I remember some here said we had the best squad in the league before the season.
We actually have a very good squad
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When fit its not a million miles off in fairness, nobody here saw the rapid decline of rooney and the extensive struggle of Memphis adapting to the club. looking on paper our attack was "ok" but with no depth. in reality it was "Shit" with no depth.
I've seen a lot of that talk on here. About how we need to catch up with Real, Barcelona and Bayern. Well we didn't get here in a day. And it's gonna take a good amount of time to get back up there with them. Whatever the feck that means.
People expected all new signings to come flying into the season. That does just never happen and it is not fair on players to be relied upon to save the club's honour in their first season. LVG was the biggest muppet of all in this respect.
The squad was never really the problem IMO.
I mean look at some of the talent we have..
Rooney
Martial
Depay
Mata
Schneiderlin
Schweinsteiger
Smalling
Shaw
De Gea
The squad is easily good enough to be at least competing for the title/latter stages of CL and not just on points but on performances too.
They are just not being played right....
I mean look at some of the talent we have..
Rooney
Martial
Depay
Mata
Schneiderlin
Schweinsteiger
Smalling
Shaw
De Gea
The squad is easily good enough to be at least competing for the title/latter stages of CL and not just on points but on performances too.
They are just not being played right....
You do have a very good squad by PL standards.
GK - Best in the league.
Defence - Very strong, but Smalling needs a higher quality partner.
CM - Very strong, lots of depth.
AM/Wings - Could do with a bit more trickery. Quite some distance behind City/Arsenal.
Strikers - Need a Rooney upgrade/reasonable third choice.
Two or three offensive signings in the coming windows will put you up there with City & Arsenal. Until then, I gotta say, you're a 3rd/4th place team (albeit one with a great foundation moving forward).
Absolutely no reason you shouldn't have escaped that CL group, though.
GK - Best in the league.
Defence - Very strong, but Smalling needs a higher quality partner.
CM - Very strong, lots of depth.
AM/Wings - Could do with a bit more trickery. Quite some distance behind City/Arsenal.
Strikers - Need a Rooney upgrade/reasonable third choice.
Two or three offensive signings in the coming windows will put you up there with City & Arsenal. Until then, I gotta say, you're a 3rd/4th place team (albeit one with a great foundation moving forward).
Absolutely no reason you shouldn't have escaped that CL group, though.
GK : Top 3 in the world
Defence : Overrated, Only Smailing is worthy of being a Manchester United defence. Darmian is off form and started to show doubts whether he's good enough for 50 games a season, Blind is good with the ball but still got outrunned by pacey winger. Luke Shaw at the moment is injured, and needs to be seen if he could maintain his form throughout the season
Midfield : Overrated, big names in BFS but apart from that the only player worth their salt is Schneiderlin. BFS is 31, Mop top is lousy, the rest is a non entity
Winger : We have none, Memphis is in awful form and he doesn't look like he'll be improving soon. Mata is awful for a guy with his reputation. Lingard while exciting prospect is still no better than you average midtable winger. Herrera can't get games and injured
Striker : we only have martial, and at this moment he's still an unfulfilled potential, until he's shown otherwise.
We're not that good
Defence : Overrated, Only Smailing is worthy of being a Manchester United defence. Darmian is off form and started to show doubts whether he's good enough for 50 games a season, Blind is good with the ball but still got outrunned by pacey winger. Luke Shaw at the moment is injured, and needs to be seen if he could maintain his form throughout the season
Midfield : Overrated, big names in BFS but apart from that the only player worth their salt is Schneiderlin. BFS is 31, Mop top is lousy, the rest is a non entity
Winger : We have none, Memphis is in awful form and he doesn't look like he'll be improving soon. Mata is awful for a guy with his reputation. Lingard while exciting prospect is still no better than you average midtable winger. Herrera can't get games and injured
Striker : we only have martial, and at this moment he's still an unfulfilled potential, until he's shown otherwise.
We're not that good
Formation/manager aside, we're good enough for 4th, but anything beyond that tooks a great working system and some major luck
Our squad lacks guaranteed creativity which is a huge problem.
Depay and Lingard are highly inconsistent which is the norm for young talent, same applies to Martial who isn't helped by the snagnation of Mata, the stop/start campaign of Herrara due to injury/being out of favour and the rapid demise of Rooney.
Goals from centre midfield are impossible due to the personnel and the deep lying position they play in.
