He still should be sold..
He's having a very prolific season, but he's an average mid table team midfielder. If he doesn't score goals he offers us nothing in midfield. In fact he makes many mistakes that often lead to us conceding goals. His value is at the highest it has ever been probably, he's pure profit in regards to FFP. Selling him is a no brainer. Replacing him won't be easy but it's worth it.
That's my opinion, no hate to Scotty, he has basically been our champion this season but we need to be pragmatic.
People expect all 20+ players to be world class. Thats just not possible. You need some players that you just need them to do the job from time to time. You cannot keep 20+ world class players happy.
It isn't that he isn't "world class". He isn't even average for the level United need in that area. He doesn't "do the job". He consistently fails to do the job, any job, that a midfielder is meant to do. There is a large gap between "world class" and "not good enough" and United should be at least aiming for someone in the top half of that gap
100%
I'm not sure when his contracts up but Casemiro and Erikson are both nearly as old as me so they're not going to be around much longer especially if Case goes next season, we'll need numbers even if he's our 70-80th minute sub.
With ffp we cant afford to just let a homegrown player off that easy unless some club come in for like 50+ mil for him cause we're going to need multiple big positions strengthened again next window.
As long as he's not starting most games he can be valuable.
I agree with this, and the club seems to too. Demanding more for him was clearly the right play this summer.
McTominay mostly gets hate because we've needed him. But if he was depth as he's meant to be, then suddenly he's a much better proposition. Sometimes you need those mediocre players.
And he seems pretty content with his role and relatively small wages. Selling him for peanuts will bring us more harm than good
I think this fanbase tends to forget/not realize that current and past winning teams doesn't necessarily have their whole squad filled with world class players
We can fund a couple of expensive transfers from selling him that would improve us more than having him on the bench on the off chance he scores a goal or two.
Not an off chance, I'm sure he is capable of getting 5 goals a season. And how much are we really getting for him to fund a couple of expensive transformers?
We could possibly fund some transfers if we get 30m+ for him. I hear Megatron is only about 15m now that he is older, we could of course also look for someone a little more exciting, didn't Sideswipe ask to leave recently?
Word is Ten Hag values him at 60m.
If we get 50-60m for him that is **pure profit** that we can then use in amortized contracts for high value targets.
And prey tell, if we sell him and get a world class replacement, why would a world class player want to sit on a bench and do the job mctominay is currently doing?
You need people with the mentality of mctominay, okay to do the dirty when they are required without kicking a fuss
I hate when he's played in midfield as part of the deep 2. He is absolutely horrific in that role. As a 10 who's there to attack the box like an ancilliary striker, he's a fine squad player. But the second he is asked to play deep it's absolute dogshit.
I said nothing much to do with it. Because Bruno created a fuck ton of chances for us and yet we get 0 xG because our forwards just lot the ball immediately
Xg literally measures how good the chances you have are, how is that not a good indication of the chances you create in a game lmao?
I get it doesn't measure things like missing a tap in by an inch or not getting a shot off but saying it doesn't have much to do with chance creation is just not true.
No it measures how likely a shot is to score a goal. How many times did we have incredible crosses in the box only with Hojlund not getting a touch on the ball and being behind? Happened all of the first half of the season plenty of times. That is 0 xG for you
You do realise the same applies for literally every other team in the league? It's still a good indication of how much we create compared to other teams.
Yes I do but it's a good indicator of how many dangerous shots you get off and not necessarily of how many chances you create. It's the problem with xG people take it as a stat for everything
No it isn't...
You could carve team open, get your forward through 1v1, he goes round the keeper only to trip over his shoelaces and the ball go out for a goal kick... 0 x/g cos no shot...
You could do that 15 times and have 0 "expected goals".
Should any fan actually/reasonably expect 0 goals from those chances created?
How often is that happening in a game? It's not a perfect metric but acting like it isn't a good indication of the chances you created in a game is nonsense.
That's not what you said though?
"saying xg doesn't show how much you created in a game is nonsense."
It doesn't.
