For me Matic was one of the reasons why Chelsea were that good last season. Quite astonishing they let go of him.
Nemanja Matić - Manchester United player
- Thread starter Santos J
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Have been reading the Matic thread on the Chelsea forum since he signed, and a few have questioned if we'll be as pleased and supportive of him when he reverts "back to the normal Matic".
Curious to know what this is. I know he was out of form for them, but what does an out of form Matic look like? Does play pass him by? Is he a defensive mess or does his passing game go to shit?
Curious to know what this is. I know he was out of form for them, but what does an out of form Matic look like? Does play pass him by? Is he a defensive mess or does his passing game go to shit?
Although the 29-year-old admitted Chelsea “is a big club”, he suggested United are on another level.Tweet
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"Chelsea is a big club, Benfica are the biggest club in Portugal,” he said. ”But Manchester United is Manchester United.
Typical fickle Chelsea fans. As soon as Mourinho had left they were downgrading his achievements. It's probably just human nature to an extent, but they seem to be particularly bad for it...(not all of em obvs!)
As I said earlier in the thread I don't think Matic even needs to perform like that every week to make a big difference to us - he can be a lot less high profile and as long as he is doing the basics like winning back possession, recycling the ball well, protecting the back four and freeing up Pogba he will be improving us as a team...we don't actually need him to be doing mazy dribbles up the right wing (although if he continues in this vein then great!).
If JM do the same thing like in Chelsea you will see Matic burned out and tired, he will slow down and in that case, you will understand what they mean. Think JM will push him hard for first 12-13 games, he will want to make advantage on table early and after that he will run him into ground if he keeps using him in midfield 2.
'Subtle dig' 
It really is impossible for any footballer to open his mouth, these days, without the gutter press spinning his words into something else.
It really is impossible for any footballer to open his mouth, these days, without the gutter press spinning his words into something else.
This old chestnut about Mourinho 'running players into the ground'...
He is a fit young man, I'm sure he'll cope...
Well it did happen with us last season. Though I am hoping this season will be better for us having more depth in CB, CM (and potentially in ST position with Ibra in January) and a Tuesday-Wednesday midweek match instead of Thursday, which Jose understands better. Also I wouldn't mind not going all the way again for the League cup if Jose is still going to play senior people. I would rather we compete for PL this season, and for that we need to be fresh by the end of the season.
Yea old chestnut, lets forget that already happened, in his title winning season he forced same XI with almost no rotation, they crossed the line but then really bad preseason and next season almost everyone of those XI looked like they are 90 years old, Matic included, Ivanovic from best RB to 3 eyed raven in space of 3 months.
Yes not an old chestnut. At any given moment there's going to be at least 3 or 4 squad member out of favour as well as a couple injured through overplay. It's how he rolls.
We have Carrick, Herrera, Fellaini, and even Pereira to sub him for. Not worried in the slightest that Matic will be burned out.
Yea its well known that JM rotates and that he never ignores poor form and state of senior member of his first XI, Ivanovic says hello.
Firstly, I think winning the League Cup was super important to Mourinho last season in order to put a trophy on the table and instil a winning mentality, I don't expect him to play such strong sides this season. But secondly last season Pogba came straight in without a summer break, Ibra is old as feck and we didn't have nearly so much strength in depth as we do now.
Didn't seem to do Lampard much harm season after season? You are looking at the one anomaly season in Mourinho's career and using that to try and prove your point. The season after Mourinho left Madrid they won the Champions League...didn't look too burnt out to me.
who was injured through overplay for us last season just out of interest?
How is that even a dig?
Well I think a problem with the Chelsea squad was its depth and who he had at his disposal. He trusts Herrera, Fellaini, and Carrick a lot, there is no doubt about that. He will play them.
Yea lets compare La Liga with case in PL. Anomaly yea...talking about proving point then mentioning Lampard. Dear Lord. Carry on.
You might be right when it comes to Ander,Afro and Carrick but in case of Chelsea squad... a 15 year old wouldnt do worse then Ivanovic in those first months of new season, guy got destroyed from minute one week in week out.
Are you missing something? The point was that Lampard played almost every game for Chelsea over years and years and was never 'burned out'. Matic is a fit young man, our midfield as a unit has bags of energy and lots of cover so there is absolutely no reason to conclude that Matic will be burnt out. Too many people have their set ideas about Mourinho 'he'll only stay 3 years and leave us in the shit, he burns his players out, he doesn't trust young players' and will grasp at anything in attempt to support their confirmation bias. Someone on here the other day (might have been you actually) was bleating about how Martial is evidence that Mourinho doesn't trust young players, completely ignoring the fact that the player that is depriving Martial of most of his game time is actually younger than Martial!
I see you never watched Matic before and JM is your landlord, so i will step away wasting my time arguing with you. Take care.
I must admit Matic seems to be a better player than I realised. I think he's that sort of player that you don't really "notice" if he's playing for opposing teams as he just gets on with his job - nothing flashy, just enables his teammates to play better. Similar to the way that Carrick has always been underrated by rival fans but United fans know how good he's been.
Don't worry I've got my flashlight! ;-)
Lol, "subtle dig" as if anyone in the world considers Chelsea to be as big as United. Pathetic journalism.
Has Matic actually upped his game? I mean it's not just us that is surprised by how good he is on the ball. Even Smalling and other ex-players seem to be noticing his on-the-ball qualities only after his move here. Can Chelsea fans tell me if he was always this good?
You never can tell if an injury would not have happened otherwise because you don't have a counter factual (as economists and doctors say). Zlatan, I would have thought, given he was so worn out at the time. I know it was about how he landed form the jump but I suspect he wouldn't have done it in that way if he'd not been exhausted. You have to look at the numbers and the timing and ask if it's at all unusual.
