Cox: Don't judge Ole on Fergie's 'attacking philosophy' - It didn't exist. | The Athletic

AndySmith1990 said:
I wish everyone would leave Ferguson out of it. It's over. Finished. His era is long gone. The football he played, how he managed, whatever he did during his time here is irrelevant to the here and now.

Solskjaer is being judged on his own achievements and failings. Unfortunately it's almost entirely failings at this point and he's shown he hasn't got a clue what he's doing. That's all on him, no other managers come into it.
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It's not exactly hard to see why people make the link when ole references the fergie era multiple times in every interview
 
I do think Michael Cox can be a bit insufferable at times but I don't see anything wrong in the article, other than the headline being quite clickbaity.

Fergie was a pragmatic manager, especially in his later years. That's not to say he wasn't generally quite attacking but I don't think he ever let a certain philosophy dictate how he approached games. He was generally quite willing to adapt his game and did so numerous times over the years.

He's also been quite consistent in his criticism of Ole over the last few seasons, this isn't something new and I feel that criticism has been vindicated with how our season has gone so far. I also think he's spot on when he brings up that Rio quote. That performance against wouldn't have looked out of place under Mourinho. From Ole's first game, people have tried to portray him as an attacking manager but I don't think that's ever really been the case. Our best performances under him have generally been those big games where we've set up to try and counter the opposition
 
dal said:
United have always been a largely counter attacking team and it’s not that which is the problem, it’s the fact Ole hasn’t won anything yet and that’s what’s building the pressure.

Regardless, what every United fan has wanted for the past 15 years is a swashbuckling all out attacking game like Liverpool and city with a high technical capability, yes Solskjaer is baring the brunt of this, he probably wouldn’t if his results were better but unfortunately they are not.

Its easier for players to concentrate and stick to a philosophy If they can have the ball for the large majority of the game and win it back quickly, something is unravelling, Ferdinand is close pals with Ronaldo, his voice probably reverberates the dressing room, Ronaldo will probably become the player manager.
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Bloody rubbish that. We were very good at counter attacking but that wasn't our main plan. We always had the initiative, specially against smaller teams. And even against "big" teams, our plan wasnt to counter attack and nick a win. That is so not true.
 
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I mean it’s a load of nonsense and it’s clearly underrating Fergie and his great Utd teams of old. He really thinks the most popular club in world football with more fans than any club worldwide was built on playing average football? Fergie played scintillating football at fast speed and with little regards to his opponents threats. He somewhat adapated in Europe as time went on but for the majority of his spell, Utd were the best attacking team in Europe. Fergie always wanted to play with pace, skill and finesse which was shown through player like Giggs and Ronaldo. Fergie being “boring” is one of the biggest myths to ever emerge into the footballing landscape.
 
dal said:
United have always been a largely counter attacking team and it’s not that which is the problem, it’s the fact Ole hasn’t won anything yet and that’s what’s building the pressure.

Regardless, what every United fan has wanted for the past 15 years is a swashbuckling all out attacking game like Liverpool and city with a high technical capability, yes Solskjaer is baring the brunt of this, he probably wouldn’t if his results were better but unfortunately they are not.

Its easier for players to concentrate and stick to a philosophy If they can have the ball for the large majority of the game and win it back quickly, something is unravelling, Ferdinand is close pals with Ronaldo, his voice probably reverberates the dressing room, Ronaldo will probably become the player manager.
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No, we’ve been a team that CAN counter attack … because we had players that allowed us to.

Those same players could also pass the ball around and attack at their own pace (I.e. not a counter).. and often did.
 
GlasgowCeltic said:
Fergies teams played great football but there was always someone in the league who were far better to watch, Keegan Wenger etc
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Maybe for you...maybe you preferred pretty ultimately mostly pointless football. But not for me. Exciting attacking winning football everyday.
 
Rex Banner said:
I do think Michael Cox can be a bit insufferable at times but I don't see anything wrong in the article, other than the headline being quite clickbaity.

