The xG table has us at 15th and it goes some way to explaining why this season has felt so fecking miserable. It only has us 8 points above relegation, it’s an absolute disgrace.
UPDATED!!! United vs Top 6 - An Injury/Availability Analysis - Still Happy With 6th?
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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.
Quality control
I want us to lose games so ETH gets sacked,
There’s no respectful league position left so I want his tenure to be untenable.
There’s no respectful league position left so I want his tenure to be untenable.
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Ah I took you to be meaning you felt this was coming from a disingenuous position.
I’d disagree on the usefulness (obviously or I wouldn’t have bothered making this) on the principle that whether these players are getting minutes through injury (which is mainly our case here) or rotation they are the actual experienced squad not the conceptual one.
What I mean by that is proportionally we’ve played nowhere near our best XI and whilst “availability” also shows that we’ve been incapable of that I think it also hides the reality of Mainoo, Garnacho and Varane.
They aren’t peak physical players. They are two teens and a fading force. That is our squad. That is our team. That’s our United.
And that real United for me is very much not a contender, and would be sitting somewhere around 6th in theory and so too in practice.
Said it in the other thread, you can debate injuries all you want but those claims that it’s ’shocking’ that we have barely had our best 11 available for one or two games are very misleading. It’s not shocking at all, if you look at other teams it’s basically impossible to have all your best players available at the same time. Arsenal have been massively lucky with injuries this year but otherwise none of the top 5 have been able to field their best XI at all this season.
If the whole premise is we cannot assess anyone before we have our best XI play several games in a row then this is likely not going to happen ever.
If the whole premise is we cannot assess anyone before we have our best XI play several games in a row then this is likely not going to happen ever.
Who fecking cares if the subsequent result is the same? It’s not like we looked brilliant with our first choice XI my god I’m so tired of these threads being rehashed endlessly.
Yes there would be a real case if our strongest sides put in far better performances than our weaker ones. But they don’t, so this is all a waste of breath
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I’ve never once said, suggested or otherwise that you need the whole XI always available all of the time. But you do need to see your best players regularly. You do to see the impact of a coach need to see his key signings on the pitch. Not Lindelof at LB, Evans at CB and Maguire/Varane.
The other top 5 have had access to their best players with far more consistency throughout the season than we have. It’s not about having the XI every week. It’s about the proportional impact of having them more often than not or most of them together.
Why do you think I set the benchmark for decent minutes as low as 50% and excellent as 75%? It takes into account the realistic prospect of minor injury and rotation.
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Our strongest side hasn’t been able to play even once all season. Let alone the majority of it be together at once on the pitch.
You need a few games together to get any of it to work.
I think what we have faced is somewhat above average and a capable manager would have dealt with it just fine. Lindelof at LB etc are just outliers that happened once or twice, we have been able to field strong teams all season long.
No one ever has their best XI available much, or at all. Someone is always going to be injured. I see how this narrative is going to work for you with how fond of ETH and invested in him you are, and it’s easily twisted too as evidenced by claiming Garnacho has been out for a third of season and Mainoo has only been available for a third of it apparently (not to mention Varane, Maguire).
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Yeah and City, Villa and Liverpool have not had their strongest side available once either. Neither have Newcastle, Brighton or pretty much 80% or so teams in the league, and the ones that have would have been able to do it just a few times anyway.
This is the case for every team, though. Timber and Partey have been out for pretty much the entire season. That's a fifth of our best outfielders, at least according to Arteta as demonstrated when he had them available for the opening game and picked them both in the starting lineup.
And it's true not just this season, but every season.
This Arsenal XI...
Henry Bergkamp
Pires Gilberto Vieira Ljungberg
Cole Campbell Toure Lauren
Lehmann
Started only two league games.
---
This United XI...
Yorke Cole
Giggs Keane Scholes Beckham
Irwin Stam Johnsen Neville
Schmeichel
Only started one.
---
And this England XI...
Rooney Owen
Scholes Lampard Gerrard Beckham
Cole Terry Ferdinand Neville
James
Never played together at all.
I think you've seriously over-indexed on the importance of of being able to put out your best team. It's incredibly rare and a Manager who's reliant upon a clean bill of health to produce a functioning team is severely limited and will always fail to build any sort of lasting success.
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Yeah exactly my point. You will hardly ever have all your 11 best players available which is what makes it such an easy argument to defend a manager who supposedly cannot cope without it.
That is the crux of it all. ETH needs everything in his favour for him to do well which just won't happen
I do think some of you are just being disingenuous. The facts are these:
1) Ten Hag has underperformed this season even with all the hands in play.
