Manchester United Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2016 - Mod Note in OP, 13/9

Charizard

I dont understand the defence of Rooney, he slows down the play which you could accept if he was scoring but he isnt. If he wanted to be a midfielder, he should have made the move years ago not when he wanted a excuse for not scoring goals. I enjoy watching United play, Rooney just frustrates me, he had the talent to match Ronaldo and Messi just not the mentality

Robson99

Pro. F wrote: »

Rooney has been excellent at keeping the ball so far this season. Average 86% pass accuracy on 35.14 passes per 90 minutes this season.

ID say Rooney had twice as many uncompleted passes than completed in the first half yesterday. He could just as easily have been called ashore at half time.
The first goal stemmed from him giving the ball away
Also for the penalty in the second half he was slow to react to Bravos mis control. If he had reacted even normally he could have got there well before Bravo
Now he wasnt the only one poor yesterday. But I think to get the best out of Pogba we need to play a 433 and that means either Rooney or Ibra up top. Rooney just isn't good enough in a 3 behind a striket

bangkok

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Pogba went missing in the business end of the Euros and again, a big game pops up and he goes missing. The Euros should have sent alarm bells to Man Utd that this guy isnt a 100m player.

Bale, CR7, Kaka, Zidane, Figo, Shearer, all world record players, all had bad games occasionally, but they never went missing on the big stage. They could flop and play badly but they were never anonymous.

Truly class players don't go awol.

Alan shearer....big stage

had the chance to join Man Utd and he signed for Newcastle. Played feck all champions league games as well

Robson99

bangkok wrote: »

Alan shearer....big stage

had the chance to join Man Utd and he signed for Newcastle. Played feck all champions league games as well

Himself and Gascoigne were the two players I would most liked to have seen play for us that we had tried to sign

secman

Hopefully feet back firmly on the ground, there were some ridiculous predictions for the match, thought a draw myself. Was surprised how bad we were in first half and how good we made city look. For all the talk about our supposed tough ball winners... hardly a bleedin tackle in the first half the
They waltzed through our midfield.

Adamocovic

Robson99 wrote: »

ID say Rooney had twice as many uncompleted passes than completed in the first half yesterday. He could just as easily have been called ashore at half time.
The first goal stemmed from him giving the ball away
Also for the penalty in the second half he was slow to react to Bravos mis control. If he had reacted even normally he could have got there well before Bravo
Now he wasnt the only one poor yesterday. But I think to get the best out of Pogba we need to play a 433 and that means either Rooney or Ibra up top. Rooney just isn't good enough in a 3 behind a striket

If it is considered grasping by many to say Rooney was involved with the goal we scored then I would certainly consider it grasping to say he was the cause or where the goal we conceded originated from.

Yes his attempted pass was blocked, but Kolarov picked it up at his own corner flag, then allowed time to gather himself, pass to the keeper, receive the ball again, get himself ready and launch it long. To which Bailly allowed Iheanacho an uncontested header and Blind was caught flat footed.

To say the goal stemmed from the blocked pass is a stretch when Mkhitaryan stepped off Kolarov, and both Bailly and Blind made mistakes.

Also the comment

ID say Rooney had twice as many uncompleted passes than completed in the first half yesterday

well that's just completely incorrect, he had 69% passing first half, not good considering the average for the team was 76% however. But you must really be watching the matches with a dislike of him to think his passing was in the 33% window.

People can argue about Rooney as a player overall as much as they want, but looking at the game yesterday while he didn't play well, particularly in the first half, it seems some people are aiming nearly all the blame and criticism at him more so than any of the others who played as bad and even worse, now I know people will want to reply to me about Rooney being the captain and gets big money so he should be accountable for the other players too or something, you can go ahead if you wan't but I'm tired of that argument and have had that debate too often so I doubt I'll will waste space on this thread repeating the things I have said before about it.

Yesterday we were outclassed, particularly the first half. We could pick nearly any of the players on the team yesterday and find fault with them. Pogba didn't have a good game to his standard, Zlatan missed a number of brilliant chances and gave the ball away quite a bit, Rooney was sloppy at times, Lingard was ineffective, Mkhitaryan failed to get into the game at all, Blind made a number of mistakes.

