Maguire is just the latest United player to have this confidence destroyed by the (Social) Media

Pace Abuser

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I don't buy this, he is not the strongest defender but with the right defensive partner he would be fine. I also don't think we defend as a team which puts extra pressure on the defence. Rashford, Greenwood and Pogba all don't track back enough.

Also this is exactly the kind of comment that is not at all helpful and adds no value to the conversation.
And then the right defensive partner, will be excused for underperforming until he gets the right defensive rb, who will be excused for not having the right personnel infront of him.

Why was Lindelof not given the right defensive partner when Ole was recruiting a defender? Instead he bought a slow coach to play a high line and give him the captaincy when it hadn't even been earnt.

The lad has been exposed as average but hyped because Eeengeerlaaand. It was a horrendous signing and will go down as one pf the worst in recent memory.
 

Vidyoyo

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This.

I know it's out of order the abuse players get online, but until there's regulations in place to completely stop it, you've just gotta stay away from it.

It's probably easy for me to say, as someone in their thirties who's never been a big social media user - but if I was a footballer I would NEVER go on social media or read articles after games, ratings out of 10 and all that. It can surely only have a net negative affect on performance.

But for people of a certain age, it's unfathomable to not be on social media. Footballers have loads of spare time and unfortunately many of us humans are impulsively narcissistic and can't resist the temptation of seeing what people think of us.
Well yeah, this. These lads are using social media to connect with fans and the like but because it's a public platform with feck all moderation, it opens itself up to more harm than good. I too think it'd be simpler if we stopped using social media but that won't be happening any time soon, especially because it's a tool for self-promotion and I think we've created this 'fear of being forgotten' attitude in modern society. I suspect it impacts celebrities a lot more than your average Joe.

As I took a relatively useless sociology degree, I studied up on early internet environments and there's a lot of difference between them and what we have now.

Before, most communities were closed (or semi-closed) and people connected because of a sense of shared experience (tbh redcafe and other forums are still this way). These environments tended to be closer with higher levels of attachment, which was also impacted by the sheer amount of effort it took to get on them back in the dial-up age. Social media isn't necessarily like this because it requires no effort on the part of users. The pseudo-anonymity creates a devil may care attitude where people can easily give and receive abuse with little real connection or consequence. You're less important on Twitter etc than almost any other internet community that came before it, which is pretty fecked up when you think about it.

Anyway, I have no idea if this is Maguire's problem but he wouldn't be the first nor the last.
 
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R77

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Another point as far as media of the non-social variety is concerned;

Were the regime to allow it (:mad:) Ole needs to do a Fergie and get the banhammer out.
 

CM10

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There just aren't that many top centre backs around these days. I cant think of a single one that doesn't regularly look vulnerable and that includes your VVD's or whoever else is the poster boy these days. VAR & the rule changes do nothing but hurt defences these days, and your 6-1's & 7-2's are probably going to become more and more commonplace in years to come.

Maguire is fine. Our defence would benefit considerably from having a little protection from our midfield, which IMO is the real issue in our performances so far this season.
The part about top centre backs might be true but then why go out and throw £80m at someone who can never justify that kind of outlay? It was stupid.

You have a point about the midfield but it's hard to dismiss it as the 'real issue' when there are so many individual errors stemming from our back four.
 

m1tch

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Ole just needs to send him on holiday, somewhere relaxing like the Greek islands. He'll come back with the right conviction after that I'm certain.
 

Bilbo

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I don't buy this, he is not the strongest defender but with the right defensive partner he would be fine. I also don't think we defend as a team which puts extra pressure on the defence. Rashford, Greenwood and Pogba all don't track back enough.

Also this is exactly the kind of comment that is not at all helpful and adds no value to the conversation.
Agreed. I just put that guy on ignore and seem to be doing it more and more often now. Add something constructive to a thread rather than 'player X is shit'.

