[A-man]

Yes they all tried to sign new CBs and the new CBs were outperformed by Smalling. He's currently out-performing the latest one we spent £80 million on. Makes you wonder how much we need to spend to actually get someone who performs better at United

It’s really not that simple. Ole has got an idea how he wants the team to play and he doesn’t believe Smalling fits that plan. He knew he needed a good CB who does fit and the one available was Maguire. He also thought Tuanzebe would fit and brought him back, and then Smalling decided he wanted to leave. Obviously they aren’t playing the way Ole wanted them to, so it is hard to evaluate Maguire fully.

Also, at thirty Smalling is pretty much fully developed. What you see is what you get, for another few years, then of course age might set in. Maybe not something to build on for the future.

The question is of course if the money would be better spent elsewhere. Because with this midfield and with a non-scoring attack, he might have started to build in the wrong place.

 

[Ekeke]

It’s really not that simple. Ole has got an idea how he wants the team to play and he doesn’t believe Smalling fits that plan. He knew he needed a good CB who does fit and the one available was Maguire. He also thought Tuanzebe would fit and brought him back, and then Smalling decided he wanted to leave. Obviously they aren’t playing the way Ole wanted them to, so it is hard to evaluate Maguire fully.

Also, at thirty Smalling is pretty much fully developed. What you see is what you get, for another few years, then of course age might set in. Maybe not something to build on for the future.

The question is of course if the money would be better spent elsewhere. Because with this midfield and with a non-scoring attack, he might have started to build in the wrong place.

I think he clearly built in the wrong place. The defense was always going to do better than last season just by trusting the defenders to defend instead of being babysat by Fellaini and leaving massive gaps on the edge of the box where a DM would normally be. I think Smalling and Lindelof would have done as well as Maguire and Lindelof have done this season, an okay defensive record. I dont think you pay £80 million for an okay defensive record. Especially when we also got in an expensive right back.

The defense was better each previous season with the same players. So they can obviously do the job of defending and not conceding a lot.

We went into the season knowing we were light in attack after we didnt sign Dybala or a Lukaku replacement. We also lost Ander and didnt replace him, moving Pogba back from the advanced attacking position he was playing last season so clearly we were going to lose quality there too. So thats a good 2 players short of last season's attacking options.

For me when the transfer window closed, I thought we had a 6/10 window or there abouts and the only thing I was positive about going into the season was that it would be hard for our young players not to be given lots of playing time and see if they can take the first team spots until we can spend again in areas we clearly need to.

We've seen a lot less of them than I was expecting and our results have been poor on top of that so the season has been pretty dour so far.

 

[A-man]

I think he clearly built in the wrong place. The defense was always going to do better than last season just by trusting the defenders to defend instead of being babysat by Fellaini and leaving massive gaps on the edge of the box where a DM would normally be. I think Smalling and Lindelof would have done as well as Maguire and Lindelof have done this season, an okay defensive record. I dont think you pay £80 million for an okay defensive record. Especially when we also got in an expensive right back.

The defense was better each previous season with the same players. So they can obviously do the job of defending and not conceding a lot.

We went into the season knowing we were light in attack after we didnt sign Dybala or a Lukaku replacement. We also lost Ander and didnt replace him, moving Pogba back from the advanced attacking position he was playing last season so clearly we were going to lose quality there too. So thats a good 2 players short of last season's attacking options.

For me when the transfer window closed, I thought we had a 6/10 window or there abouts and the only thing I was positive about going into the season was that it would be hard for our young players not to be given lots of playing time and see if they can take the first team spots until we can spend again in areas we clearly need to.

We've seen a lot less of them than I was expecting and our results have been poor on top of that so the season has been pretty dour so far.

Im not saying you’re wrong but it could be Ole didn’t think he could play the way he wanted without someone like Maguire. Not saying it was the right thing to do, but I think it was the case. Also, if he is building for a longer perspective it could make sense, but then he should dedicate more playing time for the younger players.

