I think that spot for Mainoo and Hannibal would’ve still been open even if we had kept Fred in honesty. I was all for us signing a 6/8 like Caicedo, as you might remember, which we could’ve replaced Fred, provided cover for Casemiro and still given the opportunity for Mainoo and Hannibal to play. In regards to the Liverpool game, I don’t see how Mount makes that situation any better, Bruno and Mount in the same midfield would’ve suffered the same fate.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
He’s so good. Hope he keeps develops and reaches his full potential. His ice cool composure stands out a mile in your midfield.
I don't think we've 'ignored' the qualities Mainoo has. Whatever you're referring to - general technical quality, composure, combination of physicality and technique, press-resistance, decision-making, ball progression, inter alia - we've clearly tried to both sign and develop midfielders with them over the last decade. None of these are new or obscure qualities to look for in a midfielder. We've just got it wrong, or not got it right enough anyway. Or we've signed old players whose form only lasts a season. Herrera, Matic, Pogba, Casemiro, all midfielders with some combination of those qualities.
I'll criticise the wild incompetence of our post- (and indeed late-) Fergie transfer business with as much enthusiasm as anyone. But it's not like they decided they didn't want those qualities.
I wanted Caicedo long before most on here and my thread in the football forum is there for all to see. But unfortunately we didn't sign him and the eventual cost of signing the player far exceeded a club owned by the Glazers. But I think we're going to sign a similar player come the summer window to take up a position deeper in the midfield.
Mount instead of Bruno centrally improves us out of possession and potentially in possession due to his ability to take the ball on the turn. And Mount's superior athleticism alone in comparison to Bruno should in theory make it more difficult to just bypass him because he has the running power to stay with his runners. He showed that under Tuchel whilst at Chelsea against a even better Liverpool team than the one we lost to last season. Hence Bruno being utilised as a wide playmaker should better suit his strengths whilst Mount in a more central role would give us the above defensive attributes , along with having the potential to combine with the likes of Mainoo and Moscardo ( I wish) where we might see some good football. And then all that midfield probably needs is a Amadou Onana type who would round things of nicely on paper at least due to his monster duel winning ability along with other traits on the ball.
EtH had the right idea when he utilised Bruno on the right and Hannibal centrally against Burnley earlier in the season. And I think our most balanced midfield is having either Mount or Hannibal centrally with Bruno as the wide playmaker with Amrabat/Casemiro and Mainoo slightly deeper.
I understand the frustration but I do believe the positions in midfield will be addressed in the summer because unlike last summer when priority was given to the striker and GK positions, this time it's going to be the deeper midfield area of the pitch along with CB. And if they can possibly get a deal done for Nico Williams on top of that from Athletic Bilbao who is a very interesting young forward/winger who is comfortable on either side, then that would represent a good transfer window imo.
Maybe you are right but at the same time given the number of games Fred has played and McT continues to play, clearly those are not qualities prioritized by the club for our CM.
You think he's done well with the likes of Mount, Amrabat, Casemiro, Eriksen his OWN signings, to make this midfield work?
Thats 4!! central midfielders and we still have the central mid with the most glaring weakness of the upper half of the league.
And in the end, its a 18 year old homegrown that will bail him out, i dont agree one cent that ETH has done a good job with our midfield.
It’s almost as if it’s a rare quality.
No, I don't think he's done well with the midfield and I haven't made any claims about the midfield construct being good right now because the midfield is still a work in progress but I do believe he's on the right track as far as creating a midfield composition that will be balanced physically, athletically and technically. And like I've been saying for sometime now, before Mainoo's full league debut against Everton, that it was obvious that the plan was to integrate Mainoo into the team. And ten Hag deserves credit for that because I don't believe many other managers would've had the balls to integrate a 18 year old into a deeper lying midfield role and they likely would've wanted to spend a premium on a more established midfielder. EtH absolutely deserves credit for Kobbie Mainoo and all the younger players developed under the John Murtough umbrella at youth level. If he wasn't going to integrate Mainoo, then I do believe a deeper lying midfielder would've been prioritzed last summer. Likely a young midfielder.
You say there's glaring weakness in the midfield in comparison to the upper half of the table. If you could share your thoughts on what those weaknesses are I'd like to have a discussion on these weaknesses and how we could potentially close the gap on those teams in the top half of the table.
He already seems alot cleverer than some of our players. There were moments last night when he had the ball he wanted to play it forward to beat the press but there was no one smart enough to be in that position so he had to turn back
Not that rare that you can spend £1 billion in 10 years and not find it.
