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PL Opposition Tidbits

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Frogfish

Frogfish

Gone to Redcafe
Member
I thought maybe a thread where we could post on our PL opponents without having to start a new thread for every tidbit might be of value as a repository.

This on UNITED from SKy :

After a top-four finish and cup final win, there was little pre-season worries for Manchester United and their ability to kick-on under Erik ten Hag. Well, perhaps the evidence for a potential regression was there staring us in the face all along in the form of their overperformance when assessing last season's performance data. When calculating quality of chances created and conceded, morphed into expected points the results had them overperforming by almost 13 points on the formula.
That type of modelling had them actually finishing as the sixth-best team.
Teams who overperform by such a figure do usually regress to that mean in the following season. Maybe United are.

So, without an obvious improvement to the quality of their first XI and some key players who could be on the downgrade due to their age, there is a strong possibility United are completely overrated when it comes to the market assessing their chances. That was certainly the case at Tottenham last weekend, where they went off favourites but were beaten fair and square. No team have conceded more shots in the box (31) or touches in their own box (88) than United so far this season either, albeit the sample size is a small one.
 
I happened to listen to Goldbridge yesterday ranting about the state of United and how they’ve had a bad transfer window with complete refusal to blame the manager. This after spending £180m!?

When he finally caught himself on he said something to the effect of yea we’ve spent half a billion but you need to spend a billion these days to be competitive.

I honestly get the impression fatigue is setting in with their fans again, they long for dominance and when a manager is merely providing competitiveness it’s eventually not enough. Plus they look shite right now.
 
He's probably nearly right though, if you can't afford to spend like City, Chelsea and Newcastle you aren't going to be able to stay at the top for longer than the odd season when everything comes together perfectly.

As much as we complain about our owners, it seems they are sensible (but too conservative) with the limited pot they have. All we can do is complain, be pissed off with the way football has gone and enjoy the occasional cup.
 
Interesting that I was looking at a general fans predictions for top four and the only one that had Man u in there was one of their fans.
It is a small sample size to be fair.
For the record the most popular combination was Man City winning with Arsenal, Liverpool and Newcastle occupying the other three places in varying order
 
Markeh said:
I happened to listen to Goldbridge yesterday ranting about the state of United and how they’ve had a bad transfer window with complete refusal to blame the manager. This after spending £180m!?

When he finally caught himself on he said something to the effect of yea we’ve spent half a billion but you need to spend a billion these days to be competitive.

I honestly get the impression fatigue is setting in with their fans again, they long for dominance and when a manager is merely providing competitiveness it’s eventually not enough. Plus they look shite right now.
Click to expand...
They have more serious issues within their squad than we do (for me a DM and a CB would make us title challengers, for United they need a total overhaul and they aren't buying the quality of players to accomplish that with 8 players, all of which could be considered to in their match day first team squad, between 28 and 31 yo).

Ave squad age given : for United between 25.9 and 26.5 and for us as 26.6 to 27.1 (depending on which site you choose to use) with Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Matip, Adrian, Thiago and Alisson the ones boosting the ave. age, though at least 3 of them will be gone next season so we really no longer have any ave. age worries.
 
Markeh said:
I happened to listen to Goldbridge yesterday ranting about the state of United and how they’ve had a bad transfer window with complete refusal to blame the manager. This after spending £180m!?

When he finally caught himself on he said something to the effect of yea we’ve spent half a billion but you need to spend a billion these days to be competitive.

I honestly get the impression fatigue is setting in with their fans again, they long for dominance and when a manager is merely providing competitiveness it’s eventually not enough. Plus they look shite right now.
Click to expand...
They spent that much and didn't think of buying a proper midfielder. Idiots
 
Bradley said:
He's probably nearly right though, if you can't afford to spend like City, Chelsea and Newcastle you aren't going to be able to stay at the top for longer than the odd season when everything comes together perfectly.

As much as we complain about our owners, it seems they are sensible (but too conservative) with the limited pot they have. All we can do is complain, be pissed off with the way football has gone and enjoy the occasional cup.
Click to expand...

Yea i think he is right but welcome to the second tier of financial might, he was also gurning about Qatari ownership coming too late for this season.

He should probably be moaning about something useful like working FFP or salary caps, anything other than when his club can also join the state ownership elite.
 
Frogfish said:
They have more serious issues within their squad than we do (for me a DM and a CB would make us title challengers, for United they need a total overhaul and they aren't buying the quality of players to accomplish that with 8 players, all of which could be considered to in their match day first team squad, between 28 and 31 yo).

Ave squad age given : for United between 25.9 and 26.5 and for us as 26.6 to 27.1 (depending on which site you choose to use) with Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Matip, Adrian, Thiago and Alisson the ones boosting the ave. age, though at least 3 of them will be gone next season so we really no longer have any ave. age worries.
Click to expand...

Yea as much as Casemeiro and Varane were lauded as top tier signings that’ll bring them back to relevance they were too old. They’ve still got a bit of a muddled transfer strategy going on. Their captain must be nearly 30 now too.
 
