Other positions be damned. We needed to spend most if not all our budget on midfielders. Just liked Spurs did.
Centre Midfielder Transfer Links
- Thread starter luke511
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Mexico's midfield outplayed ours tonight. We should definitely look at 17 year old Gilberto Mora at least.
Though, after his showing, I expect a lot of clubs will be after him.
Though, after his showing, I expect a lot of clubs will be after him.
Mexico's midfield did not in any way outplay England, it was also Mora who made the error for Englands second goal getting robbed by Anderson. He was subbed after 60mins.
No idea what game you watched.
17 year old makes an error in a last 16 world cup game. Wow. He's an incredible talent.
Outplayed in what way? Don't know what you were watching.
Go watch Pirlo schooling England in a euros final to understand what being outplayed actually looks like
They 100% dominated the midfield.
We countered well and had Bellingham and Kane.
Mora isn’t ready physically for the prem and he would probably demand a fair fee with the hype around him.
I thought he handled the physicality well in that he made smart decisions and played fast enough for physicality to not be a big factor. Besides, he's 17 years old. That's not really a problem in a decision like this. It would be like a club turning down JJ Gabriel over his current frame.
I definitely like the look of him overall but I just can’t see him being able to give the instant impact that we need this summer and being able to handle 50 or so games. If we already had an established midfield then going after him as a project to develop would make more sense.
But you need players who can get the ball consistently to your wide players and forwards. Bruno has to take all the responsibility, and thats why we look much better when Lisandro plays.
In the past we have seen us(and Bruno) play much better when you had Eriksen or Pogba on the pitch in deeper areas.
If you think we can coast with lateral passers in midfield, that would be a big mistake.
I don't just look for short term additions. Long term benefits matter a lot as the goal of United should be to create the biggest peak possible in a team as that's what's needed to win a title. Stock up in talent. Real Madrid did the same thing years ago.
If we're not good enough next season, but it makes us better for 2028-2031 period, make the signing. I want the best possible team United can create. Not just the best possible team for next season. Next season is only important in stabilizing the club in the top 4. Most of us believe we won't win the title next season anyways. If we win a title, I believe it will be with the core of Mainoo, Heaven, and Yoro being part of that group as they get older.
He would have been a far superior signing to Ugarte. Yet most of the caf were crying about signing him, and instead we were talking up this amazing ball recovering machine that was Ugarte instead.
I’d still probably rather take Berge, than some no-name, “next” Kante regen from France that half the caf muppets over.
This lad was invisible for most of the game
And he's not a central midfielder. He'd be Bruno's understudy.
Maybe he is an incredible talent but that doesn't change that he had an awful game tonight.
They dominated possession after England went down to 10 men. Before that they where being dominated except for a 10 minute spell before half time. Even after England went down to 10 their midfield did nothing except push the ball wide and swing crosses in.
Exactly. Most analytics sites have him as being the worst player on the pitch.
To be fair, so did Wilcox and the team in place at the time.
Will be good to see how Berge fairs against the hundred million pound men on saturday.
He’ll look as comfortable at that level as he’s looked in the league. Norway looked great against Brazil, and he was a key part for them.
I think we can do better, but we can easily do a lot worse.
That's not what happened. It looked to me that Mexico were the better side with the ball to start and end the first half, but England struck quick on 2 goals off of counter attacks.
Mexico definitely dominated the game in the first half, they had about 60% possession in the first half and had us pinned back defending most of the half passing the ball around brilliantly, while we had most of our possession amongst the defenders with our only threat coming from counters.
I can't see how anyone can say they did not dominate possession in the first half when that is factually incorrect.
Exactly this but I do think that’s exactly what England wanted. The slow play from us quietened the crowd and we drew Mexico onto us until Rice spotted the big opening to counter and we executed flawlessly.
He looks a good player, I suspect Spanish clubs will be after him as he is from a Spanish speaking country.
@RegisteredToSayOneThing sent me a DM as they're out of their daily allowance, but they've been looking at player comparisons using real data. Interesting but a lot of players I just wouldn't want here on that list, and some I've never heard of
Hello,
I only get 5 comments a day and I used them.
I made a thing when I was bored.
That's the top 13 players who are as close as possible to the 90th percentile in recoveries, touches in opposition area, defensive actions and possession won in final third (AKA as close as I can get with the stats I ripped off of FotMob (I'm not shelling out for Statsbomb/Opta) over two days, to a high-energy box-to-box type without essentially just going over it with adding more stats that describe the same thing essentially).
Backed by real data.
No one matched it 1:1, Rabiot was closest at 92.1/100
If you could paste it in the thread that would be nice.
