Defensive Midfielder

gaffs

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I thought Fernando for Porto was fantastic last night. He was disciplined, always in position, shielded his back four well, intercepted loads of passes, made some cracking tackles and distributed the ball well. I thought he played the defensive midfield role perfectly.

Porto were aloud to breeze through our midfield and our defence was left exposed many times.

So why don’t we have someone playing the defensive midfield role for us?
 

Lot 49

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Carrick was. He just disappeared again like he did against Villa.
 

Brwned

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Carrick's not a defensive mid, and we played with a midfield two for most of the match, Lot 49.
 

FlawlessThaw

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Carrick can generally protect the back four pretty well. His dip in form has resulted in us conceding goals with ease.
 

Pogue Mahone

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FlawlessThaw said:
Carrick can generally protect the back four pretty well. His dip in form has resulted in us conceding goals with ease.
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Agreed.

When he was playing well, earlier this season he was constantly making last-ditch tackles/interceptions in and around our box.

He's been poor for a few weeks now and the deterioration in the defensive side of his game is dramatic. The opposition are strolling through our midfield and overwhelming our back four. This started in the second leg against Inter and has been a feature ever since.

Don't tell Mozza though. It hurts him.
 

Mozza

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Pogue Mahone said:
Agreed.

When he was playing well, earlier this season he was constantly making last-ditch tackles/interceptions in and around our box.

He's been poor for a few weeks now and the deterioration in the defensive side of his game is dramatic. The opposition are strolling through our midfield and overwhelming our back four. This started in the second leg against Inter and has been a feature ever since.

Don't tell Mozza though. It hurts him.
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Fletchers playing just as often and I'm told he is in great form, how come he's failing to protect the back 4? Are we actually completely reliant on Carrick to do the defending seeing as it's his poor form that is the problem?
 

Lot 49

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gaffs said:
I dont think Carrick gives us enough protection, not against good teams anyway.
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Well it's all about opinions but did you think that last season or for most of this? Because Carrick has been our equivalent of a DM for a while now and we've generally looked rock solid up until recently.
 

buckooo1978

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hargreaves, fletcher, anderson and carrick can all fulfil this role for us

problem is that hargreaves is injured, fletcher was playing wide most of the game, carricks form is slipping and anderson has been injured and a shadow of the player from last season
 

MUFCgal

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gaffs said:
I thought Fernando for Porto was fantastic last night. He was disciplined, always in position, shielded his back four well, intercepted loads of passes, made some cracking tackles and distributed the ball well. I thought he played the defensive midfield role perfectly.

Porto were aloud to breeze through our midfield and our defence was left exposed many times.

So why don’t we have someone playing the defensive midfield role for us?
Click to expand...
I think we've really missed Hargreaves this season. He does that job fantasticly. Fletch can do it but he's been put out wide sometimes. Anderson can do a job at it too, but he's been injured quite a bit recently.
 

gaffs

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Lot 49 said:
Well it's all about opinions but did you think that last season or for most of this? Because Carrick has been our equivalent of a DM for a while now and we've generally looked rock solid up until recently.
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I have always thought that.

Carricks a top player, but hes never been the pivotal player for us defensively that some on here make him out to be.

I dont actually think that Carrick is actually playing much differently to how he normally does.

Inter, Villa, Liverpool and Porto - 4 teams who have been strong in midfield are have not been afraid to take the game to us.
 

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Because we don't need one. The past few weeks wouldn't have happened if Carrick's form wasn't poor, nothing to do with lack of defensive midfielders.
 

Lot 49

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Mozza said:
Fletchers playing just as often and I'm told he is in great form, how come he's failing to protect the back 4? Are we actually completely reliant on Carrick to do the defending seeing as it's his poor form that is the problem?
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Fletcher didn't play in the Liverpool game, against Fulham he started RW and only moved to the centre once we were down to 10 men, he was by far our best player against Villa and then last night had to spent the majority of the game on the wing again.
 

red2deadboy

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We brought hargreaves to do this DM job and neither carrick, fletcher or anderson are that type of player. Carrick reads the game well and can tackle a bit, Fletcher is a buy player and Anderson doesn't no what he is at the moment.
All teams need a player to do the ugly stuff and even barca yoyo to fill the role. The only person in our squad to put in hard challenges are vidic, gary and rooney which leaves a bloody great big hole between defence and midfield.
Hopefully hargreaves will be back next season, but if this looks uncertain IMO SAF should be looking for a hard as f*ck DM for us. To be honest what is wrong with having 2 anyway, as allows us to rotate.

Candidates???
 

Fishbone

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Anyone remember the Marcos Senna debacle? The guy we were going to get instead of Hargreaves? What were we going to get him for? Like 5M-6M? Fergie stuck to his guns and got Hargeaves. But after watching him in the Euros and for Villareal...this guy is quality. Man did we miss out...a bargain deal for an absolutely outstanding defensive midfielder. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
 

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I thought Carrick had been doing a lovely job in front of the back four this season. He seemed to be playing in a more advanced role last night, while Scholes shielded. Maybe Fergie though that he would pick their drifting forwards up early and release the ball.

It seemed Porto, like others, had figured that if you push up against the defence and deep-lying midfielders, you get a lot of joy. We needed to keep our shape, hold the ball out wide and have one of two strikers dropping off to offer support. Tevez did that when he came on, but Ronaldo and Park drift too much against strong midfield's - where shape is essential. What happened in the first half of the CL final, should (with hindsight), have happened last night. I think the whole team is slightly unbalanced at the moment. Fergie will right the wrongs, i think. We have been very successful, grinding out results, but that seems to be prohibiting us now. We need to rethink tactically.

