Fergie’s the problem!

Pogue Mahone said:
Says Jonathan Liew, not me.

Main gist of it is this:



You know, it kind of makes sense…
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Pogue Mahone said:
Says Jonathan Liew, not me.

Main gist of it is this:



You know, it kind of makes sense…
Click to expand...
Its utter and complete nonsense. The Busby babes are the ones who turned united into a team that must play with wingers for example. Including that attacking player culture and belief in given youth a chance. Furthermore, United through out its history has shown that its most successful periods have been when they weren't changing managers and footballing direction repeatedly. At most the kept the plan. Just changed the executor of the plan
 
MalaysianRed7 said:
The thing about Fergie was that he was a master of adaptation. For one, had no set style of play. We didn’t play every game like we did against the likes of Wigan and Bolton who we’d routinely stick 4 past, by dominating the ball and only leaving the centre backs at the back. The Arsenal masterclass of 2009, people forget, was done by us sitting back and giving Arsenal the ball, before springing on them at uncontrollable pace. At the moment, I genuinely do not know what our style of play is.

Then, you look at the way he changed his coaching staff as he started to build new teams. McClaren came in to replace Kidd in 1999, Queiroz came in as he was building the team spearheaded by Rooney and Ronaldo etc. He knew that if he didn’t change his assistants as his teams went through cycles, the club would go stale as the same voices and team talks would be heard time after time. Ole has an absolutely incompetent and inexperienced coaching staff with him now, and he isn’t good tactically himself. He’s on a hiding to nothing, and yet he refuses to change it.

Fergie was also a master of rotation. I genuinely think he’d still win the league now at 80 years old with this squad. He would constantly fine tune the tactics, change one or two players every week to keep everyone fresh, and we’d steamroll the league. Someone like Cavani would become his supersub and backup to Ronaldo, like Ole and Chicharito were. Ole’s ability to trust his squad and rotate is awful. Telles plays a good game against Villarreal and hasn’t played a minute since. Lingard scores 2 goals and makes an assist off the bench, and still doesn’t get rewarded with starts. CL semi finalist and Ballon D’or nominee Donny’s situation is simply baffling. Is it any wonder it looks as if he’s started to lose the dressing room? Under Ole, the likes of Phil Neville and coincidentally, Ole Gunnar Solskjær would have never gotten a game.

So no, Fergie’s regime and the current one share absolutely no similarities, as the media like to make out.
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Great Post, the man was a master at the game because he was a great student of the game.
Never allowed himself to go stale, always looked to the next challenge.

Great point about Lingard, fergie ALWAYS rewarded good form, even if the selection seemed a bit off.
With Ole the players don't fear being dropped, and the squad players don't feel motivated to get a chance in the team.
 
Sir Matt Busby was blamed for the club's decline after he retired. It wasn't until we hired a great manager when things began to turn around. Busby was still around the place and he supported Fergie's vision 100% so did Sir Bobby. They didn't disappear from the club and neither should Fergie. We just need to hire a great manager with his own vision but can also take inspiration from the greatest manager.
 
Tom Van Persie said:
Sir Matt Busby was blamed for the club's decline after he retired. It wasn't until we hired a great manager when things began to turn around. Busby was still around the place and he supported Fergie's vision 100% so did Sir Bobby. They didn't disappear from the club and neither should Fergie. We just need to hire a great manager with his own vision but can also take inspiration from the greatest manager.
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Yep.
 
Mickeza said:
Did the LVG era not happen?
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To be fair LVG really pushed for something different and look how he was hounded out by GNev, Scholes and co even after an FA cup win. Toxic class of 92 not SAF is the issue, pushing agendas to suit their mates or outdated idea of football. I doubt SAF has any say on the team that starts and coaching.
 
Football has moved on a hell of a lot even since 2013 when Fergie retired. His ethos lingering over the club has been an issue since he left. The truth is that he left the club in an antiquted state and we're still a long way from modernising properly. Ole has been a throwback manager who believes that replicating the Ferguson era is the path to success. It's a fools errend. We once won the league with 75 points under Fergie. The top teams are much more efficient now as they're employing data science to maximise performance. We need to move on and less input and influence from Fergie will be beneficial in my opinion.
 
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Aren't there problems across the club? Isn't that the issue? The owners care more about short term revenue streams than building a club that will, in the long run, be successful and more profitable. Woodward is lingering like a bad fart, to be replaced by another guy in the same mould, neither having the football experience to know how to manage a club, let alone onf of United's size. Murtough and Fletcher are new hires, one of which without experience in that kind of role. The manager is living in the shadow of his playing days and the guy that brought him to the club, but appears to be a one trick pony. The coaching staff are mostly learning on the job.

