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Manchester United Thread

beachryan said:
As it happens, couldn't disagree more. Ferdinand is possibly the single biggest reason we won the league.

When he was injured, our defence was crap. And Vidic was out the whole season. His organisational skills are all that held our admittedly weak defense together for most of the year.

Nastasic was undoubtedly the best young defender, but I think Rio still has more presence and impact on the overall defensive unit. Espcially when you put him alongside defensive powerhouses such as Rafael and Evra ;)

Anyway, this year should be intresting for sure. Moyes has always valued a stable CB pairing, and to be honest has always maintained a pretty solid defense in his time at Everton. Big year for Smalling, he really needs a run as CB to prove his worth, or else I fear he'll be off somewhere. Can't afford injuries all season.

Same with Jones to a lesser degree, though I think Moyes will love the gurner.

And then there's Vida - who knows if he can come back and actually play week in/week out like we need our captain too.
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I agree that without Rio we would have collapsed at season, don't get me wrong, its just I feel that his contributions were almost all in the last months as opposed to Nastasic who coped well all year despite Mancini having crackpot ideas to keep changing his defensive tactics. I don't know, they were close but for me Nastasic edges it for the fact we played well for longer imo :)

I still can't find much love for Jones, he's a great tackler and has excellent work rate.. but when the ball is crossed in I swear he has a mini panic attack and just struggles to clear the ball! I like him at right back because theres less heart attacks to he had!

Smalling I can't tell if he's any good, he just meh..

But we need Vida, no doubts about that hes fantastic and the cornerstone of our defence. For me the best defender of United for the time I've been watching United.
 
TheJinxedOne said:
Nastasic was better than Ferdinand through out the season, please don't be deluded by the last month or two of the season and ignore Nastasics fine form.
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It's not being deluded, it's called being realistic, you should try it sometime.

Also your talking about nastasic, who will no doubt be a excellent cb, who had the likes of kompany to back him up where rio had evans, who is nothing more than lower end of the league cb, jones, smalling and vidic who struggled with injurys. also why would i put nastasic ahead of vidic when vidic managed more games and he was injured for alot? and he stood out more than nastasic?

ferdinand only got the recognition at the end of the season but he was playing well for majority. simple as that. with kompany, majority of seasons, he would be in the starting 11, i just felt that season wasn't his strongest showings and i'm sure you'll see a difference this season.
 
WOW Surprised, was expecting a meltdown to be occurring in this thread with the Fabregas pursuit looking dead in the water.

Atleast we tried eh? Fellaini will do. :II
 
YoungGun_UK said:
WOW Surprised, was expecting a meltdown to be occurring in this thread with the Fabregas pursuit looking dead in the water.

Atleast we tried eh? Fellaini will do. :II
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Mixed reports coming through, one paper suggesting that a deal has been struck.. another suggesting that its dead and one more saying Fabregas will seek assurance on how many games he plays before agreeing to a deal.. all suggest that the deal is worth £36m.. for me it will be a case who ever is lining up come August 9th for Ferdinands testimonial will be the only signings.
 
Give up on the paper talk, a lot of 'credible' sources were convinced Thiago was imminent and in the end it seems we were never that interested post U21 Championships.
 
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This is how it feels to be a United fan right now..
 
TheJinxedOne said:
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This is how it feels to be a United fan right now..
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Which is a spoiled mindset, I'd rather feel this way during the summer than during the actual season were we normally do rather well.

As I said, we'll definitely add to the squad, which is fine. Im encouraged by the caliber of players Moyes is targeting, we might not pull any of this summer but it bodes well for the future.

Add to that people are acting like were some spent force who without major signings are going to drop out the top four, that's not likely with our current team who are a pretty decent bunch actually.
 
Just put a bid in for Luis Gustavo, Moyesey.

Gustavo and Cabaye would do for me. A shame PSG got Digne because he looked like a very good long term replacement for Evra.

Hopefully that Monaco rumour is false. Nani getting a fresh start under a new manager could hugely benefit us this season.
 
