Are you confident of success in the INEOS era?

Invictus said:
How is Yoro injury prone, though? He was always available in 2022–23 according to historical fitness records (but not always selected because he was 16/17 years old), and missed 1 match in 2023–24 (racking up the most minutes for a centerback in Ligue 1 after Rasmus Nicolaisen).
Click to expand...
Well, I'm not talking about his short senior career. Before he signed to United, he claimed that he wants to play for Real Madrid, his childhood dream club. But Florentino Perez offered only 17 million to Lille, as he had reports about Yoro having several injuries as a junior player, even at really young age and some say this was the reason why other clubs weren't really interested in Yoro. And yes, he started his career in Manchester with a serious injury, can be a coincidence i don't know. And on top of that, i know that a special talent can cost a fortune but not with 1 only a year left of his contract. I don't really get this high amount as if reports are true only Real Madrid showed serious interest in him and the difference between the 17 million they offered and the 60 million we paid seems unreasonably big.
 
adkb said:
I feel people here are going over the top with blaming INEOS. They can't just fire a manager after 3 months of deciding to continue the manager.
Even if its the thing to do.

I have always been ETH in. But I am afraid his time is coming to an end. But i still insist that the players will put the next manager down as well.

How INEOS deals with these players is the real indicator of their success for me. Bruno and Rashford are at the centre of this talk. Both players are keeping the team up in the short run and keeping the team down in the long run.

But I am confident. I can't not believe in them. Life would be difficult if this continues. I can't take it anymore.
Click to expand...

So they’re cutting their nose off by doubling down rather than making a swift decision due to making an error? If that’s how they operate, get the “For Sale” signs out and get them up at Old Trafford. If they’re too proud or too stupid to see what is in front of them then they can get gone.

If you make a mistake, own it, rectify it and move on, don’t double down and hope things change magically, it’s not how things work.
 
Not firing ETH in the summer, extending his contract and still not firing him so far this season must be some of the worst club management in recent history.
My belief in success under INEOS ownership diminishes a little day by day.

Make the change!!
 
Last edited:
noodlehair said:
Without meaning to pick on you in particular, what logical basis is there to be "sure" that INEOS will either a) get it right, or b) have the control and backing of the Glazers even if they did know how to?

So here's my two sense and I'm sorry but its not going to sound very positive, but its based on what I know about Ratcliffe and what I think we can all see is happening, which, to anyone who does know about Ratcliffe, shouldn't be a surprise at all.

Firstly, Jim Ratcliffe is a business man. He is an expert at making himself money. He is not in any way a demonstrated expert at running a successful football club. He OWNS a football club, but not a successful one or a comparable one to Man Utd. He is a demonstrated expert of the same thing that the Glazers are, which is making money out of an asset. He's good at the politics side of business, which is why he said all the right things to get people on side during the sale/tender process, but nothing he said at the time was based on anything other than it being what he knew people wanted to hear. The reason there is no evident plan is because the plan was simply to get what he wanted, which he now has. That is how he and people like him operate. I have no doubt he WANTS United to be successful, but he doesn't necessarily know how to do that because a football club doesn't work in the same way as a rocket or fracking company does.

The second thing with Jim Ratcliffe is, he has a track record of treating his employees poorly, to squeeze what tiny extra profit he can into his own pockets. Something which he has already brought to the table at United. This does not translate well imo to running a successful premier league team. It does not get people on side or believing that you will deliver them success. It grinds them down into doing the job. The only people within an organisation it might appeal to are the higher ups who might pocket a bit more money for themselves. Premier league footballers and for the most part coaching staff are generally from working class backgrounds, and in the case of United are mostly millionaires with inflated egos. They are the front line performers and they aren't going to respond positively to sacking off the office or backroom staff to save pennies, and seeing people they relate to more than the execs losing their jobs. They will also not respond positively to being shit talked to the media and told they are all for sale at the right price, or that "things will get better before they get worse", again insinuating they are not good enough and the problems are their fault. This isn't the same as one of Ratcliffe's factories where he can just bully the workforce around with demotivation tactics. You need the playing personnel positively motivated because in order to succeed they need to be at 100% every week. If you grind them down into just doing the job, then that is what you get, which results in things like losing at home to Bournemouth. You only have to listen to or read up on some of Ratcliffe's comments to realise how out of touch he is with ordinary people, i.e. his employees, which includes all of our players, coaches, manager.

