In his first season, yes. He looked good. But it was always in and around the box where he excelled, even if he was at CM by name. Since that first season he's completely dropped off.
18
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 20
- Goals
- 3
- Assists
- 1
- Yellow cards
- 7
- Red cards
- 1
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In the latest edition of the United Hour Podcast, Imran (@Annihilate Now!) & Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to discuss disappointed FA Cup exit at the hands of Brighton - confirming our shortest season in over 100 years. They also discuss the news that Michael Carrick is set to be United's manager until the end of the season.
In his first season, yes. He looked good. But it was always in and around the box where he excelled, even if he was at CM by name. Since that first season he's completely dropped off.
And Casemiro hasn’t been dreadful? Casemiro has delivered the single most braindead 45 minutes of football by a senior CDM I have seen in a while against Chelsea. That alone should have paved the way for him never to start a game for this club. And you blubber about Ugarte and Mainoo? Mainoo is the biggest CM talent we have produced for probably the last two decades and you are writing him off because a failings manager thinks Casemiro-Bruno is a PL midfield partnership? Not a lot of sense being talked I agree.
An absolute comedy. That second season of Mainoo, how was his senior teammate doing Casemiro? And how many 18 year old CM are there consistently brilliant?
Which are those? Does he become faster, less rash and more reliant in possession once he has a more reliable partner? Our midfield set up does showcase him in the worst possible light, highlighting all of his weaknesses, but those don't simply disappear with a more competent partner next to him. You can, of course, hide him behind a couple of great midfielders Pirlo-style, the issue is, does he have enough creative output to justify it?
And yes, he still is, at least as the things currently stand, out best central midfielder (not sure why Mainoo forgot how to play there but he did, Bruno was never a central midfielder in the first place and Ugarte has turned into a pumpkin).
could be one of those games which go into his favour, winning few 1v1 and he's playing a blinder, scoring obligatory headed goal.
He had been pretty great in that game aside from two of the stupidest and most pointless fouls that you'll ever see. And while overall those cards were what mattered the most in the context of the game, it's really unfair to say that he was horrible for the entirely of that first half.
He wasn’t horrible, that’s why I said braindead. That shouldn’t happen to 20 year old Mainoo never mind him. And we were cruising against 10 men Chelsea, he would’ve been ripped apart on equal terms by Caicedo and co.
With a competent partner he can focus solely on his own game and compensate for his own weaknesses, weaknesses I'm sure he's acutely aware he now has (we're all very aware of our own decline). A lot of the time, he is overextending himself here and trying to cover too many poor aspects in his partner, which leads to some of the rashness and more bone-headed plays. The thing is, most of the time, those supposed bone-headed actions are to cover for someone else not doing their job or simply not having the prescience or quickness of mind to process what's about to happen due to their lack of positional awareness or understanding, so Casemiro will take the card for them or do what needs to be done in lieu of the partner's failure to react accordingly. Imagine the vast majority of that coddling being washed away and him only having to focus on his own game. It would be transformative for him and the team.
His legs are in the process of going as is his stamina, but he still has the innate understanding of midfield to conserve his tank if left to his own devices, so yes, less rash for certain given the majority of the time he is having to be rash is the fault of whichever player is out there next to him. A better partner also gives him more time on the ball by better sharing the load and drawing men to him or simply being available as either an outball or someone to interact with, and given a competent partner will by default be majority in the correct positions to be viable, it would result in Casemiro himself being able to better select what he himself will do, or even have more time to look up and pick out a better option, so yes, more reliant in possession too.
One higher mind in CM can not ward off two or three good minds by themselves. Two higher minds can, though. Or even a higher mind next to a good mind stands a chance. We have a higher mind next to: Bruno, who isn't a CM and doesn't have understanding of the nuances of the role, who often leaves his partner all out at sea; Ugarte, who is simply not good enough to play in a 2-man midfield in the PL; Mainoo, who is deficient athletically and likely to struggle with coverage sooner than later in one half of football, let alone two. In each instance, Casemiro is by himself and having to cover for others leaving him in the lurch in their own particular way - his energy and game should all be front-facing and outward toward the opposition and the game going on around him, not to, by default, having to carry CM partners who are seriously deficient in one way or another that thus have him focusing as much on them and what they're not providing, as the opposition, and what they are.
Casemiro is miles off what he used to be, but still, it would have been nice to see what would have happened here if he wasn't continually carrying midfield partners and was allowed to focus on himself and the opposition in its entirety. I think we'd have seen that whilst he was no longer modern legend Casemiro, he was still way above most others during his slide.
Yes hes dropped off since the first season (injuries and a long Euros contributed) and no he was not always best in his first season in and around the box. Dropping off from his first season does not change the fact he is poor as a 10 and his best games for both club and country in CM
We've the option to extend..