Our central midfield balance is wrong and its badly exposing our defenders. If anyone can stomach watching any of our 3 leagues games again its really obvious to see. Pogba and Matic are an extremely pedestrian pair and teams are passing through and around them with minimal effort. Unfair to simply single those two out, as there are other issues, but I feel very confident that we put any 2 of Fred/McT/VDB in there instead our team look instantly more compact and robust.
 

Tom Cato

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Grown ass man, should be able to cope. If not, give up the captaincy.
The common thing footballers say they don't miss are the gutwrenching nerves before a game once they've retired.

Add to that with a onslaught of opinions that ALL lambast and criticize your professional performance day in and day out.

And you wonder why he might be struggling mentally?

Let's pretend that where you work, you try your best and you *think* you are doing well, or are at least conscious of your performances. Perhaps you're not perfect, but you are trying.

Let's also pretend that your profession has a few thousand online commentators, TV spokespeople and journalists who all talk negatively about all your efforts, day in and day out. Everything you do is TERRIBLE. YOU are the cause your departments struggles and YOU should be moved away so your co-workers don't have to be dragged down because for all you attempts, you just SUCK at your job that you pour your heart and soul into. you, you, you, YOU, YOU!!

"Grown ass man should be able to cope". Yeah, good luck with that.
 

Bebestation

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The social media for United players is worse because the fans are worse.

What is the point of complaining about an 80 million pound price tag when it's done already, is it used to beat Maguire or Woodward or both? Would the same fans have cried about their dear Sancho flopping because the guy would have failed as a 120 million pound player no doubts.

The fans pretend like they weren't happy when things happen, they pretend like they never wanted things that turned out sour and end up pointing fingers out because of their frustration as glory hunters.


People think Social Media pressure is going to come from fans of other clubs - why the **** would a random club's like Liverpool's or Arsenals fans talk & put more pressure on Maguire more than United's when it focuses on his United performances & the following troubles in his National team?
 

GazTheLegend

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Welcome to the big time.

This is what it's like to play for a big team that everyone wants to lose. This is why our players are paid so much, if they can't hack it then they shouldn't be here.

There's a reason some players go to other clubs and look better than they did here.
Does this happen as much at any other club?

I know I've never gone on Twitter or whatever to slate the everloving shit out of (say) Mangala or whatever latest 70 million central defender is shitting the bed at Manchester City.

Yet people on this forum JOIN IN with the fans of other clubs, twitter morons and Facebook plebs to continually abuse and let's be honest - bully our players on the internet at a time when people are highlighting mental health problems daily.

The media is piling on article after article joyously revelling in their endless clicks for the latest hacked together trash tier tripe they're spewing forth about (man Utd player) on (current date)

It's a digitised mob mentality and likes and upvotes might as well be pitchforks. If you aren't going to support our players while they're here what chance have they got to succeed? fecking zero. Blame their mentality if you like but then it's just as easy to blame our fans who really should know better.

Alex Ferguson was right to establish a siege mentality because right now it really does feel like the world is against us.
 

Murray3007

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simple solution really, don't go on it, also don't really believe it anyway, shows more weak mentality, every player goes threw bad spells, these players haven't had half the abuse Rooney and Beckham ever got.
 

FrankDrebin

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I will tone down my criticism of Maguire. He's clearly going through a rough period after going all Streets Of Rage in Greece.
 

Deery

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and miss out on the positives? Money, sponsor contracts and the attention of adoring fans? No way that is going to happen.
Messi doesn’t use social media as far as I’m aware, there’s a Team Messi Twitter but rarely very active. It doesn’t seem to bother him, am sure there is more as well.

If he did his talking on the pitch it wouldn’t be a problem. As someone mentioned just use a PR man if it means so much to you.
 