I do think some people are overreacting too. Yes it's a game we desperately wanted to win, but we lost to the better team on the day. Personally just going to move on from it now and look to the next game.

I know we want to be beating everyone but this wasn't like we dropped points at home to some underdog team that we should have walked past, there is no need to panic yet, plenty of football to be played.

TheDoc

Better see me some Memphis on thursday

Adamocovic

TheDoc wrote: »

Better see me some Memphis on thursday

And a possible Phil Jones cameo :P

PhlegmyMoses

Watched the highlights again. That Zlatan header where he put it into the keeps arms rather than head it down was a great chance. Had he buried that, we'd have won, I reckon. As bad as we were yesterday for the first 30 mins, there was lots of positives and we were creating chances second half that we never would have seen last year. Mourinho still hasn't found his best 11, but there were lots of encouraging signs.

Notorious

Pro. F wrote: »

Herrera was playing as central midfielder. Rooney was playing as a 10 and then as a winger. You aren't comparing like with like.

Which is the problem with stats in football. It's very difficult to compare like with like. Who can we compare Rooney with from yesterday's game; De Bruyne? It's all subjective.

But since you chose to ignore it, let's stick with corners. So Rooney missed meeting a United player with 4 corners, we can attribute that to a lot of things. Bad day in the office etc. So against Hull he had 5 corners, and how many met a United player - none. Then before at Southampton he had one corner, which was unsuccessful too. So that's ten corners from Rooney that haven't met a United player.

Corners aren't the most important stat in a game. Does this mean Rooney should be dropped - no. Should someone else be taking corners? Probably.

You can ignore the stats all you want, bend them to suit as you will. But you cannot ignore that Rooneys role has changed at the club. Change is fine and it's natural as any player gets older. But Rooney is a shadow of the player he once was. He continuously blows hot and cold. He's far from terrible, but I think he's not up to the high standard we need. Rooney isn't a sacred cow, there's no reason why he can't be benched to test other options.

jayo26

Adamocovic wrote: »

And a possible Phil Jones cameo :P

Hopefully they have a doctor and a broken bones specialists on call.

Deise_2012

Rooney gave away the ball 23 times. How many times did De Bruyne or Silva give the ball away?
The fact is that he has been performing averagely with the last 3 years but he has gotten away with it due to the fact he has had managers who were under the spotlight more. (Moyes, Van Gaal and Hodgson)
Mourinho really needs to drop him and get Pogba playing further up the pitch, it's just inexcusable how a guy who has been getting 300k a week for the past 3/4 seasons can get away with that. Imagine Messi or Ronaldo playing like that in Spain? They'd be slaughtered.
I really liked Rooney, he was a fantastic player, tenacious and always looked to make things happen. But he just hasn't got the legs anymore, he's not able to score 20 a season or control a game.
He has gone from Striker to Midfielder to #10 to playing right wing yesterday. Fair enough he was trying to get balls in but I cringed when I saw Kolarov overlapping him and beating him for pace.

8-10

eagle eye wrote: »

My Mom was Valencia, i thought he had an excellent game, if he had a cross in him he'd have been a very clear MoM.

Are you serious? De Bruyne was everywhere. Valencia was nowhere near matching him

Nalz

Rooney needs to be dropped

Trigger

8-10 wrote: »

Are you serious? De Bruyne was everywhere. Valencia was nowhere near matching him

I think he is talking about from just Uniteds team..

bangkok

Robson99 wrote: »

Himself and Gascoigne were the two players I would most liked to have seen play for us that we had tried to sign

I would have preferred Ronaldinho and batistuta

8-10

astradave wrote: »

I think he is talking about from just Uniteds team..

Ok. Don't think that's how man of the match works but fair enough if we're counting that pick whoever you want.

Chris_Bradley

Not sure if this was discussed but that Ibra video stoking the fire by sending training gear to City's Bravo for me was over the top.

