Where do people think he fits into helping solve Utd's two big midfield issues is the question
Adrien Rabiot | signs 1 year deal at Juventus. See you all next year
- Thread starter Tom Van Persie
- Start date
- Status
He solves one of this summers biggest problems for one, he is free.
True,I suppose you could argue he offers the ability to cover Casa and partner. Unfortunately it does still leaves us short of that player to control things in the middle of the park
Followed him when he was playing for PSG. All I remember is that he and his mother was a real problem for the club.
Google "rabiot problem" and find out for yourself. Don't want him here.
"Why Juventus should cut their losses on problem child Adrien Rabiot while they still have the chance" is one of the articles that show up, and it's a very interesting one.
After reading how bad he's been for Juventus, I can't understand why we should be giving him any paycheck ever.
Google "rabiot problem" and find out for yourself. Don't want him here.
"Why Juventus should cut their losses on problem child Adrien Rabiot while they still have the chance" is one of the articles that show up, and it's a very interesting one.
After reading how bad he's been for Juventus, I can't understand why we should be giving him any paycheck ever.
Last edited:
He’s a more than adequate back up for Casemiro, that’s one of those issues. Can also partner him in tough games instead of Eriksen.
We still need that metronome though, alrhough if reports of Mount/Rice are true then EtH is going all in on playing on transitions, which suits the best offensive players in our current squad (Bruno/Rashford) but not conducive to long term front foot dominant football.
So is that you saying we aren't likely to see that style of play under Erik until he brings one in or do you feel he hasn't any intention to do that
If we get that duo then yes, a Rice-Mount midfield just screams counter press and ball progression through carries, not passes, you add Bruno at the tip of that and you can kiss goodbye to ball retention. We will see a similar playstyle to this season with deep line, lots of transitions but better with progression through midfield. I really dislike that long term vision but it does somewhat fit our personnel, Rashford for instance would be half the player he is without space in behind.
I envision him as the Fred replacement, a defensively solid player who plays alongside Casemiro in the games we need more stability in. Just...as a better footballer than Fred
But there's the danger I see. Unlike Fred who is a reliable backup squad player, Rabiot seems a bit of a diva who would want to start every game and otherwise would cause trouble. His qualities are undeniable but we need to maintain the good team spirit we have. I will trust ETH but for me, this transfer seems a bit risky.
Di Maria is coming home!
Rabiot is not a deep lying playmaker than can compete with Eriksen for that spot is he?
I initially wanted him for that but I’m not sure if I want him anymore if he can’t add a tempo to our midfield play.
I initially wanted him for that but I’m not sure if I want him anymore if he can’t add a tempo to our midfield play.
If we manage to let all of Caicedo, Rice, Bellingham, Mac Allister move this summer just to get Rabiot on the free, I think it's a bad deal all around. Rabiot and let's say Caicedo or another younger midfielder would be a good deal.
Everyone wants ball possession but no one wants to get rid of Bruno. The mind boggles.
Eitherway I’m sick of the concept now anyway… We don’t need a deeplying playmaker to keep the ball.
We had Paul Scholes and Carrick and we played Zombie football. You guys forgot?
Zombie football at its worst was with an out of form Carrick + Fletcher in 09-10, then to varying degrees with Carrick + Giggs or Carrick + Cleverly. Scholes barely feature in those last few years and ironically our most improved period of midfield control was when Scholes had his 6 months renaissance when he came out of retirement in 2012.
Anyway, football has changed, you can’t really compete for the highest honours with midfielders who do their best out of possession, well unless you are doped up to your ears with coffee and energized drink + inhalers.
So because we played zombie football once over 15 years ago, we have to remain a transition based counter attacking side in perpetuity?
No. How about we have a good manager who knows how to set up a team. He will buy players that will make it work.
Just because we think we know best doesn’t actually mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We don’t seem to care about the ‘techi’ baller if it’s Caicedo for some reason. It all comes down to our personal preference. I think we can all calmly say we club and ETH have identified the CM as a key possession and it will be filled by either Rabiot, Rice, Caciedo and maybe be a slim chance FDJ. Eitherway we will play better football next season, regardless of who it is.
My point was we wasn’t a possession based team. However yes except the zombie era. Nobody has a problem.
Football has changed or there is Man City?
It’s a big difference as nobody but City play at that level and the style of football we had this season I still backed us to beat Arsenal. I would still back up to beat Arsenal if we had better players but played the same way.
All we are doing it compare football to one team. Clubs playing a similar way aren’t even a threat to us obtaining trophies.
In all honesty City’s football is boring to me anyway.
