I agree that our problems are certainly not limited to Louis van Gaal. Only that they are made more severe with him in charge. If Jose comes in, I would like Jose (or whoever we bring in) to choose his own coaching staff, with no one pushed on him. But yes, there are fundamental problems there which are evident in the decision making process since SAF retired.
LVG Out Thread | BBC: Sacked!
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I agree that our problems are certainly not limited to Louis van Gaal. Only that they are made more severe with him in charge. If Jose comes in, I would like Jose (or whoever we bring in) to choose his own coaching staff, with no one pushed on him. But yes, there are fundamental problems there which are evident in the decision making process since SAF retired.
Sir Felex Arguson?
of course
If you run a business and things are not as successful as they should be, you don't just replace the CEO and hope things get better. We need to set out the goals and from their you plan how to achieve them. Reorganising the academy or bringing in a director of football could be ways to facilitate your plans in order to achieve your goals. But I'm not an expert on how to run a successful football club so I can't really comment on your last question if I'm being honest. Neither am I in a position to know the club are currently in process of doing behind the scenes.
I suspect that United 10-15 years ago had the right fundamentals in place for those times. But things change, we now need to look how to adapt to the changing times as they are now as and in the future.
So youre saying you dont know what our problems are, but you just know it isnt all about Van Gaal? Fair enough. FWIW I agree.
if the CEO is the problem (LVG) then yes you get the hook. fundamentally he's not moved us on inch in the right direction. so as a company he'd have been fired (yes with a nice soft landing) by any F 500 company going. see Apple , i hear they are successful and they did Jobs when he lost his way.
A lot of businesses actually do just that. Barclays have done it twice recently. Of course the CEO does not run the Barclays on your high street, or know exactly what the traders in every Barclays office is doing, but its ultimately up to him to set the company's direction and take action when things go wrong. That's why CEO's get hired and fired.
There is a sense of drift at Manchester United. Nobody at executive level is grabbing the reins and making sure everything is working. It took us a year to decide Nicky Butt should run our academy. He was on the staff the whole time! It does not scream of a well oiled operation.
It might not all be Van Gaal's fault but he's certainly part of the problem, the fact nobody at executive level has taken action on that is very worrying.
More or less, yes.
So we agree then, sort of.
This was his third and final chance, for me. He blew it.
Rashford saved him for a few games.
Rashford saved him for a few games.
So we agree then, sort of.
Fundamentals is a vague term. Yes, nobody knows really how the club is actually run. We aren't behind the scenes. Though, like Brondby, maybe some on the board or LVG are members of the Caf...
But I thought the same as @Adebesi - DoF, revamp of the academy, etc. I certainly think the club has to look at its own faults in the last 3 years and seek to establish a more competent decision making process and planning.
This stain is still at the club. 
Yeah, sort of.
Sir Alex has proven, even with the executive team we have, a top manager could do better with the squad we have. Louis Van Gaal will never turn this around, that was obvious by Boxing Day 2015. He shouldn't be our manager.
Beyond the change of manager more needs to be done though. However, you can't reverse it and get the same results. A top class executive team with a terrible man manager would not bring us success. That's why everyone is so keen to get a top manager in and Van Gaal out.
Fellaini was pretty decent in the second half. Definitely our best outfield player. However not the best player on the pitch by any stretch of the imagination.
not sure - LVG out yes. shit CEO IMO.
I think it's fair to say that, to use a metaphor, most CEO's would get more than 2 years to turn things round.
'Foundations', 'fundamentals', these are utterly meaningless terms in the context of a football club, we aren't talking about an ailing economy that has declined over the course of a number of decades for many reasons, it's a football club that has gone from an elite perennial challenger to a mediocre hope for top 4 side in the space of two years.
Improving the youth setup is not going to guarantee the clubs future success, it never has and never will, otherwise Southampton and West Ham would be regular title winners. Almost every great side in the last 20 years has seen a huge amount of investment in bringing in elite talent, Bayern, Barca, Madrid, Juve, Milan, United, Chelsea and Arsenal being the prime examples, our starting lineup in the 08 CL final had exactly two youth products, one of which was a generational midfield talent.
This bluster about how 'LVG is building for the future' has only ever been a pathetic excuse to try and justify his horrendous management and the results and performances that have been produced. He wasn't building for the future when he went out and broke the British transfer record for Di Maria, or brought in Schneiderlin, Blind, Herrera, Schweinsteiger or Darmian. These aren't 'players for the future', they are all in and around or reaching their prime and were bought to improve the first 11 now. He has continually picked the likes of Young, Valencia, Carrick, Rooney, Fellaini over younger options, and the only reason he has ever really played any youth players was due to having nobody else available thanks to his rubbish squad management.
When Van Gaal was hired the popular line about him was that 'he's won titles at every club' not 'he plays young players'. He was brought in to stabilize a club in freefall, get us back into the CL, bring in quality first 11 players and get us back to where we should be by his third season, not a word about 'fundamentals' or any other such bullshit.