So in the round, by the end of the season we had
Phil Jones (broken toe)
Chris Smalling (knee)
Marcos Rojo (anterior cruciate ligament)
Zlatan Ibrahimovic (anterior cruciate ligament)
Timothy Fosu-Mensah (shoulder)
Luke Shaw (unknown)
Eric Bailly (ankle)
That's quite a lot of defenders. Of course it could be co-incidence
I stopped reading at broken toe!
I didn't really, but come on, most of those injuries seem to be down to various types of impact, not because of exhaustion. As a club almost every season we seem to have a cluster of injuries all at the same time - most of the time it's just coincidence, but now because Jose is here it's suddenly a sign of overworking the players?
We've had lots of defenders getting injured lots of the time for years, the situation last season was nothing particularly new
I agree it's not new. I've always felt there's some underlying problem.
I think it's more to do with a culture of over-competitiveness. We saw it a lot under SAF as well, and I think perhaps we saw it less under LVG, who was more of a rotator.
As to the impact injuries - well yes. But who can say why a player fails to (for example) pull out of a tackle, or adjust his position to avoid an injury? Who can say when a muscle that would have held tears instead, leading to another injury elsewhere? In many cases, tiredness is the hidden factor. That's why they tend to happen in clusters imho. One player goes down (from tiredness or otherwise), another gets overplayed to compensate, rinse, repeat.
Obviously I can't prove any of this - it's just intuition.
The one thing I'll say is this is a motivated Matic after a big move. Let's see if he can keep this up. Although tbf even if he cant keep this level of attacking play up, if he can continue to be an effective DM and pass it forward enough, it will be a huge benefit.
I don't think conte really liked matic has a player, or was his type of player he wanted going forward, was it hunger from matic? was he out of form? it could be like a rooney case where he just wanted a fresh start, has maybe it felt stale at chelsea. At times at chelsea it felt like a very toxic place when the players are on the wrong side of the bed. But hopefully matic and pogba is united's petit and vierra, 2 very tall players of 6 ft 4 and 6 ft 3, that are technically some of the best midfielders in the world. Many saw matic has a mistake to sell to united, maybe matic just wanted a new start is well, and there was nothing conte could do
Well, you're completely entitled to your opinion obviously - I'm no expert. I will say though that out of all of those injured the likes of Young, Fosu Mensah and Luke Shaw had barely played, so their injuries were demonstrably not due to exhaustion or overplaying. Phil Jones played 26 games and had a couple of different injuries (one of which was caused by Smalling on England duty!) so again not down to exhaustion. Chris Smalling's injury also came on England duty, and he only played 36 times for us last season so probs not down to being overplayed. Rojo's injury came during a period where both Smalling and Jones were injured so we were unable to rotate - so even if his injury was in part exacerbated by exhaustion it was hardly Jose Mourinho's fault. Bailly got injury just at the end of the season and he'd only played 26 times for us - so again not really down to exhaustion but could I guess in part be down to having to play a lot of consecutive games due to the injuries to our other CBs. The only one on the list that you could really say was wilfully overplayed by Mourinho was Zlatan, but even then his injury was caused by an awkward landing - it is very difficult to ascribe that to exhaustion...none of us can ever really say whether it played a part or not, but again, given that he was the only fecker that could put the ball in the net for us I can understand why Mourinho played him in nearly every game. This season we look to have more options, and apparently with the likelihood that Zlatan will come back to further strengthen when fit. I don't think there is really a story here.
Yes I'm not suggesting that all were caused by being over-played, just that some of them probably were. An innocent injury in player A leads to an overplaying injury in player B.
In Zlatan's case he was clearly the only squad member any good at scoring goals, and was absolutely overplayed. The only debate is whether his injury was connected to that, beyond the obvious fact he would not have been injured had he not been playing at the time. The answer to that we can never know.
Yeah, but in the post I replied to you said there will always be a couple of players out injured due to overplaying because that's 'how Mourinho rolls' - but it seems a bit harsh to lay the blame at his door for the likes of Rojo and Bailly picking up injuries because Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber had got themselves injured playing for England! The only player demonstrably 'overplayed' last season was Zlatan, and even then it would be tenuous to place the blame on tiredness given that he just hyperextended his knee and landed badly. Before he came to the club we were all excited because Mourinho's record with injured players was actually really bloody good!
Didn't Mourinho win the league with Chelsea by almost playing the same team week in and week out and even getting old Terry to play almost every match in the season.
Doesn't look like someone making the team exhausted.
Doesn't look like someone making the team exhausted.
Again one can't really know from the circumstances why a player gets injured, one can only look at the broader statistics and the timing. If it's a lot, and it's the end of the season, and it's in one position or set of positions, then chances are increased that it's caused by being overplayed. But the individual details are always elusive. It may be that Jones got injured in the first place through playing too much for example. We just can't know.
Oh man, I'm going to end up repeating myself if I carry on this debate so I'll duck out at this point. All I'll say is that a few posts ago you were saying that we will always have a couple of players injured due to overplaying cos 'that's how Mourinho rolls' and now you're saying that 'we just can't know' whether any of last seasons injuries had anything to do with being overplayed.
I think the best thing is to try to leave all of these preconceptions about Mourinho at the door, given that we're just starting a brand new season and the managerial bedding in period is behind us. Let's see how the season pans out before making blanket statements based on very little.
Fair enough. The two statements are consistent though. The first is my opinion. The second is that it can't ever be proven.
Yeah Mourinho doesn't like to rotate much and I think Matic will play in most of our games.
I told you so.