Then a 6-game span - Ferguson failed to progress from a CL group that had Benfica, Basel and Otelul.
Van Gaal was around relegation places with Barcelona in 2003 after more than 13 games.
Jurgen Klopp and Dortmund
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Then a 6-game span - Ferguson failed to progress from a CL group that had Benfica, Basel and Otelul.
Van Gaal was around relegation places with Barcelona in 2003 after more than 13 games.
This thread over the last few pages gives a really good summary of modern football fans.
Dumb idiots.
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This thread over the last few pages gives a really good summary of modern football fans.
It really is incredible.
Well, on play style I'd agree that they are still the 2nd best to watch but Wolfsburg really have a quality squad now (apart from strikers where they only have Olic) and apart from their last 3 games which weren't all that they played really well in October and November. They IMO earned the 2nd spot in the table at the moment. It remains to be seen if they can keep it up for a full season, though, especially if De Bruyne picks up an injury. He has been a joy to watch this season IMO and carried them quite often.
Still your points are true. If they wouldn't make so many individual mistakes on the defensive end they would've gotten a lot more wins by now. Even though I think they also defend worse as a team. In their title winning seasons they were often able to prevent goals from individual mistakes because there was always another guy around to cover if a defender fecked up. I think that is less the case now. I admit though, that I only saw about 50% of Dortmunds Bundesliga games this season and watched the highlights of the others on Sportschau or Sportstudio.
And Dortmund's finishing really has be shit. They create enough chances (apart from set pieces which have been particularly bad this season) but every time someone tries to finish it looks like the player turns into Mario Gomez at the Euros 2008.
Especially Hamburg are ridiculous. Stuttgart at least don't spend money on transfers and just have a overpaid squad (similar to Schalke IMO whos wage bill is also too high in comparison to the quality of the players).btw.: If i look on this numbers and see Hamburg and Stuttgart spending so much money... I can just....
Hamburg spend money on transfers and relatively high wages but are still one of the worst sides in the league.
TBH I hope both Stuttgart (so I can watch them against Karlsruhe in the 2nd BuLi) and Hamburg (stop that clock) go down.
Man I would still take him after Van Gaal leaves. Hopefully Klopp can sort this out as it will be harder to keep Reus, Hummels and Gündogan.
Careful.
I think this is a very useful test. If he does turn it round, then that tells us more abou the man than we previously knew, and certainly qualifies him as a potential LVG successor. If, however, things don't get any better, then I think we can safely rule him out.
The strange thing is that whenever I've seen them, they've not played that badly. Certainly not badly enough to be bottom of the table on performances alone.
They have been ridiculously wasteful in front of goal though and haven't looked organised in defence at all, with numerous individual errors leading to conceded goals.
Perhaps complacency has set in for the first time under Klopp and quite a few players need motivating and a kick up the backside to play to their usual level.
They have been ridiculously wasteful in front of goal though and haven't looked organised in defence at all, with numerous individual errors leading to conceded goals.
Perhaps complacency has set in for the first time under Klopp and quite a few players need motivating and a kick up the backside to play to their usual level.
As it stands, he is more qualified that LVG. Even with the current season troubles at Dortmund.
How do you figure that then?
In what way?
How?
I've not seen much of them, but from what I've read this was the story early on, but it's developed into a visible lack of confidence in recent matches?
Let me rephrase.
1. If Klopp was available last spring, and it was a choice between Klopp and LVG, the overwhelming majority would go with Klopp.
2. His troubles this season do not make him a less attractive candidate for the United job, should he become available in the near future.
Let me rephrase.
1. If Klopp was available last spring, and it was a choice between Klopp and LVG, the overwhelming majority would go with Klopp.
2. His troubles this season do not make him a less attractive candidate for the United job, should he become available in the near future.
Doesn't mean he was ever more qualified though tbh
Let me rephrase.
1. If Klopp was available last spring, and it was a choice between Klopp and LVG, the overwhelming majority would go with Klopp.
2. His troubles this season do not make him a less attractive candidate for the United job, should he become available in the near future.
Now this post, I agree with. Although the issue here is the same with any young manager (and player) the briefer your overall body of work, the quicker a bad season eats into your reputation. Of course, we're not even half way through this season so yes, the criticism is very premature.
Hummels is getting tarred by the same brush IMO. He hasn't suddenly become shite in 4 months but you might get that impression from his thread in the transfer forum.
Let me rephrase.
1. If Klopp was available last spring, and it was a choice between Klopp and LVG, the overwhelming majority would go with Klopp.
2. His troubles this season do not make him a less attractive candidate for the United job, should he become available in the near future.
Absolutely no arguments with that post.
Let me rephrase.
1. If Klopp was available last spring, and it was a choice between Klopp and LVG, the overwhelming majority would go with Klopp.
2. His troubles this season do not make him a less attractive candidate for the United job, should he become available in the near future.
Point 1 is correct, but you draw the wrong conclusion in point 2.
His troubles this season only illustrate the degree to which his popularity was, at least to some degree, knee-jerk... a bit flavour of the month. They don't make him a worse candidate, but they do demonstrate that he may not have been quite the stand-out candidate a lot of us thought.
I'm not saying Klopp isn't a great manager, or that he won't prove to be better than LVG in the long run. But take a step back, and LVG unarguably has the better pedegree of the two as of right now. How Klopp deals with his current problems will go some way to deomstrate whether he really is deserving of the adulation we've bestowed upon him.
No it's not - criticism is perfectly valid. What are we meant to do, sit here saying he's doing great and none of this is his fault?
Writing him off would certaily be premature though.
