I can't see Gundogan working for us really. Wilshere really would be the missing piece. We have someone who can dictate the play in Carrick, we need someone next to him to run around like a lunatic, pushing forward with the ball and actually putting some hard tackles in. I don't think you can afford to have two midfielders who like to sit and dictate in a two man midfield, at least not if you want to make the most of it.
Gündogan vs. Wilshere
- Thread starter RDCR07
- Start date
"...aye that does look fecking good, to be fair."
But the amount someone's passing is tested depends on the system as well.
Wilshere, for example, is not really ever charged with providing a range of passes. He is asked either to engage in short passing to move the ball up the field, or cutting through balls from the number 10 position.
On the limited occasions he's played for England in a slightly deeper role, his long passing has been excellent. Not Fabregas level, but really, really good.
tackles per game:
Gündogan 2.3 league, 2.7 cl
Wilshere 1.6 league 2.0 cl
interceptions per game
Gündogan: 2.4 league, 1.8 cl
Wilshere: 1.1 league 2.7 cl
(whoscored.com)
keep in mind that Wilshere only played 3 CL games, so those numbers probably don't tell that much for him.
This is just not how it works. We are evidently not being coached to adopt a pressing game - and certainly not a pressing game of the extreme intensity of Dortmund's. You can't just add a player whose last team played a certain style and expect us to suddenly adopt that style. The only person who can change our style of play like that is Fergie. And either because he doesn't want to, or because he's fairly hands-off in training and Mike 'the beanbag' Phelan takes the lead, it doesn't look like happening any time soon.
Doesn't really mean anything. I'm not talking about the amount of tackles really. It's about an attitude on the pitch, Wilshere is a very aggresive player, I think we could do with that in our midfield.
Tell us more. Where, when? Somebody ring Fergie. Muppet panic from me here.
Yep. It's not even just aggression, it's about pure mental drive. People often say that Rooney's not that good for us any more. But when he's not playing, we invariably look awful. It's because for every second he's on the pitch, he positively reeks of determination. There's not a second when he's not desperately trying to force us to win the match. Sometimes, watching Wilshere this season, he seems to have the same thing but doubled. It's what people call being 'a leader on the pitch', although that's a pretty lame way to describe it.
Gundogan doesn't really have that. No-one in this Dortmund side is quite like that, really. They don't need it, because they're all cogs in a machine that already drives itself at 100 miles an hour.
This was in a Yahoo article a week ago.
So, he wants to go to Spain.
It's not just one player though. It's van Persie, Kagawa, Welbeck and Rafael all coming to the fore in the last 12-18 months who are well suited to the style. It might never happen but I think that there glimpses of Dortmund-style football with and without the ball when Welbeck and Cleverley broke into the team. I reckon Meulensteen's coaching will see us take on a pressing game eventually and probably sometime before Sir Alex calls is quits.
He will go to who ever offers him the biggest pile of money and the best chances to win something, like 99% of all players.
I'm just glad that Spanish teams don't have the tax break bonus for rich foreigners anymore.
So you don't judge how aggressive a player is by how many duels/tackles/interceptions he seeks but by.... ? What exactly?
We don't need Dortmund style bloody football.
Both Dortmund and Bayern have come to the fore by doing their own thing. We shouldn't need to copy them, we just need to get the right players and the right training to play our football.
Watching him play? I mean FFs
Trust me, I'd love nothing more than for you to be right. I'm just saying that it doesn't matter how many players can do it, you need to be actively and systematically coaching it before the team will start to actually employ it consistently. Because a 'pressing then passing' (Klip Klopp then tiki-taka?
) game is about the team as a unit more than the individuals.I agree in theory, but I have to go with Brwned in practice. What is 'our football'? Over the last couple of seasons, I'm not sure the players could have told you, except to mumble something about wingers.
How much of both players have you seen? I mean the numbers clearly speak for Gündogan, his workrate is great, he played (well) as AMC, CM and right infront of the back four. But you just say Wilshere is more aggressive without offering anything other than 'because I say so'. I'm not trying to say one is better than the other I just find it wrong to dismiss a certain quality of one of those players when it's actually quite easy to see when you watch him often.