Improving the youth setup is not going to guarantee the clubs future success, it never has and never will, otherwise Southampton and West Ham would be regular title winners. Almost every great side in the last 20 years has seen a huge amount of investment in bringing in elite talent, Bayern, Barca, Madrid, Juve, Milan, United, Chelsea and Arsenal being the prime examples, our starting lineup in the 08 CL final had exactly two youth products, one of which was a generational midfield talent.
This bluster about how 'LVG is building for the future' has only ever been a pathetic excuse to try and justify his horrendous management and the results and performances that have been produced. He wasn't building for the future when he went out and broke the British transfer record for Di Maria, or brought in Schneiderlin, Blind, Herrera, Schweinsteiger or Darmian. These aren't 'players for the future', they are all in and around or reaching their prime and were bought to improve the first 11 now. He has continually picked the likes of Young, Valencia, Carrick, Rooney, Fellaini over younger options, and the only reason he has ever really played any youth players was due to having nobody else available thanks to his rubbish squad management.
When Van Gaal was hired the popular line about him was that 'he's won titles at every club' not 'he plays young players'. He was brought in to stabilize a club in freefall, get us back into the CL, bring in quality first 11 players and get us back to where we should be by his third season, not a word about 'fundamentals' or any other such bullshit.
The DoF debate has been a really interesting one and I dont have a clear position on it at all.
My starting off position here is that we are a mess, a shambles at the moment, I agree with Rams on that. It does run deeper than the manager. But in terms of solutions, I dont have any clear answers. (Again, apparently like Rams.)
I can see the upside with a DoF: in a nutshell, in the past we have a manager who was basically omnipotent. And in Gill, SAF had an enforcer, almost an administrator, executing his wishes. Im sure I am doing him a disservice and he did stuff himself, but I think he would accept that he played second fiddle to SAF. Now he has left and it has created a vacuum. Ive lost count of how many times I have said that in the last 3 years. It used to be about the players but these are mostly different players. So the problem now is about decision making: the power rests with a small clique of basically non-footballing people around Woodward. They have evidently outsourced all the footballing stuff to the manager. Which is fine when it works. But it isnt working. A DoF would possibly solve that problem, but could create others. We are having enough problems finding suitable candidates to be our manager, why would it be any easier to get the right DoF in? We have this Italian guy we are looking at apparently, I dont know anything about him. How much does he know about the PL? We will have to trust that works out. If it doesnt, we just have less clarity in terms of where to put the blame if things go wrong.
The academy thing is also interesting. In the space of a few weeks we have a whole load of threads in here with conversations about how rubbish our academy is. Then we have an injury crisis and the kids come in and play better than the players Van Gaal has brought in. And then a load more threads (at least one created by me) asking if the kids are our salvation. So as a group, us United fans are clearly a little confused about exactly what is going on with the youth.
I dont think there are any easy answers here. I think that is why clubs have cyclical downturns. A club is so far ahead it seems insurmountable, but when Dear Leader departs everything goes to shit and no amount of careful planning (and I think we tried, we really tried to plan so this didnt happen) seems to be able to avert it because the problems manifest themselves in unexpected ways. Or maybe they would have been hypothetically avoidable, but we just cocked it up, despite our best intentions. I have no idea.
But as you said, we need to establish a more competent decision making process. I have waffled on here for all this time and havent managed to improve on that single sentence of yours! Whether that is getting a DoF I dont know, ultimately it depends whether we get the right one. But something has to happen. So if the next manager comes in and decides to sell half the squad, we have someone experienced in football to sanity check the decision and check that things are being done at an appropriate pace and with a clear vision of where we are going.
You obviously haven't read or heard what Fergie thinks about the foundations of a successful football club. But anyway, lets agree to disagree. And I think we both agree that it would be best to replace LvG.
Part of the problem is...if LVG is telling Ed that he's revamping our youth, laying foundations set-up etc etc, a non-football man like Ed is going to impressed, given that he doesn't have the deeper knowledge to judge whether LVG is a shyster or a genius.
And he has SAF's book on his bedside table and it opens automatically at the page where it says: "You have to give managers time to implement their vision."
How do you this? Are you that fly on the wall who's spying on LvG's and Ed's every meeting?
Those two are far more expert in their fields than I'll ever be; which makes it strange that they're failing so badly.Correct. At an institutional level, things are wrong. It's why Giggs can't be thrown in as next manager.
Last night was yet another night he got his tactics completely wrong.
At a macro level, this entire episode tells us that not only is LvG not good enough, but the people that are running our club, as in Woodward and the board, are not good enough either. So, nothing is likely to change, even with a new manager as long as we have the ageing old guard still adhering to their rigidly inflexible and antiquated views of what the club should be. Until that's resolved, we will always be in a one step forward two steps back situation, even with Mourinho or any other top manager. The problem with the club at this moment are the board, and the Glazers really need to wake up to this.
