Absolutely horrible midfield

flappyjay

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I see now Martial is the one getting a lot of stick for how crap our midfield is. Apparently he isn't affecting play because he is lazy. Let's not forget that one of our more active forwards Rashford was getting less touches than anyone bar de Gea before Martial returned. It doesn't matter how much someone runs when the ones responsible for passing the ball to him are clueless at that part of the game.

You can see a difference between when the Bournemouth midfield was allowing our midfielders to play in the first 10 mins. Marital was linking well with James and they were creating a bunch of half chances. As soon as Bournemouth closed down our midfield mctominay could barely complete a forward pass and Andreas decided to do a Mata and disappear. I would wager any one of Rashford, Martial and James would make the Liverpool bench. Look at our current midfielders none would make the bench when everyone is fit that's how poor they are.

Now I am not saying we couldn't challenge for top 4 with Fred and mctominay (top 4 is probably at its weakest in a while) but if you are going to have those two as your midfield base you better have someone like prime Ozil ahead of them feeding the forwards. Alternatively only one should be playing alongside two creative cm's. Instead we have them playing alongside the worst set of 10s in the league. Look at all the teams we are challenging leicester have Tielemans and Maddison for creativity, Chelsea have Jorginho, mount, willian at occasions. Liverpool have their fullbacks and city have an army of creative players. Look at our squad and ask yourself besides Pogba who the feck do we genuinely expect to provide our forwards. Look at Spurs their main creative force has been crap and that has coincided with them being as shite as us.
 

GazTheLegend

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People have started defending Fred FFS

he’s atrocious, Lingard is atrocious... we have two players that would be passengers in championship teams
 

flappyjay

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People have started defending Fred FFS

he’s atrocious, Lingard is atrocious... we have two players that would be passengers in championship teams
It's either people don't know the function of the midfield or they don't actually watch our games. It's appalling I gave up on them when they couldn't string more that 3 passes when Everton smashed us 4-0 last season
 

Raw

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It's by far the worst midfield out of the top teams, it might not even be top 10 in the league. First choice midfield isn't that bad (Pogba, McTominay, Fred) but it's still a long way off the top teams, especially in terms of depth. Pogba's great when he wants to be, McTominay is a consistent hard worker and Fred is just bang average. Outside of that, who have we got in central midfield? Matic who's absolutely past it and Garner who isn't ready. Brilliant options there.

Letting Herrera and Fellaini go without any replacements has completely fecked our season. It's not like we even replaced them with youth players anyway (like we supposedly did with Lukaku), McTominay was already a first team member and Garner has yet to make his mark. That plus Pogba being injured for god knows how long has turned our midfield into mediocre crap.

The most annoying thing was that back in the summer we all saw how shit our midfield was yet we did nothing to sort it out.
 

flappyjay

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It's by far the worst midfield out of the top teams, it might not even be top 10 in the league. First choice midfield isn't that bad (Pogba, McTominay, Fred) but it's still a long way off the top teams, especially in terms of depth. Pogba's great when he wants to be, McTominay is a consistent hard worker and Fred is just bang average. Outside of that, who have we got in central midfield? Matic who's absolutely past it and Garner who isn't ready. Brilliant options there.

Letting Herrera and Fellaini go without any replacements has completely fecked our season. It's not like we even replaced them with youth players anyway (like we supposedly did with Lukaku), McTominay was already a first team member and Garner has yet to make his mark. That plus Pogba being injured for god knows how long has turned our midfield into mediocre crap.

The most annoying thing was that back in the summer we all saw how shit our midfield was yet we did nothing to sort it out.
The most annoying part is that if we could see it that means the coaching staff saw it and didn't take action during the window. Midfield had the highest priority as we were short after Herrera and Fellaini
 

The White Pele

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We don’t have midfielders that can hold possession in the final third and have that composure to find the right pass.

Too often they either try to shoot through a sea of bodies or take the easy pass out wide to the fullback.

David Silva is obviously one of the best in the league in this area but even someone like Tielemans is composed in those situations and finds a pass more often than not.
 

Ekeke

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We don’t have midfielders that can hold possession in the final third and have that composure to find the right pass.

Too often they either try to shoot through a sea of bodies or take the easy pass out wide to the fullback.

