Manchester United are the best drilled defensive unit in league - G Neville

Pogue Mahone said:
He was definitely weak under high balls in his first few seasons but I noticed a huge improvement last season. I certainly don't think he is so much worse than all the other keepers on that list to completely negate the big reduction in number of catches/punches per game compared to the others. Close the gap slightly, maybe.



Well that's the point I'm making. Once a narrative gets established, people cling to it long past the point where it's no longer true. Last season, there was a narrative established earl on that we couldn't defend for shit and De Gea was single-handedly stopping us slumping to mid-table. Now we're seeing stats that (after the early season wobble) we had the meanest defence in the league, with our keeper facing comparable shots on goal to all the other top teams and punching/catching a lot fewer balls/game. To me, that means we need to re-think the narrative. Perhaps De Gea was better protected than our defence has been given credit for?

I mean, don't get me wrong, he did make the highest number of saves/game of any top four keeper, so he definitely could have been protected better but those stats do imply that he was nowhere near as exposed as people seem to think.
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I wonder how the stats would look if you split the season in two halves? It seemed like our defence got stronger for a large period of the second half of the season after being much more dependent on DDG at the beginning. It's quite possible that his performances in the first half of the season alone saved us rather than it being consistent throughout.

I'm not convinced the entire fan base and manager could have bought into the "DDG saved us" narrative without there being some foundation for it, especially given Van Gaal's quite statistical and detail orientated approach.
 
Ramshock said:
The same two games people are judging him to be shit on? Come on
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I like Blind, but I thought he might struggle. He's done very well but to compare him to Kompany after two games is premature. I'd agree that people writing him off already are also wrong.
 
Blind has surprised us all and handled himself very well on Friday even after they brought Gestede on.

What will be interesting is how he does if a striker gets the better of him early in a game. If a striker either beats him with pace or strength early on. Will he wilt? Or brush himself off and go again.

But so far so good and he's handled what's been thrown at him. Let's not forget he's forming a new partnership with Smalling so in theory their partnership will get better.
 
sullydnl said:
I wonder how the stats would look if you split the season in two halves? It seemed like our defence got stronger for a large period of the second half of the season after being much more dependent on DDG at the beginning. It's quite possible that his performances in the first half of the season alone saved us rather than it being consistent throughout.

I'm not convinced the entire fan base and manager could have bought into the "DDG saved us" narrative without there being some foundation for it, especially given Van Gaal's quite statistical and detail orientated approach.
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Yeah, I think it was definitely a season of two halves. Hence Nev's goals conceded stat starts in November.

What's interesting about the stats I posted is that DDG still saw a very similar amount of action overall (less, if anything). Which demonstrates how well protected he must have been once we got our shit together. So, in terms of stopping the opposition scoring we'd have to say that Van Gaal's famous philosophy was reaping benefits about as soon as he predicted it would.
 
Rich_H_1989 said:
Blind has surprised us all and handled himself very well on Friday even after they brought Gestede on.

What will be interesting is how he does if a striker gets the better of him early in a game. If a striker either beats him with pace or strength early on. Will he wilt? Or brush himself off and go again.

But so far so good and he's handled what's been thrown at him. Let's not forget he's forming a new partnership with Smalling so in theory their partnership will get better.
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And the entire backline for that matter. Shaw was playing them onside in one of the sequences they showed and when you play such an aggressive offside trap every single defender has to form a partnership together.
 
OnlyTwoDaSilvas said:
November was also when Carrick came back. It's no coincidence that's when we shored things up a great deal. Then our end-of-season collapse happened as soon as he was absent again.
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Aye, good point. Having him and Schneiderlin in the team really makes us crazy hard to break down. Probably overkill though.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Aye, good point. Having him and Schneiderlin in the team really makes us crazy hard to break down. Probably overkill though.
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It is probably overkill because right now neither of them feels comfortable stepping out of that zone to link midfield and attack and we have a chasm between the midfield and the #10. Ironically enough someone like Di Maria who is capable of collecting the ball from deep and running at the defense would be the ideal #10 with the kind of protection those two offer behind him and that's likely what Van Gaal has been trying to get from Memphis and Adnan.
 
