04 Nov 2023 07:33:46
Good Morning Ed002
Does united have any interest in Onana from Everton and is he available?
{Ed002's Note - Amadou Onana (DM/CB/CM) Only moved to Everton in 2022 and they are not looking to sell him. Arsenal and West Ham interest has moved on. Newcastle spoke with Everton in the summer but have now identified another player as their primary DM/CM target. Manchester United had him a long way down their list of targets but failed to sign preferred options in the summer.}
04 Nov 2023 10:16:13
He's a good player but not what we need in my opinion. I think when we lose a lot of focus is placed on physicality and work rate. People say about us being lazy, not tracking back, losing individual battles and pulling out of challenges. While that might be true to an extent all those actions are done OFF the ball.
You don't have to track back if you have the ball, you don't have to challenge for the ball if you have it.
My view is that if you are focusing on preparing your team to have to fight and work to win the ball then as a manager you've already conceded possession of it in your mind.
What we need is better technical players, players with a great touch and technique, intelligent, mobile players who can read the game and find pockets of space to keep and progress the ball.
I'm not a fan of watching my side be played off the park. While I certainly don't watch that happen and think if we kicked them, roughed them up and ran harder then things would have been different. That's not what I want to see.
Amadou Onana is a good runner, he has a great engine, works hard, is strong and throws himself into tackles. However, he isn't particularly mobile, slow on the turn and easy to run off of if he gets too tight. While on the ball he is fairly average, fine with short passes but not expansive or intelligent in his passing. His touch is okay but not great, he often gets away with a poor touch due to his strength and ability to hold a player off.
He's a fine McTominay replacement, but he isn't the sort of player who'll take the side up a level, and I don't think he has the potential to become that player.
04 Nov 2023 10:52:23
Ed002 thank you for the reply.
Shappy
He has everything our Mids don't do well. Big, fast and very athletic and technically very good. He is a tall guy so they never look as good as the 5 foot 9 guys technically.
You hardly see him lose a physical battle or pushed off the ball which happens to all our guys. He has a great engine on him and plays in a pretty poor side. I think he would do really well if he had better players around him. He also has good composure comparative to Doucure who plays like a headless chicken.
Watched Barcelona vs real last week. They have a lot of technical players but physicality is not their thing. First half there was only one team in it as real gave them space and they were knocking it around. second half real got physical and they just got bullied.
We are like that. We have good technical players but they either lack pace or too easy to push off the ball. Any team that presses and sticks tight to us gives us problems.
We lose the ball constantly and don't have the legs to get back and concede. It looks like there is no fight in them, I just think physically we are easy to push around and combine thatt with a lack of pace in midfielders and CB's it a bad look.
05 Nov 2023 13:08:26
Ahmad, He's good at winning the ball back but he can do very little with it once he has it.
He's in the bottom 28% of midfielders in Europe for progressive carries, and the bottom 26% for progressive passes. That means 75% of all midfielders are better at progressing the ball up the field.
To put that in perspective Casemiro is in the top 85% of midfielders for progressive passes, and McTominay is in the top 74% of midfielders for progressive carries.
showing that the current defensive midfielders are far superior at progressing the ball up the field, and yet our biggest problem is a lack of ball progression through midfield.
While we do lose the ball its not often because we are outmuscled for it, but because we play a poor pass or have a loose touch which enables the opposition to pinch the ball away.
If you look at the statistics of tackles in the EPL then you see that 12 teams lose more tackles than we do. However, what is fascinating is where we lose our tackles.
We lose tackles in the attacking third less often than 17 sides in the EPL. However, this might be because we spend less time with the ball in the attacking third.
In the middle third (where most midfield play happens) we actually lose tackles here less than ANY of EPL side. This really proves the point that we don't desperately need midfielders who lose tackles less often.
However, the real shocker is in our own defensive third, where we lose tackles more than 18 other EPL teams, with only Arsenal losing more tackles in their defensive third. This stat probably highlights why Andre Onana has started playing more long balls and not playing out from the back.
Seeing as typically our strongest and most combative players play in defence it's very telling that it is in that area where we lose more tackles than the majority of the league.
The problem with our team is not being outmuscled, but that we don't have the technical skills. Poor touch leading to turnovers, and poor passing leading to giving the ball away.
Simply put we are unable to keep the ball due to poor technical quality not physicality. Amadou Onana would bring us a better player at winning the ball, but he doesn't solve the issue of us not being able to play through teams, progressive the ball forward or really significantly stop us losing the ball in our defensive third.
05 Nov 2023 14:44:18
Its why Mainoo is so highly regarded by the manager and club, at youth level he has shown he has superior technical and physical qualities.
Whether he can also be superior in mens football remains to be seen.