Are we uncoachable?



I can't help but think of the question posed when I see footage like this.

Supposed to be a CL level PL squad training here. We're supposed to be awestruck by technique, we as laymen, could only dream of having. With that said, WTF is that?

If that's the state of us what kind of football would you have us play to optimise the collective? Mind is dialing back to Mourinho or defensive-minded Simeone here, as much as I hate to say it. We can't even go the flying wingers or counter-attacking routes.
 
It's just a variation of a rondo but with the whole group involved, not sure there's a huge amount to read into here - probably warming up and it's a selected short video, there's probably a reason why that footage was selected...

Also on the awestruck point, you see these kind of errors most games - overhit passes, bad touches etc. Obviously I'd say we have a few players who are more prone to this than others but no footballer doesn't make the occasional basic error.
 
We are definitely not uncoachable, as boring as it may have been at times (not always) lvg clearly had us coached and in hindsight I wish we had allowed him to continue as his last season was not a disaster like ole's, moyes's and mourinho's.

The fact that ole and mourinho managed to get the team to 2nd place finish tells you we are coachable and neither of mourinho (past prime) or ole were hardly great coaches, imagine if we had hired conte (who was available) instead ole or if we had hired conte before chelsea got to him instead of hiring mourinho that summer.

Ole has a lot to answer for though as it feels like he left the most toxic squad mentality post fergie
 
Fortitude said:
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Let's get down to business
To defeat the Krauts
Did we just sign donkeys?
Who are our scouts?
You're the saddest bunch I've ever coached
But you can bet before we're through
Mister, I'll make a Wout out of you!
 
Fortitude said:


I can't help but think of the question posed when I see footage like this.

Supposed to be a CL level PL squad training here. We're supposed to be awestruck by technique, we as laymen, could only dream of having. With that said, WTF is that?

If that's the state of us what kind of football would you have us play to optimise the collective? Mind is dialing back to Mourinho or defensive-minded Simeone here, as much as I hate to say it. We can't even go the flying wingers or counter-attacking routes.
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Seen this footage going viral with comparison to ETH Ajax, apparently as some kind of proof of lack of ability of the current squad.

In reality it's just a 25sec clip out of hours of training per day so absolutely pointless to overanalyse and it's proof of absolutely nothing.

On the more general question of the thread - I do think there is a major issue for the players who have been here under several managers. Every 2 years there is a change of ideas and style, takes time to adapt each time - another reason to stick with the manager despite poor results because I really can't be arsed to start at square one again.
 
Rood said:
Seen this footage going viral with comparison to ETH Ajax, apparently as some kind of proof of lack of ability of the current squad.

In reality it's just a 25sec clip out of hours of training per day so absolutely pointless to overanalyse and it's proof of absolutely nothing.

On the more general question of the thread - I do think there is a major issue for the players who have been here under several managers. Every 2 years there is a change of ideas and style, takes time to adapt each time - another reason to stick with the manager despite poor results because I really can't be arsed to start at square one again.
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What are you talking about? This is basic technique that we are failing at which we see every game.
 
Rood said:
I'm talking about how stupid it is to overanalyse a 25sec clip of training
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If you allow yourself even 25 seconds of weakness, how can you claim to be great?

Fecking hell, I'm posting that on LinkedIn and tagging every CEO.
 
Rood said:
I'm talking about how stupid it is to overanalyse a 25sec clip of training
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If we were fluid in-game I could lean towards this. As things stand, it's an extrapolation of what we mostly look like in game, same goes for the Ajax meme footage; they looked like that in game and you could logically conclude the training footage was simply extrapolated come match day.

Another way this could be looked at is: would you bet on the rest of the footage looking like that clip or like the Ajax footage?

That might've been the worst of the footage, but I'd love to see the best.
 
I think it is impossible to implement any style of play, tactics, etc. Because our club has no idea, no philosophy, every time a new manager comes around, we change everything, so the team is some sort of junk shop.
 
Definitely not, I think we're just trying to change too much all at once.

Imagine you're Maguire or Casemiro or Bruno and you have basically played football one way your entire career - suddenly you're being asked to do all kinds of weird and wonderful things...its no wonder it looks chaotic at times
 
If Lvg can coach a side containing fellaini in midfield to play Liverpool off the park and generally out possess most sides when he was in charge and this was after taking over moyes trash football, then ten hag should be able to coach us to look competent on the ball, it's really not a tall order
 
Lee565 said:
If Lvg can coach a side containing fellaini in midfield to play Liverpool off the park and generally out possess most sides when he was in charge and this was after taking over moyes trash football, then ten hag should be able to coach us to look competent on the ball, it's really not a tall order
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van Gaal couldn't coach us into managing more than one or two shots on target, despite having the ball for literally 60-70% of the game.
 