They didn't copy anyone 1for1 but they took a look at what beat them and adapted.
Not really. In short: Bayern's current style started with van Gaal trying to play Barca's possession game and then Heynckes came and enriched it with counter attacking/transition/pressing style similar to Dortmund or Real.
They didn't copy anyone 1for1 but they took a look at what beat them and adapted.
Well all Sir Alex's teams here have had similar things going for them. Excellent wing play, a classic 9 and 10 system up front and a flat midfield two. We've never really been a high pressing team though have we? We have usually been about counter attacking.
It's up to Ferguson as to what he thinks is best suited to this current era but the idea of Manchester United copying another teams style of play is rather depressing.
Just carbon-copying one side's would be, I agree. But what do.ob says above is hard to argue with: you learn from the top teams, and the teams that are beating you, and you adapt.
Since Barca displaced us in 2009, every team that has been considered one of the top two or three in Europe - Barca, Real, Bayern (it would be very knee-jerk to include Dortmund, and downright pig-headed to mention Chelsea's CL win) - have employed a high-pressing defensive game. Some then focus on keeping the ball and dominating possession patiently. Some counter-attack rapidly and incisively. Some do a bit of both. But that high-pressing, intense mode of defending is the one which has dominated Europe since 2009, and I think we have the players to do it excellently if we only tried.
Sorry to go OT. But it'd relevant to the discussion about whether Gundogan would be able to play for us the way he plays for Dortmund.
I've seen him a few times maybe 5-6. I've obviously seen Wilshere more.
Gundogen isn't any worse he's just different, he's better at basically purely being a playmaker, has a better range of pass and technically is probably better. However Wilshere just has an attitude in his play which is not there in Gundogans game, he seems to have a Keane like attitude on the pitch, hence aggressive.
Bayern are very much like Bayern Munich right now, efficient and powerful. Van Gaal helped develop some players but they have kept their own style very well.
I'm sorry but that's bordering on ignorant. Bayern's style is so much more than that and clearly evolved over the past couple of years. Van Gaal didn't just tweak a few things he gave them a new (his, not Bayern's) system. Heynckes continued to go down that path but after his first year he put an emphasis on pressing, collective movement, etc.
In short Bayern are playing van Gaals football improved by what Heynckes learned from his games against Dortmund.
And it would be the same with United. Analyzing the strength of another team and learning form it does not mean that you have to copy them, it just means that your coach evolves his style.
Also I'm not sure if Gündogan is the better playmaker. His range of passing is good but not outstanding. The most exceptional thing about him is probably his ball control which makes him almost immune to pressing.
May be derailing the thread a bit, but I think it's fairly evident from our football the past two seasons that we've evolved our style slightly to counter Barcelona's dominance.
To be honest, I would love for us to play the way Dortmund do. I mean who would say no to a more attractive passing game? If teams like Swansea and Southampton can do it, then why not us? The point Im trying to make is it is not that hard to adopt such a footballing style. It might look ineffective at first since we try and pass the ball around and lose possession, but once we grasp the idea, our level of playing is just elevated an extra level.
We do play an attractive passing game, in fact we're one of the most effective at it in the league.
Too many long balls and too much hoofing to my liking if Im being honest. We are better than what we were a few years ago but still we need more confidence on the ball and we need better movement of the ball.
Out of the top 5 leagues, we're 4th for pass accuracy only behind Barca, Bayern and Arsenal.
Yep. I don't think we have a problem going forward at all. Certainly we won't do if we buy a decent midfielder to partner Carrick. It's the lack of an effective defensive strategy which holds us back. We just don't have enough of the ball to show what we can do consistently.
Pass accuracy alone doesn't really tell that much. Just tells you that you can keep the ball well against most (inferior) teams. What you create with possession is a whole different thing. Swansea are Europe's 8th best team in terms of pass acc (whoscored.com) but in reality they are barely top8 in the prem.
Barca for example probably had amazing pass and possession stats against Bayern. But that really doesn't reflect the game at all. Real was ahead in both stats tonight too I think.
Barca for example probably had amazing pass and possession stats against Bayern. But that really doesn't reflect the game at all. Real was ahead in both stats tonight too I think.