Fergie was a pragmatic manager, especially in his later years. That's not to say he wasn't generally quite attacking but I don't think he ever let a certain philosophy dictate how he approached games. He was generally quite willing to adapt his game and did so numerous times over the years.

He's also been quite consistent in his criticism of Ole over the last few seasons, this isn't something new and I feel that criticism has been vindicated with how our season has gone so far. I also think he's spot on when he brings up that Rio quote. That performance against wouldn't have looked out of place under Mourinho. From Ole's first game, people have tried to portray him as an attacking manager but I don't think that's ever really been the case. Our best performances under him have generally been those big games where we've set up to try and counter the opposition
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Exactly. And that's probably why so many of the responses in the thread seem to be missing the point - I doubt too many people on here will have subscriptions, so the headline is all they see.

Worth pointing out that the Athletic is notorious for this kind of crap - it's usually someone other than the writer picking the article headlines and images, all designed to be clickbaity.
 
SAF was a world class manager. OgS is not. It’s really that simple. The cult of OgS is so strong we’re now rewriting history.
 
If Ole actually had two good midfielders I think we would be a different proposition.

we will beat Watford and lose to Chelsea and it will be behind the sofastuff.
 
Ferguson very clearly did have an attacking philosophy. Being able to counter does not imply reliance on a counter. Any 'great' side can counter effectively! We had a game in and out of possession under Ferguson. We could usually control matches. Not always in Europe, sometimes we would adapt, but we weren't routinely struggling for control of the ball as we are now.

The one thing he is right about is that Ferguson adapted and became increasingly... continental. Pragmatic, more positional, whatever you want to call it. Which is actually one in the eye for all the assertions that he was weak tactically. You can't have it all ways, how can he be weak tactically because of the idea we played a basic 4-4-2 yet also be non attacking within this setup (?) and then adapt his game but still be underwhelming tactically. As a narrative that isn't consistent.

If we're going to be very general about it we'd say Ferguson was an attacking, swashbuckling manager for a while and then with the help of assistants (presumably) he moved with the game. Which is simply logical, the top managers of today would have to do that if they are to be top in 20 years time.

There's far too much focus on Ferguson within the discussion of these managers associated with United. A point of leading is that you are your own man. You can take things from others but it isn't going to make you a top manager by itself, you are the sum of your qualities as an individual and not just tactically. Ferguson's record is beyond reproach, if they are trying to take too much from what he did then they didn't understand the way the master reinvented sides and understood different generations of player. That in itself suggests you have to be discerning in what you apply in 2021.
 
Woah. Some people going in way too hard on Cox.

He's not saying Sir Alex wasn't tactically savvy. He's pointing out that he was a pioneer in England for adapting and pragmatically changing things routinely through adopting tactical innovations that came from European coaches at that time. He's pointing out that Sir Alex, unlike Ole, wasn't afraid to delegate coaching responsibilities to different assistant managers who brought new and different ideas. This is how Sir Alex kept on winning. He saw the changing trend of the game and shuffled the coaching staff accordingly.

Ole, by contrast, is trying to recreate a United philosophy from the past, which is in direct contradiction to Sir Alex, who constantly forsook his old ideas for news ones when it was deemed necessary in order to stay at the top.
 
Don't see anything wrong with the quotes about Ferguson in the OP at least.

It's absolutely true that man management was SAF's biggest strength, the way his teams played throughout the years certainly changed and he brought in assistants with different ideas who handled the tactical specifics. For example we know Queiroz was the guy who presented the tactical briefings, ran the training sessions in terms of tactics and that in games like our defeat of Barca was the guy who came up with the gameplan. And there were plenty of periods where our defence rather than attack was what got us success, either in one-off games or series of games. Our 2008 league win was quite arguably based more on the effectiveness of our defence rather than our attack for example, keeping 23 clean sheets in the league that season.

