Disagree completely....you can't put a square peg in a round hole. He just doesn't fit into this squad as a starting XI player simply because we have Bruno and we don't have a holding mid who can cover for his lack of defensive responsibility. Makes absolutely no sense to put him on a contract extension for 3-4 yrs at 300K a week to sit on the bench or be a bit part player especially if you want to keep winning.
These conversations about Pogba were all happening well prior to Bruno signing.
well that makes it even worse so i don't see how you can put the blame on Ole then for not being able to figure out where to play Pogba. The player has to show the ability to earn a position and that ability to excel at the same time. He's done neither in the last two years.
It's hardly surprising a dinosaur like Mourinho wasn't able to get the best out of him.
They were a lot sillier then, to be fair. Pogba was our best player in 2018/19 and, contrary to what most people will have you believe now, he was also very good for much of 2017/18 despite Mourinho's usual antics around the Sevilla and Tottenham games later on.
That's too horrible to even imagine, and yet you're probably right. God knows what that would mean for Sancho.
Haha can you imagine how bad that will be when Pogba and Bruno are caught upfield and Fred is the one holding back the Alamo? It will be like a cartoon when the eyes start bulging
We have seen Pogba play strangely disciplined a few times though recently. I think it’s possible but would require a lot of coaching. And I’m not sure that’s oles style. He just seems more a “just do what you know you can do” type of guy. And if you put enough of those together, BOOM!
I regularly disagreed with the people saying it back then. I thought it was obvious then, and is obvious now, that his best position was as the most attacking midfielder with the most freedom in a three man midfield. It never made sense to me why Mourinho and then Ole didn't build the midfield with that in mind. While Pogba himself certainly wasn't blameless (he still could have performed better), he was being set up to fail to some extent by the poor balance of the entire system around him.
Are you Carl Anka? The same bloke whose solution to fix the Pogba conundrum was to just tell him he doesn't have to defend any more?
This is the problem and what too many of our fans think is possible. There is no player in world football that will hold the midfield alone. Kante would look like shit trying to do it himself. Bruno plays like a second striker in many games and Pogba would rather be further forward. Unless Pogba is extremely disciplined (and that is wasting his ability), I don't see how we realistically play both Bruno and Pogba in the midfield.
By adding Ole in the argument means you need to add the manager's system. May be Pogba just doesn't suit to Ole's system, thus, those people might made a valid point about moving Pogba on. Whether it is the correct thing or no, we will only know when it's done.
He had 22 passes and 33 touches on the ball in 80 minutes. Fred, for comparison, had 45 passes and 58 passes in 90 minutes; the Villa midfielders had similar numbers to McTominay but in a team that had 40% possession. Ronaldo attempted more passes than McTominay.
Yet thats where he played in the europa league final and was head and shoulders above every one else.
Being as though we spent alot of time with the ball with our defence pushed high against a low block its not a surprise to see he had alot of touches in support of the attack, but he still did alot of work in the dm position winning possesion for us, which is pretty much the no 6 main job.That's not where he played in the EL final at all.
Still, Pogba occupied deeper and more central positions than him, on average. You can check his heatmap on whoscored.
This is correct. Pogba spent the whole game deeper than McTominay. McTominay was getting forward and joining the attack. Pogba spent most of his time picking up the ball from our CB's and playing it forward.
The guy's deluded and believes he's better than he actually is. Having world class qualities does not make you world class, particularly if you only ever turn up in a minority of games.
