Sofyan Amrabat | 2023/24 Performances

Bondi77 said:

He is bad but Antony is different level when it comes to bad.

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Yeah, mostly because we paid insane money for Antony, while Amrabat is a loan on peanuts money

RedDevilQuebecois said:

He's a severe indictment against future transfer proposals and loans coming out of Serie A. The Premier League does NOT allow you to have so much time on the ball and it means you either react quickly or you will feck up.

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It really isn't. He was slow in Serie A also and rarely imposed himself on games aside from one game against Napoli that I recall. Fiorentina fans weren't even bothered about his departure.

Anyone who saw him play outside of the World Cup saw this but this forum for some bizarre reason thought he was the key player to sort out the midfield.

RedDevilQuebecois said:

He's a severe indictment against future transfer proposals and loans coming out of Serie A. The Premier League does NOT allow you to have so much time on the ball and it means you either react quickly or you will feck up.

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Us getting a free run at him was very suspicious.

Lay said:

It really isn't. He was slow in Serie A also and rarely imposed himself on games aside from one game against Napoli that I recall. Fiorentina fans weren't even bothered about his departure.

Anyone who saw him play outside of the World Cup saw this but this forum for some bizarre reason thought he was the key player to sort out the midfield.

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Goes to show how bad our fans know about football. It is just all hyped and vibes.
It is also an indictment of our scouting team and manager to even bring him on loan.
I think ETH as manager doesn't appreciate how high level the EPL is when he continues to bring such average players to the club.
His best signing in Martinez may not even be the next manager's cup of tea as he has some deficiencies in his game that needs to be covered.
In general, this has been a bad experiment

E-mal said:

Goes to show how bad our fans know about football. It is just all hyped and vibes.
It is also an indictment of our scouting team and manager to even bring him on loan.
I think ETH as manager doesn't appreciate how high level the EPL is when he continues to bring such average players to the club.
His best signing in Martinez may not even be the next manager's cup of tea as he has some deficiencies in his game that needs to be covered.
In general, this has been a bad experiment

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ETH just isn't a very good manager.
Scholes said the same thing yesterday, he said all our center backs need protecting but United CBs are expected to defend one on one.

He seems to want to slow the game down to pick a pass but the problem is he doesn't have the ability to make space for himself to do that. The pace of the Premier League is always going to require a much quicker decision than in other leagues.

E-mal said:

Goes to show how bad our fans know about football. It is just all hyped and vibes.
It is also an indictment of our scouting team and manager to even bring him on loan.
I think ETH as manager doesn't appreciate how high level the EPL is when he continues to bring such average players to the club.
His best signing in Martinez may not even be the next manager's cup of tea as he has some deficiencies in his game that needs to be covered.
In general, this has been a bad experiment

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What deficiencies does Martinez have in his game that needs to be covered? Genuinely curious.

justsomebloke said:

What deficiencies does Martinez have in his game that needs to be covered? Genuinely curious.

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He is not the quickest , he is physical but lacks physicality if that makes sense , not great in Aerial duels again due to his size , have doubts about him playing in high line required to defend large spaces and ending up in lots of one and one duels .

gajender said:

He is not the quickest , he is physical but lacks physicality if that makes sense , not great in Aerial duels again due to his size , have doubts about him playing in high line required to defend large spaces and ending up in lots of one and one duels .

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You mean he's physical but he's not strong? That does make sense.

I don't know, to me he has looked excellent in one on one duels, and doesn't seem to struggle much with aerial duels either. He does get outpaced sometimes but it seems to happen quite rarely.

Let’s be honest - he’s crap.

Would rather have Fred.

Foolsgold21 said:

Let’s be honest - he’s crap.

Would rather have Fred.

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Fred would've been decent at that LB role since he can actually run. While Amrabat was never really going to be made permanent, yesterday was the final nail.

