He has lost a EC semi final, a final, and has a record of 7 W and 11 L in the CL. Do people expect that he can actually challenge for Europe? Miracles happen indeed (e.g. Di Matteo), but having one of the most expensive squads in the world after 3 years in charge and still relying on a miracle, it's pretty damming. The subs he made Vs Leipzig and yesterday show his lack of competence.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Name these top class coaches instead of just saying the usual generic stuff.
Tbf Sir Alex only won the CL twice in 25 years. Pep has got to 1 CL final in 10 years.
The CL is a tough competition.
Touchel won it in 5 months..
Neither of them would be losing to European canon fodder for starters, and would be progressing out of the group stages easily and not allowing their respective teams to fall into the Europa league. And unlike Ole they've racked up an enviable trophy count.
I was unaware that he started managing this January. Remarkable, that.Touchel won it in 5 months..
Off course it is better, I make it all about the the idea, not the person. Then again, people who likes to be cyber bullies here must get a response. Any poster have the right to post their idea about the manager in the MANAGER PERFORMANCE THREAD, even if these post does not taste good for you.
Sir Alex did not have one of the most expensive squads in the world until late 00s, when he reached 3 finals. He had also won previously 2 europeans trophies with the outsiders. I don't expect Ole to win every year the CL. To have one or two bad (or awful) years in Europe is normal, but losing to lesser teams like Istanbul, Leipzig, Villareal, Young Boys three or four times per year in Europe, is unacceptable for me.
So did Di Matteo ..Touchel won it in 5 months..
He also only lost 1-0 to Liverpool after they went down to 10 men at Anfield - he brought on a CB for an attacker and ceded wide areas dropping deep to deal with crosses. Liverpool had a lot of shots outside the box and totally dominated possession but never looked like scoring. Ole really needs to have a look at that game and learn some tactics. Jesse making the mistake he did doesn’t happen if Ole goes to a back 3, gets varane on and plays narrow encouraging crosses.
My last thought here and I will close this discussion from my side. He must win a big trophy at the end of the season with the world class squad he has now. If he fails, there is only one outcome here "thank you for your service but we need to bring someone else to take it from here".
Hater
It really isn't. By ridiculing the "Ole fanboys/cultists" you're turning dozens of people off from actually wanting to engage seriously with you, because if they're on the "I think Ole is generally doing a good job" side, they can't be sure if they're one of these fanboys you're calling deluded.
7 losses, and people need to dig a bit deeper into the record - 2 of the losses came against PSG, another 2 vs barcelona, 1 vs Leipzig. Apart from the 2 losses against Istanbul and YB, I don't think he's done that poorly in Europe as 5 of the 7 losses came against decent teams
What if he loses the CL final on penalties to PSG after battering them for the entire game and having a legitimate goal ruled out a week after losing the league on GD to City on 106 points? Do you see how ridiculously stupid statements like “if he doesn’t win a trophy he’s sacked” are? Context matters surely?
Yep, so thats actually 4 moths it took him to win it. My bad.
This is a poor analogy those managers have had a huge amount of domestic success. As it stands Solskjaer hasn't won anything of credibility in the entirety of his managerial career. You can give Pep / SAF a pass with the UCL, Ole not so much.
Always the same crap when we lose, people need to calm down and seriously get a life,
We're still in the champions league, we haven't gone out, we don't know if finishing 1st or 2nd is best yet.
To all the constant moaning little children, Ole with be here till the end of the season, he'll either win something or he'll leave, so suck it up moaners it'll be 1 way or the other soon enough.
We're still in the champions league, we haven't gone out, we don't know if finishing 1st or 2nd is best yet.
To all the constant moaning little children, Ole with be here till the end of the season, he'll either win something or he'll leave, so suck it up moaners it'll be 1 way or the other soon enough.
SAF also had to play the best team ever in two finals. We would have had at least one more cup.
