Weaker yet have three more points than the same period as last season??
Mason Mount's Misfortune
- Thread starter horsechoker
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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?
Holy shit you're right. Because we beat Wolves 1-0 in a game we were appalling in and deserved to lose by 3 or 4 goals.
At this rate of improvement we should finish the season on 132 points.
No he wasn't. First year at most.
Except he was. From stats alone 3 seasons ago he had 12 goals and assists and then he followed up with 21 goals and assists.
Objectively speaking that's decent enough, and then superb. That's before we consider his best assets which is off the ball work, retaining possession and positional intelligence.
He was also among the highest in chance creation. You can try your best to rewrite history but you can't.
Better these injuries happen now than later in the season. For us though it seems they just happen at all times. Wonder when our 1 game will be where we have our strongest XI.
What a really dumb outlook.
Of course he was, don't be silly, let's not rewrite history to suit your agenda against him.
How so? It's factually correct,
Things can be factually correct and also dumb. This is one of those things.
"Stats". Unfortunately people actually watch games rather than tracking stats on websites.
Not really. Bruno and Rashford are getting more I think.
It's hard to care about him being injured. It's hard to care about this season at all with the Glazers still here. Feels like we're treading water.
Oh trust me, we've alll seen his games. I specifically said even if we just look at stats the output justifies successful season logic.
The eye test just makes your evaluation that much more questionable.
No they aren't that's criticism for their perceived weaknesses or attitude, Mount was being written off before he had even kicked a ball, two games in he might as well be on a plane to rwanda.
How much is it to Rwanda, anyway? Surely a whip-around can be organised?
We're trying to press teams higher up, I know it hasn't fully clicked yet but first half vs Spurs was the blueprint. Do we switch system because Eriksen can't do it, maybe bring in Hannibal?
Totally agree with your comment on Spur's first half. Someone gets it!
It's also factually correct that in the same two fixtures last season, both only around 3 months ago, we dominated one, drew the other and scored 2 goals in each. And since then both of those teams have been in major flux, lost their key players and have new managers.
How many points and goals conceded do you think we'd be on right now if we'd started this season against Brighton and Brentford?
One might have to question the positional intelligence of a creative midfielder if he keeps averaging 18 passes in an entire game of football.
Not at all - if he's adding value to the system then you don't hang your hat on isolated stats like these.
It wasn't a great blueprint if we can only do it for half a game, during which we score 0 goals and the opposition hit the post twice.
I remain extremely unconvinced. At the moment its up there with pretending Roy Keane was a centreback and Alan Smith a midfielder.
Have to keep our eyes out for when he starts to add value
It's the second match, Jesus, give it time. We've seen a glimpse.
And maybe until then don't make premature evaluations. Because he's not performing any more poorly for us than any of his peers bar Onana.
We score zero goals but Bruno miss a sitter, Rashord was through on goal and we should have had a penalty. Like I said it hasn't fully clicked but we were the better side that half. The idea would be to do it for the entire game which will come. Have some faith bro/sis!!
Ah he'll be useless. Part of the post Fergie curse, dreadful owners, awful managers, terrible players, bad luck etc
There are people here who just want to be moany cnuts about everything. They saw someone in YouTube bitch and moan, so they think that’s how discussion works.
I've only just caught up on this. Thought he was just out for two games, but seen the updates. How annoying.
Can't remember Fred spending too much time on the sidelines. So, we've moved him on and replaced him with Mount, who now isn't available. Can't help but think we've downgraded...
At least this will give us an excuse to get more signings.
Can't remember Fred spending too much time on the sidelines. So, we've moved him on and replaced him with Mount, who now isn't available. Can't help but think we've downgraded...
At least this will give us an excuse to get more signings.
Its the second match of the manager's second season. Its an odd time to suddenly throw a new system at the players based on 1 signing (who is now injured anyway). Especially when said signing is being asked to play a role he literally never played at his former club and has shown little to no evidence he is suited to.
Its firmly under the category of "completely bonkers" until proven otherwise, which I highly suspect it wont be.