Yes, fair point.
Completely disagree. Van Gaal was sacked from Barcelona because of relegation possibility, ffs.
Moyes? The bit I am finding amusing in this thread is the lack of consistency with some people considering their opinions on Moyes in certain aspects.
Almost getting Barca relegated, fecking up the World Cup qualification with a highly talented nationalteam and getting sacked by Bayern when he was on his way to finish below Leverkusen and Hannover and miss out on CL football are maybe good examples for huge questionmarks about LVG's career, don't you think? Van Gaal had his fair share of shocking seasons.
that's bonkers. Klopp has given Dortmund years of unprecedented success. Moyes gave us nothing prior to his tenure and has no right to be warranted alongside him in terms of levels of criticism.
and you have conveniently ignored the quote I bolded. The moving of the goalposts is funnier the longer the thread goes on.
Not really. Moyes had no experience managing a big club, but Klopp was one of the principal reasons why Dortmund are where they are. It's understandable why Klopp would be given more time than Moyes.
He had them close to the relegation zone, not in it and certainly not bottom, and by this point he'd already won a lot more than Klopp has as of now.
But even so, I agree that at that point he would have been a gamble.
If Klopp goes on top prove himself on the future, as LVG did, then fair enough. And for what it's worth I suspect he will. But right now LVG has by far the better CO.
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It would be interesting to see if Arsenal fans would see it the same way if Arsenal were sitting dead last in the EPL at this point in the season.
That would definitely be a more meaningful comparison.
What did I ignore exactly?
There'd be red wine all over the place.
Moyes did not win any trust while at United. If a new manager came to Dortmund at the beginning of the season and turned them into the mess they are currently in he should not even get until the end of season. Klopp has been there for 6 years though and this time has seen them progress from a mid-table club to an European force. He, like Ferguson at United, deserves to be trusted.
Will be interesting to see how he manages to get the best out of this season now. Must be very hard for him to be Europe's most wanted manager for 2-3 years running and all of a sudden sitting last with BVB.
This btw shows again what a job (especially in regards to motivation, adaptation and pressure) SAF did over 2 decades by not finishing outside the top 3 at all.
Some ppl (especially some opposition fans) like to argue how he didn't have the same pressure as a RM or Chelsea manager because his job was safe. The thing is this never mattered as it was never in doubt United would not finish outside top 4 irrespective of what happened. The opinions/expectations from all sides (Glazers, pundits, media, fans) were always clear: "Whoever finishes above United wins the league, OK let's analyse before the season starts who will be in the top 4 but take United out as they are United and will be there anyway".
SAF never hid behind the excuse of being "safe", nor did he regularly read out his CV like some other managers to remind everyone what he has won (Benitez and especially Mourinho remind everyone of their CV all the time, and tbh so does LvG to some lesser extent). SAF instead put himself under pressure by regularly reminding everyone that the past didn't matter and all that is important now is the future. He also never put down expectations by claiming we'd be in the top 4, but instead always said we were aiming for the title.
Anyway back to Klopp ...
This btw shows again what a job (especially in regards to motivation, adaptation and pressure) SAF did over 2 decades by not finishing outside the top 3 at all.
Some ppl (especially some opposition fans) like to argue how he didn't have the same pressure as a RM or Chelsea manager because his job was safe. The thing is this never mattered as it was never in doubt United would not finish outside top 4 irrespective of what happened. The opinions/expectations from all sides (Glazers, pundits, media, fans) were always clear: "Whoever finishes above United wins the league, OK let's analyse before the season starts who will be in the top 4 but take United out as they are United and will be there anyway".
SAF never hid behind the excuse of being "safe", nor did he regularly read out his CV like some other managers to remind everyone what he has won (Benitez and especially Mourinho remind everyone of their CV all the time, and tbh so does LvG to some lesser extent). SAF instead put himself under pressure by regularly reminding everyone that the past didn't matter and all that is important now is the future. He also never put down expectations by claiming we'd be in the top 4, but instead always said we were aiming for the title.
Anyway back to Klopp ...
Prove himself? He already has, surely? Back to back title wins with Dortmund after years of being shit. Destroying Real Madrid to reach the final and and then losing cruelly to Bayern. What else does he have to prove? That he has the ability to win away to Stoke? LVG got sacked by Bayern (finished 3rd) while Klopp was running away to the title.
Winning more than Klopp had by now? That's also not fair. Klopp's up against an all time great team in Bayern who just hoover up any talent the competition has. LVG was managing Ajax when their production line was insane and, well... Ajax!
People saying Moyes wasn't good enough were generally in the minority and some were being told they were terrible fans for not wanting to back a man who didn't deserve the job in the first place. Klopp has actually proven he's a top manager.
That he has the ability to stay on top.
He made us overarchive for three straight years and followed it with another good season, especially given the circumstances that year. He did all that despite being snatched away multiple key players over the years. His biggest flaw up until this season was losing his last title chances vs. one of the best teams in the history of modern football and at least the cup fixtures were all close affairs.
How many coaches actually had this kind of consistent success in the last 20-30 years? Not many and the vast majority of them worked under better circumstances than Klopp does.
I think they need to change their attitude a bit. Not go into games with the idea of trying to finally start their comeback for the CL places but with the aim to stay good defensively and fight out a narrow 1 goal win. In essence they need to start thinking like a relegation candidate and play in that manner. Just for a couple of game stay compact, stay deep and use the fast strikers to maybe nick a goal or get one from a corner. In essence they need to fight like beavers at this point and not try to get back to their fancy attacking football they just don't have the mental stability to play this way atm.
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