That flexibility and ability to delegate was what allowed SAF to be SAF, so it would be strange to frame what reads to me as an accurate description of his approach as criticism.
 
Fergie always played with attacking football. We only played crap football in his late year's and after seeing Phelan with Ole I can see why now.

The below video just shows how played with SAF. We always were able to keep the ball even when teams press us mad and play through them. I remember games when the opposition will be trying to stop us the first half and lose steam to continue in the second half.

 
Hoof The Ball said:
Woah. Some people going in way too hard on Cox.

He's not saying Sir Alex wasn't tactically savvy. He's pointing out that he was a pioneer in England for adapting and pragmatically changing things routinely through adopting tactical innovations that came from European coaches at that time. He's pointing out that Sir Alex, unlike Ole, wasn't afraid to delegate coaching responsibilities to different assistant managers who brought new and different ideas. This is how Sir Alex kept on winning. He saw the changing trend of the game and shuffled the coaching staff accordingly.

Ole, by contrast, is trying to recreate a United philosophy from the past, which is in direct contradiction to Sir Alex, who constantly forsook his old ideas for news ones when it was deemed necessary in order to stay at the top.
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sullydnl said:
Don't see anything wrong with the quotes about Ferguson in the OP at least.

It's absolutely true that man management was SAF's biggest strength, the way his teams played throughout the years certainly changed and he brought in assistants with different ideas who handled the tactical specifics. For example we know Queiroz was the guy who presented the tactical briefings, ran the training sessions in terms of tactics and that in games like our defeat of Barca was the guy who came up with the gameplan. And there were plenty of periods where our defence rather than attack was what got us success, either in one-off games or series of games. Our 2008 league win was quite arguably based more on the effectiveness of our defence rather than our attack for example, keeping 23 clean sheets in the league that season.

That flexibility and ability to delegate was what allowed SAF to be SAF, so it would be strange to frame what reads to me as an accurate description of his approach as criticism.
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Completely agree. As an oppo I find it utterly bewildering that the legacy of (almost inarguably) the most tactically flexible manager of all time has been co-opted into rote soundbites, oftentimes by his former players.

Certainly I can understand being nostalgic for Fergie's tenure; what is odd is the extent to which the wrong lessons have been learned.
 
Ferguson’s Hairdryer said:
Not in the low block, less than 40% possession type of way. We were more of a hit teams on the break with our fast/tricky wingers when the moment came but we wouldn’t just sit back hoping for the moment to come.

The only low block, defensive, less than 40% possession match I remember under SAF was at OT Vs Barca in the SF and we won 1nil. Other than that SAF usual tactic was to simply set one player to ruin the oppositions playmaker, while our other players just played normally or close to normality.
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Every match against Barcelona at the time was us defending the majority of it.
 
tjb said:
People really need to go back and watch us play, then come back and talk about Fergie tactically. It's very insulting. Our interplay, ability to move the ball around the pitch and even attacking combinations were better than any other team at various points of Sir Alex tenure. Different systems, different styles, consistently working under one man. The football we play with Sir Alex is better than what Klopp's Liverpool has been, yet somehow he is a better tactician, despite the style similarities??

The same thing used to happen when Fergie was compared to Wenger and Arsenal. For me, we were always the better team to watch and always had much better control of games. We were a better passing team than them and it showed when we went to Europe. Yet they were always praised as more entertaining and sexy. With Wenger being more tactical. Its the opposite of British bias imo.
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I really think you have rose tinted glasses on.
 
Hammondo said:
Every match against Barcelona at the time was us defending the majority of it.
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Don't think it was necessarily by design though. Even back in 2008 they still had 2 of the greatest midfielders of all time + Messi even if the team hadn't quite come into its prime yet.
 
lex talionis said:
What I remember most from the Ferguson era was his sides’ ability to consistently capitalize on the mistakes of the opposition. We rarely dismantled the opposition with intricate passing. It was sometimes counterattacking, sometimes relentless pressure. Ferguson adapted his tactics constantly to exploit the opposition.

