Hi all, Came across this which alongside general challenges for van Gaal, pulled out a couple of key stats which are pretty stark, particularly ranking United's goals from midfield against other teams - 16 vs 44 for City and Chelsea, and even lower than Norwich and Fulham. http://hitrowz.com/2014/07/21/van-gaals-big-challenge-to-usher-in-a-new-era-at-man-utd/ Is Herrera the answer? Would Vidal be? Or more about tactics and approach?
United havent really had a decent goal scoring midfielder since Scholes' hey day. Chelsea have been blessed, in the last 15 years, with quality goal scoring midfielders, Gus Poyet and Frank Lampard spring to mind. People forget how prolific Poyet was for us in midfield, think it worked out 1 in 3 games, which is decent for a midfielder, chipped in with some important goals too.
hehe, aye. Its like when you think that Alan Shearer has only 1 league title winners medal, same as Mateja Kezman!
not so sure about kagawa. i believe hes got 10+ goals a season in him just dont know if hell get the playing time and when he does if its in a posistion to get the best from him
All our midfielders wills score more this season imo with LVGs attacking philosophy and not Moyes defensive football.
LOL Keane wasnt anywhere near a prolific as Scholes was he? Just checked, Scholes scored about 1 in 4, Keane around 1 in 10. Remember we are talking pure goalscoring here, and no other attributes.
I think stats like that are a pretty lazy form of analysis tbh. They make interesting reading, but it seems like every man and his dog has the stats to provide 'the answer' to why we underperformed last season. Except they don't. As a comparison, we scored 17 goals from midfield in the 2012/13 PL season, precisely one more than last year. And yet strolled to the title by 11 points with the league sewn up in March. Ultimately it's nothing to do with where you get the goals from, you just need to get the goals. I personally won't give a **** if Herrera scores no goals this season, as long as he's pulling the strings to get us playing well and winning games. In fact probably the worst thing we could do would be to sign a midfielder purely because of their goal scoring record to try and make our stats look better in the hope that will be 'the answer'. Hell, we might end up signing some huge donkey. Like Fellaini...