Its quite crazy that once again our midfield is left to rely heavily on someone adept but physically past it i.e. Matic previously
I would presume we won’t extend his contract but will be interesting to see who we replace him with . The fact of the matter is we need 2 CM’s in the summer
What I mean is, we surely conceded more shots and also the goal after he got sent off. It's true whether it was 10 vs 11 or 10 vs 10. The bigger point is that this is only based on a handful of games, so can be easily impacted by one or two games. Still, I don't think anyone really doubts that we are more solid with him on the field, given the alternatives available.
Yeah but the statistic is about us conceding more opportunities without him on the pitch. The Chelsea game would just be another example of it. The small sample size is obviously a different matter of course.
I'm really just saying that it's kind of ironic that in the Chelsea game he got himself sent off, so of course we concede more chances when he wasn't on the pitch - but him not being on the pitch was due to a big mistake on his part, not a choice by the manager.
There’s no reason why we should’ve though. We weren’t at a disadvantage. Chelsea didn’t create much in that game regardless. Their goal was their only shot on target.
I think it’s a rose-tinted view personally but I doubt that we’ll ever get to check who’s right (and even if he stays past next summer and we sign a great midfielder, he’ll be a year older). We’ve seen many great players age gracefully, adapting to their own new-found limitations — and Case isn’t one, he still plays like he has the body and the reaction speed of a 25 years old when he clearly doesn’t. To say that most of his stupid mistakes come as a result of his partner’s previous mishaps is also disingenuous, time and again he commits utterly pointless fouls or flies into dangerous tackles when there’s no real danger — it’s on him, not on Bruno, Mainoo etc. Even in Chelsea’s game — he wasn’t covering for anyone for either of his yellows.
Of course, our choice of his midfield partners exaggerate an already glaring decline that he’s had. But he has declined enormously on an individual level and can’t play in his own best role at top level anymore. He’d be a decent creative outlet for a bottom half team with a few guys covering for his athletic shortcomings.
I’m not sure why it would be disingenuous rather than a mixture of Casemiro sometimes overplaying and [many] other times, taking one for the team (deficient partner), I think both are true.
We see some old greats adapt and age gracefully, but they don’t have the kind of handicap with supporting cast Casemiro has to put up with - if he were provided with a competent CM partner, he would not look so haphazard and might even get to exploring the old man version of himself. He has never had the chance to wear comfy, age with grace slippers here because midfield has been terrible for years.
I really can’t agree with you in regard to what Casemiro would be if he had a competent midfield partner next to him. A lot of what he has to be out there is because if he doesn’t do it, nobody else can/will. Casemiro has not had the chance to be a specialist here, and he would if his partners were good enough. That is when we would have got to see what he is compared to his old self. You have to bear in mind, his old self had Kroos and Modric at their peaks next to him, so the only fair relative comparison would be that class of player next to this… seasoned version, at which point we would be able to examine like for like. We don’t even play with a midfield trio, let alone have equivalent level talent to Kroos and Modric to make the assessment from. So we’ve got a much, much, much worse midfield set with a 2-man job alongside a declining Casemiro. It’s just not fair to try and compare.
I am certain that this, late 2025 version of Casemiro would look like a very different animal in a competent midfield, let alone a good or exceptional one - he wouldn’t look half as past it as he currently does, imo.
Let’s agree to disagree then. It’s a shame that the club didn’t give us a chance to find out who’s right here though and we our midfield recruitment is controlled by the girl from the “everything goes in the square hole” meme.
I do think that he still has a future in a lower-paced league like Serie A where he’ll have more time on the ball and less immediate pressure (although in all likelihood his next club will be in Saudi). But not in PL where he won’t start for most teams — and most teams play on the front foot. He does defend very well in a low block still, I’ll give you that.
I do think that he still has a future in a lower-paced league like Serie A where he’ll have more time on the ball and less immediate pressure (although in all likelihood his next club will be in Saudi). But not in PL where he won’t start for most teams — and most teams play on the front foot. He does defend very well in a low block still, I’ll give you that.
I just think he’s a victim of circumstance in that he has so much more to do than he ever did in his career with a much worse collective, which really robs him of the old Yoda role where he is maybe even a bit part player, imparting copious amounts of wisdom and knowledge to the next generation. It can do nothing but make him look worse than he might actually be, imo. You put him in a good midfield and reckon he’d look like himself, but his tank would betray him later in games, and that would be where mistakes would then compound if he were not subbed out.
It’s a lot more chaotic and disorderly here, which creates a unique set of problems he wouldn’t be exposed to in functioning midfields.
The game against Chelsea that we won, you mean? Casmeiro does make stupid challenges but his general play is better than Mainoo and Ugarte at CM. They are all crap, let's be honest, but Casemiro is the least crap of the 3 currently.
And for the record I was a massive critic of Casemiro and a massive backer of Mainoo. I think Mainoo in the right system is a great player but without a very specific system to suit him, with two other CM's covering his poor tracking and defensive work and lack or athleticism, it just doesn't work. Casemiro is the best of a band bunch for our current CM.
