The inpact of Coutts article

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We created chances when Coutts played and we’ve created chances since. I won’t deny that the stats show our form pre and post-Coutts show we were in better form with him.

But we also took our chances. Leon scored 2 calm finishes against the pigs, for example, and then missed 2 absolute sitters against Brentford and Middlesbrough. That’s nothing to do with Coutts.

We can talk about his impact all day but we’ve still had the chances to win games. Our disappointments have been our finishing.
 
It wasn't so much his direct impact on the way the team played that cost us.

We were absolutely flying before it happened and then a bad injury to a very well liked player followed by a bit of a wobble in form seemed to knock all the stuffing out of the squad. (probably the fan base too if we're honest)

We regrouped after a period as Lunny and Evans found their feet and whilst weve been OK since we have struggled to find the swagger or momentum that we had.

The stats and figures can be analysed but it was a psychological whack as much as anything.
 
That has to be one of the most sickly articles I’ve ever read.

“automatic promotion was probably broken along with Coutts’ tibia”

“Rather than simply replacing a faulty carburettor, they needed a new engine.”

“The orchestra had to learn to play without its conductor.”

Pass me the bucket.
 
Much talked about on here, as ChampagneBlade says, and James Shield highlights a number of points that have been made by many Blades on this forum.

That night at Burton, it instantly felt like an incident capable of changing the short-term destiny of the entire club. Indeed, at the risk of subscribing to the often derided attitude that the fates are invariably against us, it felt entirely typical that something like this should happen to halt United's momentum.

We'd won 12 out of 17 games, and could make a strong case that we should also have won 3 and drawn 1 of the other 5 games that we'd played up to that point. My view, expressed at the time from what I'd seen of the division, was that we would have been in or very close to automatic promotion, if we could keep the midfield triumvirate together all season.

Nothing that I've seen since has changed that view. The fact that crashingly functional teams such as Cardiff, Boro, Millwall, Derby and Preston are contending, illustrates what an opportunity this season presented. It's sickening.

I said that it would cost £15m to replace Coutts. I'm not saying that anyone else would pay that to buy him from us. Rather, that to find a player to integrate into our side and have the effect that he has on the back 3; the way he makes the wing-backs play; the licence that he gives to Fleck to be at his most effective and the consequent effect that has on Duffy, would require us to be shopping for a 'finished article' kingpin midfielder.

We can only hope that Coutts returns at the same level and hope against hope that we'll have another opportunity as good as the one that was opening up for us in November, again.



LS16Blade said:
Even before Wilder took the reigns, we were a better side with Coutts in the team. Being one of the Blades who recognised Coutts as, in the gaffer's parlance, 'a proper footballer' right from the off, I merely attach what I posted back in December 2016:



Cerberus Blade is spot on. Losing Coutts wasn't so much about losing a midfielder, it was about losing the team's 'brain'. Of course, you can stick another midfielder in to try to perform the same role (and I think Evans and Lundstrum have at times done reasonably well in Coutts' position) but Coutts is a more intelligent player than anyone else we have in the squad.

Watch how Coutts receives the ball from the defenders on the 'half-turn' because he has already decided where he is going to move the ball; he always dictated the direction of our play and the big part of our success in the first third of the season was that Coutts instinctively knew whether a given attack should be down the left, right or the middle, depending on which area we had an overload on the opposition.

Now, just watch how our other midfielders receive the ball 'square on' to the defender that has passed to them. They have their back to the strikers, can't see how the play is unfolding, have nowhere to go and consequently, invariably end up passing the ball straight back to one of the defenders. Opposition teams are then shepherding our play back into tight corners and, ultimately, it often ends with the defender hitting it long.

When Coutts got injured I said that he was the one single player that we could not afford to lose; he is literally the brain of the team. I also said that, regardless of Coutts' actual value on the open market, it would cost us £15m to replace what he does within our system (Woods at Brentford is the closest I've seen to what Coutts does).

Obviously, we were never going to spend millions. With the hindsight of what has happened since November 17th 2017, though, what we perhaps should have tried to find in January was a 'Gordon Cowans type' intelligent player coming to the end of his career, who had the intelligence to come in and do what Coutts did so brilliantly in the first part of the season.

