Manchester United signings must fit three-point criteria ahead of summer transfer ‘cull’
Manchester United signings must be able to understand the Ruben Amorim system, run all day and actually want to play for them. It’s a low but necessary bar.
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Ruby’s diamonds
Another match, another painful defeat. Can we not just wrap the league season up early so we can focus on the cups?
We were ok at times against Spurs, Garnacho wasted a couple of really good opportunities and the players put in a shift, but you could see from our bench that it was going to be a long afternoon if things didn’t click for the starting 11. The problem of course is that simply being “ok” is not good enough. Being critical, Ruben should have made changes earlier but he’ll know better than anyone if the youngsters on the bench are ready to be blooded.
Aside from a small glimmer of hope in the cups, this season is now a write-off. We will hopefully get enough points to avoid relegation (dear lord), and then the cull and player churn continues in the summer. Blooding the youth and bringing in younger players (21-24) on reasonable wages, to supplement the handful of experienced players we are retaining, is the way to go – players who can soak up information to play Ruben’s system, run all day and look like they actually want to be there. We’ll dub them Ruby’s Diamonds.
Once (if?) we get to the magic 40 points safety mark, blood some of those kids Ruby baby and give us a modicum of hope to cling to for next season.
Garey Vance, MUFC
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(Not) Too Good To Go Down
Losing to Spurs was no surprise but looking at our remaining fixtures is giving me some concern…
Everton (A) – 1
Ipswich (H) – 3
Arsenal (H) – 0
Leicester (A) – 1
Forest (A) – 0
City (H) – 0
Newcastle (A) – 0
Wolves (H) – 1
Bournemouth (A) – 0
Brentford (A) – 0
West Ham (H) – 1
Chelsea (A) – 0
Villa (H) – 0
This gives us potentially 36 points. The average required to stay up is 35.6 points. If you look at the teams below, they have all outplayed us and only need a couple of good results to catch us. Add to this our growing injury list, make no mistake, we are in a relegation fight!
Adidasmufc (Maybe we need relegation to get a dose of humility)
Nothing
I can’t be the only one getting to point where ‘stats driven analysis’ is just no longer either interesting or even insightful.
Salah was about 3cm away from scoring a third in the Liverpool-Wolves games, and to me that is far more dangerous than a tame effort that is onside but goes 30cm wide.
I’m not suggesting offside goals merit anything other than rueful recrimination and hand-rubbing. But i am suggesting that the pendulum shouldn’t swing entirely the other way either. Making a judgement that liverpool did ‘nothing’ based on the stats is somewhat misleading. LFC were 2:0 up, and clearly playing on the break. What occurred was almost a textbook practical application of that approach working. Same too for the move that led to the correctly non-awarded second ‘penalty’.
All this kinda falls down like a house of cards when you think about it.
We have stats on striker conversion rates and their own performance against their xG chances, but it doesn’t actually measure every time they have a chance. It doesn’t measure their performance and conversion rate in instances where a colleague is offside in the build-up, or there’s been a judgement about a negligible foul on the half-way line two hours earlier in the move. Have they slotted it 2 out of 3 times they’ve been fed the ball ,or 2 out of 6? If we’re trying to guague how deadly they are why do the actions of other players interfere with that?
You have many sites and accounts now ‘cumulating’ xG. So in an extreme world a team of Dejan Lovren’s ballooning a long range shot over the roof of the stand 10 times could accumulate a collective xG of say 0.25. That’d certainly be both a higher shot count and possibly a higher xG than what Liverpool managed in the second half, but would that be playing with a plan? Having seen good old Dejan do that several times, I can say with a degree of certainty the scoreline in such a situation will resolutely be zero in a hundred games of trying. LFC tried something different and the scoreline was the same, but I’d wager the chances of success of that plan across a few games are far better, albeit the stats are damning.
This isn’t to say Liverpool were actually great; They weren’t. Trent was again exceptionally poor at the thing he is supposed to be brilliant at. Quansah played well but clearly inspired fear in those around him. Things were bloody nervy. The team need to improve. Sending Danns on loan seemed odd then and even odder now. Elliot has alas fallen into the same vortex Ozzie Smith fell in, in the Simpsons. Darwin came on but only contributed defensively. All of that should be emphasised. In fact, they should be written about rather than statistics for conclusions if we are omitting so many variables in their collection. At least I think so.
Tom G
Liverpool bias
What do we have to do as fans to stop the ‘fan tv’ co-commentary on Sky games, also known as Carragher and Neville commentating on the teams they support – fanatically supporting them as one club men not just a biased ex player.
We had to put up with both on super Sunday. We had Carragher tell us Jota’s penalty was a clear penalty and there was ‘definite contact’ even when he saw the replay, he only then changed his tune when it was obvious it was going to var – but no call for Jota to be carded for a clear dive, I thought refs had no choice in these letter of the law decisions. The ref even got to see it twice so he agreed there was no contact, so what made Jota throw himself to the floor? Carragher was also adamant that the Konate foul was ‘never a second yellow’. Then once it started to get twitchy in the final 10 minute Carragher went all mute. The level of his he has in his commentary and punditry is embarrassing.
Before the game we had a carefully staged interview by fan boy Carragher with Slot where Slot could apologise for his behaviour on Wednesday. It’s been interesting to see the non-reaction to Wednesday from virtually every pundit….we had a manager sent off for his behaviour towards a ref, having already been banned for an accumulation of yellow cards for his behaviour towards the ref. His assistant was also given a red card and one of his players Curtis Jones was sent off for the third time in his career, once for a dangerous tackle and twice now for starting a fight at another teams celebrations.
