That just seems like a convenient excuse not to spend money. Wasn't Bruno wanted by Poch anyway? So buying him woulda made even more sense. They just dont want to spend.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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That just seems like a convenient excuse not to spend money. Wasn't Bruno wanted by Poch anyway? So buying him woulda made even more sense. They just dont want to spend.
I remember him clearly saying that any players that left would be replaced when asked about the potential Lukaku transfer. In his defence he didn't say when this would happen though.
It really seem like we weren't seriously linked to them until Juve suggested a swap deal involving Lukaku.
Exactly. That situation had shades of a Moyes. Situations we’ve never had with Mourinho or LVG.
Hung out to dry?
He's a novice manager that was given 150m to spend, the same as lvg and jose on their first season. More than moyes.
Hung out to dry?
Moyes didnt get baines for 30m. Ole got 80m for maguire and 50m on awb.
He might not get a full 400m support just yet. But he certainly wasnt given peanuts.
Who authorizes smailing loan? Lukaku transfer? Who authorizes it? Loaning smailing doesnt get us any money, it's all down to ole. He could have kept smailing but he dont.
He could have persuaded lukaku to stay, but the very moment he enters the door he's so adamant on making sure lukaku knows he's not on his plan.
It's all good if you can walk the talk. But at the moment when we're having mason greenwood as striker backup, and leaking goals all over while smailing looks to be the signing of the year makes him looks utterly clueless.
Well, sure, but at the start of the season thats all just guesswork really. Imo, the real problem here is not that he chose to buy a CB over a CM, the real problem(s) is that the state of the squad was far below the level we should be at and more importantly more money should have been available.
We should have gotten a CB and a CB. Not one or the other, and if we are going to "rebuild" one or two players at a time while still trying to rid ourselves with all the dross, we have more than just one rocky season ahead
We could have got a CB and a CM if we hadn't blown the majority of our budget on that CB. Ole knew his budget quite well, judged by the quote, so if he wanted a CB that much while thinking CM was that important also why didn't he try to go for any other center back who isn't that overpriced even if less known than Maguire while keeping Smalling ? However, we still decided that splashing the majority of the budget on Maguire to replace Smalling was so well worth it even if we ended up having no more money for a midfielder so that's it really. We can blame the board for said budget but it could have been spent in a much better way, and the manager always needs to have a longer sight than anyone else. As I said if his gamble worked and Maguire replacing Smalling improved us so much and the midfield didn't suffer he would have been getting credit but since the opposite happened, it's fair he will get criticized for how he organized his budget. There's no hindsight in this, we just evaluate the outcome of the window and its effect on the team.
No manager has got a free cheque book at United and Ole hasn't been treated any differently than the any of the previous 3 managers when it comes to the money available to spend in summer. It's not a big budget, which is something to criticize the board for, but since he knew it, he (or any upcoming manager) should try to organize it in the best possible way.
Considering we sold a 80 million striker and lost a 40(?) million CM for free. Then yes, hes been hung out to dry.
Just to be clear, im more of a "Ole neutral" at this point and voted he should be replaced in the summer, but say if we hire Poch and this level of investment continues its going to take years, and years before we get anywhere. Our net spend the last two summer windows have been about half of what it was in the previous ones, which is incidentally also why Jose lost his marbles and had a meltdown
I would be happy to be proven wrong, but i am pretty confident that if Poch takes over this summer and is only given 70-80 million to spend, we will be having the same type of discussion in a years time
But say we went out and bought one CM and one CB for 40 million a piece, that would most likely be players of lower quality that did not improve us that much. Our latest CB purchases has been in that bracket: Lindelof, Rojo, Baily and i think most fans agree none of them are really good enough to be relied on as starters. Imo i would much rather then go out and buy one good player for the entire sum, rather than two mediocre ones.
Not going to argue about the price on Maguire. We did overpay for him and he has not really justifed his price tag (yet anyway), but i really doubt we would be having this discussion if Pogba was fit.
I think if no signings happen, Ole should resign, it's not worth getting sacked in the summer at this stage and the key contributors to this crisis (Woodward and Glazers) will get away with it again.
It doesn't work like that really does it? More money doesn't necessarily mean more quality, and just because Bailly and Lindelof flopped it means we should never scout for young CBs when we have limited budget and need more money for other more urging positions, it means we should scout better this time. If you are going to splash the majority of your budget on a CB, or actually any player in general, you need to be totally sure he's going to transform your defense or whatever position he's going to play in. Unfortunately Maguire hasn't lived up for the expectations we put up for him, and our defense has only improved marginally but not to 80m degree, so the outcome is it wasn't worth it. I wanted Maguire in summer and actually feel being let down by the overall transfer looking back at it now.
