You are comparing Pogba, a midfielder, to Bale/Suarez who are attackers, its an unfair comparison
Baby elephant is growing quickly in the room
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Fair points. I hope none of us thought he would be a 'superstar' from the off, very few players do that. However, a little more consistency within a game would be nice.....
The question should be why the feck did we pay 25m for memphis?
28m for fellaini?
14m for Darmian?
Thats a waste of money, not paying 90mil for a proven quality player.
IMO, pogba is fine and will definitely grow from strenght to strenght.
Penny wise and all that.
28m for fellaini?
14m for Darmian?
Thats a waste of money, not paying 90mil for a proven quality player.
IMO, pogba is fine and will definitely grow from strenght to strenght.
Penny wise and all that.
It's unusual for clubs to pay so much money for a central midfielder and I think this will count against Pogba. Usually this sort of money is spent on prolific goalscorers or goalscoring wingers and Pogba will not give you that. What he will give you is brilliant passing and control, strength and the ability to turn defence into attack very quickly. I didn't think he was that bad today and he could easily have scored and assisted a goal. It's too early in the season to criticize him though.
So he has to score on every decent chance he gets just because Woodward&co decided that they would pay £90m for him?
Those three play in the two best teams in what is essentially a three team league, besides Bale struggled when he first came to RM.
Not saying Pogba has hit the ground running here, but consider the following
- He had no preseason
- Played in the euros to the end, and lost
- In a new team with a new manager
If you're reducing it to genuine highlights you have two passes to Ibrahimovic, the cross to Rooney and the two headers. All were nearly moments and that's frustrating, but the reality is there's a very fine line between success and failure in those instances. You can argue Ibrahimovic made poor choices with his finishing or was just stopped by a great keeping performance, Rooney was a little too slow and Pogba just didn't get his angles right. In all cases the result is pretty poor and obviously has a significant impact on the match result, and thus a significant impact on people's perceptions of the performance, but for me they're all promising moments.
We have someone who can dance his way through midfields and pick out perfect through balls, someone who can rise above everyone else at corners, someone who can make late runs and put a dangerous ball in the box and someone who can pick up perfect positions in the box. In all cases I don't think any of our players have the combination of athleticism and technique to replicate those moments.
Maybe we should be concerned about his finishing, or maybe it's just a mental thing right now. Should we be concerned about his lack of defensive contribution? I personally don't think so given we were rarely troubled defensively and on the whole it was a dominant performance that Pogba played an active role in throughout.
Great post Brwned. I agree, I'm not concerned about his finishing because he isn't a striker.
When is it fair to criticise a midfielder of a midfield 2 for their finishing?
When is it fair to criticise a midfielder of a midfield 2 for their finishing?
I'd be delighted with that but not seen much evidence so far.
Come on.....He's had a handful of games. Not worried in the slightest!!!!!!
It's too early to judge him. I think we'll see the best of Pogba around christmas/new year but I'm not sure people will be so patient because of the huge transfer fee.
A box to box midfielder who is bought for £89M - I'd expect him to be putting in constant MOTM performances...not "almost scoring 1 goal" and "almost getting an assist".
In fact, I'd be embarrassed if that's all I was able to do.
The simple truth is that right now he isn't the best midfielder in our team (I think Herrera is).
He certainly isn't the best midfielder in our league.
And I don't think anybody would even think to argue that he is the best (or even one of the best) in the World.
Joe Allen, who cost Stoke under £15M and gets paid a fraction of what Pogba gets, had a better game today.
Nonsense. He oozes quality in everything that he does. He'll come very good.
Yeah..he's never been a high goal scorer. I think he scored 8 in each of his last two seasons at Juventus? So that isn't a main part of his game for sure.
Indeed. The transfer fee makes everybody (including me) more impatient.
Put it this way, if we paid £120M for Neymar, would we accept him putting in average performances and scoring less goals than our other attackers? The answer is no. We'd expect him to immediately be our best attacker.
In the same way, from game 1, I expected Pogba to be our best CM. In truth, his first game for us, was fantastic, but since then, he has been average with a good game here or there.
In comparison, our other Galactico (Ibrahimovic), may not be firing on all cylinders, but statistically, is our best attacker.
Am I worried about the Pogba situation? Certainly not.
Am I disappointed? Definitely.
Shouldn't we be more concerned about the 50kg gorilla?
We could have got 8.4 Payet's..
The chance he created for Ibra came because he miscontrolled the ball. Doing so worked in his favour on that occasion but he kept doing that throughout the game. When a players getting the basics wrong I think it's fair to say he was rubbish.
He's generally got good feet however I can't help but feel there's no getting away from being 6ft 4. It's hard to be that tall and your touch, control, sharpness of movement etc to all be spot on. Sometimes he looks clumsy.
