Why not?
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Easy ammunition for some of the rabid fanbase.
It’s a term used to describe getting information directly from someone rather than via a third party.
I know. I was hoping for a little bit more information on the identity of that person. Or maybe Ole said it himself and I missed it.
So Oles confirmed that our summer warchest was pitiful. Maguire + AWB in simplistic terms was £130m. We got 75m for Lukaku which we would have planned for since we knew he was leaving. So our budget again wasn’t far off the 70m mark.
All the bs about dybala and bruno in the summer then was exactly that, bs
It’s going to be a disappointing couple of Windows I think
All the bs about dybala and bruno in the summer then was exactly that, bs
It’s going to be a disappointing couple of Windows I think
I would say yes, I still wasn't overly confident in the squad we had. We had lots of duds who needed to be sold. Maybe one can argue that he chose to ship the wrong players but then one can also argue from his side that Herrera was always going to leave as he wanted more, Smalling wanted to leave as Ole could not guarantee him first team football, Sanchez is Sanchez and Lukaku I already stated my point.
In the last 4 transfer windows including this we have added 6 players which include a third choice keeper, a winger from a championship and a raw right back in Dalot and in that process have let go 8 players. SO in total 6 ins and 8 outs. SO don't you think we need to buy more quality irrespective of the manager.
Let us review our squad
Keeper: I would say we are fine in that department but I won't mind promoting Henderson and selling De gea
Full backs: Shaw has been here for almost 6 years and has shown very little growth. Rest are very young and need to be developed properly.
Centre back: maguire seems the only guy so far who should be a regular. Rest the jury is still not out. Lindelof has been ok but is he someone who can help us challenge for the title, Not sure. Maybe he like Fred can improve even more. Bailly and Rojo are too injury prone and Tuanzebe seems to be joining that list. Less said about Jones the better.
Midfield: Pogba, McTominay and Fred are our first three choice midfielder. Matic has been decent when called upon but he would have been sold had McTominay and Pogba stayed fit. Less said about Periera the better.
Attack: Take out rashford and Martial we have zero attack. Expecting a 18 year old to solve everything is not correct. Lingard, Mata are best as squad players. James is still raw.
Now tell me don't you think we would need at least 4 players and that is presuming Pogba stays, if not make that 5 or even 6. This is why not buying anyone this January is baffling.
He speaks a little about it here. If you are interested
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...olskjaer-can-fulfil-ambitions-manchester/amp/
Why are you assuming that anyone who wants to leave we should simply allow him to go ? As I said above ask Pogba. He came in force with his agents both talking in summer about wanting a new challenge and so, and he's still here, with the club firmly refusing to let him, so the idea we let these players go because they just asked too is wrong. We also let them go because Ole wasn't that concerned about losing them, and the club didn't care much either, unlike Pogba, who the club is refusing to sell at all costs.
The squad now currently is very poor, no one will argue on that but for me it was far better when Ole got the job and it proved during his initial months that we had a good set of players back then and needed few key additions in defense and midfield to become much better. The fact that one full summer and 150m spent and the squad now is in far worse shape than his initial 3 months is just poor in general. If the midfield and attack are that fecked up he could have always spent the 150m on a midfielder and an attacker instead of Maguire and kept Smalling for one more season. We could have canceled Lukaku's deal in the last day and kept him for say 6 more months till Jan to try and sign another striker, then sell him. Plenty of options, but as mentioned in Ole's above quote, he analyzed the squad and thought splashing 80m on Maguire to replace Smalling was totally worth it even if it meant the majority of the budget is now gone and we might not get a midfielder or attacker to replace the goners. He holds as much blame for the current squad problems as much as Woodward. That's not to mention how he dealt with Pogba's, Scott's and Rashford's injuries that aggravated them and led to us spending long time with each one of them, because he rushed them all earlier.
Woodward is a crap negotiator but he doesn't choose the plan for the summer, the chosen targets or the priorities. The manager does.
Currently yeah we need a major overhaul but after last summer and its outcomes I have zero faith in Ole (and neither in Woodward too) to do such a job.