Our best attacking outlet broke his leg while our right sided full backs consist of an offensively blunt Darmian and a failed right winger in Valencia.
Depay and Lingard are highly inconsistent which is the norm for young talent, same applies to Martial who isn't helped by the snagnation of Mata, the stop/start campaign of Herrara due to injury/being out of favour and the rapid demise of Rooney.
Goals from centre midfield are impossible due to the personnel and the deep lying position they play in.
Our best attacking outlet broke his leg while our right sided full backs consist of an offensively blunt Darmian and a failed right winger in Valencia.
we won the international caps league! hurrah!
come at me
come at me
England used to look awesome on paper.
This list reminds me of Arsenal's 4th place trophy.
http://www.manutd.com/en/News-And-F...rnational-caps-games-appearances-in-2015.aspx
Some positive news, at least. Or not, if you stand by van Gaal and still argue that our squad is shit even though everything points otherwise.
This is actually more than decent argument that our squad is quite good, even if you take away Romero(but why should you, when we all know that de Gea deserves more caps, so it kind of evens out), plus our squad is relatively small this year. And looking by names, majority of mentioned players play for big football countries.
Top ten clubs is included in the article.
Still shit?
With the exception of DDG and maybe Smalling, none of these are "key players" for their countries. None are talisman.
I think we all agree that we have an abundance of "decent" players. What we lack is "very good" to "world class" players.
When we become competing again on the prich (could be a while), I believe we will be able to compete for the best players in the world of we continue our very new policy of paying as good as anyone.
We only started showing ambition to buy from the top shelf two years ago, with Woody. We spent the ten years before that looking for "value". A policy that ultimately left us with an aged squad with no young/peak talent.
Agreed. I love the fact that we are spending £150m a season now. It feels much better than winning trophies under the old feck Ferguson. I had tears of joy in my eyes when we confirmed £60m signing of Angel Di Maria.
I don't get the sarcasm. Fergie built an incredible squad that peaked in 08/09 and slowly declined as finding unpolished gems became increasingly difficult and we did not invest in top shelf players.
Is that not a fair assessment?
All I am saying is we now are more likely than ever to land top players as we are willing and able to pay the market rate fees and wages - which we weren't before.
Is that not a fair assessment?
All I am saying is we now are more likely than ever to land top players as we are willing and able to pay the market rate fees and wages - which we weren't before.
Our defence is good but we should still invest in a first team centre back. Our midfield is a little average at the moment but with the potential to be very good in my opinion, the right balance needs to be found and we need players like Schneiderlin and Herrera to kick on and take their game to the next level. Wingers/ Wide forwards is in crisis and needs desperate investment. Up front we need a top quality quality striker still. Martial is a great youngster but can't be expected to carry the mantle for United just yet. We also need an improvement in the number 10 position, either by Mata/ Herrera or someone stepping up or by buying someone.
Still a fair bit of work and improvement needed to get to where we want and are supposed to be as one of the worlds biggest teams.
Still a fair bit of work and improvement needed to get to where we want and are supposed to be as one of the worlds biggest teams.
Our squad only has 2 proper full backs, our main back up at CB couldn't stay fit if his life depended on it. And bar Rooney and Mata who are both in shocking form our attacking options consist of 3 youngsters who are no where near ready to carry a team with the ambitions of a club our size.
Our midfield is good but even then our two best midfielders are the wrong side of 30.
In short despite spending £300m+ on our squad it still has huge issues, in fact most of the same issues it had 3 years ago when Ferguson retired.
Our midfield is good but even then our two best midfielders are the wrong side of 30.
In short despite spending £300m+ on our squad it still has huge issues, in fact most of the same issues it had 3 years ago when Ferguson retired.
Why do people keep mentioning form of players?
We are talking about quality of squad in general, and we have lots of quality throughout the squad, form has nothing to do with it. No one said our players aren't out of form, but that's not depending of the quality of players. Not one of Chelsea's players are in good form, yet no one is saying their quality is equal to teams that fight for relegation.
We are talking about quality of squad in general, and we have lots of quality throughout the squad, form has nothing to do with it. No one said our players aren't out of form, but that's not depending of the quality of players. Not one of Chelsea's players are in good form, yet no one is saying their quality is equal to teams that fight for relegation.
