Yeah, bring back Mourinho. Haha
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Yep, it's an utterly useless way of looking at progress. Then again, we all know why these people are clinging to points tallies and it's certainly not for objectivity.
Have you got a time machine? We don't have to compete with those teams
League position, which I would think is what really matters to most of us.
My point is just that every season is different. Some seasons the lesser teams are a challenge, and some seasons they aren't.
No, we don't. But it does mean our elevation from third to second isn't as dramatic.
So if we finished this season with a similar amount of points to last season, but won the title because City and Liverpool both suffered a massive drop (only one did), it would have shown our improvement?
We are now at a point where even if Ole wins the league, it still won't be seen as a improvement over the last 7 years.
I think he could be a massive sway in us getting Haaland if we do get him. The most sought after player in European footballer is Norweigan and Ole gave him his debut. A very big positive for us if we get him.
Hypothetically, if a team wins PL with 66 points, It would mean that the league was more competitive, and there was more uncertainty. We were the most consistent team, and I'd say that's improvement.
And btw, I don't buy completely into the league position idea as well, but it's a better indicator than points. What I care about is how the underlying stats have evolved from previous season and compared to other teams in the league. Finishing 2nd on 81 points is not progress if you're reliant on your goalkeeper's shot stopping ability (if it was any other skill like playing out from back or anything, I wouldn't mind that) and your strikers being unsustainably clinical for a good portion of the season.
95-96 season - 82pts
96-97 season - 75pts
97-98 season - 77pts
98-99 season - 79pts
Clearly there was no improvement in the late 90's under Fergie!
96-97 season - 75pts
97-98 season - 77pts
98-99 season - 79pts
Clearly there was no improvement in the late 90's under Fergie!
Not sure if serious or not. If we win the league with 66 points, do you think we've stagnated?
Well, there were two very good teams in England in recent years, and now there is one, but Liverpool didn't drop off because the league is more competitive. So in a scenario like that, it's possible the bar is just lowered because there are no super-teams.
I was completely unimpressed with our second-place finish under Mourinho because I looked at the team and realised there was no way we'd catch up with City playing that way.
Similarly, I'm looking at United right now, and while I see the improvement, I also see the flaws that will mean catchng up to City depends on them lowering the bar rather than us reaching it.
Yes, It's possible. If the bar is lowered because there are no great teams around like Liverpool and City of recent years, and being "just good" is suddenyl enough to win the league, (and it wasn't in recent years), then yes, we can stagnate and win the title.
Weird way to look at things, in my opinion.
Manchester United don't exist in a vacuum, and we can't control other teams progression or regression.
The only thing we can try to do is win more games and points than the other teams in the league.
If we win the league, we've improved/progressed compared to the other 19 teams in the league, and we've improved compared to our previous (8?) seasons as well.
If we win the competition, we've been better than all other teams. Something we haven't been for a while.
If we go from being the 6th, to the 3rd, to the very best team in the league, I honestly don't understand how that's stagnation by any metric at all.
But hey, I've already admitted to being delusional and ridiculous, so I'm sure I'm wrong.
We are now at a point where even if Ole wins the league, it still won't be seen as a improvement over the last 7 years.
I know, right?
There's raising the bar and moving the goal posts and all that, and then there's this.
A whole new level of expectations. But sure, "We're Manchester United!!!!!!!"
It's basically setting a almost impossible standard to meet and then complaining when a team in it's second season fails to meet it. Which would makes sense if this was coming from opposition fans but it's pretty odd coming from United ''supporters''. Tbh it wouldn't be so bad but the arguments put forward are insane, there's really nothing to be debated or discussed when someone thinks winning the league isn't a sign of progress or that Fulham play better football than the league top scorers.
It's a shame because it's killed the forum as a place to discuss football.
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It's clear progress in terms of how good you are compared with the rest of the league.
It just doesn't mean you're actually a better football team than you were a year or two ago. Surely that's clear...
Fergie's title teams weren't all on the same level. Some were brilliant, others weren't as good.
This is exactly what I disagree with. If you win the league after finishing 2nd, 3rd og 6th the season before, you're by default a better football team.
Even if we somehow win the league with 66 points, it doesn't automatically mean the league regressed. It might just as well mean the league got a whole lot stronger.
And being better than all your opponents is superior to being better than 18 of 19 opponents. Or 16 of 19 opponents. A relatively speaking better team.
Comparing it to Sir Alex' winning sides is something else entirely. Winning the league with 85 points one year and 79 the year after might be considered regression by some, or stagnation by others. It could also be viewed as improvement, if the league in year two was a lot stronger. Or if the gap to 2nd were bigger. Or if he crashed out of Europe in year 1 and got further in year 2. Comparing 1st and 1st is a whole lot different than comparing 3rd and 1st. If you win the league two years on the trot, other competitions is a better measuring stick when looking for signs of improvement or regression. If you win the league after finishing 3rd, you don't have to look any further to figure out whether or not the team has improved.
Again, we don't exist in a vacuum. If we win the league after not winning the league for 8 or 9 seasons, we're by default a better football team.
But sure. We can just agree to disagree.
