Just what the hell has happened this season?

RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
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I don't think the ownership is what's wrong here looking at the amount of money spent on bringing players to the club, it's more on the CEO himself and the recruitment policy of both managers and players.
The number of below-par players we bought, especially during LVG days, took us ages to weed-out from the club, then the fallout with Jose and not backing him in transfer market (for me, him choosing Bailly and Lindelof was just a shit decision, I mean it's evident as none of them is even close to world-class) and you know Jose is only good when he handpicks his players, otherwise it's 3rd-season syndrome.

Then came Ole and I would say did really well in the beginning, but was like russian roulette, a lot of records we broke, and a lot of disappointing defeats(we won 9-0 then lost 0-1 to bottom club, very difficult to forget that..), as a counter attacking team we were good, but to dominate a match we just had no plan.. but then it all became too much for him, I think bringing back Cristiano fecked him literally.

We never really hired a manager who did really well, all of them underperformed, our greatest achievement was the europa league, a competition I rarely recall us playing in during SAF days.

Not trying to get Pep or Klopp after him was just satanic...
 
I think this club needs to rethink itself on what is needed to get back to the top. It needs to look around at what the other teams do. For example we paid 80 mill for an average cd, when I am sure with good scouting and looking around the world we could have spent a lot less and got better. Same with the expensive RB and RW. The fact we were unchallenged getting them should have set alarm bells off. All 3 are English and at the least from their point of view, every mistake is scrutinised, and the price tag is rightly mentioned. This puts enormous pressure on the player to try and not feck up, rather than play the way they did before.
As for this season it was obvious that Liverpool and Chelsea at least were going to comeback into it. Did buying Ronaldo feck up how Ole wanted to play? Did the form of Bruno and Rashford play a part? Was the over reliance of a not good enough midfield of mainly mcfred? A lot of variables, but when you get turned over by Watford, that one match alone showed that there were serious problems, that even a second manager is struggling to put right. We will chase the Rice's and Phillips again in the summer costing a fortune and the season after we will still have the same problems
 
RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
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I wouldn't say it even took 10 years. It took 27 to build the winning mentality under Fergie and it was gone under Moyes within the first couple of months.
 
I’m still stupefied at the lack of forward planning from the board after Fergie announced his final retirement. Moyes was a wild gamble and we’ve been gambling ever since. It has set us back a good 15 years and longer
 
First we need to fix the running of the club. Although we would all want the Glazers out that is not going to happen whilst they are making a profit. However, the running of the club needs to change. I had hoped with the parasite Woodward moving on, we might see some fundamental changes, however with the board overruling Ralf on 1.) The decision to keep Lingard and 2.) the decision to give him time to clear his head, it is clear the board has too much influence on footballing matters.

If we can fix the stench at the top then maybe we can begin to move forward. On the playing side- much work is needed. We have 4 players out of contract this summer, we have 2/3 that dont want to be here and then we have a raft who are not good enough, it is clear much investment is needed.

1 CB
2 CM
RW
ST
 
RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
Click to expand...

Agree.
I am not that convinced that the owners really are the problem. Just one of many.
It is down to the local management team to fix it. But that is very easy to say, but significantly more difficult to deal with.
Manchester United is a massive entity. So the problems need to be first identified accurately and then broken down into manageable packages.
But without an in depth understanding of the way the management team operates, it is difficult to correctly understand the potential solutions.
 
Winning mentalities can be built in months or years. They can also be lost in that same timeframe.

Having a winning mentality is about having players that will run through walls for the coach and the other players. Its having players who do as they are told and put the team before themselves. Its just getting harder and harder to create that these days because players have so much power.

Imagine how hard it would be to manage any work place when the staff could just not really bother and be rewarded with pay rises. When they could just not really work or do as they are told and their manager would get the sack instead of them.

Its very hard to keep players who are paid top dollar happy unless they are winning trophies but then its a bit of a catch 22. How do you win trophies if your players don't have any mental fortitude when things aren't great. When they won't work to fix issues and instead would rather just wait until the next manager comes in.
 
