Yeah he had to replace pretty much half of a finished team and build a base that he could build upon.
I think this is where the way we see football is going to seperate us as for me there was more direction under LVG than Jose. I personally think LVGs 2nd year was better than his first. I look at more than just points, goals and statistics and the things we actually do on the pitch and on the whole LVG’s United was a far more educated footballing team than what we see now. It was by no means perfect but it was building towards something. Now it looks like just trying anything and throwing the sync at it to see if something sticks.
There is no problem with that at all. I mean I see why you have your conclusions on LVG and your opinion on Jose but for me you are looking at it through a very narrow lense hence why I don’t agree with your opinion on what Jose is doing or your opinion that we’ve actually played well for the majority of this season. Again it just comes down to how people understand football or interpret it, we are all different.
Why do the numbers need "justified"? You're using stats from Jose's first season, which wasn't as good as his current season, and comparing them with stats from LVG's best season, which he got fair credit for at the time anyway. If it wasn't for a surprise run of home draws over a year ago, the stats would probably look very similar.
Skewing stats to prove a 'point'
When are the mentalist LvG sympathisers going to do one.
Skewing stats to prove a 'point'
When are the mentalist LvG sympathisers going to do one.
I think mentality is overrated in the sense fans expect it to lead to results. I think it is usually the opposites. When a team clicks and has a good run, it creates momentum, when that momentum lasts long enough and the squad goes through some great comebacks or wins or even tough to take defeats that they come back from, it translates itself into a strong mentality. It comes from continuity, stability and success. When we talk about Fergie and the mentality of his teams, I think it was driven by years and years of him having established himself, having an aura that affected not only his players but also his opponents in the way they were intimidated especially in English football.
I agree with this. I don't think we did not improve tactically. It's more that we went into a tactical direction that is inherently more fragile and limited and that relies on other teams' under performing. Of course all tactics rely to an extent on the opponent but our approach is even more so which is why it is still enough for us to finish second and could even be enough to win us the league in most other seasons, but it is a league that was won by Leicester. So yes, personnel wise, most definitely, this team is even better on paper at least than some of Fergie's. Tactically, we're working within a more limited, lower ceiling spectrum than under LvG even if we might be higher on said spectrum.
Not sure I agree with that. Mentality is a state of thinking and we all know that Lvg went to great lengths to instill his philosophy. The players became cowardly cautious because they knew they’d be told off for things like being in the wrong part of the pitch
That's a fair point, I think we have a bit of a chicken-egg scenario there. I think my point was that if those very same instructions yielded results, the players would follow them religiously and with absolute belief that they would translate to what we would call mentality. I think the exact same can be said about Mourinho in terms of how some of his methods can contribute to a lack of confidence. In theory at least, when you insist on being "humble" and going into every big game with the mindset of nullifying first and foremost basically being indirectly told that you are not as good as your competitors, it can mean that the players are insecure which again can translate into a weak mentality. But we do know those approaches won in the past, when his teams had momentum going for them, this did not affect them and they were some of the toughest competitors around.
In a way I agree, but the principles of what LVG wanted and what Pep does with his teams are the same. I think the media made too much out of what LVG said and it took on new life under the fans. Like the he’d rather a player take a touch then shoot. Morphed in to he doesn’t want anyone taking first time shots. Simply he was being pragmatic and pointing out if a player takes a touch sets himself he has a better chance of getting a shot on target. A thing that also gets forgotten is we had a really young and untested frontline still finding their way in the game. At times they had moments of really really good play. I think their lack of experience and the lack of any real quality in midfield led to just this doubtful front 6 that didn’t seem to trust each other hence the very static boring football.
That sounds very similar to Valencia now except add in Young, Shaw, Martial to the list with him.
