Stats without any context. I've linked all 12 goals we've conceded in his 13 starts for us this season below.
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12
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 45
- Clean sheets
- 20
- Goals
- 4
- Assists
- 0
- Yellow cards
- 4
- Status
Our defence has been very impressive this season, not sure how you think a bunch of defenders wouldn't work as a unit, if they didn't we'd be bottom of the league. It's a very well drilled and organised machine. Smalling has had a very good season, but still some are digging up ancient history to prove their point, rather than how he was actually performing pre his injury. So over seeing all this he's just a squad player and is easy to replace, there's not many more defensively sold centre halfs out there, stick him alongside a real leader and we'd be sorted. Jose has far more pressing issues than Smalling, we're doing pretty well stacked for centre halfs and there's no outstanding candidate available to replace any of them. Plus we've got some superb prospects who'll be pushing for a place over the next few seasons.
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It’s been so long since his last involvement in us conceding a goal and dropping to points that it’s already ancient history for some
6 of those have some very poor moments from him in the buildup to conceding.
Can you state which ones please?
I have watched all of these and the only one you can blame him is the last one against Leicester. He should have never been there and said so as well. All of the others he has no role to play unless he is also on the pitch and at one time he has played the ball. I am one of his biggest critics but I have to say he has been solid this season for a long time and especially of late.
Wow, you are something
Agenda posters like @Ultimate Grib and @11101 should be ignored. @Paz showed himself out. @Jaybomb is now focusing on Martial. There's no reasoning with these cats when it comes to Smalling. A waste of time
I have nothing better to do with my life so I spend it planning my next attack on the Chris Smalling thread 
Yeah he should have saved the shot too. Smalling is our CB so should do everything himself and given that criteria he hasn't scored nearly enough goals this season
1 : Mata gives the ball away, Lindelof is turned inside out and lets his man shoot. Smalling? Doesnt do a lot wrong, he's tracking his man at the back. If he was the best defender in the world he might have reacted after the saved Ince shot and launched himself in the way of the second shot and blocked or headed it clear but I'm not sure any current CB around the world would have got it right 10 times out of 10 and stopped the shot.
2: Lindelof can't defend a high launched ball from the keeper, a bad header back to his own keeper leads to a great chance. Smalling? Tries his best to get back and block the shot on the line but just cant make it. Nothing he can really do here, other than perhaps being in charge of dealing with every high ball and doing 2 CB jobs at once.
3 : Smalling tracks the run from midfield because for some reason Jones has planted himself yet allowed a great cross to come in. Ashley Young hasnt gone back to his box to help defend so Smalling has covered a large amount of space to make up for the defenders on this side being out of position. Bailly hasn't reacted to the shift in team shape and come across to help out. Neither has Valencia. This is a cock up from the entire defence and the closest to doing the right thing is Chris Smalling.
4 : Ashley Young pushes up to pressure the man on the ball and a fast double team movement takes both he and Matic out of the game. Smalling tries to cover, puts some pressure on the winger so he cant get a quality ball in. Perhaps he could have managed a block, perhaps not. But the ball in was poor and Lindelof slips over when it would have been easy to deal with otherwise. Easy finish and not much any of the other defenders can do after he does that.
5 : The Rojo Special - Gets turned and then dives in with little chance to win the ball and catches the player. Got away with a bunch of these last season, this time its punished. Smalling is not a surgeon and won't be performing any brain transplants in his lifetime so there's nothing he could do here.
6 : Pogba and Ander are 5-10 yards apart leaving plenty of space in the middle and on the other side. Lingard is closest to the player who ends up having the chance and hasnt tracked him properly which could have made up for the midfield mistake. Smalling and Rojo are close to each other at the start, but an attacker makes moves further from Smalling so he puts himself in a position to deal with any crosses towards him. Meanwhile Rojo doesnt at any point look and notice this and in fact moves towards the player that Ander has tracked back to cover. Theres absolutely no need for Rojo to have moved and in fact the final chance falls to the player about 5 yards behind where Rojo started. So if he had just moved slightly back with the play as the attack progressed instead of running down towards the player already tracked then he'd have been in the perfect position to easily cut out the cross.
At most we could say that once Rojo moves when he doesnt need to, Smalling could possibly have seen that and stopped tracking his man and moved closer to Rojo and not leave as much space undefended. That would have put Smalling in a good position to pressure and perhaps block the shot if lucky. At the same time that would have left the players at the back post unmarked for the cross because even though we have 2 other players towards the back, meaning we have 3 vs 2 there - only Smalling moves in a way that would see him beat his man to the ball.
Valencia and Lindelof may possibly have done more to cover if Smalling had moved over to cover the space Rojo left behind without a reason. We'll never know if thats the case, but we can see they dont look convincing in where they place themselves when the cross comes in. So again if Chris Smalling was the best CB in the world he might have moved to cover Rojo's error and possibly distracted or blocked the shot, which is more like he did in the previous Chelsea example.
Again its a defence-wide lack of coordination and Smalling does the best defensive work of the backline, but at the same time its entirely possible that he could have done a little more. Compared to the other defenders who should have done a lot more.
