He has to play behind Rooney again against Tottenham.
Sorry Robin......but we must try it again.
Sorry Robin......but we must try it again.
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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Yeah, I'm being negative after saying he had a very good performance. Right.He was the fecking business tonight.
What the feck is wrong with the cnuts on here who bring in negativity after a result and performance like that?
What an utter weapon you are.
Just no. People seem to be forgetting that RVP is an actual world class player, better than both Rooney and Kagawa.
Yes. After a United player has a brilliant game in a great European away result, if the first thing you say is "Watch people go overboard over his performance tonight"... that's pathetic & negative. Talk about having it in for a United player ffs.
I don't have it in for him at all. He's one of my favourite players. It doesn't mean you can't point out when people on here go overboard, which they do with Kagawa, frequently.
Talk about having it in for a United player ffs.
How was he in the first half today? I only got to watch the second. Thought he was OK, great pass to Rooney for Smallings goal. Was he any better in the first?
I'm for playing more fluid football. Don't really care who has to sit because of it.
Excellent. Busy, productive. Won 4 free-kicks in good positions, 1 leading to second goal, instrumental in break that led to 1st.
I think we're all going a bit overboard. Yes he was excellent tonight when he was played in his position, but when has he ever impressed from out wide? I know he's not even remotely a winger, but still, talk about a one trick pony.
White text ffs.
White text ffs.
That's good news. Considering our lack of good wingers, we should really look into playing Januzaj/Kagz/Rooney narrow behind RVP - we still have wingers who we can bring on if we need width. But doing this I'm sure would improve our fluidity through MF. Would require Rafael at RB for it to work though I think.
You almost got me, but not quite. :P.
Can't see anyone who watched that tonight writing off our wingers so quickly. Tony had his best game of the season and it was Rooney and Kagawa's linking with Valencia and Nani that caused most of the problems tonight.
He was a busy bastard in the first half, all over the place, quick, smart passing and darting through the middle like you never see him do on the left. Involved in that great counter-attacking first goal.
Very doubtful. It's particularly curious when you anticipate exaggeration that hasn't happened yet, it gives you away.
I haven't seen any such frequent exaggerations, but you must have realised that people go overboard over virtually every one of our players at some point or another. Some more than others.
Very doubtful. It's particularly curious when you anticipate exaggeration that hasn't happened yet, it gives you away.
I haven't seen any such frequent exaggerations, but you must have realised that people go overboard over virtually every one of our players at some point or another. Some more than others.
Thought it might get a nibble!
Honestly, it's quite staggering how many people have slated him throughout the season. "I don't care if he's not a winger, he should be playing better there." Why?! Would you expect Fabio to excel in the centre of midfield if he finally got to play in the first team (seriously, where the hell has he gone?)? No, you wouldn't. It's unfair to expect the same of Kagawa. If he was playing as a #10 regularly and not impressing, fine, but he's never had a real run there.
Played there tonight and hopefully finally proved himself to the moronic doubters that he is indeed a very, very talented footballer.
No point in bringing him in for a big game when he might not be fully fit when there's a very good partnership with Rooney and Kagawa already, and both are fully fit. Let RVP fully heal so he doesn't aggravate his injury further.
A little harsh on them yeah, but one game doesn't change the general trend this season. Fair point though.
But I guess next question is, if we want Kagawa at 10 with 2 wingers, one of RVP or Rooney won't be happy, which poses it's own problems.
Judging by Moyes comments before the match I don't think van Persie will even make the Spurs match unfortunately. I really hope he is fit for the game though.
My response would be to drop one of the wingers. As you say, this one good game doesn't wipe out a season in which they've had a mixture of good and not so good games. I reckon you put Rooney out left in the formation but let him do his usual all-over-the-pitch job, and give Kagawa the #10 slot, since it makes so much of a difference to his performance playing there. Then RVP can play up front as per usual. Then the wingers can fight it out for the remaining slot on the right, which should prevent any more dips in their form from having too detrimental an effect on our season.
