At some point you are only as good as the players you have available.Lots of delusion that Poch or otherwise would have us challenging for the the title. This first XI/squad is miles away.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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What’s happened to Ole’s tactics? We seem to be regressing instead of improving on his initial 1-2 months. All his talk about the United way and attacking football has disappeared. Counterattacking teams like PSG and against the top 6 away from OT is fine but we’re looking more and more like we did under Jose. I mean even Pogba seems to have gone back to his old form.
Ole/the players are probably worried about injuries from playing a high pressing game with players not fit enough to do so.
Trust Ed Woodward and the Glazers to take the cheap and easy way out.
What's impressed me most till this point is good ability to see and change the obvious deficiencies. Hopefully he continues with the same approach during the summer.
Some of the obvious things , I'm hoping he will address are : buying a RW, a replacement for matic, a new RB, not wasting resources on a high profile CB, getting rid of Mata Sanchez, Valencia and Rojo and new contracts for rashford and hope for pogba and Herrera
Some of the obvious things , I'm hoping he will address are : buying a RW, a replacement for matic, a new RB, not wasting resources on a high profile CB, getting rid of Mata Sanchez, Valencia and Rojo and new contracts for rashford and hope for pogba and Herrera
It's how I see it. Ed Woodward & Glazers got lucky with Ole, they've finally made one decision right. We begins another cycle, better or worse who knows.
Remember just few months ago everyone was talking about how bad United's structure was, needed DoF etc...? It's gone. The board is on borrowed time for now and once things turn sour, none of them knows how to fix it, that I'm convinced. Woodward is still a shit director in my eyes, one positivity doesn't mean we should ignore all the shites he had done.
It's unfair to expect Ole to do everything.
Totally agree mate.
Number 2 is wrong. We don't need to spend less. You've added with that at the end of your post!
I think it's the other way around. Aside from a couple positions we have a strong first 11, but a load of really shite squad players. Overall I think Spurs have the better team because they have less weaknesses
He need to stop playing on the counter attack at home.
Against the likes of Watford and Wolves at home we need to be dominating games not let the opposition control the midfield.
Against the likes of Watford and Wolves at home we need to be dominating games not let the opposition control the midfield.
I don't think he has a choice. One of Jose Mourinho's principals was to be strong at home, yet we were still put on the back foot at home over and over. It has to do with quality. 2 workhorses in midfield, 2 centre backs and 1 fullback that can't play with the ball, 2 attackers that are inconsistent.
Matic and Herrera are too defensive, Jones and Smalling are box defenders, players when under pressure resort to habit and all of these players have the habit of playing safe rather than taking risks.
He has his work cut out. We are shit.
Ok. Let me rephrase. You could reasonably draw from what he said that he thinks we should waste less money.
And Watford had Pirlo and Modric in midfield with Aguero and Kane in attack? We were very good at home last season iirc with the same players.
totally agreed. can add pogba and herrera uncertain future to it for decline in our performance.
Your average PL player can look world class when they have momentum in their favour. What makes a top player is their response to adversity. Everything went well for Watford and they looked great, it gets very ugly when things arent going well for Watford.
When things don't go well for us, it ends up a disaster. The first instinct is to pass back or hoof it. Pogba was an absolute disaster but he never stopped trying to take risks and go forward, the same cannot be said for those behind him who constantly passed the buck (except Shaw who was fantastic).
You said we can't dominate games because we are lacking in individual quality, but Watford does not have tier one players either, yet that didn't stop them from completely dominating the game. Momentum was with them because they had the better plan and were far more organized as a team, which allowed them to take the initiative and control the game. They dominated because they had the better team. Individual quality scraped us through if anything.
Pretty much this. We've got a frail bunch, mentally and physically. We've seen certain other clubs in particular take a couple seasons to be able to sustain fitness levels needed for a continued pressing game and we're far from it. Not only that, it only took the first bout of fatigue to cripple the squad and our play has been disjointed since. This is before we even get into the need for replacing certain positions with better quality players
Games vs game I guessing. Hence why they are not higher up the table.
When Ole took charge in December, our pre-season started.
The training regime he implemented resulted in the injuries when we played Liverpool.
As we have seen we are still seeing players coming back to being fully match fit.
He has addressed the one area we were weak in since Fergie left. The Defence.
Before the injuries I would have put our midfield against any in the league.
Fully fit I still believe that.
He has improved all our players.
We had good attacking players. He has improved them.
Most of us love Ole because he gets us and what he has done.