Sure Barcelona, with superior passing and possession stats, got spanked by Bayern on Tuesday.
I agree completely. Also I think we sometimes aren't as fluid, and interchangeable up front at times which can result in a struggle to break teams down. I'd expect that to improve with Kagawa settled further into the team. I'd like us to get a winger more capable of playing on the inside, especially if Nani goes. When looking at the teams left in the CL, they all have that type of player. Ribery, Robben, Pedro, Di Maria and Reus are all very good when drifting central.
Back on topic, I'd have Gundogan over Wilshere.
Edit: on the pass accuracy, I just think it's a bit harsh to say we play to many long balls when we are actually very good with the ball.
Passing is the key there, not possession. And whatever 'passing stats' they were superior in cannot have been the relevant ones. Every forward pass seemed to find a Bayern player (or Messi, who then immediately gave it away to a Bayern player. There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.)
I agree with Doob. I think its has more to do how efficient your passing is in terms of creating gaps in your opposition's defense. I have a high standard as to how I would like for the team I support to play like. Maybe the way we are playing right now is more than satisfactory for most fans but definitely not me.
And the way Dortmund play is different from the way Barca play. If I was to pick one style to follow, I think it would have to be Dortmund's because they play with more width and bring their wingers into play more effectively which would suit our style of play.
Nah, I don't think that's a problem in and of itself. All our forwards are capable of playing incredibly fluid, creative football in and around the opposition box. Rooney, Kagawa, RVP, Nani - they love that sort of stuff. The reason we sometimes seem to have struggled to break down defences is that we haven't given those players enough control of possession to get into those positions often enough. Look at England against San Marino. It's England - hardly Barcelona. But because they had almost constant possession of the ball around San Marino's penalty area, they were playing the sort of outrageous, interchanging, artful football you'd expect to see from Cruyff's Netherlands generation.
I honestly think the high-intensity pressing is the difficult part, and the key to everything else. Learn that, and the sheer quality of our attacking players will do the rest.
There isn't really a Dortmund style. Their style has changed with every new season, Klopp seems to tailor it match the strengths of his players. It also depends on the opposition they play. In their league they are turning into a possession side but against top teams they are happy to focus on transitions/counter attacks.
It was the same with Bayern against Barca. On average they are by far Europes team with the second highest average possession%. But against Barca they played a more passive style in terms of possession and were content with exploiting the opportunities Barca offered them.
1 player in the engine room can make one hell of a difference. If your pool consists of two players nearing 40, a couple of young players who struggle to play at the same tempo for 90 minutes, a fella with a 'chronic' condition and Michael Carrick, you have to set your team up to get the best from them.
If we spent big in central midfield and for arguments sake signed Gundogan and or one of the Benders (I'm fully aware that none of the above are likely to happen), we'd certainly look at ways to include their current playing style into our system.
Throw in the way Kagawa played at Madrid, a player who is quite clearly growing into this side, Welbeck's insane work ethic, Rooney, Valencia and Carrick who has played in every possible way you can think, it's possible.
In a different example, consider how incredible the change was in midfield and thus the whole team when we signed Carrick. Granted, his impact was more on the passing side of things but that little piece in the jigsaw had a huge impact on the success of the last 7 seasons.
A player like Gundogan could certainly lead to a shift in the system providing we incorporate his strengths and strike a balance with Carrick's strengths. It won't be entirely symmetrical to the way Dortmund play because in reality who's to say that we can't develop a superior system whilst incorporating factors from the way we currently play and their high-energy pressing game?
One thing that I think we can improve the Dortmund style (if we want to adopt it), is our good wing play.
Hmm, fair enough, that's a pretty convincing argument. I'd certainly love to see it happen. The backing off thing drives me absolutely nuts. It doesn't matter how shit the opposition is, more often than not we grant them free unchallenged access to the edge of our box.
It doesn't stop me wanting Wilshere more though. Tbh he's as much of a presser, naturally, as Gundogan anyway, so you might get the same effect. He just does it in teams (England and Arsenal) that don't do it, or don't do it systematically like Dortmund.