Manchester United Talk/Gossip/Rumours - 2013/14

DDG
Smalling Rio Vidic Evra
Tony Kag Carrick Jones Rooney
RVP


That's what I'm predicting. I'd like to see Nani in Valencia's place to really make us dangerous on the counter but I can't see it happening. Rooney and Val will tuck in when we don't have the ball and push up to support RVP when we have the ball. Jones will do a job on Mata and Valenica will be asked to track Hazard.

Any idea when Nani is supposed to be back from his injury?

bucketybuck wrote: »

Its hardly that simple. In the past when players left usually new players came along to take their place. Kanchelskis was soon replaced by Beckham. Cantona replaced by Sheringham, Robson replaced by Keane.

We still pine for Pogba because there still hasn't been anybody come along to make us forget about him.

They're both gone and they're not coming back. I'd suggest that people start forgetting about them on their own steam.

kryogen wrote: »

That's great to hear, Im pretty sure everybody has been waiting to see what your take on the subject was to see what was the best way forward.

What do you want the club to do? Get into the DeLorean and change the past?

Mikeyt086 wrote: »

I thought I had seen him misplace a few passes today and I recalled thinking that he was struggling, but if his passing was accurate maybe it was his defensive play, or while Swansea had the ball, that I thought was sloppy. I would like to see his tackle %, as I can think of a number of times the likes of Shelvey and Michu got around him, a few of them were unlucky, but he seemed to come off worse a few times, as his positioning was poor resulting in him having to scramble back to get pressure in.

I didn't think he was good today. Not because he's a bad player, I really like him, but a combination of things like being on the back foot in terms of territory and possession and the conditions, I thought he struggled. Although not to the extreme of some in here and on the match thread.

Cleverley's defensive stats were nothing amazing all right, but they weren't bad either. There's no stats to show whether a midfielder got into the right positions to close off the opposition, so like all stats there's only so much they can tell us.

Here's the defensive stats for the five CMs who played a significant part in the game yesterday:

Carrick (full game)
Tackles (success/attempts) 0/1; Headed duels (success/attempts) 0/0; Interceptions 6; Clearances (success/attempts) 6/6. Total successful defensive actions = 12.

Britton (45 minutes)
Tackles (success/attempts) 1/1; Headed duels (success/attempts) 1/2; Interceptions 1; Clearances (success/attempts) 0/0. Total successful defensive actions = 3.

Cleverley (full game)
Tackles (success/attempts) 0/0; Headed duels (success/attempts) 0/2; Interceptions 1; Clearances (success/attempts) 2/2. Total successful defensive actions = 3.

Canas (77 minutes)
Tackles (success/attempts) 0/2; Headed duels (success/attempts) 0/1; Interceptions 1; Clearances (success/attempts) 0/0. Total successful defensive actions = 1.

Shelvey (45 minutes as CM in 2nd half)
Tackles (success/attempts) 0/0; Headed duels (success/attempts) 0/0; Interceptions 1; Clearances (success/attempts) 1/1. Total successful defensive actions = 2

(clearances are recorded all over the pitch not just in the box btw)
source: squawka.com

So Carrick really stood out in defensive stats with 6 interceptions and 6 clearances, that's very impressive, even for him (it's 12 defensive actions compared to an average last season for him of 4 per game). Canas, who was Cleverley's opposite number as the more creative CM for Swansea, only had one defensive action in his 77 minutes on the pitch; Cleverley had 3 in the same period of time. If you multiply Britton's stats by two, to account for the fact he was only on the pitch for half the game, he would have had 6 actions, which is quite good compared to average numbers.

I don't agree that Cleverley's defensive positioning was poor. It looks to me that Moyes has the team extremely well drilled in terms of shape. It seemed he had both Carrick and Cleverley pushing up at the same time when the opposition midfield had possession centrally, leaving gaps in behind them which they then had to rush back to cover when they were played around. That's something that happened with his Everton team too (noticed it when I was re-watching some games of theirs during the summer to understand Moyes' style better), it seems to just be part of his plan sometimes.

