He needs to play him against Liverpool as he will have to rest Valencia for Olympiakos game.
Shinji Kagawa
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He needs to play him against Liverpool as he will have to rest Valencia for Olympiakos game.
He most certainly doesn't disappoint every game.
Hey, at least if they're all going to disappoint, bring in the one who knows how to actually play football right?
Stupid posts don't deserve serious responses. You clearly don't like him as you're last post before this was saying shit about kagawa last season for no reason, so there's no point in discussing it with you. Just normal stuff from the people who ignore how he actually plays on the pitch and criticize him for the sake of criticizing him (similar to young really, although kagawa is a much better and more intelligent player).
By that same token, Kagawa has played just as well as Young this season. Both have done equally well yet one is a much better player than the other. And has less goals and assists than the other. What does that say about Kagawa? This, from a huge Kagawa fan.
Obviously he doesn't deserve to not be picked at all, but just cause he's a better player doesn't mean that he's more deserving of a place in the team than a inferior player that does the same job equally well. The fact is Kagawa isn't performing. A half hour against Swansea doesn't change that and although Moyes has messed him about, for a player of his calibre, he shouldn't be as anonymous as he is for United.
Obviously he doesn't deserve to not be picked at all, but just cause he's a better player doesn't mean that he's more deserving of a place in the team than a inferior player that does the same job equally well. The fact is Kagawa isn't performing. A half hour against Swansea doesn't change that and although Moyes has messed him about, for a player of his calibre, he shouldn't be as anonymous as he is for United.
I wouldn't bother replying to him. That first post quoting the New Zealand one was as odd as they get.
I say it's more strange to suggest that a Premier league manager would base his team selection on the evidence of a friendly against New Zealand.
You'd be wrong then. Playing a guy who's coming off a good game and some confidence no matter who the opposition makes complete sense. It's hardly like Young and Valencia have decent form on their side. Your response was just very odd. You seem to pull the "build a team around" bit out of your arse given the guy you were quoting made no mention of it.
Not really. Anyway, since when did one good pass and scoring a penalty equate to a "good game" against cannon fodder like New Zealand?
If that really is the best bits of his contribution over 90 minutes that's not a great audition for a start at the weekend.
Do we even know that he had a good game? He scored a penalty in an easy win against inferior opposition. Just seems like the Kagawa fanboi club clutching at straws.
I doubt any of us actually watched the game, but a goal and assist usually equates to a good game. Remember young against stoke? Scored a goal and got an assist and everyone forgot how bad he was in the first half because he won us the match.
Anyways, considering kagawa is more talented then either young or Valencia, and neither of those two are impressing, why don't we give a run of games to kagawa like we did with Valencia? He's been crap for 2 years now yet for some reason still plays most games, despite probably being our worst winger at this point.
I just don't understand why kagawa has to have a very good performance at least to stay in the team, when Valencia and young have had maybe 3 combined all season long. If anything, they're playing themselves out of the team so logic dictates to give somebody else a chance, especially if they are more talented individuals.
Apparently he set up one too. I agree with you to an extent though, it doesn't seem like many were actually watching the match. A goal doesn't necessarily mean he had a good match especially when that goal is from a penalty.
Anyone that actually did watch the match that could tell us more about how he played? If he's played well, then fair enough, put him in the squad for Saturday.
The Kagawa vs Young/Valencia debate is so fecking boring. It's obvious that first Fergie and now Moyes both came to the conclusion that they bring something to the team that Kagawa doesn't. Even when neither of them are at their best.
His inability to displace two players that come in for so much criticism says more about Kagawa's own inability to prove himself as PL quality than it does about anything else.
Of course it makes sense. Especially given how lacking in confidence and end product our players currently our. Any sort of confidence and goals under anyone's belt is more than welcome and can only help in getting them picked and more importantly, helping the team.
If were having auditions for a starting place, an assist and goal isn't bad when compared to our wide players actual performances which are more akin to a complete mental break down on stage.
Anyway I'm not going to go on and on discussing a performance against new zeland, my point was that the guy who posted that said something pretty reasonable - that getting a goal and assist should help kagawa's confidence and that a start could help him build on that. Not sure how he was interpreted to mean that we should build our team around him.
Actually your reply smacked more of someone with an agenda against Kagawa. I'd like to see him start more but I'm hardly his "fan". Neither do I really know how he played. But your post didn't make any sense given the post you were quoting. You seemed to just want to have a go really. You could have argued against him starting or something logical like that.
Okay, so because Moyes picks them over Shinji, he's right, even though young and Valencia have constantly underperformed and we as a team have played shit whenever they've been on the pitch? The manager isn't always right you know. Obviously kagawa hasn't done enough so far, and has underperformed, but you can't say he hasn't deserved more chances because Valencia and young keep playing despite being crap week in, week out.
