The problem is Van Persie. What will Moyes do with him when both he and Rooney are fit? Is he big enough to play an effective system over picking the biggest names and egos? I agree that a couple of powerful and fast ball winning midfielders creating a base for our attacking players would transform a team with Januzaj-Kagawa-Mata supporting a lone front man.
The Mata-Kagawa Linkup today..
- Thread starter The Man Himself
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I don't think any team in the world has a world class backup forward. What we need is someone of Saha's class at backup and I think Welbeck's very capable of doing that. I still think van Persie's the better player and his performances last season were as good as any single season in Rooney's career. Saying that, if we were to sell one of them it'd have to be van Persie simply because given his injury problems this season I don't think we could rely on him to be the one main striker. I think we'd play more technical football with van Persie as the only forward and there'd be some excellent linkup between him, Kagawa and Mata but Rooney obviously does pose more of a threat in behind and can stretch the defence and that's probably more important to have in the team right now.
The style of football we can produce when we have them is breathtaking. We look a real team right now.
Really is.
We have some very good one-touch passers in the team now. Hope Moyes finds a way to play all of them together to good effect.
Rooney, Mata, Nani, Kagawa, RVP and Januzaj. Welbeck is not the same as the others at this point of time, maybe in the future.
I disagree. Welbeck has always looked capable of one touch intricate football ever since he broke through.
Selling Van Persie in the summer is a no-brainer for me. He's nearly 30 and slowing down. Similar stage of his career to when we sold RvN. We should be looking to build a more dynamic attacking side, so selling RvP whilst he has some market value left makes sense. Can't say I've missed him since injury either, as we've looked better.
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Don't you dare touch them Moyesy
some great link up between then. And then add in Adnan and Nani at the end of the game and it looked really good (admittedly against an already defeated side). Put some real quality CM in behind these players and I feel we really have a lot of potential in the team.
They're making me excited about United again; excited about the next game and excited about how this team will develop in the coming years.
Has to be the foundation of the team next season. We've finally found a role for Shinji, and it's with our other huge signing and best player. Wayne back into his #9 role in which he's excelled in the past and we're a very good side once again.
Agree and I know nobody has world class striker backup but then very few play with 2 strikers upfront. If we are moving away from that system and one of RvP and Rooney needs to make way it has to be RvP. I would still hate to see RvP go though. If we can have someone like Reus coming in then even if RvP goes, we can be better covered for goal scoring players if Rooney gets injured. Welbeck needs to give some confidence in his finishing ability to trust him to lead line.
I dont. Hence why I said "probably not going to happen". Its nice to dream, though.
This x10000This nonsense about RVP.
The issue is Rooney playing as #10. Play any of Kagawa/Mata/Janujaz there, then pick Rooney or RVP up top.
RVP as a 9, is so much better than Rooney. Rooney should be deployed in one of the wide berths, cutting in and interacting with Mata and Kagawa.
Based on what?
Not sure why people are so quick to write off RVP. I still believe there is no reason that RVP, Rooney, mata and kagawa can't coexist. In fact, I'm not even sure we have tried this combo before? It's frightening how many good attacking options we have and yet for some reason have failed to get the best out of them until recently.
Sir Alex thought so.
Rooney can play the left sides role in all this, but then he'll probably become angry and confused.
Based on seeing them play?
Completely disagree. Rooney as true number 9 is not as natural a goal scorer, but we don't need a static lone striker up top if we play Kagawa, Mata and (pick a winger). Rooney is more willing to make runs out wide to open up space and is a more interchangeable player than RVP. Ultimately this isn't even an argument for me because while I think selling Rooney last summer would have been an intelligent move, the club has gone all in with Rooney and there is no chance he will be sold this summer, or for the foreseeable future.
Rooney does not have the pace and agility anymore to be deployed in a wide role. His work rate is tremendous as a striker, but his tendency to chase the ball around and lack of tactical discipline at times is a massive drawback when he plays on the wing, where he often fails to track back and leads to 2 vs. 1 situations for our fullback to face alone. This is exactly what happened in Madrid during the 1st leg last year and was why SAF dropped Rooney for the 2nd leg.
If we put Rooney on the left as an inside forward it has the potential to work but I still feel like he'd have too much of a tendancy to come inside and crowd up the space for Mata in the middle. There's also the option of doing:
Rooney RVP
Mata
Kagawa Fletcher
Carrick
Change Fletcher and Carrick with new midfield signings (Gundogan and Carvalho ideally). Still there would potentially be a lack of someone with real pace in there to run in behind. I just have my doubts whether RVP and Rooney can make it work together and we'd be better off selling one of the two (has to be RVP as Rooney signed a new contract), and then playing Kagawa-Mata and then a winger like Reus on the other side.Mata
Kagawa Fletcher
Carrick
The discussion has more of drifted to RvP here. As I see it, RvP is not a problem and him up top and Rooney-Kagawa-Mata behind him can work but he will need to be brought more into play for that to work smoothly. Right now, many times he is isolated upfront and gets involved only when long balls are played to him or ball is crossed in box. This will need change of system but if he is played little withdrawn from opposition box, and involved in build-up it can work. It will also cause lot of confusion for opposition defenders because if they get drawn forward with RvP, we will have the 3 playing behind RvP capitalizing on that space with their speed.