It looks to me as if too much depended on Pogba being great, and he has hardly even played.

 

[ForlanFletcherPee]

Smalling has never had a problem defending against fast players. It’s Lindeloff and Maguire who struggle playing a high line when there’s a fast opponent about.

I'm just sick of how people just try to get a reason to mitigate this guy's ability ,hes played with fast players for God's sake, Salah Mane Firminho, And most recently he played and tamed pacey Mbappe so what is your point... ? Even Messi, didn't humiliate him as haters thought .. The overrated Maguire hasn't played these world class and we are complaining of his slothfulness already

 

[ForlanFletcherPee]

Not surprised he’s doing well. For his sake hopefully he gets a permanent move there, where he’ll be appreciated and gets away from the crapshow that is Utd and our toxic fan base who scapegoated the shit out of him.

Spot on, because even if he's crowned best player in Italy come the end of the season if he joins back there are some who are already waiting for his slightly error to feast on. I wish he stays permanently where he's treated with all fairness rather than premeditated opinion

 

[Irwin99]

15 million is a steal for him, we're getting ripped off if that's true.

 

[Cassidy]

Hes a good defender, and 15m is a steal

 

[ash_86]

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[Cassidy]

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We better ask for more than 15m. Didnt he recently sign a new deal too

 

[ash_86]

We better ask for more than 15m. Didnt he recently sign a new deal too

Yup , he's signed up till 2022.

 

[Jibbs]

Bring him back in Jan.

 

[Stacks]

Yes they all tried to sign new CBs and the new CBs were outperformed by Smalling. He's currently out-performing the latest one we spent £80 million on. Makes you wonder how much we need to spend to actually get someone who performs better at United

How is he outperforming Harry? is Maguire in Italy? How did they get on when both played in EPL? did Smalling have better performances?

 

[Conor]

He is miles better than Lindelof, not sure why we didn't at least try him and Maguire together. Hopefully Tuanzebe can emulate him in that partnership once he's fully fit.

 

[ClaytonBlackmoorLeftPeg]

We had 7 CBs at least one had to go. No one in their right mind is buying Rojo, Bailly or Jones - that’s why Smalling is on loan. He’s the only one that had any value to any club.

 

[He'sRaldo]

We had 7 CBs at least one had to go. No one in their right mind is buying Rojo, Bailly or Jones - that’s why Smalling is on loan. He’s the only one that had any value to any club.

Apparently Barcelona wanted Lindelof.

 

[manunited1919]

I'm just sick of how people just try to get a reason to mitigate this guy's ability ,hes played with fast players for God's sake, Salah Mane Firminho, And most recently he played and tamed pacey Mbappe so what is your point... ? Even Messi, didn't humiliate him as haters thought .. The overrated Maguire hasn't played these world class and we are complaining of his slothfulness already

Can you even read? My point is exactly the same as yours, so go rant at someone who actually hates Smalling. There’s plenty of those around.
Oh, and you should apologize too.

 

[bond19821982]

We conceded many of soft goal with Mike Smalling in the team as well. What is stupid is that he doesn't suit a team that wants to build from the back and places an emphasis on passing because that's his real glaring weakness but that's not what we do. We have talked a lot about it but we don't actually really do much from an offensive point of view with our CBs, the occasional pass from Maguire will find it's way to whoever is playing 10 but him and Lindelof are both pretty normal on the ball.

For the style of football I want to see, Smalling is a poor choice but for the style we play he's great. AWB-Smalling-Maguire-Shaw is offensively pretty limited but it's fecking solid defensively physically, aerially and it's pacey. Put a half decent DM in front of that and we'd be a nightmare to score against, even with Ole.

Ofcourse I am not talking about Smalling alone. You replace Lindelof with Smalling and then you have the defence you need.

 

[Cabin Clown]

Find it baffling that we went and blew almost our entire transfer kitty on Maguire, then loan out our best defender in Smalling when one of the two most important areas to upgrade were RB (AWB thank god) and CM. I rate Maguire and would like to see them two make a partnership & think it could work really well, but still.

