Yeah that’s the one. For me (and the guy on Twitter) that’s Werner’s mistake. I don’t see Maddison doing anything wrong there.
I wish I could stabilise the camera, but Maddison's making a smooth run and he stops as Werner makes the pass. It's more noticeable if you watch the line of the edge of the box. The runs by Solanke and Kulusevski (I think) leave him wide open and he staggers his run rather than just carrying on.
Maddison and Solanke's body language after the pass is also pretty telling. Similar vibes to playground football back in the day where your team has to have the last pick and whenever they get the ball and waste it, you die a little on the inside.
I think it's too early to judge any of those players, but I felt that the balance of the side was wrong. Fernandes has played way too much football over the past few years and he needs help. Mainoo and Ugarte are both solid holding midfielders. There's nothing to link defence and attack. Garnacho and Rashford are both better on the left, but the Englishman doesn't do enough defensively. Arguably both don't. Zirkzee's a good striker, but he lacks physicality and doesn't hold the ball up well on his own. Dalot's not a left-back and he was also isolated a lot of the time, though his application was poor too. The situation with Shaw and Malacia wasn't addressed in the summer and the squad balance is well off.
I was quite surprised at the Zirkzee signing to be honest. He’s very technically talented but it felt like that similarly for us, Utd were in desperate need of a central figure who can grab goals and lead the line. Zirkzee’s strike rate in Italy isn’t much better than what Hojlund’s was and neither seem to have the domineering presence of a typical striker/ centre forward. Utd have seemingly invested a lot of money on two strikers who don’t really have the current pedigree to lead a line for a huge club and are presumably banking on one of them becoming capable of such.
You can make a case for a lot of these players individually (although none are A listers, except Fernandes at his very best), but they do not fit together as a team. Ten Hag seems to diminish all of them because they can’t function properly in a team which doesn’t have an identity or style of play, has glaring weaknesses which individuals can’t compensate for, even when at their best and seems to lack motivation and inspiration. Spurs have had to search for an identity - the shift from Conte to Ange has been seismic, but at least your manager knows how his team should play and is making a decent attempt at selecting players and giving them roles to achieve that.
This is what I don't get with Ten Hag. He has the odd game where the whole team play well, then he changes it. I've no idea what he's trying to do most of the time and neither does his team, by the looks of things. You know what most managers are trying to achieve, even when it doesn't work. With Ten Hag? Nope. The signings, the formation, the team selection, the results, the good, the bad and the ugly. All of it leaves me shrugging my shoulders. What's the plan?
Opinions are not facts and when it comes to player critic it's all about opinions. Clearly Ange is happy with the contribution from Werner. If you didn't see the positive work of his down the wing, creating situations then maybe you are allowing your preconceived ideas to colour your view. The reason we are celebrating a memorable win is Ange and if he thinks players should start that’s good enough for me.
He wasn’t good enough yesterday and generally hasn’t been good enough for a number of years, hence why he’s been sold and loaned out twice. That’s not anyone being anti Werner, it’s just how it is.
Just saw online: Following Dejan Kulusevski's goal against Man Utd, no team has provided a greater spread of goalscorers than Tottenham (8) this season.
I'd have probably had Onana down for a 7 to be fair seeing as he saved three one-on-ones (twice vs Werner, once vs Solanke) and so that alone prevented the scoreline from getting embarassing. Wasn't at fault for any of the goals either... which is quite surprising actually.
the minority are usually right. But numbers are irrelevant , in this case only one person's view matters.
He's also created the most chances of any player at Old Trafford so far this season, in second place is Andreas Perreira... extremely damning on just how bad Utd's players have been considering that was their third home game. He's also now moved joint top for chances created in the Premier League this season alongside Palmer with 15. They've both overtaken Sonny who was the original leader on 13.
Sorry, my post was badly phrased. I meant that no other team has more unique goalscorers than Spurs (8 - Son, Brennan, Kulu, Solanke, Bissouma, Maddison, Porro, Romero) But yeah, the tweak in position has done him the world of good.