The chickens have come home to roost. It was fairly obvious that Ole was leading us on a long road to nowhere and the club and the majority of our fans mistakenly put all their trust in him despite him showing evidence time after time he wasn't up to the task.

We've wasted some of the best years of our players and accumulated a lot of expensive deadwood in that time. The results in the past few years were far better than the performances warranted and this season it just simply caught up with us. It was never sustainable despite all the idiots on the forum who would shout you down when you tried to point it out.

Once we finally decided to pull the trigger on Ole at least 6 months too late, we had no able replacement ready to come in despite his position being untenable for several weeks hence the limbo clusterfeck of a situation we currently find ourselves in. I have absolutely zero faith in the board that things will change anytime soon.
 
Poor recruitment, sticking by Ole after the obvious signs he wasn't the one. We overachieved last season with the players we have. A mediocre team having a mediocre season.

I don't feel like things are heading in the right direction either. The club is rotten.
 
Buster15 said:
Reality is what has happened.
Realistically, we are lacking the necessary quality, especially in midfield creativity.
Too many deficiencies. But it is the culmination of years of terrible coaching and general poor discipline and low expectations.

To win at this level, you have to have a winning mentality right through the club.
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True, I think the Glazers have taken the heart out of the club and it’s become more corporate and cold. We need to get our soul back.
 
This is for me the worst season post Fergie and that’s saying something. Signings have not worked, players have regressed, a poor weak culture has leaked back into many players and the previous manager was backed far too long into this season. You pull all these bits together and it creates this mess. On top of that the interim manager looks like a short term sticky plaster ultimately out of his depth to sort this mess out.
 
KiD MoYeS said:
It is a commercial driven club, not an ambitious club. The owners do not care for the club and would probably love to sell for a massive profit, but nobody is stupid enough to put the billions required in - as such a massive investment is needed to get the squad and stadium to scratch. I have accepted the club is no longer the club I fell in love with.
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Yeah sadly we are a commercial money making machine foremost and a football club secondary which is disgusting
 
Years and years of bad management, squad building and player development has caught up with us meaning just throwing money at the problem or changing the manager isn’t enough.
 
This is fixable I believe. We need an up and coming elite manager who is driven and hungry and we need to back him. We need a Fergie in 1986 - a title and cup winning manager regardless of the quality of the league. A proven winner who is looking to step up.
 
I barely pay any attention to the club anymore, but even still there’s been glaring points in the past 3 years when ruthless decisions should have been made.
Solskjaer, Lindelof, Bailly, Fred, Martial have all been given time when the majority have written them off. Probably more.

the United way will not work for the foreseeable future.It worked when we were firmly ahead of the rest.

I also can’t help but see parallels with mid 90s and onwards Liverpool - boot room decisions, home grown talent and signings that on the face of it look good, but just don’t measure up.

we need a manager with a tactical game plan above all else and a board willing to fire him the minute it’s clearly not working. Forget statement signings with 10yrs value and build a squad repeatedly weeding out failures early.

In a sense what Newcastle will be doing is where we should be too. Preparing for large scale turnover, while reaching certain milestones.
 
I blame it on the people who have created player power at our club. Our players are spoilt, think they are untouchable and dont have a regard for difference. Ive never disliked a team as much as I do now. The club, from top to bottom is rotten. I just feel this thread is a repeat emotions of other threads.
 
RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
Click to expand...
If you have owners who are hungry for success, it can change. Compare Glazers with City, Chelsea and Liverpool owners. They are hungry for trophies every year, care less about the share price and more about on field actions. Man United is a giant pantomime, in a few years it will be like the royal family and we will have a tv series about us.
 
I honestly believe this season has been the culmination in various ways of everything that has happened under Woodward.

Ludicrous contracts given out to fringe players and youth prospects, a refusal to cut our losses on under-performers, a string of managers with completely different tactical approach, a transfer strategy that makes no sense, a fixation on star signings, putting being a brand over a football team. This has all created chaos on the pitch, and a terrible attitude amongst the players away from it.
 
U.N.C.L.E said:
What has happened, you ask?

“What price a midfielder?” is my reply.

Been saying it for almost 10 years - no one is in the engine room
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How very true.

