He is, but he also stops your other players playing so well and therefore his presence hasn't made United any better than last year. He's added +5 to your front line, but his inclusion has taken away five x -1s from your midfield, ipso facto he serves no purpose, hence why you're no better off now than you were before he rejoined. When he leaves you you'll be no worse because your other players won't be in his shadow anymore again.
How does he take away from the other players? These days he basically plays like a poacher so it’s not like he’s dropping deep and playing as a midfielder which means they don’t see the ball (a la Kane)
2020/21 pre-Ronaldo P38 W21 Scored 73, Conceded 44, finished 2nd Top league scoring players: Fernandes 18 Rashford 11 Cavani 10 Greenwood 7 2021/22 with Ronaldo P36 W16 Scored 57, conceded 52, currently 6th Top league scoring players: Ronaldo 18 Fernandes 10 Greenwood 5 Rashford 4 He's scored no more this season than Fernandes managed last year, but CR7 scoring those goals has stopped the supporting cast get so many. I don't watch enough 90 minute games to really explain how. But Man Utd are measurably worse in almost every aspect this season. Them being worse can only be explained by the manager (all their managers have been gash for years), one or more new players or all other teams getting better. The only way you can get by with saying CR7 is both great and that he doesn't take from other players is if United being more rubbish is due to (a) another signing or (b) that every other team has improved significantly more than Man United. That would explain the winning less, scoring less and conceding more they do this season. Just as many teams have gotten worse as gotten better this season so I don't buy reason (b). And Varane and Sancho haven't made them worse. Not any better, but not worse. Greenwood situation probably affected them a bit but not that much. Too many of that team probably look at CR7 as being the person to rely on who will win them games and therefore relieve themselves of pressure. Last season more of their frontline were contributing and performing. That's not Ronaldo's fault. Possibly a victim of being so good that others around him expect him to do everything.
I’ve never really understood the idea that the best player holds a team back or negatively impacts others. It’s the opposite way round for me and that’s talking from my own team’s perspective. Kane and Son have carried us for the last two and a half/ three years because our team hasn’t been good enough prior to the arrivals of Romero, Bentancur and Kulusevski, who are all now pulling their weight (and some) alongside our main two. Go back to the years of 2015-2017 and Kane and Son had a whole team pulling their weight along with them. From defence to midfield to attack everyone put in the work and contributed, for successive seasons we had multiple players in the PFA TOTY. Ronaldo’s problem at Utd is similar to Kane and Son’s of the last few years, the others around them don’t step up enough, if at all, whilst their other signings have been borderline horrific. There’s a load of expensive and overrated tripe in that squad and Rangnick has more or less implied that in his interviews. That team needs major upgrading if they’re to ever get near their former heights.
So is Ronaldo also responsible for Wan Bissaka, Shaw and Maguires form dropping off a cliff? It is generally considered that the form of their defenders and the 2 holding midfielders has been the biggest problem at United this season. Plus an interim manager who has not managed to really adapt his methods to the premier league. The likelihood is that without CR7 united would be lower in the league than they are with him.
Well yes, that's what I'm saying. The rest of the squad don't perform as well with CR7 around. And that doesn't make it Ronaldo's fault... just that the rest of the squad work less and rely too much on him to bail them out. But similarly, when he wasn't there last season, a lot of them did perform better. But then that's going to be ETH and Ralf's problem to solve. I'd hardly say their signings are horrific as none of them have made them worse per se. Varane is not worse than Lindelof or Maguire. Sancho is not worse than Greenford or Martial. They just have a squad with morale and work ethic problems, a bit like ours (Arsenal's) a season or two ago when we had a squad full of egos and/or overrated players like Guendouzi, Sokratis, Auba, Bellerin etc
No, all three of those have always been **** with or without CR7. A few good games for England aren't going to change that. If that's the general consensus then fine, but it's a fact that United are not scoring anywhere near as many goals this season either. The manager - well yeah could be that, but Solskjaer was also a festering turd of a manager so not like he has much to beat there.
And it’s worth pointing out that Fernandes’ goal stats were heavily aided last season due to the 9 penalties he scored in the league, got 4 in other comps too. Ronaldo in comparison has only scored 3 so far this season. I still think Fernandes is a very good player but he massively stat-padded last season thanks to them.