GazTheLegend

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simple solution really, don't go on it, also don't really believe it anyway, shows more weak mentality, every player goes threw bad spells, these players haven't had half the abuse Rooney and Beckham ever got.
Hopefully they can ignore it. But how would you feel if everyone on the redcafe, for an experiment, started calling YOU a useless cnut every day? They you switch on the television and there's Roy Keane saying "Murray3007 is a useless cnut." Listen to the radio? Yeah Adrian Durham is telling the world it's all Murray3007's fault England are such a shambles It's pretty much impossible to avoid. Opposition fans are loving all this - which means it's bad for us and hopefully all the Man Utd lads manage to stick together through it all because they need to be stronger than ever now.
 

Bilbo

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The part about top centre backs might be true but then why go out and throw £80m at someone who can never justify that kind of outlay? It was stupid.

You have a point about the midfield but it's hard to dismiss it as the 'real issue' when there are so many individual errors stemming from our back four.
I think our fans need to forget about the transfer fee. Centre backs are more expensive now because there aren't many available. We needed a centre-back and a leader and Maguire ticked both of those boxes, and our goals against went down from 54 to 36 last season. That there is justifying the outlay, regardless of the fact that Maguire has now become our whipping boy.

We just have to write this start off as a freakshow. Liverpool have shipped 7. City 5 at home. United 6 at home. Chelsea 3 in 30 minutes against West Brom. Its mental, but it wont last.
 

RedRoach

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Welcome to the big time.

This is what it's like to play for a big team that everyone wants to lose. This is why our players are paid so much, if they can't hack it then they shouldn't be here.

There's a reason some players go to other clubs and look better than they did here.
So it is interesting for me that Ferguson leaving coincided with the rise of Social Media (Facebook and Twitter). United are the most followed and talked about club on Social Media and the result is this circle of vultures around the club who cannot wait to tear down any little success we may have. Did this happen before? Sure, but on a smaller scale. The only way the crazies truly had a voice was via phoning in to some talk show and shouting for a bit.

It is easy to say players should be stronger and should be able to hack it like players of the past, but this is the first generation to suffer this onslaught in its current form and the constant memes and shit that gets thrown at them. If I was a professional player or coach I am not sure I would want to join this circus if I am honest. You can live a much calmer and less stressful life playing for or coaching Tottenham.
 

Deery

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Hopefully they can ignore it. But how would you feel if everyone on the redcafe, for an experiment, started calling YOU a useless cnut every day? They you switch on the television and there's Roy Keane saying "Murray3007 is a useless cnut." Listen to the radio? Yeah Adrian Durham is telling the world it's all Murray3007's fault England are such a shambles It's pretty much impossible to avoid. Opposition fans are loving all this - which means it's bad for us and hopefully all the Man Utd lads manage to stick together through it all because they need to be stronger than ever now.
You haven’t seen some of my posts in the Transfer and Cavani threads I see..
 

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Interestingly enough, our defence was much much worse when our attack didn't work either. We scored 36 and conceded 29 (in 24 games) before signing Bruno; we scored 30 and conceded 7 in the 14 games after signing Bruno.

So when our attack was a problem, the defence was a problem, too. Basically, if the attack can't keep the pressure on the opponent, our defence crumbles.
Isn't that true of ANY defence though? Hence why managers constantly stress that their teams 'defend as a team' and that defending 'starts from the front'?

If you allow teams to pass through the lines and pick the ball up in pockets of space, of course your defence will struggle. Likewise, if you watch our games, the number of times our defenders are left 3 vs 3 or 2 vs 2 backpedalling/running back towards their own goal is frightening.

I believe a great deal of this is down to the pairing of Pogba and Matic in the CM role. It just doesn't work at all. You can just about squeeze acceptable performances out of Matic if he has legs next to him, but he's far too slow to cover for a player who just wanders around aimlessly as well as do his own job
 

flappyjay

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Interestingly enough, our defence was much much worse when our attack didn't work either. We scored 36 and conceded 29 (in 24 games) before signing Bruno; we scored 30 and conceded 7 in the 14 games after signing Bruno.