We had something of an engine room in Ander Herrera, who would never be confused with Kante or Keane but he was something of an allrounder in midfield who at least was light years superior to Fred and McTominay. The only point I want to make here is that our previous saw and current manager sees no need for a midfielder -- Ralf is perfectly pleased with the job Fred and McTominay are doing. The mind is boggled that our previous and current manager have been conned into believing that we're so set in midfield that we don't even have to bother playing other midfielders in the squad even when Pogba is out with injury or Bruno is having a bad spell. Even as we consistently get overrun in midfield, Fred and McTominay apparently are good enough to rubbish any discussion about strengthening our midfield. We of course do scrape the occasional win over Norwich and their ilk, but we get shredded by Liverpool and City and lose to clubs like Young Boys and Middlesbrough.

We as supporters can all see with our own eyes that Fred and McTominay would get nowhere near the squads at Anfield or the Etihad, let alone ever start for them, but these two are regular starters for United. And, like clockwork, we continue to toil somewhere between 4th and 8th place in the EPL and predictably get dumped out of cup competitions. But the good news is that we continue to line up new sponsors even as our prospects for competing well on the pitch continue to fade further and further away.
 
MajesticUnited said:
This is fixable I believe. We need an up and coming elite manager who is driven and hungry and we need to back him. We need a Fergie in 1986 - a title and cup winning manager regardless of the quality of the league. A proven winner who is looking to step up.
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But the board has to back that manager. Without a proper organizational structure, even the most talented manager in the world won't be able to take us back to the top.
 
None of this has shocked me really, our signings have been shocking for years to go with shocking managers and then you add in a pretty average group of players, to begin with. This is the result of years and years of god awful decision making from the board and recruitment.
 
I can't remember a time ever where I felt like just throwing the whole lot of the team in the bin and starting again. It just feels like we've never been this rotten and dysfunctional ever. Even when Jose was about, it was easy to just point at him as the evil trouble maker. But now? Looks like all throughout the squad there's issues. It's exhausting.
 
Judas said:
I can't remember a time ever where I felt like just throwing the whole lot of the team in the bin and starting again. It just feels like we've never been this rotten and dysfunctional ever. Even when Jose was about, it was easy to just point at him as the evil trouble maker. But now? Looks like all throughout the squad there's issues. It's exhausting.
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Exactly how i feel, even under Jose and LVG to me there was still a good bunch of likable players and even under Ole at first. But now i genuinely think we seem the most unlikable squad in the league, i can't stand any of them at the moment. With the exception of someone like Elanga
 
charlenefan said:
B Before the start of the season everyone thought we'd be challenging for the title this season

So WTF has happened?
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Everyone didn't think this. People who turned out to be wrong thought this.

And what happened is they turned out to be wrong. Because McFred and because Ronaldo and because ' p.e. teacher ' coaching and because no high press. All predictable and predicted because underlying all this was the Glazers and not putting football first.
 
hobbers said:
AWB is an abysmal player for any side that wants to keep the ball or press aggressively. Klopp and Pep wouldnt go near him with a barge poll.

Maguire would also be on Pep's scrapheap even faster than Ake had they signed him.

We spent £130m on two awful defenders for a side that wants to be good with the ball and control games.
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Yes but we're talking about the drop-off this season. We finished 2nd last season and AWB played virtually every game. Above Klopp's Liverpool, I might add. Nobody is disputing AWB isn't a flying, 'modern' full-back, but way too much is made of it, in the context of our struggles this season.

Maguire is just objectively not an awful defender. I am sure Maguire would get into 99% of teams in world football, so again, we're clutching at straws thinking our problems boil down to individuals.
 
Lentwood said:
Yes but we're talking about the drop-off this season. We finished 2nd last season and AWB played virtually every game. Above Klopp's Liverpool, I might add. Nobody is disputing AWB isn't a flying, 'modern' full-back, but way too much is made of it, in the context of our struggles this season.

