The first half of the 2022-23 season. The evaluation of Anthony is full of ‘question marks’.
Manchester United’s rise has come to a halt. Manchester United, who had been on a nine-game winning streak since losing against Aston Villa last year, recorded a 1-1 draw against Crystal Palace. Bruno Fernandes took the lead and continued to attack afterward, but missed every chance of an additional goal and gave Michael Olise a dramatic equalizer at the end of the second half. The undefeated streak was not over, but it was a disappointing result as they were able to jump to second place.
Fernandez, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Christian Eriksen, who scored goals, performed well. However, Marcus Rashford was struggling and could not continue his scoring streak. Anthony, who assisted Boot Verhost on the right, also walked the pitch for 70 minutes, but had no impact whatsoever. Rather, it was more highlighted that he had an argument with his ‘colleague’ Fernandez.
Detailed indicators were also not good. He tried 3 shots, but only 1 shot on target, and even that was not a threat. There was no key pass, and all of his ‘strength’, dribbling breakthroughs, failed. Rather, I almost allowed a counterattack by recording only 2 turnovers. The football statistics media ‘Whoscored’ recorded a rating of 6.44, which was the second lowest in the team after Rashford. The British media ‘The Sun’ also gave the lowest rating of 5 and evaluated, “Although he moved actively, he had no presence at all except for arguing with Tyreek Mitchell and Fernandez.”
It’s not just this game. This season, Anthony has little influence as a whole. He made his debut brilliantly with a goal against Arsenal, and seemed to continue his streak with back-to-back goals against Manchester City and Everton. However, after that, he fell silent for 3 consecutive league matches and left due to injury. He had no offensive points in the four league matches he played after the World Cup break. He is on his way to scoring 5 goals in 18 matches, including cup competitions. 바카라사이트
His performance itself is not good either. Based on the football statistics media’Understat’, Anthony has the highest number of shots per 90 minutes (3.49) within the team this season. However, his expected score is only 2.32. He is lower than Rashford (9.12), Antonio Martial (4.12) and Fernandez (3.52). Even lower than Christian Eriksen (2.90) whose shots per 90 is only 1.33. That much means that he could not produce a threatening shooting scene.
It wasn’t even his role as a helper. Anthony has not recorded an assist this season and his expected assist is just 0.31. It is lower than Jadon Sancho (0.72) or Anthony Elanga (1.09), who are out due to injury. The transfer fee of 100 million euros (approximately 133.1 billion won) is sluggish enough to be colorless. Of course, it’s true that it’s been a while since I joined and I need more time to adapt, but it’s definitely not an ‘efficient’ investment.
Of course, it wasn’t without concerns. Investing 100 million euros in a player with no big league experience was described as a ‘panic buy’ by fans and media alike.
Concerns were even greater because Anthony’s league was in the Netherlands. This is because there is a precedent of bringing in a player from the Dutch league and failing. The main character is Memphis Depa. After conquering the Dutch league with PSV Eindhoven, he entered Old Trafford. Expectations were high for him, such as receiving the uniform number ‘7’. But he had disastrous results. Depay left for France with only a modest record of 7 goals and 6 assists in 53 games over two seasons.
It is not possible to directly compare Antony and Depay. But when something similar happens over and over again, a lesson must be learned from it. Maybe the Dutch and English leagues are at odds with each other.