This would be fine if he just stayed out of site and kept his mouth shut, and left the management of the playing staff and the players to others, but he/INEOS haven't done this. How often would you see or hear Sir Alex, Klopp, Pep, or any owner or exec of any successful team, speak negatively about the players or coaches they are in charge of? It never happens and that is not a coincidence imo. For the most part you don't hear from the ownership at all other than an official statement if someone important leaves or has to be sacked.

The one positive thing I think Ratcliffe has done since, is employ a team of people to run the football side of the club, who might actually have a clue how to do it. In doing so effectively admitting he has no real clue how to do this himself...and I think there will in time be positive benefits from that, but what you have to keep in mind is these people are still working with their hands tied behind the Glazer ownership and also now Ratcliffe. The club is not set up to be successful, it is set up to save and make its owners money. Yes Ten Hag has not done a good job, and yes he might eventually be sacked, but then the club is not an attractive prospect to any manager with the ability and pedigree to be successful. The same applies to players. The aura of managing United is no longer a thing for the very top level coaches, and the aura of playing for them is not enough for a footballer who has ambition to win major trophies. There needs to be solid backing and foundation behind it, and as long as we're stuck with our current ownership set up, there isn't.

On the Qatar thing. I wasn't exactly Qatar in, but to me it was the lesser of two evils, because it would have meant ridding the club of the Glazer ownership that I THOUGHT everyone was really desperate to be rid of, and also would have meant the club being structured on being successful, and from a moral point of view, the more focus on the ownership, the more chance to shine a spotlight on whatever the issues people have a moral objection to. I found the whole being dead set against it on this basis peculiar, as I don't remember United fans boycotting the world cup en masse, or marching around outside St James's Park when Newcastle were taken over. It seemed to me less about caring about the moral issues and more pretending to because there was a chance to get on a high horse and look better than others, in the process cutting off nose to spite face. and I got some shite for saying this at the time and might do again, but unless anyone reading this DID boycott the world cup, and boycotts watching all of City and Newcastle's games, or has actually done anything, at all, to combat the things they proclaimed to take such an objection to, then I'm sorry but they are full of sh*t. Because none of these issues have been solved by Jim Ratcliffe buying a 25% steak in United. It has not made the world less homophobic or more tolerant to women's rights, or lessened the cruelty or suffering towards anyone.

My realistic view is that barring the odd freak season we are going to have to settle for being an also ran now, with the danger being with our current set up its much easier to slide further down the pyramid than it is to climb it. You can see already the criticism starting to build for the likes of Ashworth and I think they are the last people who should be in the firing line (and I say this as someone who's joined in the criticism). Whether Ashworth is good enough or not he is employed specifically to help the football team and that will be his aim. The issue is that when you look at the set up above him, he is going to be swimming against the tide and competing with clubs who, in terms of the level we expect to be at, aren't. The best I think fans can do at this point is get behind the players and the staff who are there to try and help things on the pitch, and try to create a more positive environment, which I know sounds naive and stupid but I do think footballers are reactive a lot to the fans and the environment they are trying to perform in.

Apologies for how long that was.
Click to expand...

Good post.
 
Many of us fans were Hailing INEOS for hiring a best in class leadership team and haven’t acknowledged the fact they only had from June to work together. They interviewed managers and deemed ten hag to give us the best stability this season (they only extended his contract by 1 year and didn’t reward him with a new contract)
, whilst they spend longer on defining a clear strategy for the first XI and academy. I suspect once that’s complete they have a manager or two in mind to execute that longer term strategy . Unfortunately we e fallen flat on our face a log sooner than they and us anticipated. They know that was a risk and it hasn’t paid off. Doesn’t mean they’re incompetent. Personally I think it’s now only another PL loss before they’ll reluctantly act but the issue is going to be WHO do we bring in that we WONT sack in a year/2.
 
adkb said:
I feel people here are going over the top with blaming INEOS. They can't just fire a manager after 3 months of deciding to continue the manager.
Even if its the thing to do.