As for Pogba's situation I think this is better discussed in the injuries thread as we stupdily rushed against Rochdale, but for the record, if you are entering the season with one top class midfielder available then what are you expecting? As I said all these situations should be analyzed by the manager while putting his transfer list and priorities.
No more money does not equate better players necessarily, and there are plenty of cases (Vidic, Evra) where we have players bought for cheap that turned out to be massive success stories, but those cases have been rarer and rarer the past years. Honestly, my only criteria for assessing a transfer is simply: "Did the player improve the team" and in the case of Maguire he did and so did AWB. As i said, Maguire has not justified his price tag yet, and we got fleeced by Leichester, but considering we could have wanted him last year for 60, that's more down to Woody than anyone else.
That bolded part is key and i think most of the caf wanted him here. Injuries as always is something you have to factor in, but i think its a bit much to expect Ole (or any manager) to predict that x,y or z player is going to be injured for the majority of the season. Especially when its someone like Pogba who, as i said, has had a very good fitness record so far in his career.
The sad part is that while we are here bickering about the manager yet again, Woody and co have yet again successfully pulled the wool over our eyes, as they did with Jose, and they are let of the hook yet again. I dont really care if Ole is managing us in August, its not really that bloody important to me, but if say we get Poch in the summer and he have to contend with the same squad and the same lack of backing from the board, we will be having the same discussion in about a year
Here's my thoughts about Ole right now:
His tenure with us is bittersweet.
Right now it feels way more bitter because of the crap results but something good that's been done is the much awaited deadwood sale and the coming of good replacements and promotion of youth.
And before any of you skirm at this I'll say that yes, price aside, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka are good players, and so are James, McTominay, Williams and Greenwood. The signs of squad improvement are clear.
The problem with Ole lies in the tactics, which are borderline amateurish. He tries to make his team play like PL winning Leicester but that team was a one-off thing, and it's clear that's the only way he can set up the team!
Of course, injuries have contributed to the poor results and that's on the board. Lack of squad depth is a serious issue right now. We should have made at least 6 buys between this window and the previous and it looks like we'll settle for 4, if that many.
I don't think Ole has been bad if you take him as a transitional manager, someone to rebuild and hand a healthy squad to someone like Poch, who can actually set it up to play competitive football. Ole won't become that guy.
Sadly, the board never backed the rebuild. Odd overpriced player aside, we are yet to see any manager be handed the "war chest" that is promised every season.
No manager in the world is going to succeed in here because the board isn't interested in results, Woodward made it clear to the shareholders. Maximum revenue with minimal investment has been their motto, and it will remain so until their pockets suffer as a result of our poor performances.
The best we can hope in the current scenario is that whoever we hire after Ole can keep the team consistently in the UCL to retain the "sleeping giant" status and not becoming AC Milan.
After that, the only way to win things again is the club being sold to people who actually care about the sports part of our club.
TLDR; Ole should be seen as a transitional manager, and has to be backed to rebuild the squad for the next coach.
MUFC will never win the PL or the UCL with the Glazers as owners again.
His tenure with us is bittersweet.
Right now it feels way more bitter because of the crap results but something good that's been done is the much awaited deadwood sale and the coming of good replacements and promotion of youth.
And before any of you skirm at this I'll say that yes, price aside, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka are good players, and so are James, McTominay, Williams and Greenwood. The signs of squad improvement are clear.
The problem with Ole lies in the tactics, which are borderline amateurish. He tries to make his team play like PL winning Leicester but that team was a one-off thing, and it's clear that's the only way he can set up the team!
Of course, injuries have contributed to the poor results and that's on the board. Lack of squad depth is a serious issue right now. We should have made at least 6 buys between this window and the previous and it looks like we'll settle for 4, if that many.
I don't think Ole has been bad if you take him as a transitional manager, someone to rebuild and hand a healthy squad to someone like Poch, who can actually set it up to play competitive football. Ole won't become that guy.
Sadly, the board never backed the rebuild. Odd overpriced player aside, we are yet to see any manager be handed the "war chest" that is promised every season.
No manager in the world is going to succeed in here because the board isn't interested in results, Woodward made it clear to the shareholders. Maximum revenue with minimal investment has been their motto, and it will remain so until their pockets suffer as a result of our poor performances.