I know he scored and Bravo looked an eejit and all that - just felt he was leaving his hand out for a slap & it wasn't done in good taste.

Trigger

8-10 wrote: »

Ok. Don't think that's how man of the match works but fair enough if we're counting that pick whoever you want.

We are in the United thread not the match thread, discussions will be predominatly about United players.

8-10

astradave wrote: »

We are in the United thread not the match thread, discussions will be predominatly about United players.

Yep apologies I picked it up wrong initially

jayo26

Chris_Bradley wrote: »

Not sure if this was discussed but that Ibra video stoking the fire by sending training gear to City's Bravo for me was over the top.

I know he scored and Bravo looked an eejit and all that - just felt he was leaving his hand out for a slap & it wasn't done in good taste.

I thought it was a brilliant bit of banter and something we should see more of instead of all the pc crap that's spouted.

J. Marston

It wasn't banter (that fúcking word...) It was some advertising nonsense.

Chris_Bradley

jayo26 wrote: »

I thought it was a brilliant bit of banter and something we should see more of instead of all the pc crap that's spouted.

Ah Banter.....

jayo26

J. Marston wrote: »

It wasn't banter (that fúcking word...) It was some advertising nonsense.

It was still a bit of fun advertising if it was that I don't see why they be any disliking to it.

jayo26

Chris_Bradley wrote: »

Ah Banter.....

Ahh cheerup.......

The_Kew_Tour

Robson99 wrote: »

bangkok wrote: »

Alan shearer....big stage

had the chance to join Man Utd and he signed for Newcastle. Played feck all champions league games as well

Himself and Gascoigne were the two players I would most liked to have seen play for us that we had tried to sign

Ronaldinho

Hococop

Chelsea draw was a bit of a boost to a bad result

Flint Fredstone

When you have Liverpool fans drooling all over a 2-1 United defeat to City, you know things are looking up.

Cantona's Collars

Just a thought,can we get somebody else to take corners? Of all the corners we got in the last few games not one found a United player.
There seems to be a weird fascination with whipping balls into the near post and it never works.We have several players who are 6-4 or 6-5 and we can't seem to pick them out from a corner kick.
Daley Blind can deliver a decent ball but it seems to be Rooney's job to take all the corners.Giggs used to be the same,for a guy that played at the highest level for 2 decades,he was useless at taking corners.

Liam O

zerks wrote: »

Just a thought,can we get somebody else to take corners? Of all the corners we got in the last few games not one found a United player.
There seems to be a weird fascination with whipping balls into the near post and it never works.We have several players who are 6-4 or 6-5 and we can't seem to pick them out from a corner kick.
Daley Blind can deliver a decent ball but it seems to be Rooney's job to take all the corners.Giggs used to be the same,for a guy that played at the highest level for 2 decades,he was useless at taking corners.

Corners aren't an effective way of scoring goals. I think the average is 1 of every 30 results in a goal. Probably less for a lot of big teams now who have a lot of smaller attackers than before. Rooney's corners are fine.

jayo26

Flint Fredstone wrote: »

When you have Liverpool fans drooling all over a 2-1 United defeat to City, you know things are looking up.

They were doing that under moyes and lvg it means nothing. Doesn't take much to get them drooling they do that in pre-season.

I think end of December we will know where everyone is or where they are heading.

People getting a excited over city playing fantastic for two first half's of excellent football but in both games were lucky to hang on.

Liverpool have looked better for longer periods then city but they have looked sh1t for longer periods then most of the top teams.

Chelsea were ment to be cool and efficient but they were lucky enough too.

Arsenal are always gonna be arsenal.

I think we are heading in the right direction but players need to pull with jose if one or two react bad to his media interviews it could backfire quickly.

jayo26

It be grand zerks we might have jones to take them Thursday night.

I actually don't see why it's so hard for a professional player to take a corner. We have some of tallest players in the league for crikey sake just lob it in high to edge of six yard box it's not rocket science.

Cantona's Collars

Liam O wrote: »

Corners aren't an effective way of scoring goals. I think the average is 1 of every 30 results in a goal. Probably less for a lot of big teams now who have a lot of smaller attackers than before. Rooney's corners are fine.