David Silva is obviously one of the best in the league in this area but even someone like Tielemans is composed in those situations and finds a pass more often than not.
He'll shoot a lot too so not a good example
 

Woodzy

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Incredible the amount of midfielders we have bought in post-Fergie and still have the worst midfield in what we would traditionally call the ‘top 6’. You could probably pick about 4 or 5 other teams outside of the top 6 as well.
 

Abhinav

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With Pogba, the midfield can pass off as a top 6 unit, without him it is distinctly average. We definitely need at least 1 if not 2 quality midfielders to help the forwards.

Saying that, I disagree that the midfield is the only reason our forwards are underperforming. The likes of Martial and Rashford are not consistent enough to make us into a top 4 unit. We need more firepower up front as will in the midfield.
 

Raw

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Incredible the amount of midfielders we have bought in post-Fergie and still have the worst midfield in what we would traditionally call the ‘top 6’. You could probably pick about 4 or 5 other teams outside of the top 6 as well.
Since Fergie retired, the midfielders we brought in were:

Fellaini, Mata, Herrera, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Pogba, Mkhitaryan, Matic and Fred. Out of those, the only ones I'd classify as being better than average are Pogba and Herrera. About £330m spent and only two decent midfielders out of it. One of them isn't here any more and the other is probably leaving soon.
 

Ballache

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People laughed when I suggested during summer that, in case Pogba leaves, we should go all in and sign Ndidi, Madison and Neves. The answers were "so you are basically saying Leicester's midfield plus Neves would improve us".
 

Ekeke

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People laughed when I suggested during summer that, in case Pogba leaves, we should go all in and sign Ndidi, Madison and Neves. The answers were "so you are basically saying Leicester's midfield plus Neves would improve us".
I'm not sure we had £250 million to spend on midfielders
 

Raw

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People laughed when I suggested during summer that, in case Pogba leaves, we should go all in and sign Ndidi, Madison and Neves. The answers were "so you are basically saying Leicester's midfield plus Neves would improve us".
Are you sure they didn't laugh because of how preposterous that would be? No fecking way Leicester would sell two of their midfielders plus Maguire in the same window! Not for a ridiculous sum anyway.
 

Abhinav

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Since Fergie retired, the midfielders we brought in were:

Fellaini, Mata, Herrera, Schneiderlin, Schweinsteiger, Pogba, Mkhitaryan, Matic and Fred. Out of those, the only ones I'd classify as being better than average are Pogba and Herrera. About £330m spent and only two decent midfielders out of it. One of them isn't here any more and the other is probably leaving soon.
That list is awful. The worst part is that the collection has been assembled under 3 different managers. Somebody other than the manager has to take accountability for the floundered fortune. The managers have paid the price with their jobs, what about the others who were part of the decision making process?
 

Sky1981

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We don’t have midfielders that can hold possession in the final third and have that composure to find the right pass.

Too often they either try to shoot through a sea of bodies or take the easy pass out wide to the fullback.

David Silva is obviously one of the best in the league in this area but even someone like Tielemans is composed in those situations and finds a pass more often than not.
I don't think the burden lies in the creative midfielder alone.

if you're playing as a midfielder in a barcelona team you will have an easier time to make fancy through pass because the whole team moves in coordination as a team. Put Pogba or even perreira in a better tactically coached team they'll perform better.

You really can't do much when you have the ball while the other 10 teammates are not doing off the ball movement.

Our problem lies deeper than that, cue all our deadwoods turns out to be doing just fine after they're moved on.
 

Sky1981

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That list is awful. The worst part is that the collection has been assembled under 3 different managers. Somebody other than the manager has to take accountability for the floundered fortune. The managers have paid the price with their jobs, what about the others who were part of the decision making process?
I believe the managers of Manchester United is in charge for buying the players, even if in some cases they do not directly scout/pick/negotiate they will have the final say (apart from how much).

I don't believe Ed Woodward has a team to decide who we should bought, all the bad purchase should be attributed to the manager. LVG probably are given a list of recommendations from our scouting department, and he dumbfully just say "ok" to the names on the list.

Player purchase is one of the biggest aspect of being a manager, there's no way Moyes/LvG/Jose/Ole has nothing to do with deciding who we're going to splash tens of millions of pound sterling on.
 