May as well add Fergie to the pile.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Says Jonathan Liew, not me.

Main gist of it is this:



You know, it kind of makes sense…
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Bollocks though isn't it?

He either has very little influence.

OR the problem is our board and owners who know feck all about football, have no vision and have not even hired any football experts to assist. So rely too heavily on a retired legend.

So even if you take Fergie out of the equation, we would see the same problems.
 
The thing is its all specultion that Fergie saved Oles job. No one knows for certain. He could have chipped in, been asked directly, or not at all.
When you have a big manager like Busby or Fergie the media are always over who is running the team.
I think the simple fact is the board never expected the season to go like this and they have no contingency plan. They are hoping to get past City with at least a win out of one of the games. That buys them the international break to sort out a manager. Surely they know now that Ole is taking this club nowhere.
So no I dont think Fergie is the problem.
 
The article isn't blaming Fergie.
I said last week that we are the only club that still gives the head coach the title of Manager. It's a small issue but it's lends credence to the argument this club is still beholden to some ideals that might be outdated. I think we are the last club in the league to have appointed a DoF. You often hear fans and ex players say Fergie was close to the sack after 3 years. I am not going to get into the legitimacy of that argument but that argument is just indicative of fear. Fear that we might lose out on the next Fergie, when in fact the chances are miniscule.
A coach is just an employee.
 
Tom Van Persie said:
Sir Matt Busby was blamed for the club's decline after he retired. It wasn't until we hired a great manager when things began to turn around. Busby was still around the place and he supported Fergie's vision 100% so did Sir Bobby. They didn't disappear from the club and neither should Fergie. We just need to hire a great manager with his own vision but can also take inspiration from the greatest manager.
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Right on but I don't think the article blames Fergie for the decline but rather his desciples/former players. Ole mimmicks Fergie far too much but he hasnt the intrinsic knowledge to know why Fergie did what he did and the Co92 protects Ole because in him they have a manager who imitates the only football theory they know. Remember how savage Scholes was on LVG and how accommodating all of them are of Ole's failings?
 
"there is something essentially quite weird about the extent to which this global super-club still appear to be in thrall to a retired 79-year-old man who hasn’t coached a football team in almost a decade. It’s also a situation without any real precedent."
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I'm not sure the club are as in thrall as the media, like I saw so many versions and different analysis of the man being at Carrington ffs.

Sure he has a unique place in the club lore, and rightfully so. Unique manager has unique standing is not really that surprising?

I don't buy much of that article. The media loves a narrative but I think Ole is just not a very good manager, his CV and my eyes agree. Sometimes it's quite simple, but the media still need daily copy.

Also Fergie played with Keane on the right before Beckham. It's lazy to say we always played with wingers.
 
The only problem with Fergie is that everyone and everything is still being compared to him.

And we can't live up to it.
 
Man Utd played with youth and wingers long before Ferguson arrived. It's not really a Fergusonism. He just reinstalled those ideas at the club.

He's talking bollocks and jumping on the Utd band wagon to get some clicks.
 
moses said:
I'm not sure the club are as in thrall as the media, like I saw so many versions and different analysis of the man being at Carrington ffs.

Sure he has a unique place in the club lore, and rightfully so. Unique manager has unique standing is not really that surprising?

I don't buy much of that article. The media loves a narrative but I think Ole is just not a very good manager, his CV and my eyes agree. Sometimes it's quite simple, but the media still need daily copy.
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Exactly. After Sir Matt we had O Farrell, Wilf, Doc, Sexton and Big Ron before hiring a young Fergie. A quality manager and footballing people at the top probably would take the club in a better direction regardless of Fergie's shadow. Once Fergie started winning no one mentioned Busby's aura and influence.
 
For anyone suggesting that SAF doesn't have any influence over United, then you will be very surprised to learn just how much influence he has over a current regular in the first team, who is constantly selected even when out of form...

Scott McTominay

Speaking to The Herald newspaper in May 2018, McTominay said:
"When I was in the development centres I was in and around The Cliff, Alex was there and he spoke to my dad,"
"After the memorial service for the Munich Disaster earlier this year he pulled me aside and told me: 'Make sure you do play for Scotland.'

McTominay would go on to choose to play for Scotland over England.

Could this be a reason why Solskjær always plays McTominay, and refuses to use other options in the squad?
I certainly believe it could be.
 
Agreed, but I think the Black Eyed Peas are shite in general if I'm honest.
 