Anyone who understand our squad should know no matter what tactical or coaching change, it was almost impossible to expect our players to be fully control in possession with one man down in away match. Our midfields don't have ball retention skill. Pogba & Bruno often caught off in possession when being pressed because they don't have the ball retention skill. Don't get me started with Fred's ball retention. You might think Donny probably has the skill (this debatable) but even if it's true, one player alone won't turn Bruno, Pogba, and Fred into good ball retention players. People thought we could just easily keep possession if we don't bring Varane and keep more midfielders to maintain the lead but in reality we never had the players to do so, thus Ole's option was always limited to trying defend the lead and play counter, and using that counter attack approach, we could actually lead 2-0 if Ronaldo wasn't going down easily or not running out steam.
So far I had seen more positivity in him that he can lead us to major trophy. It's not his fault that Bissaka made a red card while Lingard decided to be play stupid passback to lose the match. I judge him to end of the season.
So far I had seen more positivity in him that he can lead us to major trophy. It's not his fault that Bissaka made a red card while Lingard decided to be play stupid passback to lose the match. I judge him to end of the season.
Think the image of Ronaldo off for Lingard will become one of those images that encapsulates his reign as manager, like Moyes 80 crosses or LVG putting Jones on corners
What was he doing between hanging up his boots and going into management? There's a 23 year gap there, seems someone so good at managing must have been doing something football related in the intervening years.
We were playing against a bunch of farmers ffs. Our players, all of them are 10 times better than any of theirs. Nuff with excuses. You don’t have to defend Ole for every bloody thing. yesterday was a nightmare.
You mind finding me some examples of all these countless people calling him 'useless and inept', as most of the criticism I see is simply just saying he's not good enough and why.
No farmers in UCL!! This is not Europa League!! Even Glasgow Rangers couldn't qualify. Even Zenit managed to only lose 1-0 to Chelsea in Stamford Bridge.
Scholes is saying the other teams have proven managers that have won at the top level. Ole hasn't and is unproven in this regard. Not exactly controversial.
Well yes, if we normalize losing to the mighty Leipzig then his record is fine. That's the problem; we don't actually expect him to do well. Even when we loose, its because its a normal thing. We lost to Leipzig because even though we wanted a draw, he set us so negatively and we end up losing 3-0 and then he decided to bring a defender who had played 150 minutes the whole season. We lost to Villareal, even though the whole world knew De Gea's embarrasing record in penalties, and yet he decided to stick with him. We lost to PSG, even though it was obvious that the PSG players were tilting Fred to get a red card and he did not react.
Not really an excuse, the club's pursuit in the league domestically is to be able to qualify and compete in European competition. If the manager comes unstuck continually with no expectations of winning the league, what then is the point in having such a purpose to finish in the top 4 ?
The whole point of competing in the UCL is because it's the highest level of competition. It's more ridiculous excuses to cover what is none other than mediocre management in Europe. Ole as it stands is worse than Moyes in this regard.
I think a lot of this is fair and although I have real concerns about Ole the reality is we've made a good start in terms of results in the league and it's difficult for any side when they go down to 10. Where I would slightly disagree is that Ole decided to build his team in this manner, not looking to build a team that was great in possession and control the ball, it wasn't forced upon him.
Yet the change he made yesterday when we went down to 10 was to take off one of our 2 fastest attacking players. Admittedly Sancho wasn't playing well but keeping Pogba and Van De Beek on (albeit VDB then came off at half time), who are going to offer you less pace on the break, surely meant that the plan was to hold the ball and then it just became more muddled as the game went on to extent that we'd largely vacated the midfield by the end. If the plan is to counter then at least have a threat, we didn't have a shot for the last 70 minutes. Every manager makes mistakes but it just feels like he's still making more than the managers at our main rivals and he's not always learning from them, this season will really tell if he can over a campaign.
Indeed. I suppose the question is, do people think that Solskjaer is a manager of the same/similar calibre to Pep, Zidane, Klopp, Tuchel, Flick, Conte etc. If not, why do they think Manchester United, perhaps the biggest club in world football, with aspirations to win major trophies every season, should persist with a manager who is not top class.
