Premier League 2024/25

Madueke who seems decent for Chelsea often but nobody talks about? Just realized hes English, how good is he?

Always been a fan of Madueke, but he was mostly on the bench.

Vibe wrote:UTD played like cunts and ETH has no balls. 1-1, injury time, UTD play like they're defending a lead and Brighton play like they're behind.

At '92, UTD played with 11 on their half.

Fully deserved.

Yes. I was so raging after that match and couldnt consume any United related content until today.

The thing is we were in control of that match in the first half. yes conceded a fluke goal and guess what ten hag does at HT, take off the only player who was contributing to that control aka Mason Mount and bring on Zirkzee. I can see fans calling for that substitution as fans more or less have this tunnel vision and often fail to see the intangible qualities someone like Mount brings. But an actual manager with actual data at his disposal doing that? Like wtf. We restricted them to 3 shots in the first half. Same as in the first match, when Bruno is kept far away from mf and Mount is playing at 10. Fulham didnt get a sniff. Now I am not saying Mount is perfect, he is certainly not. But the thing with Mount he is currently the only one in the team who is making us dominate a match. He may have flaws, but his pressing game is elite.

I would have been happy had we lost this match still having control. That would have been 2 matches and some decent progress showing. But instead here it is 1 step forward and 5 steps backward. Same as last season. I tried to give ten hag the maximum benefit of the doubt. But bro is not him. We will have RVN as manager come December, and rightly so.Sigh, dont know how we always end up with frauds when other teams seem to have great luck with managers. And yes Slot looks good fml. He will school ten hag next week its looking like.

ETH's subs are baffling every time, he does come off as clueless. Used to think it was cuz we didnt have much in the way of options but nah. Very annoying.

Ugarte done dealio I fully expect us to line up with something like this against Liverpool loll


lol

I just don't know where the goals are gonna come from this season, AGAIN. Rashford is finished. Zirkzee from what I hear is not a traditional CF. He isn't a gonna bag us 25-30 goals a season. Hojlund injured and still too young.

It's a shame we dropped 42m on Zirkzee. I know Napoli were asking 120M at the start of the summer but Osimhen can go for 60M now apparently...and nobody is in for him ffs. Could probably bring them down to 50.

I wonder if they won't let him go out on loan...we should see about a Sancho loan swap

Ugarte, has he even played in preseason? He must be way behind in fitness. Still lol yea can see ten hag throwing him into first team next week and fans jumping on him if he doesnt live up.

The thing is if not ten hag, someone else will definitely get a tune out of these set of players I have a feeling. Slowly, there is a good team being formed unlike under the previous regime and previous managers. No more buying the Casemiro's and Ronaldo's and Edinson Cavani's of this world. And no more paying over the odds for limited players who then go on to quickly become deadwood. Its a strategy City have successfully followed. Not going above 50-60 mil for a single transfer barring the odd ones like Grealish. That way even if they they dont work out, you wouldnt suffer such heavy loss. Glad Berrada has brought that to United. Also there's a youngish core being built.

GK
RB-De Ligt-Martinez-LB
CM-Ugarte-Mainoo
RW-CF-LW

with Amad, Garnacho, Yoro, Zirkzee, Hojlund who can develop into starters and Bruno, Mount, Onana, Mazraoui and Dalot in their prime and can do a job for now and a few more years (jury still out on Maz for me cos of injury problems, where as De Ligt and Ugarte I think are going to be successes, still purely subjective though).

They have done a great job with player sales too and the next batch of deadwood like Maguire, Lindelof, Eriksen, Casemiro etc can be phased out next summer. And rashford, Antony, Luke Shaw must know that time is running out and if they cant turn it around they will be disposed sooner as well.

there's concrete talk of us swapping Sancho for Sterling, I'd take that tbh even though I don't really rate Sterling much, I just want Sancho OUT permanently. No loan bs just to see him back next summer.

A new LB is a must its a shame we missed out on that Turkish lad Kadioglu or w/e. I can see us loaning someone last minute for sure.

Yes. Sterling for a loan + option to buy kind of deal with wages reflecting that of a rotation option and Sancho out of the door along with that would be a smart business even though many people are saying otherwise. If he doesn't have any other takers he may even agree to such a proposal if the alternative is to play for Chelsea U21s.