He needs to use his strengths more, his power and athleticism instead of overdoing the tricky, quick stuff.
Not to mention that Pogba has never been the fulcrum of his club side in his entire career. Bale and Suarez had experience in being the star man for club and country.. Pobga has had experience of being the star for country where he has done well but doing it week in week out for club is new to him. He's also playing in an unfamiliar position.
Well it's arguably easier to settle in a new team as an attacker than a central midfielder, so that's another mitigating factor for Pogba's underwhelming performances so far.
I disagree, I would say it is harder to settle as a striker because you need to score goals or else the pressure builds
A midfielder needs to build awareness of what his new teammates are likely to do at both ends of the pitch. Which takes longer.
Lack of baby elephants in this thread is making me sad.
My thoughts exactly.Following the match day thread is illuminating.We appear to have a large cohort of fans who you would not want to be sharing a trench with to put it mildly.
We did overpay, no doubting that.
That said £ for £ Memphis/Darmian?Shneiderlin/Rooney last contract are all far greater wastes of money.
He will come good, but he's not even world class atm in my opinion, which is a pretty shocking thing to say when you've spent 90m.
That said £ for £ Memphis/Darmian?Shneiderlin/Rooney last contract are all far greater wastes of money.
He will come good, but he's not even world class atm in my opinion, which is a pretty shocking thing to say when you've spent 90m.
The price tag is not bonded to his performances. It's a silly thing to keep saying he should be having 10/10 performances because of the 100m price tag. The 100m price tag is what Utd was willing to pay for his current and future level. He is 23 and will likely stay for another few years here at the least. It's unfortunate that he hasn't hit the ground running so far but we're not even 10 games into his first season.
Nobody is saying he should be having 10/10s but 7 's would be nice. ......the odd 8 even.
I thought he was pretty good again today. He'll get better though.
2 glaring misses today. Some decent play, some passive play. He's struggling but I have faith he'll come good.
The fee Is hardly Pogbas fault but there's no denying Woodward got his pants pulled down big time, no midfielder EVER is worth more than £60 million. That sort of cash we paid should be used for the elite goal scoring players (bale, Neymar, Suarez, lewandowski, aguero, Ronaldo, Griezmann and messi)
On pogba himself If you ever saw Pogba at Juve then you know there's a real player in there somewhere. That said he's not got anywhere near the calibre of players he did have at Juve, he's gone from playing with the likes of Vidal, marchisio, khedera to Fellani and Herrera.
On pogba himself If you ever saw Pogba at Juve then you know there's a real player in there somewhere. That said he's not got anywhere near the calibre of players he did have at Juve, he's gone from playing with the likes of Vidal, marchisio, khedera to Fellani and Herrera.
If not for crossbars and poor finishing by Zlatan he could've easily have few more goals and assists to his name. He is quality, money aside he is pound for pound the best player in our team.
Whats wrong with Herrera? He is quality.
I've said it in a another thread. He played excellent in the first 30. Playing penetrating balls through the middle from distance, if Ibra had scored his sitter we wouldn't be having this conversation and we'd be talking about how crucial he was. Granted, we were pretty flat thereafter but the whole team struggled for movement in the second half once Stoke got their house in order.
No he's playing alongside Mata/ Herrera and still not looking great.
There has been evidence of his ability in the games he's played, it just hasn't turned into consistent, effective performances yet. It will, given time.
Elephant in the room? Pogba really? I think there is a lot to be concerned about this team at the moment but Paul is very low on that list. He has been effective without lighting the world on fire in a team that is still yet to gel. We could lose our shit about the performance lot of players so far: Martial. Miki, TFM, Morgan. But the team is still gelling so I would say calm down. Pogba will be bossing it soon so that the old people can go back to complaining about his hair and his dabbing.
Pretty sure Ozil was 'knicking a living' by this stage. Players just need time to settle.
To add to this he wasn't even that bad. Tbh he had a good game and on his good day or with bit of luck could have turned to great game. He loses possession as he tries to unlock defenses, maybe people are happy with likes of Cleverley who does nothing but pass it to the nearest player.
Also against Stoke Pogba created 2 chances to Zlatan, 1 in the opening mins which was very good pass and also one in the last mins when he dribbled and passed it to Ibra and Keeper made a decent save.
His could have scored from corner which missed by yard, his finishing was poor for the chance created by Lingard and he hit the woodwork in the last min.
He also created chance to Rooney who slid but missed by a yard.
Like I said, game was good which had potential to be great game with bit of luck. Most important thing is as a midfielder he is getting into lot of great positions and it's only matter of time before he starts scoring them.
I think we should sell him in January.
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