The kid's alright - the Scott McTominay thread

Did he play in their loss to Kazakhstan today?

 

I got off my but and looked it up, think he got the highest player ranking at 2.69.

 

I really hope we have discovered another 'academy Fletcher' in McT .. There is plenty of room for improvement..

 

The improvement is notable. He's done much better in recent games than some of his performances under Mou, which were excusable because he was 1. new, and 2. it was under Mou.

 

McT needs to add to his game a bit of drive forward with penetrative passing. I know his role is to keep it simple but he has a nice technique and he is good on the ball, so he can offer more than just keep it simple.

 

I still think at best McT becomes a very good harasser, which can be valuable in certain situations. But I don't see him adding enough to his game to ever be a starter. Technically hes just not very good.

 

You'd be very wrong. McT has great technical ability.

At first when he broke through, he was a bit clumsy. But that could easily be explained away as the kid getting used to his new body. He had a massive growth spurt late in his development.

I actually think he will go from strength to strength year over year. He's got a lot of tools to work with as a central midfielder. Keep in mind CMs develop late, and McT was an attacker at youth levels. So his positional learning curve will be behind where it otherwise would have been had he played CM at the youth level.

 

What technically is he good at right now? Decent tackler, decent touch. Not great on the ball, dribbling is very average, passing is very average.

 

He has a very good touch and his passing will surprise people as he becomes more confident on the pitch. His passing technique is indicative of having a more expansive range than he has shown consistently to date. He's been very reserved in the number of longer/forward passes he's played.

His situational awareness is also very good.

And he's a good tackler/tracker of runners.

 

I feel like he can be a very good squaddie in the Fletcher mold. It would be nice to have good depth that we developed as a club. Same for Lins and Axel and TFM.

 

Yes we require a top quality like scholes but also need functional players who get odd games and still give all and gives us 6-7/10 every game like Nicky butt fletcher(i rate him highly) oshea Phill Neville used to. Our problem atm is both the starting 11 and decent loyal depth players who wants to perform for badge..

 

this.

we need solid non-sexy performers just as much as WC talents.

 

i want to disagree with you here....... not sure we have "enough"our players are no consistent enough.

also, we are not where we can handle top class players. they would be wasted in our team unless we get WC players in en masse.

 

The problem is out "top end players" are shit or not really top end so it gets confusing. We think we need new sixes because Matic and McT aren't good enough. The key is McT is good enough to be a squaddie, it is Matic that needs to go and that is the problem all over the squad . AY, Smalling, Jones, Matic, Alexis, Mata are all players that need to be sold sharpish!

 

As evidenced in the last game, McT is able to win aerial balls in the middle (unlike Lukaku ). Unlike Matic, he can consistently turn with the ball in close quarters. I like his play and think he should play more.

 

Being better than Matic shouldn't be the benchmark. Neither are anywhere close to being good enough as staters. McT is a good depth guy to have around but he's like Jesse, not good enough to be in the starting 11 each week for a top level team...which we aren't.

 

McT made the same, exact mental mistake Shaw made the week before. Both mistakes led to goals.