He speaks a little about it here. If you are interested
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...olskjaer-can-fulfil-ambitions-manchester/amp/
Nothing here that says he denied Pogba wanting to leave. His response just proves what I'm saying in fact. Pogba wanted to leave but both Ole and club regard him as too valuable to let go even if it's his wish, we kept our stance firm and have been trying to persuade him to stay, on the contrary we let the likes of Lukaku and Smalling go easily because we're not that much concerned about losing them, even if it meant Lukaku leaving in the last 2 days of the market after we had already failed to secure a replacement for him, we still didn't care and agreed on the deal. The idea of us letting players go just because they asked doesn't make sense for me.
But how do you know Ole did not want strikers and midfielders to replace Lukaku and Herrera respectively. How do you know he didn't ask Lukaku to stay but he already made up his mind to play for Inter. Did you forget him posing with a Inter shirt on even before the deal was agreed. Lukaku and POgba are two different individuals. Lukaku has come out and said he was looking for a move since March, so don't you think the club should have handled it better.
Yes Ole could have and should have handled everything better, considering he was here since December, but maybe just maybe Woodward being Woodward screwed things up. Weren't we after Dybala like just at the final minutes of the WIndow. The point is whether it be Van gaal or Jose or now Ole , Woodward has proven to be a pathetic negotiator. I can blame OLe for many things but to blame him for not buying a striker or midfielder when he said in July after we bought AWB and James that he was looking to secure 3 to 4 players shows it was the board who did the poor job.
One of the reasons we have accumulated so much deadwood is that successive managers knew that with our crap recruitment system, it s better having deadwood than nothing.
Ole is experiencing it now. To his credit he still managed to shift some deadwood and replacing them with youngsters, something Mourinho was not very keen on.
Still, if we don't improve our recruitment system, we have no chance..unless it s run.that way on purpose so we don't spend a lot..
Ole is experiencing it now. To his credit he still managed to shift some deadwood and replacing them with youngsters, something Mourinho was not very keen on.
Still, if we don't improve our recruitment system, we have no chance..unless it s run.that way on purpose so we don't spend a lot..
Due to the quote above, in which he mentioned he spent the majority of the budget on the defense because he thought we needed to defend more, so he knew the budget available for him and our prime target in the marker was to reinforce the defense with most of our budget while midfield and attack came as secondary objectives. We haven't targeted any other midfielder after Longstaff and the only striker we were interested in was Mandzukic, the 34 years old. Nothing really that shows the midfield or attack were priority for us this summer. Woodward is a crap negotiator bur he doesn't choose the targets to negotiate with.
As long as a player is under contract we're in full control of his future and we can agree or refuse to let him go as much as we want. We were just not concerned about him leaving, and the opened the door for him to go, while the door was firmly shut in front of Pogba's face from the start.
No one has defended Woodward, the guy is a terrible CEO and a crap negotiator, and he's the main denominator in all our failure post SAF. I don't think anyone is convinced otherwise, regardless of their stance on the current manager. The main point of difference in opinions is that some think Ole also holds a responsibility for our current situation, alongside Ed.
I don't think the interest in Dybala was bullshit. That signing absolutely reeks of Woodward trying to make a marquee signing (leaving out it was only really happening via a swap deal for Lukaku).
Bruno in the summer was definitely all BS. Only Spurs were genuinely interested.
I think our transfer budget has basically been capped at £100m net per season. That's what it looks like to me. Which is a pittance obviously and exactly why the Glazers and Woodward have installed a patsy as manager to put a happy face and spin to it.
Regardless of any ones views on Ole as manager I think this transfer window (if it remains like this) just basically confirms what we all already know- who’s in charge is irrelevant we’ve no chance with this recruitment process past, present or future. We may as well all give up caring and arguing amongst ourselves and use the rest of the season in protest at this recruitment strategy and lack of spending.
I noticed that too.....lot of noise to keep fans alienated but the end result remains the same- 70 to 80 million net spend per year.
Our only hope is that our youngsters continue to improve and we manage to unearth some gems like James. (But James is rather the exception in our case)
Of course in hindsight he should have done differently.
