Put it this way they are closer to being contenders than we are.
Damage done by previous regime
- Thread starter RedBanker
- Start date
Except nobody puts 2nd place on a pedestal bud.
I don’t believe any manager since SAF has had the control or authority that he had.
Well every manager here has gotten exactly the players they wanted. Much to our detriment when the next manager comes in and wants to go in a different direction.
It’s widely regarded as fact in football circles that the United gig gives you as much free reign as any job in the game. I mean we haven’t even had DOF’s or any structure above them other than an accountant with cash to burn.
Of course, but right now we're analyzing last season. We've been shit this season, and Ole got sacked rightfully.
Not sure that is true to be honest.
Spon on.
The backbone of OgSs team were holdovers from Mourinho or underwhelming signings.
Shaw, Lindelof, DdG, Fred, McTom, Rashford, Martial [for a time], did Mou give Greenwood his debut?
There tends to be a habit with any OgS critique that Mourinho gets used as a counter, it’s unhelpful & irrelevant. Being shit is better than being absolutely shit but you’re still shit.
So people wanted ‘90% of Mourinho’s players gone’ but OgS built his teams around a vast number of them.
Mourinho being a bad manager for us doesn’t excuse how badly OgS handled the position.
As above, as terrible a squad as Mourinho left OgS chose to rebuild around a large number of them.
Both crap but refocusing on OgS, with hindsight the term malpractice comes to mind.
Well you haven’t been paying attention.
Aside from Martial would you have wanted to get rid of those players you’ve listed? The players you listed are the ones we expected him to keep.
You can only sign a couple of players every summer so any new manager is lumbered with the bulk of what the previous manager bought, which is obvious.
Too many drinks mate, I misread that as Ole not Ole fans. My mistake.
There are no more Ole inners, he's gone. Though there might be one or two, Ole back inners.
Funniest shit about our top management is stopping Mourinho from buying him for around 50-60mil just to buy him for 80mil next year.
Too many drinks mate, I misread that as Ole not Ole fans. My mistake.
There are no more Ole inners, he's gone. Though there might be one or two, Ole back inners.
I am not sure about that. They seem circling around Rangnick, waiting for his mistakes to justify why Ole failed. The problem with that is that this is Ole's team which means that if it lack character or leadership its on him.
true. It's also fascinating how we go from extreme to another. LVG's obsession with ball possession was polar opposite to Moyes (reliance on flanks) or SAF. Mou (counter attack football) contrasted greatly with that of LVG and Ole. Rangnick's geggenpressing is the exact opposite to Ole's football who had assembled one of the laziest teams in the EPL. I mean can you see Ronaldo, Pogba, Rashy, Martial and Greenwood chasing the ball like men possessed? That means that we brought managers in knowing that they will have to dismantle the squad to succeed.
Usually clubs has a culture and they hire managers who shares that culture. Thus the disruption is minimal. United don't have that because there are barely anyone at board level who understand football let alone build a vision for it and make sure that certain standards are kept. Take Ole as an example. He kept talking about how important the youth academy is while concurrently hoarding a ridiculously amount of players. Its amazing that no one was able to smell the rat here.
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Great point other massive clubs like Bayern Coty etc a new manager comes in and if you didn’t know there was a new manager on the bench you wouldn’t really know from the way they play football. Identity is so so key for this club moving forward, we’ve chosen the godfather of the gengenpress so let’s change all aspects of our recruitment training etc to become a good pressing team. If a player doesn’t fit the system they should be let go. I like slab head but for me he doesn’t fit this system neither does Bruno Rashford Ronaldo Lingard so get rid. Bring in some new players hungry to work hard and do well and players that fit the system.
Maguire and AWB signings still infuriate me to this day, our driving motive was more with their passport than anything football related. I always say Ole is in all but the strictest sense a British manager and he was prepared to overpay for both of them for his cultural reboot which we now see was just nothing more than hot air.
To think of the talent we could have bought at £40m apiece and how far along we would be in our development had we not wasted £130m on two players with massive flaws that ensure that they will never be top level players. If we are to win the league within the next three to four years we will only do it by replacing those two but for a long time they were hailed as the flagship of our cultural reboot.