Also, that's not true at all that fergie came to that conclusion. At the start of the season he was constantly playing, until he got injured for a few months, and then took a while for him to come back from injury properly but was back to constantly starting at the end of the season. Anyways, kagawa played more then young did last season, and Valencia only had 24 starts all season in the league compared to kagawas 17, which shows that fergie obviously didn't want to keep starting him all the time but had no choice when kagawa was out for a few months and nani was always injured. He even tried to do the diamond thing earlier because of how crap the wingers were, with kagawa in the middle, and dropped both young and Valencia, but nobody was used to it yet so he went back to the norm.
Kagawa scored and assisted in Japan's friendly against New Zealand today. His assist(the first goal in the video below) was freaking sublime!
It's pretty obvious that Kagawa won't become like Silva or Mata, out wide. Both players started out as wingers in their younger ages, and Kagawa started out as an attacking midfielder at a younger age. This is definitely one of the reasons why he's not good at beating his marker and not good at dribbling past players. For this reason, he will be more system-dependent than anyone else because he doesn't have the experience playing different roles that Silva, Mata, Januzaj, Rosicky, Cazorla, etc. have.
At this point, it's best for him to play centrally as Moyes likes to overload the wide channels rather than play through the middle. Playing behind the striker like how Osman did for Moyes will be best for Kagawa, at this stage.
At this point, it's best for him to play centrally as Moyes likes to overload the wide channels rather than play through the middle. Playing behind the striker like how Osman did for Moyes will be best for Kagawa, at this stage.
Fergie repeatedly picked Valencia and/or Young ahead of Kagawa last season. That mental winger bloke spent the whole fecking season moaning about how his favouritest ever player was being criminally underused. You'd have to be living under a rock not to realise that Moyes' marginalisation of Kagawa is just the continuation of a trend that started last season.
It was a completely different situation though. Kagawa last season was out for over 2 months, yet ended the season with 22 starts in all competitions, while Valencia had 29 starts in all competitions (out of 54 games I think). Young had 18 starts, Nani with 15. So that's clearly not true that they kept being picked ahead of Kagawa, and when you consider the fact that Kagawa was injured for all of November and December (basically the busiest part of the season), it makes sense that he'd have less games then the others and would have missed a lot, but only had less then Valencia (who was fit all season).
As I said before, Kagawa started the season first choice, got injured, missed a few months and then went through a tough few months around January-March while trying to force his way back in the team, was out of form because of the injury, and then eventually did get back into the team and was starting pretty consistently in the last bit of the season. At least that's how I remember it. Everything Fergie has said about him as well points to rating Kagawa very highly and just having an unlucky first year with the injury. He even started him away to Madrid, arguably the biggest game of our season, which shows he had faith in him (started Nani in the other one as well, shows he rated both over Young and Valencia to perform in the biggest game when it really mattered).
Just so we're clear that I'm not losing my mind.
Here's a quote from a post by that MW bloke from March 31st last year.
15 starts by the end of March last season.
So far this season, he has 7 starts in the premier league and 5 in the CL. A total of 12 starts altogether.
0 goals and 0 assists in those 12 starts.
So he's had just 3 fewer starts than he'd accumulated by the end of this month in the season just gone (with another 5 fixtures up for grabs between now and March 31st 2014)
The stats for goals and assists give more than enough reason for his relatively infrequent appearances this season. Both Valencia and Young have proven themselves more capable of creating or scoring a goal in 2013/14. Which speaks volumes really.
Here's a quote from a post by that MW bloke from March 31st last year.
15 starts by the end of March last season.
So far this season, he has 7 starts in the premier league and 5 in the CL. A total of 12 starts altogether.
0 goals and 0 assists in those 12 starts.
So he's had just 3 fewer starts than he'd accumulated by the end of this month in the season just gone (with another 5 fixtures up for grabs between now and March 31st 2014)
The stats for goals and assists give more than enough reason for his relatively infrequent appearances this season. Both Valencia and Young have proven themselves more capable of creating or scoring a goal in 2013/14. Which speaks volumes really.
You can prove anything with facts.
Why are you making it appear that Ferguson preferred Young over Kagawa? There's nothing to suggest that was the case, whatsoever. The same applies to Young under Moyes.
Moyes gets plenty of stick off me, but he's left Young out in the cold on many occasions this season, which is a positive. At one point the bloke was scoring free kicks in a behind-closed-doors match. And no, he wasn't injured. After the City debacle, he played about half an hour in the league until he scored a nice goal against West Ham.
Cue the standard Shinji excuses - he's played out of position, needs a run of games, its the rest of the team's fault for not adapting to his style of play etc etc
I'm lumping Young and Valencia together as that's the way they're usually discussed in all the relentless fecking complaints about team selection, this season and last.
No, they don't.
There's a video of Shinji putting some sublime crosses (i should say passes, because he look up, look for the partner, and aim to him), all of them wasted by our strike force. All of them, certain assists.
People here love to blind themselves. Anyway...
I think most people lump Moyes' preference with Young based on the games he's started. He started against Liverpool, City and Chelsea away despite relatively poor form and almost no productivity in games against lesser sides. It stinks of a 'work ethic over skill' selection which is a grievance of many.