Indeed it has become a dirty word which can only be a sign of delusional impatience. I agree with most of what you say but I just want to add that there always seems to be this perception that players performances and levels exists outside of the way the team is functioning. How many teams do we see teams playing well and people going "look at him, he raised his game" or "it is clicking for them and their players have found form". The case most of the time is a well functioning well oiled team make its players perform to their best. We talk about the Barcelona players for example and there is a handful of them that would easily look underwhelming in a team like ourselves or Chelsea or something like that and people would be talking about how these players are not good enough.
This is usually the case for defenders and midfielders who rely a lot on what's around them which made judging those players extremely difficult especially in the very tactically oriented modern styles. The attacking talents are easy to judge, they're the one who make things happen and you pretty much only need to look at their ability to beat their men and finish their chances to know their level and coincidently that is exactly what we are missing. We have a squad that can easily be one of the best or at least function as one of the best from the keeper to the midfield. Up front however is the missing link and it is incredibly unfortunate that we are missing THE most important ingredient to make a team top and the one ingredient that can cover for everything behind it.
Generally I would agree with you.
But Martial flew out of the blocks.
And Di Maria was so good in his first few games - some people couldn't believe that he chose to sign for us.
And I remember when Rooney first arrived at MUFC - that guy was like a tornado. RvN was prolific, immediately.
But in general. I do agree with you - it takes time to adapt.
I think the squad we have is decent. The main issues are the strength in depth and the lack of quality.
With the current state of the league and the top teams, a good manager can win the league with a couple of additions and recalls to this squad. I would seriously consider getting Januzaj back from Dortmund and adding a central defender or a left back in January to give the title a serious push. The league is there for the taking with the right tactics and approach.
With the current state of the league and the top teams, a good manager can win the league with a couple of additions and recalls to this squad. I would seriously consider getting Januzaj back from Dortmund and adding a central defender or a left back in January to give the title a serious push. The league is there for the taking with the right tactics and approach.
The trouble aren't the signings but the system we are playing (which is LVG's fault) + the lack of talent this squad has (which is not LVG's fault, at least not all of it). We spent some good money in great talent and yet all money seem sucked in a black hole. LVG lack of man management (Januzaj, ADM, Nani and Chica had hit us hard) but its also true that SAF has left a very weak side behind and Moyes has spend money on players that we didn't need
Our squad is lacking in depth and quality.
De Gea is obviously a top class player. At the back Smalling has been superb. He's the only one. Shaw will, if he recovers fully, be a top player as well.
In midfield we're solid. Our better players are past their prime.
Upfront and out wide we're lacking. Mata could be valuable if deployed in the right system. Martial will be a top, top player I think.
All in all you struggle to see where the money has gone to be honest. We have a handful of players who'd get in to other top sides.
De Gea is obviously a top class player. At the back Smalling has been superb. He's the only one. Shaw will, if he recovers fully, be a top player as well.
In midfield we're solid. Our better players are past their prime.
Upfront and out wide we're lacking. Mata could be valuable if deployed in the right system. Martial will be a top, top player I think.
All in all you struggle to see where the money has gone to be honest. We have a handful of players who'd get in to other top sides.
What is concerning to me, is not that players are starting slow and taking time to adjust, but that they are starting hot and then regressing, the longer they spend at the club.
The squad itself is very good (very light in some areas due to our clueless manager).
If we had the right manager we'd win the league this season.
If we had the right manager we'd win the league this season.
We're miles behind city but they're underperforming far more than we are. We'd probably have 3 players get in a combined 11. Possibly 4. And none of the front 4.
Ddg
Zabaleta
Smalling
Kompany
Shaw
Yaya
On form fernandinho, but we could have one in there, no one stands out though.
Silva
De Bruyne
Sterling
Aguero
Definitely could have won the league this year under a better manager in my opinion but that doesn't say much about the quality of our squad. Right now at this moment in time we have 4 players who are good enough to play for this club and are CL winning quality..
DDG, Shaw, Smalling and Martial.
Then there is the likes of Schneiderlin and Herrera... young athletic talented players who can be useful for the first team at any level if they're feeling confident, playing in right position and given good instructions.
Other than these 6 players... perhaps Depay has the potential to become a first team player but other than that.. every other player at this club hasn't got the ability to be a first eleven player at a top top side.
Blind is a great squad player and definitely worth his place in the team but he is not first team material.
The squad needs a major revamp and an influx of quality.
DDG, Shaw, Smalling and Martial.