Alex99 said:
van Gaal couldn't coach us into managing more than one or two shots on target, despite having the ball for literally 60-70% of the game.
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How many shots we averaging now? 18 goals in premier league is embarrassing. LVG should never have been appointed but at least it was clear what he wanted the players to do
 
Rood said:
I'm talking about how stupid it is to overanalyse a 25sec clip of training
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Yeah but we see the same in games. That's why that clip resonates.

Those passes there, exactly the same as McTominay's pass for the second Bournemouth goal.
 
Gordon Godot said:
How many shots we averaging now? 18 goals in premier league is embarrassing. LVG should never have been appointed but at least it was clear what he wanted the players to do
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Wanting the players do something dull and ineffective is as bad as whatever we've got going on now.
 
It's not uncoachable.. we don't have the players to play a technical game and we do not have elite players .. and we are trying to play a different style that suits our players ..

I am sure if we sit back .. 2 banks of 4 .. try to hit on the counter . Relase Garnacho/ Rashford, Hojlund quickly.. . we will succeed.. might even win today and even maybe draw this weekend .. Jose style ..
But we are trying to play open.. and we do not have the players for this ..
We suck in recruitment .. we bought wrong players all the time..
 
Any group of players is coachable, but you have to pick a style and crucially stick to it.

The last four managers probably came in with an idea, began that way but then all panicked and compromised. Played tactics and players that didn't fit each other.

All four ended up with a nothing style. A hybrid sort of set up that didn't work.

Right now we haven't got a set of passers or alternatively a physical bunch that can be more direct. Neither here nor there because ETH has let the job get to him. He's compromised.
 
Alex99 said:
van Gaal couldn't coach us into managing more than one or two shots on target, despite having the ball for literally 60-70% of the game.
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And yet we scored more goals under lvg than ten hag in their respective first seasons, I would take the bore draws under lvg with 70% possession over being humiliated over a dozen times under eth along with less possession.
 
Scandi Red said:
Let's get down to business
To defeat the Krauts
Did we just sign donkeys?
Who are our scouts?
You're the saddest bunch I've ever coached
But you can bet before we're through
Mister, I'll make a Wout out of you!
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Coach #1 : Shaw wants another bread!
Coach #2 : Say goodbye to those who bet on these!
Coach #3 : Boy, they thought videogame counted as going to gym.
Neville : This guy's squatting with his feet!
Sancho: Hope they don't notice I pick blue (on fifa online)
Now I wish that I knew how to meme!!!
 
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Lee565 said:
And yet we scored more goals under lvg than ten hag in their respective first seasons, I would take the bore draws under lvg with 70% possession over being humiliated over a dozen times under eth along with less possession.
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A shinier turd doesn't make it any less of a turd.
 
We are stuck in the past trying to re-create old glories. Every manager we sign has does not have free reign. They have to abide by the 'United Way'. That means McTominay and Rashford are integral as academy graduates. McTominay less so but we always have to have at least one star academy player we build around. Rashford is that man. Then you add to it the idea of free flowing attacking football which we think is our DNA. That means we will never be a Pep type team. Then you add structure like never having a DOF. Then you have old school United people throughout the club. This stagnates bringing in new ideas. Add it all together and you can see how no matter what manager you bring in they are hampered by tradition. That means new managers just try and adapt their philosophies to what they think Manchester United should be instead of writing their own story. Liverpool was the same until Klopp came in and threw out the rulebook and did everything his way.
 
Rood said:
I'm talking about how stupid it is to overanalyse a 25sec clip of training
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I agree with this, but why would the club even allow this footage to be released? The communications / social media people should've been more selective over which footage was released to the public, knowing it would've obviously (rightly or wrongly) been over-analyzed.
 
I think it's because we give managers too much power, especially signing players. This should have stopped and we should have learned from the Moyes debacle. Signing Fellaini when we actually needed a Kroos or Fabregas type midfielder, Moyes knew he needed a different profile of midfielder but instead of relying on club scouts or asking the club to pick a midfielder of similar mould, he went with Fellaini just for the heck of it.

LvG like the OP said really drilled down his philosophy into our squad. We again made the grave error of relying on him for transfers - Depay, Di Maria, Falcao, Schneiderlin. We had to pay dearly to get rid off these. This should have been where we wisened up and appointed someone who knows football to run the club instead of relying on managers. LvG with a competent DoF could have worked wonders and laid a foundation for modern football. We could have brought in modern managers to work on top of what LvG did with the squad.