O'Shea didn't do badly, he just isn't suited to playing against the quicker players. I'm looking forward to getting Rafael back for that sort of job, which is when?
 

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Pogue Mahone said:
Agreed.

When he was playing well, earlier this season he was constantly making last-ditch tackles/interceptions in and around our box.

He's been poor for a few weeks now and the deterioration in the defensive side of his game is dramatic. The opposition are strolling through our midfield and overwhelming our back four. This started in the second leg against Inter and has been a feature ever since.

Don't tell Mozza though. It hurts him.
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What a good post ! This is one of the main symptoms of our defensive frailties at the moment. The midfield with the exception of the excellent Fletcher have been too easy to break through and have not defended as a unit
 

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gaffs said:
I thought Fernando for Porto was fantastic last night. He was disciplined, always in position, shielded his back four well, intercepted loads of passes, made some cracking tackles and distributed the ball well. I thought he played the defensive midfield role perfectly.

Porto were aloud to breeze through our midfield and our defence was left exposed many times.

So why don’t we have someone playing the defensive midfield role for us?
Click to expand...
They only breezed through our midfield because we were the team playing with the attacking initiative. We were committing great numbers to our attacks and they were fairly disciplined. It's not as though it was just this Fernando who held them together - as a unit, they were well disciplined. They then took advantage of spaces left by us and counter attacked well.
 

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To all intents and purposes, we haven't played with a defensive midfielder ever under Ferguson. Certainly not during the successful times. So why do we need one now?
 

OneUnited24

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I honestly believe that when SAF broke up that Carrick Fletcher partnership in the middle of the season our defence became our last line of defence all the time - during the start of the Carrick-Fletcher MF pairing we saw that if one would attack the other would defend, it was a good working they had. However, once they stoped playing this understanding between the two suffered because now when they play together our defence is usually out numbered and we leak a goal.

It doesnt help that Carrick seems visiably tired or we seem to deploy Fletcher on the right...
 

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gaffs said:
I thought Fernando for Porto was fantastic last night. He was disciplined, always in position, shielded his back four well, intercepted loads of passes, made some cracking tackles and distributed the ball well. I thought he played the defensive midfield role perfectly.

Porto were aloud to breeze through our midfield and our defence was left exposed many times.

So why don’t we have someone playing the defensive midfield role for us?
Click to expand...
He was good but is such a shame that we started to put two strikers in the second half late in the game, one thing is protect your defence with one striker to cover and another is to cover two strikers with wingers also trying to attack. We didnt complicate them at all in the first half, if it wasnt by that Bruno Alves's horror we wouldnt have even equalised in the first half.
 

AttackingFlair

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We brought Hargreaves thinking he could do a "DM job" but he can't, he's better out wide as a combative midfielder. Carrick can do a good job when he's on form (vs Inter) and Anderson while he can do a defensive job (vs Arsenal/Liverpool), he's effective going forward.
 

Legend16

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Pogue Mahone said:
Agreed.

When he was playing well, earlier this season he was constantly making last-ditch tackles/interceptions in and around our box.

He's been poor for a few weeks now and the deterioration in the defensive side of his game is dramatic. The opposition are strolling through our midfield and overwhelming our back four. This started in the second leg against Inter and has been a feature ever since.

Don't tell Mozza though. It hurts him.
Click to expand...
Hargreaves is a bad miss at this stage of the season
 

GaryLifo

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I would play a front 6 of

Fletcher Carrick

Park Tevez Ronaldo

Rooney

as part of a 4-2-3-1 formation away to Porto.

I would also try it away to Sunderland on Saturday so the players get used to it.
 

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AttackingFlair said:
We brought Hargreaves thinking he could do a "DM job" but he can't, he's better out wide as a combative midfielder. Carrick can do a good job when he's on form (vs Inter) and Anderson while he can do a defensive job (vs Arsenal/Liverpool), he's effective going forward.
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Who says he can't?

He was down in the pecking order, so fit in, in a versitile role... Hargo is oen of the worlds best DM's, he did it at Bayern and complimented well in the England team in the role... don't see how we've come to this conclusion about Hargo given he's not been given a run-out at a DM for us.
 

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Carrick needs a rest and he will certainly improve....so do some of our other players - Evra, Ronaldo.

But the form of Liverpool in the league may not allow us to do this. Hopefully, they can dig deep and carry us past the finishing line.
 

AttackingFlair

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Anderson Searl said:
Who says he can't?

He was down in the pecking order, so fit in, in a versitile role... Hargo is oen of the worlds best DM's, he did it at Bayern and complimented well in the England team in the role... don't see how we've come to this conclusion about Hargo given he's not been given a run-out at a DM for us.
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Well the only times he's looked anywhere near good was when he played wide and delivered some quality crosses and even a right back he was solid.
 

Suedesi

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Micheal Carrick

Poor, poor, poor performances from our DM. He's provided no penetration, incisive passes, created any chances or put any cover for the defense in the last few games. Has been absolutely gash at the heart of our midfield. Someone's going to quote the stats on passes; what good is if he "completes" 20 5-yard passes to Scholes?

Sort it out Michael.
 

Mozza

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Suedesi said:
Poor, poor, poor performances from our DM. He's provided no penetration, incisive passes, created any chances or put any cover for the defense in the last few games. Has been absolutely gash at the heart of our midfield. Someone's going to quote the stats on passes; what good is if he "completes" 20 5-yard passes to Scholes?

Sort it out Michael.
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He sent Giggs clean through in the Villa match and completed 19 passes to the forwards (Ronaldo, Rooney) compared to Scholes 10 last night
 
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