Michael Pulis

RIP to Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva. Tragic news, and the deepest of condolences to their family and loved ones.

That's a massive overperformance!

He suffers from an aesthetic bias in that his football is not particularly beautiful to watch. Yamal might get only 10 goals a year but his will invoke a much greater reaction.

He has also flopped massively in his biggest career move and publicly pleaded to return to Inter a really offputting way.

I would argue that nothing about that EL final suggested that they deserved to win it. I think the strongest argument for keeping him was squad morale + his performance last year. But it isn't an insane decision to sack him imo. Leaves with grace and cult hero status.

How would you justify this season's performance though ? It has to be one of the worst seasons ever from a Premier League side. United's this year is of course quite close - if not worse.

I guess you actually need to see the avg delta between Post shot xG and xG for each foot. A higher delta would imply better finishing. Does he have the same delta for each foot ?

Yeah it's undoubted that there was more life on football twitter. At it's best it was amazing.

Speaking personally though, there were too many bots, gambling posts, unrelated replies in comments, extremist content, pornography and violent content on the site by the time I decided to abandon it.

Does this account for minutes played ?

I feel like you are too dismissive of Mbuemo in this report. He has generated 16.79 npxG/A this prem season. That is better than Fernandes (15.57), Garnacho (10.1) or Amad (8.86).

Last 3 league Seasons npxG+A p.90
22/23: 0.44
23/24: 0.60
24/25: 0.44

It's not ALWAYS United interest i.e player bad.

I would say I've watched him a lot too, I am a United fan! He's even signed my shirt in person when I went to Old Trafford last year.

I get the comments that he might be a super unique talent, but I still think that for the right fee, we should probably sell him & reinvest wisely.

Having said that, I think United deserved to win. But it's a final and we probably used all our luck on the OL game.

Amorim was not at his best during this final though. The lineup selection was probably out of his hands due to the injuries, but even then it was not as strong as it could have been. Not starting Ugarte ...

But he did not react accordingly during the game and his substitutions were far too late.

Yes, that is elite company.

Even watching the games you will notice how he comes on and instantly makes things happen. It's just his infuriating decision making and lack of quality in front of goal that drives fans mad, imo.

He is also not as direct or aesthetic as Amad, which draws comparisons.

If you watch the games where he racks up the xG and shot numbers, it's mostly because he literally shoots from anywhere, always. He has also historically always under-performed his xG.

His decision making is infuriating and he never manages to pass to the striker. Good not great

YouTube video by Premier Sports Network Europa League final | Extended highlights | Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester United

youtu.be/zHxoi9SgMWk?...
I would disagree. Watch the slow motion again. He initially goes to make a touch but it comes off his back heel, rebounds off of Shaw (making it an own goal) and ends up nestling perfectly into the corner. Without his movement there would be no goal, but it isn't a shot imo.

Surely this is wrong. Johnson did not shoot. It was an unintentional touch that deflected and went in.

Spurs could have played another 90 minutes and still not have scored a goal of their own.

United looked like they had a goal in them but ultimately the lack of quality and poor game management from Amorim was enough for Shaw's own goal to win it for Spurs. Fair play Ange.

Ref was poor.

Malta has actually started calling up quite a few players recently to their own national team! Jamie Carragher's son is amongst them. Always happy to see Malta on my timeline, I'm Maltese 😁

United would reply with ... you're basing your conclusion on the assumption that he WON'T keep up his Messi/Ronaldo level xG overperformance... Well... what if he does ?!

Considering that the average coach in the big 5 league's age is between 50 and 55, the average % of men totally bald by that age is roughly expected to be 25-30%. So the baldies are over-performing ever-so-slightly.

It has to be Man United.

But how likely is it that owners know enough about football to set a coherent and feasible strategy to run footballing (not business) operations ?

Isn't that the whole point of the SD ? Delegation by the owners to someone more experienced ?

It's also not the only research to suggest that players from Turkey and the Bundesliga have similar VAEP drop offs in their first season following a transfer.

https://tonyelhabr.rbind.io/posts/soccer-league-strength/

There is also a paper about quantifying the strength of different leagues by looking at the VAEP of players following a transfer.

Bundesliga tax seems quantifiable.

Yes it is! It also says that players from the Championship on average experience a similar drop off to Bundesliga players when moving to the Premier League.

Not conclusive by any metric, but a pretty interesting I would say.

https://thecomeonman.github.io/PredictingTransferSuccesses/

Numbers >1 indicate that moving from a league on the Y-axis to a league on the X-axis, VAEP (something akin to xT but more nuanced) improved.

I.E the same player will likely perform better. Numbers <1 indicate worse performance moving from Y-axis league to X-axis league.

Yeah last summer's was a remarkable outlier where we operated with uncharacteristic sleekness. Unlike the summers before, which were dubious.

The profile and position being signed, the squad building, the motivation for the signing, the transfer fee, the WAGES, the drawn out public negotiations...

Feels a lot like the Mount and van de Beek signings if true. A good player but is there a plan for him to integrate within the team, and will they get any minutes with Fernandes still being United's talisman? Similarly to the Mount signing, it's also really overpriced.

What about on the ball ? I believe Pope was also really good at the fundamentals but his ability with the ball at his feet was ultimately why he was never the bonafide number 1.