Is this the worst run of awful football since Fergie retired?

I think the parallels with LVGs second season are very accurate

We had glimpses of brilliance.... remember the period beating Spurs 3 nil then going to Juanfield. Genuinely one of the best post-Fergie performances. Everything clicked there performance wise and Liverpool chased shadows that day.

how many games though did we end up with 1 or 2 shots on target? We were very boring to watch in spite of having some real quality in attack. The cup game at home to Sheffield United will be forever etched in my memory in terms of 2 hours lost

certainly some parallels with the way we've played at City/Anfield/Emirates and struggled to be productive in front of goal
 
You need to make room for some deliberate and serious mental gymnastic to say 'NO' here, no matter how you slice it. This dude makes LVG looks positively attacking.
 
I think something fundamentally changed in Ole’s last season. That was the first year when it just felt normal for the team to lack application, effort and mental fortitude on a consistent basis. In ETH’s first year, we got a bit of a new manager bounce but more importantly, we had a few players like Casemiro, Martinez, Rashford and Bruno who helped paper over the cracks but since the last third of that season we’ve reverted to the prior season’s levels and now even worse.

Essentially what we’ve seen in this period of around 3 or so years is a club whose mistakes have fully caught up with it - from recruitment / contacts to managerial hiring / planning and vision. We’re now truly paying for all those blunders and hence we look a tactically, technically, physically and mentally broken team.

We need at least 3 strong summers to arrest this malaise as I don’t see minor steps taking us anywhere.
 
I'm old, i remember United under Atkinson. They were poor then, but they tried and no matter what they had Robbo. That alone gave a club a head start. What a player he was, people talk about Keane yet he was Keane with skill.

This current side is easily the worst I've seen in my lifetime and it's not even close. I can think back to about 85-87 when Everton were a top team.
 
I honestly don't think it's worse than ETH's worst runs. I'm not going to pretend we're good at the moment, but at least we haven't been completely spanked by 4+ goals or given up multiple goal leads regularly like we did at times before.
 
Ibi Dreams said:
I honestly don't think it's worse than ETH's worst runs. I'm not going to pretend we're good at the moment, but at least we haven't been completely spanked by 4+ goals or given up multiple goal leads regularly like we did at times before.
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Yes agreed, mostly also because we almost never had 'multiple goal leads regularly'.
 
Idxomer said:
I don't think it has ever been worse, not even in the last days of Mourinho, Ole or Rangnick.

It doesn't seem like this team can perform even at 50% of their abilities.
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At least in those cases, we were talking weeks and months. Now we're closing in on two whole seasons of awfulness, and it's been getting steadily worse.

Don't really see the point in separating out Amorim's period. We were pretty much just as bad this season before he arrived.
 
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justsomebloke said:
At least in those cases, we were talking weeks and months. Now we're closing in on two whole seasons of awfulness, and it's been getting steadily worse.

Don't really see the point in separating out Amorim's period. We were pretty much just as bad this season before he arrived.
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Basically since we won the league cup vs Newcastle. Been awful since!
 
Andy_Cole said:
Basically since we won the league cup vs Newcastle. Been awful since!
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Yep. And, it's a new threshold this season. Before that, "awful" always meant hovering somewhere not much above 10th. Now it means hovering somewhere not much above 15th.
 
Patience is sadly lacking in the modern world. This win now or else mentality will result in far more failures than long term options of strength. I understand that fans need to see a product that they can associate with and admire, even if results take time to develop in a positive manner but give the guy a chance - it is not his squad, the system is completely different and he has been there a little over five minutes. If you are not aware, Manchester United is NOT a quick fix.

Perhaps by the middle of next season, once another transfer window has passed and importantly, the players get a full summer of learning the Ruben Amorim system, then, the judges can finally be allowed to sharpen their pencils. Until then, it is ridiculously unfair to do so.
 
Yes, when you consider that this is happening at the start of a new manager's reign. I've not tuned out of our matches so quickly under a new manager.

When Amorim played Dorgu on the right and started Dalot on the left is when I realised that I'm not seeing the vision.

Still early days, mind, but I think for the more cynical, Amorim just put himself on fraud alert with that move.
 
Ibi Dreams said:
I honestly don't think it's worse than ETH's worst runs. I'm not going to pretend we're good at the moment, but at least we haven't been completely spanked by 4+ goals or given up multiple goal leads regularly like we did at times before.
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Not worse, but not pretty also. The only thing that feels better is that it often looks like the team is trying to play football in an organized, coherent manner. Players simply cant or wont. Tempo is bad, technique is lacking. Didnt have this feeling with eth, seemed more random.
 
Ibi Dreams said:
I honestly don't think it's worse than ETH's worst runs. I'm not going to pretend we're good at the moment, but at least we haven't been completely spanked by 4+ goals or given up multiple goal leads regularly like we did at times before.
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Is it really fair to compare the overall standard of Amorim's tenure to the worst of ETH's time here?

There's too much recency bias where our ex-managers are concerned. Aside from the disaster at Anfield in his first season we were fairly solid.

We only lost one game at Old Trafford in 22/23 and based on home form were second only behind City. This season we've lost seven games at home, five of which game under Amorim. We've won only two - Everton & Southampton, and have been beaten 3-0 by the likes of Bournemouth.

I want him to succeed but the lengths some go to (I'm not saying this applies to you by the way) to excuse him of everything that goes wrong and blame everything on the last manager is absurd.
 
Ibi Dreams said:
I honestly don't think it's worse than ETH's worst runs. I'm not going to pretend we're good at the moment, but at least we haven't been completely spanked by 4+ goals or given up multiple goal leads regularly like we did at times before.
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The thread was made during Ten Hag's bad run in his 2nd season. I think there were only two legitimately good performances in the first half of that season, against Chelsea and Aston Villa.
 
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