And there are still Ole defenders in this thread saying 130m wasted on both of them would not get better players somwhere else. Like really ? Example: could have bought Hakimi and Ruben Dias who have more skills in their pinky toes than Maguire and WB. We could have plucked multiple defenders in any league outside PL (discounting Bayern, Madrid, PSG obviously) in the world for that fee.The only non British thing about him is his name and nationality. Also anyone remember that Longstaff crap ?
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The reality is that United hasn't had an identity for a long long time. After the Glazers took over and saddled us with debt, SAF reverted to an almost scavengers mode were top players were sold and replaced with mules (Young, Valencia, Cleverley etc) whose job was to allow us to squeeze every drop of quality out of the older players. That side was cynical, methodical, defensive and quite frankly boring. In fact we used to crack jokes in here about own goal being our most prolific player.
That is why United are struggling and why I am hopeful that we're finally getting things right with Rangnick. The German is a sporting director first and a manager afterwards. He's more known for building clubs from top to bottom rather then winning trophies and his career reflects that. I'd say let allow the man to analyse the squad we've got only to move him to a sporting director role once these few months are over. Gengenpressing is the closest thing United fans can relate to the romantic version of the United way. It successful, its bold and its attacking minded. In fact Klopp and Rangnick describes it as rock and roll football. On top of that it requires a lot of legwork and adaption which means that managers using that system will have to rely on young/hungry players. The more used to the system a player is the better thus youth academy players will be given a realistic shot as opposed to players who are here for their final pay cheque.
I’ve posted many times in the past about just how devastatingly detrimental it’s been for us as a club to swap from one manager to the next without any sort of continuity from a DOF or similar.
It’s why other clubs are more easily able to continually swap managers and maintain a semblance of balance in the starting 11.
It would have seen us in a better overall net position even after multiple changes in manager, my concern is that I have no real belief in the new structure we’ve put in place, it needs to prove itself first for me. The fact we don’t even understand Fletchers role and the temp manager can choose the man for the permanent role gives me doubts.
It needs to be a balance between nurturing a manager and falling into the sunk cost fallacy or believing that time makes someone better at an activity. People put far too much weight into overly simplified ideas like "managers need time" and point at managers A, B and C and ignore the fact that there were clear trajectories for those managers and their progression that earned them the time. Klopp is a prime example where everyone with half a brain could see what he was building towards even if in the short term it was erratic and ultimately not amazing on the results front.
Ole was the complete opposite. People kept asking for time for him when there was nothing to suggest that time was doing him any favours. If anything he was regressing as malaise set in with the players. They became comfortable in their mediocrity and couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel with Oles methods.
I wouldn't have said that was modern at all personally. Modern football at the top level is massively prescriptive. The very best teams of the past 4-5 years have all be highly cohesive units where every player knows exactly what their job is, where they should be on the pitch and where their team mates will be. There is room for flair and skill in these setups but that flair and skill is primarily used to deliver the killing blow or make a yard of space or break out of a pattern that the opposition have got the measure of.
Liverpool, City and Bayern are the epitome of modern fast paced football where you just relentlessly batter the opposition and completely stifle them on and off the ball. The only way to do that is with a highly organised and coached team. There is a reason managers and becoming more and more important at the top level and getting paid more and more money.
Honestly, I would suggest that Oles style was very outdated in many areas and he was taking his experiences from playing under one of the best managers ever, in a different era for football and trying to apply them to a completely different landscape. His comments that football is a simple game and its about who wants it more just speaks to that for me.
I think the players liked him because hes fundamentally a lovely bloke. I know people who are awful at their jobs but that doesn't mean their work colleagues don't like them. I know people who I think are complete idiots in many ways but they are still friends and I like them as people.
Agree 100%.I grind my teeth when I see AWB & Maguire play.
Well, you need to give managers time to implement the system you want to play with. Nobody is going to give you 10 years for that but you have to give managers time. And if you see progress, you stick with it. I would say that we showed great deal of progress with Solskjaer until this year. But football is a short term sport nowdays so you are going to get sacked for couple of bad results. That is reality.
I don't think Solskjaer style was outdated. I actually think it is modern way of football as lot of managers are trying to do the same. Not something I would go with. I'm more like vanGaal type of guy with little bit more tempo when attacking but overall more tactical in my thinking. I think the players character let down Solskjaer and he was of course part of problem for making it happen. I think him giving them more freedom than previous managers they became "untouchables". They thought they were better than they actually are. Stopped running, stopped fighting.
