Football in the UK and Ireland season 2019/20

Just read that Nick Cushing, ManCity manager, is leaving the team effective early February. He's going to New York City FC to be that team's number 2. NYC FC is owned by the rich Arab that owns Manchester City FC, I believe. Cushing will be on the sidelines for ManCity's game against Arsenal (Feb. 2?) but will gone immediately or soon after that. May be a good opportunity for him but the ManCity front office is leaving the women's team in the lurch, to be sure.

 

A lot of the complaints are about her goal scoring/finishing. I get it in a sense, but the extent of the criticism stems from them thinking they were getting an elite midfielder who scores goals. That’s on them, not Groenen. Some people think she’s not creating enough, which is just strange considering she’s made quite a few decent chances backed up by her squad leading KP/90 and her having the second highest xA/90 in the squad. Add in the secondary assists/dangerous flank passes, and I just don’t really get it.

At least one person has questioned her ball retention and defensive capabilities. Questioning Groenen’s defensive ability is ridiculous. She’s been played at CAM for almost the whole season by Stoney so far, so she’s been less influential defensively than she has been for the Dutch. However, she’s pressed well in each match and has stood out with strong defensive moments vs City, Chelsea, and Everton with a couple moments in other matches. I do understand the ball retention comment more, but she’s mostly held up the ball well with her dribbling/passing. Bar a couple moments, she hasn’t put the team under threat or ruined promising attacks with dispossessions or misplaced passes.

I think I’m just going to have to work on accepting that I just won’t ever agree with some people, so that I’m not as affected by their somewhat confusing takes.

I think I’ve been mostly fine with FBRef’s and wslstats.org’s numbers, but yeah, I get what you’re saying. Defensive numbers don’t always seem the most accurate, and InStat has way higher interception numbers compared to everyone else. There have been differences in passing numbers, but I think it’s generally been pretty close. Don’t know what happened with Ladd, but the stream did start terribly for Utd vs Bristol. Either way, I do appreciate the free stats. (InStat’s not free, but Henderson posted Ladd’s stats.)

 

She did score a few goals, but apart from the first few months of the 2017/2018 season, her goals were infrequent.

 

Groenen might of just turned 25, but she's is nearly a 10 year veteran of first divison soccer. Here's her yearly stats(though the soccerway website don't give assists for players)
Netherlands - J. Groenen - Profile with news, career statistics and history - Women Soccerway
hard to say how good she is; some fans think she's some kind of wunderkind(obviously some of the BS posters), but other reviews don't think much of her(this one site called 'all white kits', called her an "turnover machine"). The Guardian had her at #45 in their top 100. Personally think that's too high for her & remember, this is a poll that had Miedema only at #7 & didnt even have the likes of Macario or Ashley Lawrence in the poll even though the latter has just been named by the Canada soccer feds as their player of the year(yet the overrated Sinclair got #28).
What gets me is that while just about all the best players in Europe have been picked up by the top 10 woso clubs, Groenen plays still for a weaker one.? Though that might not be an bad idea though as it assures more playing time(compared to Jill Roord who can't get a starting job with the biger/richer clubs that she plays for)
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btw.........Arsenal trying to pick up Catlyn Foord in responce to Chelsea/Kerr. Since Foord hasn't looked that good lately, perhaps an psychological move on the part of Arsenal?

 

Yeah, we’ve already settled on Groenen not being a consistent goal scorer by any means. Contrary to your posts in the past, Groenen’s been great for the Dutch without scoring goals. Macario’s a college player with no senior international experience; why would she pop up on that list? I thought even Fleming showing up was strange. Maybe Lawrence should have showed up, but PSG and Canada not having standout years may have played a big role.

All White Kits is Henderson, who appears to solely rely on InStat for his evaluation of certain games/players. (He also didn’t rate Roord that highly pre/post World Cup based on InStat.) Groenen’s play style is going to not rate that high often enough on the service since it seems to focus a lot on pass percentage for CMs/CAMs, and Groenen kind of plays like a winger in a box-to-box position. Add in the fact that I’ve noticed InStat’s stats differ a fair amount of times with other providers and I’ve disagreed a lot with their ratings for other players, and I subsequently don’t rate InStat that highly.

