I think most fans understand that we won’t be successful this season but that doesn’t mean that anything less than 4th is acceptable. Where do you do draw the line? I mean it’s all well and good having a long term strategy, but firstly, the fans need to start seeing steady improvement which so far we haven’t and secondly the club needs to at least keep afloat(4th place finish at minimum) or we’re going to continue to lose money and current and potential young fans to clubs that are winning. This idea that we can’t have a long term strategy and remain somewhat competitive is rubbish. This club is fecking colossal, make no mistake about that, but another two seasons finishing 5th/6th/7th or lower will hurt us.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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I think most fans understand that we won’t be successful this season but that doesn’t mean that anything less than 4th is acceptable. Where do you do draw the line? I mean it’s all well and good having a long term strategy, but firstly, the fans need to start seeing steady improvement which so far we haven’t and secondly the club needs to at least keep afloat(4th place finish at minimum) or we’re going to continue to lose money and current and potential young fans to clubs that are winning. This idea that we can’t have a long term strategy and remain somewhat competitive is rubbish. This club is fecking colossal, make no mistake about that, but another two seasons finishing 5th/6th/7th or lower will hurt us.
First of. Fourth place is not realistic with this squad. It is possible, but not realistic. If you want to draw a line on unrealistic goals, so be it. Second? You haven’t seen improvement? Wow. You really should watch more closely and read a lot of statistics. It’s not only about results, although with a bit more luck another four points should be on the board. People keep going on about tactics, like they have a masters in it. And all they come up with is a few minor tweaks and formation change. But when you look again at the statistics. Third. This club has 480 million fans or something.
Do you really think a few years building will be the downfall of the club?
There could be a multitude of reasons why Pereira was picked: his set piece ability, his workrate defensively, and so on. Even so, how many 17 year old players are even considered part of their first team squad in the league? How many minutes have other comparable talents had thus far? Like I said, it's one game. If it's a pattern two or three months from now, then by all means, vent away. The season will be a long one and after the int'l break we will see more of the squad being used. This will be the avenue through which the kids will get their chances to break through. The onus will be on them to do so.
Ole isn't daft, and he's brought through plenty of kids for Molde - one who was even younger than Mason is now. He sees them every day in training and we have to trust him to make the right judgement call.
Of course if we finish 5/6/7 over top 4 we will be hurt more....
But the way it looks, we won’t be getting top 4 this season. We have a thin squad lacking talent in key positions.
We can do better next season if we pick up some stronger midfielders, striker, and a right wing.
Do you think we can’t find better CMs and RWs than we currently have if we finish 10th over 4th? No. We can always improve this shit squad and do better next season. As long as we don’t get relegated
Re the boldened, that's a very good point that I hadn't fully considered.
And on the performances, I'd say on the balance of play, we deserved to win all of the games we've had thus far, but I'd say Saturday's was the weakest performance with so many unenforced errors at the end of the first half giving Southampton the sniff they required to get themselves a foothold in the game. Our big players let us down after they weathered the initial Southampton pressure and we started off decently in the second and should have scored at least twice before Southampton got their equaliser. It's poor finishing and a worrying lack of confidence which is messing us up atm. The former can be fixed with training, but the latter is a deeper issue.
I hope once we get the players back from the international games, Ole finally gives Fred a chance at the double pivot and move Pogba further up. The sooner that can happen, I think we'll see a different team and one with much more cutting edge and physically imposing in attacking areas.
Ole is struggling to get any sort of creativity / control with the players he has at his disposal.
The insistence to keep playing Lingard is worrying, maybe even lead to his downfall.
Bringing Matic on to get Pogba up the field? surely Fred would be a better shout ?
The insistence to keep playing Lingard is worrying, maybe even lead to his downfall.
Bringing Matic on to get Pogba up the field? surely Fred would be a better shout ?
I think Fred returned to the squad woefully short of match fitness and Ole is doing his best to shield him from criticism at this point.
We have had 4 games now? Surely he is fit enough to be on the bench?
I struggle to see where our next win is coming from?
He sacrificed top 4 for a the Europa League. Very obvious in the last 3-4 games of the season.