I think he’s absolutely right, in a broader sense. It’s the continuous nostalgia, harking back to the past, seeking answers from a time which is long gone instead of adapting to, seeking and fashioning new solutions for the present.

The reason why it resonates is I’ve seen an exact facsimile of this situation play out at my own club as a matchgoing fan at Anfield since the mid 80s to our detriment, the famous ‘boom-bust‘ decades you used to laugh about where we continuously harked back to the past instead of adapting to and progressing with the times.

I was too young for shankly and paisley but I starting being taken to games as a child during the fagan years in the mid 80s and have since seen at first hand dalglish, souness, evans, houllier, Benitez, hodgson, rodgers and dalglish again come and go before we arrived at klopp.

Throughout this period it was one continuous history lesson about the glorious past whilst the club stagnated, watched others overtake us on and off the pitch, became a laughing stock and a salutary lesson on how great dynasties decline, etc etc.

Then klopp arrived, and the first thing he did was take down the ‘this is Anfield‘ sign, signalled definitively that the past was glorious but no longer relevant, that we had to change everything and start building as he put it ‘our own history’ instead of harking back to the past. I think it’s fair to say he achieved his targets and has made us relevant again on an ongoing basis.

I see all of this reflected at United. For Ferguson substitute shankly and paisley, for ‘the United way’ sub in the boot room, for solskjaer I give you souness and evans and the second coming of dalglish. The class of 92 pundits continuously discussing what fergie would’ve done is reflected in Hansen and lawrenson and others continuously harking back to their own times from a decade or more earlier. Bringing back Ronaldo, all of it is just futile nostalgia. In the meantime the club stagnates and with that, slowly but surely, will come a loss of relevance. Until the direction of travel changes.
 
Fergie always gets the blame, while will.i.am gets off scott free EVERY time.
 
Syphon Wallet said:
Great Post, the man was a master at the game because he was a great student of the game.
Never allowed himself to go stale, always looked to the next challenge.

Great point about Lingard, fergie ALWAYS rewarded good form, even if the selection seemed a bit off.
With Ole the players don't fear being dropped, and the squad players don't feel motivated to get a chance in the team.
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Fully agree, especially with the bolded bit. Shaw and Maguire have been poor this season, but I understand if he has some loyalty towards them because they carried our defence last season. His stubbornness with Lindelof, Fred and McTominay is plain odd. Either way, that’s 5 players drastically underperforming this season, and yet they start every game. No one can blame the fringe players for getting angry.
 
Tom Van Persie said:
Sir Matt Busby was blamed for the club's decline after he retired. It wasn't until we hired a great manager when things began to turn around. Busby was still around the place and he supported Fergie's vision 100% so did Sir Bobby. They didn't disappear from the club and neither should Fergie. We just need to hire a great manager with his own vision but can also take inspiration from the greatest manager.
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This. Great post.
 
Tom Van Persie said:
Sir Matt Busby was blamed for the club's decline after he retired. It wasn't until we hired a great manager when things began to turn around. Busby was still around the place and he supported Fergie's vision 100% so did Sir Bobby. They didn't disappear from the club and neither should Fergie. We just need to hire a great manager with his own vision but can also take inspiration from the greatest manager.
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Spot on Tom!
 
tomaldinho1 said:
To be fair LVG really pushed for something different and look how he was hounded out by GNev, Scholes and co even after an FA cup win. Toxic class of 92 not SAF is the issue, pushing agendas to suit their mates or outdated idea of football. I doubt SAF has any say on the team that starts and coaching.
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I think Neville said we’d win a title under LVG after he met him and was impressed. Scholes was just bored by his second season like the rest of us. After LVG went there was a huge media push to get Giggs the job - that was sold as a go back to the Fergie days type appointment - but the club resisted and went Jose. The article is total bollocks. The modern day equivalent of Ferguson’s values and principles is Klopp - he’s far more like Fergie than any of the people we’ve hired - would that be an issue if we’d hired him? This entire week the media have been throwing shit at anything Manchester United - this is just another in a long line of articles that misses the mark completely. The simple fact is at the start we had zero structure to conduct a rebuild - we bought very badly and hired the wrong managers. That’s it.
 
duffer said:
I have a friend who is utterly convinced Fergie hand hand picked Moyes to make himself look better.
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Ferige contacted Ancelotti/ Pep / Klopp before he went to Moyes(this was confirmed by Ancelotti/Klopp too and Pep siad he had a lunch with Fergie in new york restaurant but he didnt get his slang and didnt understand what he said but we all can imagine why Fergie called Pep for lunch..... Even though he was friends with Jose he didnt offer UTD job as Fergie knew Jose would ruin our image.

