Our average league finish 2014-2019 was 5th. Nobody sees top 4 as the 'ultimate glory' but the simple fact is if we manage to finish there again it represents improvement on where we have been since SAF retired, whether I stamp my feet and demand a title or not.
Is Ole’s football really any better than José & LVG’s?
- Thread starter Schmeichel's Cartwheel
- Start date
LVG won the FA Cup.
Jose won the league Cup & Europa league. Got to an FA Cup final.
All of which looks well beyond Olé's capabilities.
So previously in the season posters suggested we have more of the ball this season with teams sitting back and not letting us counter as much.
We actually have less of the ball than we had last season. 55.9% of the ball and 5th most in the league compared to 56.2% and still 5th most in the league this season.
Slightly less shots although slightly more on target than last season.
We actually have less of the ball than we had last season. 55.9% of the ball and 5th most in the league compared to 56.2% and still 5th most in the league this season.
Slightly less shots although slightly more on target than last season.
I can never forgive Jose for the heritage comments after the disgraceful performance against Sevilla. He should have been sacked on the spot for saying that, but that’s another story.
I have enjoyed Ole’s tenure more than Jose’s and LVG’s. Do I think that he is the best thing ever? No. Will I take a manager like nagelsmann if he became available? Absolutely. But to say that his football is more boring/stale than LVG’s and Jose’s is just not true, IMO.
I have enjoyed Ole’s tenure more than Jose’s and LVG’s. Do I think that he is the best thing ever? No. Will I take a manager like nagelsmann if he became available? Absolutely. But to say that his football is more boring/stale than LVG’s and Jose’s is just not true, IMO.
I had a season ticket for LVGs time here. I wanted to stab my eyes out for a bunch of games. Our style of play is still frustrating but nothing will ever be as frustrating as the slow ponderous play he had us playing at times. I remember a Newcastle game where I think I considered Hari Kari on the way home
This is a terrible thread.
Ole is slowly building a hungry squad full of young players. Ole has practically worked miracles to turn things around. With Pogba you never know if he's gonna be sulking all game on the pitch, or taking your breath away with skill. Fred and McT can be as good one week as they are dire the next. If Ole had a Scholes in midfield and a Rooney upfront then we'd be playing better stuff no doubt. He's still a few players away from having us playing nice football again.
Jose is a spoiled childish narcissist who would throw his own grandmother under a bus to save himself from blame. He'd whinge and whinge, until the board cracked and gifted him 90 year old Alexis on 450,000 a week wages, only for Jose to dump him on the bench for months at a time, because his first 20 minute cameo did not result in 2 goals.
Hiring LVG was a daft as if we had have hired Neil Warnock to be our manager.
Ole is slowly building a hungry squad full of young players. Ole has practically worked miracles to turn things around. With Pogba you never know if he's gonna be sulking all game on the pitch, or taking your breath away with skill. Fred and McT can be as good one week as they are dire the next. If Ole had a Scholes in midfield and a Rooney upfront then we'd be playing better stuff no doubt. He's still a few players away from having us playing nice football again.
Jose is a spoiled childish narcissist who would throw his own grandmother under a bus to save himself from blame. He'd whinge and whinge, until the board cracked and gifted him 90 year old Alexis on 450,000 a week wages, only for Jose to dump him on the bench for months at a time, because his first 20 minute cameo did not result in 2 goals.
Hiring LVG was a daft as if we had have hired Neil Warnock to be our manager.
Seriously?
I mean we can praise Ole without going this OTT and hyperbolic.
You're acting like he took over a relegation candidate team with no money.
Were you happy with Fellaini, Sanchez Smalling, Lukaku, Lingard, Pereira, Dalot?
What about De Gea and being obviously dropped for a GK that is much more well rounded and young.
What he has done with the squad and reshaping it has been amazing work.
Again, I'm not disputing he hasn't done a decent job.
But this idea that he's doing miracles for us is ludicrous.
The issue here has always been that there is nothing close to a general consensus about how well he is doing. If there was then we wouldn't ever need to use words like 'miracles' because we wouldn't also have 3 pages of moaning posters attacking him after a 2-0 away win in a European quarter final. One post called it an 'absolutely catastrophic' performance.
A more sensible and less dramatic forum should by now have reached the point where his biggest fans can claim a very good job but needs a trophy soon, and be able to make that point without abuse, and his biggest critics should be able to claim that we've certainly improved in many metrics but they'd like to see more entertaining football slightly more regularly somewhere down the line. That would be fair on both sides, no?
We won't ever reach that point though, because this isn't a sensible forum and it is over dramatic.
@cyberman put it perfectly. The agenda for or against is still so deep rooted that this 'doing pretty well' (which we undoubtedly are) is not solving anything. We need 5-0 dominance or a complete collapse for people to definitively win this argument. Steady progress solves nothing
Steady progress is all we can hope for unless the owners splash the cash.
Pretty sure those are all still man united players 2.5 years into Ole's tenure. Also De Gea has not been obviously dropped, not according to Ole anyways.