Anyone who thinks Lindelof is better than Smalling in any area of defending is astonishing to me. The only thing he's better at is passing, and even attribute of his is overrated.

 

[Ekeke]

How is he outperforming Harry? is Maguire in Italy? How did they get on when both played in EPL? did Smalling have better performances?

Yes

 

[Irwin99]

We had 7 CBs at least one had to go. No one in their right mind is buying Rojo, Bailly or Jones - that’s why Smalling is on loan. He’s the only one that had any value to any club.

Thought Everton were in for Rojo this Summer and he was a bit pissed off at us for pulling the plug on the move? Guess we didn't want to strengthen a mid-table rival.

 

[Ekeke]

Thought Everton were in for Rojo this Summer and he was a bit pissed off at us for pulling the plug on the move? Guess we didn't want to strengthen a mid-table rival.

The rumour was they wanted him on loan, we wanted a fee

 

[TrustInOle]

Get the lad back in January, and stick him in with Maguire. Should never have been let go ahead of Jones, rojo and Baily.

 

[Revan]

It doesnt matter how you feel. What matters is that we had a defender who likes defending and defended well in front of De Gea. You can defend well by taking power off a shot or putting the attacker in an uncomfortable position where they cant finish how they would want to. Those still count as shots. So no, averaging less than 1 shot more per game than Arsenal doesn't mean our defense was worse than theirs.

Its also a matter of where the shots come from. Matic wasn't good at tracking back and providing a shield in front of the defense. So unless we can seperate how many of those shots were from midfielders and players on the edge of the box that the midfield should be tracking back with, then your numbers dont mean what you think they mean

De Gea was chosen as our best player, the best keeper in the league, won his only ever entry in FifPro XI that season, while saving more shots than any other keeper in top 6, and single handed keeping us in many matches. That while we were playing in a very defensive way.

The defense was not good that season. De Gea was great and we were very defensive.

 

[Stacks]

De Gea was chosen as our best player, the best keeper in the league, won his only ever entry in FifPro XI that season, while saving more shots than any other keeper in top 6, and single handed keeping us in many matches. That while we were playing in a very defensive way.

The defense was not good that season. De Gea was great and we were very defensive.

No point. He will never see it that way. He saw us as United 2009

 

[Ekeke]

De Gea was chosen as our best player, the best keeper in the league, won his only ever entry in FifPro XI that season, while saving more shots than any other keeper in top 6, and single handed keeping us in many matches. That while we were playing in a very defensive way.

The defense was not good that season. De Gea was great and we were very defensive.

It was less than 1 shot more than Arsenal per match and it doesnt tell you where the shots came from. If they were from range thats on the midfield, as much as you try to blame it on Smalling.

In fact lots of hopeful shots from 25 yards out is a sign that teams dont feel they can break through and create good chances

So once again show me something that says we had a lot more shots from inside our box that De Gea saved that season, than this season

 

[roonster09]

De Gea was chosen as our best player, the best keeper in the league, won his only ever entry in FifPro XI that season, while saving more shots than any other keeper in top 6, and single handed keeping us in many matches. That while we were playing in a very defensive way.

The defense was not good that season. De Gea was great and we were very defensive.

It was less than 1 shot more than Arsenal per match and it doesnt tell you where the shots came from. If they were from range thats on the midfield, as much as you try to blame it on Smalling.

In fact lots of hopeful shots from 25 yards out is a sign that teams dont feel they can break through and create good chances

So once again show me something that says we had a lot more shots from inside our box that De Gea saved that season, than this season

XG against should answer all that.

 

[Ekeke]

So there you go, both United and Arsenal had 1.8 shots saved per game from inside their box

1.2 to 0.7 with United having more shots saved from outside the box. Often but not always, thats an issue with midfield tracking back to mark and close players down. Some of it can be CBs but certainly not all of it.