I'm not gonna paste the stats for every player, that's about 30 images (maybe they can on request)
Hello,
I only get 5 comments a day and I used them.
I made a thing when I was bored.
That's the top 13 players who are as close as possible to the 90th percentile in recoveries, touches in opposition area, defensive actions and possession won in final third (AKA as close as I can get with the stats I ripped off of FotMob (I'm not shelling out for Statsbomb/Opta) over two days, to a high-energy box-to-box type without essentially just going over it with adding more stats that describe the same thing essentially).
Backed by real data.
No one matched it 1:1, Rabiot was closest at 92.1/100
If you could paste it in the thread that would be nice.
I'm not gonna paste the stats for every player, that's about 30 images (maybe they can on request)
I never said "lateral passers," though. I literally said I want a No. 6 who can break the lines, progress the ball and keep play ticking over. They're completely different things.
The point you're missing is that linebreaking becomes far more difficult when a team is defending with 10 men behind the ball. There simply aren't as many passing lanes through the middle because the central areas are so congested. That's exactly why I said wide players become the most important part of breaking a low block.
You can have all the progressive passers you want, but if your winger can't beat his full-back, your full-back can't overlap, or nobody is forcing defenders out of shape, you'll just keep recycling possession around the edge of the block.
That's why I used Spain and Portugal as examples. Rodri, Pedri, Ruiz, Bruno, Vitinha and Neves are all elite at progressing the ball, yet even they have games where they struggle against compact defences. It's clearly not because they suddenly forgot how to pass.
Lisandro helps because he's another player who can break lines from deep, but once you've progressed the ball into the final third, someone still has to create separation. Nine times out of ten, that's your wide players creating overloads, winning 1v1s or delivering quality into the box.
So no, I'm not arguing for sideways passers. I'm saying that people massively overstate how much another creative midfielder changes things against a settled low block, when history shows it's usually moments of quality out wide that actually open those games up.
Dont get why we dont focus on Spanish midfielders. So good, highly trchnical, work rate.
Club never values possession. Fans don’t either.
It is not just possession though. Just generally extremely strong and well trained players
We used to though. I wonder why and how this changed.
When?
@RegisteredToSayOneThing sent me a DM as they're out of their daily allowance, but they've been looking at player comparisons using real data. Interesting but a lot of players I just wouldn't want here on that list, and some I've never heard of
Hello,
I only get 5 comments a day and I used them.
I made a thing when I was bored.
That's the top 13 players who are as close as possible to the 90th percentile in recoveries, touches in opposition area, defensive actions and possession won in final third (AKA as close as I can get with the stats I ripped off of FotMob (I'm not shelling out for Statsbomb/Opta) over two days, to a high-energy box-to-box type without essentially just going over it with adding more stats that describe the same thing essentially).
Backed by real data.
No one matched it 1:1, Rabiot was closest at 92.1/100
If you could paste it in the thread that would be nice.
I'm not gonna paste the stats for every player, that's about 30 images (maybe they can on request)
Can't post images
https://i.ibb.co/LXBFJk9s/Capture.png
Elliot Anderson - 104
Aleksander Stankovic - Inter - 98.2
Adrien Thomasson - Rennes - 96.3
Bryan Cristante - Roma - 96.3
Mamadou Sangare - 95.6
Alex Scott - 94
Benjamin Andre - Lille - 93.4
Scotto - 93.2
Declan Rice - 92.7
Bryan Heynen - Genk - 91.9
Woulter Burger - Hoffenheim - 90.2
Hjolberg - 90.2
Stiller
That's CDMs under the same criteria.
By CM and CDM that's their most played position. I could leave that box unchecked but it would go against CAMs like Szoboszlai who play there now and then but whose percentiles are being based off of his output vs CAMs so they're over-inflated.
It's not close to perfect but I think it does an OK job for something made partly out of spite. I'm still tweaking the ranking and rating formulas but that's something else and as I mentioned in the DM I don't get the raw position data but I think it's a close approximation of a busy box-to-box midfielder.
Regarding ChatGPT for that type of broad question you can't trust it. It could be getting real data and making an opinion off of that, but it could just as likely (and TBH more likely since it doesn't appear you told it not to) be basing it off its training data which is just weighted to the most vocal and not necessarily correct frequent opinion. To put it bluntly it could just be telling you what it expects you want to hear. Even if it provided stats there's no guarantee it's real. It could just be a bunch of hallucinated stats it thinks sound right that it thinks you want to see.
I never said Mexico didn't have more possession I responded to the claim that they "dominated the midfield" which is not the same thing, unless you think simply having more possession = dominating?
England let them have the ball and when they couldn't do anything centrally they pushed the ball out wide and just got crosses in, England's 2nd goal was a result of them trying to play through the middle and getting countered.