NotoriousISSY

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I'm not sure we had £250 million to spend on midfielders
I think the point is, 3 players from Leicester and Wolves would transform the engine of our team.

That in itself is a ridiculous statement, but it's completely factual.

I do understand its financially impossible for us though, so don't strike me.
 

Abhinav

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I don't think the burden lies in the creative midfielder alone.

if you're playing as a midfielder in a barcelona team you will have an easier time to make fancy through pass because the whole team moves in coordination as a team. Put Pogba or even perreira in a better tactically coached team they'll perform better.

You really can't do much when you have the ball while the other 10 teammates are not doing off the ball movement.

Our problem lies deeper than that, cue all our deadwoods turns out to be doing just fine after they're moved on.
Who are all the deadwoods who seem to be doing fine?

- Fellaini is playing in China
- Schweinsteiger went on to play in the MLS
- Schneiderlin has been poor for Everton
- Mikhi has been as poor for Arsenal as for us
- Anderson: does he even play anymore?
- Cleverly: playing for Watford, not a regular
- Herrera: not a deadwood at United, left of his own accord
 

JPRouve

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I think the point is, 3 players from Leicester and Wolves would transform the engine of our team.

That in itself is a ridiculous statement, but it's completely factual.

I do understand its financially impossible for us though, so don't strike me.
It's not a ridiculous statement though, the vast majority of players currently playing for top teams come from these type of clubs. At the end of the day, Henderson and Wijnaldum were purchased from Sunderland and Newcastle not Real Madrid and Barcelona.
 

Ekeke

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I think the point is, 3 players from Leicester and Wolves would transform the engine of our team.

That in itself is a ridiculous statement, but it's completely factual.

I do understand its financially impossible for us though, so don't strike me.
I dont see why it would be a surprise. If you look at how Liverpool made their team most of them were signings from lesser teams in the premier league, along with a few signings from Roma in Serie A.
 

soapythecat

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Only as recent as the West Ham defeat, when I thought Ashford was making some superb runs and finding space yet never got a ball to his feet or into his space. He got so little effective service that it must have worn him down as he looked dejected in the end. Likewise against Bournemouth, when the front 3 ran themselves into all kinds of space and positions in the first 20 minutes yet never got any decent service.
Those 2 games spring to mind when I think about how a effective, creative player behind them could have made all the difference to us been 1 or 2 up by the break.
The club needs to spend, and spend big if they have to, to find a CM to play alongside McT and free Pogba to sit behind the front 3. Fred isn't a good player - he is good at running and closing down but his distribution and composure on the ball is Sunday league stuff. McT is much better out of the two and needs to start (lets face it, we won't buy 2 CM this January).
Perreria and Lingered are not good at all. Flashes of something good in recent matches and thats about it. Stats back this up. If Ole isn't pushing for a CM this window, before a forward, then I do worry about his management. We could have Messi and Ronaldo up front at the moment but with ball flying past them, they too wouldn't achieve much.
 

AaronRedDevil

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United's midfield haven't been good in nearly 10 years. We had cleverly and Anderson for:lol: feck sake. Pogba is probably the only good midfielder they bought since Roy Keane.
 

GazTheLegend

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Don't forget Pereira.
I am still giving Pereira the benefit of the doubt and a bit of leeway to improve. This is his first full season.

Lingard has had plenty of time and Fred cost us 50 million so those two are basically finished in my book.

Either way, to my mind it is absolutely the centre of the park that’s murdering any momentum our team has and it’s absolutely astonishing to me that we never replaced Herrera. Surely we have an analyst or two at our team that could have explained how important he actually was.
 

Ikon

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The most annoying part is that if we could see it that means the coaching staff saw it and didn't take action during the window.
The coaching staff are not responsible for recruitment.
They can put forward their needs but its a certain someone else's job to make signings.
Solskjaer said months and months ago, he wanted two new MFs, and the board delivered him none. Absolutely none.

Now Solskjaer is taking the blame because the Midfield is crap and "he allowed Herrera to leave", as though Solskjaer any control of that situation.

We all knew that we needed to recruit at least 5 quality first XI players, and our board could only manage to deliver 3 across an entire Summer window.
 

Abhinav

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I believe the managers of Manchester United is in charge for buying the players, even if in some cases they do not directly scout/pick/negotiate they will have the final say (apart from how much).