I have always been ETH in. But I am afraid his time is coming to an end. But i still insist that the players will put the next manager down as well.

How INEOS deals with these players is the real indicator of their success for me. Bruno and Rashford are at the centre of this talk. Both players are keeping the team up in the short run and keeping the team down in the long run.

But I am confident. I can't not believe in them. Life would be difficult if this continues. I can't take it anymore.
Click to expand...
But they can. We have seen big clubs firing managers 3 months after hiring them, let alone 3 months in their third season.

They definitely can fire EtH. They just choose to not fire him, based on, at this stage I do not know what. Some blind hope might have been justified last season, but now it is beyond incompetence.
 
noodlehair said:
r. It seemed to me less about caring about the moral issues and more pretending to because there was a chance to get on a high horse and look better than others,
Click to expand...

Projection.

If you really just want to win no matter the cost, and think your advocacy is justified because 'everyone else is a hypocrite', there's a club with your name on it in Ardwick.

As for analysis of Ratcliffe, it isn't unfair, it's just you did not walk us through Qatar's use of psg. Their biggest players want to walk away as the club is continually failing in Europe. Spending 200 million on Neymar to spank Lorient.

Also, their failure to buy United, outwitted by 'Brexit Jim', should be the 'lightbulb moment' for their cheerleaders.

I personally don't think Ineos will lead United anywhere, and don't want the club associated with Ratcliffe or the Glazers, but the concerns about Qatar's state bid, and the effect of state ownership in football, are genuine.

msra5kg2 said:
Many of us fans were Hailing INEOS for hiring a best in class leadership team and haven’t acknowledged the fact they only had from June to work together. They interviewed managers and deemed ten hag to give us the best stability this season (they only extended his contract by 1 year and didn’t reward him with a new
Click to expand...

ten Hag will most likely be sacked whenever a positive replacement is identified. He's practically his own interim at this point.

Had a Jose to EtH's LvG been truly available...

In the meantime, we supporters are at the mercy of the banter brigade.
 
I think it'll be another 10+ years at least until we challenge. Potentially even more.

We've become a finished club in terms of competing for top honors. Any hope I had with Ineos and the current board has evaporated when they didn't sack ETH after the last international break. At this point, it's just apathy whenever we lose.
 
It seems that we are all too naive to believe that Ratcliffe could change the club. We already have problematic major owners in Glazers. And now Ratcliffe as new owner bringing in different set of problem altogether. No wonder we now look worse off with 2 major owners than under one.

Pray hard that this is temporary
 
msra5kg2 said:
Many of us fans were Hailing INEOS for hiring a best in class leadership team and haven’t acknowledged the fact they only had from June to work together. They interviewed managers and deemed ten hag to give us the best stability this season (they only extended his contract by 1 year and didn’t reward him with a new contract)
, whilst they spend longer on defining a clear strategy for the first XI and academy. I suspect once that’s complete they have a manager or two in mind to execute that longer term strategy . Unfortunately we e fallen flat on our face a log sooner than they and us anticipated. They know that was a risk and it hasn’t paid off. Doesn’t mean they’re incompetent. Personally I think it’s now only another PL loss before they’ll reluctantly act but the issue is going to be WHO do we bring in that we WONT sack in a year/2.
Click to expand...
Exactly. These people think a vibe change is going to change things, that's all a new manager is going to be for now. INEOS need time, this is the first season with everyone in place.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
I think it'll be another 10+ years at least until we challenge. Potentially even more.

We've become a finished club in terms of competing for top honors. Any hope I had with Ineos and the current board has evaporated when they didn't sack ETH after the last international break. At this point, it's just apathy whenever we lose.
Click to expand...

Yup and it won't be under this ownership structure.

In 10 years time, INEOS will go crawling to the middle east for some state backed investment into the club.
 
Meh, even though we’re terrible at the moment, I wont lay overall judgement just yet, but it’s only fair to be critical on why they keep the manager, the setup, stadium plans, etc. It’s the overall structural things you can be critical of/see good/bad patterns in, but that proces is far from over or even begun yet.