We badly need goal scorers with our inconsistent set of  forwards/wingers for the short term. And sterling can perform that false 9 role way better than bruno. Its strange because even though he has played for both our rivals, I dont hold any ill feeling to the guy lol. He is approaching 30 but is still better than Rashford. So if we can somehow structure the deal in a smart way which I kind of trust Ineos to do, the downsides of this transfer would be very low I think.  If it was Glazers, it would have been a firm no because those idiots would hand him a 5 year contract lol.

LB no chance though. Martinez will cover until Shaw comes back and there is also Amass. Kadioglu would have been ideal. Even someone like Hermoso would have been fine. But nah. We are done after Ugarte and a very low probability deal for Sterling.

Why is PSG shipping Ugarte already?

Enrique didn't like his profile, wants to play tiki taka and apparently Ugarte is more of a traditional destroyer

The DM market is pretty thin. Not sure how I feel about Ugarte. He offers zero forward passing, and his defending style is really aggressive. He has a habit of jumping out of the midfield line which can leave them exposed. The pace in the PL so high, so I question whether he has the legs to compensate and eat up that lost ground after stepping up.

It wasn't the Enrique didn't like him. He looked great for about 2 months. Then he fell completely apart... he just can't hold the ball under pressure at all or pass much. Newcastle first leg exposed the weaknesses with their press and everyone attacked him the same way afterwards. So Enrique was forced to bench him against teams that pressed. Then, Fabian Ruiz just took over the position (much better player).

Now, you not only have Fabian Ruiz, but Zaire Emery has muscled up and can play there. Joao Neves has looked fantastic... so with Ruiz, Zaire-Emery, Vitinha, Neves and Lee Kang-In, there was absolutely no playing time for him.

I hope he finds that confidence from early days again. My kind of player. But Newcastle game wasn't very inspiring as far as a comparable to EPL style play.

Here are his strengths:
- Ball recovery
- Very hard-nosed
- A lot of energy
- Very good in 1v1 defending

Weaknesses:
- Too aggressive
- Slow at times
- Bad with the ball
- Limited passing
- Bad positional awareness at times

55M is it for this donkey? LOL Althnough I saw him being in the team of the tourney in the Copa I think, apart from that hes looked very average whenever I saw him at PSG, exactly as Sport said... may Man U's suffering continue

I’m not very familiar with Ugarte, but he sounds like Fred 2.0 with the way you describe him

Thimmy wrote:I’m not very familiar with Ugarte, but he sounds like Fred 2.0 with the way you describe him

Well you don't ship a good player after 1 year unless he's not good or you dont have money and must sell (wink wink)

just signed the second best DM in the world

what a time to be alive, the rebound begins

Mbappe is not the best in the world

Haalaand is and has been for some time

I bet he'll be subbed off at some point

GL, this is the point of the weekend where our friend Thimmy is quietly remarking on Haaland and his situation but is discreetly bursting inside in glee, at his success.

Unreal eye for a goal though

I still think he's mostly boring to watch with his static role at Man City, and that likely won't change until he or Pep leaves the club. But the rate at which he scores goals still doesn't seem to slow down.

I'm actually a bit surprised that you haven't been more on the Mbappe hype train, Arq. I recall you were among the people who weren't very happy when I criticized his reliance on pace and large spaces several years back.

He seems to have developed his overall game quite a lot since then, and I like to think that he'll come good for us, but he's definitely no CR7 when it comes to adapting quickly. Injuries to Camavinga and Bellingham probably haven't helped his adaptation process either.

So it looks like Lopetuegi doing a decent job at Westham? Competing very well with Man C atm...

BarcaLearning wrote:So it looks like Lopetuegi doing a decent job at Westham? Competing very well with Man C atm...

He didn't perform very well with Wolverhampton last season, so I have no clue why West Ham decided to appoint him as their manager. Somehow, he managed to turn a disappointing season into a job upgrade, just like Vincent Kompany West Ham are a pretty decent, mid-table team. They're not great, but they're not among the weaker teams in the league either. I think they finished just below Man United last season.

Haaland definitely on fire again, hes making them finishing look easy... not sure what it is but he was kinda off for a while bit this version is good to see. Its not always easy to not get the ball a lot n be so alert n fast n clinical when u dont touch the ball much but he seems so good at it atm.