Only a fool looks at the league so early on. But what I do look is performance, 1) Chelsea way ahead of us, can see a clear identity and pattern of play, the manager is genuinely trusting two young players and they are delivering. 2) Arsenal again they are performing well, have a good style of play and you can see progress.
This is what’s meant by building something and patience.
Btw. Spurs, Arsenal have had more difficult starts then us. So yes league position is misleading. But give it until November and you’ll see the gap.
Or because he’s older and ‘more experienced’. He’s not a good player, and was less likely to make an impact going forward than Greenwood. This has been evidenced by all the times he has failed to make an impact in the past.
I agree that most teams don’t rely on 17 year old forwards. But so what? Most teams don’t have Mason Greenwood, and most teams also have senior forwards so that they don’t have to play their 17 year old forward. Most teams’ 17 year old forwards don’t even have a squad number, let alone have a 17 year old who had his #54 squad number replaced with #26 this season. So we can stop hiding behind Mason’s age. He obviously shouldn’t be judged as all other 17 year olds. He is a 17 year old first teamer. Just like Oliver Skipp was a 17/18 year old first team member for Spurs last season.
Again, I have no issue with him not being first choice. But we do not have any other forwards. Andreas Pereira isn’t amongst the ones we have. Greenwood plays on the right as a forward. He has come from the bench every game this season to play on the right. He played on the right throughout pre-season. However, when we lost a forward, we picked Andreas ahead of him instead of playing the next forward we had (after all, we had just lost a forward to injury). We don’t have MANY forward options, but we do have one. He’s been in the squad for a reason. He’s cover. Well we needed cover due to injury, yet we chose a midfielder instead of a forward. A rubbish midfielder at that.
I don't know, most players got at least 4 or 5 halves of football during preseason to build them up for the current way of play. Fred had what two closed door friendlies?
Well lets wait and see, he has got 2 weeks now to work with some of these players.
Unless Ole lets him go off on honeymoon.
Weird how you have the whole summer and you plan to get married when the pre season starts..
He presumed he was going to be in the Brazil Copa America squad. Where he got that idea from. He has confidence if nothing else.
Great, so what happened for the other 34-35 league games that season? He took over a team who finished level with City the season before and actually regressed the team. Beating the likes of Anderlecht, Zorya Luhansk et al told us nothing. And what of what he did in his last season? Do you seriously think Ole is going to bring us that low?
Chelsea are not ahead of us, and if you can't see a clear plan or identity from Ole's Utd, then I don't think football is the sport for you. They were getting outplayed at home for the whole of the second half to Sheffield Utd on Saturday. Name me one game this season where that's happened to us?
Arsenal are displaying all the same frailties as last season and in letting Koscielny go and bringing in Luiz, they have actually weakened themselves defensively. Bringing in Pepe to an already firing frontline was pointless, unless they know one of Lacazette or Aubameyang is off.
Spurs got away with a point to City when it should have been 5, 6, or 7. They also lost to Newcastle at home. Not much different to us, and if anything, they've been much worse in their actual performances.
I'm using the league table because you seem to have this belief based on not very much that we're awful. Poch has a worse record than Ole in his last 15 games, yet who is the one who is the focus of your ire?
You talk about building something and patience, yet show nothing of it towards the manager of your own team. Poch has had the time and patience to build his team, Emery had a full season where he looked nowhere near to the Champions League, and Lampard took Derby from 6th, to 6th last season. Yet, according to you, the latter two are better than Ole, despite him outperforming them all on almost every metric thus far.
Zero self awareness
Some people do not seem to realise that even when you are building a football team you need at least half of them who are world class or at least close to world class. Then you get other things in place. Some of you are either too young to see what SAF did at United. United already had world class players when he came to United. They had the best two midfield players in the UK and probably at that moment in time the best midfield player in the World. Certainly Robson at his peak would get into the world eleven at that time.We also had one of the best CBs around. As for English League we had top players too in Whiteside, Wilkins, Muhren, Stapleton, Duxbury, Jesper Olson, Gordan Strachan etc.
