26 May 2016 21:45:50
What position does everyone want to see Martial play next season?
I quite like him playing on the left of the front 3 with the freedom to drift left to run at the full back or cut inside on his right and drive into the box. There are a lot of similarities between himself and Henry.
At the moment, if we sign a quality CF, I think the left is better for him as he will see more of the ball and will be more difficult to mark out of the game than if he plays centrally.
I expect in a few years he will move to a more central position like Henry did when he has more experience and learns the finer points of the art of being a striker.
26 May 2016 22:23:47
Henry was an average lw . Once moved to cf he was fantastic .
Martial is a cf .
He can play lw but even at monaco he was moved to cf.
People will argue we need a striker so martial best position will suddenly be lw.
26 May 2016 22:42:17
Left wing its where he played best last season. He is not a natural finisher. He does his best work on the ball where most c. f. s make their best runs off the ball. he is too static in the box. He will develop a lot of this instinct in the coming couple of seasons and may well up more central like you say Henry did. He was not played central regularly until he was 24 / 25 . He will develop his game as he matures. He does not play well with his back to goal at the moment and is at his best when facing opponents and running at them either cutting in from wide or going down the line.
That is why we need a c. f.
Rashford is too young and will need to be protected in order to maximise his potential as ronaldo was as giggs was as messi was and Rooney is way past his best.
our goal return last season tells us that but some chosse to ignore it.
Obviously our style was not helping those up front but even Stevie wonder can see that rooneys best days are behind him rashford is not mature enough yet to be the main man and martial played better when on the left.
26 May 2016 22:43:03
Martial started 8 games as a c. f. for Monaco.
26 May 2016 23:17:21
Ken
Lol how many of them did you watch .
I thought you would be straight in at it .
Don't tell me, martial needs to play lw even though you and others argued he needed to play c. f. and not be stuck on the wing when Rooney was up top.
Rash should be rested even tho you argued he shouldn't be dropped when Rooney was fit
I think I know where you are going with this, do we need a new star striker some one like zlatan?
Coz I thought you had argued all season we needed a fast mobile striker, stretch the game, run the channels etc.
Lol very impressed you managed to get 2 digs in at Rooney as well. It's just funny now.
26 May 2016 22:38:24
To be fair even as a CF Henry liked to drift out to the left and deeper than a normal CF so he could use his pace to beat the offside trap and get on the end of long balls or through balls. It made him harder to mark and if he got the ball to feet he was able to beat most defenders with his dribbling ability and pace.
I think Martial has very similar attributes to Henry and if played as a lone CF could be outmuscled.
I think the other option is to have an interchangeable front 3 who swap positions at will like Rooney Tevez Ronaldo. Martial Rashford and Griezmann or Lacazette would be very exciting but I think Zlatan is coming.
26 May 2016 23:59:08
Jred I wasn't keen on the idea of Zlatan because he is too old and slow (a bit like Rooney) that being said other posters on here are slowly persuading me that it could work. I think Ibrahimovic will be more prolific than Rooney in the number 9 role. I'd be delighted if we signed Griezman or Kane instead though.
As for not signing a CF how would we set up? If Martial plays CF and I assume Rashford plays RF, who plays LF? I would love Depay to make the position his own but I wouldn't like us to be relying on him coming good.
Starting next season with a front 3 of Depay Martial Rashford with Januzaj Rooney Lingard as back up would seriously worry me.
27 May 2016 00:41:51
Mulam I agree, I would go with an interchangeable front 3 as opposed to a static c. f. like ibra or Rooney.
Martial doesn't have to play every game as cf he could play some games lw, rash could play cf or rw linders has played lw and 10.
I think depay will show what he can do and he can play any role across the front 3 . Add a griezmann type player who can also do that and you have a flexible modern front 3.
To be honest even lukaku can play wide, Kane can play 10.
Or we could play the big lad ibra up top with the young uns out wide like u14s.
27 May 2016 07:40:28
Or just like every winning team Jose has produced
It's his formula. I can't wait to see how he shapes up.
27 May 2016 07:45:50
I have said it on numerous occasions. Martial would be better suited as a CF. If we could buy somebody like Griezemann I would be more inclined to do that instead of buying ibra.
But if we were to buy Ibra, it's not the end of the world for Rashford or martial. They both can play on the wing adding extreme pace and support for Ibra up top. They would be a very frightening front 3 for any team in Europe.
Ideally I would rather see us buy a forward who can play along the front 3, but failing that it's an exciting prospect to have Ibra here. Rashford and Martial will both learn and grow from it. In 2 years time Martial is our No.1 striker IMO.
27 May 2016 09:06:45
Angel
I would agree with that.