Shinji Kagawa

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Siorac said:
Don't get me started on that. We only ever created something when Kagawa found a pass through the middle; yet we kept forcing the ball out wide.
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Our insistence on pumping aimless crosses in was maddening, especially since Everton were so compact and organised. This was an issue last season a fair bit: being one dimensional and predictable in our play.

Hopefully Kagawa will give us greater variety; certainly looks that way.
 
Let's hope his teammates will allow Kagawa to give us greater variety... on his own it will be difficult if everyone else concentrates on getting the ball out wide as soon as possible.
 
Siorac said:
Let's hope his teammates will allow Kagawa to give us greater variety... on his own it will be difficult if everyone else concentrates on getting the ball out wide as soon as possible.
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Yep, that's my worry.

We've got this ingrained mentality that everyone has to go wide all the time. It's clear he likes to operate in the middle of the pitch and a lot of the time last night our players seemed reluctant to trust him with the ball.

Surely we bought him to add a different dimension to our play? Hopefully after we've shaken off the cobwebs we'll see a bit more variety from our attack.
 
To be fair, he only looked so good because every other one of our attackers (apart from Cleverley) was so shit. Literally all he had to do to make himself look better was put in 2 good through balls.

It was a good opening performance, nothing amazing though, think people are going a little overboard.
 
Cina said:
To be fair, he only looked so good because every other one of our attackers (apart from Cleverley) was so shit. Literally all he had to do to make himself look better was put in 2 good through balls.

It was a good opening performance, nothing amazing though, think people are going a little overboard.
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That's not "literally all he did" though, was it? He played very well.
 
Give it time for our players to learn to play with him, we've never had a player of Kagawa's ilk. It's going to take time.

By far the best player last night though.
 
I too hate the tendency to play the ball wide just for the sake of it. Either you have players in wing positions that will beat the defender(s) for pace or skill (usually Valencia but he was starting from deeper last night) or you give the wingers more support.
I was so frustrated with what was happening on the left towards the last quarter of the match, stupid misplaced passes from Nani/Evra/Young.
What Kagawa contributes to, in theory, is a quicker game, but I think SAF needs to think about the players and formation he deploys. For me, Kagawa should start every game (save for resting or injury).
 
Feed Me said:
Our insistence on pumping aimless crosses in was maddening, especially since Everton were so compact and organised. This was an issue last season a fair bit: being one dimensional and predictable in our play.

Hopefully Kagawa will give us greater variety; certainly looks that way.
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You're saying we shouldn't have tried to play the ball out wide because Everton were "compact and organised" Surely you see that doesn't make any sense?

The only way to break down a team like that is by making the pitch as wide as possible and hope to get around them or stretch play enough that a gap might appear if we switch play back to the middle. Unfortunately, our wingers and full-backs played poorly and Everton's back four excelled themselves which made them extremely hard to break down. To be fair to Everton, there's not many teams in the league as good at defending a one nil lead at home. It's not as though we're the only team in the top four to go to Goodison Park and find that out.
 
Stupid to suggest "all he did" was get put in two good through-balls.

Apart for one moment during the second half where he seemed to disappear a bit (before the 65 minute mark), he was very, very good. His first touch is a delight to watch, and I love how everytime he receives the balls he starts moving. A lot of players receive the ball and stay put, which makes it easier for the opposition to get the ball back. Shinji is always moving, it's great. He's always looking for that killer pass but doesn't seem to force it and doesn't hesitate to do the simple pass.

Also his movement in the box is very good and he manages to get into dangerous positions very easily. Yesterday, I can remember three clear cut moments where he was in great positions: during one of our attacks where Welbeck forced the shot when Kagawa was coming up next to him on his right, the Van Persie threaded ball and the lay off to Cleverley. That's good against a team who defended very well and were very compact.

Gérard Houllier who was commentating for French TV clearly fell in love with him and said very early on he'd be one of the top passers of the league. Once a bit of comprehension is developed between him and the other attacking players, that does indeed seem very likely.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
You're saying we shouldn't have tried to play the ball out wide because Everton were "compact and organised" Surely you see that doesn't make any sense?

The only way to break down a team like that is by making the pitch as wide as possible and hope to get around them or stretch play enough that a gap might appear if we switch play back to the middle. Unfortunately, our wingers and full-backs played poorly and Everton's back four excelled themselves which made them extremely hard to break down. To be fair to Everton, there's not many teams in the league as good at defending a one nil lead at home. It's not as though we're the only team in the top four to go to Goodison Park and find that out.
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It's a problem though, because while it seems sensible to do what you're suggesting and what we're always trying to do in those circumstances it almost never actually works.

When we go down almost every single team know that we will try to play around them on the wing, and they will double up on our wingers, forcing us to keep putting in crosses from deep and poor crossing positions. As long as they are able to prevent our wingers and / or full backs from getting into decent crossing positions near the line, we have absolutely no ideas at all.

It was exactly the same last season as well.

Edit: The "obvious" tactical solution seems to be to expand our possible solutions to breaking through a team that sits back so that we're not so utterly predictable when chasing a game. I would say we've got the personell now to do that, so hopefully Fergie will get on it sooner rather than later. I feel our inability to turn a game around the past year reflects this problem very well.
 
Siorac said:
Don't get me started on that. We only ever created something when Kagawa found a pass through the middle; yet we kept forcing the ball out wide.
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Thats how we've played for ages. A change in playing style will take time. I agree with the sentiment that our other players need to trust him more and feed him in the centre even in tight spaces.