NewGlory said:

Yeah, mostly because we paid insane money for Antony, while Amrabat is a loan on peanuts money

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If true, then 10m loan fee is not peanuts money

Foolsgold21 said:

Let’s be honest - he’s crap.

Would rather have Fred.

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And I have to admit I though Amrabat will be an improvement, how wrong was I.

Foolsgold21 said:

Let’s be honest - he’s crap.

Would rather have Fred.

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And it's not even close.

Fortunately we didn't buy him - that was a prescient call. Wonder who insisted on that.

Foolsgold21 said:

Let’s be honest - he’s crap.

Would rather have Fred.

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Letting go of Fred was dumb.

Would it be fair to say that Fred would be our second best central midfielder now, behind Mainoo? At least he could track a runner and press effectively. He's better than Eriksen, McTominay and Amrabat, that's for sure.

Kostov said:

And I have to admit I though Amrabat will be an improvement, how wrong was I.

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Lots and lots of posts and commentators said he was too slow. Noone else interested. Another ETH ex player he chased all summer. If we had sold McT he would have been a permanent signing.

justsomebloke said:

And it's not even close.

Fortunately we didn't buy him - that was a prescient call. Wonder who insisted on that.

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We only didnt buy him as we didnt have the funds. Widely reported that if we had shifted McT then ETH would have signed him permanently.

Mike Smalling said:

Letting go of Fred was dumb.

Would it be fair to say that Fred would be our second best central midfielder now, behind Mainoo? At least he could track a runner and press effectively. He's better than Eriksen, McTominay and Amrabat, that's for sure.

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Fred wasn’t good enough - it was right to move him on.

The issue is replacing him with this fella.

next_number_seven said:

ETH just isn't a very good manager.
Scholes said the same thing yesterday, he said all our center backs need protecting but United CBs are expected to defend one on one.

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That's the point, then we added Martinez who himself needs protecting. Boggles the mind

Foolsgold21 said:

Fred wasn’t good enough - it was right to move him on.

The issue is replacing him with this fella.

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A precious few of our players are actually good enough, so it's about how you build the squad up and who can do a job while we transition.

It would have been much better to let go of McTominay, even considering all the goals he's gotten this season. The problem is that McTominay doesn't fit into the structure of the team. When you play him, you sacrifice all build-up and solidity in midfield for a potential goal. He can't be trusted. I'd take Fred as a starter over McTominay in pretty much all games.

I thought he'd have been better, but he hasn't seen a lot of game time, probably because he is just too slow. Very easy to blame him for the third goal, he shouldn't have taken any chances and just hooked that clear.

But what in the feck is that scooped pass into that area for? Linfelof did it a few times as well and the ball was given away nearly every time, you're just asking for trouble popping the ball up into the air in an area like that against City.

Gordon Godot said:

Lots and lots of posts and commentators said he was too slow. Noone else interested. Another ETH ex player he chased all summer. If we had sold McT he would have been a permanent signing.

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If we sold MCT he would have been sacked by now. Amrabat needs to go back to Italy today.

justsomebloke said:

What deficiencies does Martinez have in his game that needs to be covered? Genuinely curious.

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Height, pace and rashness.
He is not slow but not fast enough to play a high line either when you compare him to the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal defenders, that much is obvious.
As with most of our half decent players, we praise them to high heavens and then reality dawn on us when we realize they are just not as good.

He is very rash and defending has become worse this season for some reasons.

There is a reason why Argentina did not use him as a starter at the world up despite having a "better" season than the spurs guy.

I am telling you now, a new manager will look to improve on him at center back

RedDevilQuebecois said:

He's a severe indictment against future transfer proposals and loans coming out of Serie A. The Premier League does NOT allow you to have so much time on the ball and it means you either react quickly or you will feck up.

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It’s just who he is as a player. Hojlund is doing just fine and he came from Serie A too.

E-mal said:

Height, pace and rashness.
He is not slow but not fast enough to play a high line either when you compare him to the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal defenders, that much is obvious.
As with most of our half decent players, we praise them to high heavens and then reality dawn on us when we realize they are just not as good.