Then there is the likes of Schneiderlin and Herrera... young athletic talented players who can be useful for the first team at any level if they're feeling confident, playing in right position and given good instructions.
Other than these 6 players... perhaps Depay has the potential to become a first team player but other than that.. every other player at this club hasn't got the ability to be a first eleven player at a top top side.
Blind is a great squad player and definitely worth his place in the team but he is not first team material.
The squad needs a major revamp and an influx of quality.
For me, where the quality has fallen off the cliff this season is up front.
There can be no complaints about our keeper. Apart from our recent problems defending set pieces and the debacle v Arsenal our defending has been solid despite our injury problems on the back line and our midfield play is generally very good. But it comes back to poor finishing that robbed us of wins v PSV and a few other matches in the league.
Perhaps poor finishing is a function of poor link up play, but we've seen more than a few glorious chances go wasted which can only be explained by poor finishing.
Improve the finishing and suddenly we're picking up three points, not one point. But we have to improve our set piece defending too. Any opposing manager will want to exploit that weakness until we've addressed it.
There can be no complaints about our keeper. Apart from our recent problems defending set pieces and the debacle v Arsenal our defending has been solid despite our injury problems on the back line and our midfield play is generally very good. But it comes back to poor finishing that robbed us of wins v PSV and a few other matches in the league.
Perhaps poor finishing is a function of poor link up play, but we've seen more than a few glorious chances go wasted which can only be explained by poor finishing.
Improve the finishing and suddenly we're picking up three points, not one point. But we have to improve our set piece defending too. Any opposing manager will want to exploit that weakness until we've addressed it.
The title of this thread is actually hilarious.
This post is spot on. Except Depay has shown nothing - absolutely nothing - to suggest he has any quality.
We need a serious, serious investment a day clear out again. We have spent less than half what it is needed.
For £250 million, our squad is an utter embarrassment.
We've pissed so much money up the wall its unreal.
We've pissed so much money up the wall its unreal.
Is it really that big an embarrassment? I still reckon we have the 2nd/3rd best overall squad in the league. The problem really has been the sub-optimal use of such a good squad.
Is it a really good squad though? I'd say the defence is good but Schneiderlin is the only defensive midfielder you can really rely on next season with both Schweinsteiger/Carrick aging. Blind looks better at CB so I didn't count him. Lingard is a squad player, Memphis still looks very very raw. Rooney is finished. Mata could flourish again I reckon. Young is a squad player. Martial is fantastic. Fellaini is a squad player. Herrera can flourish too I reckon. So basically, you need to spend again on a defensive midfielder, and definitely 2 attackers. Perhaps a new CB too knowing United's injuries.
Arsenal, Chelsea, City have better squads, certainly better first 11's.
Not really, Schneiderlin & Blind are two good long term defensive midfield options. Schweinsteiger is 31, so he should be able to play another 2-3 seasons. We need a CB for sure (given that Rojo/Jones are never going to stay fit) and a striker (to replace Rooney). Januzaj will come back, so will Wilson. Impact of injuries on our CBs & LBs aside, we need only 1 player to have a complete + quality squad. If we use it well - i.e. rotate right, and play the players in their natural positions, we should be fine.
I don't think we've got a very good squad, but its clearly better than these recent results suggest.
I'm not arguing about squad quality viz a viz those teams. You've already qualified it with your statement on first XI. The point is only that, our squad is by no means an 'embarrassment'. Its way too good to be performing the way it is.
That's true as well, LvG gets the absolute minimum out of our players.
I disagree in the sense that the players themselves we've bought (sans. Falcao- but who could know he was broken?) are good on individual merit, but I said back in September it looks like a slightly random collection of players that don't all appear to suit a possession based style. I include Di Maria in good players we've bought because it was more down to his mentality that he failed and he's showing he's still a good player at PSG. Memphis and Martial for example are also good players, but they need to be able to take risks and in this philosophy that doesn't appear to be allowed.
The only tactic we seem to employ is just... 'don't lose the ball'- but there's no consistency aside from that. Some games we try and walk the ball in, some we launch the ball to Fellaini, today for example was mostly aimless crosses into the box. We actually would probably be much better on the counter attack. Have Carrick/Schweinsteiger and Schniederlin as basically disciplined, deep lying play makers who can spray the ball about and allow the likes of Martial, Memphis, Young and even Mata/Herrera license to roam and possibly lose the ball knowing we've got six plus De Gea back if it goes wrong.