Going up against the refs, Pep and Haaland...

gg

Thimmy wrote:I'm actually a bit surprised that you haven't been more on the Mbappe hype train, Arq. I recall you were among the people who weren't very happy when I criticized his reliance on pace and large spaces several years back.

He seems to have developed his overall game quite a lot since then, and I like to think that he'll come good for us, but he's definitely no CR7 when it comes to adapting quickly. Injuries to Camavinga and Bellingham probably haven't helped his adaptation process either.

He's the best player in the world (Mbappe) as I cant recall being unhappy with it thats Sports I bet.

But I long deemed you the authority on Norwegian talents and Haaland as you know more of his best role and movements than I but you must admit, despite being streamlined his goal blaze is exciting you.

Arquitecto wrote:

Thimmy wrote:I'm actually a bit surprised that you haven't been more on the Mbappe hype train, Arq. I recall you were among the people who weren't very happy when I criticized his reliance on pace and large spaces several years back.

He seems to have developed his overall game quite a lot since then, and I like to think that he'll come good for us, but he's definitely no CR7 when it comes to adapting quickly. Injuries to Camavinga and Bellingham probably haven't helped his adaptation process either.

He's the best player in the world (Mbappe) as I cant recall being unhappy with it thats Sports I bet.

But I long deemed you the authority on Norwegian talents and Haaland as you know more of his best role and movements than I but you must admit, despite being streamlined his goal blaze is exciting you.

It was a while ago, but it seemed like almost every single member of this forum was quite upset with what I considered to be quite mild criticism towards Mbappe. I could’ve sworn that you were among the people who barraged me with disagreeing responses since I remembered your specific name when I recalled that conversation, but I might be wrong about that.

Either way, I haven’t watched Mbappe much since then, but Sports seemed to suggest that he’s added more tools to his game and has become less reliant on pace, and I don’t doubt that it’s true. That’s what I wanted to see from him when I initially pointed out what I saw as limitations in his game, and what I recognized as the primary reason for why he struggled to have an impact against teams with pacy fullbacks. The intention wasn’t to berate him, like it would seem that people suspected based on some of the responses. All players have areas that they can improve on, we might as well discuss them. I do enjoy watching Mbappe at his best, and I’m getting too old for the spitefulness and banter of player rivalries, like I used to indulge in between Messi and CR7.


As for Haaland, I did start following City regularly because of him and I do think it’s exciting to watch his ruthless finishing ability. I am a fan of his, and I don't think it would've made any difference if he wasn't Norwegian. I have mixed feelings about him as a City player, in general. I started following him at RB Salzburg out of impulse, and he was so refreshingly fun to watch that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that watching him play rejuvenated my interest in the sport as a whole, at a time when I was gradually losing interest in it.

Ever since he transferred to Man City, the things that once made him uniquely entertaining to watch, like how he used to brute force his way through players with pace and power, or occasionally display some of the clumsiest, yet surprisingly effective dribbling I have seen, has been reduced to largely just hovering around the box and barely being involved in play. He looks like a relatively generic player these days, but the elite finishing ability that he's had for as long as I've been watching him has largely been kept intact, and his goalscoring statistics are completely wild for someone so young.

As much as I dislike seeing what he’s turned into from an entertainment point of view, he’s still fascinatingly effective at finding the back of the net, and while some may believe that Mbappe is the best player in the world right now, I think the two of them offer very different things and aren’t quite comparable unless someone insists on comparing two very different sets of talents. I will say, though, If we didn’t have Vinicius already, the addition of Mbappe would’ve been a much more significant signing. I think Haaland would’ve been a massive signing regardless of our existing team, because even when he’s reduced to being a fox in the box in Pep’s system, no one rivals his shot to goal ratio. Not even Messi or Ronaldo. I think Real Madrid would be the only realistic upgrade on Man City for Haaland, and I believe it would've been a really mutually beneficial deal, as we need a CF and he would finally be freed from the shackles of Pep's rigid, positional system - but I imagine he'll stay at Man City for quite a few more years at this point. Assuming Barca don't have a million levers ready to pull for him, which would be a nightmare scenario for me as a Real Madrid fan.

I couldn’t care less who’s the best player in the world right now. In my mind, R9 is still the overall most talented player, Messi is the most accomplished and artistically skillful, Ronaldinho is the most entertaining, and Redondo is the niche pick that I truly have an irrational bias towards.