Rojo did his ACL in 17/18 and since then has played very little. Baily had knee surgery scheduled and is now barely back, Jones constantly get injured as well. 3/5 CB's at the club has very dubious fitness records which meant that if we did not buy Maguire we would have gone into the season with Smalling/Lindelof as our CB pairing. A long term injury to one of those two we would be in deep shit as we would have to rely on Jones+1, which is not ideal. Pogba thus far in his career has had an excellent injury record and has missed more games this season alone than his whole career combined. No one could predict he would miss most of the season too injury. Say if we spent the budget on a CM instead and then say Lindelof was out for half a year, we would be in big trouble as well. Buying a RB was really a no brainer. I'd say in the summer (before factoring in any injuries) i would say it was about 50/50 on buying a CB and CM as both were needed.
Lukaku wanted away. No point in keeping him around. Losing Herrera was a damn shame, but that was mostly down to Woodys ineptitude of handling contracts.
The sad reality is that we have the second highest wage bill in the league and not the quality to show for it. This is not the result of this summer window, but rather years and years of poor scouting, poor investment and we handing out ridiculous contracts to under performing players. I've said it before, but considering our investment the last two years have only been half of what LvG and Jose got to spend in their first two windows, i think its very plausible the owners has tightened the purse strings, and demanded we trim the wage bill before we went out and buy new players
The problem is that (outside of Lukaku and Herrera), none of the players sold under Ole had any real market value to other clubs as they were all deadwood. When you look at our remaining deadwood, they dont have much value either
Rojo: Headless chickens and very injury prone.
Baily: Headless chickens and very injury prone.
Jones: Headless chickens and very injury prone.
Shaw: Always injured and has not developed at all the last 2-3 years
Matic: Past it
Pereira: Not EPL quality
Lindgard: Not EPL quality
Mata: Past it
If we are lucky, some lower table EPL teams are maybe willing to fork out 10-15 million for the British players (a bit more for Shaw), but i sincerely doubt any of the other ones would be interesting targets. We have seen 7 players go and just 3 come in, and in my opinion the ones above also need to be moved on, so that's another 8 players that we ideally should clear out.
Agree with everything except this. James is a decent hard-working squad player, not a gem. A gem is a game-changer or someone with the potential to be a star. James for me is neither, but he's highly welcome here.
It's indeed a hindsight for us fans, however for a manager he should analyze all different situations and try to predict all the outcomes whenever a big player is injured how we would replace him during the season then reach the conclusion on how to spend the budget in best possible way, then endure the responsibility for that. If it had worked he would have got credit so of course now since it was proven wrong he should be criticized for it. He spent the majority of budget on the defense and the end result is the midifled and attack are totally fecked up and even the position we spent our money on doesn't look that good with us leaking goals all over the place and barely keeping any clean sheet. He needs to be blamed for it because that was his choice. He replaced Smalling (who was our only defender who is consistently fit throughout the season) by 80m Maguire while keeping all the injury prone players. Did that improve our defense? Was the outcome of replacing Smalling with Maguire now we are halfway into season really worth 80 and spending the major part of our budget? I wanted it to work but the improvement is so marginal and didn't look like it was worth wasting the majority of our budget on it rather than on a midfielder and a forward tbh.
As for keeping Lukaku, what's the problem in keeping a player who wants out I don't get it. It was the last few days of the market and it was so obvious we weren't going to sign a striker. Cancel the deal and let him stay just for one more season or even till Jan when we will be able to try and buy another striker. What would he have done? He was under contract. He would just play that's about it. Pogba didn't speak a single word about him wanting to leave once the window was closed. Keeping Lukaku for one more season would have been far more better than our current situation, there is no doubt about that.
100 % correct
I bet he'd bite your hand off to have Smalling, Lukaku, and Fellaini, back in the team just now.
He's been hung out to dry, and hopefully the fans will continue to call out the real culprits here.
He's been hung out to dry, and hopefully the fans will continue to call out the real culprits here.
Bingo. That’s the truth the Ole in brigade don’t want to admit. It’s the romanticism and nothing else.
Why Ole ? Why should he be the one to lead this so called rebuild? I’m yet to receive a convincing argument. All you hear is this resetting of culture bla bla and playing youth.
OGS willingly let all 3 go.