He's also taken 50% fewer shots this season compared to last and his shooting accuracy has gone down from 42% to 32%. He also has only half the number of assists. Passes per match are down 10%. Accurate through-balls down 50%. All of this could well have nothing to do with Ronaldo. But Bruno used to be the main man and now he isn't.
It is still interesting to see how a team reacts when the talisman is out. Some of our most impressive sequences of results came without Kane in the side. That's not me going full DGC and saying we'd be a better team without Kane, but it does seem that the overall team sometimes work much harder when that star player is out. I say sometimes because it certainly didn't happen when he got injured at the beginning of the 16/17 campaign. But then you have our CL run, the run of 4 wins before we lost to Burnley and Mike "you know what you are" Dean etc.
Did those players perform better or did they just take advantage of Spurs and Arsenal being poor? Both you and us strengthened in the summer (and winter for us) and barring a poor run of results should be finishing above Utd this season. 9 of Fernandes’ league goals last season were penalties and Ronaldo’s only taken 3 this season so he hasn’t overly affected Fernandes’ goal tally, the lack of penalties have. Rashford’s never been a hugely consistent goal scorer and has suffered for game time this season due to Ronaldo and Sancho’s arrivals - the latter has been horrific and so far does look worse in the Prem than Rashford and Greenwood but teams need to try getting value out of big money signings. Varane’s a brilliant player but he’s missed almost half the season. I’d say Greenwood being a **** has hurt them as he’s a very solid finisher who’d have likely hit a good few goals this season - more than Sancho and probably more than Rashford as law of probability would suggest he’d have gotten better with age and experience. Overall Ronaldo hasn’t had a negative impact on that side, various factors both inside and outside of Utd’s control have, such as other teams improving considerably, Greenwood’s exclusion, poor signings (Sancho ****, Varane injury prone), average players getting worse and further exposed plus hiring a manager midway through the season that hadn’t managed in about 2 years and never in England probably didn’t help.
I think you can get by for an initial run of games without your team’s best player and even put in some stellar performances due to the hard work you mentioned but over a 45+ game season you’ll notice a massive difference if they weren’t there and it almost certainly won’t be for the better. Spurs without Kane (or Son) would very much likely finish a good 4-5 places lower than they would with.
Ultimately as Ronaldo has aged, he’s become a player you have to build a team around, in terms of accounting for his declining 90-minute fitness and pace. He’s a phenomenal athlete but isn’t going to play 2+ games a week at full throttle anymore. He needs players in and around him to help with the running and feed him the ball in spaces he’s dangerous. That isn’t to say that having a team set up like that won’t work, because he’s still an elite finisher and is capable of world class moments. But United don’t have the players or the will to set up around him. Their only decent AM needs to be the focal point of a team and Bruno ain’t getting that when Ronnie is around. Their wingers are inconsistent and seem to act as individual players rather than creating space for the team. Nobody has been able to find a good combination of deeper midfielders and their defence is a mess. All in all if they had wingers who were in form and had more game awareness, and a more solid defence and a bit more balance in central midfield then I don’t see a problem setting the team up around Ronaldo at 9. But they don’t have the players and the managers haven’t been able to find a solution to it either because they’re desperate to include Bruno and I don’t see how he fits with Ronaldo as he also wants/needs to be the focal point of the team.
Ronaldo's clearly still a very dangerous player, but he doesn't suit gegenpressing. Rangnick also appears to have pissed off a number of the other Utd players. Couldn't have let the **** take penalties last week, could you?
Ronaldo’s still actually playing the large majority of 90 minutes though. The guy isn’t quite human. I think it’d be somewhat detrimental to build a team around Bruno over Ronaldo too. I don’t think they have the defence, midfield or wingers to set up around Bruno either, largely because they just don’t have the right quality regardless of the player they want to build around or the system they want to play. So their best bet is trying to get the most out of the one player who teams still massively fear until they start nailing the recruitment side of things.
He lobbed it into an empty area of the ground. No, not one of the home stands. Nice to see that players can still be charge for **** after games, though. Just not the ones that should be.
Bournemouth have at least one piece of good news today: Great to hear it and nice to see him back on the mend. No idea what happens from here though, as he's out of contract at the end of next month. Doubt he'll have any problems getting a new one, though. Very talented player.