The best we can hope in the current scenario is that whoever we hire after Ole can keep the team consistently in the UCL to retain the "sleeping giant" status and not becoming AC Milan.
After that, the only way to win things again is the club being sold to people who actually care about the sports part of our club.
TLDR; Ole should be seen as a transitional manager, and has to be backed to rebuild the squad for the next coach.
MUFC will never win the PL or the UCL with the Glazers as owners again.
And in 8 out of 10 of those years he has been in Norway. And in Norway he hasnt been doing 'bad' things at all... His only failure was in Cardiff. Mind you it was a bad one.
But saying his work in Norway was bad is just ignorant and wrong.
And what do you mean about dreams and hopes? Im not a believer in fairytales. I know excatly where we stand as a club. And I do not think that a change of manager would do us any good.
Now, with Ole, it's said that its a plan to build for the future. And the evidence of him and the club doing so is there. I didnt expect us to be a top 4 club this season, I expected a top 6 with a good run in the EL. And thats what we've done so far.
I don't think any other manager would get this team any higher either, because we aint got the players for it. Atleast we're developing players now, players I like to see play for the club. And so far, if it continues, I think the club will only get better with time.
And, lastly, I couldnt give a damn that Ole is a former player, I've never even mentioned his past. I think he's the right man at the moment, and whenever he leaves the club will be in a better shape than we he arrived. Because when he arrived it was dire. Taking over from 3 different managers with a planning that wasnt backed by the board, making it a complete mess and unbalanced.
Sorry, but it was you who said you were sick to the back of you teeth. You also claimed that my line of hinking is astoundingly dumb. I call it levelheaded. Because I'm a newbie I couldn't respond earlier. I don't live in a fairytale land, things have gone shit on too many instances for people I know in order to believe in fairytales. However, I've also seen misfortune turned around enough not to automatically dismiss someone getting stuck somewhere on their path, be it in social life, business or sports. Whether the clubs upper management, OGS and the squad deserve the patience is up to debate. I believe OGS may be able to turn it around, you don't. It is you who claim to know the facts. I claim neither of us do.
Please try to not conflate the "players we are 'strongly' linked with" with the players we keep a tab on. A lot of posters do to be honest, you were just in this thread where I've already posted.
No im not, so im not going to blame him for something I know nothing about. I am sure that he wants more players, like every other manager that has ever managed a football team.
United are not cash strapped, net spend this summer was £50 mil roughly? Was that all we had to spend? I think the blame lies elsewhere. Oles at the wheel.
How do you know he did not want an attacker and midfielder? Should he have acted like Jose and came out and critisesed his squad? The fact is we do not know what goes on behind close doors, so why blame Ole for something that may not be his fault?
Net Spend in the summer was 75mil, do you really believe that is all we had to spend? Everyone knew we needed a new centre back and right back, we had been screaming out for it for years. Stop defending Woodward and the Glazers and get begind Ole.
Oles at the wheel.
Leicester finished 1st under Cluadio Raneri, then near gets relegated the very next season.Last season Leicester were 9th and we were 6th. We spent 150m and bought their defender while they spent 100m. How did they come to have a better squad than us with this? Maybe it has something to do with their managers?
Did the manager suddenly become bad at his job? Did every other club in the premier league sack there manager and replace them with a better manager? Or is football abit more naunced than that?
Not necessarily related to what you’re discussing it Ole’s pursuit of Longstaff is something else I hold against him.Awful, awful, player.
You don't remember us wanting to sign him for 25m and Newcastle wanting 50m? We weren't just keeping tabs, we wanted to sign him.
Is this what you mean by keeping tabs on a player? All reliable sources by the way. Also tell me if we were linked with another CM as much as this in the summer
A lot of posters conflate "the only players we are heavily linked with" with "the factual list of the only players our club is pursuing". All I am saying is you (and I) don't know which other targets the club has, be it for the short or for the long term. Sorry if that doesn't apply to you, it seemed to me it did.
Maguire hasn't improved our defense that much, or not to the degree that was worth blasting the majority of our budget upon to replace Smalling, as he didn't replace any of our injury prone defenders. The improvement in his case is so marginal and the defense hasn't really been that good this season at all. If you think otherwise then fair enough.
The season we finished second Pogba also had a 2-3 months injury in the first half too. It's not the first time, so no reason why to not predict any similar situation to happen.