He is very rash and defending has become worse this season for some reasons.

There is a reason why Argentina did not use him as a starter at the world up despite having a "better" season than the spurs guy.

I am telling you now, a new manager will look to improve on him at center back

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I mean I've read some bad takes here, but calling Martinez rash and saying that's why Romero plays over him is one of the worst.

The only positive i can give him is that he's better that DVB.

E-mal said:

Height, pace and rashness.
He is not slow but not fast enough to play a high line either when you compare him to the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal defenders, that much is obvious.
As with most of our half decent players, we praise them to high heavens and then reality dawn on us when we realize they are just not as good.

He is very rash and defending has become worse this season for some reasons.

There is a reason why Argentina did not use him as a starter at the world up despite having a "better" season than the spurs guy.

I am telling you now, a new manager will look to improve on him at center back

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Really don't see the height and rashness factors. Obviously he's not tall, but that doesn't seem to limit his effectiveness much. Also I don't think he comes across as rash - on the contrary I think it's notable how good his decision-making generally is. I'd say Romero is considerably worse on that point. And while I agree he doesn't have top-shelf quickness or pace, it's hardly a pronounced shortcoming either.

If a future manager will look to improve on him, what will he think about the rest of our defence? They all have considerably worse shortcomings than he does.

NewGlory said:

Yeah, mostly because we paid insane money for Antony, while Amrabat is a loan on peanuts money

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Ten million for a loan deal isn't peanuts money, need i remind you that Fred was a far better useful player but he was sold for less than his ten millionloan fee.

Hughes35 said:

The only positive i can give him is that he's better that DVB.

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Playing with ten men would still be preferable than either.

E-mal said:

Height, pace and rashness.
He is not slow but not fast enough to play a high line either when you compare him to the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal defenders, that much is obvious.
As with most of our half decent players, we praise them to high heavens and then reality dawn on us when we realize they are just not as good.

He is very rash and defending has become worse this season for some reasons.

There is a reason why Argentina did not use him as a starter at the world up despite having a "better" season than the spurs guy.

I am telling you now, a new manager will look to improve on him at center back

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Looking at the current best starting XI with everyone available, Martinez' spot is one of the very last that should be looked at. It would be absolutely mental to get a replacement for him before we get a few new midfielders, at least one new forward, a new left back and even a partner for Martinez.

If a new manager looks at our squad and has a Martinez replacement as a priority, I'd be extremely worried.

KiD MoYeS said:

Playing with ten men would still be preferable than either.

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They'd be better doing a competition and picking a fan to start each week instead..... And I'm only half joking.

izak said:

Ten million for a loan deal isn't peanuts money, need i remind you that Fred was a far better useful player but he was sold for less than his ten millionloan fee.

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Not sure why this keeps getting posted.

Fred was sold for 9.75m + potential add ons.

Amrabat loan fee was 9m.

SER19 said:

Nobody cares that this just isn't true?

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Oranges038 said:

Not sure why this keeps getting posted.

Fred was sold for 9.75m + potential add ons.

Amrabat loan fee was 9m.

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Most reports are that we sold Fred for €9.74m and Amrabat's loan fee was €10m. Obviously Fred does have add-ons which we will hopefully receive, but their base cost seems to have Amrabat more expensive. There are some sources that say Amrabat was only €9m though, but either way it was obviously a bad decision.

MadDogg said:

Most reports are that we sold Fred for €9.74m and Amrabat's loan fee was €10m. Obviously Fred does have add-ons which we will hopefully receive, but their base cost seems to have Amrabat more expensive. There are some sources that say Amrabat was only €9m though, but either way it was obviously a bad decision.

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Getting rid of Fred wasn't a bad decision.

It's the choice of replacement that turned out to be a bad decision.

At least SEG -- ten Hag's mate and son - will make some profit when he goes back to Fiorentina and they get a transfer for him in the summer with a year left on his contract.