7 : Lindelof, a bit like Jones earlier, just stands there and allows his opponent to play a fantastic ball into a dangerous area. It goes way over Smalling's head, nothing he can do about that. Its over Rojo too but the man who runs in behind him, who Rojo stops to point at saying he's offside maybe, hopefully, miss controls the ball backwards to a teammate who puts it in. And the 2nd man, who was also closest to Rojo could have been covered if he was moving to react to the pass instead of hoping the referees assistant would bail him out.
8 : Lukaku does a poor job with his challenge and the ball drops to a City player who turns it in.
Lingard and Matic both get sucked under the initial cross and take themselves out of play. Lingard at least leaps to try and challenge for the ball though, Matic on the other hand starts in the perfect position to have dealt with Lukaku's bad touch back. For some reason known only to Nemanja Matic, he moves out of the 6 yard box, closer to the corner and under the ball. I gather he was there for a reason at the start, to defend the 6 yard box but he deserted it and decided to have a break from the game for some reason instead.
9 : Lukaku swings his right boot at a cross and it bounces back off a teammate to a City player who turns it in.
10 : Corner comes in Rojo doesnt deal with it, doesnt react and it bounces off his knee towards the middle of the 6 yard box, is flat footed and again doesnt react and it falls to an opponent inside the box. Rashford is there to try and help out but doesnt manage anything either. Smalling tracked his man, but his man pulled wide and Smalling went with him so he wasn't defending the middle of the goal. We had 6 other players in the 6 yard box, at least 2 of them (Mainly Rojo but also Rashford) could have done a lot more than they did.
So there you go, the first 10 goals and Chris Smalling is perhaps guilty of 1 thing - Not covering for Rojo's mistaken positioning in goal 6. And thats being very slightly harsh because he was still doing a good job defending the situation that he is taking care of but if he had moved over like he did against Chelsea on this occasion it may have bailed us out.
11. Jones gets sucked in beyond the half way line, Smalling does a great job covering the defense and holding up Mahrez. Unfortunately he's let down by those other defenders and teammates because they havent put half as much effort and energy into getting back fast like Smalling has and its an easy finish from the unmarked striker.
12. Smalling is playing injured and risking making it a lot worse. He's no longer at CB because Lindelof and Jones are playing there. Ashley Young doesnt track his man and De Gea doesnt challenge for an easy ball close to his goal that the attacker volleys home from knee high in De Gea's 6 yard box.
So yeah, not the best CB in the league. Not the best CB in the world. But he has had very little, if anything, to do with any of the goals we've conceded with him starting. That cannot be said of any of the other defenders alongside him and even the best goalkeeper in the world is more guilty for one of these than Smalling is for any one of them.
Suppose Lukaku is the worst striker on the planet too because I have a video proving it.
So have we decided which 6 goals Smalling was poor at?
Smalling has been our best centre back this season in my opinion. People might argue and said it should be Phil Jones. However, Smalling has been playing more in big & tougher game such as Liverpool, Arsenal, City Chelsea & Spurs and also including the on form Watford at that time, and Smalling was performing very good in those games (may be not against Chelsea but Jones didn't play well either against Chelsea). Jones has the easier fixtures & that's why he has more clean sheets than Smalling in the league, on top of that Smalling played with Lindelof when he had shaky start.
I find it unbelievable how someone can blame Smalling for the Leicester City goal. Last season, people followed Jose to criticised player like Smalling who refused to play due to broken toe & against Leicester City this season he showed commitment & be professional to play even with injury and our fans criticised him. That Leicester 2nd goal in my opinion should be a team's fault (players & manager as well) not just an individual's fault.
I find it unbelievable how someone can blame Smalling for the Leicester City goal. Last season, people followed Jose to criticised player like Smalling who refused to play due to broken toe & against Leicester City this season he showed commitment & be professional to play even with injury and our fans criticised him. That Leicester 2nd goal in my opinion should be a team's fault (players & manager as well) not just an individual's fault.
Man Utd 2:0 Derby
Really good defender, just a bit of a clumsy donkey at times. Would say he’s the third best we’ve got behind Bailly and Jones.
Smalling and Blind, just like old times tonight. Big Mike winning everything and then give it to Daley to play.
Expect this thread to be bumped continually over the next few days as people search for errors.
Expect this thread to be bumped continually over the next few days as people search for errors.
Good solid 90 minutes under the belt.
They don't post in here when we don't concede, when we concede they look to blame him for being on the pitch.
So awfully quite in here when he has a good game
No, it's not agenda at all.So awfully quite in here when he has a good game
Smalling is a spin on the 6 degrees of separation theory. All goals must be partly his fault.
People have to stop using the word "agenda" on here. People rate players diffferently, big deal. Some might go too far with criticism, granted, but it isn't because they have an agenda against a player that plays for the team they support.
Thought he did really well.
Did his job. Not much to comment as it was a very normal and typical Smalling performance.
Depends on how you define it. For me in this medium it would be allowing your prior opinion of a player to override what you see in any given match.