What do our posts here have to do with the club, and what effect will they have to say such paragraph? For the record most of us are against Woodward, but the problem for me is even with a better board, better CEO and better players, Ole will still be a poor manager and not the right man for us, and won't miraculously turn to a good enough manager for Man United. Another problem is the guy isn't giving any reason to defend him by blaming the board. He's taking every chance to defend every board's decision, defend the structure and defend the club's transfer strategy. If he's lying then he's a yes man for the board so I can't find a logic in defending him by blaming them. People say he's staying positive in front of media but is there really any manager who takes every chance to defend his board and says he believes in it while claiming he's fully well backed and everything is his decision like this?
@el3mel
How many managers do you know that started having a pop 13 at their CEO and owners 13 months into the job, 10 of those as permanent?
How many managers do you know that started having a pop 13 at their CEO and owners 13 months into the job, 10 of those as permanent?
This season was a freak. Ranieri was never a top drawer manager and he had never won a single league title before this season despite managing several big teams in the past, and post Leicester he has been doing nothing worthy to mention.
He got Chelsea into the CL before Roman’s money did
But what you have done here is blame him for two things i think he should not shoulder all the blame for. 1. Injuries, 2. A poor squad that is mostly the result of lack of investment. Like we can discuss for ages whether or not we should have bought a CB instead of a CM in the summer, but the fact is we should have went out and bought both
Poor results is one thing hes (partly) responsible for, but how much of that is down to coaching/tactics and how much of that is down the the quality of the squad? I dont know the answer, but i think its a bit rash to outright dismiss it as poor coaching and then claim a different manager could do much better with these same players. Remember Jose only got 6th his first season here, with a PL win rate of 47%, Ole's (entire reign) is currently at 46%..
One thing i agree on though is comments about the board. I am properly annoyed by those comments and its pretty clear they have failed at their jobs the bast 6 years, so he just should have kept his mouth shut. Having an open conflict in the media like Jose did is not ideal either, but dont praise them, because that seems pretty stupid imo
I really expected us to sign two players during this window. For me this looks like just getting into summer, replace Ole with Poch and then maybe to buy 1-2 players and selling 3-4. It's kind of depressing that it looks like no incomings now.
I don't see us to buying players like Sancho, Maddison, Dembele and so on if we dont qualify for the Champions League or at least look like a team that will play for major trophies in the next few years.
I don't see us to buying players like Sancho, Maddison, Dembele and so on if we dont qualify for the Champions League or at least look like a team that will play for major trophies in the next few years.
The poor squad is something both him and Woodward share the blame for. He doesn't shoulder all the blame for it sure but at the same time he can't be excused either that is my point. As for injuries, I haven't been talking about it till Rashford injury when he said he didn't want to play him as he was struggling with several knocks but he decided to risk it and it backfired, which drove me nuts.
Regarding results, we have lost to 6 teams in the bottom 10, Palace, Burnley, WHU, Newcastle, Watford and Bournemouth. You can make them 7 if we count Arsenal who is currently 10th. This is very poor considering we actually did well in several big matches this season and the fact that Chelsea above us have been losing points non stop for the last 2 months and we still can't catch them. All these losses against bottom half of the table indicates a problem, and that the team is coached to play in a certain way that's good against big teams but run out of ideas against a parked bus.
He's being hung out to dry and yet he's so clueless he doesn't see it. Still rambling on about the future that he will won't be part of 
. I just hope he looks in the mirror once he's sacked and doesn't try and come out with excuses.
. I just hope he looks in the mirror once he's sacked and doesn't try and come out with excuses.How many deadwood are actually gone. We've sold Darmian and Ashley Young who are deadwood. Herrera, Fellaini and Lukaku are better than what we have now, I wouldn't exactly call them deadwood. Smalling and Sanchez are on loan so they are still coming back.
So in reality we've sold just two deadwood. Lingard, Rojo, Matic, Mata, Jones, Pereira, these deadwoods are all still here and 4 of them were handed new contracts last season.
Now so far in three windows we've signed just two starting quality players - AWB and Maguire both of which are arguably overpriced when we could have gotten similar quality elsewhere for cheap.
So is this a rebuild??? Its a very shambolic and slow one if it. This is a very terrible rebuild and has been a failure so far. We've let 3 of our best players go, hardly sold deadwood, extended the contract of some of this deadwood and we've hardly reinforced the squad.
This rebuild has been very slow and it has hardly even started. We can trust Ole to carry it out but what he has shown already so far to me is that he's not a good enough coach even though he has shown signs of being able to carry out a rebuild. But he's not a good coach so what's the point of keeping him when this rebuild has hardly even kicked off.