Other players with a similar mix of skills seem to move around Europe every summer. Other teams, not even just the elite ones we like to compare ourselves to, routinely pick up these kind of players.
Its not like Joshua Kimmich is the only midfielder on earth of this type and if you can't get him you just can't get anyone. Ok, yes, the players who can do it to the same degree as Kimmich fit on one hand. But when the challenge is upgrade on McFred, you can be damned sure there's a range of options out there.
Man Utd just like to stockpile attacking midfielders. Eriksen, Van de Beek, Bruno, McTominay, we had a bunch of them already and, just for kicks, decided to slap £60m down on Mount for the giggles.
Thank God for the academy, as Mainoo and Gore might just bail out our wonderful recruitment team.
It's not like EtH didn't know he was looking for it.
He chased FdJ the entire first summer due to this particular quality of his. When that didn't materialise, why didn't we just go for a similar player at that point? Because there aren't many around and if they were they were unattainable (even more than FdJ).
Always when you get into these discussions posters like you go with "oh there are loads of players we just ignored them" but then fail to provide a list of players that would fit the bill. I mean, I've seen the charts outlining progressive passing and progressive carrying and Amrabat looks like one of the best midfielders in Europe going by those metrics, and then we get him and he turns out not to be able to do it in the PL (so far) and everyone's like "I could've told you a year ago that he was a dud".
So, given the knowledge that EtH identified this quality as something he was searching for as soon as he stepped through the door, why didn't we just get another Frenkie de Jong once we couldn't get him through the door?
I stand by my assertion that the FdJ type of progression from deep positions is a rare quality, and showing that you can do it stats-wise in another league does not indicate that the player would translate it into the PL. It's quite easy to understand how a player can have many progressive carries against a team that's sitting deep, where you can just run unopposed with the ball and it registers as a carry, versus doing it in the PL where many teams employ an aggressive press and you find yourself surrounded by one or more players as soon as you pick the ball up in the CDM position.
After we missed out on De Jong, we allegedly looked at Rabiot and ended up with Casemiro. The fact we didn't end up with a similar profile of player has less to do with how rare they are and more to do with the fact that, obviously, our recruitment team had not identified a profile of player they wanted.
For the umpteenth summer in a row we ended the window scrambling about looking for the best available instead of working to a plan.
If your point is that very few players can do the job to the same standard as De Jong, well then I agree with you. However, it's certainly not De Jong or bust. There are plenty of players who are competent at receiving the ball from the back four, turning and moving up the field.
You are right to say that there's always a risk when buying from abroad. But that risk would exist for De Jong as much as it might have existed for players like Enzo Le Fee. There were other options we could have looked at that offer similar characteristics. De Jong is not so unique that if we couldn't get him we should have just abandoned looking for that sort of player and just get the biggest name we can in classic United style.
Good post.
We turned Rabiot down due to excessive wage demands (or they turned us down due to not paying them what they wanted, if you prefer to see it that way). Would you want us to keep going the way of paying players upwards of £300k/w like we do with Sancho just because that's the only way to get them through the door here?
Either you subscribe to the theory that EtH decides all the transfers or you don't. So if you believe that EtH decides all the targets then going from Frenkie to Casemiro signals that EtH went "I can't get a player with the skillset that I want so I'll have to do something else tactically and adapt to not having that player", considering his familiarity with FdJ. Casemiro was in the works for many months before he actually signed so I doubt the part about us scrambling, but rather pulling the trigger on something that was already set in motion.
On the other hand, if EtH had no say and the footballing structure decided to go from Frenkie to Casemiro then obviously they went for big names only and couldn't have considered the profile of the player considering their differences, and I have a hard time thinking that considering they wanted a clean break from the Woodward era. If we'd ended that summer with Enzo Le Fee, who you refer to, as our second midfield signing next to Eriksen, what would the reaction on here have been? And what would the verdict have been had we not qualified for the CL this season?
So yes, my point is that very few players can do what de Jong does, and even those who fit the bill if you're just looking at the statistical profile (like Amrabat) aren't certain to be successful, which is why the constant clamour on here for lesser-known players is such a pointless thing, because those opinions are always stated with absolute certainty, yet can never be proven one way or the other (except for Amrabat).