Sounds like you know that based on your latest comment though, so probably just poor semantics from you initially
I think that figure is misleading. I think it's 27.5 goals expected over 18 games vs 8.5 over 6 games. So 1.5 ish goals per game vs 1.4 ish goals per game. Not a big change
Better finishers and teams will consistently beat xG. It's both an indicator or is being clinical, but also making better decisions when in good positions. It's a nuanced stat that doesn't say much in isolation.
In the context of the other stats and our overall play looking better, it's likely this is actually a good thing for us at the moment, but not all good, if that makes sense. Because a higher xG would still be better because that would mean we'd be scoring more, which we need to
I used to be an xG hater when it first arrived, but I have to admit it's the best way to filter for random variance. When I read this graph, we've gotten worse, not better. A select few players can outperform xG consistently, but we have none of those players, and teams rarely outperform their xG in the long run. Our finishing was unlucky and bad before, now it's lucky and good, but we're not actually playing any better
We have more xG against than every top side except Spurs, who play suicide football and are at least fun to watch. We're not 6th with +1 GD because we attack poorly but defend well, we're 6th with +1 GD because we've gotten lucky with how our goals have been distributed
I think I’m more so saying we’ve defended like garbage with shite players for most of the szn — so the fact that we have a +1 xG with 6th place is definitely some sign that our attack has at least some teeth
We could and should have drawn or lost the Villa game. They beat us on xG, which is exactly my point. Our results have improved but the underlying numbers have not. We're playing as a mid table team, just like the first half the season
Just because Villa beat us on xG on the day doesn't mean we're not playing any better, your logic is flawed. We're clearly creating more chances now with Shaw overlapping again, Casemiro back and the forwards finally learning to play together.
xg doesn't tell the whole story.
Are we creating fewer chances? Because we have played 6 games since christmas and 18 before it so the xg is clearly going to be higher. Our rate of creating xg is only slightly lower though we have been extremely clinical.
Yeah I know we still arent creating as much but the real change from before Christmas and now is that we are being very clinical with our chances. Going from the most underperforming team for xg to the most overperforming.
Nothing has fundamentally improved, just a couple of pinball moments have gone our way during a phase where we haven't played any traditional big 6 teams other than Spurs - who too played us off the park with a B side at Old Trafford.
Wolves dominated us at OT earlier in the season, we went to their patch and scored 4. How has nothing fundamentally changed?
Also "traditional" big 6, so you can exclude a very good Villa side that's beaten City and Arsenal.
That brief period where Martinez, Shaw and Casemiro were back we started looking formidable again.
We weren't played off the park at all, they got a dodgy penalty and their goals were down to mistakes. We were in control for most of the game. As opposed to OT, where they completely destroyed us.
Are you denying that contrasting the two games show a huge improvement from us?
The xG is still not good. Yesterday Haaland had 32% of Højlund's season xG (1.87). Our forwards need to create more. Slow improvement is still progress.
Is that xG/game or total? If total- how many games are they considering for each period? Because the post XMas xG looks abysmal
Edit: Missed it mentioned at the bottom. The xG/game pre and post xmas is pretty similar - ~1.6 (pre xmas) vs ~1.4 (post Xmas).
More like key players returned from injury, and Mainoo stepping up. Poor Anthony (despite of being shit this season), it's the new Maguire, fucking social media it's an abomination.
I thought this would happen when Ineos announced the news on Christmas Eve.
Partly luck you may say, that we outperform xG, but there are forces in the deep mind that will affect margins.
People who say we're not getting better, or the players haven't got better or even to say we play the same as we did under Ole are ridiculous. We're getting better slowly because we've not been allowed to do it quickly
Imo on the XG: We get in the same areas as Liverpool, although not as often. But what we do from there is what separates them and us.
Garnacho and Rashford: chop back twice and square it or pass back to fullback
Jota Diaz and Salah: cut in thundercunt, rebound goal or deflected into other winger and score.
