Everyone"s been saying that our team won"t be complete until we sign a world class creative midfielder. I'm not so sure. We have a large number of creative midfielders (Giggs, Cleverley, Carrick, Anderson). What we lack is a defensive minded midfielder to muscle and boss the midfield. We have Fletcher, but he's been out injured. This has forced us to play the likes of Anderson and Carrick out of position and resulted in these players never really realising their true potential in the last few seasons. In fact, both players had their best season with us when they were playing alongside Hargreaves. Pogba is one potential player who could fill this void but he's not quite ready just yet. My solution, bring in Lassana Diarra on a season long loan. Out of favour at Real and a loan would mean that he's not tied to us if it doesn't work out. Thoughts?
A good idea in theory and i rate Diarra, Are Madrid likely to agree to a loan though? Our easiest option is just to hope fletcher gets better but he was only just getting over the Virus so whats hit him now if anyone knows? I actually though think that even if the midfield stays as it is now we will be fine, its not as big an issue as its made out to be.
I kind of agree. It's definitely the weakest part of the team, but against west brom I believe we had over 60% possession which is something we never managed to do last season. But we only had 1 shot on goal all game. Which obviously means there's a lack of creativity going forward. I don't think we need to sign a midfielder, we just need the right balance with the partnership. Ando-Carrick is the best option. Carrick offers defensive cover which gives Ando more freedom going forward as Carrick is sitting deep. When Ando plays with Cleverly they have to share the defensive responsibilities, thus limiting our creativeness in the middle of park. But I do think given time cleverly-Ando partnership could be top class.
you don't have any creative midfielders and you don't have any quality DMs you've got a handful of roughly equal (squad) quality centremids who 'do a job' and you let your defence and your attack do all the work. it works well enough to beat most all mediocre english sides and protects your defence but it's also what holds you back from being a truly feared top side.
Diarra would be a great option, he's a different kind of defensive midfielder to Carrick, Diarra is much more of a pitbull type pf player, always snapping at peoples ankles, something we could certainly use as an extra option and the kind of player who's defensive work rate could free Anderson to play a much more attacking role. As for Fletcher, he's just played 90mins in the reserves, hopefully this is a good sign and hes finally beat that mystery illness, against certain teams we really could use the extra bite he can bring to the midfield.
Diarra is just a fouling machine. He is rated highly because of the clubs he's warmed the bench for, not because he actually warrants the credit he gets. Players like him are two a penny and I wouldn't want any of them. I'm proud of the fact that United don't have a player like Song, Mikel, De Jong or Lucas ie. a guy whose primary purpose is to break up play and leave the football to more talented players. Song and De Jong are both a class above Diarra as they can actually contribute to attacks in some form but I still wouldn't want that sort of cynical player in our team. As for the creativity, I still felt we were poor from that standpoint at the weekend. 1 shot on target, 2 goals on Sunday. We can't expect to get away with that every week. And it wasn't as if we were creating a lot of genuine goalscoring opportunities that were missing the target either. I can think of one for Nani and very little else. It puts a helluva burden on the wingers when your midfield aren't creating chances and Nani has too many bad days (such as Sunday) for us to be relying solely on them for creative purposes again.
I kind of agree with this - we don't have any really specialised CMs. Carrick screens the defence but isn't really a defensive midfielder, and Ando, Cleverley and Fletch are all able to attack and track back and do a job whilst our wingers and strikers carry the attacking threat. Which may be a decent approach in the modern game - clubs with top class central midfielders tend to struggle quite a bit when those midfielders are out through injury the team noticeably drops a level. Look at how badly Chelsea did last season when Lampard was out for a couple of months - their reliance on him effectively cost them any chance at the title. We had a similar problem from 2004-2006 when we were reliant on Keano and Scholes and they were struggling with injuries and blurred vision respectively. Even Barca have struggled to replace either of their two core CMs - Iniesta being injured was one of the main reasons they were so toothless when Inter took them apart 3-1 in 2010. Unless you have high enough quality backups, which makes it almost impossible to keep everyone happy and in form, having only one or two top class CMs can actually make you weaker going forward if either of them is unavailable. Although the same doesn't necessarily apply to DMs. I guess that depends on how you define mediocre English sides. Our midfield was enough to outplay Chelsea home and away in the CL last year and home in the league, and also City (with Silva, De Jong and Toure) in the CS this year. And given that Arsenal are losing Fabregas and Wilshere, and Liverpool have Henderson and Adam as first choice mids, I would say our midfield can (and does) compete with any club in England. Which is pretty much the object of the exercise - win your domestic league with the CL being more of a bonus if you get the right bits of luck and perform at the right time.
I think you have enough creativity from wide and / or Rooney to still win the league but can't see you getting close to Barca with the likes of Anderson, Giggs, Carrick, Fletcher etc in the middle. But as above, CL is just a bonus and I still think your side is more than capable of winning the title which is the bread and butter.
Will Cleverly be playing a big part in your season? Or will he mainly be used as back up? I have been impressed with him so far.
errr....Fletcher!! Good player and all but he doesn't get in the side because of his ability with a football at his feet.