The funny thing is that he's had maybe 180mins maximum in his proper position this season, and looked excellent in all of them. Add that to his only full game there last season, Norwich, and a pretty undeniable pattern starts to develop.
He and Rooney have repeatedly showed the potential for a dazzling creative partnership. It's time to actually give it to them. I'm convinced that you don't actually have to drop RVP to do that, you just have to make the wingers (who, despite good performances tonight, have still been a little unreliable this season) fight it out for one slot.
You're being very odd here, he is one of my favourite footballers, how that post goes against that is beyond me. It's an observation, I didn't in any way criticize him or his performance, it was a dig at some of the OTT posters on this forum, quite clearly.
In the last sentence you're actually agreeing that people go overboard, so ... wasn't what I said ... valid?
Either way you're drawing conclusions that aren't true and being pretty abusive in doing so, seems needless.
Personally I think RVP should start from the bench against Spurs if he's fit. This worked so well tonight, and despite scoring pretty steadily, van Persie's looked off it all season. I thought it was a lack of fitness, and a prolonged rest should do him no harm. What's the worst that could happen? Kagawa or Rooney has a stinker and we bring on one of the world's best strikers after an hour?
You're screwing Rooney about a bit there. Rough, considering he's been our best player this season, to ask him to make do out left in order to accomodate RVP and Kagawa in they're favoured slots. It probably is the only way to shoehorn the 3 of them in but I can't see Wayne licking his chops at the prospect.
Indeed. It also wouldn't get the best out of Rooney, who has always been better centrally.
If he was playing like he was last season then moving him over to the left becomes realistic, but on this form it just shouldn't happen.
Not really. I'm telling him to keep doing exactly what he's doing now. There's no way to write 'free role' on a formation, so I'm nominally putting him in the wide role, but he won't actually play there.
The point is that Evra, combining with the midfielder on his side (Cleverley, for example, who does like to drop wide), and with Rooney and Kagawa, gives us more than enough width on that side on his own. Even playing behind a winger, he tends to be the player who takes up that position when we attack. So it seems like an obvious solution to play no proper winger on that side and to let Rooney do whatever the feck he wants. He didn't actually play any differently today than he does behind a striker. he was essentially sharing Kagawa's space on the pitch, and that proved incredibly effective.
He makes a valid point to be fair =P.
No he doesn't, but this really isn't the place to whip up that moronic shitstorm again.
EDIT: Besides, as I say, I'm not actually saying Rooney needs to change positions. All I'm saying is that it is perfectly possible to let Rooney do exactly what he's been doing all season long, and play Kagawa as #10 at the same time. Tonight proved that they can play in the same area without 'getting in each other's way'.
The whole idea of 'getting in each other's way' is ridiculous. A football pitch is a big space. What we're talking about is deciding to keep two players who have proved that they link up superbly and are very creative together close to one another on the pitch. Xavi and Iniesta have built their careers on trying to stay as close as possible to one another on the pitch whenever possible. Do they 'get in each other's way'?
The problem is you're looking at this only from the perspective of going forward. We still need someone to come back and help Evra, especially against a team with a good winger full back combination. Yes going forward Rooney has a free role but ultimately one of the two have to do some defensive work on the left. That is where the problem lies because not only do neither want to do it, they can't then dash upfield and influence the spaces there on a quick flowing move. It's the defensive duties which makes Kagawa bad on the left and Rooney not want to play there. Going forward it's easy to say you can go where you want. But if you've been tracking back, you can't just teleport into a position between the opposition lines.
But Rooney is famous for liking to get stuck in defensively. People on here actually criticise him for going deep too often, and for being too eager to chase back and help out in defence. I'm saying that if you play Kagawa as #10, Rooney's flexibility and work-rate can be turned into a massive plus. He will do that work defensively, because he already often does. And he will go where he is needed on the pitch, because that's already something he likes to do - to stay involved in the play no matter what is happening. Despite how the tabloids like to read things, his issue last season wasn't with specific positions, it was with the fact that thanks to his own form along with RVP's arrival and other factors, he wasn't having much of an influence on our football. This approach would, if anything, allow him to be even more integral.