Mike Smalling said:

Letting go of Fred was dumb.

Would it be fair to say that Fred would be our second best central midfielder now, behind Mainoo? At least he could track a runner and press effectively. He's better than Eriksen, McTominay and Amrabat, that's for sure.

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Mainoo obviously has a lot more potential and will (unless something goes badly wrong) go on to be much better, but I expect Fred would have still been better than Mainoo has been this season. At the moment I would say that in most games Mainoo looks good when he gets on the ball, but he's too often quite ineffective and drifts through games without having much impact. Perhaps it's partly due to our set-up where we use our midfield much less than most other teams, but he does have some way to go in that regard. Obviously that's to be expected though at his age.

In saying that, it looks like Fred has picked up a couple of injuries this season so maybe his all-action style is catching up with him.

Oranges038 said:

Getting rid of Fred wasn't a bad decision.

It's the choice of replacement that turned out to be a bad decision.

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Yes and no. It was always going to be more difficult to replace Fred than a lot of people made out. Especially once we moved him into the #8 role he was a good player to have in the squad (compared to our other options). Even if the replacements had been better than Fred, he still would have been a better squad player than others that we kept.

His age and playstyle was the main issue, as there was a risk that we'd soon see a significant drop in level.

Selling Fred and Elanga for peanuts before replacing them properly with an already paper thin squad was a bad decision.

Thankfully ten Hag couldn't also get rid of McTominay or we'd probably be a lot closer to the bottom half of the table.

Can't fault Amrabat's effort, but he regularly plays suicidal passes deep in the United half, how a coach or Ten Hag hasn't picked him up on this is beyond me.

MadDogg said:

Most reports are that we sold Fred for €9.74m and Amrabat's loan fee was €10m. Obviously Fred does have add-ons which we will hopefully receive, but their base cost seems to have Amrabat more expensive. There are some sources that say Amrabat was only €9m though, but either way it was obviously a bad decision.

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No, most reports are that fred was 15m and amrabat was 10m. Euro this is. But this is my problem with these false representations:


Thats a 5m difference. Then there is the matter of 3.75m euro difference in wages for the year. So that makes it around 8.5m.

Then forget about amrabat - Fred is 30 and was never getting a resale value again. The only club who stumped up for him was fenerbahce, which tells you all you need to know. In terms of financial fair play balancing, the guts of 9m isnt a small fee and might be what made a different deal possible. Maybe atalanta held out for an extra 9 for hojlund. We don't know what 9m in saving allowed elsewhere in terms of wages/book balancing.

Very simply put, this just isnt a like for like simple comparison. We've done enough shit business to not need to resort to false arguments as if everything is like for like. Multiple other factors were part of selling fred, and yeah amrabat probably was a misjudged replacement on loan, but we might not have even considred it had Mainoo not been injured. If Mainoo and Mount were fit all season would we have played amrabat? Unlikely we would have used him. It also looked possible that Mctominay could leave late in the deadline.

So yes, it's nice to sit here and laugh at just how inexplicably stupid we are that the average online fan can see how paying more for amarabat on loan than fred was sold for- but its a)not true, and b) more complicated than that.

Born2Lose said:

Selling Fred and Elanga for peanuts before replacing them properly with an already paper thin squad was a bad decision.

Thankfully ten Hag couldn't also get rid of McTominay or we'd probably be a lot closer to the bottom half of the table.

Can't fault Amrabat's effort, but he regularly plays suicidal passes deep in the United half, how a coach or Ten Hag hasn't picked him up on this is beyond me.

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We did replace them. Mainoo was promoted and Mount was brought in. Mainoo got a bad pre season injury which meant we needed the extra body. I don't think we left the wings thin either. Elanga was very poor, and at the start of the season we had rashford, sancho, garnacho and antony for those positions. not to mention that we sometimes see bruno there, possibly even mount there.