How do you know it will come? 45 minutes of looking just about ok and 135 of looking a complete and utter shambles might not be enough to fully condemn something as a crazy idea, but its certainly not enough to indicate it isn't crazy.
I would feel a lot more comfortable if we still had Fred and didn't have Mount, and that's nothing against Mount, but he very obviously doesn't pay the same position as Fred, and we needed Fred 56 times last season. There were very few games we were crying out for a second no10...but we did need to emergency loan another midfielder when Eriksen got injured.
With half of those being to the other team.
Fred and Mount actually play the same role within this system. The system isn't new either, you should rewatch our fixtures with Barca especially when Fred was on the pitch. We played with similar set up a lot after Eriksen injury last season. Football is about doing the basics right, if we do the basic things within the idea of the manager for 90 mins every week things will be alright
I’m baffled we’ve sold Fred.
I think it’s obvious that we need Amrabat. Someone to keep the ball and knit the defence to the attack. He is in the top 10% for passes made I believe, the opposite to what Mount has provided so far, and similar to what Eriksen can offer.
Youd hope that he has more stamina than Eriksen too, which is I guess why Ten Hag wanted Mount.
Once again, I would blame the ownership situation on the lack of transfer movement. If the Glazers were gone we’d have undoubtedly had a much better transfer window.
The hope of course is still that we can get Amrabat in before deadline.
Maybe Missing Much Maligned Mason Mount Means More Magical Memories Made Medially Mainoo Moreover Malacia.
To be honest I'd rather a player gets on the ball and does something, even if it doesn't materialise into anything decent (not that Fred was always bad). Getting involved and being proactive in the game is a prerequisite for good performance levels for a United midfielder.
So in my opinion I think just kind of hiding and not getting on the ball is worse because we don't even know if he'd be any good if he was getting it more often. All we know is he's putting in a VDB impression which has no prospect of going anywhere good until he firstly makes himself available in the game.
Difficult to answer that last question as that'd be hypothetical but I'd imagine we'd be on three or four points, which would have been a massive improvement on last season's start also.
As starts go, we have had a better start than last season despite apparently being weaker, seems a bit of a contradictory statement.
Mount will always be up against it simply because many did not want him here in the first instance. He is not the type of player akin to the type of football we fans wanted to play under ETH especially since he chased De Jong. Mount's signing is the final nail in the coffin against our dreams of playing a controlling style of football.
Why is last season's start so important? The baseline performance is what we achieved over the season. I don't find the opening 2 games to be very compelling as an argument, if there was a 2 game trophy for that maybe it would be, but if there was we wouldn't be winning it on points or performance levels. I don't see a high player churn within the XI's we've fielded for me to want to go back to Erik ten Hag's first two competitive fixtures as a Man Utd manager and directly compare them to this season. It seems very artificial to put forward that argument.
What should be expected is that taking our average level of performance from last season, you'd hope for signs of improvement early on based on learnings from last season, preseason training time, and signings because it is supposed to be progressive development expanding on what we are building. That's fairly straight forward and intuitive and basically the point of management, incremental improvement at the least. Sometimes it doesn't happen early in a season, but let's call that for what it is, it has been pretty poor and so far Mason Mount in exchange for Eriksen hasn't yielded anything good.
The worry being that there isn't much to fall back on. It would be nice to think we could point to Mason Mount's great recent form for club or country. Or for his history of solid performances in the role we're playing him. But we can't do that, we basically have to go for these hopeful notions of "he'll improve" etc. It's good you are concentrating on two games because honestly that is about the one saving grace with Mount at the moment because the logic behind it looks very strange.
Dude, he created 3 chances in the last game, it's not his fault we can't finish a ham sandwich. Fred is/was nowhere near good enough for United. Mount is not experiencing his best form, but if (and maybe that's a big IF) he gets back to his form 2 seasons ago, he will be far better for us than Fred. I do not share the Fred-love that many on here do. I never rated him, never wanted to see him play, and on the few occasions when he made it through a match without something braindead and calamitous happening, I only felt exhausted.