I was saying to myself last night...Kagawa's success would depend on how well the blokes playing behind him feed him and allow him to play between the lines rather than drop too deep.
 
Looked quite bright but like all things it will take him time to settle in and get used his team mates and for them to get used to him.
 
JazzG said:
Looked quite bright but like all things it will take him time to settle in and get used his team mates and for them to get used to him.
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He looked perfectly settled. It's the other 9 who looked like they'd just stepped off a plane from Japan.
 
Encouraged about the way him and Percy were linking up, need to see more of Kagawa in behind the striker, with RvP up top! Rooney can do one if he keeps playing like yesterday.
 
Very very tidy player who is comfortable receiving the ball in tight spaces.

Will do brilliantly here. Our little David Silva.
 
First time I'm really getting the chance to see him so it could be the totally wrong impression, but what I really liked is that for all his obvious ability on the ball, he seems really economical in his choices, unafraid to keep it simple. He obviously can force it but he only seems to do so at the right times when he feels guaranteed of completing the pass. He looks so tidy that you feel he's never going to give it away.
 
He created about four chances we should have put away - which was basically all the chances we had.

The Welbeck chance in the first half, the Rooney header which he missed horribly, the Cleverley goal which somehow ended up not being registered, and a couple of through balls that Welbeck and Rooney should have done better with.
 
This guy's going to be a legend. I just hope our players get used to how quick his decision making is, and how even if he's surrounded by three players he should still be seen as available for a pass (because honestly, they seemed a bit timid to pass it to him.)
 
Him being surrounded by our usual zombie midfield out in force, basically made him look like a Prodigy stage show on fast forward.

He wasn't actually THAT good, but compared to the rest of our midfield/attack, he was what Lionel Messi would look like playing against.. well, other players.
 
you could say he looked THAT good only because the rest of them were so shit, but you could also argue that had they done better Kagawa would subsequently do even better, if nothing else get an assist or something.
 
Yeah, I've heard a few people trotting out the line that he only looked good because everybody else played badly. Which is a load of shite really. Much easier to look good as part of a team that is all on top of their game. Far harder to shine when all your team-mates are a bit off the pace.
 
So here comes the next dilemma.

Fulham at home next, do we start rooney and rvp up top? kagawa get dropped or do we move him to the left or centre mid? does rooney get dropped for being a fat rubbish shit on monday and play kagawa behind rvp.
 
So he created two clear cut chances for his team mates(Cleverley and Rooney) which both probably should've scored. Also some great through balls to Welbeck which should've been finished better but yet he looked good because his team-mates were shite?

I swear, people are getting more dumb here.
 

Almost all of our best moves came through him. Love the little through balls he gives to our strikers, put Welbeck clean through the middle on one of them.

However, this highlight package also shows that Rooney looks like he is still on fecking holiday in dubai with colleen. Get it together FFS! Its infuriating to watch him so sluggish in the first match of the season.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, I've heard a few people trotting out the line that he only looked good because everybody else played badly. Which is a load of shite really. Much easier to look good as part of a team that is all on top of their game. Far harder to shine when all your team-mates are a bit off the pace.
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As I said, I thought he was excellent. But really, he was surrounded by a lot of players who did themselves no good with that performance.
 
Adam-Utd said:
So here comes the next dilemma.

Fulham at home next, do we start rooney and rvp up top? kagawa get dropped or do we move him to the left or centre mid? does rooney get dropped for being a fat rubbish shit on monday and play kagawa behind rvp.
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I'd honestly move him to the left, provided Valencia plays right, with Rafael at right-back.

Nani and Young were horrendously stupid on the left. You might say Kagawa's not at his best there, but at least he would choose the correct passes and execute them properly. He can always come in-field and link up with the forwards.

Rooney and RvP need to be given 90 minutes playing together up top. There's no point in us having potentially the best strike-force combination of the decade without giving it time to develop.
 
Kraftwerker said:
I'd honestly move him to the left, provided Valencia plays right, with Rafael at right-back.

Nani and Young were horrendously stupid on the left. You might say Kagawa's not at his best there, but at least he would choose the correct passes and execute them properly. He can always come in-field and link up with the forwards.

Rooney and RvP need to be given 90 minutes playing together up top. There's no point in us having potentially the best strike-force combination of the decade without giving it time to develop.
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I agree, valencia can keep the width on the right, kagawa can mix it up behind the strikers and evra can push forward and stay wide left.

Welbeck on the left was not a good decision, although he did his best he was always looking to go into the strikers position, we looked quite unbalanced.
 
I never realised how two-footed he is before, he must be the most two-footed player in our team now. I do think people are perhaps going a little overboard (Iniesta comparisons) because this is the first attacking midfielder type we've had for a while, while the likes of Arsenal, City, Chelsea, Madrid etc. all have a couple each, but he's obviously a great player.
 
Adam-Utd said:
I agree, valencia can keep the width on the right, kagawa can mix it up behind the strikers and evra can push forward and stay wide left.

Welbeck on the left was not a good decision, although he did his best he was always looking to go into the strikers position, we looked quite unbalanced.
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No, Welbeck coming in from the left actually gave us some threat. That disappeared when we first put Rooney then Young on the left: it was replaced by the classic "Evra or the winger whacks it into the first defender" routine.
 
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