So much blind love in this thread.
I'm out.
I'm out.
17
Season Average Rating
- Appearances
- 29
- Clean sheets
- 9
- Goals
- 2
- Assists
- 3
- Yellow cards
- 4
Yep, sadly this is very true. I still think neither of Cleverley / Fletcher has the same quality as him.
This. Blackett didn't play a single hopeless long ball to our forwards. Blind was the foundation that we built the house on. I was over the moon watching the way he turned quickly and moved the ball forward quickly and intelligently. 107 passes completed is just an amazing number.
I am of the opinion that he will go down with other great bargain buys we've had such as Vidic, Evra, and Chicharito.
I like him a lot but i still think he could improve his tackling.
My reaction when he signed was "Ehh he's a decent fullback but we'll see how well he does in midfield, not expecting much". I've only got one performance to go on since then, but my goodness I'm bloody excited to have him now.
He played well, but still think he's behind a fully fit Michael Carrick.
may i ask why you think this?
Michael Carrick has carried our midfield for years without any sort of reliable partner. Blind has had one good game for us.
There were a couple of occasions where in his efforts to win the ball back he was too easily brushed away by the opposition and he hit the deck. Hopefully he deals well with what should be a tougher examination, even physically, on sunday.
I liked the passes forward from him. They were often returned backwards by our attackers but it's important to keep probing and looking for that rather than hiding and passing it out wide all the time.
I liked the passes forward from him. They were often returned backwards by our attackers but it's important to keep probing and looking for that rather than hiding and passing it out wide all the time.
Carrick was also rubbish last season. Your post makes him sound like one of the midfield greats or something.
I'm looking forward to carrick returning. He shouls enjoy the movement of these new players. But I dont see him being guarateed to start by default. It's hardly as if a top top midfielder like scholes is returning who is so clearly on another level. Carricks a good player and hopefully he and blind rotate and botj contribute.
It still amazes me how people can underrate Carrick after all this time. After the all time legends like Scholes, Keano and Robson, Carrick is amongst the best midfielders we've had at United. And its hardly a crime to be behind guys like those.
Granted he may not get fit or in form again at 33, no guarantees there. But if Carrick is fit he can offer a hell of a lot that Blind doesn't.
he has, but he is also 33, and has shown time and time again his lack of pace leaves us very exposed to counter attacks with him in the DM role, he is also coming out of the back of probably his worse season asa footballer and has suffered a bad injury.
blind is on the back of his best season, had a great world, cup and his mobility is something we have been desperate for in midfield since Fletcher succumbed to his illness
personally i think we need to look to the future,carrick has been a good servant, but i think his time has come and gone.
He may work on his physical game but I don't think he was brushed easily, him and herrera both looked like they want to win the ball cleanly so they fell down a couple of times just because they didn't want to commit a foul. He is better reader of the game than tough tackler but still better than carras IMO
I dont think you can really say he's be worse than Blind at that, for the simple fact that for the last few years he's basically had to be a one-man midfield, so the comparison is totally unfair. Scholes managed about 20 league starts in his final two years, and every other partner he had - Anderson, Cleverley, Giggs, Jones - was hardly top drawer.
Carrick was playing in a midfield 2 alongside some seriously duff performances from our lads, and playing against teams that had 3 in midfield. He was getting outnumbered 3 to 1 at times, if Ando or Clev disappeared. He was caught out on the counter, yes, but that's because he had to do the defensive role, the playmaking role and join in the attacks. If he stayed deep to cover the back four, the attack stopped functioning altogether. The fact he held it together for so long is frankly amazing.
Blind was great this weekend, but he was in a midfield 3, and was playing alongside Herrera and Di Maria, which makes a huge difference. Play him alongside Cleverley in a midfield two and those numerous neat short passes are going into dead ends. On the other hand stick Carrick with ADM & Herrera, with Mata, Rooney & RvP moving ahead of him and his excellent range of passing can really open the game up quickly.
I think both players will play a role this season, and indeed both may play at once if we're playing tougher opponents. I certainly don't see Carrick as being redundant though.
is his agent known as a 'blind salesman'?
QPR did not press high enough up the pitch to assume the hoofing is dead, but yeah, 107/112 was good to see.
finally someone with a nice long hair. He can be our Hargreaves vol2
Hitting long balls under high pressure has not been our problem. I lost count of the number of hit and hope long balls our defenders chanced v Burnley when they had acres of space to move into. The problem was simultaneously that the player on the ball would refuse to travel with it and try to draw an opposition player off his mark, and our defensive players not making their markers work by even attempting to move away from them. Mainly Fletcher and Cleverley playing f*cking hide and seek.