AFAIK it's pretty common knowledge he doesn't want to play on the left. From a pure tactical and footballing ability basis, I agree it works.
Its not really the same as Xavi and Iniesta though, you're supposed to have two players in central midfield. Its completely normal.
What you're suggesting sounds more like Mancini's really narrow formation at City when he had Silva/Nasri/Tevez playing in attacking midfield, and they did get in each others way. I think you'll always end up with one of Kagawa/Rooney playing wide to some extent.
In a perfect world we'd print that out and staple it to the foreheads of the guilty.
As I've said a few times now, I'm not arguing that he should play on the left. Read my posts again. I'm saying he's already playing a free role all over the pitch, and that Evra already practically fills the role of a winger on the left, so why not just move Kagawa into the #10 position.
I've not really made my point very clearly - I only mentioned Rooney on the left because there's no way to depict someone playing a free role in a written formation. I don't actually want him to play on the left. If Moyes went with this approach, all he'd have to say to Rooney is 'keep doing what you're doing. Go wherever on the pitch you feel like you're needed.'
Yes, but if you watch Xavi and Iniesta, they literally try and stay within no more than ten yards of each other at all times, which is certainly not true of all midfielders. So I'm not referring to them both playing in midfield, but rather to the fact that they deliberately play as close together as possible. And it doesn't lead to them getting in each other's way, it leads to them being a more effective unit.
Kagawa and Rooney have already done this twice - tonight, and against Norwich last season. In both games, people put Rooney up front in their formations, but his actual average position on the pitch was pretty much the same as Kagawa's. Neither of them played ahead, they both played in the same space, creating for one another and for the other players. Kagawa stayed strictly in that position, and Rooney floated in and out of it - going forward sometimes, into midfield sometimes, out to either wing sometimes. And in both games it has been incredibly effective.
No, you've made your point fine. You're just not listening to what I'm saying. Someone has to track back on the left to support Evra. You say that's fine because Rooney likes doing that. But you cant just have someone do it occasionally. Whether you play with wide men or not you always have a player to support your wing backs. It's not possible to say to Rooney "go ahead, go wherever you want, but track back on the left too". Also it's not possible to not specifically allocate that to someone because then Evra will be exposed.
All I'm saying is you're neglecting the time it would take for Rooney tracking back to then transition to contributing upfield. Hey may have e license to go where he wants but tracking back will seriously curb his influence in going forward.
Ok yep I get you now. I agree it's potentially a problem, although to be honest I'm not sure it's one which we don't already have. Because Evra already fills the traditional winger role in attack for us at the moment, you'll generally find our left winger playing as a sort of inside forward close to the #10 already - Nani did it today, Januzaj has done it in his performances there. And as a result Evra has already had minimal cover down that wing. Generally that cover seems to come from the midfielder - note today how often it was Giggs defending with him there, with Nani caught too far up the pitch and therefore having to come back and help defend centrally whilst Giggs did that.
Obviously that's not ideal. The solution for most teams that play any sort of 4231 is that both of the '2' are defensively capable. With Cleverley that's still an issue - he's had some good games helping Evra defend on the left, but he's also had some stinkers, leaving Evra completely exposed. So potentially it would require us to partner Carrick with Fellaini - or ideally in the long term, someone better.
But as I say, I think that's a problem we're already dealing with. Rooney would be able to provide as much defensive cover as most of our left wingers have this season, since he already spends so much time back helping out the midfield and defence. It's certainly not a problem which would outweigh benefits of what I think is the obvious system for our attacking resources.
My fundamental point is that I think we're almost doing most of this stuff already. Rooney already plays a free role, and already does a lot of defensive work. Evra already fills the wing position, and his winger is already having to play more centrally in order to accomodate that. Rooney and Kagawa have already shown how well they work when they play in the same area of the pitch. All we need is to allow Kagawa to play in #10 to complete a system which has practically assembled itself.
Not sure how to get into all this really, I disagree with a lot of what you're saying but I think its going to be a difficult discussion to try and articulate.