Yepp it is more people are very stubborn to change the mind about a player. Think stubborn is a better word than agenda. Most players go up and down in form and play better in some games and worse in others, but a lot of posters struggle with that as they want a player to be either great or shit all the time it seem.
Some posters seem incapable of saying anything positive about certain players they supposedly support. Not sure what to call that.
People throwing “agendas” around are ecstatic about his big solid performance as the rock of defence against Derby fecking County. You’d expect him to perform against a team at his level ffs. Sigh 
I like Chris, but this thread is atrocious. If he wasn't good enough, I don't think he would have been here so long and had consistent runs in the team under every manager. Surely he would've been replaced?
That's about as far as it goes, no one in our squad, or who I think we could realistically sign, will be as good as Rio or Vidic. Unfortunately this is the benchmark / comparison of past players.
That's about as far as it goes, no one in our squad, or who I think we could realistically sign, will be as good as Rio or Vidic. Unfortunately this is the benchmark / comparison of past players.
He can only play against whatever opposition is on the pitch, and he did well as he has for the majority of games. You’d expect us to score against Derby as well; should we not give praise to Lingard and Lukaku?People throwing “agendas” around are ecstatic about his big solid performance as the rock of defence against Derby fecking County. You’d expect him to perform against a team at his level ffs. Sigh
It doesn’t make for good discussion if all you see is people saying great performance, solid, good goal Messe Lingard. That’s a wasted post in my opinion as it offers nothing to a debate which by definition is a discussion of different opinions/arguments.
I generally won’t post if I don’t feel I’m adding something valuable unless I’m over the moon that is why I’m surprised by some of the posts in here after Derby, but everyone has their own process and I do my best to respect it.
That's because this thread got around 15 new pages during the time he was out, mostly from people bumping the thread to criticise him, even though before the injury he was in good form and hardly anyone from those folks even posted in this thread.
You can see that his confidence is back and that is one of the reasons why he is playing well. Also if your partner keeps getting changed you will never have a settled defence line.
I also think that Daley is very underrated .
I also think that Daley is very underrated .
Looks to me like Smalling just takes his defending very seriously, and takes great pride in his defensive contributions. So much so - he leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to his role as a teamplayer, especially when the team has possession.
Its a confidence thing, in that he doesn't trust his abilities with the ball at his feet to be as adventurous as he is actually capable of.
I've seen Smalling play certain games being actually adventurous in possession. Passing under pressure straight to attackers, getting forward with the ball, trying to assist even. Problem is, it doesn't happen very often. Maybe one of those things once a game if we are lucky. Mostly its just sideway passing and pondering on the ball.
Why? Because taking so much pride in his defending, he hates risk. All that going forward and adventurous passing doesn't come without consequence, being a defender. He is making a living of not letting goals in, minimising risk is what he constantly does, every game. He has a hard time accepting a lot of risk and has become a greater defender because of that thinking. That's why we also see so few mistakes from him, its all through his game now from the passing to the pondering, to being at the right place defensively. Its a double-edged sword for the team as we have one of the safest and best defenders in the world, and its not helping our collective play this way. I only wish he would be more confident
Its a confidence thing, in that he doesn't trust his abilities with the ball at his feet to be as adventurous as he is actually capable of.
I've seen Smalling play certain games being actually adventurous in possession. Passing under pressure straight to attackers, getting forward with the ball, trying to assist even. Problem is, it doesn't happen very often. Maybe one of those things once a game if we are lucky. Mostly its just sideway passing and pondering on the ball.
Why? Because taking so much pride in his defending, he hates risk. All that going forward and adventurous passing doesn't come without consequence, being a defender. He is making a living of not letting goals in, minimising risk is what he constantly does, every game. He has a hard time accepting a lot of risk and has become a greater defender because of that thinking. That's why we also see so few mistakes from him, its all through his game now from the passing to the pondering, to being at the right place defensively. Its a double-edged sword for the team as we have one of the safest and best defenders in the world, and its not helping our collective play this way. I only wish he would be more confident
Man Utd 3:0 Stoke
Some good clearences under no pressure and did well against Crouch on one occasion but overall so far struggling to follow him around and been caught out of position:
He was marking Valencia when Ireland took his first mishit wide open.
Marking the left post for Irelands second wide open shot.
Ball watching instead of looking where Crouch was and trying to block him while De Gea was coming for the ball.
Needs to improve second half.
He was marking Valencia when Ireland took his first mishit wide open.
Marking the left post for Irelands second wide open shot.
Ball watching instead of looking where Crouch was and trying to block him while De Gea was coming for the ball.
Needs to improve second half.
For Ireland's first chance, looked like he was keeping close to Crouch, otherwise it'd be Crouch vs Valencia.
No idea what he was doing for Ireland's second chance.
And his build-up awareness is non-existent. Numerous times he’d pass back to de Gea and did not give him an alternative for a short pass. Might be a tactical decision but found it kind of odd.
My bet is thats he’s on the pitch just because of crouch.
Surely that is Jones and Matics bad on that one. Or actually if Jones has gone to press the play then maybe Shaw should drop in there. However Matic for sure must be able to see Ireland.
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