So I will never lose my respect for Fergie in that aspect. he put UTD in first place by going to the above list of managers first.
 
Everyone keeps saying the board has no football experience and they are just accountants and bankers. But most boards are made up of CEO's, Finance people, Lawyers etc. They are the ones that know how to run the business. If you just got a bunch of ex pros in there - Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, Neville etc then we would be fkd. If you look at the Chelsea, Man CIty, Liverpool etc boards they are all business people not ex footballers.

So the question is how does it really work. The board must rely on senior football figures within the club to advise them. Like any CEO they dont know the whole business. They cant. They have to rely on department leads to advise them. So who actually is making the decisions at United and who is influencing these decisions? I would love to know who are the people responsible for this near decade of fk ups.

You can see we are stuck in the past. And we can see there are deep rooted problems within the club that goes past the manager and the players. And everyone can see its not working. Serious unbias questions need to be asked. And that also applies to Sir Alexs' role. Like we have to separate Ole the player and Ole the manager we need to separate Sir Alex the God and if Sir Alexs' is directly or indirectly influencing United down the wrong path.

Whether he is or he isn't I have no idea because I am not in those meetings so I cant say.
 
Spoony said:
Mourinho used to invite him. He's hardly a Sir Matt who had an office at OT which he used everyday of the week. Anyway Fergie sits down after HT, Liverpool score a fifth and Fergie looks flabbergasted...just like every fan, yet the press...
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First of all the article makes the point that due to technology, back in the 70s, there weren't extra cameras looking for Matt Busby's reaction when a goal (or 4) went in against Utd. but I have already stated elsewhere that due to modern technology (a thing called privacy class) it shouldn't be happening with Fergie, now. Or does Sir Alex quite like it when he is found by Sky or the BBC - can he not ever let go of being the center of attention as he once was, for so many years?

I don't subscribe to that weird theory that Ferguson wanted Moyes because he didn't want the next manager after him to be successful - well not exactly. There is, I believe, some truth in the fact that Fergie (and Sir Bobby Charlton) blocked Mourinho coming in 2013 - apparently they had concerns about his 'character' not being the right fit for Manchester Utd! OR could that just be that they or rather he (SAF) didn't want someone with such charisma coming into the club after him, as he enjoyed being the 'Special One' at Old Trafford and he still does.

P.S. Busby may have had an office at OT, but did he get £1,000,000 a year as club Ambassador too - or anything even like it in 1970s money? I bet not. Office or 1 million? office or 1 million? I know which I'd prefer!

P.P.S. Did Busby totally destabilse the club during his time as manager by having an argument about a racehorse leading ultimately to an American take-over that is at the root of pretty much every single problem besetting the club in this decade? I rest my case.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
To be fair LVG really pushed for something different and look how he was hounded out by GNev, Scholes and co even after an FA cup win. Toxic class of 92 not SAF is the issue, pushing agendas to suit their mates or outdated idea of football. I doubt SAF has any say on the team that starts and coaching.
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But he does. In the article being discussed is the passage: "This month a video emerged of Ferguson criticising Solkjaers decision to drop Cristiano Ronaldo for the game against Everton. “You should always start your best player,” Ferguson tells the former cage fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov."

OGS must be aware of this and will pick Ronaldo first, as a consequence, even when he should start Cavani instead, this afternoon. If he dare not park in his old managers car-parking spot, he is unlikely to ignore comments like this and start leaving Ronaldo on the bench. So it may not be Fergie picking the team directly, but indirectly he is influencing things and that is crazy.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
More like this place is unable to read linked articles before casting judgement on them. Not once does he imply Fergie is actively meddling in decisions on the pitch. It’s more about decisions being made on the basis “what would Fergie do” when the whole concept of Fergie the manager is so distorted by nostalgia we’ve forgotten what made him great in the first place. It’s Ole and the class of ‘92 who are the real targets of this article, not Fergie.
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It’s a good point Pogue
 
JebelSherif said:
First of all the article makes the point that due to technology, back in the 70s, there weren't extra cameras looking for Matt Busby's reaction when a goal (or 4) went in against Utd. but I have already stated elsewhere that due to modern technology (a thing called privacy class) it shouldn't be happening with Fergie, now. Or does Sir Alex quite like it when he is found by Sky or the BBC - can he not ever let go of being the center of attention as he once was, for so many years?