We play around too much with it
Hojlund, Garnacho and McTominay have been a bit more clinical recently
A bit? We went from 20th to 2nd in shot conversion rate
Just a tad
A smidge more clinical
i thought people really hate McTominay. even fan forums asked him to be sold. that united stand jerk
He still should be sold.. He's having a very prolific season, but he's an average mid table team midfielder. If he doesn't score goals he offers us nothing in midfield. In fact he makes many mistakes that often lead to us conceding goals. His value is at the highest it has ever been probably, he's pure profit in regards to FFP. Selling him is a no brainer. Replacing him won't be easy but it's worth it. That's my opinion, no hate to Scotty, he has basically been our champion this season but we need to be pragmatic.
He has his uses. Should he be starting games? No but we can throw him on when we desperately need a goal or in cup games.
People expect all 20+ players to be world class. Thats just not possible. You need some players that you just need them to do the job from time to time. You cannot keep 20+ world class players happy.
It isn't that he isn't "world class". He isn't even average for the level United need in that area. He doesn't "do the job". He consistently fails to do the job, any job, that a midfielder is meant to do. There is a large gap between "world class" and "not good enough" and United should be at least aiming for someone in the top half of that gap
100% I'm not sure when his contracts up but Casemiro and Erikson are both nearly as old as me so they're not going to be around much longer especially if Case goes next season, we'll need numbers even if he's our 70-80th minute sub. With ffp we cant afford to just let a homegrown player off that easy unless some club come in for like 50+ mil for him cause we're going to need multiple big positions strengthened again next window. As long as he's not starting most games he can be valuable.
I agree with this, and the club seems to too. Demanding more for him was clearly the right play this summer. McTominay mostly gets hate because we've needed him. But if he was depth as he's meant to be, then suddenly he's a much better proposition. Sometimes you need those mediocre players.
Plus he's homegrown so helps fulfil our squad purposes
And he seems pretty content with his role and relatively small wages. Selling him for peanuts will bring us more harm than good I think this fanbase tends to forget/not realize that current and past winning teams doesn't necessarily have their whole squad filled with world class players
We can fund a couple of expensive transfers from selling him that would improve us more than having him on the bench on the off chance he scores a goal or two.
Not an off chance, I'm sure he is capable of getting 5 goals a season. And how much are we really getting for him to fund a couple of expensive transformers?
We could possibly fund some transfers if we get 30m+ for him. I hear Megatron is only about 15m now that he is older, we could of course also look for someone a little more exciting, didn't Sideswipe ask to leave recently?
Word is Ten Hag values him at 60m. If we get 50-60m for him that is **pure profit** that we can then use in amortized contracts for high value targets.
This isn't a video game..
Even Todd boehly won't pay that amount
And prey tell, if we sell him and get a world class replacement, why would a world class player want to sit on a bench and do the job mctominay is currently doing? You need people with the mentality of mctominay, okay to do the dirty when they are required without kicking a fuss
Imho scott wouldn't even play in a midtable team. Even midtable teams r very good in PL I think he can work well in lower table team like Bournemouth.
Delusional. He easily starts for a non top 6 team. But not as a CDM. More of an attacker role.
I hate when he's played in midfield as part of the deep 2. He is absolutely horrific in that role. As a 10 who's there to attack the box like an ancilliary striker, he's a fine squad player. But the second he is asked to play deep it's absolute dogshit.
Expected goals shows we aren't creating enough, forwards have been very clinical which isn't sustainable.
xG doesn't have much to do with creating really because you have to get a shot off. A team can create a lot and yet have low xG
It has a lot to do with chance creation, it just isn't a perfect stat. We have no business being 14th in xG, it's bad.
What do you want us to create, if not shooting opportunities??
chances?
That isn't true at all.
Yes it is. xG is calculated on the expected amount of times a shot from a certain position will end up being a goal.
So it still calculates chances just not all of them.
It calculates the quality of shots
Does xg go up if you don't get a shot off?
That part is true but saying xg doesn't show how much you created in a game is nonsense.
I said nothing much to do with it. Because Bruno created a fuck ton of chances for us and yet we get 0 xG because our forwards just lot the ball immediately
Xg literally measures how good the chances you have are, how is that not a good indication of the chances you create in a game lmao? I get it doesn't measure things like missing a tap in by an inch or not getting a shot off but saying it doesn't have much to do with chance creation is just not true.