When is the last time Rooney played well in a wide role in terms of creating chances for others and scoring himself? When he plays as the No. 9 and drifts into wide positions for periods of possession or on the counter he can be effective, but he is not capable anymore of putting in a complete shift on the wing defensively and his declining pace and agility are more pronounced when shunted wide and limits his ability to contribute effectively in attack.
It's getting boring by now... Fergie did the same. Why? because he knew he didn't have good enough midfield to let Kagawa and Mata work their magic. Young and Valencia made us a little bit less vulnerable defensively. I'm sure Moyes will play both Mata and Kagawa if we finally sort out our midfield and back-four.
How often did Sir Alex do that? In fact Kagawa started most of the games in the final few months of Sir Alex's time. Also there was no Mata last season, so I'm not sure what your point really is?
My point is that somehow it's Moyes who prefers Young and Valencia whereas it's bollocks.
If he doesn't prefer them, why did he start them both against Olympiakos (A) when we basically had a full squad to pick from?
Mate, I'm not saying he hasn't preferred them but that it's not like Moyes is the first manager to prefer them. Fergie was the same if you remember the abundance of similar discussions last season.
I don't have access to it right now, but I'll try to check on the number of games they've both started under Sir Alex last season, I'd wager it wasn't that many and it certainly wasn't in any "big" game.
Not with the effectivness, smart movement and technical perfection of the others. Not even close.
I guess I imagined all this Fergie bashing last year, then.
Maybe you did...
I can't think of one single occasion where Sir Alex picked a team as badly as Moyes did for Olympiakos away...
I think this season it has been a mistake making the Rooney-RVP axis the fulcrum of the side while rotating and experimenting with the players behind. Firstly, it adversely affects the balance of our side. Secondly, these two quite often pick up niggly injuries meaning we have never really had any consistency in selection and never build any rhythm in our play.
Next season I believe we should be looking to consistently play
1 of Rooney/RVP
3 of Nani/Kagawa/Mata/Januzaj
with Welbeck providing cover for these roles also
The 3 behind the striker should become the fulcrum of our side with consistent selection there, with Mata at the heart of it. If this was the case I think you could interchange the striker game by game without seeing much difference in the way we play and we might actually have some identity. As it stands, we have been changing from having Mata and Kagawa in the wide positions one week to having Young/Valencia's pace and width the next.
I think today has convinced me that a wide player is not necessarily a priority. We just need to select our better ones more regularly. Alot depends on Nani though as we have been unable to get 30 games out of him. Without him we would need another IMO.
Next season I believe we should be looking to consistently play
1 of Rooney/RVP
3 of Nani/Kagawa/Mata/Januzaj
with Welbeck providing cover for these roles also
The 3 behind the striker should become the fulcrum of our side with consistent selection there, with Mata at the heart of it. If this was the case I think you could interchange the striker game by game without seeing much difference in the way we play and we might actually have some identity. As it stands, we have been changing from having Mata and Kagawa in the wide positions one week to having Young/Valencia's pace and width the next.
I think today has convinced me that a wide player is not necessarily a priority. We just need to select our better ones more regularly. Alot depends on Nani though as we have been unable to get 30 games out of him. Without him we would need another IMO.
I don't find it hugely surprising but with Hernandez up top stretching the play, it created space for the likes of Mata and Kagawa to work with - leading to them playing much better.
With Rooney up front dropping deep, it allows the opponents defenders to push up and limits the space that our attacking players have to work with.
It's not rocket science particularly, but yeah.
With Rooney up front dropping deep, it allows the opponents defenders to push up and limits the space that our attacking players have to work with.
It's not rocket science particularly, but yeah.
He bought a player this summer, not what one would like to see our team turned into..
When the guy on the opposite wing was drawing triple teams and generally keeping opposition sides from rarely venturing out of their own half at all. Your earlier post was spot on as well.
Exactly.
Young and Valencia played there against City (A), Chelsea (A) and Arsenal (H) in the three big league games we played before Christmas. The only other big game we played before Christmas was against Liverpool when Nani, Valencia and Kagawa started. Young and Valencia were good against both Chelsea and City from what I remember as well and we won al three games. Considering Sir Alex has happily played Park and Valencia in numerous big games (including CL finals) ahead of more talented players, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest he would've continued to do the same in European away games again this season.
There are alot of examples. Fergie did have a knack of getting results with bizarre selections but it didn't always work.Maybe you did...
I can't think of one single occasion where Sir Alex picked a team as badly as Moyes did for Olympiakos away...
Fair enough, but it's also fair to say neither has look as poor as they have this season yet for some reason Moyes thought it a good idea to start them both in (at the time) our biggest game of the season in Greece.
At least it won't happen in Munich.
Indeed. I'm sure you could see numerous people freaking out in the matchday thread for the home league game against Chelsea in 08/09 when we dropped Carrick, Scholes, Tevez and Nani for Berbatov, Park and a midfield partnership of Fletcher-Giggs and we ended up winning 3-0. People will now say there was plenty of logic to each decision but at the time people were talking about it as yet another terrible team selection. It's absolutely mental to suggest that people getting pissed off about "stupid" lineups is something that's only started with Moyes.