This idea that Woodward screwed him over is a myth.
He let those three go and those roles were supposed to be taken over by Maguire who the club spent an absolute fortune on, McTominay who's been promoted to the first team and was having a break out season and finally Rashford/Martial/Greenwood who were more than making up for the goal scoring load.
There's been misfortune with injuries and the club should have added some padding to the squad to absorb those blows but lets not argue like Einsteins with the benefit of hindsight.
AWB+Maguire for 130M and we sold Lukaku for 75, Like that we might sign Bruno and another Striker but Ed might recapture that by selling Pogba for 120M.
Other than Smalling, he willingly let them go in the knowledge they wouldn't be replaced? Utter rubbish.
I just posted an interview where he said clearly that every player leaving needed to be replaced. If you want to focus on the latter statement that he was happy with the squad, that is fine. Although not very intelligent. Especially when he know he got a lot of work to do integrating youngsters. I don’t think Woody screwed him over, but I do believe he failed to deliver what was a list of players wanted. Just like we see at this very moment. Best part of it is, because he acts like a man and gets on with it, the warriors of the internet comes out like trolls in the night calling him a puppet
I'm trying my best to support him, but he simply is not the man.
He talks about rebuilding, when we keep booting players without replacing them, and when he keeps giving our deadwood second, third and 20th chances, while ignoring promising youngsters, alienating them in the process. And not a single criticism of the board not backing him with transfers, which infuriates me the most.
He talks about rebuilding, when we keep booting players without replacing them, and when he keeps giving our deadwood second, third and 20th chances, while ignoring promising youngsters, alienating them in the process. And not a single criticism of the board not backing him with transfers, which infuriates me the most.
He literally said Greenwood would be 'promoted' and would play a key role. He never wanted to replace Lukaku for this season.
He signed Maguire to 'replace' Smalling.
He didn't target a midfielder at all. He had a budget and direct quotes from him state, how he wanted to spend the majority of it on defenders to improve our defense.
I'm not the one talking rubbish here.
Agree I am not seeing much rebuilding being done. If he is not backed then he need to put pressure on the board.
If we can't bring in top players then try to bring in talents from smaller teams for less money.
Going with a tiny squad with almost no options is not a rebuild.
Our academy has done well, but we can't put 100% faith in them to keep producing top players. No other team does that.
I didn’t read what he was saying as that at all. I don’t think he was talking in terms of a budget, he just pointed out that majority of money we spent in the summer was on defenders which is true. I don’t think he was saying “I had a fixed budget and chose to spend the majority of it on defenders”, he was simply saying “in the summer most of the money we spent was on defenders”.
This wouldn't surprise me
Nonsense, this was said to smooth things over after Dybala and Mandzuckic blew us out, why would he want those two if he thought Greenwood was up to it all along.
He would have been out of his mind not to want a midfielder, Longstaff was talked about all summer long if I remember correctly.
I know that’s not what he meant by it but I’m reading between the lines - we had no money left (or time as it turns out) for attackers
I mean it's really hard to argue, considering past experiences, that if we do end up buying nobody, which is seemingly more likely now, that they've lost faith in Ole's ability in this experiment, or perhaps because they didn't expect Pochettino to be available? They were after him big time before so it's not unthinkable, either way, its a travesty if we buy nobody in this window, utter neglect.
He is gone if we do not sign anyone. The board have effectively given up on the season with no new signings.
That’s not at all what I said. I’m critical of Ole to this point. But, I’m giving him a little bit of credit for not going on some kind of daft overspending spree to save his job. Or fixing things in the short term with players that will be be bad decisions in the longer run.
Uhm, it doesn't take some kind of a superhuman intellect to have figured out that we'll be fecked cometh injuries with how we've handled our transfer 'business'. Plenty of people have said it. In fact I'd argue that you (not you personally) have to be pretty fecking thick not to have foreseen the situation.
You forgetting 4-2 in 2015 under LVG where we dominated them for 90 minutes.
So Dybala and Madzuckic were planned targets, his objective was to sign forwards. Why wait until the end of the window? Also why did both look like deals suggested to us when Juve decided they wanted Lukaku ?
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