You refer to Enzo Le Fee, but there have been tons of players who have been the solution to our midfield issues who haven't amounted to much or secured moves to big clubs. It's not like we as a club, when we lost Carrick and Scholes, went "nah we don't want those type of players anymore". They're rare and even if the footballing structure finds them due to searching for their profile it might not be as simple as just going and getting them. We were interested in Enzo Fernandez when he moved to Benfica, but who's to say that we would've been successful with that if we'd really pushed for it? We couldn't get Bellingham due to not offering first-team football at the time. When we came in for Caicedo a third-party ownership problem arose which might have had to do with the profile of our club with people inserting themselves into the deal which they weren't interested in doing when Brighton came calling. They're obviously not the same style of players, but I can understand that a manager who is open to adapting his team's style based on available players going in a different direction when a player that has a style essential to one tactical approach isn't available.
That is what we've done since not getting FdJ, in going for the 4-1-4-1 and signing Mount instead of spending £20m each on three or four mini-de Jongs in the hope that one will be decent. Whether that was a good decision remains to be seen, but I can understand the thinking and I don't subscribe to the notion that getting another player like FdJ was feasible at the time, and the Amrabat signing has showed that having a statistical profile that shows that you're good at progressive carries and passes isn't a guarantee that you can do the job that FdJ was supposed to do.
Prioritised might be a fairer measure, yes. Although Fred is gone now, and we did try to sell McT in the summer, so by your measure that suggests changed priorities under ETH.
Great comments from the gaffer about him at today's presser.
Williams renewed until 2027 and PSG are reportedly very close to signing Moscardo for €25m.
That, and look how much some legitimate two way midfielders that are even close to world class are going for.
Probably worth mentioning his release clause has only been upped to €60m, so he's likely still open to moving in the summer.
I think it's summed up pretty well here 9 mins out in the studio youtu.be/effmI6l03_U?si=NuAxK-krQeEa5g4e
In that sense in our midfield, we constantly have 2 players all over the pitch. Add a rashford as well and we are totally unorganised.
That's player selection and tactics. Totally on the manager
interesting watch
Jesus, that's a decent release clause for a buying club. He looks class.
Huge game for the lad today, hope he smashes it.
Expected start for Mainoo today
Newcastle 1:0 Man Utd
Too lightweight and not ready for a team like Newcastle.
Imagine putting a kid into that set up away at a super physical team like Newcastle, leave him totally isolated from his midfield partners. I think Utd have a gem on their hands here but I don't think there is a midfielder out there who can succeed in that role. Even his FDJ fetish would have struggled to work in the PL imo.
He needs an actual midfield partner. We can't just throw him into the first team to carry the midfield whilst McTominay focusses on getting forwards to score.
He didnt have a good game but cant expect him to have a good game in a game like todays. Paul Scholes wouldnt look good in todays team and match.
I'm so sick of ETH, play a proper fecking midfield, don't leave an 18 year old alone in there.
There's talent there but I fear for him at this club.
Mainoo (and Garnacho) for obvious reasons is going to find playing 3 games in a week difficult.
Even more so if one is an away trip to Turkey. Even if they don't play the full 90 minutes it is still a energy draining experience.
Even more so if one is an away trip to Turkey. Even if they don't play the full 90 minutes it is still a energy draining experience.
Amrabat isn't at the level required long term, but at least play him in there as somebody else who is vaguely interested in playing football to give Mainoo support.
Asking somebody to play next to Scott McTominay is asking them to be a one man midfield.
Asking somebody to play next to Scott McTominay is asking them to be a one man midfield.
Kobbie was sacrificed to the lions tonight. Newcastle could see the lack of football in our defence and midfield and just swamped him. Mainoo is plenty good enough to deal with a two man press. However, at times Newcastle put three on him. They knew he was isolated and the guys around him can't pass go on monopoly. Unless we get some proper footballers into the midfield area, its going to be tough on Mainoo now opponents know they have to smother him. There have to be others who can take the ball and move it through the thirds, or this will keep happening.
Exactly. If Casemiro can’t cope next to that useless lanky twat what chance does an 18 year old have?
If he has any sense he should look to go join a team that will compliment his talent, not devoid him of it like Utd.
Tough game for him tonight and he struggled to get into the game.
He will learn from this. Fierce off the ball intensity from Newcastle.
Mctominay was worse though and did him no favors.
He will learn from this. Fierce off the ball intensity from Newcastle.
Mctominay was worse though and did him no favors.
Yup. At least Amrabat can pass a bit.
Mctominay should be used as an impact sub when we need a goal.