Carrick, FdJ, Busquets add to a midfield?
and Jorginho as well.
Arguing for the sake of it? You have admitted that you don't really understand what Mount does and have made assumptions based on a single teamsheet, yet undeterred have continually argued with me about the attributes of a player I have watched play for probably something like 13,000 minutes.
You've then tried to make it out like I'm somehow appealing to authority when I am the authority here on Mount? It's so unfathomable that EtH would agree with me that he must also be wrong. Also apparently Tuchel is wrong - but you obviously know better.
Hurr durr no obviously I don't, I've just wasted untold hours of my life on this forum trying to educate the ignorant masses why Enzo Fernandez is one of the best players in the world.
Spare me the condescension - again you admitted that you don't know what position Mount plays or why he's valuable, so we can just put a pin in this discussion here.
Unfortunately there isn't a player like that available. These profiles are very rare because you need an extreme and unique skillset to pull off what they do. There is de Jong, but he doesn't want to come. Maybe Brozovic could do a good job there, but he's 31 this year and would be a short term solution. I think he recently extended his contract anyway.
Looks like you misunderstood my post.
You were talking about attributes of FDJ and suggested signing a similar player, albeit of lesser quality (whilst declaring you don’t get paid to identify such players). You’ve been saying that Caicedo is a better fit than Mount and I was pointing out that when comparing FDJ’s attributes to those of Caicedo and Mount, Mount is rather more similar to FDJ than Caicedo is.
I wonder if you have seen much of Mount? Possibly you haven’t been purposely tuned into evaluating him which would be quite understandable, why would you necessarily bother? And actually he is not an easy player to describe. When we were first strongly linked with him, I posted “What IS he?”. The first reply I got said “A footballer, apparently.” Strangely, that reply was exactly right. He doesn’t have a specific, conventionally recognised position but he is a footballer, and a good one. EtH would rather have FDJ but I think he has looked at Mount and thought “this guy could do something similar”.
What can I say. If I’m wrong I’ll donate my slippers to Oxfam.
The ones that get paid handsomely at the club often don’t get them right either, over the years.
So??
Yeah, I don’t disagree.
He will absolutely be part of the first 11, make no mistake, he will line up alongside Bruno and Casemiro
I don’t think FdJ and Mount are similar at all. Just because they can dribble and pass doesn’t mean they are both similar.
why I’d be happy with Caicedo is because he is a proper central midfielder who if it works out can be at our club for a long time. He could easily replace Casemiro in couple of years time. My opinion is that Bruno, Casemiro and Caicedo partnership would work much better than Bruno, Casemiro, Mount midfield. We don’t even have to sign Caicedo but someone like FdJ is okay as well. Caicedo is a good option right now because we don’t know if and when another similar talent would be available in the market for something like 80m.
Signign Caicedo would mean weakening our rivals as well. That’s an added bonus.
We had a similar dilemma with Pogba as well, I see Mount as someone similar with better workrate and less skill on the ball. We have attempted to play Bruno, Eriksen, Pogba before in that role and none of them have adapted. For me there is no reason to believe Mount will transform successfully. If anything prior experiences shows that it will end badly.
even if Caicedo doesn’t work out moving him on would be easy. Mount will never move outside of England and no one in England will match what we will pay him. That will be another saga on its own.
I disagree. You are going to ask me who else but it’s not my job to watch all European games and come up with names. You can laugh at this response but we will end up salivating over a player another club seemingly pulled out of “nowhere”. Case in point Bruno Guimaraes.
I don’t get the Enzo Fernandez point.
I don’t care what position Mount is good at but the midfielder I want Casemiro to partner with is not Mount.
I have stated over and over again that I’d be happy to get Mount on the cheap to add squad depth but definitely not at the expense of us signing a proper central midfielder.
Yes you are arguing for the sake of it. You said all managers know the type of midfielder they need. I stated examples of managers failing Manchester United continuously and you moved the goalpost to managers not being right on specific players.
I could give a feck about what Mount is good at or what sort of a player he is. Like you said you are the expert on Mount. But IMO I know what our midfield lacks and I want us to sign a midfielder who would improve our midfield. Again IMO Mount is not that midfielder.
Think we’ll go with Mount. A better fit for the way EtH wants to play.
Christ!
People need to understand that ETH may be looking for something else from that 8 position. He signed Eriksen, he wanted to sign FDJ too. In the past he had Gravenbach who is not a deep lying playmaker. He had energy, could dribble but most importantly could join the attack and flanks.
That's what I think ETH is looking for. More energy and more attacking impetus from midfield. It's a 4141 not simply a 433 and when you watch Ajax you can see it. More similar in shape to Liverpool. I don't think we intend to have a playmaker in midfield. I think we plan to have inverted full backs( a new right back), so Shaw, the new right back, Casemiro and Licha will have the main active roles in our build up.
I do also think we plan to sign Rabiot and keep Eriksen, allowing us to have a multitude of options in midfield
That's what I think ETH is looking for. More energy and more attacking impetus from midfield. It's a 4141 not simply a 433 and when you watch Ajax you can see it. More similar in shape to Liverpool. I don't think we intend to have a playmaker in midfield. I think we plan to have inverted full backs( a new right back), so Shaw, the new right back, Casemiro and Licha will have the main active roles in our build up.
I do also think we plan to sign Rabiot and keep Eriksen, allowing us to have a multitude of options in midfield
No amount of posts from me is going to change EtHs transfer plans. If we are successful with Mount I’ll be happy as well.
I don’t think we are getting a RB.
This is a good post. I think we will sign KMJ and add him to the list of players involved in the build up. We will be playing a high line with a "sweeper keeper" (someone like Costa but definitely not DDG) and the 5 defensive players in front of the keeper in this 4141 formation will all be capable passers, allowing for ball progression rather than hit and hope. Conversely, the five attacking players will all be expected to press as the first line of defence, but will not be solely responsible for creating. It is much easier to defend against a team that has only five players capable of creating something, than against a team with 10 players capable of being involved in the build up play. This is the Dutch concept of total football, and from next season I expect our squad to be much more in tune with ETH's thinking.
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