Is Pogba being misused by Mourinho ?

[montpelier]

I think we need to face up to the fact that Pogba is a dickhead who won't do his defensive shift - despite having all the attributes to be able to dominate wherever he plays.

Or there's some kerfuffle about a fitness issue but they don't want to let on - which usually plays out as does the player have an operation or do we try & rest / play through it, and where opinions vary as to the best thing to do.

There's something going on, that's for sure.

 

[edgar allan]

From my seat in the Stretford End, there has been no reason to question Pogba's work rate during games. He's always moving. Always finding space and up and down the pitch. He isn't defensive minded but he isn't given freedom. The only player with little defensive duty in general in Lukaku. In fact I think his general movement is poor and he is often lazy. Pogba ? Perhaps in one game for some reason...generally speaking not at all

For me his work rate has fallen off a cliff this last month.
He jogged about again tonight.
Very poor performance again.

 

[Jinn]

I thought he did reasonably well in the last 20 minutes. A lot of the creativity came through him. Made some chances, some good passes. If Lukaku can hold the ball or have a good first touch, maybe we could have created more.
All in all, not bad from a guy who is not in form and short on confidence.

 

[Kinsella]

 

[PoTMS]

When do we decide to call it quits again and move him on for someone that doesn’t have to be pandered to and can play in more than one position/formation?

 

[GhastlyHun]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...g-paul-pogba-mind-game-own-goal-jose-mourinho

Well, we got there in the end. Grudgingly, belatedly and against the manager’s better judgment. But with 17 minutes gone in this Champions League first leg, on a breezy, boisterous night in Seville, José Mourinho found himself forced by circumstance and bad luck into playing his most talented midfielder in his favourite position.

 

[ForeverUnited93]

Something is definitely wrong, and now there’s whispers his manager is pushing for hims to leave.

Calling it now, Pogba is off, and what a disastrous return for him, came back in 2016 and off again in 2018.

Mourinho has destroyed him and he’ll be wanting out.

 

[Hoof the ball]

If City were to hamstring De Bruyne the way we hamstring Pogba, you'd expect poorer performances from him too. It's all about putting round pegs in round holes. When your tactical setup is rigid and you force an unnatural role on your most gifted player you can expect him to play at less than his potential.

 

[sincher]

Don't know what is going on but his effort on the pitch is clearly not enough.

 

[desmondisback]

Maybe, just maybe, Pogba is not as good as everyone thinks he is. His price tag has meant everyone assumes he's a top bracket midfielder. I see an inconsistent player who has a brilliant game against mid-table fodder where he plays nice, simple pass and move football. For whatever reason against the better teams he simply does not perform.

So Mourinho is not as good as everyone thinks either? A manager who buys a hugely expensive player who is "not as good as good as he thinks" has made a big mistake. Jose is paid to spot these things. He's supposed to be the "special one" . The genius of football. And he didn't spot this about Pogba? Has he made a boo boo?

My point is that whilst the focus is on Pogba , what about the wider issue here? We can't afford to buying players like Pogba and making mistakes with big money any more. Either Jose knew the kind of player he was buying or he didn't. If he didn't then he's incompetent. If he did and he's still trying to make Pogba into the kind of player he can't possibly be - then he's still incompetent. Either way you cut it , it comes down to Jose's judgement call (or misjudgement).

 

[desmondisback]

If City were to hamstring De Bruyne the way we hamstring Pogba, you'd expect poorer performances from him too. It's all about putting round pegs in round holes. When your tactical setup is rigid and you force an unnatural role on your most gifted player you can expect him to play at less than his potential.

.....another voice of sanity! It's too simple for some people to see it.

 

[tony54]

Something is definitely wrong, and now there’s whispers his manager is pushing for hims to leave.

Calling it now, Pogba is off, and what a disastrous return for him, came back in 2016 and off again in 2018.

Mourinho has destroyed him and he’ll be wanting out.

My opinion, Pogba doesn't have the nounce to fit in. The quicker he goes the better for all. No prima donnas here, thankyou.

