Okay without my Rooney Bias I will be honest about our best team. One of my Favorited Utd players is Berbatov but little Pea works so much better with Rooney and will always score. However, Berbatov should stay and get a new deal as he is still a fantastic player, however in away games we need goals and Hernandez offers that. Valencia has returned and looking sharp as well. People may not like Carrick but him and Anderson work well together. Also Fletcher has not impressed this season and both Ando and Carrick are ahead. Our home team should be .........Berbatov Rooney Nani Anderson Carrick Valencia Evra....Vidic....Rio......Rafa ...............VDS Away ...........Rooney Hernandez .Nani....Scholes Carrick...Valencia Evra....Vidic....Rio......Rafa ...............VDS Do you agree
It's too simplistic to just name teams - the actual team selection will always depend on the opponents. I can see those selections being used when we are playing against an opponent that uses 442 with an average / good midfield. But when we play teams that pack the midfield and have good players like Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, we're gonna need more that two in central midfield, so it may turn into a 451/433 like vs Arsenal. We're also likely to need Fletcher if the opposition have dynamic attacking midfielders like Lampard or Iniesta, as Carrick has failed to deal with those types of players in the past. Either way, we need a more effective midfielder to operate in the forward areas. Scholes doesn't get forward as often or effectively enough any more, and Anderson still needs to develop more and stay injury free for longer.
Your best/ ideal team should always include Hargreaves while he's still on your books Massive shame about him, more so for England than you of course
I agree, Hargreaves at his best was brilliant. Probably more of a shame for England too, as United have managed well enough without him.
Yeah, and we managed to keep him fit for at least one full season, and it was the critical one. Still can't help but wonder how we'd have done in Rome with him in the centre, and against Bayern last season for that matter...
Realistically (i.e. not including Hargreaves) our best team has one common central midfielder- Anderson. He has the blend of Scholes, Carrick and Fletcher and really should be the lynchpin of our midfield for many years to come, he's certainly got the talent but whether SAF gets the best out of it and he stays fit is another thing altogether. Other than that, it's a bit too simplistic to name a best team for home and away because a lot does depend on the opposition. This season though, our best back 5 is VDS, Rafael, Rio, Vidic and Evra. I'm not buying this Rafael is too small to play against some teams, does SAF not realise how short Evra is? If he truly believes that height is a problem then surely against some teams we would play with Brown and O'Shea at RB and LB. Because Rafael is just as good as Evra in the air, whom the latter is a fantastic header of the ball. I'd go a bit further and say that Berbatov and Rooney are now able to play together in all matches. It's taken a bit of time, but their combination, this season especially has been very good and I think Berbatov and Hernandez should be just as effective against anyone.
Realistically - Anderson is about as good as Lampard was when he was 22. But with many more medals And more injuries
I see your point, but.... How many goals has Anderson scored in four seasons as someone who is considered to be an attack minded midfielder? Lampards three seasons before leaving West Ham saw him bag 29, and that's for a pretty average team and around the same age as Anderson at 22... Andersons medal haul has nothing to do with his ability or contribution either, just fortunate to be in the squad of a very succesful team.
Attack minded midfielder yes, but goal scoring midfielder no. And the United team get many more goals from the wings than the Hammers did back then - Lampard was basically their only goal scoring threat apart from their strikers and the odd few from Joe Cole. Compare that to Ronaldo, Rooney, Berbatov, Tevez, Nani, Giggs, Scholes, Valencia, Park all of which have been scoring a few a season whilst Anderson has been here. We simply don't need him to score goals like the Hammers needed Lampard to. And back then goal scoring was pretty much all Lampard had - had he not gone to Chelsea he might not be half the player he is today. Anderson still has a lot to learn and improve on, and could still fail. But writing him off as **** is something only a dipper would do...
Other players scoring or not is surely acedemic? Agreed, he obviously has something, but his rate of development is not exactly rapid given that he is at one of the most succesful clubs in the world, and has been in the company of some of the best playing and coaching staff in the country at some of the best facilities. Measured by that standard and calibre of player around him around him, and on that basis, I would have to say that he isn't that good, ie ****. Lampard, agreed, did come on leaps and bounds by moving to Chelsea at the age of 22, noticably in his second season...Anderson made that move and has had that luxury now for four years... I stand up for Mikel, who has been with us for similar, but in reality...
Not really. When Utd players get the ball in the forward midfield areas, they look for Scholes or the wingers. At West Ham they looked for Lampard. Being the main goal threat and being presented with more chances obviously means you get more goals. You saw the same thing when Andy Cole moved from Newcastle to Man Utd. If only it was that simple! There's a long list of players that move to the best clubs in the world and either stay still or go backwards. SWP, Damien Duff, Glen Johnson and Mikel all developed very slowly, if at all, at Chelsea for their first few seasons. Utd have a similar list, and Real Madrid have killed more careers than they've enhanced. It's not as simple as Football Manager "train this stat", they have to learn to fit into the team and, in the case of players from abroad, adapt to the division. Agreed he is not up to the standard yet at United, but then that is a high standard to be judged by. Both Anderson and Mikel (up until last season - he has improved a lot this season) would walk into the team in any PL club outside the top 6. But Lampard had already had six seasons and almost 140 PL games at West Ham. Through injury, Anderson has played only 68 PL games at Utd, so he has less than half the experience Lampard had at that age. Another hazard of moving to a top club early in your career - you don't always get the game time needed to improve rapidly.
Oustide the top 6 is one thing, but we aren't talking about top 6 clubs here are we? Anyway, I appreciate what your saying, and I am all for sticking by players with potential as there are those who are late developers, a la Lampard, Hasslebaink and Drogba...it just seems to me that Anderson falls short of the mark given the time he's had at the club, a touch of the Robbie Keane syndrome...good, but not that good. (****)
I would agree with that, if he'd had three full seasons at the club. But after a promising first season he got an ankle injury that disrupted his second season, a cruciate ligament injury that ended his third, and a knee injury against Crawley that has disrupted his fourth. So he's not really had the full benefit of his time at the club, spending almost a full year on the treatment table. All you can really say about him so far is that he had a good first season and a disappointing second season, which is hardly ground breaking for a foreign import into the PL - Nani's second season was pretty **** as well but he's come good with some time to develop. So I'm reserving judgement until he's had a decent run in the team, and a bit more time to mature.
The 'problem' with Anderson, as I see it, is that we signed a skillful attacking midfielder and have attempted to turn him into a more rounded player and educate him defensively, as it were. Anderson himself said that Ferguson is trying to develop that side of his game. He has bags of potential but we are yet to get it out of him for any length of consistency. I'd love to see him deployed in a more advanced position for a spell of games. Still, just having a run of games would be nice. I mean, what is his longest spell of games in a row for us? 3 maybe 4?
TuckersLaw is by far and a way the most informed, unbias poster on this site. He's a credit to the man Utd board. Why can't you lot be more like him? Regards Mr Nice
Thanks for that, but I am biased. I'm a professional boob, but I manage to keep it under wraps most of the time.