That's partly my point though. It's a blasphemy to compare that Real Madrid to what we have here but it was never a team that was focused on control, it was a chaotic team and during Casemiro's peak he thrived in chaos. Yes, it was very much a controlled chaos from that Madrid side while our chaos stems from incompetence but it is chaos nonetheless. And Casemiro's unique set of abilities plus his impressive athleticism and innate aggression were a perfect fit for a more chaotic style of play. That's why he was so good with us in the first half-ish (probably a bit more?) of his first season, until he has lost that athletic edge. It's important that he didn't turn shit in the second season once we've changed the system, it happened in the spring (and while I don't agree with all of his red cards, he was already missing a lot of tackles even in his top United form).
I get if it's an argument about someone like Busquets — if you put him, especially a past his peak version — in a team like ours where he's literally the only midfielder covering the entire width of the pitch, he'd look half of the player he is. If you put Busquets, even the 2025 version, in a top possession-based team, he'll still look... okay. Because he's all about control, positional awareness and anticipation. Casemiro was always rash, aggressive and chaotic — which works very well until it doesn't. With players like this losing even 10% (an arbitrary relatively low number) of your pace and/or reaction speed means that you miss every last ditch tackle that you've used to make on a regular basis. It's a fairly common problem with more physical-oriented players, once they lose their edge, it's an unstoppable and drastic decline. And a lot of his mistakes nowadays have nothing to do with our structure or the quality of his partners — he simply thinks that he's capable of something that he no longer is and that's what's frustrating, you'd think that a player of his experience would be way more aware of his own shortcomings and try to adapt accordingly. Turns out his experience was very situation-specific and doesn't translate well into the new set of circumstances.
Yeah but the kind of chaos you refer to is an invitation to an open game by a superior midfield to anything they went up against. Even if we had 2/3’s of that here plus Casemiro’25, I would take that all day and expect him to hold his own enough for it to be worthwhile.
I made the point earlier that it doesn’t have to be some all-time great partner, just anyone who can hold their own in the key aspects of midfield. We don’t have a single one of those here outside of Casemiro, and he pays the price for that, being delimited and brought down alongside whoever his anchor happens to be on a given day. It’s no different to an exceptional CB only being able to do so much before what he’s alongside brings his own prospects down - like Rio before Vidic came.
I don’t know how you have circumvented Eriksen being burnt out coinciding with the midfield going to pot. Once he was spent in November, Casemiro was by himself, which no midfielder should have that burden. The remainder of the midfield is around 14th place quality as 2-man units without Casemiro, for me. It’s not something to take lightly how much he’s been done dirty having such a selection of partners to play beside in a 2-man midfield.
I would honestly convince him to take on lesser wages and a short term contract. He's not at his prime anymore but he's still very useful. If Baleba is the guy we're getting then I'll rather Ugarte go first.
Liverpool 1:2 Man Utd
Our most important player.
We melt like butter without him. Hopefully we can get to January without any injuries or red cards.
We melt like butter without him. Hopefully we can get to January without any injuries or red cards.
Really good again today. He's so important for us to have a proper deep midfielder in there.
The man is reborn, another great performance.
Was great. And he played 180 mins in Japan 
The yellow for the team on the counter attack was the type I'd want to see, he knew Ugarte was on in seconds.
The yellow for the team on the counter attack was the type I'd want to see, he knew Ugarte was on in seconds.
He gets a lot of stick but game after game he is doing very good job. I would keep him (for lower salary) of course.
Needs to cut the silly late tackles out because once Ugarte comes on our levels drop so much. Good performance today, he still treats the ball like a bomb but generally finds his man and his height is important in the center.
Class. Love him. Wish he was 8 years younger. And Irish
He's by far our best midfielder for the first 60 minutes but once he gets tired his performance levels drops a lot, good to see that Amorim has noticed this and takes him off before it's too late.
He was very good in the first half. Nothing fancy/showy at all, he was just screening the defence really well.
He has lost some weights. Easily our best CM. You can see how we lost that midfield battle when Ugarte and especially Mainoo came on
Well said.
With Bruno as usual all over the place, Casemiro held midfield together.
Good performance, but thank goodness he was subbed as soon as he got a yellow.
Not sure what people are talking about. It has been a good game from us and the result is undoubtedly terrific but does anybody want us to play the way we did today all the time? Obviously he can still offer something, obviously he has his uses but whats the point in trying to taylor our games towards such flawed players who are anything than the future. Casemiro had a good game today, kudos to him, but lets face it, we scored one before Liverpool was really awake and we scored from something akin to a set piece. We didn't have a hold of the midfield at all.
It always gets a shitter when he's not on the pitch.
I always dread it when he leaves the pitch. We always drop a level or two