So when our attack was a problem, the defence was a problem, too. Basically, if the attack can't keep the pressure on the opponent, our defence crumbles.
This. Using number alone doesn't tell the whole story. The 1st half of the season the attack wasn't good but it didn't help that we couldn't keep clean sheets neither which made it harder to get 1-0 wins.
 

GazTheLegend

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You haven’t seen some of my posts in the Transfer and Cavani threads I see..
Ahhahahahahahaa. I played football on Mondays transfer deadline day and I was extremely excited after the game to learn we had signed 4 players that day personally. I'm shocked at the vitriol our club and board got for signing two wonderkids, a (not long past!) World class striker and a Brazilian left back. But the doom and gloom has kind of taken me aback a bit.
 

TrustInOle

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Last season Maguire made his mistakes, as did the rest of the defence, but make no mistake the defence was not the problem since we scored only 60 goals and had we had a fully functioning attack many of the draws / defeats would have ended up as wins.

The thing is there is no flawless defender, I have watched VVD several times and he has made several errors that have led to goals that have subsequently been papered over by Liverpool's superb attack.

Queue the end of the season and Maguire's trip to Greece followed by the hysterics in the media and since then it has been a downward spiral with even former United players in for him.

He seems to have become the latest target for the crazies on Social Media to crucify. Look at any thread on Twitter about Maguire and it is disgraceful.

Now this is not the first time this has happened. Smalling suffered the same fate. Many signings have turned into turds as soon as they have joined United as the cesspit of hysteria surrounding the club on Social Media and the Media in general strangles the life out of them.

United are in the spotlight 24/7 and that has its advantages (money) and major disadvantages as the players have to face an onslaught of hate from fans on Social Media which feeds into pundits' analysis on TV in the actual media.

I am not sure what the solutions is, clearly the players need super thick skin but that is not easy given how things get out of hand on Social Media. I am convinced Maguire is not as bad as we have seen this season and it is confidence issue that is being caused by being placed under the magnifying glass.

How does the club prevent players being taken down by the mob on Social Media and having their confidence destroyed? The other day I watched the "Social Dilemma" on Netflix and it was an eye opener in terms of how the constant barrage of media can impact individuals psychologically and cause serious problems with younger people in terms of their self esteem, how is this any different for players?
Brilliant documentary, scary at the same time.

Coming off social media or hiring a PR handler would be best. 4 years myself without using any social media outlet, other than Caf, and my life is infinatley happier and less stressful. One thing a lot of people don't realise is the hate and anger is purposely pushed through media platforms to gain reaction and affect people's views or to tarnish someone's image/ movement.
 

Murray3007

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Hopefully they can ignore it. But how would you feel if everyone on the redcafe, for an experiment, started calling YOU a useless cnut every day? They you switch on the television and there's Roy Keane saying "Murray3007 is a useless cnut." Listen to the radio? Yeah Adrian Durham is telling the world it's all Murray3007's fault England are such a shambles It's pretty much impossible to avoid. Opposition fans are loving all this - which means it's bad for us and hopefully all the Man Utd lads manage to stick together through it all because they need to be stronger than ever now.
in all honesty I couldn't really care, add in to the fact, he cant be that bad as he's a united and England player, yes he's having a horrid time the now but if you have a player who lacks pace you simply don't play a high line, which both teams have been trying to do, he needs dropped for his form no because someone on social media said so or gave him some abuse.
 

jeff_goldblum

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Grown ass man, should be able to cope. If not, give up the captaincy.
This is a pathetic attitude that belongs in the last century. The billy big bollockses on here giving out about the mental fragility of footballers would crumble under a fraction of the same scrutiny. A degree of scrutiny comes with the paycheck and the privileges of the job, but there's a line and the microscopic analysis, speculative pop psychology and mass cyberbullying footballers (and especially Manchester United players) are subjected to definitely crosses that line.

We can hark back to the idealised hard men of the olden days all we like but they were under a lot less pressure, both in terms of media/fan scrutiny and in terms of restrictions on their lifestyles/coping mechanisms the job entailed, than modern players are. Think of some of the players who turned to drink under the pressure of playing for big teams in the 70s, 80s and 90s. There's every chance modern football and 'fan culture' would have crushed some of United's most iconic players of the past.
 