We had a 10 day long hatchet job on Lewis-Skelly for being incorrectly sent off and celebrating his first goal. Where is the similar treatment for Curtis Jones? Similarly Arteta despite keeping his council on the incorrect red was lambasted by pundits for inciting his players and fans reaction/disrespect to refs and was told he was to blame for the ref pile on, the PGMOL felt the need to put out a statement, then the premier league also put out a statement about celebrations after the Lewis-Skelly goal.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the player with a history of ill discipline red cards, and a manager who has been put in the stands twice already this season for his behaviour towards officials might have been the ones to face such faux outrage from pundits up and down the land and be the poster boy for the respect refs campaign.
I’m also looking forward to the new PGMOL trial rule being rolled out for all teams where just before you get sent off for a second yellow your manager can decide to sub you off instead. Mac Allister at Bournemouth, Bradley at Everton and now Konate v Wolves – there is nothing more telling than the immediate substitution of a player who has been very lucky not to be sent off.
Now of course Liverpool fans will argue the other way, but the point stands that these are marginal decisions and all have gone Liverpool’s way, as so much has this season. Liverpool looked leggy to me, let’s see how the next 3 league games go, the lack of injuries has been a blessing so far but Slot hasn’t massively rotated and has relied on a critical core of players. All the pressure is on them and it started to show v Wolves – last year Liverpool were 5 clear with only 8 games to go and bottled it. This year they have to win it given the perfect storm of everything falling jam side up and perfectly on their plate…..
Rich, AFC
Rule book questions
Re: Jota’s ludicrous, and depressing, dive in the area today. We’ve seen the “drag your leg towards the defender’s leg even if your leg is not going to be impacted” trick many times before (thanks Jamie Vardy…). But when Simon Hooper somehow falls for it (he had a terrible game btw), and it is then rightly overturned on VAR, why is Jota not booked as a result? VAR is used to show what happened, and what happened was a blatant dive looking for a penalty, which is a bookable offense right?
I’d be grateful if one of our many F365 pedants would please educate me.
Mike (1 year since last trophy) WHU
Redundant rules
I wrote last week about the way in which head injuries are treated in football and it got me thinking about various other rules which are enforced ridiculously or make no sense.
Firstly, throw ins. The amount of foul throws over the course of the season which are almost never enforced is endlessly frustrating. Until the referee decides once in a blue moon to enforce them (Bellerin once did two in the same game). Also, how far up you can walk for a throw is directly proportional to how close you are to your goal, whenever I see a team get a throw in next to their own corner flag, usually the camera zooms on a certain player/manager before cutting back to the throw in suddenly having moved to nearly the edge of the box, that genuinely makes a pretty big difference on teams being pressed high.
Secondly, the 6 second rule for goalkeepers, thankfully they’re trialling an enforced 8 second rule, but it is insane how long goalkeepers can hold the ball for, every game you see keepers holding the ball for upwards of 20 seconds and often just catching it and deciding it’s time for a lie down. Why is that tolerated at all?? The only time I can remember this actually being enforced was Simon Mignolet (of course) in the europa league. In the NBA, referees count how long players are in the key (Area in front of the basket) and the arc (Area directly beneath basket) all while live play is happening and players can reset their times by picking up attackers or briefly stepping out. When goalkeepers are holding the ball, it is the least eventful part of ‘live’ play, it goes unenforced for no reason whatsoever.
And then watching Liverpool’s two penalty appeals, most seem to agree Jota’s wasn’t a penalty as he forced the contact. But why should Diaz’s be? All attackers do it (Harry Kane is the master), but why can an attacker kick the ball away and dangle a foot out towards the keeper and automatically have a penalty. I get it’s a foul everywhere else on the pitch, but a penalty has roughly an 80% chance of being scored, if the keeper hadn’t impeded Diaz, he had literally a 0% chance of scoring, he had just booted the ball out for a goal kick. For a penalty surely it should be considered what chance the attacker had and have they decided to go down.
Finally, the threshold for yellow cards is wildly inconsistent, so often a cynical foul occurs in the first few minutes and goes unpunished due to it being ‘too early in the game’. What?!?! In the recent merseyside derby, both Gueye and Bradley absolutely should have received 2nd yellows quite soon after their first, but didn’t, clearly because they were already on one. Would a sin-bin or forced substitution really be getting too detailed? Seems better than the rules just being completely different based on who infringes them and when.
C, Greece.
VAR-city blues
So, with the rise in the terms LiVARpool and VARsenal, I wondered if I could shoehorn the term VAR into every current Premier League club, you know, the important stuff. I’m pretty confident I’ve nailed this list to be honest, but I’m open to ideas…
VARsenal (obvs)
Aston VARla (do they play in the Segunda Division?)
Bournemouth VARthletic
BrentVARd
Brighton and HoVARlbion (comfortably my faVARite, absolutely bVARtiful)
ChVARlsea (tenuous)
Crystal PVARlace (equally tenuous)
EVARton (I mean, that’s just low hanging fruit)
FVARlhum (the most tenuous?)
VARpswich Town
LeicestVAR CIty
LiVARpool (obvs 2.0)
ManchVARsters United and City (regretting this list now)
NewcVARstle United
NottingVARm Forest
SouthVARmpton (actually sounds like a wealthy suburb in Hertfordshire)
Tottenham HotspVAR
West VARm United
WolVARhampton Wanderers (low hanging fruit 2.0)
All in all – I’d say this is evidence that everyone is privileged and gets all the VAR decisions – with apologies to Wolves, who, let’s be honest actually are genuinely the hardest done by, by a country mile, since the advent of Video Assisted Refereeing
With much mirth and bad jokes,
Harold Edmonton Hooler