A europa league qf. We got knocked out of the CL in the group stage.
I'm with you halfway on both statements. He definitely needs a trophy but i think most ole outers would say he's done an acceptable job bordering on good.
And yes we have improved in many metrics but that should be the case every year under any manager. Staying still is falling behind as Fergie taught us. And while we want to see more entertaining football , it's also more sustainable, modern football not the freestyle stuff we usually see under ole( which can be entertaining at times)
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That cannot possibly be true?
Miracles?!
It won't always be true but for any company or in this case football team that aims to stay at the top for a long period of time it should be the goal. I think you can make a case City have been improving on some metrics ever since they got taken over.
Yes, but isnt this the same Ole who stated 2 years ago Man Utd go into every match to win and every trophy to win? Funny when it doesnt happen the goalposts figuratively are moved.
I loved Ole as a player no doubt about that he was a legend for that night in Barcelona wrote him into Man Utd.
I dont think he has done enough to get the job for another 3 years. Maybe I would think different if he had have won a trophy by now. His new metric now though is to judge him on the league and forget trophies, a change from when he came in. So lets judge him on the league. We are 2nd, but still way off challenging for the title. He will have us top 4 (and probably 2nd this time) for 2 seasons on the trot which was beyond the other incumbents previously. Luckily for him there is no top 4 place trophy. He will be here next season I have no doubt, but will he be able to get us any further, thats where I cant see any progress to this. If he can get a WC/top striker a WC/top DM and a very good RW in then we might have a chance. The trouble is all the other teams will be looking for better players as well. This season might be the best he does in league position.
I dont think he has done enough to get the job for another 3 years. Maybe I would think different if he had have won a trophy by now. His new metric now though is to judge him on the league and forget trophies, a change from when he came in. So lets judge him on the league. We are 2nd, but still way off challenging for the title. He will have us top 4 (and probably 2nd this time) for 2 seasons on the trot which was beyond the other incumbents previously. Luckily for him there is no top 4 place trophy. He will be here next season I have no doubt, but will he be able to get us any further, thats where I cant see any progress to this. If he can get a WC/top striker a WC/top DM and a very good RW in then we might have a chance. The trouble is all the other teams will be looking for better players as well. This season might be the best he does in league position.
The difference in football under Ole when compared to LVG is night and day. i actually look forward to our games again now. There is more of purpose to our play. The passing across the back four is gone. Maguire and Lindelof play with their heads up, look to play forward and look to instigate attacks, not just retain possession. they aren’t the flashiest or best at it, but they are improving all the time. See Rashford’s goal on thursday. As a team, we’re not peak Barca, we’re not as easy in the eye as City, but at our peak we weren’t ever really the best footballing side on the planet. the success meant that didn’t matter, winning nothing however has changed people’s priorities somewhat and changed opinions.
I still remember the weekends under LvG. i remember feeling forced to spend time with my wife and kids instead of watching the football in my man cave as it felt preferable to another borefest. i once nearly had a nice enough time with my wife that i considered buying her some flowers and asking if we could spend some more time together to try and get that spark back. luckily i soon came to my senses and spent the money on some lingerie for my mistress instead. dark, dark times. Ole has brought back some light. whether he’s the right man to get us all the way back to the top, i’m not convinced, but it at least feels like we are heading somewhere.
I still remember the weekends under LvG. i remember feeling forced to spend time with my wife and kids instead of watching the football in my man cave as it felt preferable to another borefest. i once nearly had a nice enough time with my wife that i considered buying her some flowers and asking if we could spend some more time together to try and get that spark back. luckily i soon came to my senses and spent the money on some lingerie for my mistress instead. dark, dark times. Ole has brought back some light. whether he’s the right man to get us all the way back to the top, i’m not convinced, but it at least feels like we are heading somewhere.
Don't tell me you thought that meant that the goal and the measure of success was winning everything, all of the time? That 's just the attitude every team needs to go in with. Quite appropriate, but those are not "the goalposts".
As far as I'm concerned, the goalposts haven't moved at all. He was hired on a strategy - explicitly backed by the board and reconfirmed at every turn - to build a team good enough to be serious contenders for the PL every season. And to do that not in the quick easy way, but by taking the time to build with youth, developing club culture etc. Progress towards that is what I've judged him on all along, and it's still what I judge him on. I never remotely expected that to result in a title challenge this season, certainly not with the limited progress we made in the summer transfer window. He's ahead of schedule, in my opinion.
That of course doesn't mean that Cups and European success doesn't matter, but if you have a team good enough to contend for the PL title, then you also have a team good enough to compete for Cups and in Europe. That's not necessarily true the other way around.
I definitely enjoy watching us more than I did under LVG, which wouldn't be hard. Under Jose, we actually played some decent stuff for awhile before it all turned to utter shite. I'm not a huge fan of our football, but I'll give some leeway and say there are multiple variables at play as to why our football has looked quite stale recently. One of the criteria I wanted this season was an improvement in our football, and I feel we're more solid now - so I'll put that down as an improvement.
