Vasilevskiy
The cat will be back
Does Fabregas leave as the best Spanish PL player ever?
De Gea
Does Fabregas leave as the best Spanish PL player ever?
De Gea
Just saw this and found it incredibly interesting. Since WWII United has had 464 players feature for them. 49% have come from the Academy.
Hard to really read anything out of that statistic. For one thing we have no idea what other teams' stats are like for that same period, for another that is an insanely long period and that could easily mean something like 99% of players were from the academy for the first half of that time and 1% for the second half of that time.
Yeah I'd say Silva for his quality and longevity. Alonso is a decent shout but I don't think he played in the PL long enough, and even when he did he didn't light up the world the entire time -- I would put Fabregas above him.He’s not there yet. But could be.
It’s David Silva at this point in time.
United have always had strong academy representation, and there’s really two standout generations.
The busby babes and the class of 92.
There’s also the insane streak of like 80 years of having at least one academy graduate in every match day squad.
Fabregas in 14/15 was great too, 18 assists. He was also great in 16/17, very productive, but wasn't a full-time starter.09-10 season from Fabregas was ridiculous. If he hadn't left it would have been him with some margin. Not a huge fan of the Fabregas that came back. Certainly not in this context of the best ever.
Now it is De Gea, Silva and then Fabregas for me.
Silva is brilliant, but he has never really been the clearly best player in his position in the PL (depends how you define his position I guess). de Gea is and has been the best goalkeeper for quite a few years (I thought Lloris was close at one point, and Curtois was as well, but overall de Gea has been on top for quite some years now).
For sure. I think the argument you can make for Fabregas was that his peak in his time at Arsenal was better than what Silva did with City.Still good of course, but if we are talking best ever then I think he falls a bit short in his later years (not that there have been too many great Spanish players in the PL). When he was younger he was an absolute force in midfield. I think he lost that at a fairly young age (he is still not that old). Kept his great vision and passing ability though (which means he still racked up "points" - this being a hockey board and all). Not that dissimilar to how Scholes changed his game through his career.
Arsenal always dominated Spurs in the NLDs, but even when Spurs were the clear underdog (fighting to avoid relegation even at some point) you still felt you had a chance (the naive optimism of football fans). However, there were two players that time after time seemed unplayable and that was Henry and for a shorter spell Fabregas. Not primarily thinking about goals, but just how they would dominate games in a way very very few players are capable of.
For sure. I think the argument you can make for Fabregas was that his peak in his time at Arsenal was better than what Silva did with City.
Luckily for the spurs the transfer window is still op... never mind.welp, Kane out for a month
Luckily for the spurs the transfer window is still op... never mind.
Time for some Coco I guess.And they still have Sonn.....oh....never mind
BAH GAWD That's Sam Allardyce's music!What has Huddersfield been doing with the Premier League money? Reportedly they made over 100 million pounds last season. Why have they not invested in the squad? Puzzling. Now they are going to be relegated.