Imagine you yourself took on a new job where everything possibly gone wrong has gone wrong for the last 12 years. Where do you even start? Can you measure where it’ll all end after 5 months?
 
Their dithering is as bad as anything under the Glazers.

I agree with people who say they are the perfect shield for the Glazers now. The rat leeches know how to wriggle out of the spotlight for sure. We don’t know how much influence the Glazers still have, but on the surface, the manager decision has been a fail by ineos.
He should have been sacked a dozen times before now.
But it’s fair that the ineos lads haven’t been in place long enough to judge.

My main concern is the dithering at the moment. For all we know, even if they do sack him, they will then take another age to sack the next guy if he isn’t good enough
 
Keeping Ten Hag in the summer and doubling down on it by bringing in even more Dutch back room staff and players was a huge mistake.
 
No because the Glazers still have a huge say. And I'd bet now there are conflicts going on already.
 
It’s to time to face the truth, INEOS are a disaster in football, we get the billionaire that’s as tight as a Ducks A…!

We get a company that look after mediocrity personified, they’ve had years to prove they are winners, they took over Lausanne in 2017 and Nice in 2019, they have not delivered any major trophies and never delivered CL football with all their wealth in weak leagues.


This is their track record on football;
Nice 5th, 9th, 5th, 9th, 5th

Lausanne 10th (R),3rd/2nd Div,1st /2nd Division, 6th, 10th(R), 2nd /2nd division

They’ve been relegated twice in the Swiss league, that’s a huge warning signal, done very little with Nice apart from being a mid table yo yo club and if you look at the current positions, it’s incredibly alarming.

Currently Nice are 8th, 3 wins(33% win rate), 4 draws, 2 defeats.

FC Lausanne are 8th out of a 12 team league, 4 wins from 11 games, 2 draws, 5 defeats

United P9 W3 D2 L4, these stats are so similar across all three teams, basically win a third of the games, draw a third lose a third and looking at stats last year when they took over United in the EPL these are the stats from 28th February 2024.

P21 W7 D6 L8 PTS 27 GS 29 GC33 - 4GD

It fits with my 1/3 wins, 1/3 draw, 1/3 lose theory that INEOS seem to adopt when running a professional football team!

This seems to be their remit, look through all of their times in charge of their other two football teams and this is pretty much a lock, of course when Lausanne dropped down a league they went to 50-55% win rate in the Swiss second division.

Nice have fluctuated between a team that wins 39-44% and a team that draws a high percentage of games, like brailsford says small margins, he’s nudging the bar to more 40/35/25 with Nice but they are not consistent, they have never had back to back incremental success or improved league positioning.

If the hierarchy have told ETH, he must be more conservative and try and draw more of the games he loses, it’s no wonder that’s he’s now up to a 44% loss rate in the EPL, THIS IS NOT THE MAN UNITED WAY, trying to control games by wining 1-0 or if we fight back from 1-0 down and then accept the draw.

If we continue with a new coach with this 1/3rd Strategy, you can basically conclude that your club will nearly always finish on 13 wins 12 Draws 13 Losses and 51 points, positioning 9th to 14th every season.


Question?
Did SJR and INEOS get carried away with wining the FA Cup, one of the oldest and most prestigious trophies in world football and to date INEOS only trophy of note, did this blind side their ability to make the right decision with ETH when they had 12 PL matches to conclude that the coach was in serious decline and no coach with a win rate of below 50% can coach man united, let alone below 35% which is what his last 21 games have shown!

It suggests that they looked at his previous season of 23 wins from 38 Games which was a 60% win rate and got giddy, believing that if they backed him in transfer market, tweaking a few areas, they could regain that 60% win rate and reduce the loss rate to 20% and Draw 20% of games.

There’s so many number crunchers now on the board at United I’m sure someone said to ETH if we buy your 4/5 new players can you achieve these KPIs of 60/20/20 so 38 PL games 23 wins 7 Draws and 9 Defeats which is 76 Points, they did not do their due diligence because ETH and his squad were in huge decline from February 2023 not February 24 and he should have been removed this summer.

Now for every single day extra that ETH stays, then there will be a serious risk of long term damage to the club that will be very difficult to fix even with a new Elite Coach, he must be removed Immediately!
 
