What do you think about other people here on the forum when you feel the need to make sure some thoughts are always met with a certain reaction?
Look, you gave the touching point away in your post: it seems like you think, that Ole only inherited Pogba in the worldclass category. But that isn't true. He also inherited players like Rashford, De Gea, Martial, Greenwood, McTominay, Fred, Matic and Shaw. These weren't bad players just because some struggled under Mourinho. Half of them are still in the 1st team. Maguire and Wan Bissaka were mostly already lined up so Ole only had to pull the trigger, it is not like he came up with these names, they were the obvious ones back then. It seems like the squad wasn't that bad after all and underperformed under Mou. Ole was successful in taking away that negative influence. For me, we are now performing more to the real level of our players. What I am asking is - wouldn't it be great to have them overperform once in a while?
I am not denying that the results improved. Ole earned as much and even a bit more credit for it as the team itself. We are more entertaining to watch than under LVG and Mourinho, I'll give you that - but whats the real value of that? Is that because we play so good under Ole or because we played badly under the other guys? For sure I know my stance on that...
I kind of struggle to see other improvements. Maguire became a laughing stock beginning of this season - it is common now to name him when the topic is overpaying for players. AWB was targeted by opposition managers because of his subpar technique - not a good sign even if that doesn't seem to be a very big issue these days. Rashford was better last season when he was asked to create more, he struggles badly this season. Martials emergence last year was seemingly not connected with the manager because then it shouldn't have imploded like it did this season. McTominay seemed always to be a big game player with great mentality. And he improved by getting more reliable. But did he improve his passing? His positioning? His shooting? Which aspect of the game do you think has been worked on? The same with Rashford - which area specifically?
Maybe, just maybe - our squad didn't just live up to their potential only because of Mourinho's missing positive impulses but because of the negative impulses he created. Especially to Shaw. The best performances in the last two years have been in the caretaker time. When everybody felt free, we hadn't even Bruno back then. Would you agree, that all the improvements you see (and I only do partly) are maybe due to the non-existence of negative influence (i.e. Mourinho) at least as much as because of the positive influence of the current manager?
There were threads here called "zombie passing" years ago. It is still an issue except for the odd game where the opposition is daft enough to have a go at us. If Brighton manages to perform quick passing play, if the second string of AC Milan manages to do it, how is it possible to insist that we just don't have the players to do it? If we have a manager, who should only be held responsible when he has the best of the best at his disposal, then we always have to pray that transfers work out like they did with Bruno. Is that a good idea looking at our transfer history?
