Paul Pogba
The importance of Pogba for Manchester United is underestimated by a lot of pundits and premier league fans. Paul Scholes recently criticized Pogba on the BT Sport talk show, saying that he can not control the game like Pirlo did at Juventus or like De Bruyne does currently at Man City. He went on to say that he does not think he is training properly and that he looked a lot fitter at Juventus.
Scholesy does not want Pogba to be the one controlling the tempo of the game, he wants him to be a runner and a goalscorer. On one hand I agree with Scholesy, Pogba should be the playmaker, the one outside the box making runs with Matic and Herrera playing behind him in a 3-man midfield. On the other hand I think that Pogba is receiving unwarranted criticism because he is by far the most important Manchester United player.
Let’s look at some statistics. As of today (10th of January) it has been 444 days since Paul Pogba ended on the losing team in a Premier League match, the last loss coming against Chelsea on October 23rd 2016. The Manchester United league record with Pogba playing = 34 games, 21 wins, 13 draws and 0 losses (@Optajoe).
In the same time frame Man Utd have lost five games without him playing and if we look at any football related website that tracks ratings, Pogba has by far the highest average rating out of any United player, averaging a 7.73 rating on whoscored.com. In 12 appearances he has scored 3 goals and made 7 assists in the league, making him assist or score a goal every 104 minutes.
There is no other player in the team that makes the same impact as him and it is not even close, I think he is the future captain for Manchester United and the effect he has on the dressing room is also a big plus for the squad morale. Any Manchester United fan can easily see a difference in the team when he is playing and when he is not, the reliance on him is a bit too much in my opinion, but that is what happens when you create a system around your best player.
Post by: Hákon Þráinsson
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