Problem is, who would get us (or any other team for that matter) closer to Barca? Real have Ronaldo, Ozil, Diarra and Alonso, any of which would probably be first choice for Utd (or any other club in the PL) and still only managed to match Barca once in five attempts, getting hammered at home twice along the way. When Barca play to their best I don't think there are 11 other players in the world that could match them right now. It's like Ajax or Bayern in the 1970s - the only hope we, or anyone else, has in Europe right now is if Barca play below their best or have players missing. Fletcher got more assists than Malouda, Lampard and Gerrard last season, despite being ill for most of the season. He may be primarily defensive, but can still do a job going forward with the ball at his feet - players like Mikel and Lucas barely ever cross the halfway line!
Swarbs, I think the lack of a stand out player at CM helps you in some ways. Like you said other clubs can't cope with the loss of a CM because their tactics require that persons prescence. Although none of yours are dominant or big names, you can swap pretty much any of them because their role is so limited and not integral to 'match winning'. And Henderson is a right mid. And Gerrard, Aqulilani and Meireles are our 3 best CMs. In that order.
Mikel doesn't cross the half way line for us because that is his job but he has played more attacking roles before Chelsea and at international level. He is certainly as good technically if not better than Fletcher. Lampard and Gerrard had a fair few missed games too!! But back to the point, I 100% agree there is little anyone can do to match Barca at the moment but having a sneijder say in your team would certainly get you closer than having say Carrick. It depends whether you are happy to play second fiddle or whether you try and get as close as you can over the next few seasons. Sometimes it's having something different as well. Take our CL semi against them, over 180 minutes they needed a last gasp goal and some rather dubious pen decisions to beat us because we had such a workman like midfield of Lampard, Ballack and Essien who didn't let Barca play around them.
I'm not sure we need a Sneijder/Modric type player, to win the league, in still confident our side is string enough domestically. However if we want to bridge the gap to Barcelona in Europe then a player Like Sneijder would certainly improve the side
Aquaman? Seriously? Haven't seen him in pre season but he definitely didn't look up to PL standard in 09/10. And Gerrard and Meireles were both dealt with well by Fletcher and Scholes in the 3-2 at OT last season - apart from set pieces you guys didn't have a shot on target in that game. Surely that's the point? Regardless of what you think of the two players (I disagree with your view but it's the standard view of non Utd fans so I can see why you have it), it shows that Chelsea as a club are willing to have a midfielder in their side who does nothing other than defend and destroy. United aren't. Every defensive minded midfielder we've had for about the last 25 years (Keane, Ince, Robson, Hargreaves, Fletcher) have all been able to play in a role where they can go forward and create and score chances, and all have done so. Nicky Butt failed to make the grade at Utd precisely because he couldn't play that type of box to box role. I don't honestly know if it will get us closer - Veron didn't get us any closer to the CL in 2000. Same with Chelsea and Shevchenko. Buying a player just because you think they will make a difference in Europe is often a recipe for disaster - they have to be able to play in the team week in week out in the PL in order to also play well in the team for the CL. Sneijder may well make a difference, but if he unbalances the team in PL games then we may end up worse off than we are right now. You were also quite lucky in that game, in that Messi and Eto'o didn't really turn up at all and the flowing football didn't really click. Eto'o in particular was dire - he did more in the first ten minutes of the CL final than he did in 180 minutes of the semi final. We managed the same stifling tactics against them in the 08 semi final, playing with pretty much the same team as in the 09 final. In both semi finals both clubs needed Barca not to play to their best in order to stifle them.
Personally I think we need someone like Tiote or Mulumbu or Muamba that just allow the others around them to play. Anderson and Cleverley are able to unlock defences but the former is hardly ever allowed to truly do this. Maybe because SAF wants to instill a defensive side to him or that he just doesn't want to take a risk with too attacking a midfield. We did try this against WBA, two central midfielders that are normally attacking and at times it showed their defensive shortcomings. People are as usual doing a Wenger over Fletcher. He is technically very good. He scores goals, defensively astute, tackles, passes with both feet. What more do you want from a CM? Question is whether he will get over his illness anytime soon and it may take some time for him to get fully match fit but signs were good against the Arsenal reserves. Against Barcelona, especially at Wembley I thought, we needed someone from midfield to push on. They were there for the taking if we had one or two more bodies. Was it any surprise that we cut them open (easily it has to be said) when someone from midfield (Giggs) ran beyond the front two? Granted, the majority of players would curb their natural instincts against Barcelona to make up the numbers in defensive positions, but if (and it is all what ifs now) we had say Anderson, Giggs and Nani/Valencia playing behind Rooney, we might have had even more sucess.
He was arguably our best player towards the end of the 09/10 season when he finally was fit to play. Lots of assists, MOMs and a couple of goals. People were so committed and obsessed with branding him a flop they deliberately chose to ignore his actaul performances. And he was universally seen as our best player this preseason. Scored the winner (deflected though) against Spain in the recent friendly. Had a big part in a goal vs Germany in their friendly before that. Personally I think deliberately not rating him became such an industry for rivals reality became irrelevant.
You obviously didn't even watch him play then - he got man of the match more often than not when he played. Not up to standard I think Silva would be the ideal player for you. Silva and Tiote would make your squad complete