Blind didn't do anything spectacular, he mainly just positioned himself to receive the ball from Evans and Blackett and passed it neatly on to Herrera/Mata/Di Maria/Rafael/Rojo. Looked good in their half too though to be fair.
im not blaming it all on carrick, he has been a great servant to the club, but his pace has already been an issue, and will always leave us open to counter attack if he is the one protecting the back four. he also isn't great at high tempo games, both when where on the offensive or the opposition is. he is best on slow tempo games when the game is played in front of him.
im not saying carrick is redundant, he still has a great range of passing, and is steady option, but i certainly don't think he should be first choice, i think we should be looking forward, and blind is our best option to do that.
weve held on to the past to many times recently, with Ferdinand, scholes....... lets not the same mistake again
Carrick is not redundant, nor does one bad season or one good game from Blind mean he has no role. Blind still has to fight for that role, if that game has shown us anything was that competition will be fierce.
Our passing out of defense has been a problem both under pressure and when not pressured. I think that was a big part of the problem with the 3-5-2. One less option for a defender to hit with a pass. The other team just put their wingers on our wing back, had one striker up against our 3 CB's and then we had 5 mids/strikers against 7 of their mids/defenders. Now, it's 6 vs 7.
I meant that in the sense that our problem is not merely hitting it long when under pressure. That's an altogether more tolerable practice and is sometimes the rational thing to do. The biggest problem has been the failure of our players in our half to take advantage of open space. I think it's a failure of personnel rather than of the system.
A very impressive chap. I think I'm going to love him.
Has there been a 'Blind leading the Blind' quote yet?
Has there been a 'Blind leading the Blind' quote yet?
Got to agree. Carrick has had to play with some absolute dross and still stood up. Was holding mf together ok his own last year. Fully expected him to be only cm to survive from last year. Will hopefully regain form with intelligent and better teammates like the ones he'll have now
For those who are worried about his physicality, Blind went toe-to-toe with Yaya Toure in the Champions League as part of the the Ajax team that nearly embarassed City home and away in 2012/13. He held his own well back then.
Him and Eriksen were standout performers.
Him and Eriksen were standout performers.
That's reassuring because it was him and that nasty fecker Ramirez that I was most worried about.
Too many love is blind jokes in this thread.
For those of you with a long memory, Philip Cocu went to Barcelona in 1998 and a lot of people wondered if he would be good enough ( very similar to Daley with us). He stayed there for 6 years and was outstanding for them. He later returned to PSV as a player and is now managing them. I believe that Daley will be similar. He will be an outstanding player for us for 6 - 8 years and later retun to Ajax to end his career
He was brilliant in last game for being his first. Hopefully he can unleash his longer ranged passing as well when he feels more comfortable and he can improve a lot if he just increases the amount of one-touch passes.
Nearly always he received the ball in the first touch, to pass it with the next touch. It isn't going to be very positive for us when we are pressed, unless he already has it in his rhytm to always just use one touch passing unless he needs more.
Hopefully just a matter of being nervous and wanting to do well.
Nearly always he received the ball in the first touch, to pass it with the next touch. It isn't going to be very positive for us when we are pressed, unless he already has it in his rhytm to always just use one touch passing unless he needs more.
Hopefully just a matter of being nervous and wanting to do well.
What was his dad like as a player? Just out of interest.
Awesome player think the Dutch Maldini/Baresi type. He'll never be as good as him but that's no slight. On a side note I think people are rating Blind a bit to highly (probably because the comparisons) Fletcher Cleverley and Anderson.
Centre back/libero, could play full-back as well. He was a ball playing defender with a good well rounded skill set, without anything standing out really. Great player though, but just very balanced.
Thanks. On the bold part: the opposition was also poor too. He needs to play more matches before he can be accurately judged.
Love is blind.
http://livelifeunited.com/why-daley-blind-most-important-cog-in-van-gaals-tactical-system/
Quite a good article on what Blind does.
Quite a good article on what Blind does.
That is a damn good blog, remember it well from last season. Probably the only good thing to come out of that carwreck of a season was his analyses!
I think I must be the only person on here who find blogs/analysis like that ridiculously over-complicated. All those pictures and lines and complex diagrams could have been summed up by "he's decent on the ball and generally picks the right pass". There really is nothing else to learn by wading through that mass of information.
Either that or just read the Van Gaal quote at the bottom.
“He is a player who can see situations in advance. He can [therefore] always pass to the free player, and when he doesn’t have the ball, he knows when he has to press the opponent. That’s a very good ability to have.”
Either that or just read the Van Gaal quote at the bottom.
“He is a player who can see situations in advance. He can [therefore] always pass to the free player, and when he doesn’t have the ball, he knows when he has to press the opponent. That’s a very good ability to have.”
Reading his wiki entry it appears his only season as a DM was last season with Ajax.
Also it appears he has played at RB in the past while on loan at Groningen. I wonder could he be an option for us there?
Also it appears he has played at RB in the past while on loan at Groningen. I wonder could he be an option for us there?