Played exactly how you would expect a 33 year old Christian Eriksen to play.
14
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 34
- Goals
- 4
- Assists
- 5
- Yellow cards
- 4
-
Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) discuss United's fantastic win away against Athletic Club in the semi-final of the Europa League.
They also pick out the positives of United's 4-3 loss away at Brentford, and Nik reviews a day out at Old Trafford watching Manchester United Women qualify for the Champions League.
Looked a literal ghost out there
His football brain and intelligence is great. But, his body can't keep up anymore. He looks much older than 33. A shame we couldn't get him years ago.
I know he's a good guy, but everyone knows now that he's such a shit footballer. He can't play anything at speed anymore. Football is athletics with skills. He can only play training session tempo.
Feels like we exclusively start him in games against big, physical sides who aren't going to give him a kick. Newcastle, Brentford etc.
There was a point where he was trying to pressure Isak and Isak just slowly walked to the right and glided past him. I felt sorry for him.
Like Lindelof, another where today should be his last start for the club before his contract expires. Zero benefit in starting him from this point.
Think Amorim decided to keep him on the pitch as 2nd half went on and it looked less and less likely we'd get something out of it. Probably only to get a cameo vs Lyon.
Eriksen has been terrible recently, today was no exception. I don't know what Amorim thought he'd get from starting him, given how little he has offered recently. Another one who is clearly on the way out and we get nothing from giving minutes to.
I suspect it's just because Amorim didn't want to risk anyone else. Casemiro was rightfully rested, Mainoo and Mount are just back from injury and are being eased in and Collyer is injured. As such it was basically a choice between Eriksen and Hojlund (with Bruno playing either as a CM or #10) for that last spot.
There's other games where Eriksen might be actively chosen ahead of those players for tactical reasons, but this match I think it was just to look after the fitness of others. Obviously there's always the option to throw a kid in there, but I don't think Newcastle is the match to be giving a kid a debut in midfield.
Yes this was clearly a game that, in the grand scheme, we could sacrifice. That is likely why Ugarte played 90 minutes for once also, Bruno actually got subbed off and Casemiro was kept rested on the bench.
Thank god he is out of contract in 3 months.
Take a guess where this intellegent football brain decided to pass to in the following, I will give you a clue its not to Amass or Dalot to progress out of this situation.
I know people will disagree because he was a free signing but he still a poor signing for me. He can do something now and then but he's mostly overran in midfield and gassed after 60 minutes. Embodies the lack of physical ability in the team.
We’ve had some abysmal midfields over the years but to be fair to him, that Casemiro, Bruno, Eriksen trio wasn’t bad in EtH’s first season. Don’t think he’s been the same since that injury he had when Andy Caroll took him out.
I thought he was good for us until that injury by Carroll. The midfield of him, Bruno and casemiro were good for that little period in ten hag first season.
Eriksen is not a holding midfielder in a game where we are playing against an aggressive and capable opposition midfield. It is as simple as that. It is a question of position. Eriksen still works great for Denmark 10 also against a quality team like Portugal, who would do great in the PL. He just don´t fit in the pivot in games like yesterday.
He can ping a pass. That's all.
I honestly think this 'version' of him is the worst central midfielder I've seen get significant minutes for us. He offers virtually nothing, and the fact he's in positions where teammates rely on him to play a defensive role and then have to scramble to make up for him not doing it must be absolutely infuriating.
I would honestly put almost any other fitter player in there. He's not even passing, creating or scoring anymore.
I like Amorim, but I see no excuse at this point.
I would honestly put almost any other fitter player in there. He's not even passing, creating or scoring anymore.
I like Amorim, but I see no excuse at this point.
I agree with this. Not because Eriksen is a bad player but because we signed him after he'd excelled as the most attacking of Brentford's midfield three and then decided to try him in a double pivot.
We should have signed a proper #8 the summer we got Eriksen but just went for the best, cheap, available option for the umpteenth time.
To be fair, our manager did know him from Ajax. It’s a bit unfair to expect a manager to look beyond that.
He was great until Carrol killed him, we finally had a quality and technical midfielder again.
Obviously more useful in Europa games these days which is fine as Eriksrn will be gone in 2 months.
ETH wasn't at Ajax when Eriksen was?
He was training there before he went to Brentford.
Still a massive stretch to say he knew him from Ajax when all he did was train for a bit.
Not sure why we all pretend that he ever was a CM in the first place, never mind this after near death version of him. We field a midfield of Ugarte, Eriksen and Bruno and expect to cope against two of the arguably best CMs in the league? Amorim just follows up on ETH footsteps in regard to some stupid decisions.