We have some absolute monsters in our team now yet Rooney failed once again to pick any of them out.How hard is it to place a ball unchallenged and pick out a team mate at least once a game?
Blind started taking corners last season and we looked dangerous from them,now we are back to square one even though we have taller players who are brilliant in the air.
I know it's not an efficient way of scoring but if the corner taker keeps hitting the defender standing at the near post almost every time then the chances of scoring go down to almost zero.(unless said defender scores an own goal)

Cantona's Collars

jayo26 wrote: »

It be grand zerks we might have jones to take them Thursday night.

I actually don't see why it's so hard for a professional player to take a corner. We have some of tallest players in the league for crikey sake just lob it in high to edge of six yard box it's not rocket science.

I didn't want to mention Jones but it goes to show that even LVG didn't have faith in his main man to take a decent corner so he got Jones to take them.

Flint Fredstone

jayo26 wrote: »

They were doing that under moyes and lvg it means nothing. Doesn't take much to get them drooling they do that in pre-season.

I think end of December we will know where everyone is or where they are heading.

People getting a excited over city playing fantastic for two first half's of excellent football but in both games were lucky to hang on.

Liverpool have looked better for longer periods then city but they have looked sh1t for longer periods then most of the top teams.

Chelsea were ment to be cool and efficient but they were lucky enough too.

Arsenal are always gonna be arsenal.

I think we are heading in the right direction but players need to pull with jose if one or two react bad to his media interviews it could backfire quickly.

Yeah but they are making it out like we lost 2-0 to Burnley or something.

jayo26

Flint Fredstone wrote: »

Yeah but they are making it out like we lost 2-0 to Burnley or something.

Yeh but Burnley set out to stop them scoring and accidently scored two at the same time sure that's no way to play football.

Cantona's Collars

Manchester United youngster Marcus Rashford will "take over everything", team-mate Zlatan Ibrahimovic has predicted.

And Ibrahimovic has backed his young team-mate to become a leading light on the global stage, provided he is allowed the time to develop.

"First of all, he's 18, he's still young. He has a lot of time," the former Sweden captain told MUTV.

"I think the way you have to approach a player like that, where everyone is talking about the talent and what he's able to do and what kind of potential he has, is to remember he still has a lot of time.

"It's not like he needs to take over the world today, the club knows that, the coach knows that and the team knows that.

"We know his quality and what he's able to do. What the world is seeing now, we already know because we see it every day. There is no need to rush to push him and put him in the heat zone and put a lot of pressure on him because that can have the opposite effect.

"Time by time, he will take over everything. It's about having patience."

Mitch Connor

Looking forward to watching the team on Thursday.

Would like to see Schneiderlin, Herrera and Pogba in midfield, with maybe Martial, Rashford and Mkhitaryan as the front three (thought Mkhitaryan did himself no favours at the weekend.... rubbish!)
Also hoping to see Fosu-Mensah get a start. Would imagine Smalling will come in too.

Manutd_4life

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Looking forward to watching the team on Thursday.

Would like to see Schneiderlin, Herrera and Pogba in midfield, with maybe Martial, Rashford and Mkhitaryan as the front three (thought Mkhitaryan did himself no favours at the weekend.... rubbish!)
Also hoping to see Fosu-Mensah get a start. Would imagine Smalling will come in too.

Memphis needs to start imo. He hasn't even been on the bench in recent weeks. He needs games for his confidence. I still believe he can make something of himself at the club.

Mitch Connor

Manutd_4life wrote: »

Memphis needs to start imo. He hasn't even been on the bench in recent weeks. He needs games for his confidence. I still believe he can make something of himself at the club.

To be honest, I forgot he existed!

Manutd_4life

Mitch Connor wrote: »

To be honest, I forgot he existed!

Haha the same happened with me with Schneiderlin yesterday!

bangkok

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Looking forward to watching the team on Thursday.