Niall said:
Where did you find that URL? The URL for that video on the streamable website is:

Code: 
http://streamable.com/9l2p

That's what the embedding code is looking for.
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Ah, that explains it. I took the url from Reddit, which must have linked directly to the resource in order to be embeddable on the Reddit listing.
 
OnlyTwoDaSilvas said:
November was also when Carrick came back. It's no coincidence that's when we shored things up a great deal. Then our end-of-season collapse happened as soon as he was absent again.
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While it's true that our collapse coincided with Carrick's injury, it's also the case that Jones went out at the same time. And, interestingly, when Jones came back, the three game losing streak stopped and we finished with a win and two draws conceding only twice in the final three games.
 
They didn't really need to pick November 8th as the start date. They could have said from the start of last season and we would still have the best record (although it would be marginal, only by 1 I think). We conceded 14 goals between the start of the season in August and the start of November (the bulk being the Leicester game obviously), and then from November until now conceded 23, so it's undoubtedly a huge improvement in that sense.

One of the main reasons why I'm confident we'll challenge for the title is because how organized we are when we are fully fit. With Carrick last season, I think we had around a 75% win rate, but he was out for half the season and we went down to like mid 30's without him, because that would mean putting Rooney in midfield, and Herrera/blind holding. Now we have Schweinsteiger who is even better then Carrick to rotate, and when necessary, Schneiderlin who is more then capable of being a very good defensive mid as well. Means we shouldn't have the problem that was the biggest issue last season and we should be a lot more consistent even with 1 or 2 injuries in midfield.
 
JPRouve said:
Click on shots. for 2014/2015.

Edit: We concede the least amount of shots per game, but we have the highest shot on targets percentage and the 4th goals per shots against percentage.

So what I understand is that we don't concede much opportunities, but we concede big opportunities, so while De Gea doesn't have much to do, he has important save to make.
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Aah. Got it. I'd like to believe that opposition players are more motivated to score against United. So, even an average striker has a higher probability of scoring from a chance against us as compared to the same chance against another team. ;)

Optimistic thinking, but I get your point.
 
ravelston said:
While it's true that our collapse coincided with Carrick's injury, it's also the case that Jones went out at the same time. And, interestingly, when Jones came back, the three game losing streak stopped and we finished with a win and two draws conceding only twice in the final three games.
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That's the spirit. Not enough Jones love in this place. He's a bloody good defender.
 
bosnian_red said:
They didn't really need to pick November 8th as the start date. They could have said from the start of last season and we would still have the best record (although it would be marginal, only by 1 I think).
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Would have been joint first with Chelsea on 37.
 
If not for the desperation to see something familiar a.k.a: a traditional big central defender, anybody would have been able to see that we conceded an extremely small amount of chances since the second half of last season. Our fans and English fans however will never feel comfortable unless there is a Terry/Vidic at the heart of defence. Playing with a high line and defending through possession and being compact can more than make up for that traditional defender profile though and it definitely has in our case. Problem though is how much we are sacrificing to keep our shape defending wise at the expense of being dangerous up front.
 
Just to add some more fuel to the De Gea fire; His save % last year was essentially tied with Courtois (both around 71.8%). Both Hart and the Arsenal combination (Ospina + Szczesny) had better save ratios (73.1% and 72.7%). This doesn't mean that I don't think he's one of the best keepers in the world - just that he did nothing that far beyond the expected last year. Sure he saved us a few times, but that's what (good) goalkeepers do.
 
ravelston said:
Just to add some more fuel to the De Gea fire; His save % last year was essentially tied with Courtois (both around 71.8%). Both Hart and the Arsenal combination (Ospina + Szczesny) had better save ratios (73.1% and 72.7%). This doesn't mean that I don't think he's one of the best keepers in the world - just that he did nothing that far beyond the expected last year. Sure he saved us a few times, but that's what (good) goalkeepers do.
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That may be true, although it's worth noting that save ratios won't take into account the type of saves a keeper is making, which makes them at least a little bit unreliable. De Gea made a lot of tremendous saves last season which were crucial in us winning games, or not losing them. Statistically though, that won't go down as anymore impressive than a fairly basic save he'd have made.
 