We decided to rip it all up and got the moron Mourinho in. Again wasted transfer funds, started the downfall of Martial who looked like a good footballer till Mourinho came in.

I don't want to talk about the disaster that is OGS. Never deserved our job, started the idiotic signing British talent trend just because he couldn't attract any sort of talent from around the world.

I thought once we we appointed Rangnick in an advisory role and EtH as coach, we are finally turning things around. Then we got rid off Rangnick, did all the mistakes we did all over again - now ended up with Antony, Mount, Amrabat, Onana, Casemiro - the kind of footballers we shouldn't be considering. I mean there wasn't even talk of talent like Doku, Szoboslai on our radars who our rivals have easy signed but we have to go through nonsense transfer dramas like Mount's every fecking year.
 
redIndianDevil said:
I think it's because we give managers too much power, especially signing players. This should have stopped and we should have learned from the Moyes debacle. Signing Fellaini when we actually needed a Kroos or Fabregas type midfielder, Moyes knew he needed a different profile of midfielder but instead of relying on club scouts or asking the club to pick a midfielder of similar mould, he went with Fellaini just for the heck of it.

LvG like the OP said really drilled down his philosophy into our squad. We again made the grave error of relying on him for transfers - Depay, Di Maria, Falcao, Schneiderlin. We had to pay dearly to get rid off these. This should have been where we wisened up and appointed someone who knows football to run the club instead of relying on managers. LvG with a competent DoF could have worked wonders and laid a foundation for modern football. We could have brought in modern managers to work on top of what LvG did with the squad.

We decided to rip it all up and got the moron Mourinho in. Again wasted transfer funds, started the downfall of Martial who looked like a good footballer till Mourinho came in.

I don't want to talk about the disaster that is OGS. Never deserved our job, started the idiotic signing British talent trend just because he couldn't attract any sort of talent from around the world.

I thought once we we appointed Rangnick in an advisory role and EtH as coach, we are finally turning things around. Then we got rid off Rangnick, did all the mistakes we did all over again - now ended up with Antony, Mount, Amrabat, Onana, Casemiro - the kind of footballers we shouldn't be considering. I mean there wasn't even talk of talent like Doku, Szoboslai on our radars who our rivals have easy signed but we have to go through nonsense transfer dramas like Mount's every fecking year.
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I don't think LVG wanted to be in control of recruitment, he ended up having to be which was such a bad idea as he was out of top flight management for a while. He signed players he knew from years before or had impressed him at the WC but he is, without doubt, the coach who impressed his style on the team and cleared out a lot of average squad players. The tragedy of Evans returning now so many years after and the cycle repeating itself is almost poetic.

Now we are back where we were with a manager running recruitment because they can't get the players they ideally want i.e. an established striker, De Jong and seemingly no input from the scouting team apart from a desperation signing in Casemiro for absurd money. The sole positive I will say is the age profile of our transfers are a lot better and will, at least, retain sell on value versus the old fecks who left on frees/for peanuts. Every cloud and all that.
 
Rood said:
I'm talking about how stupid it is to overanalyse a 25sec clip of training
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Is it really overanalysing it when it's literally just a microcosm of our general inability to find our own teammates and retain possession in any given match?
 
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We are un-coachable despite spending over a billion on 50+ signings over past decade.
 
Alex99 said:
Is it really overanalysing it when it's literally just a microcosm of our general inability to find our own teammates and retain possession in any given match?
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It’s confirmation bias.
 
Fortitude said:
If we were fluid in-game I could lean towards this. As things stand, it's an extrapolation of what we mostly look like in game, same goes for the Ajax meme footage; they looked like that in game and you could logically conclude the training footage was simply extrapolated come match day.

Another way this could be looked at is: would you bet on the rest of the footage looking like that clip or like the Ajax footage?

That might've been the worst of the footage, but I'd love to see the best.
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Big Ben Foster said:
I agree with this, but why would the club even allow this footage to be released? The communications / social media people should've been more selective over which footage was released to the public, knowing it would've obviously (rightly or wrongly) been over-analyzed.
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The clip is taken from a much longer video which you can find on YouTube or the ManUtd app.

UEFA rules now say that all clubs must do a 15min open training session for the media, but even that is just a snapshot of what happens in training every day.

Its Andy Mitten who has chosen that 25secs and then someone else made the comparison with ETHs Ajax for a quick laugh.

Given recent performances I can understand questions over our players abilities and the level of coaching. But most of these are International level players, I have no doubt that they have the technical ability to be doing much better, they were better last season too.
 