We can’t actually play two solid CDMs, because we don’t have them in the squad. Ugarte is decent, but there are clear issues with anyone we might partner him with.
I think some of you are being a bit unfair. He’s barely played for months and then gets thrown in the deep end against what is probably the most physical and best midfield in the premier league. Set up to fail.
I'd rather we promote some random kid from the youth teams instead of watching Eriksen struggle to walk like he is fighting to stay on his legs. Eriksen has been done here for over a year ago.
Yeah, that's because you have a made-up idea of what that youth player might be able to do. You haven't even named someone. This is what happens so often, because of our crap team. "Just play the youth players" is thrown around so often with no regard for what they can do or how that would impact those youth players. The ones that are ready, like Collyer and Amass, get introduced to the team. There is no point in throwing in a not-ready youth player to be humiliated against a very good Newcastle side.
I'm not defending Eriksen. He is done and will leave in the summer, everyone sees that. But in a situation where our most important game is vs. Lyon, it's not crazy to play him in order to rest Casemiro, if that's who Amorim wants to play on Thursday.
I'd love to know the terms that were agreed when we signed him. Quite a few clubs were interested so I'd imagine it was very far from "free", even if we didn't pay a transfer fee to a club.
Don't you all get tired of that bullshit idea that giving youth players game time is actually doing them harm? When was the last time a young player was badly impacted by giving them a fair chance to play? I don't have a made up idea of what a youth player can do, you make crap as you go along.
And yes I have not named anyone particular since I don't follow the youth teams these past 2 years like I used to, but what is the point of a youth team if you can't produce and give chances to young players when you are borderline relegation side and give minutes to someone like Eriksen?
He’s resting players for Thursday, and has very few options.
I don’t imagine anyone really wants to see Eriksen start games anymore. But we do need to give some players a break, especially when one of them is Casemiro - and we know he can’t play every game.
No, I think there is a good way to introduce a youth player that fits for most of them. Maybe you start giving them a few sub appearances and starts in easier games, before you start them in the most challenging games of the season. For outstanding talents that are physically, technically and mentally ready, you can be a bit more aggressive, but I don't think we have those available right now.
Cool, you can't name the player, you just want him to start. Makes a ton of sense. Just grab anyone from the youth team, because Eriksen and others are not very good. Don't you think it makes more sense that the coaches that watch them everyday make a determination about what youth players are ready to play in the first team? We've already seen debuts for Collyer, Amass and Obi-Martin (and Heaven who is not from our academy) this year, so it's not like they are being super conservative with youth. I imagine it's just a case of not having a midfielder available that would do better than Eriksen. Simple as that.
I still don't know why he was playing in the midfield yesterday honestly. We've been using him at 10 since the last Newcastle game where the same thing happened.
But yeah he's never been the deep lying playmaker we've played him as while he's been here anyway. It worked to an extent in his first season but even then it was clearly not the solution.
But yeah he's never been the deep lying playmaker we've played him as while he's been here anyway. It worked to an extent in his first season but even then it was clearly not the solution.
Hardly surprising really. The older he's got, the more conservative his creative output has gotten. Its better for him to be 99% sure his 5, 10 yard passes are going to reach there destination than hopeful creative ones. If he loses the ball, he's buggered. The opposition can just steamroller him. He hasn't got the athleticism to get around the pitch now. Basically, he's pretty pointless.
Positionally he seems pretty clueless too in this set up but I think that could be said about a few of our midfield players.
Positionally he seems pretty clueless too in this set up but I think that could be said about a few of our midfield players.
No.
It’s a massive stretch to say he knew somebody who was training with them? I don’t think it is at all.
No worse way to breed youngsters than see the club tolerate shit performers on obscene contracts imo. The best introductions for youngsters during the past years has been when we were to the bare bones and forced into it. That's how Rashford showed up for example. How we handled that afterwards was a completely different matter imo.
It's not the point whether I can name a youngsters from the youth team, you are completely missing the point. I know them by name, don't watch them regularly to give a fair verdict. You have people employed by the club to do that exact thing. The question I am asking is what is the purpose of our youth teams if they can't answer in a situation like this?
Kone is 19 years of age, so is Moorhouse, the Fletcher twins are 18 years of age, if they are ever going to make it here, they need to be able to respond in a situation like this, and for that they need to be given a chance.
The coaches that you call on about, basically exiled Amad for a year and a half under ETH, deeming Antony to be better. I don't trust these coaches at all, I think Amorim just like many other senior managers plays "safe", with both Eriksen and Lindelof yesterday for example, and the result was what we saw.