With Ole, we’re utterly predictable, too slow and pathetic in defending free kicks. How this has been allowed to persist over the last four months if last season and three months into this season boggles the mind.
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We had amazing attacking instincts with SAF.
 
You can't get the full gist of what he's saying without reading the full article. It's not particularly damning of Ole or Fergie TBH.
 
BlahRules said:
Fergie always played with attacking football. We only played crap football in his late year's and after seeing Phelan with Ole I can see why now.

The below video just shows how played with SAF. We always were able to keep the ball even when teams press us mad and play through them. I remember games when the opposition will be trying to stop us the first half and lose steam to continue in the second half.

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I wouldn't say that was notably attacking, if anything it looks closer to possession football, which wasn't our norm.
 
Skills said:
Don't think it was necessarily by design though. Even back in 2008 they still had 2 of the greatest midfielders of all time + Messi even if the team hadn't quite come into its prime yet.
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Oh yea, we had no options we were forced to defend.
 
Martial'sEmergingSmile said:
The underrating of Fergie's tactical ability by football's fart-sniffers is just weird at this point.

There was a similar article from Jonathan Wilson recently that all but called him a cheerleader, while acting like it was simply common knowledge to credit his success to tactical masterminds like Brian Kidd, Jimmy Ryan, Steve McClaren and Mike Phelan.
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Truly disgusting. Which one of these even went on to have a great career? Even Queiroz has done relatively nothing.

Hammondo said:
Every match against Barcelona at the time was us defending the majority of it.
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Not true. We gave them a good go in the 2009, even had some really amazing chances in that game. We just collapsed after that absurd Messi header goal. in the 2011 one, yeah, they outclassed us, but honestly - compare the squads. It was men against boys. On a different day that 2009 final might have gone differently.
 
tjb said:
People really need to go back and watch us play, then come back and talk about Fergie tactically. It's very insulting. Our interplay, ability to move the ball around the pitch and even attacking combinations were better than any other team at various points of Sir Alex tenure. Different systems, different styles, consistently working under one man. The football we play with Sir Alex is better than what Klopp's Liverpool has been, yet somehow he is a better tactician, despite the style similarities??

The same thing used to happen when Fergie was compared to Wenger and Arsenal. For me, we were always the better team to watch and always had much better control of games. We were a better passing team than them and it showed when we went to Europe. Yet they were always praised as more entertaining and sexy. With Wenger being more tactical. Its the opposite of British bias imo.
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Man Utd in the 90s played some wonderful football and scored all kinds of goals. I think the people who say they didn't eitger weren't around or just don't remember how good it was in the 90s.

Sure wasn't team work only invented a few years ago.





 
Seems like he’s taking aim at the ex players due to their popularity.

Ferdinand is in the mould of Ian Wright as a pundit, likeable and speaks more about the emotional side of the game from his own experience. So any jibe against his tactical punditry doesn’t hit the target.
 
Sviken said:
Truly disgusting. Which one of these even went on to have a great career? Even Queiroz has done relatively nothing.


Not true. We gave them a good go in the 2009, even had some really amazing chances in that game. We just collapsed after that absurd Messi header goal. in the 2011 one, yeah, they outclassed us, but honestly - compare the squads. It was men against boys. On a different day that 2009 final might have gone differently.
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There's a hell of a lot more to management than just tactics. You can be a superb tactician and still be a bad manager.

That doesn't change the enormous influence someone like Queiroz had though. There's no real question that he was the driving force behind our tactical ideas at that point given (as per the players) he was the one devising them, presenting them and training them.