 

[desmondisback]

No worries, i'm enjoying reading your contributions to this thread. And i'm glad for this response because it saves me from a lot of writing.

I guess it's somewhat a matter of perspective..............................edit........................ all: Excelling in a midfield of two as the more creative of the pairing, leading his team to a league title by playing behind the forward (2003) and then coming back and writing history again as a deep-lying playmaker.

A very insightful post but I do disagree with a few things. I enjoy reading your comments also because you are making a very reasoned argument which I respect.

I think the manager always has the supreme responsibility for the players he plays , buys , coaches , whatever. In a situation like this it's a test of Jose's managerial skills. Shaping a player like Pogba to play the role you suggest is going to be a massive task because you would need to change his entire mentality. You can tweak a player and get a square peg into rectangular hole but not a round hole. It's too big a step.

The fact remains that Lampard would not have been the player he was at Chelsea if he had been regularly asked to play the role that Pogba is being asked to. It could not have happened without some defensive protection allowing Lampard to do his thing. It's interesting that you bring up chess again. I played chess at quite a good level and the one massive principle of the game is to utilise your pieces to the best of their abilities. Protecting your king can be achieved in many ways. A queen that is harrassing your opponents king is doing a good job because he's going to find it hard to get at your king whilst he's defending his own. A queen needs space and freedom whereas a knight can work in closed spaces. You don't want your queen to be tied down , you want it to use the fact that it can move to many squares all over the board. Best to leave your rooks to do the Matic work , your queen can get back quickly if needed and help out. You can easily use a £100 million queen in an attacking way to really give your opponent something really serious to think about? In chess attack often is the best form of defence.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Jose really had a proper say in buying Pogba because he seems a pretty bad fit for the role you suggest. I also don't think we have a lot of time before he will be off. This can't wait 2 years. My fear is that Pogba will leave and within 2 years we will see him playing for another big team. Imagine the nightmare scenario. Pogba goes to City , Liverpool , Real etc and comes back to OT in a midfield 3 and a free rein under a far less negative manager. He plays a blinder and reminds us of the player that he is , ripping us up in midfield. Why couldn't he have been a United player we will ask?

What will we think then? I guess you know what I'll be thinking. For me this still goes right to the very heart of the Jose experiment. Pogba fits the script for an attacking United more in line with our traditions . Jose does not (nor LVG) . He's a temporary sticking plaster who is not in line with our football traditions . The Pogba v Jose thing is an ultimate battle for our football soul. Do we dare release Pogba properly and see what happens? The instinctive United fan's response is a resounding yes , it's in our blood. The instinctive Jose response is no.

I think he will go and not too long after Jose will go , and we will be left with the same problem we have always been left with since 2013.

Who are we?

 

[desmondisback]

My opinion, Pogba doesn't have the nounce to fit in. The quicker he goes the better for all. No prima donnas here, thankyou.

You have no thoughts on Jose's judgement on buying him in the first place?

 

[Footyislife]

If City were to hamstring De Bruyne the way we hamstring Pogba, you'd expect poorer performances from him too. It's all about putting round pegs in round holes. When your tactical setup is rigid and you force an unnatural role on your most gifted player you can expect him to play at less than his potential.

This. Can we get rid of managers who can't build teams around the players we do have? We've finally have enough talent to win something and our manager is trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Leaving our best talented young player out and playing weird unbalanced football without proper RW & continuing to use the likes of Lingard and Mata instead of Sanchez and Martial.

 

[desmondisback]

I wonder if Pogba will end up being the scorpion for Jose the frog ?

(or the other way round?)

 

[TheRedDevil'sAdvocate]

@desmondisback

As i already mentioned, if Pogba fails at United or if he leaves to search for greener pastures, it will certainly be one of Mourinho's biggest defeats and something that will follow him for the rest of his career. I repeat that i'm not on this forum to defend Mourinho. I still believe that it's not such a crazy idea but let's just leave it there and save ourselves from the trouble of going in circles on this matter. I also believe that if there's a rift between Pogba and Mourinho and the manager decides to put Pogba on the transfer list, he will hit the wall named Woodward. Pogba is a valuable asset to the club and Mourinho is certainly not Ferguson. But maybe i'm wrong, we'll see.

