The Manchester United Club Thread

tangey said:
Amorim was scouted with the exact unrepentant knowledge that he played a specific system. When he then continues to play that specific system, you can not level the criticism at him, you need to level it at the people who brought him in. And again, he did not want to come mid season, they told him now or never, so the fact that united were woeful during last season under a manager that did not want to come in because he did not have an opportunity to change the squad, is not his problem, it is the people that effectively put a gun to his head.
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I don't think bringing him in at the start of this summer would have been any better. Lets say we finished 8th-10th last season under an interim. Amorim would have come in, tweaks would have been made and this season would have been some version of last season but with a full transfer window. I think he would have been gone at the end of this season as a result.

I think that the club either need to spend whatever it takes to bring in a top quality CM this summer or be ready for a rough season. I don't think we should be buying him specialists this summer but there are plenty of CMs that would work for him and whoever replaces him if that happens.
 
fez said:
This ones for you @sigma
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I'd be interested in seeing the stats across his entire spell.

The stat that's missing is shot conversation - ours is so bad compared to other teams.

The issue with stats are that they mean nothing if we finish the season in 15th!

Whilst I agree that things might not be as bad as they seem, the problems are getting over the line and things like keeper errors. We're comically bad at defending corners - the stat for goals conceded from corners/set pieces last season anyone?

Fingers crossed we actually do start scoring and winning. I want nothing more! Why I doubt we will is because we haven't bought a striker we can depend on, nor have we bought a keeper we can depend on.

So I guess it's a case of buckle up and not have high expectations. But hope for the best! Moaning does not mean one hopes for the worst.

This is the team I happily travel 100s of miles to watch. Perhaps that's not always obvious from my moaning.
 
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Stats for the most part can always be twisted to suite any argument your putting forward.

If a team only scored 30 goals a year yet won league, you wouldn’t care if there xg or total shots should have been really a 100 goals

Cause ultimately the result matters not the stat

You could always argue yeah utd have many shots etc so either your strikers are all crap or you gave world class keepers every week all depends how you spin it
 
Mark1989 said:
Stats for the most part can always be twisted to suite any argument your putting forward.

If a team only scored 30 goals a year yet won league, you wouldn’t care if there xg or total shots should have been really a 100 goals

Cause ultimately the result matters not the stat

You could always argue yeah utd have many shots etc so either your strikers are all crap or you gave world class keepers every week all depends how you spin it
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The irony here being that the most stats/analytics focussed club in the League, won the title.

Results matter but they're ultimately a consequence of performance, which stats tell you. If you continue to play well, results will come.
 
BaZ87 said:
The irony here being that the most stats/analytics focussed club in the League, won the title.

Results matter but they're ultimately a consequence of performance, which stats tell you. If you continue to play well, results will come.
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Which is why I'd like to see the same stats for last season.
 
BaZ87 said:
The irony here being that the most stats/analytics focussed club in the League, won the title.

Results matter but they're ultimately a consequence of performance, which stats tell you. If you continue to play well, results will come.
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But you also have the best player in the world.
 
sigma said:
Which is why I'd like to see the same stats for last season.
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You don't need stats to see that you were rubbish last season. Now I didn't see the Burnley game but saw the Arsenal and Fulham games and for the most part your performances looked better than last season. Whether you sustain that, I don't know.

You've got 2 very tricky games up next and if you get slapped in those, it could lead to a negative spiral with loss of confidence and an even greater media circus around the club/manager.
sigma said:
But you also have the best player in the world.
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I'm not sure Chiesa's that good or why you needed to put this in a separate post but we identify targets based on stats/analytics. I watched an interview with one of our former eggheads recently and he was asked the question about when the rest of football will start taking stats seriously and his answer was the day Brentford are relegated will be the day you know others are taking stats seriously. He explained that no way Brentford, with their resources, should be in the PL if it wasn't for how smart they are with stats/how useless most other sides are.
 
BaZ87 said:
You don't need stats to see that you were rubbish last season. Now I didn't see the Burnley game but saw the Arsenal and Fulham games and for the most part your performances looked better than last season. Whether you sustain that, I don't know.

