PBP: UEL - Manchester United FC vs Linzer Athletik SK - Aug 05, 2020 [R]

Not really impressed with any of the B team tbh.

Pretty clear why he flogged the same 11 to death in the EPL, think he will use the same in the EL.

With the Champions League coming, we need better depth.

 

Of our fringe players, Mata and Jesse benefit the most from Sancho IF they can get on the pitch. Double edged sword that.

 

today's game showed why ole is going after sancho AND grealish: in an ideal world, no one in the starting front 4 should see signifcant playing time next year. i know i'm in the minority here but i still don't understand what we're trying to do with williams on the left.

 

Can't play the entire b team and expect a great performance.

Fred, Jesse, Ighalo, Bailly, TFM, Williams and Mason (assuming we land Sancho) is a pretty good group of players to draw from. Needs to be better I will agree, but rotating 3 or 4 of those guys in and using another 3 to 5 off the bench is not the end of the world.

 

I get the point and I wasnt expecting it to be cohesive.

Just watching the players individually and their decision making, control, passing etc. left me unimpressed. Each player from the B team maybe apart from Fred & Bailly looked a big drop-off quality wise.

 

They've barely played in 5 months.

 

It was no different to when they were getting regular minutes first half of the season;

- James still anonymous, a welsh Theo Walcott
- Mata still has no end-product and positional ill-discipline
- McT still has no positional awareness or defensive instincts
- Lins still offers workrate without end product
- TFM still looks like a Palace / Fulham reject
- AP has no one-touch passing

etc etc

Wasnt rustiness it was levels.

 

That’s harsh on Theo Walcott.

 

Maybe we should have given minutes to Gomes..

 

Deserved it.

Tonight's #MUFC star man as voted for by you?

🥁 It's...

⭐️ @JesseLingard ⭐️ pic.twitter.com/gwqYthaAx4

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 5, 2020

 

FYP

 

Pogba is such a weird player to watch play. It is like he has a gravitational effect. He came on and the field tilted in our favour. The player he came on for was previously our best player and by all accounts had a good game. Couldn't even point to like 3 or 4 concrete moments on the ball that made us better, but his movement and understanding of space makes everyone's job easier - especially in build up.


Not a great performance or result, but no injuries and some minutes for the reserves many of whom are likely to be used in some way this season and the next.

 

Yes, the entire B team together leav es something to be desired. But one, or two, at a time, our B team is fine to fill in for rotation purposes.
Mata should have scored twice today, especially at thd end of the first half. He could have dribbled in and shot.

 

Exactly, this isn't Chelsea of a decade ago or Citeh of a few years ago with 2 internationals at every position.

The reason I don't approve of buying backups is that we won't get better, we'll just suck less. If we bought an upgrade to Matic and then Matic & Fred were our first 2 midfielders off the bench, we'd be much better off than if we bought a backup for Pogba who isn't going to play a bunch.

AP and Jesse are not great options to start at LW or AM, but as the guys who come on for 20 minutes or who start in the cups or against a lower level team? They can do a job - especially if the rest of the xi is in order.

 

The highlights from the FC Copenhagen vs. Erdogan boys from Istanbul ... can hardly understand how this slow moving team of old men became Turkish champions. But perhaps Erdogan personally gave them a helping hand.

 

It's a nice sentiment and sounds good on a forum, but it assumes that you only bring on players to rest members of the first team for a job well done. If we need to chase a result then, no, these players can't help. They can do a job ONLY if the rest of the XI is in order - so what happens if the rest of the XI isn't in order? What happens when the gap between AP/Jesse and Bruno/Rashford is as big as it currently is, and you need a win?

There are situations where signing a new 1st choice as an upgrade makes sense. Generally speaking it is the most straightforward way to go about improving the side. That is why we signed Bruno, AWB, Maguire. It's why we're signing Sancho.

But the idea that you shouldn't sign 'backups' (which, again, is a very reductive way of describing the role we're talking about for VDB or Grealish) whatsoever, is clearly not an opinion that any manager in football really holds. Not Klopp, not Guardiola, not Ole, not anyone. It would be amazing if such a manager has ever existed, or at least over the past 10-20 years where squads mean so much.

 

Then why Thiago Alcantara?

 

Because 'generally the most straightforward'. Route 1. Read literally the next paragraph for more info.

And literally the previous paragraph! Lol

 

You are reading this far too simply. You absolutely don't sign peak age players as backups if they are going to be expensive. That's the road to ruin. If the players don't make your XI stronger, you shouldn't be paying top wages and big fees for them. You can add depth by signing a young player with upside, ala James. You cannot however do that with a player like Thiago or Grealish. Although Grealish is young, he'd make more than everyone bar the starters and likely more than several starters too. That isn't sustainable and it is downright foolhardy.

Backups are developed into starters if you buy them young. Beyond that you should aim to use the veterans and kids that you have on hand until you identify a player that makes your xi better. Ighalo is an excellent example of a veteran backup. Doesn't make sense to pay over the odds for someone who is only there to fill in.

Signing peak age players to be backups on big money is precisely how you end up with a squad like ours where instead of 18-22 excellent professionals and another 5 or 6 promising kids, we had 10 players not worthy of a matchday squad on our books.

You suggest that signing a peak age player to be a backup is the only way to get a bench that can win you a game. But by your own admission if they aren't good enough to supplant the starters how do they change the game?

If we add Sancho and a quality DM, our squad will be immeasurably better than it was last season.

We would have on the bench Mason or Rashford, James and Ighalo as attacking options. We'd have Matic and Fred as midfielders and Mata, AP and Jesse as extra bodies or situational players. A year ago our options were decidedly worse. Grealish would never play ahead of any of our starters, so he'd be on the bench while we ignore the fact that we are starting a 31yo DM in front of a slower than molasses CB.

 

Is he replacing Pogba or playing next to him?

 

This is probably the biggest problem with trying to have this conversation.

First, you think I'm suggesting signing a peak age player to be a 'backup' (and your interpretation of a backup, not mine) is the ONLY way to get a bench that can win you a game. I have absolutely no idea where you got this from.

I would then, from this nonexistent position, have to explain how a sub who isn't good enough to start can still change a game, as though that isn't something that happens in 60-70% of close football matches already. As if we aren't being managed by the best sub we've ever had.


I just wanted to post the above to point out how the debate here is swinging wildly at thin air. Even if you don't mean the above, it's how it reads.

Now...


The only position you're talking about working on improving is DM. I'm fine with upgrading DM. I've said this several times.

I'm also fine with holding out on DM for a year and signing an AM/CM who can rotate with Pogba and Bruno. I think we could sign a youngster to do this, but I also know we have youth coming through in the next couple of years.

I've been quite vocal about not really wanting Grealish because there are cheaper alternatives and we don't need LW cover, given all of our forwards can play there already, including Sancho. If we could get him for £40m then fine, though I would rather a RAM who could play more centrally, like Matheus Pereira or Buendia, or an AM/CM like Van De Beek or Eze, or a LW/AM like McNeil who offers a completely different profile and is 5 years younger.

I'm deliberately leaving Thiago out of the list because for some reason that's all some people would read or respond to, when the real reason the previous debate flared up, was much like the start of this post - people made weird and/or bad arguments, I disputed them, and now for some reason I'm the guy who wants to die on Thiago's hill.

I absolutely think that we need better bench or rotation options for AM than Lingard and Pereira. And so does Ole. I don't think a new DM fixes that. And evidently neither does Ole. I have a multitude of different ways I think we should go about it rather than spunking £80m down the wall for Grealish. Hopefully, so does Ole.