What's weird to me is people seem to view SAF's ability indentify talent and delegate like that (a quality that was directly responsible for the tactical shift that brought our era of success in the 00's and, in turn, helped cement SAF's place as arguably the greatest manager of all time) as somehow being a lesser talent than having strong tactical ideas himself. Or at least that's how people's overly defensive reaction to the idea that he himself wasn't some master tactician comes across. When in reality what SAF had was probably a rarer skill than that.
 
sullydnl said:
There's a hell of a lot more to management than just tactics. You can be a superb tactician and still be a bad manager.

That doesn't change the enormous influence someone like Queiroz had though. There's no real question that he was the driving force behind our tactical ideas at that point given (as per the players) he was the one devising them, presenting them and training them.
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You need both to be a great manager. SAF was an absolute success everywhere he went. The notion that he was just a "lucky guy" with good man management is a joke.

Which players have said that Queiroz was the driving force behind the tactics? From what I remember there was only that Barcelona game where we played most atypically. Everything Quieroz did was at the behest of SAF.

What's weird to me is people seem to view SAF's ability indentify talent and delegate like that (a quality that was directly responsible for the tactical shift that brought our era of success in the 00's and, in turn, helped cement SAF's place as arguably the greatest manager of all time) as somehow being a lesser talent than having strong tactical ideas himself. Or at least that's how people's overly defensive reaction to the idea that he himself wasn't some master tactician comes across. When in reality what SAF had was probably a rarer skill than that.
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SAF only delegated when he got too old to be able to properly participate in the coaching himself. He stlll oversaw the coaching and his ideas being implemented. It's not like Rene, for example, have his own ideas in contrast to SAF. He simply did what he was told.
 
Brophs said:
Michael Cox can - and I can’t stress this enough - get to feck with his pseudo-intellectual autofellatio he passes off as tactical insight.
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He can be pretentious but he's right about this. SAF was more pragmatic than his ex-players are willing to admit. We played counter-attacking football plenty of times against the likes of Arsenal or Barcelona but some fans act like he managed the Globetrotters.

Martial'sEmergingSmile said:
The underrating of Fergie's tactical ability by football's fart-sniffers is just weird at this point.

There was a similar article from Jonathan Wilson recently that all but called him a cheerleader, while acting like it was simply common knowledge to credit his success to tactical masterminds like Brian Kidd, Jimmy Ryan, Steve McClaren and Mike Phelan.
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They're wrong to dismiss him as not being smart tactically but I think they have a point when they say that SAF didn't have a clear footballing "philosophy" like Guardiola or Klopp. He adapted over time. That's why he outlasts most other great coaches by decades.

Chesterlestreet said:
He's pretty much insufferable, yes.
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True. He can be a condescending twat. He also hates rugby which means he's a tool medically speaking.
 
Sviken said:
You need both to be a great manager. SAF was an absolute success everywhere he went. The notion that he was just a "lucky guy" with good man management is a joke.

Which players have said that Queiroz was the driving force behind the tactics? From what I remember there was only that Barcelona game where we played most atypically. Everything Quieroz did was at the behest of SAF.


SAF only delegated when he got too old to be able to properly participate in the coaching himself. He stlll oversaw the coaching and his ideas being implemented. It's not like Rene, for example, have his own ideas in contrast to SAF. He simply did what he was told.
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In Giggs' autobiography he says Queiroz had “large amounts of responsibility” within the club, and had been entrusted to “train us, prepare us for games, organise the team and decide the things we need to work on."

John O'Shea on Queiroz' role: "He has worked very hard on giving us different ideas about how to kill a game off and how to expand our game to get from defending to attacking very quickly. I think you have seen that on lots of occasions, but also having the patience to keep the ball because in Europe the teams are so good that you do a lot of work if you don't have the ball."

So as per their descriptions Queiroz was the one who trained the team, prepared the team, organised the team, decided what the team needed to work on and implemented ideas in terms of killing teams off, offensive transitions & maintaining possession. In would say that constitutes him being the driving force behind the details of our tactics.

And then you have the Barca game you mention as a case study, with the below quotes also indicating that this was what he brought to the club generally.

