People can perform all sorts of mental gymnastics, try to find glimmer of hope based on last weekend or the multiple turning points, the stark reality staring at us is that ETH is not it.
There are plenty of issues:
(1) The most important thing needed to get us back to the top is the recruitment.
There has be far more hits than misses. Under him (and we can blame the management team all we want) the players signed are far from being good enough to get back us to level needed to compete with City, forget Liverpool and Arsenal, who seem to have go their act together.
It's quite surprising too as when he first came, ETH mentioned in his interviews that how he is taken note from Pep's mention of the physicality you need in your team to succeed in the premier league. But since then he has gone on to recruit Martinez, Antony, Malacia, Mount etc....who are not overly physical players and get rag dolled too easily. Martinez's desire, ball playing skills, defensive nous are things to be admired but even then he can't be the starting CB for a side looking to reach the top. He either will have to form a part of a three man defense or becomes a hybrid FB in the Zinchenko/Trent mold. The less said about the others the better. Antony is a not a United standard player; he is worse than Depay. Mount is a pointless signing. Malacia is a Buttner reincarnation. Weghorst was the worst striker I have seen in a United shirt. Amrabat looks like the typical midfield plodder from the Serie A without too may qualities (he is stupid too...what's with the handling of the ball when he is on the ground?), Eriksen is a good signing but the kind you make to complement the squad, not as a starter.
Onana is an outfield player masquerading as a keeper. People can sight lack of confidence, adjustment to the league or whatever but the guy has got a terrible technique for a keeper. Is clueless on what to do in one on one situations. Is a poor stop stopper. And his much hailed ball playing ability leaves a lot to be desired too.
On top of bad signings, we have made wrong signings for the second summer window running. We earlier used to get the past it former superstars (Bastian fecking Schweinsteiger!) for free or for low fee, but this time we paid 60m rising to 70m for a 30 year old on his last legs to play DM in one of the most physical leagues in the world. We needed a striker as a top priority last season but we paid 3x his actual value to get Antony. We needed two proper CM's this season - a back up to Casemiro and a proper metronome to play alongside him, an Eriksen upgrade - but instead we somehow recruited Mason Mount and Amrabat. A non CM and a poor poor back up for Case.
Not all of this stupidity is on ETH, but from his familiarity with these players, it seems he has played a pretty big role in demanding and getting them.
(2) He doesn't know how to rotate.
He ran the main players to the ground last year; that too in a WC year with players experiencing an extra-ordinary work load. Look at our main players last season - Martinez, Shaw, Rashford, Bruno, Eriksen, Casemiro - all of them either injured or woefully out of form. Last season, their bck-ups only came to the fore when one of them was injured. Whenever not injured, they played in the league, in the league cup, the FA cup, Europa....even against shit opposition they started most of the games. I don't remember the opponent but Eriksen could have been easily rested in the game he was assaulted by Andy Carroll. He hasn't been the same player since then. Martinez was played in games this season even though he had not fully recovered from the stress injury he sustained last season. Shaw either played FB or CB, but hardly ever rested. Same for Rashford, Casemiro and Fernandez.
It's no surprise that all of them struggling this season.
(3) Last and the most important - his football is too risk averse and simply not good enough.
The football reminds me of the dark days of VG. It's slow, ponderous, lacks ideas and relies too much on individual brilliance. How many chances do we create? How many times in a game do we trouble the opposition keeper?
Our build-up is painfully slow. It's passing between the defenders and the midfield before we run out of ideas. Then we either pass it back or give it away. Or we simply hoof the ball. What was the point of getting this "Ball playing keeper" if we still hoof it more than 50% of the times and are so bad at winning second balls? How come after almost 90 (league, cups and pre-season) games we still don't know how to play out from the back? Why can't we string more than 3 passes together before giving it to the opposition?
"We want to become the best transition team in the world" - Transition teams play fast football and are excellent at winning the ball back. In fact, you can't become a transition team if you cannot win the ball back quickly. I can understand playing low percentage balls in order to find your fast attackers, but then you also have to win the ball quickly if that low % pass doesn't work out. Due to our inability to press in sync and win the ball back, we actually end up making every opposition team "the best transition team in the world". Even relegation candidates like Forest or Wolves can come to our home and cut through us at will.
Folks will say these things take time or injury excuses or whatever but after 90 games you should be able to see some green shoots towards ultimately reaching your goal of playing competent football. So far, the only thing I can see is our return to bad days of VG football when we could neither defend nor score goals.
A last minute win (as ecstatic as it was in the moment) by hoofing it to the new Fellaini is not going to change the fact that ETH hasn't been able to implement any kind of playing style so far. And yes, 3rd place and a league cup.....the most expensively assembled and the most handsomely paid staff in the world can achieve those based on individual brilliance or small periods of good play - we have done it regularly over the last 11 years by winning multiple cups and multiple top 4 finishes under various managers - but it still doesn't take us to the promised land. We can get top 4 in the league when other teams are having an off year or we can win a cup competition, but the fact remains that we are no way near building a team or a style play that gets us back to being a top club, who is constantly in the running for top honors.
It's just a feeling of despair after seeing 11 years of continuous failure - wrong people in-charge, wrong managers and wrong players. I am posting here after a long long time and don't know when will I post again. I just needed to vent my frustration.
The club, Old Trafford, Sir Alex, us fans - we all deserve better. May be the new owners, whenever the club is sold, will be able completely overhaul the system and get competent people in charge to end this horrific nightmare. Hope springs eternal!
off the 5th CL spot with 30 games to go. Sometimes you just need to ignore the noise from the media and relax.