2) we have faced the most impactful injuries to any team across the league. The fact is we haven’t had our first choice defence out even once and perhaps more importantly, there’s been no possibility of continuity.
3) Our squad is the weakest in terms of depth in the top 6. When Martinez is out we are down to Lindelof, when shaw is out we are down to AWB left back. When Rashford isn’t firing we are down to, a 19 year old. You can’t simply ignore this fact . When arsenal miss timber they have White. When city miss De Bruyne they have Foden and silva. When Liverpool miss Matip they have Konate. It’s just a different league of squad quality and I think people are being seriously biased to pretend this wouldn’t have impacted on any manager.
Could we have still managed too 4 under another manager? Yeh perhaps, but I guarantee under the same circumstances as this season, manager would have us playing consistent swashbuckling football. Would pay for people to use abit of logic and not let emotions cloud it.
1) Ten Hag has underperformed this season even with all the hands in play.
2) we have faced the most impactful injuries to any team across the league. The fact is we haven’t had our first choice defence out even once and perhaps more importantly, there’s been no possibility of continuity.
3) Our squad is the weakest in terms of depth in the top 6. When Martinez is out we are down to Lindelof, when shaw is out we are down to AWB left back. When Rashford isn’t firing we are down to, a 19 year old. You can’t simply ignore this fact . When arsenal miss timber they have White. When city miss De Bruyne they have Foden and silva. When Liverpool miss Matip they have Konate. It’s just a different league of squad quality and I think people are being seriously biased to pretend this wouldn’t have impacted on any manager.
Could we have still managed too 4 under another manager? Yeh perhaps, but I guarantee under the same circumstances as this season, manager would have us playing consistent swashbuckling football. Would pay for people to use abit of logic and not let emotions cloud it.
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Point 1 is just not true.
Point 2 is also not true as the above shows.
Look what I was replying to. Look at the wider context of the data. Look at my wider response.
We haven’t had our best players on the pitch anywhere near the other top 5. Whether they are all there or not was not the point I have raised I was responding to someone who raised it.
See above.
What did the other examples all have though that this squad doesn’t? Quality depth.
To make your point you’ve selected peak Arsenal, peak United and the Golden Generation.
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I think this completely misrepresents my argument and ignores all the time and context I’ve applied to it.
ETH does not need everything in his favour. But when all the clubs above him have had far more favourable squad availability, and better access to their better players on a consistent basis is it any surprise that the teams with that access are in a better position?
In a better position, maybe. But I don't think it justifies United's quite poor numbers.
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And I think that’s a fair enough place to find yourself falling. Recognising relative to other clubs you’d expect them to maybe be in a better position but being disappointed by the underlying numbers from this United side.
Truth be told that’s not far off of my view of this season.
Of course it is, you navigate around data in a way that makes ETH look better on purpose, making all the small tweaks that work in his favor - Garnacho, Mainoo, Varane, even Hojlund. If you used availability instead of mins on the pitch then Garnacho is basically 100%, Mainoo is going to be at least in 60s, Højlund and Varane both in 70s, and if you do what you have done eg for Villa by removing all players that have been out for season and replacing them with their backups you could even have Martinez replaced by Maguire and Shaw replaced by Wan-Bissaka.
I do understandrstand that because of your adoration for ten Hag and your desire to help him look better here, you have to build an argument around data that works here. I would probably be doing the same if it was about a manager/player that I liked a lot. For what it’s worth I think you have done very well here to serve the purpose of this exercise.
The perception of depth quality is also affected by how well the manager gets the players to perform. I’m sure the likes of Kiwior or Tsimikas would not be considered ‘quality backups’ but rather along the lines of whatever name calling our fans have used towards Lindelof, Wan-Bissaka, McTo etc., if they were here.
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The narrative by some on ETH is staggering. He is not capable of building a squad that’s obvious. £450m spend and we’ve more holes to fill than he started with. I’m absolutely convinced a competent manager would have this squad top 4/5 this season inc all the injuries though I’m equally convinced a competent manager would not have started the season relying on Shaw & Varane to be cornerstones of his defence. Equally galling is the 5 points we threw away last week. Villa are away to Arsenal next weekend we could hap put them under pressure but no the tactically inept ETH once again showed his masterclass in substitutions and hey presto 5points blown. No excuse not getting top5 this season never mind top4. Look at the mess both Villa and Spurs were in prior to their new managers.
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It’s not, please see thread marked posts.