 

[Ekeke]

And here's this seasons :

Well would you look at that, we've had 1.9 shots saved from inside our box this season. More than 2 seasons ago by 0.1

1 shot from outisde the box per match, 0.2 down from 2 years ago

 

[Ekeke]

Lastly, here's where our defensive problems came from last season :

Look at that, conceding the most shots from outside the box out of all teams in the league. Why? Because we had Fellaini dropping deeper than a DM to help out with the ball in the air, so opponents were free to find a player on the edge of the box to shoot at goal because we didnt have a DM in the usual DM area to pressure them. Our defensive options were too deep. We then had Matic playing in DM and not bothering to try and win the ball, so Ander would come in and do that job. Ander played an important role but I guess it wasnt enough to make up for Matic and Fellaini's "shielding" of the defense.

We still had a higher amount of shots coming in from inside the box than this season or two seasons ago. That can be partly to do with the above as its a small distance between inside and outside the box, but also our CBs werent as good as the season before. Smalling was okay rather than very good and he wasnt in all the time. Bailly, Lindelof, Jones all struggled and Lindelof was okay for the 2nd half of the season.

We do also need to take into account that DDG was poor as opposed to very good in the previous season and he's been better this season too. And these stats are about saves - he wasnt very good at making them last season so that could effect the numbers

I'd hate to see what these stats said in the first half of last season because no doubt they would have been much worse under Mourinho, where we ruined our season.

 

[A-man]

It was less than 1 shot more than Arsenal per match and it doesnt tell you where the shots came from. If they were from range thats on the midfield, as much as you try to blame it on Smalling.

One shot more per match than Arsenal but they also conceded almost the double amount of goals and finished 6th position. I think defence was decent that year and especially good was Smalling, but the super star was DDG.

 

[Ekeke]

One shot more per match than Arsenal but they also conceded almost the double amount of goals and finished 6th position. I think defence was decent that year and especially good was Smalling, but the super star was DDG.

I dont disagree for one moment that DDG was the best. But he was the best GK in the world that season so you could pick any CB in world football and replace Smalling with him and he'd still have been the superstar

 

[Revan]

It was less than 1 shot more than Arsenal per match and it doesnt tell you where the shots came from. If they were from range thats on the midfield, as much as you try to blame it on Smalling.

In fact lots of hopeful shots from 25 yards out is a sign that teams dont feel they can break through and create good chances

So once again show me something that says we had a lot more shots from inside our box that De Gea saved that season, than this season

So what point are you trying to prove? That we had the same shots from box as Arsenal, more than them from outside the box, but conceded only half the goals. This only proves that De Gea, not the defense was the difference between us and them.

 

[Ekeke]

So what point are you trying to prove? That we had the same shots from box as Arsenal, more than them from outside the box, but conceded only half the goals. This only proves that De Gea, not the defense was the difference between us and them.

That our defense was pretty good, and De Gea was great on top of it. Resulting in 2nd best defensive record

You talk about De Gea having more work to do that season, but he had the same amount of shots to save as this season from inside the box and slightly more shots to save from outside the box where midfield is also a big factor. Plus I'm sure if you ask him he'd much rather face shots from outside the box where he has time to react than making saves from inside the box where we can directly tie it to the CBs.

So yes our defense was just as good 2 seasons ago as it is now when it comes to De Gea having to make saves

 

[Revan]

That our defense was pretty good, and De Gea was great on top of it. Resulting in 2nd best defensive record

You talk about De Gea having more work to do that season, but he had the same amount of shots to save as this season from inside the box and slightly more shots to save from outside the box where midfield is also a big factor. Plus I'm sure if you ask him he'd much rather face shots from outside the box where he has time to react than making saves from inside the box where we can directly tie it to the CBs.

So yes our defense was just as good 2 seasons ago as it is now when it comes to De Gea having to make saves

How it was pretty good when statistic wise it was worse than Arsenal's despite playing in a more defensive oriented way. It was De Gea being in God mode which resulted with us having the second best defensive record. Not Smalling, Bailly or Lindelof.

