Shinji Kagawa
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
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That was a game, not a period when he was 'awful every week'. After that game he didn't played on the next 6 weeks.
Well that's not true he played 60 minutes 5 days later.
And he played in the two prem games before that and wasn't very good either.
I personally thought the most important thing for Kagawa was a run in the side and confidence from his manager, lo and behold he starts looking the business as soon as that happens.
Like I said in the Nani thread yesterday. It's almost as though there's some sort of correlation between playing well and getting picked more often. Crazy, eh?
Yes, which was 2 days later. He then started the next game. Before that he'd started 5 out of ten games and come on for 30 minutes in another game. This is while we played football two times a week. So every week seems fair enough. If he hadn't have missed two weeks through overeating he'd have started about 40 games this year for club and country which certainly seems like a lot
You said every week but in that time it went like this:
- Tottenham - dropped
- Swansea - played
- Sunderland - dropped
- Swansea - played
- Chelsea - dropped
- Sunderland - played
- Cardiff- dropped
- Stoke- dropped
- Fulham - dropped
if that's "awful every week" in your book then we read different books you and I.
I don't know about here but on the newbs people were slating Moyes for playing Kagawa out wide, calling Moyes all the names under the sun, blaming him for some of Kagawa's poor performances. He played out wide last night and was excellent, dispelling that myth, if he hasn't already, that he's incapable from playing on out wide. Sure;y Kagawa should take some of the blame for some of his poor performances, not Moyes for, 'playing him out of position'.
Or... getting picked more often and playing well
Strange that your rule hasn't really applied to half of our team this season.
To be fair Pogue, maybe the reason he's playing better now is that our "system" has clearly changed in the last month. Have we seen a game where we've resorted to the style of play we had against Fulham for example? Maybe, playing with like minded players like Mata might make a difference. You mentioned Welbeck as well. During the time when Welbz led the line for us in Rooney/RVP's absence, did Kagawa get a game? or a regular run? Nope. You mentioned our strikers making runs. The fact that we don't have two strikers stepping on each other's toes might actually be of benefit. And having one striker is clearly liberating more space than when we have 2 up top. There was that period where we didn't score a goal from open play for a ridiculously long period of time, with Valencia/Young being our wingers. Is that a sign of our attackers making great runs? Or were the wingers shit then too?
And you know, playing a player repeatedly and showing some confidence in him might actually make a positive difference to the player. Rather than you know, hooking him after a good game and sitting him on the bench for 3-4 weeks at a time. Even Rooney's form clearly suffers whenever he's back from a spell out of the team and it takes him a few games to get back to top level.
You can't say "Sunderland - Dropped" when it was literally two days after the Swansea game. You missed off the games before that.
Shaktar, Tottenham, Everton, Leverkusen - played, played, played, played.
So since he come back from international break he played 10 weeks of football and played 7 games and came on once for half an hour. This was also around internationals.
It hasn't, though.
Every single time Kagawa has played for United it's been in some variant of a 4231 formation, where he has license to tuck in as well as rotate among the three positions behind the striker.
We've seen the formation we played last night dozens of times this season. The only real difference was Kagawa playing well in it.
Actually feck it, can't eb bothered to have the same arguments again. Let's just hope he carries it on from now on!
Feck me Twiggy, you said around the Swansea FA Cup game mate, hence why I gave you the stats for around that game.
The FA Cup game was in Jan, now you start bringing up games in November?If you didn't like the word dropped, then think of it as "left out" instead. Anyway, you know who did play both games, Danny Wellbeck, and the following game too.
Everyone knew he was talented, the problem is fitting him in our team week in week out. And some of the posts in here are so embarrassingly agenda driven, everything is about belittling the players who compete for his position whilst lumping hyperboles around Kagawa like theres no tomorrow. The fact remains that we will have enough trouble next season choosing our front attacking four when RvP and Rooney are fit, with Mata, Nani, Valencia, Welbeck all competing. We need consistency next season, a regular starting 11 and unfortunately for Kagawa we have Mata now. I think one, maybe two big names are going to go in the summer and chances are it will be Kagawa.
I do think our approach to games, the style of football we have been playing for the past few weeks, is different to what we saw a month or two ago, even if the formation itself is the same. The contrast with the Fulham game is pretty stark, but that was only the most notorious example of how we were playing week in week out in the middle part of the season.
For me the truth is somewhere in the middle of the two extreme opinions being laid out here. Of course Kagawa is playing better now than he was earlier in the season. But the whole team is also playing better, with a more coherent gameplan, and that is also bringing out the best in him.
Whatever the truth of it I hope he is still here next season and the manager finds a way to fit him into the side regularly.
For me the truth is somewhere in the middle of the two extreme opinions being laid out here. Of course Kagawa is playing better now than he was earlier in the season. But the whole team is also playing better, with a more coherent gameplan, and that is also bringing out the best in him.
Whatever the truth of it I hope he is still here next season and the manager finds a way to fit him into the side regularly.
Not just the formation Pogue, but the style of play within the formation. I mean, surely the fact that we were crossing like maniacs even in your 4-2-3-1 formation, whereas we're not nearly doing it nearly as much now must be some type of coaching change, unless the players are just playing their own way now. And if you watched the number of times Rooney and RVP ran into and almost atop one another, and the fact that they had multiple games where the amount of passes between them was less than five, shows there was no real interchange between them, so really it was more 2 up top, than Rooney as a playmaker in the 3 behind the 1. I mean, can you find another playmaker for any other top team that passes it less than five times to the main striker over a 90 minute game in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
Kagawa played well enough on the left under Fergie. POTM August 2012 and one of our top performers in from the beginning of March till the end of the season. He played almost exclusively on the left during this period. He had maybe 1 and half game combined in the AM role. Having said that, his best football did come during the minutes he played as an AM...