Too early to say, the staff they wanted were only onboarded during towards the latter half of August. What we are seeing now isn’t just their output but also the failures of countless years and Ten Hag.
 
Hughie77 said:
No because the Glazers still have a huge say. And I'd bet now there are conflicts going on already.
Click to expand...
Yep you can imagine Joel and Avram loving this, you thought we were bad, well we passed over control of all footballing matters and now look at the Sh..Show.

You have an elite best in class board and they can’t get one thing right?

Joel will be telling Sir Jim, we came 7th once and sacked the coach, we won an Fa Cup came 5th and sacked the coach, now we’re 14th maybe we should take back control of the club again, our shares are falling or maybe we call Qatar back and take their offer for all our other shares right now?

Other to you Sir Jim, you love the club, you want to be good custodians, then start now and sack this clown whose currently embarrassing the team week after week.
 
Anyone who still has faith in this regime fair fecks to you. In the short time they've been here, I think they've already done an untold amount of damage. Damage I'm not sure we'll recover from for many many years.
 
Skills said:
Yup and it won't be under this ownership structure.

In 10 years time, INEOS will go crawling to the middle east for some state backed investment into the club.
Click to expand...
It will be well before that, the Glazers still retain 51% overall control and could easily sell that to Qatar or any middle easter consortium. If the club is languishing in the bottom 4/5 or worse relegated and those shares drop below $12 they are currently just under $16, they’ll panic ?
 
This strangely enough weakens by opinion of them. Not only did they cost us more money to sack him by triggering his extension in May, but this has been on the cards for the last two international breaks. They have literally waiting until it couldn't get any worse, which isn't a positive.
 
astracrazy said:
This strangely enough weakens by opinion of them. Not only did they cost us more money to sack him by triggering his extension in May, but this has been on the cards for the last two international breaks. They have literally waiting until it couldn't get any worse, which isn't a positive.
Click to expand...
Yeah seems very reactive and not proactive.
 
Thanks God, finally! But ETH should have been sacked after FA Cup. Finishing 8th with negative football should never be tolerated. Hope Ineos Team learned the lesson.
 
I'd love to know what they expected coming into this season because we got exactly what we were asking for after keeping ten Hag and he still got sacked.
 
If it's anything like the job they have done with Nice in France it's going to be some managerial merry go round for United. They arrived at Nice in 2019 currently on their 7th different manager and that will likely become 8 soon as they are 8th in the French league.
 
With hindsight, I think they actually made their decision two weeks ago in that meeting in London, which is why they've been quiet since. For the past few weeks, they've been working out the logistics and sounding out potential replacements. My honest guess is that we've received strong indications from Xavi, which is why they pulled the trigger upon the first loss after that meeting.

I was not a fan of keeping him due to how bad last season was. I think our fans don't truly appreciate the hopelessness and just how long that lasted. ETH achieved a level of dour that even LVG in 2015/2016 couldn't reach. What's worse is the level of disregard he had in his comments despite how poorly we were performing.

I would have sacked him in the summer to keep in line with INEOS reputation for being ruthless. However, in giving him the space to fail woefully, the fans who would have protested his departure have dissipated, which now allows them to have a truly fresh start at the cost of success this season. I think we did a good job in the summer in regard to signings, we've just been unfortunate that ETH's survival mode has made it difficult for these players to integrate. We've only had glimpses of what Yoro, Ugarte, Zirkzee and De Ligt can do.
 
tjb said:
With hindsight, I think they actually made their decision two weeks ago in that meeting in London, which is why they've been quiet since. For the past few weeks, they've been working out the logistics and sounding out potential replacements. My honest guess is that we've received strong indications from Xavi, which is why they pulled the trigger upon the first loss after that meeting.

I was not a fan of keeping him due to how bad last season was. I think our fans don't truly appreciate the hopelessness and just how long that lasted. ETH achieved a level of dour that even LVG in 2015/2016 couldn't reach. What's worse is the level of disregard he had in his comments despite how poorly we were performing.