I think Solskjaer vastly underestimated the importance of coaching in the modern game.
It feels like he wanted to mimic the Sir Alex way of management as close as he could (especially the last few years of Sir Alex), so he was the self styled man management guy who’d motivate the players and got Mike Phelan because Sir Alex had him… and then he just left the coaching side in the hands of McKenna whose only experience was youth team coaching (albeit was highly rated) and recently retired Carrick. It feels like Solskjaer thought man management will trump over coaching… however he is not Sir Alex Ferguson, which was his first mistake.
His second mistake is keeping both McKenna and Carrick as the main first team coaches. In a then ideal world, he replaces Carrick with an experienced coach with good pedigree... but he kept both of them and seemed happy with them even though there is plenty of evidence of Utd playing very disjointed and heavy reliance on individual brilliance. Solskjaer’s Utd werent known for comfortably controlling games. It felt like every Utd game was on a knife edge a lot of the time. A sign of a good team is keeping a slender 1-0 lead but being in complete control of the game and the other team not looking like they’ll score. That barely happened under Solskjaer... if we were 1-0 up in the 88th minute against a relegation fodder side, your heart was in your mouth.
And his third mistake was his general man management itself… he was so chummy towards his players and you could tell from the interviews he did. He fell into the trap that any manager in any profession can make with their subordinates (let alone football) in that they become best mates with them and therefore the authority of being manager is eroded and the players in this case will see him as an easy touch. Sir Alex was a ruthless bastard who’d get right up in your face and tell you if you were playing shite and would cast you out of the team and even the club altogether if you fell out of line. Can you really see mild mannered Solskjaer getting up in ‘Rashy’s’ face if he turned up some shite football?
It feels like he wanted to mimic the Sir Alex way of management as close as he could (especially the last few years of Sir Alex), so he was the self styled man management guy who’d motivate the players and got Mike Phelan because Sir Alex had him… and then he just left the coaching side in the hands of McKenna whose only experience was youth team coaching (albeit was highly rated) and recently retired Carrick. It feels like Solskjaer thought man management will trump over coaching… however he is not Sir Alex Ferguson, which was his first mistake.
His second mistake is keeping both McKenna and Carrick as the main first team coaches. In a then ideal world, he replaces Carrick with an experienced coach with good pedigree... but he kept both of them and seemed happy with them even though there is plenty of evidence of Utd playing very disjointed and heavy reliance on individual brilliance. Solskjaer’s Utd werent known for comfortably controlling games. It felt like every Utd game was on a knife edge a lot of the time. A sign of a good team is keeping a slender 1-0 lead but being in complete control of the game and the other team not looking like they’ll score. That barely happened under Solskjaer... if we were 1-0 up in the 88th minute against a relegation fodder side, your heart was in your mouth.
And his third mistake was his general man management itself… he was so chummy towards his players and you could tell from the interviews he did. He fell into the trap that any manager in any profession can make with their subordinates (let alone football) in that they become best mates with them and therefore the authority of being manager is eroded and the players in this case will see him as an easy touch. Sir Alex was a ruthless bastard who’d get right up in your face and tell you if you were playing shite and would cast you out of the team and even the club altogether if you fell out of line. Can you really see mild mannered Solskjaer getting up in ‘Rashy’s’ face if he turned up some shite football?
And by all accounts, his next signings were going to be Trippier and Declan Rice. The latter of which we were going to have to massively overpay for, and would have possibly turned into another Maguire (not in a good way) if not managed properly.
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I think Rice would have been a good signing but sometimes you have to wonder whether the weight of expectations on the player and the big contract that comes with it at a relatively young age won't drag down the player. Throughoit history I think there has only been a couple of players that have embraced the World Record transfer fee - Zidane and CR7 - whist the rest rest have flattered to deceive.
Let's hope you're right about that. I wouldn't count on it though. Last pay cheques are what we've come to specialise in. I don't think anyone cares how suited players are to the system, or whether we even have a system. Big name stars and experienced, mature age players are what matter, and the more the merrier. Solksjaer couldn't sleep unless he had three mature age players for every position on the pitch it seems. You'll be waiting til the cows come home for youth players to get a realistic shot. I think Solksjaer's cheque book approach will be the norm now whomever is in charge. Mourinho and Van Gaal spent almost as much, especially on big name veterans. The fans love it, so who cares if it's the wrong thing to do.