Fair point. I think that says more about our manager than the abilities of Young and Kagawa, though. The "work ethic over skill" was something I didn't like about the latter Ferguson era, and I still don't like it now.
He was out for over 2 months though, which makes that number look a lot worse then it really is (he missed 16 games in that period according to transfermarkt). So from April 1st until the end of the season (1 month and a half) he got another 7 starts.
Anyways, if you don't believe me that Kagawa was mostly first choice when fit, look at this...
http://www.transfermarkt.com/en/shinji-kagawa/leistungsdaten/spieler_81785_2012.html
In the league, he started 17 games. Was injured for 11/12 games during that knee injury period (it says not in lineup for the game prior to knee injury so I'm not sure if he was rested or just injured then). Unused substitute 4 times (rested for champions league games v Galatasary and Madrid for the first 2). Then only subbed on 3 times. Doesn't seem like the stats of somebody who was out of favour now does it?
Edit: Want to add that Young did also play most of the time when fit in the league, he just had loads of injuries. Valencia on the other hand didn't have any injuries.
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Did you just conveniently "forget" that Kagawa had missed 12-15 games at that stage, because of injury/travel? It's hard to take you seriously as a poster when you ignore important facts like that.
Fergie started Kagawa 70-75% of the time in the PL/CL when he was available. That's a first XI player right there, way ahead of Young. Also, we didn't have Januzaj or Mata in the first team last season, so of course Valencia was gonna get a lot of playtime. Kagawa can't occupy both wings. Not to mention, he was a first choice for the AM position when RVP or Rooney was injured. He started roughly 1/3 games there, which again gave much more opportunities for Young/Valencia. But Fergie never chose Young over Kagawa consistently. And if he was around at this stage, I doubt he'd choose Valencia ahead of him as well.
Face it: Fergie rated Kagawa.
Which will, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with Kagawa slipping further down the pecking order this season, right?
I don't deny that he's been used less this season than last. With very good reason. A couple of which you mention there (Januzaj obviously being the bigger influence of the two, when it comes to Kagawa sitting games out) but the most obvious reason being his woeful productivity, when he did get picked (as outlined above)
However, anyone who thinks he established himself in Fergie's best XI last season is living in cloud cuckoo land. Which sums up 90% of your contributions to this thread, from day one, come to think about it.
I knew this thread and Pogue would eventually cross hairs!
Has anyone considered playing Pogue in a more central role? might improve him
Look at the post I made above, he was fit for 24 games, had 17 starts and 3 subs, 2 of the games he didn't feature in was being rested for midweek champions league games. Proves my point even more really.
Look at my post above. Also, those standard "excuses" can be used for all of our players and are valid reasons why most of them aren't performing. The only players suited to our current style are Valencia and Young, and Rooney, but he's actually a world class player so is performing well mostly (but he's suited to any style of football).
Kagawa should still be ahead of Young and Valencia. That's the point here.
The only reason Valencia got so much playtime last season was because a) we didn't have any other options and b) he had just had a brilliant season. For all we knew, he could just be in a bad spell. Turns out it's chronic.
The only reason Kagawa isn't playing, is because Moyes is a clown. If you think that you can cut a player's playtime from 70-75% to 25-30% while putting Januzaj the kid and Danny fecking Welbeck ahead of him in his natural position, and expect his level to not drop significantly, then you're plain stupid.
The funnny thing is that Kagawa has been one of our best players in the CL this campaign. Easily top 3. And surprise surprise! The CL is the only tournament were we haven't been shit! Hmm... Mysterious.
He's not that far off really even though he pulled them out of his arse. Actually his 5% margin is accurate. He started 71% of the games he wasn't injured for last season (being rested for a couple before big champions league games), and that's ignoring it took him a while to get back from injury, while this season he's started 26% of league games, or 30% if you don't take into account the first 4 games because of the confed cup so he wasn't ready for the season. Or you could look at it like he has played in only 24% of our minutes so far this season. Either way, Moyes hasn't used him anywhere near enough or as much as Fergie did. Kagawa has easily deserved a lot more then that.
@Mad Winger Honest question, what will you do when Kagawa eventually leaves Man Utd ?
So we're ignoring games in which he was injured last season but including every game from this season?
He missed a couple of weeks due to over-eating FFS! Fairly sure he also picked up a knock playing for Japan. Then there's the first few games of the season, as you point out.
Plus there's the idea that he was "rested" for CL games last season, yet started more European games this season. Are we deducting games in which he was rested before those fixtures?
Like I said, quality made up stats.
I included all of them last season (even the one's he was rested in, I just added in that point to show Fergie rated him), other then the one's he was out injured for 12 games. This season I ignored the first 4 games, forgot about the overeating thing but that only counts for 1 game really, 2 at most. So okay, 7 starts out of 21 games, up to 33%.
You know you can't just disregard the stats when they prove you wrong, just because you are wrong and don't want to admit it.
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