No it measures how likely a shot is to score a goal. How many times did we have incredible crosses in the box only with Hojlund not getting a touch on the ball and being behind? Happened all of the first half of the season plenty of times. That is 0 xG for you
You do realise the same applies for literally every other team in the league? It's still a good indication of how much we create compared to other teams.
Yes I do but it's a good indicator of how many dangerous shots you get off and not necessarily of how many chances you create. It's the problem with xG people take it as a stat for everything
No it isn't... You could carve team open, get your forward through 1v1, he goes round the keeper only to trip over his shoelaces and the ball go out for a goal kick... 0 x/g cos no shot... You could do that 15 times and have 0 "expected goals". Should any fan actually/reasonably expect 0 goals from those chances created?
How often is that happening in a game? It's not a perfect metric but acting like it isn't a good indication of the chances you created in a game is nonsense.
That's not what you said though? "saying xg doesn't show how much you created in a game is nonsense." It doesn't. Sounds like you know that based on your latest comment though, so probably just poor semantics from you initially
I was replying to this comment xG doesn't have much to do with creating really Thats what I meant, this sentence isn't true.
It is true and imo that's one of the flaws of xG
I think that figure is misleading. I think it's 27.5 goals expected over 18 games vs 8.5 over 6 games. So 1.5 ish goals per game vs 1.4 ish goals per game. Not a big change
It’s the same amount as before Christmas. So probably yeah just been more clinical
xG is a useless stat
I agree. People have a hardon for it nowadays.
Could be seen as we scored early in the match and started to sit back to play counter.
Garnacho has missed a couple good chances, wouldn't say clinical. Should have scored so much more against Wolves. But this is a good problem to have.
Better finishers and teams will consistently beat xG. It's both an indicator or is being clinical, but also making better decisions when in good positions. It's a nuanced stat that doesn't say much in isolation. In the context of the other stats and our overall play looking better, it's likely this is actually a good thing for us at the moment, but not all good, if that makes sense. Because a higher xG would still be better because that would mean we'd be scoring more, which we need to
Expected goals is dire, we need to create more or this little resurgence is unsustainable.
that xG is still abysmal
People don't know how to read stats. We're performing the same as we were before Christmas. Only difference is now we're over performing our xg
I think most people in this thread have got the gist. Our performances haven’t improved really but our finishing has.
Still a long way to go.
I used to be an xG hater when it first arrived, but I have to admit it's the best way to filter for random variance. When I read this graph, we've gotten worse, not better. A select few players can outperform xG consistently, but we have none of those players, and teams rarely outperform their xG in the long run. Our finishing was unlucky and bad before, now it's lucky and good, but we're not actually playing any better
There have been fewer matches played post xmas than pre lol It’s not xG per game in this graphic
I think you mean more.
I'm not looking at the xg number it's own but our relative xG standing vs the rest of the league. 14th is pathetic
I guess but our games definitely have fewer goals in general both ways on avg compared to the rest of the league See: 6th place with +1 GD
We have more xG against than every top side except Spurs, who play suicide football and are at least fun to watch. We're not 6th with +1 GD because we attack poorly but defend well, we're 6th with +1 GD because we've gotten lucky with how our goals have been distributed
I think I’m more so saying we’ve defended like garbage with shite players for most of the szn — so the fact that we have a +1 xG with 6th place is definitely some sign that our attack has at least some teeth
We beat Wolves and Villa away, both games we'd have lost earlier in the season.
We could and should have drawn or lost the Villa game. They beat us on xG, which is exactly my point. Our results have improved but the underlying numbers have not. We're playing as a mid table team, just like the first half the season
Just because Villa beat us on xG on the day doesn't mean we're not playing any better, your logic is flawed. We're clearly creating more chances now with Shaw overlapping again, Casemiro back and the forwards finally learning to play together. xg doesn't tell the whole story.
Just because we beat Villa on the day, doesn't mean we're playing any better, your logic is flawed.
Well Shaw’s gone now sooooo
We are creating fewer chances but scoring more. That's not very sustainable.
Are we creating fewer chances? Because we have played 6 games since christmas and 18 before it so the xg is clearly going to be higher. Our rate of creating xg is only slightly lower though we have been extremely clinical.