I do not have any adoration for Ten Hag stop being a WUM.
Rather than take on board the analysis and think about how it looks in the context of a full season you’re creating strawmans and making up things about my views.
Well that’s the point, you have built this analysis with a set of rules and assumptions that are supposed to lead to certain conclusions, but when you actually filter out all the conditions you’ve set for it to look worse for United and better for other teams, it is going to look very differently. Still slightly worse for United perhaps than it would for teams above us (but pretty sure no worse than Newcastle, Chelsea or Brighton) but nowhere near as dramatic as ‘we have missed Varane for half a season’, ‘we have missed Garnacho for more than a third of season’ or ‘Mainoo has only been available for 10 games’.
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I am not as interested in teams below us as based on league position we’re currently outperforming them. I’m looking in the sense of people are considering 6th an underachievement but what does it look like above us and are they experiencing the same injury/selection issues that we are. And the answer is no. They are not.
We’ve not had Varane present on the pitch for half a season. Some down to injury some down to selection choice but like I said to another poster do we think Varane has been fit enough to make a significantly greater contribution than what he has? Or do you think he was maybe on the bench partly due to fitness concerns?
As for Mainoo and Garnacho do you think it wise to play an 18/19 year old every game?
Can you name any top 5 club that plays 18/19 year olds as starters in their best XI?
If you use availability instead of minutes played and also add backups for positions which were clearly not established when the season started (like Garnacho and Mainoo in this case), it will be way more fair (but won’t work for your argument and won’t help ETH nearly as much).
And considering we are much closer to the teams below us than we are to the teams above us, and could very well finish behind some of them, I think it’s actually more fair to look at them than it is to look at City, Arsenal or Liverpool who we clearly should not compare ourselves to.
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What do you mean add back ups?
Im happy to end of season do a % availability summary (but I hope you can appreciate it’s a far bigger job that reporting summary stats and this isn’t something I’m paid to do) if you’d like to help me with that it would be a huge help?
But in order for us to be higher in the table we need to be outperforming at the very least Villa and Spurs squads and we then have 3 world class sides ahead of us to contend with too.
I’ve said earlier I’m happy to look at a few more clubs, but again it takes time. If you’d like to help out again it would be greatly appreciated.
Garnacho for instance, the 30%+ he hasn’t played were because a different player was preferred at the start of season and they were rotating with Antony, but that position itself we have been able to fill with our preferred player almost every single time.
As I wrote in the ETH forum I think form of top players also has a lot to do with it. Even when our players are available they have just gone to sht. Case and Rashford primarily. These two or even one of them on form would make a huge difference. But also Eriksen. People forget how key he was last season. Yes Mount was probably his replacement and rightly so but without Mount/Eriksen we struggle to link the defence and attack. Then you have Bruno who is also having his worst year. These are out key players that you need to stand up and be counted especially when everything is going to sht.
I think if Liverpool had Van Dijk and Salah just go to sht they would struggle. Same with if City and say Rodri and Haaland. City would cope a lot better to be fair but still injuries are easier to understand than players being the best in the league one season and then just total sht the next.
I think if Liverpool had Van Dijk and Salah just go to sht they would struggle. Same with if City and say Rodri and Haaland. City would cope a lot better to be fair but still injuries are easier to understand than players being the best in the league one season and then just total sht the next.
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Ah I see, yeah I’ve never once contested that? Absolutely Antony was preferred at the start of the season. But Garnacho is also 19. Do you not think that has an impact too, given his previous concerns about attitudwhich Ten Hag seems to have helped him sort out this season?
I think I’ve even said several times that our attacking options (bar Martial) have been available to us pretty much in line with most other clubs (apart from Højlund at the start of the season which was a big issue due to no other striker available.)
It’s the midfield and defence where I think we’ve suffered most.
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Well the whole point of having players like them on high wages is you’re supposed to get reliable high performance from your most senior professionals. So I agree with you here too.
What we’ve had this season is Dalot, Garancho and Mainoo arguably being the best (but that may just be my view) along with maybe Evans and Maguire?
Shaw and Martinez are the ones we’ve missed the most. When they are fit and in the groove we are a much better side.
Overall, we’ve had problems with availability across the board, especially repeated injuries after short periods of availability in key positions. Here I’m talking about CM and CB - we can’t get a run of games with the same players so there’s not enough rhythm or sympathy to our play in these areas of the pitch.
I’m sure EtH will be sacked. He doesn’t know how to get the best possible results with the players he has. Having said that, I will be stunned if any manager can get us competing within 3 years and the next guy will get the heat from day 1.