Pass maps for Mexico midfield show lateral distribution so extreme it's almost a statistical anomaly. 70% of passes completed in the first half went sideways or diagonally backwards to the full backs rather than breaking lines vertically.
Final third entries for Mexico looks like a giant donut shape in the centre of the pitch. I can't see how anyone can say they dominated midfield when all the above is factually correct.
Any analysis of a box to box midfielder has to include ball carrying/progressive passing.
I'm not sure who exactly you're comparing these players to when you say "No-one matched 1:1" but looking at the filters you've chosen and given that this is a central midfield thread I'm guessing Casemiro as he would do well under most of those. That being said Casemiro is not a box to box midfielder, he's a DM whose very good in the opponents box but almost entirely from set pieces.
For box to box midfielders you need to look at ball progression/line breaking, defensive volume/intensity and attacking threat/efficiency. You could also look at press resistance if you want the player to be the primary CM receiving from the back 4.
Ideally. You can also infer it from other stats though, and not every b2b progresses the ball, they just progress themselves from box to box and let better players move the ball.
It compares everyone in the database to everyone else, position dependant of course. 14,003 players. No CM was 1:1 because no CM was in the 90th percentile for all the stats selected.
See my first point but pay the £5,000+ and I'll integrate more data with the Statsbomb/Opta API and get stuff like gravity, EPV and OBV/VAEP. Until then...
Point is, stats are better than asking an LLM and hoping for the best.
When we had Carrick and Scholes as the midfield pair, then added Nani, Anderson, Tevez (along with Hargreaves) in the next window.
We also had Evra at left back and Rio at centre back, so that team had a good technical level. Perhaps something to do with Quieroz's presence?
You cannot "infer" ball progression from these stats.
If a player "progresses themselves" from box to box without the ball they're just running. By ignoring progression, your filter will praise a player who wins the ball 10 times but passes backwards or loses it 9 times. "Let better players move the ball" again describes an off ball runner, not a functioning central midfielder.
High recoveries, touches in the box and final third wins tells you where a player goes but nothing about what they do with the ball once they have it, it's identifying high energy presser not a true box to box midfielder. It's almost completely filtering out the "box" part of the midfield where possession is structured.
If they cannot pass or carry the ball opposing teams will target them with a simple press whenever they receive it. This player becomes a dead end in possession. If I run this filter looking at the data from 22/23 season Ugarte is one of the highest performers.
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It's insane how many supporters are delighted we didn't sign somebody, not because they think they're not good enough but because they are expensive.
When have the best players in the land not have the highest prices?
It's not like the transfer fees are coming out of my pocket.
If we put saving money first then the club is in a lot of trouble going forward.
When have the best players in the land not have the highest prices?
It's not like the transfer fees are coming out of my pocket.
If we put saving money first then the club is in a lot of trouble going forward.
Carrick and Scholes the best ball playing CM pairing in the league. Probably only second to Barcelona across Europe.
Keane and Scholes before that also brilliant on the ball.
We have to get back there in terms of style of recruitment.
I would like us to buy a proper playmaker this summer. That's a profile we lack. Someone like Stiller or Fabian Ruiz.
Since #6 is the greater need, and we're shopping in the ~50M market(Santos) for the #8, that rules out someone like Wharton or even Alex Scott. If we cant get Tchoumeni, maybe that gets revisited.
And would you say the quality of footballers today are of the same quality 10-15-20 years ago? A hypothetical scenario; if Mateus Fernandes, Bruno G and Anderson didn't exist, who would be the best available midfielders in PL, and would they be worth paying 100m for just because they're the "best in the land"? You don't just pay up because they're the best at that moment in time, they actually have to make you quite a lot better if you're going to spend that much money and obscene wages on them.
In your hypothetical scenario where Anderson, Fernandes and Bruno G don't exist does the next best available midfielder produce the same numbers as they do? If the answer is no and the next available midfielder is performing at a mid table level but is priced at 100m simply because of scarcity a data intelligent club should walk away.
There is no midfielder in La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A or Lique A who puts up similar numbers to Anderson across the board despite playing in weaker leagues. His value is not solely based on an abstract concept of being "the best in the land" it's based on elite level performance.
According to the Sun.
Very specific set of names
Anderson makes sense, to be honest, he has been top 5 best CMs in the league for two years in my opinion, and is heavily involved in all parts of the game. But the likes of Tonali and Mateus Fernandes aren't the best in the country, they're just the best ones available, and that's a different thing. They shouldn't cost premium because of their availability in the transfer market. I think there are midfielders out there that would do just as good/better if they moved to PL that could go for half of what they went for.