With a new manager (and not one of international fame), it is always hard to recruit new players as they don't know what to expect (especially as many deem it to be a failure following Fergie's footsteps), so I never expected too much this summer. With that said, a new manager and a new style should be able to give many other players a fresh start. Players like Nani, Anderson, Chicharito, maybe even Rooney will see this as a great opportunity to cement their starting place (especially as Moyes isn't one for making changes to line-ups as frequent as SAF). And with a new kid named Zaha, the new manager may be the new "signing" that we need.

Of course, it's always good to get new reinforcements, especially in midfield, but this should shape up to be a very interesting season.
 
Our defending has been quite poor, complacent. And the field didn't help at all as you can see many players not really running to avoid being injured.

With that said, our young ones have really impressed during this tour. Zaha has been a treat to watch, and Januzaj and Linegard are really promising for the future. It does seem at times that their decision making is still quite prone to error, but i'm sure with experience they will become much better players.

With that said, Welbeck has really really really disappointed. With all that promise from previous seasons, this preseason tour, he has been somewhat of a joke. His passes and plays (especially in this game) have been poor. The only thing that he has done nicely was use his speed against a very slow Hong Kong defense. I hope its just the preseason where he's not match-fit yet, or its the humidity of Asia that made him so poor, but if he keeps this up in the coming weeks, he won't see much game action at all.
 
dplane said:
Who needs a defense? As Cruijf once said: football is a very simple game. You just need to score a goal more than your opponent. :BOP:
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Ah, fair enough.. how does the old chant go? "One more to the champions!"


And Goku, Welbeck has always been a bad joke.. he just backheeled the ball once and people love a trick pony.
 
So rumor has it Fellaini's release clause expires on Friday. Do want. If we have the sums going around for Thiago/Cesc I think Fellaini for 23m is absolutely bargain business.

He'd bring balance, strength, nastiness and grit to our team. Which is what we need in the middle of the park.

Wonder what will happen to Jesse Lingard this season. Leading scorer on tour (including yesterday's class finish)but I still don't see a role for him in the squad. He's definitely behind about 6 players to get on the pitch.

Janusaj is a bit different - he's actually left-footed - which means that he and the 40 year old Ryan Giggs are our only two natural options in the wide left spot. Plus, the club seems to be making a big deal out of him, so I'd imagine he'll stay and be 'the youth muppets favorite'. As one of those, I'm astounded at his ascent to prominence, last season he wasn't really standing out ahead of a very talented U18 squad, and now he's in the first team!

Anywho, couple more friendlies left before the season, hope to see Nani and Chicarito back in action. If we let either of those go it'd be a huge mistake. I think this team has real balance to it, fingers crossed it lines up against Wigan!

----------------De Gea--------------
-Rafael----Rio------Vidic----Evra---
---------Carrick----Fellaini--------
----------------Kagawa--------------
----Nani--------------------Zaha----
-----------------RVP----------------
 
yep, that's the united lineup this season I'd like to see on the pitch as well. with only one difference, though, I didn't totally give up on Rooney and think he'll stay and retain his place.
 
Januzaj seems to be in the new breed of wingers who enjoy cutting in on their strong foot as opposed to playing on their strong side.
It actually seems to be very common in Belgian players: Mertens, Mirrallas, Hazard (both IIRC) and Chadli (I believe) all play this way and a lot or the younger Belgians appear to play this way.
Perhaps its something that is coached at youth level, of course Gerd will know more than me..
 
TheJinxedOne said:
Januzaj seems to be in the new breed of wingers who enjoy cutting in on their strong foot as opposed to playing on their strong side.
It actually seems to be very common in Belgian players: Mertens, Mirrallas, Hazard (both IIRC) and Chadli (I believe) all play this way and a lot or the younger Belgians appear to play this way.
Perhaps its something that is coached at youth level, of course Gerd will know more than me..
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Don't think it's restricted to Belgians, you're right it's very much the in thing right now. Not super new, Duff/Robben at Chelsea did the same, and Messi almost never operates from the left touchline.