@Ludens the Red meant it was a singular final in 3 years, not "loads of".
Just the Europa league final no?
The thread title should say "Damage done by a clueless board and Fergie".
We have finally lucked out getting a man who thinks on a macro level about the game.
The board does not know anything about football. So they always went to Fergie for advice.
The first advice he should have given them was to get a committee with football knowledge to advice on the next appointment after he retired.
It was all downhill from Moyes on.
It was nice to see the old man celebrate his 80th birthday in front of the supporters.
Hopefully from now he simply goes home to play with grandkids after watching the game.
We have finally lucked out getting a man who thinks on a macro level about the game.
The board does not know anything about football. So they always went to Fergie for advice.
The first advice he should have given them was to get a committee with football knowledge to advice on the next appointment after he retired.
It was all downhill from Moyes on.
It was nice to see the old man celebrate his 80th birthday in front of the supporters.
Hopefully from now he simply goes home to play with grandkids after watching the game.
There are 2 teams, Chelsea and City who pay through the nose for players like Ole did, so its not a lot of managers that do it. A checkbook manager then needs to follow it up with trophies, not state trophies dont matter, after he was incapable of coaching us to winning anything. So there was less progress than under VG and Mourinho. He was simply a really bad manager at Premier level. He got another Premier team relegated remember.
feck off
This.
Van Gaal didn't sign alot of old players though and when he did they were on the cheap (Valdez on free, Romero was on free). Bastian and Falcao were given huge salaries but they were on loan/bought on free. The rest were relatively young. Blind and Rojo were 24, Schneiderlin, Herrera and Darmian were 25, Di Maria was 26, Depay was 21, Martial was 19, Shaw was 18. LVG also believed in a small squad, maybe too small for his own good. He ended up relying heavily on youths one of whom was great ( Rashy) but most were absolutely dreadful (ex McNair). Mou started this madness as he spent money and gave ridiculous salaries on players who were at the wrong end of their career (Sanchez, Matic, Mkhitaryan, Ibra) and would have added more if given the opportunity (ex Perisic). Ole took it to the next level as he not only bought players who were at the wrong end of their career (Telles, Varane, Ronaldo, Heaton, Mcshane) but also gave contract extensions to players who shouldn't have been kept ( Matic, Mata, Grant etc)
In my opinion this is the result of managers given too much power on transfers. The manager's job had grown so much in modern football that can't be expected to know and decide over that talent playing in Portugal or Argentina. Our managers didn't help the cause either with new signings being frozen out of the team almost immediately and for no good reason. That started with Mou with Fred but precipitated greatly under Ole. He barely gave the signings made in his second summer transfer window a sniff of first team football. Our recruitment team should be given the independence and the trust they need to buy players but they should 'sell the new player' to the manager before he's signed. Managers at United should be picked on the basis that they are team players and would trust the recruitment team. Its pointless spending 30m on a player only for the manager not to play him.
Good post.
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Nice reply that. It just about summarises all our sins of the last few years. You are right in saying that Van Gaal was least blameworthy of the three. Mourinho and Solksjaer just went full Muppet mode.
They're both good players though, Rice in particular. Which good English players can you sign these days without 'overpaying' for them?
Solskjaer was decent in the PL in his 2 full seasons, it was the Cups he repeatedly failed in, Jose and Louie both managed to win at least one each but then they were both much better and vastly more experienced coaches so that makes sense.
Singlehandedly?
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Van Gaal is probably most at fault for the clusterfeck of a squad we've had post Fergie that Mourinho and then Solskjaer spent the next 5 years trying and mostly failing to sort out. He sold most of Fergie's squad for knock down prices and then signed a feck tonne of absolute shite who almost to a man turned out much worse than the players they replaced. Costing the club hundreds of millions in the process, go over his signings how many could you say were good signings or good value?
Herrera and Shaw arguably turned out the best signings of this lot and LVG said he didn't ask for them they were club signings.
Herrera
Shaw
Blind
Romero
Falcao
Rojo
DiMaria
Valdes
Schweinsteiger
Schneiderlin
Martial
Depay
Darmian
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