But he does not have the credentials of Fergie when he took charge.
He is below all the contenders he was up against.
But he understands Football and wants to play the United Way.
We may not even get 4th spot this season.
But we will get to being the Manchester United we all grew up loving.
Believe.
The training regime he implemented resulted in the injuries when we played Liverpool.
As we have seen we are still seeing players coming back to being fully match fit.
He has addressed the one area we were weak in since Fergie left. The Defence.
Before the injuries I would have put our midfield against any in the league.
Fully fit I still believe that.
He has improved all our players.
We had good attacking players. He has improved them.
Most of us love Ole because he gets us and what he has done.
But he does not have the credentials of Fergie when he took charge.
He is below all the contenders he was up against.
But he understands Football and wants to play the United Way.
We may not even get 4th spot this season.
But we will get to being the Manchester United we all grew up loving.
Believe.
No I didn't. We didn't dominate this specific game because of poor individual quality. The difference between top players and not is that top players don't let their play spiral out of control into ineptitude. There were multiple points during that game where we could have turned things around (1st goal, half time, 2nd goal) but absolutely nothing changed, we just accepted that we were shite and hoped for the best.
This is a recurring theme of the past few years, where a poor 15 minutes can dictate the rest of the game.
I wouldn't trust our midfielders to dominate a spirited Sunday league team. You only have to press them at jogging pace to make them go back. The first half of the PSG first leg where we couldn't get the ball out from our half still disappoints. Awful in possession. Ole get some actual footballers
This is exactly how I feel too. It seems they struck lucky with Ole and the desperate need to restructure the scouting and football operations has largely been forgotten.
To be honest it's true that we should be able to dominate Watford at home. For some reason we seem to be going backwards maybe the opposition teams are getting better figuring out our tactics.
When Ole came in the players were having a lot of possession and playing well. Maybe now we have something to lose they've retreated back into their shells. All this talk of players wanting to play and entertain and actually doing it for the first 10-12 games seems to have evaporated. We're making every team look like the Harlem Globetrotters.
Has football ever been about what you 'should' do? Hasn't it always been about how you react to the situation? For example it is much easier to dominate a game if the other team play conservatively and accept their inferiority or if you are high on confidence and things are going your way. When I look at the best teams they react differently to being pressed and hurried than our players.
Ashley Young will hit the ball long down the line the vast majority of the time. I can confidently say that teams know this and force him down that path while preventing the striker from making the run. It's an easy way to regain possession. Barca, Juve and City all have centre backs that can play, they can beat pressing traps, find a runner and make runs consistently well.
Football players have a spectrum of performances. The worse a player is the lower their bottom level can be. The reality is that on a bad day many of our players will get outplayed because of their low bottom level. Top players on a bad day still look a level above most players.
In my opinion the article make a valid and important point:The article doesn't make a point that's here nor there...Let alone conclude the heading
You had to hire Ole for longer than expected in the begining cause of the results combined with his history at the club. BUT its an comfortable exit for Woodward and may let him think of: "thats it, problem solved, we are ready for the future" which is simply not the case. And if its like that it will increase the problems which are lying deeply in the club since Fergie retired. This is: no longterm strategy in terms of the squad(building), the football-philosophy, the implementing of young players combined with worldclass which you buy. For all that you need a DoF as soon as possible. And the time it takes is a sign for me that Woodward and the bosses dont realise how important this is.
And i am speaking of a DoF which has all the power and the cleverness which you need today. In these times, clubs already implementing more than one DoF for all the work which has to be done in modern football (example: BVB with Zorc as the DoF, then a person as a head of souting, and now Kehl as a position between the squad, the coach and Zorc), yet United are struggling to even install one (1).
Woodward should only be the head of finance and sponsor-strategy and should have nothing to do with things related to football or scouting or the squad. Therefor there should be a DoF, a head of scouting who works under the DoF, a youth coordinator who works under the DoF, and the DoF should do all the work a Dof is doing, hire coaches, build a squad based on an idea of the football you want to see and play, and so on.
Every fecking modern Club got a modern structure, i only know United who got Woodward and thats it, thats medieval mate. Until now its open if United realise this and get their act together to be prepared for the future.
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I guess at least under OGS, we are still scraping wins against the teams, we should expect to beat. Only exception was Wolves, who are one of the tougher midtable teams.
Can you expect to dominate lesser teams consistently with the players we have? I don't think so. On a good day, when we are high on confidence and teams are scared of us we can dominate a game. But, that's not always going to happen.