CM10

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I think our fans need to forget about the transfer fee. Centre backs are more expensive now because there aren't many available. We needed a centre-back and a leader and Maguire ticked both of those boxes, and our goals against went down from 54 to 36 last season. That there is justifying the outlay, regardless of the fact that Maguire has now become our whipping boy.

We just have to write this start off as a freakshow. Liverpool have shipped 7. City 5 at home. United 6 at home. Chelsea 3 in 30 minutes against West Brom. Its mental, but it wont last.
The season before last we conceded 28. 54 goals against was the outlier, when Mourinho was begging for the sack.

I've said it before but we're worse off now with Lindelof and Maguire than we were with Smalling and Blind.
 

RedRonaldo

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The social media for United players is worse because the fans are worse.

What is the point of complaining about an 80 million pound price tag when it's done already, is it used to beat Maguire or Woodward or both? Would the same fans have cried about their dear Sancho flopping because the guy would have failed as a 120 million pound player no doubts.

The fans pretend like they weren't happy when things happen, they pretend like they never wanted things that turned out sour and end up pointing fingers out because of their frustration as glory hunters.


People think Social Media pressure is going to come from fans of other clubs - why the **** would a random club's like Liverpool's or Arsenals fans talk & put more pressure on Maguire more than United's when it focuses on his United performances & the following troubles in his National team?
Just one thing, Sancho was valued at 105m pound or 120m euro. He wasn’t valued at 120m pound.
 

King Andow

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Oh poor kid, should we offer a hug and say it's ok as he's only 27? Maybe if he wasn't a donkey constantly fecking up and gifting away goals the fans wouldn't criticize him. JLingz all over again, he's not bad it's because of the abuse by the fans. Captain :lol:
 

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It's a valid point. Our players do tend to get a rougher time on social media compared to players from other teams.

From driving Gibson off Twitter, to the racist abuse both Pogba and Young received in recent years.

It doesn't just effect their confidence though. The 'memifying' and constantly breaking them down on social media also effects their transfer values. Other clubs don't want to buy your memes, "poor characters" and players who grounded out as being 'shit'
I saw some research last week on “most trolled footballers” on twitter. Rashford was top of the list! Unbelievable. People are such twats.
 

RedRoach

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The season before last we conceded 28. 54 goals against was the outlier, when Mourinho was begging for the sack.

I've said it before but we're worse off now with Lindelof and Maguire than we were with Smalling and Blind.
Yes and yet everyone was on Smalling's back to the point where he was hounded out of the club and went off to Roma because whilst we were defensively sound in that season we struggled to play out of the back. Maguire was supposed to be the solution to that and for a large part of last season we were much better in terms of playing it out the back, the problem was in midfield in terms of turning that into chance creation opportunities.

With regards to the 6-1 that was a complete collective cluster and yes Maguire played his part, in particular with the most ridiculous of goals being the first one. However both Bailly and Shaw had complete nightmares as well. The week before AWB was being completely exposed at Brighton time and again.

AWB and Maguire have received the brunt of all the Social Media hate campaign whilst Bailly and Shaw are hardly being criticised probably because they don't have large price tags, Greece/Dubai incidents and England captaincy associated with them.

I truly wonder if AWB and Maguire are really as bad as the Social Media warriors make them out and how all of this is impacting the both of them mentally.
 

RedCoffee

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Welcome to the big time.

This is what it's like to play for a big team that everyone wants to lose. This is why our players are paid so much, if they can't hack it then they shouldn't be here.

There's a reason some players go to other clubs and look better than they did here.
This.

When you pay 80m for a player they should have all of the attributes required to succeed. Mental strength included.
It's money badly spent if they can't hack big club mentality and pressure from the media.
 