It’s not just City in England, Barca, Real, Munich, even Dortmund when they got to that CL final had Gundogan, Chelsea got Jorginho/Kovacic who are good passers. Klopp was the one who succeeded with the most workmanlike midfield but they got playmaking qualities elsewhere and even he had to add Thiago eventually as they couldn’t just run like mad men every season anymore, it’s not sustainable.My point was we wasn’t a possession based team. However yes except the zombie era. Nobody has a problem.
Football has changed or there is Man City?
It’s a big difference as nobody but City play at that level and the style of football we had this season I still backed us to beat Arsenal. I would still back up to beat Arsenal if we had better players but played the same way.
All we are doing it compare football to one team. Clubs playing a similar way aren’t even a threat to us obtaining trophies.
In all honesty City’s football is boring to me anyway.
You name me the teams who have sustained success in the last decade playing a midfield who isn’t good on the ball and I’m all ears.
Or Mount?
To be fair, Liverpool would have had sustained success had it not been for the freak (not just football wise but financially too) that is Guardiola's City. Liverpool had 90+ point finishes in the league 3 out the last of 4 seasons. That would win you 3 titles anywhere else in Europe or in the EPL in the pre-Guardiola era. They also won a CL and reached another final.
But mostly, I think your question is a bit loaded. By saying "sustained success in the last decade" you're basically narrowing it down to what, 5 teams? Barca, Bayern, City, PSG and Real. Two of which (PSG and Bayern) are so completely dominant in their leagues financially, that it's a bit of a joke. So what you're basically saying is Barca, Real & City have possession based teams with some metronome like passers of the ball, therefore there is no real alternative.
I think teams like RBL, Liverpool and Brighton have shown what can be done with a well organised energetic midfield that doesn't have exceptional playmakers or passers of the ball. At national level, neither the French nor the Argentina team that won the last 2 world cups had such players.
And Liverpool achieved that with a team full of asthmatics who conveniently had years when they suddenly couldn’t run for shit for half the season. And they moved on from that energetic midfield formula with Thiago signing.
The reality of the situation is all the best teams in Europe, and one of them is dominating our league, play with metronomic passers. That’s the level of competition we have to go up against to win PL/CL, so unless you are satisfy with the odd cup runs and title challenge, we just can’t compete playing on the counters as our main weapon. We don’t need to go to extremes like Guardiola and play sterile keep ball as a defensive tactic all the time, but we do need to be comfortable in imposing ourselves on the opponents through sustained possession in large stretches of the game.
Allegedly he is asking for €10m net in wages. At least that was mentioned in regards to Bayern‘s interest in him.
Depends what you mean by good on the ball to be honest. My point was possession based. I’m referring to style of play.
Dortmund, Liverpool, PSG, Chelsea, Bayern. All consist of hard working athletic CMs.
Real are replacing Modric and Kroos with Bellingham, Tchouameni and Camavinga. Not to mention Valverde. we would all be having a fit on here as we have no one who represents a deeplying playmaker.
My point wasn’t being good on the ball as in reality to play for Manchester United you should excel at this anyway. Not true currently but like I said this summer we will look to rectify this. The point I’m getting across is it doesn’t have to be the Man City way. That’s Pep’s ideology.
The players we have been linked with improves our team and chances of success.
He’s more an attacking profile.
I never said we should look to emulate Pep.
The point I did make, however, is that I dislike very much the long term vision of us being a transition based team that plays its best out of possession, that’s what these names we are being linked with suggests to me. Real doesn’t play like Pep, Munich doesn’t play like Pep, hell, even Barca post Pep doesn’t play like Pep, just because you play with press resistant, metronomic passers who average 70,80 passes a game with 90%+ passing success rate doesn’t mean you will hog the ball to the extent City do.
Okay. But which players are you referring to? Rabiot played for PSG who spent a lot of the time with the ball. For Juventus not so much but again like someone pointed out. If you are the best team in your league you will naturally get more of the football.
Who else are these transitional players we have been linked to?
All I’m getting from this is Pep or non Pep.
mamma mia!!
Rice did his best work out of possession, he also has one of the best progressive carries stat in Europe, average < 60 passes a match, 88% completion rate.
Mount attempts on average < 40 passes a match, with 80-85% success rate, and in his best season averaged nearly 2 tackles per match, is at his best at pressing, counter pressing and carrying.
Rabiot averages < 40 passes a match, with 83% completion rate, in the 50th and 60th percentile for midfielders in Europe, average 2 tackles per match.
That definitely is the profile of players best suited to counter attacking football, play deep, win the ball on the counter press, break through with carries. Not of those who will cycle possession and set up to pin teams back in their own half.
So the manager is doing his job then?