I wonder what the reason is. I'd guess it's that full backs have gotten on a par physically with wingers, and that it's so rare to have 2 centre forwards in the box to receive crosses. So an inverted winger can mix things up a bit more.

I do miss true out and out wingers. Not many left in big European teams. Navas, Valencia, Di Maria, Lennon and Bale when he plays left.
 
beachryan said:
Don't think it's restricted to Belgians, you're right it's very much the in thing right now. Not super new, Duff/Robben at Chelsea did the same, and Messi almost never operates from the left touchline.

I wonder what the reason is. I'd guess it's that full backs have gotten on a par physically with wingers, and that it's so rare to have 2 centre forwards in the box to receive crosses. So an inverted winger can mix things up a bit more.

I do miss true out and out wingers. Not many left in big European teams. Navas, Valencia, Di Maria, Lennon and Bale when he plays left.
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Oh, yeah I realise its more common than just the Belgians, I just mean that it seems mote prominent in their players than in other nations..
 
Januzaj isn't Belgian , hes Albanian from Kosovo :-P (yes gerd he gonna pick Albania NT over Belgium) :P
 
I'm not sure I'd fancy Fellaini playing central midfield in our side.

Whenever I've watched Belgium and seen Fellaini, he's always been just off the striker with Dembele/Witsel and others playing deep in midfield, although I'm sure gerd could shed some light on his positioning at international level.

And at Everton last season, Moyes preferred two technically astute passers in central midfield (Osman and Gibson) rather than the physicality of Fellaini who he used behind the striker.
 
Unless somethings changed I don't genuinely think were after him, surely if we were we'd have sorted it out by now or even shown are intent.

So far it seems Fabregas is our main objective with Modric possibly next in line.
 
About our wingers: none of them is originally a winger. They are all used as wingers but most of them were AMF/CMF (Hazard, Chadl, Januzaji) or forwards (Mertens).

Fellaini is a problem in our national team. Under the previous coach (Leekens) he was the first man on the team sheet as something between AMF and SS. But that is not his natural position, his natural position is DMF (that is also the position he wants to play himself, he has said that repetedly). With Standard (where he started) he played in midfield with Defour as AMF and Witsel as CMF (coming from the right). Meanwhile both Defour and Witsel became DMF's at their clubs while Fellaini had to play AMF or even forward.
In the national team our new coach (Wilmots) went for Witsel as DMF (and he is fantastic in that position) and has better attacking options than Fellaini who is not a natural attacking player. I like Fellaini as a player, but our national team plays better when he is not on the pitch (basically he lost his place to De Bruyne who is our most influential player even if he hasn't played that much, less than 10 matches i think...he only became a starter last season).

If Fellaini goes to United, i wonder how the fans will react. He is great but sometimes very sloppy and "nonchalant" (don't know if that is an English word). He regularly makes mistakes that lead to goals...
I prefer Everton's Fellaini to Belgium's Fellaini.
 
Is it just me? I'd much prefer us to go for someone like De Rossi (especially now Roma have Strootman signed up) or Gundogan over Fabregas. And for £35m?
Mind you, if the rumours about Spurs valuing Bale as being worth £20m+ more than Ronaldo are true...
 
De Rossi over Fabregas?
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Gundogan I could get behind but even then I'd say Fabregas is a proven talent in the Premiership. He'd be an incredible signing.
 
Watched Roma last night - Strootman was pretty handy. Played like (and on my TV looks like) Carrick, just kept things ticking over, connecting attack and defense and being a shield when required. Would have been a good understudy, but I'm not sure how well they would have worked together. And we can't really afford 17m for an understudy.

Another week goes by, another week without a midfielder. I'm starting to think Woodward just doesn't know enough to sign anyone. Hopefully he'll be back to managing things he knows by January, but this has been a pretty spectacular failure by the Glazers - hire a buddy who doesn't have any experience, buddy fails.
 
Interesting timeline from FLNews

"In this meeting #MUFC clearly stated to #Ronaldo that he is the guy that they want to come in and fill the void left by Sir Alex Ferguson"

The hero Old Trafford deserves but not the one it needs right now (Fabregas) ;))
 
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