Would like to see Schneiderlin, Herrera and Pogba in midfield, with maybe Martial, Rashford and Mkhitaryan as the front three (thought Mkhitaryan did himself no favours at the weekend.... rubbish!)
Also hoping to see Fosu-Mensah get a start. Would imagine Smalling will come in too.

I'd say there is no chance of pogba even going on the plane

Trigger

bangkok wrote: »

I'd say there is no chance of pogba even going on the plane

Yeah I'd say it will be a rest for Pogba and wasn't Mhkitaryan sent for an MRI after the match? Any one have an update on that?

Pro. F

Robson99 wrote: »

ID say Rooney had twice as many uncompleted passes than completed in the first half yesterday. He could just as easily have been called ashore at half time.

Nope, very wrong. He had a passing 69% accuracy. So what you thought happened is very different from what actually happened.

Robson99 wrote: »

The first goal stemmed from him giving the ball away

He gives the ball away in the opposition half, it goes back to their corner flag and then our CB's mess up and there's a goal. To think that Rooney should be singled out for blame on that goal when the whole team were losing the ball all half, their attacking move started at the corner flag and it was an easily preventable goal is just going out of your way to look for something to criticise him about.

Robson99 wrote: »

Also for the penalty in the second half he was slow to react to Bravos mis control. If he had reacted even normally he could have got there well before Bravo

Nonsense. He was sprinting towards the ball as soon as Bravo let it get away from him. He was excellent at closing down in the press all game.

brinty

Pro. F wrote: »

Nope, very wrong. He had a passing 69% accuracy. So what you thought happened is very different from what actually happened.



He gives the ball away in the opposition half, it goes back to their corner flag and then our CB's mess up and there's a goal. To think that Rooney should be singled out for blame on that goal when the whole team were losing the ball all half, their attacking move started at the corner flag and it was an easily preventable goal is just going out of your way to look for something to criticise him about.



Nonsense. He was sprinting towards the ball as soon as Bravo let it get away from him. He was excellent at closing down in the press all game.

Fair play ProF, thats a fair assesment. And i thought i disliked Rooney and found fault with him over nothing, jaysus Robson has issues...

Pro. F

Notorious wrote: »

Which is the problem with stats in football. It's very difficult to compare like with like. Who can we compare Rooney with from yesterday's game; De Bruyne? It's all subjective.

Why does a players performance have to only be compared to other players in the same game? If you want to see whether or not the number and accuracy of Rooney's passes are good for a #10, why not go and look at other #10's. If you do, you will find that Rooney's passing numbers come out very high up amongst #10's in the league.

Notorious wrote: »

But since you chose to ignore it, let's stick with corners.

I did not ignore it. I directly responded to your point about corners. You just chose to not include my response in your quote, nor to address the point I made. Here is the response I gave:
"I don't see the problem with the corners. The are obviously an extremely low quality chance of completing a pass and have nothing to do with keeping possession."

Now, I know we all like to fortify our arguments with rhetoric, but please do not lie about me ignoring things.

Notorious wrote: »

So Rooney missed meeting a United player with 4 corners, we can attribute that to a lot of things. Bad day in the office etc. So against Hull he had 5 corners, and how many met a United player - none. Then before at Southampton he had one corner, which was unsuccessful too. So that's ten corners from Rooney that haven't met a United player.

Corners aren't the most important stat in a game. Does this mean Rooney should be dropped - no. Should someone else be taking corners? Probably.

So what is a normal or good completion rate on corners? You have shown what Rooney has done on corners so far this season, but you have provided no context.

And let's just say, for the sake of argument, you are correct and that Rooney is bad at taking corners (although you haven't proven that yet). Why are you wandering off on this new argument when what we were debating was your claim that Rooney has been bad at keeping possession? Corners have nothing to do with keeping possession, unless you make a tactical choice to take them short, which Mourinho doesn't.

Notorious wrote: »

You can ignore the stats all you want, bend them to suit as you will.

I have not ignored or bent any stats. Please stop lying.