If you play Kagawa consistently, he will play well. That's the point here. Granted, he'll play better as a no.10, but if you put someone like Mata in the same position, then it hardly matters, as we've seen in the Prem lately.
If you play Kagawa inconsistently and in a two-striker system, then he will only affect the games every once in a while. Up until recently, Moyes did both of these "mistakes". To top it off, he allowed Welbeck and Januzaj to be ahead of Kagawa in the pecking order for the AM position at one point. This obviously must have shattered whatever confidence Kagawa had left.
Either way, Moyes seems to be learning. Kagawa is featuring often, and Mata is playing in the no.10 position. This greatly benefits Kagawa and ultimately: United. I'd still prefer Kagawa in the no.10 position, but I'm not sure if Mata is good enough on the wing. Time will tell though. We're extremely lucky to have both.
If you play Kagawa consistently, he will play well. That's the point here. Granted, he'll play better as a no.10, but if you put someone like Mata in the same position, then it hardly matters, as we've seen in the Prem lately.
If you play Kagawa inconsistently and in a two-striker system, then he will only affect the games every once in a while. Up until recently, Moyes did both of these "mistakes". To top it off, he allowed Welbeck and Januzaj to be ahead of Kagawa in the pecking order for the AM position at one point. This obviously must have shattered whatever confidence Kagawa had left.
Either way, Moyes seems to be learning. Kagawa is featuring often, and Mata is playing in the no.10 position. This greatly benefits Kagawa and ultimately: United. I'd still prefer Kagawa in the no.10 position, but I'm not sure if Mata is good enough on the wing. Time will tell though. We're extremely lucky to have both.
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Lets wait until RVP returns from injury and see if he is really learning or he didn't had any choice on the first place.
When's RVP expected to be fit again? I'm pretty sure Kagawa will be back on the bench again if we have both RVP and Rooney fit.
You make out as though he ate himself into oblivion, when none of us know the facts.
I guess Rooney's smoking doesn't bother you too much then? I mean smoking is premeditated
It is a problem isn't it. We can't play Rooney and RVP without sacrificing pace, and we can't play with pace without sacrificing either Kagawa and Mata and seeing as how Mata is the 38m man, we can't not play him.
He ate so much he was sick, had his stomach pumped and missed two weeks! What is worse than that?!?!?!
You dont need pace all over the pitch. A pacy outlet on the right is enough. The problem is that Moyes is more likely to take the easier option and pick the big names even when he cant get it to work just because he can say "the best players can always play together". No, either find a system in which they do or grow a pair and drop them for a lesser name that fits better.
That's racist.
It's bizarre but we don't know enough about what happened to start crucifying him for lacking professionalism. He always comes across as a very dedicated player with an excellent mentality.
What more do we need to know? I'm a fat prick but I've never needed my stomach pumped!
Exactly, Valencia on the right would be ideal but then you can't play Mata because Rooney will be behind RVP and he's not defensively sufficient enough to help Evra on the left. It is a predicament because we absolutely need someone to stretch the game for us or we seem very flat but Kagawa and Mata have already proved they have a better understanding than Rooney and RVP have shown all season.
The thing is this year we've had enough games to rotate players and they all get enough gametime. Next year.....
I've worked in the field of medicine for almost 20 years and have never once heard of someone having their stomach pumped because they ate too much. I'm convinced something got lost in translation somewhere along the way. It's all too bizarre to be as straightforward as you make it sound.
I find it hard to believe that Kagawa needed his stomach pumped from eating too much. Never heard of such a case and neither has my sister who is a doctor.
I know very little about this kind of thing but instinctively - this. Id love to know the truth of the matter, an allergy perhaps? A dodgy prawn, the wrong kind of mushroom, who knows. Its hard to think of a theory that makes less sense than Kagawa sitting down and gorging on food until he collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital.
If Moyes cant find a system to make it work, he simply has to have the balls to bench one of Rooney/RVP. Even if it means selling them. Play Mata behind the striker, Kagawa left and a pacy winger on the right.
Fine I'm not going to hold that against him any more. I was wrong.
This X100
It's the bit at the hospital that has me completely bemused.
"He's eaten too much?!? This is serious!! Nurse! The stomach pump!"
If someone rocked up at A&E saying they'd overeaten chances are they wouldn't even get to see a doctor.
The only rational reason to pump someone's stomach is when they've ingested something toxic.
He did not overeat. Its like saying, my stomach hurts, I think I sholdn't have eaten that last piece. He had a stomach bug.I completely agree. Good post.
Interestingly enough, Japanese people tend to have dodgy guts. Much more likely to die of something in their GI tract than us westerners. We're more likely to get fat and lazy until our hearts explode.
Plus the Japanese diet tends to be low in gluten, so would be common enough to get a dodgy tummy after a meal which is high in gluten. Maybe Rio took him to that Italian joint and fed him full of pasta?
Plus the Japanese diet tends to be low in gluten, so would be common enough to get a dodgy tummy after a meal which is high in gluten. Maybe Rio took him to that Italian joint and fed him full of pasta?
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