I don't subscribe to that weird theory that Ferguson wanted Moyes because he didn't want the next manager after him to be successful - well not exactly. There is, I believe, some truth in the fact that Fergie (and Sir Bobby Charlton) blocked Mourinho coming in 2013 - apparently they had concerns about his 'character' not being the right fit for Manchester Utd! OR could that just be that they or rather he (SAF) didn't want someone with such charisma coming into the club after him, as he enjoyed being the 'Special One' at Old Trafford and he still does.

P.S. Busby may have had an office at OT, but did he get £1,000,000 a year as club Ambassador too - or anything even like it in 1970s money? I bet not. Office or 1 million? office or 1 million? I know which I'd prefer!

P.P.S. Did Busby totally destabilse the club during his time as manager by having an argument about a racehorse leading ultimately to an American take-over that is at the root of pretty much every single problem besetting the club in this decade? I rest my case.
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The idea anyone buys the world’s most expensive football club because two strangers had a row about a horse is absolutely fecking puerile
 
It’s hard to tell if Ferguson is a hinderance.

He did choose Moyes but he advised to keep Phelan, Meulensteen and Steele… which Moyes did not, so we have no idea how that would have gone.

I’m inclined to think LVG and Jose were Woodward lead decisions.

I have no idea what input he had in OGS. He may have said OGS as a caretaker until they get a proper manager at the time which from memory, would have been Poch. OGS has the purplest patch to end all purple patches and gets job permanent. Not sure if he was for that

I will say though that him backing OGS seems like a bad decision on his part if that’s true. Undoubtedly that perfectly timed camera shot of him last weekend certainly showed he wasn’t impressed though. He’s smart enough to know that team with those players could go toe to toe with his last Utd team.
 
Spoony said:
@Pogue Mahone. Why are the class of 92 being targeted? Do they really have that much influence?
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They are high profile, so like Ronaldo and Fergie, they make good copy, but does anyone really think they say on TV for a wage what they actually feel? It's lenses within lenses. I don't think they have any direct influence but they do influence the narrative and there is always a discussion to be had as to whether the narrative does affect the decisions. I think the longer Ole stays in the job the more tenuous and vague the analysis will get in an attempt to keep it fresh.
 
I think Fergie going to talk with the players and be around the training ground after the 5-0 undermined Ollie and made it seem like Ollie doesn't know what he's doing. This may very well be the case but I think Fergie should have taken a back seat and talked to some players privately.

Just put more pressure on Ollie in my opinion and I don't think it helped if Ollie didn't ask for Fergie to be there.
 
Fergie is too soft to his kids because he was given more time 30 years back. Weird, because he was known for his ruthlessness and that's what made us succesful.

He is also part of the problem . If he wants to help Ole, bring some talented recognized coaches from outside. Why the feck are we sticking with rookies all around. I still can't understand that.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
To be fair LVG really pushed for something different and look how he was hounded out by GNev, Scholes and co even after an FA cup win. Toxic class of 92 not SAF is the issue, pushing agendas to suit their mates or outdated idea of football. I doubt SAF has any say on the team that starts and coaching.
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He was hounded out and sacked by Woodward and not the class of 92.
And he was rightly sacked after a season which saw us getting knocked out in the group stages of an easy CL group PLUS not getting top 4.
 
Spoony said:
@Pogue Mahone. Why are the class of 92 being targeted? Do they really have that much influence?
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I’d say Ole’s having a big influence right now! Even if you disagree with everything else in the article I think it’s a reasonable observation that Ole’s fondness for nostalgia isn’t ideal for a club that has already been left behind by many of our rivals.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’d say Ole’s having a big influence right now! Even if you disagree with everything else in the article I think it’s a reasonable observation that Ole’s fondness for nostalgia isn’t ideal for a club that has already been left behind by many of our rivals.
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Defo, but I think his fondness for nostalgia is only a bi-product of the actual problem!
 
moses said:
They are high profile, so like Ronaldo and Fergie, they make good copy, but does anyone really think they say on TV for a wage what they actually feel? It's lenses within lenses. I don't think they have any direct influence but they do influence the narrative and there is always a discussion to be had as to whether the narrative does affect the decisions. I think the longer Ole stays in the job the more tenuous and vague the analysis will get in an attempt to keep it fresh.
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I agree. They've never called for a manager's head and they're obviously unhappy with United and how we're playing. I'd struggle slagging you off Mo on the forum if you'd been proper nawty. But privately I'd feel differently. That's the problem with Gary Neville he's saying everything barring calling for Ole's head... Carragher said he couldn't openly criticise Gerrard because of the connection but I've heard that privately they didn't particularly get along but that's loyalty for you.

For me it's glaringly obvious, we need to hire a good manager who could do a job, it'd shut the media up for starters
 
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