I don't believe Ed Woodward has a team to decide who we should bought, all the bad purchase should be attributed to the manager. LVG probably are given a list of recommendations from our scouting department, and he dumbfully just say "ok" to the names on the list.

Player purchase is one of the biggest aspect of being a manager, there's no way Moyes/LvG/Jose/Ole has nothing to do with deciding who we're going to splash tens of millions of pound sterling on.


I never said they had nothing to do with the transfers. The fact is the managers have left and we are still saddled with these poor purchases. So either someone takes the blame for appointing bad managers or takes the joint responsibility for poor purchases; can’t go without any accountability.

And if manager is the only person accountable for the player purchases, what good are the scouts and the analyst who recommend these players to the manager? A manager in the current modern footballing structure cannot be tasked with unearthing gems in far-off lands. Thats the job of the scouts. Similarly, the job of the negotiators is to get these players at reasonable acquisition cost. Paying more than buy-out clause of Fellaini for instance should be a sackable offence. Its a cop-out to only blame the managers while the rest of the organisation continues to be incompetent.
 

Mcking

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Amazing how McTominay managed to get a reputation that isn't that of a bang average run-of-the-mill midfielder. Pereira could well be the worst starting attacking midfielder in the whole league and I say that with complete confidence. He has one of the worst ball retention I've ever seen, and the league simply isn't for him. Some teams even have two attacking midfielders that are comfortably better and more useful in the EPL. Fred is the best of our current trio and he is incredibly inconsistent. Our back ups? Matic, Mata, an out of form Lingard and kids - enough said
No wonder we can't score seeing that an average winger like James is also a regular in the front three with only one kid as back-up.
We basically have some goalkeepers, a defence, Pogba, Martial, Rashford and relegation fodder players. An absolute shitshow.
 

settembrini

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I don't mind our CMs. Matic needs to go but I am fine with the other options.

Our attacking midfielders/10s are an absolute joke. Mata, Lingard and Pereira have 37 appearances between them this season and have 0 goals and 2 assists. This is so bad it should be impossible. The OP is not exaggerating when he calls them the worst set of no. 10s in the league, they literally are, it's unarguable.
 

stevoc

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If you have good players in nearly all positions on form then you can carry a Fred, Mata, Pereria or a Lingard but if you're playing 2-3 of them every game in the middle of your team then it'll lead to what we've seen this season a complete lack of quality in our attacking play and a creativity vacuum. We seem ok at scoring but we just aren't making enough chances every game to put teams away.
 

GazTheLegend

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Now Solskjaer is taking the blame because the Midfield is crap and "he allowed Herrera to leave", as though Solskjaer any control of that situation.

We all knew that we needed to recruit at least 5 quality first XI players, and our board could only manage to deliver 3 across an entire Summer window.
Does Solskjaer not deserve ANY blame for not recruiting in midfield then?

If he was happy to go into the season with the state our team was in then he absolutely deserves his share of the blame for not being more forceful with the board etc. If he felt he didn’t have the tools (players) to do his job why would he even continue.

Either Solskjaers judgement is wrong and the youth players we have are not good enough or ready enough, or his persuasion and influence of the board regarding replacements was not strong enough. Either way surely he takes SOME blame? Assuredly our structure allowing 11 average players and atrocious squad depth to go into a tough premier league was embarassing and every week seems to reinforce that point as an injury or two turn us to a worse than West Ham level side.

Keep in mind our team is in the top 3 grossing football clubs on the planet with more fans and influence than maybe any other club or even sporting franchise worldwide. How did this become acceptable?
 

Hoof the ball

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It all comes down to effective coaching in the end. Fluidity of attacking play can occur even with players of mediocre ability when the structure and organisation of attacking is in place. It's the only reasonable argument for lesser teams such as Bournemouth looking offensively cohesive versus a greater team in United looking offensively disorganised.

Listening to Ole in the post-match talking about creative players needing to "be more creative" was interesting insofar as what it says about him tactically. When City break down teams parking the bus, is it merely the creative players "being more creative", or, is it that the attacking movement is coached and practised with repetition, allowing the creative players to anticipate off-ball movements with absolute certainty? It's the latter. City wide players cut inside the full-back with off-ball runs and a creative midfielder slots the ball inside the full-back to meet the run. In basketball, this is called, "through the back door". This is just one example where attacking movement allows for creative players to shine. We do no such thing, however.