I like a lot are scared that our club is stuck in this idealised vision of what Manchester United is. How it should be managed. We have to move into the modern times. As you say the club have to wake up or we will get left behind.
I bet there's also crusty bits on the pages where it says "money" or "tractors".
So your telling me Ferguson wanted Bebe? LVG wanted Falcao did he? Wasn't Luke Shaw already signed before LVG took over? Managers have transfers dictated to them fairly often with the only real objection being Wenger.
Mate I watch United whenever they are on the TV and already stated that there are problems with the playing style. This is an informed assesment, I'm not a fan but tell me what I said in my post was wrong? If you can prove to me that LVG is making all the signings then fair enough but I don't believe it to be the case at all and whilst it's not the only thing wrong but player recruitment and squad analysis has been one of United's major failures in the past three years.
We must let LVG finish the season.
Because if we sack him before then, if we don't make top 4 or win a cup, he will get to claim he could've done all of that.
We must finish with him so everyone can justifiably show him that he didn't accomplish any of it.
Because if we sack him before then, if we don't make top 4 or win a cup, he will get to claim he could've done all of that.
We must finish with him so everyone can justifiably show him that he didn't accomplish any of it.
Why do we care what he says after he leaves? I doubt he'll be hanging around TV studios like Moyes anyway.
Just listened to 10 mins of Hawksbee & Jacobs on Talksport. I happened to catch an interview with the Dutch journalist, Marcel Van der Kraan, who had been at the post-match last night. he made excuses for the performance and claimed that Memphis & Blind were below par ( as were others ) simply because they were overawed by their Anfield experience. He seems to be a real apologist for VG, but did make some rather worrying ( from my perspective ) remarks on Louis' immediate future.
He, the journo, felt that Van Gaal and his Dutch contingent, are not in any way concerned about going in the summer, and felt that they were pretty bullish about seeing out the remainder of their respective contracts. He suggested that they'd all had reassurances from Woodward & the Glazers about their futures with the club, and had appeared completely unconcerned about the speculation regarding Mourinho. In fact, he claimed that the Van Gaal camp had specific information that Jose was not going to take over at the end of the season, and that the club was still looking to move forward with the Dutchman's blueprint.
I'm not saying there's anything in this, but listening to it certainly succeeded in giving me chest pains while I was trying to digest my lunch; and I was just wondering whether anyone knows anything about Mr. Van Der Kraan? Is he reliable? Is he tabloid? Does he enjoy any sort of professional or personal confidence where the Van Gaal contingent is concerned.
He, the journo, felt that Van Gaal and his Dutch contingent, are not in any way concerned about going in the summer, and felt that they were pretty bullish about seeing out the remainder of their respective contracts. He suggested that they'd all had reassurances from Woodward & the Glazers about their futures with the club, and had appeared completely unconcerned about the speculation regarding Mourinho. In fact, he claimed that the Van Gaal camp had specific information that Jose was not going to take over at the end of the season, and that the club was still looking to move forward with the Dutchman's blueprint.
I'm not saying there's anything in this, but listening to it certainly succeeded in giving me chest pains while I was trying to digest my lunch; and I was just wondering whether anyone knows anything about Mr. Van Der Kraan? Is he reliable? Is he tabloid? Does he enjoy any sort of professional or personal confidence where the Van Gaal contingent is concerned.
The only valid reason I can see for not sacking LVG now is that his chosen successor is not willing or able to start until the season is finished. Worrying about LVG being able to say this or that is irrelevant. If it was a question of compensation we should have paid it already - though the case for doing that decreases as time goes on as the window of opportunity for the new guy to turn things around is rapidly closing - and if we cant qualify for the CL anyway there is little of the season left to save. But if we appointed Mourinho, and he said, Ill start in the summer and not before, then for me we might as well stick with Van Gaal. Especially if Giggs doesnt want to be an interim. Even if he did I have my doubts about whether he would do any better than Van Gaal is doing tbh, though it might be interesting to see.
Yes? Who else do you think has the power?
Van Gaal had already gotten the job when Shaw & Herrera were signed. He obviously gave his approval for those signings to go ahead, after they were scouted by the previous regime.
Im not so sure about Van Gaal wanting Falcao, I reckon he acquiesced, rather than being an enthusiastic advocate, but it was probably Woodward who wanted to bring in such a high profile player.
SAF I am sure wanted Bebe, or was talked into it - nobody else had the authority to allow that to happen.
SAF I am sure wanted Bebe, or was talked into it - nobody else had the authority to allow that to happen.
So your proof is that Sir Alex was forced into signing Bebe?
Please enlighten us where this ray of knowledge is coming from? Any reliable sources for this? Who exactly in the United hierachy was responsible for this horrible deed?
I love horrible conspiracy theories, they are entertaining at least.
He doesnt have to finish the season to achieve that, Moyes didnt either. But I just think the season is a lost cause anyway that we as well let him finish it.
He's on course for our worst ever premier league season in terms of points, goals and probably even position. I doubt any rational person could argue against tha dt being a horrible return by him.
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