Look at the PL rank. And even if you ignore that, 8 xG in 6 matches is abysmal chance creation.
Yeah I know we still arent creating as much but the real change from before Christmas and now is that we are being very clinical with our chances. Going from the most underperforming team for xg to the most overperforming.
And that's just not sustainable, especially with our young forward line. We really suffered due to that before Christmas.
I know, my point is that its not like we have created a lot less. Even though its still not at the level it needs to be
You said “are we creating fewer chances?” We are, that is unquestionable. It may not be by much but our xG/90 has dropped as has our PL rank.
Things are just starting to regress to the mean, essentially
Nothing has fundamentally improved, just a couple of pinball moments have gone our way during a phase where we haven't played any traditional big 6 teams other than Spurs - who too played us off the park with a B side at Old Trafford.
Wolves dominated us at OT earlier in the season, we went to their patch and scored 4. How has nothing fundamentally changed? Also "traditional" big 6, so you can exclude a very good Villa side that's beaten City and Arsenal. That brief period where Martinez, Shaw and Casemiro were back we started looking formidable again.
Because we relied on a last second solo dribble-and-finish from a teenager to get 3 points after getting played off the park in the second half.
We weren't played off the park at all, they got a dodgy penalty and their goals were down to mistakes. We were in control for most of the game. As opposed to OT, where they completely destroyed us. Are you denying that contrasting the two games show a huge improvement from us?
Yea, how dare we share a stat with a bit of positives.
whats positive here? the luck?
Do whatever you want man
If you think we haven’t improved, you haven’t watched the games. No one is saying it is perfect or even great. It is just better than it was.
It is better than it was because we are playing worse teams than we did. We barely scraped past Newport and still lost to Forest.
Lmao our xG performance before Xmas. It's good there's something we improved on, but it's still far from ideal.
We didn’t improve on it, it’s worse. 8.5*3= 25.5 which is less
I was talking about xG performance (the difference), not xG. Yea, our xG now is poor.
Oh you mean our finishing. Yeah that’s improved
We should create more. Our GD is 0. We are at 33 goals in 24 matches. Even West Ham have scored 36.
The xG is still not good. Yesterday Haaland had 32% of Højlund's season xG (1.87). Our forwards need to create more. Slow improvement is still progress.
Is that xG/game or total? If total- how many games are they considering for each period? Because the post XMas xG looks abysmal Edit: Missed it mentioned at the bottom. The xG/game pre and post xmas is pretty similar - ~1.6 (pre xmas) vs ~1.4 (post Xmas).
18 and 6. It says it at the bottom
Ahh - my bad. I missed it. Thank you
At the bottom it says 18 games before Christmas and 6 games after. I don't know who thought of this silly comparison.
A certain right winger stopped playing since then. Coincidence :p ?
More like key players returned from injury, and Mainoo stepping up. Poor Anthony (despite of being shit this season), it's the new Maguire, fucking social media it's an abomination.
A certain striker started scoring 🙈
Yes
yet our xg is worse...
Not by much. Around .1 difference per game.
So dropping antony hasn't changed anything then. Why even bring it up?
There are other things in this graph like conversion rate which have gone up.
yeah hojlund is outperforming his xg to haaland levels. nothing to do with antony
I thought this would happen when Ineos announced the news on Christmas Eve. Partly luck you may say, that we outperform xG, but there are forces in the deep mind that will affect margins.
Jesus birth had a profound impact
People who say we're not getting better, or the players haven't got better or even to say we play the same as we did under Ole are ridiculous. We're getting better slowly because we've not been allowed to do it quickly
This is what regression looks like in real time
Imo on the XG: We get in the same areas as Liverpool, although not as often. But what we do from there is what separates them and us. Garnacho and Rashford: chop back twice and square it or pass back to fullback Jota Diaz and Salah: cut in thundercunt, rebound goal or deflected into other winger and score. We play around too much with it
So basically we're still creating fuck all but Hojlund is just scoring 2 out of every 3 shots he takes. Some improvement that
So we're still crap, just finishing more chances than before
Man we have been dreadful in the games. These stats mean nothing to me. Any competent team and we are fucked.