Cheesy said:
That may be true, although it's worth noting that save ratios won't take into account the type of saves a keeper is making, which makes them at least a little bit unreliable. De Gea made a lot of tremendous saves last season which were crucial in us winning games, or not losing them. Statistically though, that won't go down as anymore impressive than a fairly basic save he'd have made.
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You are right the quality of the saves isn't quantifiable and we should keep that in mind, but a lot of posters are pretending that he was busier than all the other goalkeepers in the league and that's totally wrong, he wasn't busy at all.
 
Rich_H_1989 said:
Were they? I thought for half an hour Gana was their best player and then like villa he faded! And ultimately the midfield did just enough so that he never really threatened.

The one moment I thought he really got away was when he did a lovely Cruyff turn on the edge of our box and tried to thread a pass through which Smalling intercepted. Other than that I really didn't think they threatened?
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They had their chances man, chances that better teams would have made count. Maybe we have different ideas about what 'threatened' means.
 
The back 4 have really impressed me. They stand their ground, and try guide players into the least dangerous channel. They don't dive in, are do anything rash most of the time which gives us a great shape.

Blind and Smalling were very strong last night. Oulare came on and is a big lad, just shows you brains beats brawn. They screened him rather than diving in, it was from the Rio Ferdinand school of defending. Of course more experienced forwards will play that side of the game better, but this still great to see.
 
Mr Anderson said:
The back 4 have really impressed me. They stand their ground, and try guide players into the least dangerous channel. They don't dive in, are do anything rash most of the time which gives us a great shape.

Blind and Smalling were very strong last night. Oulare came on and is a big lad, just shows you brains beats brawn. They screened him rather than diving in, it was from the Rio Ferdinand school of defending. Of course more experienced forwards will play that side of the game better, but this still great to see.
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To be fair he had a 1 on 1 run against blind aswell, and he not only kept up but actually outmuscled him. I think blind has improved physically over this passed year as he wouldn't have done that when he first joined.
 
Smalling is growing in stature with every match. He was immense last night. Blind compliments him very well, though a pure left footed CB would have been good, and the fullbacks are great. Can't say I'm sold on Romero though.
 
Adam-Utd said:
To be fair he had a 1 on 1 run against blind aswell, and he not only kept up but actually outmuscled him. I think blind has improved physically over this passed year as he wouldn't have done that when he first joined.
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Ya, both done really well against him as I tried to say. Blind done really well when Oulare broke down the flank on a counter, got ahead of him and took the ball, didn't dive in as most would try when facing a physical striker. Can't fault Blind so far at all, passed every game with flying colours.
 
Mr Anderson said:
Ya, both done really well against him as I tried to say. Blind done really well when Oulare broke down the flank on a counter, got ahead of him and took the ball, didn't dive in as most would try when facing a physical striker. Can't fault Blind so far at all, passed every game with flying colours.
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I keep expecting blind to look out of his depth or have a poor game which makes it look a silly decision, but so far he's done better than anybody would have expected. Tougher tests will come but if he carries on like this we may not need another CB after all.
 
Adam-Utd said:
I keep expecting blind to look out of his depth or have a poor game which makes it look a silly decision, but so far he's done better than anybody would have expected. Tougher tests will come but if he carries on like this we may not need another CB after all.
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Ya, bigger tests to come. Opposition will try find faults and use them to their advantage and obviously better opposition to come to. They will look back over our games and see what they can do to try upset us and get a result. Up to Blind and Smalling to not get complacent and rise to the challenge again. A good foundation so far.
 
He's had something else to say this time. The bold part is so true.
He said: ‘They've not got enough cutting edge. They haven't got players who can beat players in the final third, they don't create enough. For me they get lulled into thinking they are playing football really well.

‘They dominate possession but they don't dominate matches. You dominate a match by scoring goals and playing at a high tempo. Win the game and then control possession.’

Neville added: ‘They need to sort the Goalkeeper situation out. That's a big problem. Manchester United need to sign a new striker, keep De Gea and now that Jonny Evans has gone, ideally a centre back too, in the next few days.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...riker-insists-Gary-Neville.html#ixzz3kLQCW3gU
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