Enfant terrible

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Last season Maguire made his mistakes, as did the rest of the defence, but make no mistake the defence was not the problem since we scored only 60 goals and had we had a fully functioning attack many of the draws / defeats would have ended up as wins.

The thing is there is no flawless defender, I have watched VVD several times and he has made several errors that have led to goals that have subsequently been papered over by Liverpool's superb attack.

Queue the end of the season and Maguire's trip to Greece followed by the hysterics in the media and since then it has been a downward spiral with even former United players in for him.

He seems to have become the latest target for the crazies on Social Media to crucify. Look at any thread on Twitter about Maguire and it is disgraceful.

Now this is not the first time this has happened. Smalling suffered the same fate. Many signings have turned into turds as soon as they have joined United as the cesspit of hysteria surrounding the club on Social Media and the Media in general strangles the life out of them.

United are in the spotlight 24/7 and that has its advantages (money) and major disadvantages as the players have to face an onslaught of hate from fans on Social Media which feeds into pundits' analysis on TV in the actual media.

I am not sure what the solutions is, clearly the players need super thick skin but that is not easy given how things get out of hand on Social Media. I am convinced Maguire is not as bad as we have seen this season and it is confidence issue that is being caused by being placed under the magnifying glass.

How does the club prevent players being taken down by the mob on Social Media and having their confidence destroyed? The other day I watched the "Social Dilemma" on Netflix and it was an eye opener in terms of how the constant barrage of media can impact individuals psychologically and cause serious problems with younger people in terms of their self esteem, how is this any different for players?
Poor pro football players and their fragile personas.
Thank God us ordinary people don't have to deal with that kind of problems. I really don't know how I would survive if Billy from Southampton and 5000000 other minimum wage academics called me a turd on social media while I was on 120-200k a week.

Maybe I would just turn the fecking phone off?
My kid in a private school would be well protected from bullying, and I doubt my neighbours in the private paradise I live in would ever look at me in a bad manner.

It's heartbreaking how this poor souls are tormented.
 

ForeverRed1

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Grown ass man, should be able to cope. If not, give up the captaincy.
exactly. Peak age, professional athlete soaking up 190k a week to play football. Can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen, only the strongest survive at this level.Maybe that’s the problem, the step up is a big one.
 

RedRoach

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Poor pro football players and their fragile personas.
Thank God us ordinary people don't have to deal with that kind of problems. I really don't know how I would survive if Billy from Southampton and 5000000 other minimum wage academics called me a turd on social media while I was on 120-200k a week.

Maybe I would just turn the fecking phone off?
My kid in a private school would be well protected from bullying, and I doubt my neighbours in the private paradise I live in would ever look at me in a bad manner.

It's heartbreaking how this poor souls are tormented.
Indeed this does impact normal people, we are basically conducting a world wide uncontrolled social experiment on this generation. As a parent of teenagers it truly scares me what is happening in the world as we see mass polarisation, memes, fake news, hate campaigns, systematic brain washing and so on happening through Social Media on a mass scale.

But why dehumanise footballers? Of course they are privileged, well off members of society just as actors, singers etc. are but does that make them immune to the psychological damage and pressure of Social Media. I don't think so at least.
 

Siorac

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Isn't that true of ANY defence though? Hence why managers constantly stress that their teams 'defend as a team' and that defending 'starts from the front'?

If you allow teams to pass through the lines and pick the ball up in pockets of space, of course your defence will struggle. Likewise, if you watch our games, the number of times our defenders are left 3 vs 3 or 2 vs 2 backpedalling/running back towards their own goal is frightening.

I believe a great deal of this is down to the pairing of Pogba and Matic in the CM role. It just doesn't work at all. You can just about squeeze acceptable performances out of Matic if he has legs next to him, but he's far too slow to cover for a player who just wanders around aimlessly as well as do his own job
You know, the Pogba-Matic theory is one of those things that sounds eminently reasonable and sensible, and I don't disagree - but it's not enough as an explanation. In the first half of last season, Pogba barely played at all after his early injury, and Matic was a fringe player for a long time. Most of the time we had workhorses in midfield: there's a lot of things Fred, McTominay, Lingard, and Pereira lack but workrate is not one of them. Yet we still conceded quite a lot of goals: 29 in 24 games is 46 goals conceded over a season; the only time we shipped more than that was when Mourinho was actively sabotaging the team with playing the likes of Herrera and McTominay at CB.