What he is identifying are players who can help retrieve the football back. When we have been getting slapped up by teams over the past couple of years it’s been repeated that the team lacks heart and aggression. Which technically means they don’t bloody know what to do when they are out of possession.
Having these sort of players give us a foundation to build up attacks and sustain momentum.
The manager knows what he’s doing.
Did I say he doesn’t?
It has nothing to do with my point, I can see the logic behind those moves, but it’s not a direction I want us to go in. We are never going to the Emptyhad, Anfield and the Emirates and play them off the park with that set of personnel, we would still struggle when teams let us have the ball and just sit compact in 2 banks of 4 asking us to break them down.
Here we go again ....
When did we ever go to those places and play them off the park on their own patch, it's a very, very rare event if it's ever happened, especially in the PL era
Again. You don’t seem to want to remove yourself from believing every team should be a reincarnation of Man City
Many teams have slapped us up and non of them have been possession based, recycling the ball whilst we just sit there waiting to counter. The one time City did it they beat us 1-0.
Our ability to breakdown low block has nothing to do with us having a FDJ. It’s to do with the fact we are imbalanced with players not knowing how to do their jobs effectively.
We slapped up Liverpool at Anfield and City at our place with worst personnel than we have now, under LVG.
The teams structure is still poor and filled with patch jobs like DDG and Eriksen. Once we fix those we will improve.
And you are letting your dislike of Pep’s football coloring your perception of possession football.Again. You don’t seem to want to remove yourself from believing every team should be a reincarnation of Man City
Many teams have slapped us up and non of them have been possession based, recycling the ball whilst we just sit there waiting to counter. The one time City did it they beat us 1-0.
Our ability to breakdown low bloke has nothing to do with us having a FDJ. It’s to do with the fact we are imbalanced with players not knowing who to do their jobs effectively.
We slapped up Liverpool at Anfield and City at our place with worst personnel than we have now, under LVG.
The teams structure is still poor and filled with patch jobs like DDG and Eriksen. Once we fix those we will improve.
Disagree on the personnel, 2014/15 Carrick/Mata were better passers than any of our current midfielder, and those were massively worse Liverpool/City teams.
This is not just about improving, but the ceiling of the team, being comfortable in playing possession football will give us more impetus over the long term than just relying on counters, for one thing, you won’t have to sit in your own box with heart in your mouth at the 90th minute defending a lead just because your players can’t pass for shit.
Doesn’t seem to rare for them to slap us up on our own turf though, does it?
That’s the level we should be aiming for, to capitalize when they are vulnerable and humiliate them on their own ground, to go away to any ground in the country and ask the home team to adapt to us, instead of us neutering them.
No. Pep just does it the best.. so it’s easy to use him as a reference point as people tend to think you aren’t doing it right if you don’t look like them.
So two players that can pass a football. We just going to ignore Fellaini, Chris Smalling and the rest of them guys then? Juan Mata left us just last season. You’re not doing well on backing your points.
Yes their teams have improved and that’s what we are tying to do. Did Liverpool improve by getting Mata and Carrick type players? I’ll answer it for you. No.
So why do you have a problem with how we are improving? Again it reverts back to what you believe style represents improvement. That is not how football works.
Your last paragraph is made up BS.
Probably doesn't but there's another way to look at it.
From what i have seen of him for France and occasionally Juve he looks like another roaming number 8 with high energy, physicality and decent if unspectacular passing range. If we're looking at it negatively we could say we have about 3 of those players already- if we look at it more positively he's generally regarded as better at those things than Fred, Mctominay, Sabitzer from what i've heard.
Also economically, selling McFred, not buying Sabitzer and getting Rabiot is a win-win in many ways. More money to spend and a free (and hopefully better) player in return.
I'd be happy with this signing if he settles here. Hopefully he's put his moody days behind him and as a club we've mostly done pretty well with French signings in the past.
I kind of don’t want him anymore. I just don’t see where he joins and becomes a starter. It will lead him to pulling a strop. I thought he was a DLP but I don’t think he is one.
Casemiro/ Rice
Eriksen/ new DLP (de Jong 24’)
Mount/ Bruno
Youngsters like Hannibal & Mainoo is the perfect balance of midfielders.
Casemiro/ Rice
Eriksen/ new DLP (de Jong 24’)
Mount/ Bruno
Youngsters like Hannibal & Mainoo is the perfect balance of midfielders.
In reality it is fairly rare, seems not the case because of recent events, I'm not really in favour of aiming to humiliate any team either, sure it may happen on the day, but actively seeking it is likely to be self-defeating over time
He can do a 8 and a 6, very good technically.
Is he more about passing in our system or more about defending and breaking the opposition?
- Status