I would like to see Pogba in the Lampard role as much as you. The thing is we don't have an Essien right now at United to make everything easier for us. This position has plagued us since the days of Scholes' return from retirement. We knew we were living on borrowed time with Scholes and 40 yo Giggs there but we didn't make any plans and we ultimately failed to fill the gap these two left behind. Since then we have a series of players who have failed to provide a solution: Morgan, Bastian, Fellaini, Herrera and the list goes on. And the problem is that they're not easy to find. In that sense, i won't hold the initial idea of Pogba in a deeper role against Mourinho. But yeah, if it all results in a clusterfeck like the one you described, Mourinho will have to take the blame because in the end, the buck stops with the manager.

I think that Mourinho is at a crossroad. His tactics are not infallible anymore. He's always looked to enforce his style of play deeper in his own half of the pitch. Firstly, cut off everything that tries to go through the central channels defensively and then use good skills on the ball in order to move the ball smoothly from one end of the pitch to the other. And unlike Ferguson who preferred the wings to build up attacks, Mourinho likes the ball to travel through the middle of the park. Now that many teams press and attack with more players, he finds himself in a difficult predicament. He worked his way around it at Chelsea by turning Fabregas into a deep-lying playmaker. Let's not forget that his move to deploy a midfield that consisted of Matic & Fabregas raised a few eyebrows back then. When we signed Pogba, i was sure that he would try him in that role. But maybe it's not meant to be and maybe Scholes was right just before New Year when he slated Mourinho for his utilization of Pogba. And it was a very harsh criticism because Scholes questioned Pogba's overall ability to dictate the tempo from deep and therefore indicated that Mourinho has made a terrible judgement call. And maybe that's why Mourinho chose to use a post-match conference to answer to Scholes' comments in particular.

Maybe that's where our opinions differ. I expected Mourinho to try Pogba in the #8 role and i didn't think of it as the worst idea in the world. In terms of chess, you can say that i always expected Mourinho to be more of a Karpov, a Fischer or a Petrosian than a Kasparov, a Tal or an Alekhine.

 

[desmondisback]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...g-paul-pogba-mind-game-own-goal-jose-mourinho

From the same article........


"The question instead is how to get the most from a player with the ability to make any kind of pass, and also to drive through the clinches and physically dominate an opposition. The best thing about Pogba is just that he so obviously loves playing, lifting his team-mates with his presence, and looking so often like a man who is basically having a ball out there.

Except, of course, when he’s not. In Seville it was an oddly chastened Pogba who came striding on to the pitch after Ander Herrera left the field early on. Pogba took up a position on the left of the midfield three, the role, quite frankly, he should have had from the start, nailed right through the season’s entire block of United team sheets.

His first touch was a glossily-executed little flick inside. He ferreted gamely, keeping his position and battling hard as Sevilla found their own midfield rhythm. But this was a United team once again struggling to move through the gears, required instead to cover and block and sit deep against opponents they might have expected to stretch a bit more.

Scott McTominay, Nemanja Matic and Herrera had lined up in a deep three-man midfield block. McTominay in particular was given a heavy load, asked to vindicate his manager’s selection in difficult circumstances. And McTominay did play well here, even if once again it was hard to avoid the feeling of a team juddering and chafing against its own constraints.

The deeper fascination of Mourinho at United has always been that basic question of style and personality, whether Mourinho can lose himself in something bigger, can allow himself to produce a United team of genuine elan rather than another corrosive Mourinho winning machine.

It is struggle that seems to be embodied right now in Pogba; a brilliant puzzle of a player, and one United would surely be better served trying to solve rather than unsettle."

 

[ForeverUnited93]

My opinion, Pogba doesn't have the nounce to fit in. The quicker he goes the better for all. No prima donnas here, thankyou.

Oh ok, let’s sell our best midfielder and arguably our best player. And who do we replace him with? Tony Kroos isn’t going to up and leave Real Madrid in his prime to join us.