Maguire is just objectively not an awful defender. I am sure Maguire would get into 99% of teams in world football, so again, we're clutching at straws thinking our problems boil down to individuals.
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Would he actually though? If i was a Leicester fan i wouldn't have him back over Evans or Fofana as an example, same goes for Liverpool, City and Chelsea. That's before we're even touching teams outside of the prem. He looks like he's bricking it everytime he gets the ball or a player is running at him.
 
Lentwood said:
It's too neat and convenient to suggest that empty stadiums somehow massively helped us when it's the same for every single team in the league
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Liverpool didnt lose at home in 18/19, 19/20 and so far in 21/22. They lost 6 times at home last season in front of an empty Anfield. That is not a coincidence and it is obviously a factor in why we finished ahead of them, some team's support makes a bigger difference than others.
 
Our squad is so bad. I looked at it with rose tinted glass at the start of the season but going into a season with 2 mid-30’s strikers a couple of just decent midfielders and a coaching staff in training isn’t good enough.

Our best defender and midfielder are both injury prone. Rashford/Shaw/Maguire/AWB are depressed and our bright star nailed into this side for the next 15 years has committed career suicide before it even started.

Couldn’t really be worse than that. We need to start been run like a proper club. When Woodward said it was like Disneyland I agree. It’s a circus with immature people not taking responsibility at every level.

Sides like Bayern and City just obliterate us these days for professionalism. Our owners will never care enough to compete fully and it’s just depressing. We won’t win much for years and years and that’s a fact.

I can see us wining about 5 league titles in the next 40 years max so the glory days are without a doubt gone. It’s so clear those are done.
 
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Yet another wasted season.It’s just so dissapointing….I just feel so disillusioned right now….
 
I have given up on this season already no point in expecting anything. I've also already written off next season too nothing will change as long as we have these owners.
 
charlenefan said:
Before the start of the season everyone thought we'd be challenging for the title this season, maybe not winning it but certainly challenging and he were are in February having seen

Out of the league cup in the 3rd round at home to West Ham

Beaten 0-5 at home to Liverpool

Out of the FA Cup in the 4th round at home to Championship Middlesbrough

19 points off the top of the PL table

Bar at opening day win against Leeds it's probably not a stretch to say the best week to be a United support this season was the 3 games where we had an interim interim manager in Carrick

So WTF has happened?
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I don't think anyone at the club has a clue about what happened and the reasons behind that, we can speculate and emit theories about that, but the first person who should of known the reasons was Ole and he didn't know what to do or fix the issues during the start of the season. In fact things went from bad to worse.

I think Man Utd nowadays is just like a zebra, is it white with black stripes, or is it black with white stripes. Were we bad all along and we were lucky to finish 3rd and 2nd, reaching EL final, having a wonderful unbeaten away run and winning derbies or are we actually better and now just having a bad run of form ?

The reality that a lot of players were a let down this season: AWB, Maguire, Shaw, Rashford, Bruno, Martial, Greenwood were all worse or much worse than last year. Did they forget to play proper football after a summer ?
Many times in the last couple of seasons under Ole, the talent of our players and individual performances bailed us out on many occasions, that did not happen this year, add to that a lot of personal mistakes and the disaster was coming.

We can't change 6-7 players once in 2 years, we can see at other clubs that there are players that can perform every year for a long time, even for a decade or more.

Honestly I don't think that our board has any clue about what manager we should bring or what direction should the club take.
 
Ixion said:
Liverpool didnt lose at home in 18/19, 19/20 and so far in 21/22. They lost 6 times at home last season in front of an empty Anfield. That is not a coincidence and it is obviously a factor in why we finished ahead of them, some team's support makes a bigger difference than others.
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Well, I would argue that it's more related to losing their best CB, no? Thing about Liverpool is they don't have City wealth (or even United/Chelsea), so they don't have the kind of squad depth these other teams have.
 
RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
Click to expand...

An owner that demands results or there is consequences can change it. I don't think they need to be as ruthless as Roman, but there has to be consequences for both managers and players.
 
RedCoffee said:
This is what we have lost over the last 10 years. How we get this back is anyone's guess.

A change of ownership will not fix this.
Click to expand...

I think it would. If we acquired owners whose primary focus was winning trophies and playing attractive football, the profits would take care of themselves.
 
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