A vociferous contingent of United fans want results and performances and they want it quick and many ignore the difficulty of doing that when your best players aren’t fit and your available players are either inexperienced or lack quality (or both). Some managers will manage to get better results some of the time but that actually won’t make any difference. The job is to win the league and you can’t do that with the guys we’ve had available this year.
WHO caused all these injuries? Poor summer games.
WHO managed our summer games?
WHO managed our summer games?
And an elite manager.
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I think this is very fair. And I agree.
I don’t think Ten Hag/the players quite know how to play with so much in and out availability this season.
I do worry about the lack of patience from many. We have the same over and over again “we need a rebuild” “next manager needs time” etc but we’ve never properly rebuilt, weve never allowed for the proceeds to take a step back to move forward.
This isn’t me saying previous managers were hard done by, and if Ten Hag is sacked I back INEOS to make a good appointment but I do wonder if one more season we’d see at least top 4 back and an improvement in our performances.
https://theathletic.com/5392417/2024/04/07/good-manager-how-to-tell/?source=user_shared_articleHow can you tell if a football manager is actually good at their job?
Nice article for you then.
Okay. ETH is an elite manager and at the level of prime Wenger and SAF.
I really despair at some of my fellow Utd fans who seem so accepting of mediocrity and failure that finishing 4th/5th/6th is seen as some sort of achievement! I dont care who the manager is, with the resources at their disposal, not being in the top 3 every season is failure. And if after 2 years there is no discernible style of play then they absolutely have no qualms at being dismissed.
We as fans (or atleast some of them) give too much leeway to failing managers with 'lack of structure' , 'injuries', 'out of form players' type excuses to hide behind.
We as fans (or atleast some of them) give too much leeway to failing managers with 'lack of structure' , 'injuries', 'out of form players' type excuses to hide behind.
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Was literally just sharing an article I thought would interest you. Obviously nobody thinks that.
I think the point people are missing with injuries is not necessarily the drop in quality (although that’s true) but the lack of consistency when trying to play.
It’s very difficult to build any semblance of fluid football when you have to rotate your back 4 every game, especially when you try to build from the back. To me that’s the critical point.
We’ve had 6 different CB pairings in the last two games. We’ve never had a stable back 4 for more than a few games.
Lack of stability in the squad is hurting us, as well as the difference in quality but most importantly the difference in playing style between all our players.
Some are best suited to defending deep, others are comfortable on the ball, others prefer to lump the ball up to, etc. We have a ptchwork of defenders with different playing styles, with no leftback for 3/4 of the season, and our CBs keep rotating. It’s not even square pegs in round holes at this stage. It’s all kind of pegs but round pegs in round squares.
It’s very difficult to build any semblance of fluid football when you have to rotate your back 4 every game, especially when you try to build from the back. To me that’s the critical point.
We’ve had 6 different CB pairings in the last two games. We’ve never had a stable back 4 for more than a few games.
Lack of stability in the squad is hurting us, as well as the difference in quality but most importantly the difference in playing style between all our players.
Some are best suited to defending deep, others are comfortable on the ball, others prefer to lump the ball up to, etc. We have a ptchwork of defenders with different playing styles, with no leftback for 3/4 of the season, and our CBs keep rotating. It’s not even square pegs in round holes at this stage. It’s all kind of pegs but round pegs in round squares.
The crazy basketball style of football we play and the fact that we never have a game comfortably sewn up where we can take it easy for the last half hour is extremely likely to be a contributing factor to the injuries. It's just another consequence of the coach doing a poor job. You're looking at it the wrong way round imo. This is more of an effect than a cause.
Those resources available isnt really a good argument. Manchester City has even more resources available, Arsenal and Liverpool can buy 70m players. Chelsea has resources available. So does Newcastle. Spurs and Aston Villa have resources available.
We should be able to do more with our resources but, as history has shown pre Fergie, we cant just 'out resource' other clubs anymore.
I doubt you find many fans who accept mediocrity from this club. The question is how to buck the trend of the last decade plus.
If you look at the favourites to be the next Utd manager and honestly think they could have come in last year and got us challenging under these circumstances then you are surely a cup half full and I hope it’s working out nicely for you.
Make no mistake, the job is to challenge for the league and win it (not to get us nicking a few more points with the squad we’ve got). It is the big picture we need to look at, over a meaningful period under meaningful circumstances.
I am so far from happy, you can’t possibly know. I just don’t happen to think (say) Potter is going make things any better.
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Well said.