If their answer is that trophies are of secondary importance, that they like Ole and love the idea of him remaining as manager for years to come, even if those years are barren in terms of success, then that's fine. It's not a perspective I share, but it is perfectly reasonable, even admirable.
We didn't look particularly comfortable on the astroturf last night from the beginning. That said, we were in control until the red card flipped the match on its head. From then on we hedged our bets on defending what we had, which obviously didn't pay off. Shit happens, let's just hope it doesn't happen again.
I'm sorry but 
There was a post on here years ago breaking this fallacy down. It was truly awe inspiring and should be pinned on this forum so we never have to hear this hot-take ever again.
But it's not just that. The whole 'but Sir Alex also had X, Y, Z games/tournaments/signings is a debate killer not because it's convincing but because in 26 years of managing United, of course he had pretty much every sort of result imaginable. If the standard is 'be worse than Sir Alex has ever been' then none of our managers should have been criticised, ever.
Mourinho is sixth on the table in December, long way behind the leaders or even the CL places? Sir Alex finished 11th in 1989 and 13th in 1990!
Van Gaal failed to get out of the group stages of the CL? So did Sir Alex in 2005 and 2011!
Van Gaal put us to sleep with his football, scoring only 62 goals in 2014/15? Well Sir Alex's United only scored 58 in 2004/05.
Moyes got utterly annihilated at Old Trafford by both Manchester City and Liverpool? So did Sir Alex in 2011 and 2009, respectively.
It's a pointless argument. Just because a manager is very much capable of replicating the lowest points of Sir Alex's tenure, it doesn't mean that he's capable of matching the highest ones. It's not a meaningful defence of anything. Sure, you can claim that defeats like yesterday's are not the end of the world and use previous similar debacles to underline that point that the club had not collapsed back then either - but nevertheless, those similar defeats were still bad results. They were still low points. They still warranted criticism.
Of course, if we do indeed fail to get out of the group stage of the CL again then Solskjaer will have done something that Sir Alex never managed: getting eliminated in the group stage twice in a row. I hope it doesn't come to that.
It will happen again. Not every week, but it will happen. We have a manager and senior coaches who don't have much experience at this level and struggle with in-game management. They are learning on the job and will hopefully improve in the years to come, but there will be plenty more nights like last night in the interim.
I never say Ole builds his team in this manner. A lot of report says he wants new DM/CM anyway so that alone shows you he wants to upgrade the current midfielder but couldn't buy everyone so he believes the best way is to play in this manner for this season.
I don't believe it was a mistake because Sancho is not rapid, he is more and less as quick as Pogba, while Ronaldo was isolated alone and he had the chance to go one v one situation or even had a shot or even take us into 2-0 but couldn't do it as his leg run out of steam. Ronaldo was always gonna do less defensive work to press given his age and that's the issue as we were one man down. We brought on Martial and Lingard who are the fastest one on that bench and faster than Sancho and still nothing changed.
Indeed. I remember already after the Istanbul embarrassment I was a bit tired of “let’s hope it doesn’t happen again” - I was sure it will happen and we have to accept that with a manager with little tactical pedigree we’ll lose those games to much inferior teams that just adopted right approach and had a better game plan. You’ll see in Europe and in Premier League. We are just not becoming a better coached and long tactically stronger team.
Its hardly as though decent teams can't draw games against Barcelona and PSG. People are acting as if these should be automatic defeats. Reminds me of Arsenal these days when they play City and people dony even expect them to get anything.
With three big transfers we should expect a bit of upheaval in the early phases, so I’m up for giving Ole this last season to win the league. Champions League is no big deal for now. I really don’t see anything from him to expect that to happen though, and I really don’t worry about finding a better manager. I just hope we’ve got a strategy in place that knits together the players we have with the manager, with long-term support for the direction of growth. Otherwise what’s the point, stick with Ole. The manager’s far less important than the structure and strategy.
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