Carrick was definitely better defending when he got back to that area in front of the back four, but Cleverley was nothing like bad imo. He was just like most creative CMs in a well drilled team - getting into the right area to close off the opposition most of the time, but once there, not doing as much as a proper defensive CM in cutting things out. He did lose his man once or twice, but not enough to say he had a bad game. I think a lot of creative CMs who are recognised as top quality would have had the same defending issues as Cleverley yesterday.

Sorry for the long response. Tl;dr version: Cleverley's defensive stats, for what they are worth, were unremarkable either way. They were close to average, even for CMs who are properly good at defending. And his defensive positioning was fine for a primarily creative CM imo.

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RobertKK wrote: »

On Cleverley, he passed a lot and it was passing so the ball would not be lost. I just found it negative to have the ball going in the right direction, then Cleverley would get the ball and most times the ball went backwards rather than a more risky pass that might set up a goal.
Rio Ferdinand played so well, he was the opposite of Cleverley in terms of getting playing the ball from midfield, he was putting in some excellent passes, through passes to get the ball into dangerous areas.
I would be happy if Cleverley did this, yes his passing accuracy was very good, but it should be when the player was taking the safest option possible near all the time.
I don't know if he was told to do this, if he was then fair enough, but as I said we had a central back who was far more attacking than Tom was.
So if he could keep the passing accuracy but be more attacking with it, then he would be a great player.
Just found his play far too defensive yesterday, but as I said, maybe that was what he was told to do.
Another thing is whether I liked it or not, it must have been effective given how well United won.

I agree that Rio did excellently on the ball yesterday for a CB, he got into the opposition half a lot and he passed it well. But he was still one of the deepest United players on the pitch with loads of time on the ball. He had 12 successful passes in Swansea's half, 7 of them were forwards, he wasn't under pressure for any of the passes and he was facing the opposition goal nearly every time he received the ball. Cleverley on the other hand had 34 successful passes in Swansea's half, 16 of them forward, and for a lot of them he was either tightly marked, facing his own goal or used his touch to take a Swansea player out of the game before he passed it on. To say that Rio was more attacking than Cleverley was yesterday is very wrong. (numbers from squawka)

The reason Rio appeared to be creating more out of his passes was because he had much more time and space on the ball, which comes from playing in one of the deepest positions on the pitch. Centre backs usually have a high forward pass percentage because of this time and space they get. In addition to that they also usually have eight or nine of their team-mates in front of them to chose from. A CM who is looking to drag the opposition defensive block around will be facing a very different, and much more difficult, challenge in possession.

Cleverley wasn't just passing so the ball wouldn't be lost. If that was his only aim then he wouldn't have shown for the ball so often when being tightly marked and so much in the opposition half, but rather come deeper to where there was more space. What he was doing was keeping the possession moving smoothly in areas that threatened the opposition most. Yeah a good number of his passes may have been backwards and sideways, but he had a good proportion going forward too, and a lot of his passes were made when he was tightly marked. By receiving and passing even when he was being pressed he was taking opposition markers out of the game and dragging the opposition defensive block out of shape.

You talk of wanting to see him making more attacking and risky passes that might have set up goal scoring chances, but that is not what a lot of the best creative CMs actually do most of the time. They usually keep it simple, keep it flowing in the right areas, and maybe only give the assist to the assist. It's why even the really good creative CMs often have surprisingly low assist numbers.

I'm not saying that Cleverley did his job amazingly yesterday, but he did it well enough, against a quality midfield and with relatively little support for possession play. He certainly wasn't poor or average like some people on here are saying.

larchielads wrote: »

anyone think we're just one bad tackle for our season bein over as in van persie gettin injured???

i know its one game in but how confident would you feel if it we lost van persie to a bad injury and rooney was to lead the line?

Don't forget RVP went through a 10 game domestic drought last season, and United still won the games and ultimately the league by a margin.

Obviously he is immensely important to the team but someone else always stands up if he is under performing, United are most definitely not a one man team.