Feel free to rate Groenen low because of her playing for Frankfurt and Man Utd. Pointing out playing time consideration is fair enough. She did play for Chelsea before, and I read that she had some discussions with Lyon the summer of 2018. Overall though, we’ll just agree to disagree again regarding Groenen.

 

I remember watching Mewis destroying Groenen during the WC-19 Finals.

 

Groenen won a solid tackle vs Mewis in the first half, got overly ambitious with a tackle in the second half that would have won the ball off most players but not Mewis with her build/frame, and then got completely fouled/taken out by Mewis not coming anywhere near the ball (Mewis got away with it), which led to Heath's first breakaway chance. If you think that Mewis challenge was anywhere close to fair, then I completely disagree with you. Groenen did indeed struggle for a 10 to 15 minute spell in that second half, but as a whole, I didn't think Mewis destroyed Groenen (fairly) in the WWC final.

 

whats Groenen's assist record? according to this(updated since last week) she don't even have 3/ A least her team is at 4th place, but looks like her fellow mid, Kirsty Hansen is getting all the laurels(voted best player in the league for October)
2019–20 FA WSL - Wikipedia

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Man U's game been cancelled, but Arsenal's is on, but both they & Chelsea are facing bottom feeders today/ next week they'll face each other
The FA Player

 

Groenen's only got 1 assist so far, but she has the second highest total XA, the second highest XA/90, and the highest KP/90 in the squad. She also has three secondary assists, two of them leading to easy chances for James. In short, her assist record for Man Utd Women has a lot to do with her teammates not taking advantage of her passes, a number of them being top quality. So, like Groenen herself, most of the squad can work on their finishing; even James has missed great chances. Hanson hasn't been getting huge plaudits since that Player of the Month win. She's finished well on low/somewhat low xG chances, but in terms of crosses/chance creation in the league, she hasn't been that great in my opinion outside of the good cross for Galton's second vs Brighton. (Edit: Hanson's also been a wing forward, but I suppose that's just semantics.)

 

With MUTV not showing Man Utd Women vs Brighton since it conflicts with coverage of the men's team vs Wolves, will there be any coverage of the Conti Cup quarterfinals?

 

Probably FA player app.

 

The FA Player hasn’t shown any Conti Cup matches yet, and I don’t see anything scheduled on the website.

 

If they can not, who do get the spot?
Seems to be four choices:
1) the next best team in the league (the way we do in Sweden, we do not have a full pro demand on the tier 1 teams but other financial criteria and demands on playing fields)
2) the team that should have been relegated (one step closer to a closed league)
3) no one, they play one team short next season to
4) FA decides when it happens (opens up for corruption)

 

Man Utd 2 - Brighton 1

Seems like Sigsworth and Zelem had great games for United. Ladd conceded two penalties; Brighton scored one and missed one. Complaints from fans again about James getting a yellow card. Now, maybe this one was actually unfair, but I have my doubts. I’ve found each previous yellow card to be reasonable, and fans have complained about all of them. Galton and Groenen didn’t play a single minute for the 3rd straight Conti Cup match.

Chelsea 3 - Aston Villa 1

Chelsea got their second and third via the bench. Aston Villa seemed to give a decent account of themselves. Kerr’s yet to play more than 80 minutes in a match and is still looking for her first goal.

Man City 4 - Sheffield United 0

Seems like this match was close for 37 minutes, but City’s superior quality showed through. Bremer’s in some terrific goalscoring form.

Arsenal 1 - Reading 0

Little with a late winner. Miedema only played the last 26 minutes, but according to Arsenal Women’s Twitter, she seemed to have a decent chance at goal. Now, I know there’s more to both Miedema and Kerr than goals. However, given all the Kerr vs Miedema talk heading into the second half of the season, they arguably should start scoring again for that attention to make more sense.

 

I was making more of a reference to fan reaction/comments than team marketing, but fair enough.