If someome like Pochettino or Ragnick comes I wouldn't mind because the rebuild has hardly started and they've proven to be good coaches that can carry out a rebuild.
The board is 100% to blame for the shambolic rebuild so far though. But like I've said several times already, this rebuild has hardly started and I rather we hire a good coach that knows how to carry out one than Ole who has shown he is a bad coach that may or may not be able to carry out a rebuild
So in reality we've sold just two deadwood. Lingard, Rojo, Matic, Mata, Jones, Pereira, these deadwoods are all still here and 4 of them were handed new contracts last season.
Now so far in three windows we've signed just two starting quality players - AWB and Maguire both of which are arguably overpriced when we could have gotten similar quality elsewhere for cheap.
So is this a rebuild??? Its a very shambolic and slow one if it. This is a very terrible rebuild and has been a failure so far. We've let 3 of our best players go, hardly sold deadwood, extended the contract of some of this deadwood and we've hardly reinforced the squad.
This rebuild has been very slow and it has hardly even started. We can trust Ole to carry it out but what he has shown already so far to me is that he's not a good enough coach even though he has shown signs of being able to carry out a rebuild. But he's not a good coach so what's the point of keeping him when this rebuild has hardly even kicked off.
If someome like Pochettino or Ragnick comes I wouldn't mind because the rebuild has hardly started and they've proven to be good coaches that can carry out a rebuild.
The board is 100% to blame for the shambolic rebuild so far though. But like I've said several times already, this rebuild has hardly started and I rather we hire a good coach that knows how to carry out one than Ole who has shown he is a bad coach that may or may not be able to carry out a rebuild
This sort of stuff is pretty much clickbait IMO. Worse yet it's from the Sun, so obviously trying to sensationalize as much as possible.
On the contrary. United is minimum result maximum spending.
Glazers arent skint. They're just too blindly trust their manager.
We're 2nd only to city in spending.
Depends what time frame your talking about, under Ole we have spent the best part of sod all.
Serious question. Do players actually want to play for Ole? Smalling, Lukaku, Sanchez, Pogba. They all wanted out. They didnt want to play for Ole. Then our captain walked out as well. Yes some of this is down to various other factors i.e. we are sht. But this seems a serious issue. Haaland wouldnt sign and yes you can say its the club or how Woodward sold us. But is he respected and admired Ole that much he would have come no? This seriously hampers our new signings as well. Yes a major part is the club as I said but a well respected manager is a major part of it
So I'm a season ticket holder and a massive Ole in fan . Well I was a Ole in but after the past week or so I have finally had enough of Ole chatting complete and utter dog shite .
This new bullshit about Sanchez just shows me he is nothing but a puppet for them parasites who own and run our club .
Ole might well be a legend but if I live to 100 I would be quite happy never hearing him speak ever again ..
The Burnley game last week I sat looking around the ground just wondering how we have become this complete and utter shit . I know it's not all Oles fault but he is playing a massive part in making me dislike everything to do with United at the moment .
Jose got stick for publicly stating he needed new players but I swear if Ed sold another 6 first teamers Ole would still sit there telling us how everything is rosy and great .
If we finish top 8 I will be amazed
This new bullshit about Sanchez just shows me he is nothing but a puppet for them parasites who own and run our club .
Ole might well be a legend but if I live to 100 I would be quite happy never hearing him speak ever again ..
The Burnley game last week I sat looking around the ground just wondering how we have become this complete and utter shit . I know it's not all Oles fault but he is playing a massive part in making me dislike everything to do with United at the moment .
Jose got stick for publicly stating he needed new players but I swear if Ed sold another 6 first teamers Ole would still sit there telling us how everything is rosy and great .
If we finish top 8 I will be amazed
Well seen as “most” of our players are willingly playing through the pain barrier I would say yes.
Lukaku wanted out because he wasn’t going to be first choice, Sanchez was having a mare, smalling was down the pecking list and Pogba wanted out before Ole arrived on the scene.
As a man, I think he's a bit of a plum to not walk if he's not backed. He's being hung out to dry. He's not good enough, but he's not got a bloody chance with the board fecking him with no signings.
We signed 3 pretty good players under Ole, and we sold players and missed out on players under other managers as well.
Valid question though, but we'll have to wait and see during subsequent windows.
He probably loves the club too much to walk, he’ll try to make the best of whatever the situation is (publicly anyway). No matter what you think of him, you can guarantee he’s doing what he thinks is best for United.
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