In fact, Cowans is a salutary example of how losing one cog in the machine can be absolutely critical, even if most or all of the other players, who are excellent in their own right, are still in place. I've no doubt that had United persuaded Cowans to do another season, with the quality assembled in the rest of Howard Kendall's squad, we would have romped to promotion in the 1996/97 season.
Click to expand...
 
Jon P said:
That has to be one of the most sickly articles I’ve ever read.

“automatic promotion was probably broken along with Coutts’ tibia”

“Rather than simply replacing a faulty carburettor, they needed a new engine.”

“The orchestra had to learn to play without its conductor.”

Pass me the bucket.
Click to expand...



"Beethoven performing grunge"


Is it about Coutts or how clever the author thinks he is?
 
Presty said:
It wasn't so much his direct impact on the way the team played that cost us.

We were absolutely flying before it happened and then a bad injury to a very well liked player followed by a bit of a wobble in form seemed to knock all the stuffing out of the squad. (probably the fan base too if we're honest)

We regrouped after a period as Lunny and Evans found their feet and whilst weve been OK since we have struggled to find the swagger or momentum that we had.

The stats and figures can be analysed but it was a psychological whack as much as anything.
Click to expand...

This!

The fact he was captain when Billy didn't start, says all there is to know about his leadership and standing in the squad.
 
LS16Blade said:
Much talked about on here, as ChampagneBlade says, and James Shield highlights a number of points that have been made by many Blades on this forum.

That night at Burton, it instantly felt like an incident capable of changing the short-term destiny of the entire club. Indeed, at the risk of subscribing to the often derided attitude that the fates are invariably against us, it felt entirely typical that something like this should happen to halt United's momentum.

We'd won 12 out of 17 games, and could make a strong case that we should also have won 3 and drawn 1 of the other 5 games that we'd played up to that point. My view, expressed at the time from what I'd seen of the division, was that we would have been in or very close to automatic promotion, if we could keep the midfield triumvirate together all season.

Nothing that I've seen since has changed that view. The fact that crashingly functional teams such as Cardiff, Boro, Millwall, Derby and Preston are contending, illustrates what an opportunity this season presented. It's sickening.

I said that it would cost £15m to replace Coutts. I'm not saying that anyone else would pay that to buy him from us. Rather, that to find a player to integrate into our side and have the effect that he has on the back 3; the way he makes the wing-backs play; the licence that he gives to Fleck to be at his most effective and the consequent effect that has on Duffy, would require us to be shopping for a 'finished article' kingpin midfielder.

We can only hope that Coutts returns at the same level and hope against hope that we'll have another opportunity as good as the one that was opening up for us in November, again.
Click to expand...
Totally agree on the Psychological bit. On top of the obvious footballing aspects.

In that fateful moment at Burton, the players knew, all of them that is, that their very best player was out for the season. A hefty blow which took some time to get to grips with.

He really is a heck of a baller, and sorely missed.

I couldn’t say it’s cost us Auto. Some strong squads have had very good runs in the last few months. But I, as others, have always maintained that in Coutts and Fleck we have a CM pairing to rival absolutely anything in this division, and perhaps beyond. Add the mercurial Duffy in to the mix and it’s plain to see Wilder had blended together one of, if not the best midfields in UTDs history.

UTB
 
Ainsley Harriott said:
We created chances when Coutts played and we’ve created chances since. I won’t deny that the stats show our form pre and post-Coutts show we were in better form with him.

But we also took our chances. Leon scored 2 calm finishes against the pigs, for example, and then missed 2 absolute sitters against Brentford and Middlesbrough. That’s nothing to do with Coutts.

We can talk about his impact all day but we’ve still had the chances to win games. Our disappointments have been our finishing.
Click to expand...
Even against the pigs, before Leon got his second, he missed a sitter following brooks’ nutmeg on hunt.

We’ll never know how much of a difference Coutts would’ve made, but we know we’ve missed we’ve missed many chances without him
 
SwissBlade said:
Even against the pigs, before Leon got his second, he missed a sitter following brooks’ nutmeg on hunt.

We’ll never know how much of a difference Coutts would’ve made, but we know we’ve missed we’ve missed many chances without him
Click to expand...

That was Brooks' fault, he whacked it to him chest height instead of rolling it to his feet. I think he acknowledged that afterwards.
 