Creative players need to have an intimate knowledge of how the forwards are going to move. If there's no structure to attacking moves in different phases then it's all improvisation from midfield, and in the end it just devolves into a big mess. Ultimately, Pogba is blamed because he "couldn't unlock the defence", but it's difficult to do so when there's no structure in the attacking phase.

You can't just say to creative players, "be more creative". There has to be an environment to allow them to do just that. I submit that this environment just isn't there. Sure, "da culture" might be improving, but there's no evidence that we're tactically improving.
 

Class of 63

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I think the point is, 3 players from Leicester and Wolves would transform the engine of our team.

That in itself is a ridiculous statement, but it's completely factual.


I do understand its financially impossible for us though, so don't strike me.
On paper maybe, but it's a whole new ball game when you pull on that red shirt and every single thing you do is scrutinised to death, one or two poor games and you can be written off as not United standard, and it takes a lot to recover from, once you start to overthink things you're doomed.
 

Ikon

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Does Solskjaer not deserve ANY blame for not recruiting in midfield then?
Of course he must take some criticism, but not sole responsibility, and not the Lion's share.
Solskjaer wanted two Midfielders and got nothing delivered. That's not on him.
Personally I think he should have been vocal about that situation instead of not rocking the boat by saying he was "happy with the squad, blah blah blah" and that's where Solskjaer is at fault.
Maybe I am being idealistic, but I think if I were in Solskjaer's position I would have threatened to resign and gone public with my reasons.
 

OohAahMartial

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I don't mind our CMs. Matic needs to go but I am fine with the other options.

Our attacking midfielders/10s are an absolute joke. Mata, Lingard and Pereira have 37 appearances between them this season and have 0 goals and 2 assists. This is so bad it should be impossible. The OP is not exaggerating when he calls them the worst set of no. 10s in the league, they literally are, it's unarguable.
This is the biggest issue. But it's worth noting that Mata and Lingard used to offer more than they do now, while never being good enough, they did at least offer some assists and goals and linked up well, but now offer nothing at all and play like cowards. Their deterioration has screwed the team.

I remember our opening day line up and it was so obvious that it was missing a #10 and RW. If we had managed to get Dybala and Bruno over the line, we would have been having a completely different season. Not getting anyone on the shortlist for those positions was the disaster, and most of that is down to Judge I think. Guy can't negotiate two deals at once and takes months over each one only to end up at their initial asking price.
 

Decomposing In Paris

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Glad to see a little perspective on this...

It's maybe not as easily fixed as some people seem to think. I will say that I really wanted Ndombele, and he's yet to exactly set the world alight on the Spurs bench... still, we'd be better with than Fred.
 

Leftback99

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No I'm told it's just the coaching. McTominay, Fred and Pereira would be like prime Busquets, Xavi and Iniesta under a different manager.
 

Decomposing In Paris

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Of course he must take some criticism, but not sole responsibility, and not the Lion's share.
Solskjaer wanted two Midfielders and got nothing delivered. That's not on him.
Personally I think he should have been vocal about that situation instead of not rocking the boat by saying he was "happy with the squad, blah blah blah" and that's where Solskjaer is at fault.
Maybe I am being idealistic, but I think if I were in Solskjaer's position I would have threatened to resign and gone public with my reasons.
One of the game's most experienced managers took that very approach last summer. It wasn't the right one and torpedoed our season.
 

FrankDrebin

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But it's the defences fault,right ?
The cover the back-four gets from the midfield is poor as is the cover the midfield get from the forwards. It's simply not functioning as a collective at the moment.
The balance is wack.
 

Cnaiür urs Skiötha

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I agree. Awful, awful, awful.
Maybe a top manager would get something out of them but based on what we have seen the past months/years I would not shed a tear if our entire midfield (including Pohba) was sold.
 

Sky1981

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Who are all the deadwoods who seem to be doing fine?

- Fellaini is playing in China
- Schweinsteiger went on to play in the MLS
- Schneiderlin has been poor for Everton
- Mikhi has been as poor for Arsenal as for us
- Anderson: does he even play anymore?
- Cleverly: playing for Watford, not a regular
- Herrera: not a deadwood at United, left of his own accord
Nice cherry picking there sherlock