I would have sacked him in the summer to keep in line with INEOS reputation for being ruthless. However, in giving him the space to fail woefully, the fans who would have protested his departure have dissipated, which now allows them to have a truly fresh start at the cost of success this season. I think we did a good job in the summer in regard to signings, we've just been unfortunate that ETH's survival mode has made it difficult for these players to integrate. We've only had glimpses of what Yoro, Ugarte, Zirkzee and De Ligt can do.
Click to expand...
Money on signings and a 17m payout...quite a steep price to pay to dissipate a few idiots protests.
 
Big Ben Foster said:
ETH isn't going to receive 17m in severance. That's a clickbait figure.
Click to expand...
Okay, 15....13....the point is that he'll get a larger payout after we extended his contract by a season then he would've if we let go of him at the end of last season.
 
Insanity said:
Okay, 15....13....the point is that he'll get a larger payout after we extended his contract by a season then he would've if we let go of him at the end of last season.
Click to expand...
Probably. It was a very dumb decision. Doubling down in October was an even dumber decision. Thankfully this time they didn't triple down.
 
The cup final complicated things and even they came to the conclusion that last season had some ridiculous issues for any manager to contend with, so in some respects I understand they gave him a fair chance and he failed miserably. The only way EtH was going to change the uncertainty was by hitting the ground running this season and he didn't, so he had to go.

Season is still salvageable and you would think the Europa League might be the best route to the champions league. It's still too early to judge them for me.
 
Irwin99 said:
The cup final complicated things and even they came to the conclusion that last season had some ridiculous issues for any manager to contend with, so in some respects I understand they gave him a fair chance and he failed miserably. The only way EtH was going to change the uncertainty was by hitting the ground running this season and he didn't, so he had to go.

Season is still salvageable and you would think the Europa League might be the best route to the champions league. It's still too early to judge them for me.
Click to expand...

This I don't agree with. I feel this is where the club consistently fails. Injuries and knowing how to navigate through them are part of his job. Same thing goes for dealing with a takeover or managing a squad of players with high salaries. At United, we have media presences like Neville who are way too sympathetic towards managers. As a club, looking to address standards, not being held hostage by "feeling for the manager" is part of our progression. Noone excuses Antony for having to deal with those conditions, so why do we constantly make excuses for managers?

The telltale sign should have been at the start of his reign, when every excuse, including Ronaldo's pressing and De Gea's kicking were used to defend his lack of tactical success. As a club, we are way too patient in our assessments of managers and quick to blame others, especially at the start. None of our managers outside of Ole have had good starts to the reign. All of them ended up leaving with the same tactical issues they came in with. I don't think it should take more than ten games for us to see good patterns of play. Creating chances whilst remaining solid is the name of the game, and our managers should be able to at least have our team showing how they would do this, even if we aren't necessarily scoring goals or consistently keeping clean sheets. This is why XG and goal difference are such good indicators. Chelsea last season, despite not winning games, had a far more positive xg outlook than we did despite the results. Watching their games, they actually dominated quite a lot of games, but weren't yet winning games.

At United, what we do is blind optimism. Managers are already crowned as liberators before they even set up to play. Average preseason performances are great exaggerated and poor ones are explained away. We then have poor starts to the season, which are always blamed on individual players, with us needing to root them out as the excuse for the manager's first season. People constantly touting what the manager needs to have us playing good football despite the fact that we have generally good players relative to the rest of the league. A good manager would be able to show good performances with the talent at United's disposal. However, at United, missing a LB or not having a CM partner are explained as the fault for all of our tactical failings on the pitch. Before long, people start blaming the players and senior executives of the club for the hard task the manager has to deal with. Not recognizing that the managers is simply failing like other clubs would. This then leads to us having an average/poor first season where the manager has been able to pull of a small run of good football, which is used as a beacon of hope. For LVG this was 3 games in March. For Ten Hag it was a few games upon the return from the world cup. That summer, we then go through an overhaul with signings to please the manager. Its only at this point, where the managers signings fail to perform do fans start to question the manager even a little bit.....when in reality, the manager should always have been judged on coaching the players at his disposal.
 
Insanity said:
Okay, 15....13....the point is that he'll get a larger payout after we extended his contract by a season then he would've if we let go of him at the end of last season.
Click to expand...

No... that's not how it works. He didn't get a new contract. He got an extension of the current contract.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.