They’ve spent 180 mill but havent gotten much better, and their fans keep moaning about the manager not getting backed.

They’re already calling Mount the new Maguire. Lovely.
 
Hansern said:
They’ve spent 180 mill but havent gotten much better, and their fans keep moaning about the manager not getting backed.

They’re already calling Mount the new Maguire. Lovely.
Click to expand...

Yea the apathy towards Mount already is amazing
 
Modo said:
What did they expect? Mount isn't a CM.
Eriksen, Bruno, Mount are all basically competing for the same position.
Click to expand...

Yea i think he’s a decent player when placed in a good team but not the type that’ll be pushing the bus as Klopp would say. In fairness if they’ve signed him to succeed the other 2 then it’s fine but the priorities are elsewhere.
 
For a large proportion of my life… Inthought it was “titbits” rather than “tidbits”.

I kind of long for the days of “titbits”…
 
Refreshing mentality regarding player recruitment.


[article]
Postecoglu, who took Hatate to the SPL, said: “You look at people raving about Mitoma at Brighton. I watched his debut in Japan. I was on the opposition bench.

“He’d come straight from Uni. In his first game he destroyed us. I knew nothing about him. I said to my opposition guys: ‘Who's this guy?’

“They said: ‘He’s just come from uni, how good can he be?’ “He put his schoolbooks down and he blew us away - him and Hatate, that day. We played Kawasaki and we were champions. Kawasaki had finished second. We played the first game of the year and him and Hatate just blew us away.

“All of a sudden that changed my thinking. I'm thinking: ‘Who cares if he’s been at uni? Are there any other university players that are coming out that we can grab?’

“Then you take that sort of open-mindedness in your next role. So when I went to Scotland, I thought: ‘Yeah, I'm going to bring three or four Japanese players, they're gonna make it’ People said to me: ‘That’s a bit radical.’

“And I said: ‘Well no, it's not actually.' And I'm the same here. It's not just about Japan. When you're looking at players, just don't look at what everyone else is looking at because you'd be surprised to see a guy who comes out of university and within three years is, you know, an unbelievable talent and in the most difficult league in the world.

“There’s obviously a reason you pay that sort of premium for some players. You understand the talent is there. But I don't believe that the best talent is only in that £50m to £100million mark.

“There are very, very good footballers out there and if you're prepared to look beyond what everyone else is looking at, you'd be surprised what you find.”
[/article]
 




Seems like Havertz is in a deep, deep hole psychologically. Flashes of Renato Sanchez on loan at Swansea. Vying with Mount as the most baffling big-money transfer of the summer.
 
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When Southgate was leaving him out of England squads there was talk that he was a bit wild behind the scenes and that Southgate's doubts about him were as much for that as for technical footballing reasons. He must have come on a ton since then, as Ange has made him part of Tottenham's leadership group and, when I've heard him, he interviews impressively.
 
Bradley said:
He's probably nearly right though, if you can't afford to spend like City, Chelsea and Newcastle you aren't going to be able to stay at the top for longer than the odd season when everything comes together perfectly.

As much as we complain about our owners, it seems they are sensible (but too conservative) with the limited pot they have. All we can do is complain, be pissed off with the way football has gone and enjoy the occasional cup.
Click to expand...

Our set up was working though, our biggest issue has been that we've not had a big player opt to leave for big money (in a while). We had a few players leave us and we reinvested well, now that's not happening we're relying on breaking even which isn't enough. You don't have to spend a billion though to win, you just need to be clever, which in fairness to Newcastle, they have been. They're not there yet but you can see it paying off at some point, without them having spunked loads on big name players, or doing what Chelsea are doing and saturating the market.

Arsenal have spent big, but could easily fall away again, while United also could go either way. Chelsea should now dominate for years, but we've seen what this sort of shopping has done for them previously.

It's ok saying you have to have billions to compete, but when there are a few teams competing like that, it just becomes more competitive in the market and exaggerated and skewed, resulting in ever more reliance on being shrewd. For every Szobo and Haaland (who had clauses anyway) you'll have another who is overpriced and a relative failure. It's all about perspective. Klopp bridges the gap somewhat because he's so fucking good at what he does, we don't need to spend a billion, he just needs the backing he should have been given after winning the league and CL. We've shown that by and large we spend well, we have few failures and that's even accounting for the occasional low cost punt here and there, and despite the whole DoF fiasco. We just don't seem to prioritise the needs of the team in terms of positions that need filling, but what we do buy we buy well, mostly.
 
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Judge Jules said:
When Southgate was leaving him out of England squads there was talk that he was a bit wild behind the scenes and that Southgate's doubts about him were as much for that as for technical footballing reasons. He must have come on a ton since then, as Ange has made him part of Tottenham's leadership group and, when I've heard him, he interviews impressively.
Click to expand...
Going to bed at 9.30pm would probably be wild for Southgate
 
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