Notorious wrote: »

But you cannot ignore that Rooneys role has changed at the club. Change is fine and it's natural as any player gets older. But Rooney is a shadow of the player he once was. He continuously blows hot and cold. He's far from terrible, but I think he's not up to the high standard we need. Rooney isn't a sacred cow, there's no reason why he can't be benched to test other options.

This is all meaningless and vague. Of course Rooney isn't as good as he used to be, very few players at his age are, but he's not a shadow of the player he used to be and he is still more than good enough to play as a #10 for a team with title ambitions. We don't agree on that.

StringerBell

Flint Fredstone wrote: »

When you have Liverpool fans drooling all over a 2-1 United defeat to City, you know things are looking up.

You have the more normal ones IRL, one of the other dads in the playground this morning who is a pool fan was talking about the derby with me, saying it is the most concerned he has been about United in years. That you feel like something is building there for the first time since Fergie left, he thinks it will take a monumental effort to beat City this year and that United were so close is a sign to be worried by considering the general perception that City have underperformed for a while and United are coming out of a very dark period.

Also doesn't understand how Bravo got away with his "tackle" on Rooney, says that over the last couple of years United would have probably lay down and died there but seemed to keep coming on stronger in the game, that if we had drawn level there would have been only one winner.

I agree with most of what he said tbh.

The defeat doesn't bother me as much as so many of the poor performances over the last couple of years.

Pro. F

Deise_2012 wrote: »

Rooney gave away the ball 23 times. How many times did De Bruyne or Silva give the ball away?

Players in Pep team give ball away less than opposition? Stop the presses!

Rooney gave the ball away 23 times if you included crosses and corners, which you obviously shouldn't. Or, if you want to include them, then do so with every other player whenever you talk about how much they gave the ball away. But then that would require you to talk about how much any player other than Rooney gives the ball away.

Deise_2012 wrote: »

The fact is that he has been performing averagely with the last 3 years but he has gotten away with it due to the fact he has had managers who were under the spotlight more. (Moyes, Van Gaal and Hodgson)

In the Moyes season he had 14 non-penalty goals and 10 assists. And that was in a team who were labouring under David Moyes. That is excellent. That is nothing remotely like performing averagely.

So he has had two average seasons. Yeah, that's what LVG did to every attacking player at the club. LVG is gone now.

Deise_2012 wrote: »

Mourinho really needs to drop him and get Pogba playing further up the pitch, it's just inexcusable how a guy who has been getting 300k a week for the past 3/4 seasons can get away with that. Imagine Messi or Ronaldo playing like that in Spain? They'd be slaughtered.

Rooney isn't as good as Ronaldo and Messi. Two of the best attacking players to have ever played the game. That is not a problem.

Deise_2012 wrote: »

I really liked Rooney, he was a fantastic player, tenacious and always looked to make things happen. But he just hasn't got the legs anymore, he's not able to score 20 a season or control a game.

Ah yes, the mythical 20 goals a season. The most arbitrary and nonsensical of expectations for any attacking player.

crkball6

zerks wrote: »

Just a thought,can we get somebody else to take corners? Of all the corners we got in the last few games not one found a United player.
There seems to be a weird fascination with whipping balls into the near post and it never works.We have several players who are 6-4 or 6-5 and we can't seem to pick them out from a corner kick.
Daley Blind can deliver a decent ball but it seems to be Rooney's job to take all the corners.Giggs used to be the same,for a guy that played at the highest level for 2 decades,he was useless at taking corners.

Most people completely misunderstand the skill that's involved to take an effective corner. You could stick me on corners for united and I could hit a united player at about 80% success. That's the easy part.

What's very very difficult is to put the ball in with enough pace, high enough to beat the man on the post but not so high it misses everyone while far out enough that's difficult for the keeper not to claim it.

This is really, really hard. There's a reason corner success rate is so low it makes you wonder why people get so excited about a corner. 10/11 men behind a ball perfectly set to defend it.

I think it would be unusual for Jose to allow Rooney take them if there was someone on the team consistently better at taking them.

intellectual dosser

What I'd allow for Rooney is that he showed a bit of grit and determination when City were rampant in the first half, and I think players responded it helped stem that onslaught. Stats wont show that.