Winning the league isn't an automatic sign of progress in your eyes, while I think winning the league is the best we can possibly do (I mean, we can't finish 0th), and that it would be the most obvious sign of progress I can think of.
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Nothing is automatic and nothing works on defaults. Therefore, the idea that if you've gone from second to first it definitely means you've become a better team than you were before, is plain wrong.
I also don't see why comparing third with first is different to comparing first and first, as the idea is to focus absolutely on the teams and their ability without adding the variable of the other teams in the league. You can go a place up to down in the league even without becoming better or worse.
I'm (un)sure you can find an example of teams stagnating or regressing while moving from 3rd to 1st in the league, but if anything they are total outliers, and I can't think of a single team that fits into the category.
Please give me a real life example of a team regressing or stagnating while winning the league after not winning (or even not being remotely close to winning) it the year before, just so I can better understand your thinking and reasoning.
This is not meant as a sarcastic or rhetorical question, by the way. I'm honestly curious, and would love it if you found some good examples.
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I cannot recall such a case in my 30 years or so of following English football, and I've never followed other leagues enough to go into such detail.
Teams that win the title after a season in which they haven't done it tend to improve. But it doesn't mean that they 100% have. It's simple logic. A team that finishes 14th one season and 13th the next isn't automatically a better team. It's no different to 2nd from 3rd to 1st from 2nd.
If you are missing the ability to apply logic maybe. It was a hypothetical scenario.If this doesn't expose the nonsense you talk I don't know what will
Fluking a league, they firing out league titles like candy, why took Liverpool 30 years to win one again
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Because that's exactly what I said... I probably shouldn't expect anything objective from someone with Ole in their name.
If you are insistent on twisting my hypothetical answer to someone out of it's context. Okay. When we last won the league in 2013, did everyone expect us to dominate in the near future? Just like in 06/07? There is context, it's not simply black and white.We are now at a point where even if Ole wins the league, it still won't be seen as a improvement over the last 7 years.
My point was that we spent 36/38 weeks outside the top 4 last season. We made top 4 for the first time in the penultimate week. It was also a historically low points tally that wouldn't have been enough for top 4 in 5/6 last seasons. Last time it was, was the Leicester title win season, which was considered an uncompetitive season. So can you see why in my eyes finishing 3rd wasn't an automatic sign of progress?
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Alright, fair enough.
There is a theoretical possibility that a team winning the league after not winning for a decade is stagnant or regressing. But they are obviously rare enough to not remember a single example in 30 years.
I take back the "automatic" and "by default", and leave the doors open to us stagnating while winning the league next year. Even though I still think it defies all logic.
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Fair enough.
I have to say that having thought of it, I doubt our 95/96 team was better than the 94/95 side. It didn't have the same strength or attacking ability. But when you look at the injuries (and Cantona's suspension) we had in 94/95, and the changes made to the team in 95/96 with the younger lads becoming regulars - plus the fact the league shrunk from 22 teams to 20 - it's a little hard to compare, even pointwise. And besides, we literally lost a double in 94/95 by a point in the league and a goal in the cup final.
I wouldn't say our team in 95/96 were worse or stagnant to the 94/95 side. It was simply different, really. As you say, very hard to compare.
It was the start of a rebuild and generation change, with unheard of success to follow. Starting with that very season.
In 95/96 we won the league and the FA cup, after not winning neither in 94/95. Were we a better team in 95/96? Maybe not. I'm sure you can find some arguments to why 94/95 were better.
But trophies (you know, improving from 2nd in the FA cup and the league to 1st in the FA cup and the league) and future success with the same core going forward points to the opposite. We changed our entire setup, and went back to our winning ways (second double in three years, with a trophy donut in between) as a result. I seriously struggle with understanding how that's regression or stagnation.
Yes, the fact that Leicester ended the season by dropping 34 points in 17 games (and Chelsea 21 in 17) clearly shows the progress of Manchester United football club!
Yes.
Spin it how you like. I suppose us getting 32 points in 14 games was nothing to do with it?
It’s not spin. It’s the logical conclusion of your argument.
You should judge us on our performances, not those of the other teams. It’s like saying that a player has become a better goalscorer because he ended up higher in the top scorers charts, despite ending the season with the same amount of goals.
I’m not saying it wasn’t to do with our form, but if Leicester and Chelsea had achieved a 1.5 points per game average over the second half of the season we wouldn’t have been 3rd/4th and you would’ve judged United’s performances differently, despite United’s games playing out literally exactly the same way. It’s nonsense to judge it like that IMO.
Even this argument isn’t as black and white as you think. Why did the other strikers score less? A bunch of factors is in play. It could be because the defenses got a whole lot better, and a stagnant number of goals scored is a sign of improvement given the improved quality of the teams/defenses faced.
Ok, so what about this season, where we've been in the Top 4 constantly since we first reached it in November? Is that not progress? What about if we finish 4th but have stayed in those Top 4 positions for the vast majority of the season?
Do you realise how banal this logic is?