Last year it was the same exact defense and we conceded double the goals cause De Gea became a mortal.

 

[MadDogg]

How it was pretty good when statistic wise it was worse than Arsenal's despite playing in a more defensive oriented way. It was De Gea being in God mode which resulted with us having the second best defensive record. Not Smalling, Bailly or Lindelof.

Last year it was the same exact defense and we conceded double the goals cause De Gea became a mortal.

De Gea wasn't the only one who dipped in form last season (although his was certainly the most extreme). Smalling himself had probably his worst season of the last five or six.

It also wasn't the 'exact same defence'. It wasn't even close. Smalling was literally the only player who stayed in the same spot (actually, didn't he end up playing on the left side for a while?).

17/18
Valencia -- Smalling -- Jones -- Young

18/19
Young -- Smalling -- Lindelof -- Shaw.

Young's form dropped significantly in 18/19 as well, probably from a combination of age and being moved to the right where he's normally not as good. 17/18 also had Matic doing quite a good job at least for the first half of the season helping to shield them and decent in the second half.

So there you have it. The goalkeeper behind them went from being arguably the best in the world in 17/18 to having a shocker in 18/19. The person ahead of them with the primary role of helping to protect the defence went from being good/decent to terrible. The manager was publicly shaming the defence and for at least a couple of weeks early in the season seemed to be deliberately setting it up to fail to make a point (McTominay in defence). Every single other member of that defence changed. So no, the difference between the seasons certainly wasn't just De Gea becoming mortal.

 

[Adam-Utd]

I've always rated Smalling highly, as a pure defender he's the best in our squad.

People got way too bothered by his "grabby hands", even though he's never been penalised for this. Perhaps he's smart enough to use it at the right times.

While obviously his passing isn't amazing, he wasn't THAT bad either. Lindelof for me isn't doing much better in this department, he plays pretty safely or just passes it to Maguire half the time.

For me i'd have Smalling back in over Lindelof, and have Tuanzebe compete with them.

 

[Ekeke]

De Gea wasn't the only one who dipped in form last season (although his was certainly the most extreme). Smalling himself had probably his worst season of the last five or six.

It also wasn't the 'exact same defence'. It wasn't even close. Smalling was literally the only player who stayed in the same spot (actually, didn't he end up playing on the left side for a while?).

17/18
Valencia -- Smalling -- Jones -- Young

18/19
Young -- Smalling -- Lindelof -- Shaw.

Young's form dropped significantly in 18/19 as well, probably from a combination of age and being moved to the right where he's normally not as good. 17/18 also had Matic doing quite a good job at least for the first half of the season helping to shield them and decent in the second half.

So there you have it. The goalkeeper behind them went from being arguably the best in the world in 17/18 to having a shocker in 18/19. The person ahead of them with the primary role of helping to protect the defence went from being good/decent to terrible. The manager was publicly shaming the defence and for at least a couple of weeks early in the season seemed to be deliberately setting it up to fail to make a point (McTominay in defence). Every single other member of that defence changed. So no, the difference between the seasons certainly wasn't just De Gea becoming mortal.

He was also shit for Spain, before his form dipped for United.

 

[arthurka]

Well done Ole. fecked that up too.

Don't know how that is on him? People cheered when he left. I said it here many times before, he is as good of a defender as anyone out there but he isn't a baller. Glad he is doing well.

 

[MadDogg]

Don't know how that is on him? People cheered when he left. I said it here many times before, he is as good of a defender as anyone out there but he isn't a baller. Glad he is doing well.

*Some people cheered.

Smalling has always been 50/50 on this forum, but the 'haters' have tended to be a lot louder and egged each other on to continue hating on him. That's given the false impression that 'everybody' thinks that he's shit, so the people who think that have felt validated. Whenever there's been a proper discussion about it there's been just as many people saying that he's our best (best of a sad bunch, but still the best) as there has been otherwise.

 

[Renegade]

Always found it ridiculous how he got lumped together with Jones as this chuckle brother partnership.