I think the last time we dominated lesser teams consistently was in Mourinho's first season. We had horrible finishing but we pinned back teams consistently. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Zlatan was a big part of that, he was always in players ears and telling them they weren't playing well enough.
In my opinion we are lacking players with courage and bravery. Some might call it leaders.
Yeah our first XI is a lot stronger than lesser teams, so yes we should actually be able to dominate them. Our squad is one of the best most expensive in history. Watfords whole first 11 probably cost less than Pogba.
But since when is a football game decided on paper? Players have a spectrum of performance and they can overlap with lesser players. Has there not been enough evidence that we have a lot of players that overlap too much with lesser players?
Yeah it's true that the wages and transfer fee's of our squad is not reflected in quality, but I would still say that our midfield and attack should dominate watfords, yet Watford mostly looked more dangerous.
Of course in the Premiere League there are no easy games, but we our performances have really been dipping lately. Thankfully OGS is not happy about it either. I don't expect us to dominate Liverpool, Chelsea or City, but at home against the lesser teams, we should be dominating possesion and chances.
This is where it started:
You alluded to quality - which I assumed as individual quality - as the reason why we failed to control the game and were put on the back foot against Watford and in many other games, which is what I don't agree with.
Watford does not have players like Modric or Kroos either - unless you are saying that they have better players than us, but that did not stop them from dominating the ball and controlling the game. They dominated not because they had the better players, habit or anything like that, but because they were better coached, were more organized as a team and had a good plan to control the game unlike us who didn't look like we had a plan to control the game, and whose players didn't even look like they know where they were meant to be or what they were meant to be doing.
Control is a team effort, if the team has not being coached well enough to be able to do so consistently and if the team goes into games without any proper plan to control the game, then they will usually struggle with it regardless of the players.
It's alright saying all these things but it doesn't matter if we don't have the players that can or are willing to play that way.
Let's see how we look after Solskjær has been afforded a whole preseason with this group of players and new recruitments to bed in and work on new tactics and formations. It would have hardly made sense for him to do anything drastic or outside of the box during an extended job interview.
Plus, there's very little time in between games, especially at this end of the season to start working new tactics. We've only got something like 8 games left in total.
As always, it's the football that matters. When Ole came in, we played with an aggresive and fluid attacking style that was extremely entertaining to watch. Then we proceeded to play counter attacking football that wasn't as good to watch but continued to bring results. Now we've gone into a jammy version of the latter where we're playing well here and there in amidst largely disjoint and mediocre football.
Ole has done a terrific job and I backed him beocoming permanant manager. However he naturally has lots to prove and the area where I am most unsure about him is our footballing style. He seems to have no set way based on what we've seen so far. A horse's for courses manager, perhaps? I'm not a fan of that. I feel we need to become a team that has a true identity rather than one that fidgets about from game to game and spell to spell. Or maybe this due to injuries and circumstances that we are playing this way? But his answers and comments don't really give a clear picture either.
Anyway, early days and we're all behind him but it'll be interesting to see how attack minded a manager he is, given all the talk early on was about 'this is Manchester United, we attack and play on the front foot' which was followed up by peformances where we played in line with that, only to deviate since.
Ole has done a terrific job and I backed him beocoming permanant manager. However he naturally has lots to prove and the area where I am most unsure about him is our footballing style. He seems to have no set way based on what we've seen so far. A horse's for courses manager, perhaps? I'm not a fan of that. I feel we need to become a team that has a true identity rather than one that fidgets about from game to game and spell to spell. Or maybe this due to injuries and circumstances that we are playing this way? But his answers and comments don't really give a clear picture either.
Anyway, early days and we're all behind him but it'll be interesting to see how attack minded a manager he is, given all the talk early on was about 'this is Manchester United, we attack and play on the front foot' which was followed up by peformances where we played in line with that, only to deviate since.
Adding to my previous post has to be mentioned that he took over a talented squad in complete shambles.
He's finally reaching the levels of
Frank Lampard as a midfielder.
Frank Lampard as a midfielder.
Think our regression is simply down to the large injury list last month that knocked our momentum, coupled with the fact that now we are in with a chance of top four, the players have got a little more cagey.
Also, we’re just not a very balanced side currently. Ole is doing beyond the best with what he has.
Also, we’re just not a very balanced side currently. Ole is doing beyond the best with what he has.
I expect that to fall into place after a proper offseason, getting transfers in, and a good preseason to get our fitness and tactics up to speed.
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