On Xavi/Iniesta - yeah I guess they play close together, so do most Barcelona players because they play a unique brand of football which utilises short passing. I don't see how its relevant. Just because playing in confined spaces works for them doesnt mean it will work for everyone else. In that post I just gave you an example of players it didn't work for - Silva and Nasri.
On the second part - firstly I don't think they played as close as you're saying, Rooney was definitely more advanced than Kagawa tonight by a clear margin. But also, what this says is that Kagawa as a number 10 works well behind Rooney as number 9. It doesn't say that Rooney and Kagawa as two number 10's behind Van Persie as a number 9 will work.
I mean, it's hard for me to explain but I just have a gut feeling it wouldn't work the way you're saying it. The majority of what you're saying is valid to be fair though.
Yeah, it's a difficult argument to have. I flatly disagree about Rooney's position on the pitch tonight - every time Kagawa got the ball, Rooney was either behind him or next to him. But I have no way of proving it without an 'average position' or 'every touch' type stat diagram, and I don't know where you find those sorts of things.
Possibly the Xavi-Iniesta example wasn't a good one, I don't know. I think it's a perfectly valid example of what I'm saying, but then so is your counter-example in Silva and Nasri. Personally, I see clear reasons why Silva-Nasri didn't work but Rooney-Kagawa would, but they're difficult to articulate. I'll try:
Firstly, I don't believe that as a playmaker, Nasri has ever been capable of much. His one great season at Arsenal was mostly to do with his dribbling and his ability to be the player getting on the end of the through-balls, not the player providing them. That means that when he plays next to Silva, all he does is receive the ball, fail to find a way to decisively contribute, and then give the ball back. That used to settle City into a pattern of useless back and forth around the opposition's defensive block - Nasri was essentially obsolete, since Silva could do anything he could and more. For us, this wouldn't be so much of a problem, because both Rooney and Kagawa thrive not on meaningless possession, but on quick decisive attacking use of the ball. Receive the ball, turn, deliver instantly to the feet or onto the head of the striker, or slide a ball through to the winger if the former option isn't open.
Secondly: This problem was exacerbated by City's style. They played a possession-oriented build-up game, which left their opposition all pinned roughly inside their box, and City's entire team arrange around the edge exchanging passes and looking for a way through, often to no avail. I've already mentioned that I don't think Nasri has the cutting edge for that job, and whilst Silva definitely does, he is certainly more of a possession-for-possession's sake sort of player than either Rooney or Kagawa. United's football, on the other hand, has never been about loads of possession to crush the life out of the opposition. When we play badly, the build-up is more patient, but even then it is more purposeful than City's was last season with Nasri and Silva. So there is far less chance of finding yourself in that situation where every single player is skirting a massive defensive block in the opposition's box, struggling to find a way through and getting in each other's way.
Thirdly: Nasri and Silva were too similar. Both liking possession, sticking to fairly central AM roles and not contributing much either defensively or as forwards. Their partnership, as a result, was part of the reason City never seemed to have any width, and never seemed to have a play B. Rooney and Kagawa, on the other hand, would be playing from a similar area of the pitch but in very different ways. Kagawa would be a totally disciplined #10, just like he was at Dortmund, focussed entirely on receiving the ball and instantly turning that possession into a threat on goal. That's what he's best at. Rooney, on the other hand, would have a free role, reign to go where he wanted and do what he wanted, to push forward as a striker when necessary, to drop into midfield when necessary, to pull wide to find space and whip in a cross when necessary. These are all things he already does. So yes, he'd be sharing space with Kagawa sometimes when a United attack sparked into life, but there'd be no risk of the same stagnant, too-much-of-the-same-thing effect that Nasri and Silva had at City.
Whew, sorry for the massive essay. I wasn't sure how to explain that more briefly. I comfort myself that if we're having to argue in detail it's an argument worth having!
Totally fair, it's all hypothetical and I could well be talking out of my arse. It's just frustrating because I've wanted to see us try it all season, and I feel like we're already doing most of this stuff and moving Kagawa central is the obvious next step, and every time we do something like it, we play well. I'd love to see us try it just once.
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