Evra:

"I remember the semi-final against Barcelona away when he was speaking with everybody before the second half. The team felt very strong at Barcelona and this was because of the work of Carlos Queiroz. Tactically, he brought something very important to Manchester United."

And Silvestre:

"I think it was something that Carlos brought to the first team. It was lots of drills and tactical positioning, knowing when to shift and when to put pressure or drop, because Barcelona can break very easily."

And Rooney:

"Whenever the manager was following his instinct and thinking "we're going to attack", Carlos would make him rethink. He was the one who gave us the tactics in 2008 and was the cautious one we needed."

I think it's pretty clear from that that Quieroz wasn't just implementing SAF's ideas. He was entrusted to implement his own, which was why there was such a much commented-on (and criticised) tactical shift when he arrived:

Alex Ferguson made a staunch defence of Carlos Queiroz at the weekend and yesterday it was the turn of the Manchester United manager's increasingly prominent sidekick to speak for himself.

Making no apologies for bringing a more defensive approach to the club, the Portuguese assistant took a leaf out of the George Graham manual of management by stating that United should pick up the habit of winning more matches 1-0.

Queiroz's role at Old Trafford has become so extensive it might be a more accurate description of his job to call him joint manager. With the extra responsibilities - tactics, training and, increasingly, media duties - has come criticism from many supporters that he has brought conservative ploys to a club once famed for a spirit of adventure. Queiroz, however, is unruffled by the allegations.

"We trust ourselves and we trust our strategy," he said. "If you think about last season, there were many games when Chelsea won 1-0. We know if we defend properly and keep a clean sheet there will be chances to score one goal and we can win the game. And after that win we can get another win. More wins lead to more wins and when you have a couple of 1-0 wins they start to become two, three or four. This is the story of the game."

Queiroz is behind the 4-3-2-1 system implemented to prolong Roy Keane's playing career at the club, leading to fewer goals conceded and scored, and fuelling the argument United are no longer the Premiership's great entertainers.

Supporters want a return to the swashbuckling ways of old rather than those of a tactician who last month stated that "the final product is to defend well, avoid goals. If we need to defend with 10 players behind the ball, we are going to do that. Those results when you score three, four, five goals, they don't come often."

Yesterday he returned to the subject. "All great winning teams, attacking teams, they have a defensive approach. Look at the Chicago Bulls in basketball. They were the best attacking team in the league yet they won all their trophies in terms of their defensive approach to the game. The more you defend and the better you defend, the easier it is to attack."
 
AkaAkuma said:
Seems like he’s taking aim at the ex players due to their popularity.

Ferdinand is in the mould of Ian Wright as a pundit, likeable and speaks more about the emotional side of the game from his own experience. So any jibe against his tactical punditry doesn’t hit the target.
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The article goes over much more than just Rio
 
Hammondo said:
I really think you have rose tinted glasses on.
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I don't think you watched us. Ironically, especially before Henry's peak years, it was Wenger whose teams were defensive. This was what we were, dominant...even in our worst years under Fergie we finished third ( in the epl)
 
Brophs said:
Michael Cox can - and I can’t stress this enough - get to feck with his pseudo-intellectual autofellatio he passes off as tactical insight.
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Brilliantly said.

Another "football journalist" who thinks he knows more than most managers.
 
From about 1994 until Fergie retired there were only 3 events that stopped United winning just about everything.
Firstly the 'Rock of Gibraltar' thing and he lost focus letting Wenger have a sniff. Second Abramovich and spending a fortune getting Chelsea the title. Thirdly Barca, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi, who stopped United probably winning 3 CLs on the trot.
These idiot journos know nothing.
 
Remember zombie passing ? CAF like to moan everytime we play dire football under Fergie. It is not all sunshine under him too. But now we cant even string 3 passes together
 
I don't think anyone judges Ole for this

we've just been really crap this season

also Fergie was mostly an attacking manager, he got a bit more reserved in his last few seasons.. but most games we went at teams
 
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