My conclusion would be that our football is overly reliant on confidence and momentum. When we have those, we look like a very good team; when we don't, we have nothing to fall back on. Our shape, our structure just completely falls apart and it always takes a long time to climb out of these ruts.
 

Bilbo

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The season before last we conceded 28. 54 goals against was the outlier, when Mourinho was begging for the sack.

I've said it before but we're worse off now with Lindelof and Maguire than we were with Smalling and Blind.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I always liked both players, particularly Blind, but we are trying to play the right way which certainly wasn't the case under Mourinho. I think there's a good reason why Smalling was available for - in these times - relative peanuts and there were no takers, and also why Southgate is playing anyone other than Smalling right now. He simply cannot play out well enough from the back.
 

sammsky1

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This. I know it's out of order the abuse players get online, but until there's regulations in place to completely stop it, you've just gotta stay away from it.
It's probably easy for me to say, as someone in their thirties who's never been a big social media user - but if I was a footballer I would NEVER go on social media or read articles after games, ratings out of 10 and all that. It can surely only have a net negative affect on performance.
But for people of a certain age, it's unfathomable to not be on social media. Footballers have loads of spare time and unfortunately many of us humans are impulsively narcissistic and can't resist the temptation of seeing what people think of us.
He said in his BBC interview that he liked to be in and around the public, and live a 'normal' life. This desire to 'connect with the masses' is what got Maguire into this mess in the first place. Rightly or wrongly, he lost that ability the moment he joined Manchester United and became our captain.

He should never have been 'out in the town' in Mykonos, where nefarious actors could create an unmanageable situation for him. Had he stayed entrenched within his own private accommodations, the Greece Police incident never happens and we avoid the entire domino effect.
 

Enfant terrible

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The common thing footballers say they don't miss are the gutwrenching nerves before a game once they've retired.

Add to that with a onslaught of opinions that ALL lambast and criticize your professional performance day in and day out.

And you wonder why he might be struggling mentally?

Let's pretend that where you work, you try your best and you *think* you are doing well, or are at least conscious of your performances. Perhaps you're not perfect, but you are trying.

Let's also pretend that your profession has a few thousand online commentators, TV spokespeople and journalists who all talk negatively about all your efforts, day in and day out. Everything you do is TERRIBLE. YOU are the cause your departments struggles and YOU should be moved away so your co-workers don't have to be dragged down because for all you attempts, you just SUCK at your job that you pour your heart and soul into. you, you, you, YOU, YOU!!

"Grown ass man should be able to cope". Yeah, good luck with that.
Why would he give a f about online comments etc.?? Is he obliged to be involved in those activities. He can hire 43 people for 1000k a week each to manage his online presence. And he wouldn't even notice that he's paying them.

I would expect my boss to tell me if he thinks I am doing a bad job. Ofcourse, if I didn't, I would suffer repercussions that would threaten me and my family's existence.

And for 120-200k a week guaranteed no matter what? For playing football????
What the feck are you people talking about?
He can buy a solution for almost every single problem he faces in life. His problems are social media abuse? Well boo-hooo-fecking---hoooo. I'm worried my tears will flood my cardboard box home.
 

Raw

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I've said it before but we're worse off now with Lindelof and Maguire than we were with Smalling and Blind.
Nah, we got bailed out by De Gea heroics many times under LVG. The issue was that despite not conceding that many chances overall (due to our incredibly high possession-based style), counter attacks routinely ripped us and our defence apart which lead to De Gea having to save our arses constantly. Doesn't really feel that way any more, but of course we're still not defensively sound.