The 3rd place last season was an undeniable sign of progress on where the team was post-Ole's caretaker period, where we huffed and puffed but in all reality weren't likely to get there, and if we did, it was going to be in circumstances not dissimilar to what actually transpired the season after. Spurs were in a horrendous rut. Arsenal started to unravel under Emery, and Chelsea were in the midst of their periodic slump because their manager looked at them funny. All of this was a major factor in why we were even in the Top 4 picture in 18/19 (as well as the freak run of results under Ole in his caretaker run). If it weren't for Ole, it would not have been anywhere near as close. Fast forward a year, and after taking a sledgehammer to the squad and bringing in two defenders, a squaddie winger in James and Bruno in January, we followed a similar story, with Spurs and Arsenal continuing their ruts, Chelsea reshaping their team and a revived Leicester on the scene who ultimately chucked it away. The only difference was we actually got over the line this time around. That, by definition, is progress (i.e. reaching a target that was not attained the season before).
We had some low lows in the first six months of last season, but ever since Bruno came in it's been a steady and at times steep rate of progression from the team. Progress is never linear and the team is still forming, with the various disparate parts of the squad still coalescing around each other to form the whole, but it's there for all to see.
We'll see if Ole can get us closer to the top than this, but I would wager that we'd be a heck of a lot closer if we actually got him the players that he wanted. That he's got us to where he has thus far with a first team that for all intents and purposes, is still pretty much the same as last season's (could argue Cavani is an upgrade on Martial, though with his injuries, I'm not sure we can rely on him every week) is a pretty good indication that Ole would likely be able to do better once he gets the majority of the missing pieces in place.
Funnily enough, I always saw our 96/97 team as maybe Fergie' weakest title-winning side, that enjoyed the fact none of its rivals were really good (though Liverpool pushes us close before falling away). You can talk about the distractions in the CL or the defensive issues, but overall, I wouldn't say this side was better than the previous season.
That is not a good analogy for comparison because there's not a finite amount of goals a player or team can score like there is with points in a league system.
As stated previously, league position is a far better way to judge progress. That's not to say points is not a metric you can use, but it's not as clear cut. If we were talking about the difference between finishing 1st and any other position, do you think anyone would give a toss about the points total?
But this didn't happen, and we finished above both. Of course if it did happen and we finished 5th, it is still a place higher than the previous season and you can judge that how you wish.
We went from having a very bad first half of the season to a good second half, which was progress in itself. It's an upward trajectory, which we have continued this season.
But no manager gets everyone he wants. Switching targets and adjusting is part of what makes a football managers. And I'll give you a spoiler: We probably won't get all - or any - of Solskjaer's first choices in the summer of 2021 either. At some stage, rather than use it as an excuse, you have to ask: Did you have a number 2 target? Did you try to go for it?
At the end of the day, judging only through league position, or only though points, is wrong. It should include different variables.
Well, obviously, but by comparing a player's or a team's performance on the basis of everyone's performance but the team or player itself you're going to tie yourself in knots, trying to make arguments that can never be proven.
For example, some people will say that a league where one or two teams get close to a hundred points isn't competitive, as if the competitiveness of a league is made up by 10% of the teams. On the other hand, some people will say that the Leicester season, where the winning team got a low points total, and thus had teams more tightly compressed, was the worst season in terms of competitiveness as all potential title challengers had shit seasons. Which one of the two is right is impossible to know and is just a matter of opinion. It's the same with goalscoring. If Martial scores 20 goals last season and 5 goals this season, my opinion would be that it's Martial who's having a shit season, not defences all across the Premier League improving (and specifically against him!).
What is possible to know is how good a team is at beating the opponents in front of them, and that is by seeing how many points they get at the end of a season.
United's improved form post lockdown is obvious from the fact that United had an average of 2.33 points per game and Leicester's decline is obvious from the fact that they dropped to a 1 ppg ratio post lockdown. What United did is irrelevant to my opinion of Leicester's performance level (ie I wouldn't have thought that Leicester had been on the same level post-lockdown if they'd managed to end in 3rd place anyway), and what Leicester did is irrelevant to my opinion of United's performance level (our improvement post lockdown would've been visible even if we hadn't made 3rd).
So, in essence, I think that the performance level of the team (or player) itself is much better to judge the team (or player) by than the performance of everyone but the player or team that is being judged, because the relative performance level brings so many unknowns into play. Did Martial not score because Ben Mee had a stormer? Should de Gea be kept in the game because the WBA player had a particularly good game with his crossing? Should we avoid criticising AWB's attacking because their left back had a good game? I mean, relative performance levels makes it so that every poor (or good) performance can be explained away by other factors.
But they at least get SOME of what they want. Other than maybe Telles, he really didn't. He wanted Reguilon. He wanted a CB. He wanted Grealish. He wanted Sancho.
He got none of them and other than Telles, he didn't get any back up options in those positions either. You'd have to think back up options were considered, but with the galaxy brains running the club, I honestly can't say for sure.
I'm not even asking for all of his first choices to come in either. Two out of three transfers that the club makes should be players Ole and the coaching team planned for, otherwise it's just a case of taking one step forward and two back. Buying for the sake of it is a large part of why we were in the mess we were in pre-Ole.
Have no idea what you're on about tbh. I wasn't responding to you're posts(I didn't quote you).
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