Rood said:
The clip is taken from a much longer video which you can find on YouTube or the ManUtd app.

UEFA rules now say that all clubs must do a 15min open training session for the media, but even that is just a snapshot of what happens in training every day.

Its Andy Mitten who has chosen that 25secs and then someone else made the comparison with ETHs Ajax for a quick laugh.

Given recent performances I can understand questions over our players abilities and the level of coaching. But most of these are International level players, I have no doubt that they have the technical ability to be doing much better, they were better last season too.
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If that's the case then fair enough, this is a complete non-issue.
 
My giddy aunt. That short video shows exactly why we can’t keep the ball in tight situations during a game. It is exactly that sort of passing which, if done correctly, will get us out of tight corners and on to attack swiftly. Unbelievable!!!
 
I think that they are coachable but to a point. Once things get difficult and expectation rises the players can't handle it. But they have people around them who convince them it's not their fault but the manager.
 
Reyoji-Utd said:
We havent been on the same page as a club.

The tops keeps half assing about the change.

The players have more powers nowadays and if EtH or any other managers wants to sell Rashford and Bruno to implement a more dominant, possesion based football, will we fans and the glazers can allow that. They pretty much our poster boys the last few years.

If Kane still there at Spurs, would Spurs still be able to play what some of us heralded so much now. Theres only so much the coach can do and change if he cant have all the power with the personels. Oh, and EtH was the De Zerbi and Ange of this world just two years ago, and now some of us said hes out of his depth and should be sacked. Its always the managers when we clearly see how many of them our players have been under and still remain here and play. The easy solution for the Glazers and fans is to sack the manager and get new one in, have honeymoon period, reality creeps in, sacked again. Rince and repeat.
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Not enough has been said about our 'captain's' disgraceful late yellow v Bournemouth. It is not credible that he did not know the consequences of his petulence. He clearly wanted to be removed from the upcoming trip to Anfield. The guy is a disgrace and not fit to wear the shirt. He should have been transfer listed after the 7 nil shambles last year, when he played but did not show up either. Any utd fans who stick up for that guy after deliberately getting himself suspended from the one game we want to survive more than any other, wants their head examined. I really worry we are on for another trashing if that is the captain's signal.
 
SirCactus said:
Not enough has been said about our 'captain's' disgraceful late yellow v Bournemouth. It is not credible that he did not know the consequences of his petulence. He clearly wanted to be removed from the upcoming trip to Anfield. The guy is a disgrace and not fit to wear the shirt. He should have been transfer listed after the 7 nil shambles last year, when he played but did not show up either. Any utd fans who stick up for that guy after deliberately getting himself suspended from the one game we want to survive more than any other, wants their head examined. I really worry we are on for another trashing if that is the captain's signal.
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Yes it has. Can’t listen to/read anything United related since that hasn’t mentioned.
 
idk but i do think we have some stupid players for sure. Reminds me of the spurs game i think when two spurs players collided and were down in our box. Ref was playing on, we had a huge advantage with possession and shouldve really turned the screws. Instead we got shaw launching a cross to nobody from our own half that the spurs gk claimed with literally nobody remotely around and spurs were able to get play stopped and sort everything out.

Just one example but swear our players do shit like this every game where they just make stupid decisions.
 
TH to blame.
Along with coaching Its also to do with tactics. We buy a big learning on the job young CF for experienced striker money, yet dont supply him. We bring a WC DM in and then another international DM and bring a good youth prospect through as well, but let them play our midfield all by themselves, while the other two midfielders basically play as SS. We have two widemen who cant cross a ball, playing inverted, when you need one at least to play with his best foot on the outside, to cross to the big CF to try and score. We leave a WC CD on the bench with the excuse that we need a LF CD, yet plays a RF as LFB.
We lack goals and Fergie always had 3/4 top goalscorers in his squad. This should have been the biggest issue solved this summer gone. We would have been better spending the Mount and Onana money on at least one striker who regularly scores. Instead we have a novice (no criticism of him) and 2 sulkers who dont track back and although have been here for years are never going to be the answer. Martial will be gone in the summer and Rashford needs moving on as well.
 
There is a core of players that have outlasted 3 managers. These players aren’t good enough and clearly cannot deal with the type of football the club wants to implement.

New signings are either injury prone, in terrible form or had off the field issues which means the core players that were expected to be squad players at best are now starters yet again.

Dalot, Maguire, Lindelof, Shaw, Wan Bissaka, McTominay, Rashford, Martial. All of these guys are not good enough and should not be here any more.
 
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