For me the gravest crime ETH committed were his transfers. Apart from Martinez, the rest of his 450m+ spending was misguided at best. The matchday meltdowns we see match after match is mostly a function, I believe, of a squad that was poorly built.
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Honestly, I think using transfers as the stick to beat him with actually absolves him. His big mistake is his football. Look at what we have going on the pitch. These players are not that bad to concede 20 shots per game. Its clearly a system problem, and this issue has been going on all season. Players, more than in any other regime we've had, are not being put in the best positions to succeed. The fact that its taking so long to get to the conclusion that his tactics are poor, actually speaks to the real issue we have at the club. It has never simply been the players. We've gone through far more players than we have managers. Those players also played better in other teams, also had good reputations coming in. IN fact, you could argue that outside of a few managers, for the most part, our players were always let down by the managers we've had. Yet somehow, people think going through Moyes, LVG, Mourinho, Ole and ETH is actually a sign that its more than the manager. However, outside of Mourinho ( who showed his decline prior to and after leaving us), its quite apparent that none of the managers were great enough to expect a guarantee of success. The players we've gone through have been more impressive, Pogba, Lukaku, Di Maria, Sanchez, Mhikitaryan, Evra, Rafael, Rooney, Van Persie, Bruno, Rashford, Martial, Varane, Casemiro, Ronaldo, Cavani, Ibrahimovic, Mata and more. Our fans can stick with a terrible manager and make excuses for years. Blaming the characters of different sets of players, without recognizing that we've consistently been behind in regard to the shape and structure of our teams. These managers squandered lots of money and were poor in setting up the team on the pitch. In that time span, we've had players carry these managers through individual brilliance to greater heights than they should have achieved at the club. In the last decade, most of our runs of form have involved consistent flows of individual brilliance, passion in the form of fighting back and our defences holding firm against waves of attacks from top teams. Yet at the end of it, its the players that get blamed. Yet the systems these managers have manufactured have consistently not created chances nor controlled games in possession.
The figures say that we've actually ran through a lot of players. They say that even if we had star players, they would be performing under par due to the systems we've been playing. We've had some of these star players come out and say as much. These cries have been treated as petulance from people who were considered superstars before they came. Yet we're wondering why we've spent ten years not challenging for anything. In comparison to this, we've had Chelsea from 2007 to 2021 listen to players. This allowed them to see managers who weren't working and replace them with ones that could get more out of the team, leading to different spells of success. Real Madrid did the same thing during that span of time. They didn't tolerate Benitez. They listened to player complaints about Mourinho despite his profile. They ended up being the most successful team of the last decade. Yet United have been in complete opposition to all of that. We've always stuck with poor managers despite reports and player complaints. We always back managers with no proof of success at the club. Hence we always reach the conclusion that we wasted years under that manager. When we get with the times, and actually listen to employees ( the players), that's when we'll be back to where we need to be.