You've got 2 very tricky games up next and if you get slapped in those, it could lead to a negative spiral with loss of confidence and an even greater media circus around the club/manager.

I'm not sure Chiesa's that good or why you needed to put this in a separate post but we identify targets based on stats/analytics. I watched an interview with one of our former eggheads recently and he was asked the question about when the rest of football will start taking stats seriously and his answer was the day Brentford are relegated will be the day you know others are taking stats seriously. He explained that no way Brentford, with their resources, should be in the PL if it wasn't for how smart they are with stats/how useless most other sides are.
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I'm an idiot and can't gel with the multi quote function

The point about having the best player in the world is that you can be playing poorly and he'll still conjure up some magic in matches that were statistically poor. A bit like when RVP carried United etc.

I suppose your point is that you bought players who could do that based on the stats approach. Which I can't disagree with.
 
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I asked Gemini to create a report on the correlation between League position and xG. It created quite an interesting report. Here is what it said about us

Case Studies of Underperformance​

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Manchester United's season was a masterclass in statistical underperformance, finishing with a staggering 13 fewer points than their xP suggested. Their 42 points were a significant drop from their expected 55. This performance aligns with a key finding from the research: Manchester United scored only 44 goals from a cumulative xG of 54.42. They effectively failed to score over 10 goals they were statistically expected to, a clear indictment of poor finishing. This case illustrates that a high xG is a prerequisite for success, but without the execution to match, it remains a measure of unfulfilled potential.

We actually were almost bottom of the table in terms of the delta between points and xPoints. Forest were +12, we were -13.

8. Conclusion​

The analysis of the 2024/25 English Premier League season confirms a strong and undeniable relationship: a team's offensive quality, as measured by Expected Goals, is a significant predictor of its final points total. The majority of clubs finished the season in a position that was largely consistent with the quality of chances they created and conceded.
 
BaZ87 said:
The irony here being that the most stats/analytics focussed club in the League, won the title.

Results matter but they're ultimately a consequence of performance, which stats tell you. If you continue to play well, results will come.
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I’m aware we use stats and our technical team are very good.

Stats do work but shouldn’t be sole focus is what am getting at.

One common stat I see from some utd fans is quoting there xg etc well doesn’t matter if it’s high if you never but ball in net so a stat would initially identify its good well then the player isn’t if for multiple seasons he never gets ball where it should be
 
We can discuss stats all we like, but the sample size is currently too small.

Last season was really poor, and was always going to be a write-off (albeit far worse than anyone expected).

It's fair to try and give Amorim a clean slate for this season, and see how things look after 10 games. My one worry is that the fixture list looks incredibly tough! There's really only one game that I'd comfortably expect us to win between now and December. Performances are going to need to ramp up, and fast.

Last season will always be in the background but I think we just suck it up for now.
 
The point is that most teams tend to hit roughly par for xG. Its really not good if you are relying on scoring far more than your xG suggests because very few teams sustain that for any length of time. If you are underperforming your xG then its not ideal but it shows that you are creating the chances that you then need to work on converting.

I would simply suggest that if we are top of quite a few metrics which many people would agree are good to be top of, we shouldn't see a horrible season if things continue like this.
 
fez said:
The point is that most teams tend to hit roughly par for xG. Its really not good if you are relying on scoring far more than your xG suggests because very few teams sustain that for any length of time. If you are underperforming your xG then its not ideal but it shows that you are creating the chances that you then need to work on converting.

I would simply suggest that if we are top of quite a few metrics which many people would agree are good to be top of, we shouldn't see a horrible season if things continue like this.
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I think you need to wait a bit more than 3 games before you start looking at these numbers. With such a tiny sample size a single game can skew these figures quite heavily and you have played, on paper, arguably the easiest fixture of the season in which 60% of your entire xg came in. You've also had 2 penalties in 3 games which will make up a little under 25% of your xg - you're not likely to continue winning penalties at that rate moving forwards. With back to back games vs City and Chelsea to come, Utd's numbers could quite easily change massively for the worse.

If after 10 games Utd are still posting high numbers of shots, xg and touches in the opposition box then maybe you can start reading more into them.
 
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