Ainsley Harriott said:
We created chances when Coutts played and we’ve created chances since. I won’t deny that the stats show our form pre and post-Coutts show we were in better form with him.

But we also took our chances. Leon scored 2 calm finishes against the pigs, for example, and then missed 2 absolute sitters against Brentford and Middlesbrough. That’s nothing to do with Coutts.

We can talk about his impact all day but we’ve still had the chances to win games. Our disappointments have been our finishing.
Click to expand...
Can’t lay it all on the finishing. No striker buries every chance they have.

Our lack of clean sheets have been as big a worry.
 
Danny04 said:
I thought it might be ‘by Peter Beeby’
Click to expand...


You only think? Is that because his name appears above the article. Or are you guessing?

Whoever penned it - please confirm when you've asked the boss - its rather flowery and pseudish ( ? ) in some respects. Numerous cliches etc. The grammar seems okay though, which is a start l suppose :)
 
I finally realised how much we have missed Coutts in the Middlesbrough game. 2 goals up v 10 men, how we needed someone to receive the ball, move with it, pass it on, move into space to receive it again. The 10 men would have been knackered after 65 minutes, and my blood pressure would have not needed medication. It has only taken me 6 months to catch up with many of you, including Pinchy .
 
I would agree that the injury to Coutts has been a big blow, but I would posit the idea that the long term illness and time consuming convalescence of Brooks has been an important factor too. He wont be right until next season unfortunately. Our priorities in the market also changed: we needed two midfielders to make up for Coutts' injury and our preexisting lack of squad depth in this area.Perhaps we would've pushed the boat out for a striker if Coutts wasn't injured?
 
We all know Fleck has suffered from not having Coutts but I believe the players effected the most are Basham/Baldock. They always use to group down this right hand side with forward / inward runs all over the place. I don't believe Evans/ Lundstram has the calmness and deftness of touch to play them through constantly.

Coutts allowed us to build up the pitch slowly, as if you was ever in trouble it would be a pass to him and let him start again. It allowed everyone to get further up the pitch, Coutts could slow it down a few seconds and they are the seconds the defenders need to get up into the opposition half.
 
Sean Thornton said:
You only think? Is that because his name appears above the article. Or are you guessing?

Whoever penned it - please confirm when you've asked the boss - its rather flowery and pseudish ( ? ) in some respects. Numerous cliches etc. The grammar seems okay though, which is a start l suppose :)
Click to expand...

What? o_O
 
Last edited:
Danny04 said:
What? o_O
Click to expand...


You asked what give the game away. Clearly the overblown style so it obviously wasn't JS.

You then, presumably for comedy purposes, hopefully anyway, suggested it was Peter Beeby. Now that jokes not worked either, you revert to "what".

In any event, it's a rehash of the many discussions on here, BM and in pubs around the City and beyond, dressed up as wise man thinking. Biggsy's latter career has been founded on much the same. Do we need another "sage" peddling the same?
 
I may have been slow to catch on to how much we have missed Coutts, but as soon as I did that old-fashioned thing of opening the newspaper and saw an article on Coutts 'by Peter Beeby', I assumed that a person called Peter Beeby had written the item. We pre-digitals are simple-minded folk...
 
HodgysBrokenThumb said:
I may have been slow to catch on to how much we have missed Coutts, but as soon as I did that old-fashioned thing of opening the newspaper and saw an article on Coutts 'by Peter Beeby', I assumed that a person called Peter Beeby had written the item. We pre-digitals are simple-minded folk...
Click to expand...


I for one was quite aware who penned it. Just didn't think much of it.
 



Sean Thornton said:
You asked what give the game away. Clearly the overblown style so it obviously wasn't JS.

You then, presumably for comedy purposes, hopefully anyway, suggested it was Peter Beeby. Now that jokes not worked either, you revert to "what".

In any event, it's a rehash of the many discussions on here, BM and in pubs around the City and beyond, dressed up as wise man thinking. Biggsy's latter career has been founded on much the same. Do we need another "sage" peddling the same?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought that the fact the author's name is on the piece might give a clue as to who wrote it, before you had to read and interpret the words/style. Sorry if I'm mistaken, my friend.
 
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