I see the ridiculous hyperbolic praise and criticisms are still at play, which is getting very boring at this point. Some posters need to learn how to stop posting in hyperbolic fashion and getting triggered so easily by praise/criticism for Ole. For me, Ole has met my personal expectations for the season and nothing more. Getting second and winning the EL will go slightly above what I expected. Next season I'll want to see a-lot more progress and less excuses.
I see the ridiculous hyperbolic praise and criticisms are still at play, which is getting very boring at this point. Some posters need to learn how to stop posting in hyperbolic fashion and getting triggered so easily by praise/criticism for Ole. For me, Ole has met my personal expectations for the season and nothing more. Getting second and winning the EL will go slightly above what I expected. Next season I'll want to see a-lot more progress and less excuses.
What if we have a similar window to last summer? Do you think it’s enough to win the league and go further in the CL? I think the owners set the pace a lot more than people give Ole credit for
We'll see.
This is the crucial point.
I know the pandemic fecked stuff up last year but there's a repeated consistent pattern under the Glazers where if we make the top 4 they are content and so we have a shit transfer window. Ole made the top 4 last year and his reward was VDB, who has contributed absolutely nothing, a backup left back and a stopgap injury prone 33 year old on a free. We've gone into this season with basically the same team as last year.
Another crap transfer window where we don't add to the first team and we have no chance of improving.
Theyll never have a better excuse for closing the purse than they have this summer. For me, if they give us a budget of £80m or above then it tells us something and should probably put an end to the claims that top 4 is the extent of our ambitions
They have
Fred, Lindelof, Matic, James and Mata are all worse currently than Smalling or Lukaku in their positions, and of a similar level to Lingard and Fellaini. Fellaini and Lukaku were a different style of player, it doesnt mean they were never effective or as good.
Ole has said De Gea will be back in so we'll see what happens now hes back
At least we know Ole is getting as much value out of the existing players as can be expected but that only takes us up to a certain point. What I find confusing about last summer is we use Cavani and Telles for depth. Both have been essential at times and have been pretty good signings at low prices. The exciting signings haven’t made a mark at all. If we were to do the same thing this summer will VDB and Amad and Pellistri get games next season while our next exciting young signings are nowhere to be seen? I find that a strange way to operate. VDB especially could have been used to give Bruno or Fred a rest or even played out on the right. Amad looks a baller but he’s tiny so no surprise from me on him not being involved much.
If we have the same summer our squad isn’t going to improve enough to challenge for the league and go far in the CL. If we kept making top 4 and having 70-80 million pound summers with an eye to the future we could either be seen as geniuses or just another Arsenal in a few years. It’s risky but not as risky and irresponsible as spending what the likes of Barca were on Coutinho and Greizmann. I think those types of transfers for older players will be replaced by players getting tapped up and running their deals down like Pogba seems to be doing (second times a charm). Players wages will continue to rise but fees start coming down again apart from for the top young players.I think there will always be major competition on that front.
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We havent won it yet. Lets wait and see.
Yes /thread
The bloke who calls everyone Stevie Wonders, 'gets it' does he?
Amazing
I can accept that people say that OGS isn't good enough - but if anyone claims that the football under OGS is worse than under Mourinho and LvG - they know nothing about football.
Yes, which is what I'm saying. So as of now, he's really only meeting the expectations that I went into this season with. Finishing 2nd or 3rd doesn't really make any odds to me tbh. I wanted a comfortable top four finish, and barring some crazy catastrophe, he'll have achieved that. I fancy us to win the EL, but of course anything can happen.
Reminds me of the saying "If everyone around is the problem, maybe you're the problem"The bloke who calls everyone Stevie Wonders, 'gets it' does he?
Amazing
I don't know if they genuinely believe it - for some of them, at least, it's probably just a case of doubling down on everything because they're so dead set against Ole in the first place.
But IF people actually, genuinely believe our football under Ole is generally worse than what was served up under his post-SAF predecessors, then...yeah, what can you say? They can't be watching very closely.
I think there is a perceptive bias with fans these days based on the general narrative set forth in the media. We have been set a low bar so any above that is touted as an achievement by the manager/players/team etc. To take an example of the Granada game in Europa. It was a very average performance, so calling it an average game which we won is totally fine but since the narrative is always the extreme. The spectrum is black and white unfortunately.
Not sure what your point is. Has anyone called it a great performance?
To me it was a standard performance given the circumstances - and a good result. Nothing more, nothing less.
I don't think that's quite fair. They still spent about £80 million didn't they? It was up to Ole and the scouts to spend it right.
Also when discussing a summer transfer window, if a club made a big signing the January before that should be taken into consideration.
If you spend £45 million in January then of course the summer spend will be affected.
I was referring to the fans who don't want to call it that way because that would mean criticizing ole and our style of football.
Yes, I understand that - but who has actually called it anything but a good result (which it was) and a standard/average/normal/whatever performance away in Europe?
I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone hailing the performance. Just the usual reactions from Ole-inners to Ole-outers being overly negative.