Yes he had class players and still he had to rebuilt the side. Ole does not have anyone apart from Pogba and maybe a future talent in Martial and AWB. That is it. So all this talk of transition has been going on for too long now. As you transition all the world class players are going to leave and then you have to relpace them again and it is a never ending vicious cycle unless the board spends a lot of money and get a better manager who has the reputation to get some world class players to come to play for him even without the CL experience and see the light at the end of the tunnel for them.
Yes he had class players and still he had to rebuilt the side. Ole does not have anyone apart from Pogba and maybe a future talent in Martial and AWB. That is it. So all this talk of transition has been going on for too long now. As you transition all the world class players are going to leave and then you have to relpace them again and it is a never ending vicious cycle unless the board spends a lot of money and get a better manager who has the reputation to get some world class players to come to play for him even without the CL experience and see the light at the end of the tunnel for them.
It is well and good to criticise "some people" whilst failing to realise that we tried this with Jose, yet 3 years on we are still transitioning?
I am struggling to see where you are coming from on this?
We have a major problem that is beyond the manager. As things stand, the only way to fix this it seems i getting rid of every player in the next 2 windows and starting fresh.
That’s the way to go! Insult those who don’t see this beautiful masterplan you’re referring too.
A manager will receive patience when things are moving forward. Clearing the deck is a good first step. No finding replacements and losing quality players like Herrera and Lukaku is two steps back. Next season we will struggle to keep DDG and Pogba. That’s a lot of quality to replace.
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At least Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs look like they can score goals. We struggle to create chances. I would rather see a team create chances, with our defence we should be able to keep teams out.
Unfortunately, our attack is probably worse than Wolves.
Less pithy remarks, more actual arguments please kiddo. Otherwise your 3 year long stint in the newbies will last for a while longer yet...
Don't see any insults there tbh. If someone makes an idiotic point, then they should be called out for making said idiotic point. Furthermore, I backed up what I said with an example of Lampard's Chelsea being a shambles with their second half performance v newly promoted Sheffield United. I could also have easily chosen other games like Leicester at home, and erm... Us on the first day of the season to punctuate just how shitty a point it was. If anything, I let him off lightly.
Not finding replacements is all well and good as a stick to beat Ole with if you think buying players is within his remit and not with Ed and Matt Judge's. He clearly identified Longstaff in midfield and publicly stated that a replacement striker would be bought if Lukaku was sold. Both didn't occur, and the blame for that lies with the people in charge of negotiations.
Keeping the players who left is also all well and good, but the same posters complaining about them going would have been the same people complaining that their still here. He's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. We've had 2 managers come in (LvG being the exception, only he went and fecked it up by selling decent squad players who hadn't let anyone down) and be afraid of making changes and instead sought to evaluate the same players who let us down time and time again, and then not sell them either due to their own incompetence (Moyes) or because their presence was a convenient get out (Jose). Ole hasn't done that. For the first time, we have a manager who is not interested in self-preservation, but has the best interests of the club at heart.
He's had one hand tied behind his back, and the easiest thing in the world for him to do was to keep those players in, but he hasn't. He's thought like a fan and discarded them. He now deserves the time and patience of the fans and the club so that he can go about rebuilding the squad from the ground up. We finished 6th last season and he came to us at one of our lowest ebbs. He's been severely constrained, and yet he's still done extremely well to get the squad in a such a position that the board now have no choice but to do a full rebuild.
I didn't want to make a new thread and I know Howson is a divisive personality, but I think Simon Wadsworth talks a lot of sense here, it's a balanced and calm look at the reality of the situation we are currently in.
And you just demonstrated your lack of self awareness again.
I am where I am because that's where I want to be. Posting limit is a blessing. Otherwise, I would probably already be banned for calling people what they are.
You conveniently forgot that Spurs have faces City and Arsenal away in their opening 4 fixtures and have actually come away with 2 points from them. Our run has been easier than theirs and we are only ahead on GD.
Yes we do have a problem and the problem is the Board and the managers they hire. Jose was a disaster only in the last season. Yes he had got players like Zlatan and Pogba to come and play for him. He made bad transfers too but he did win us two trophies in EL and the League Cup and got us to a 2nd place too.
Ole does not have the capacity to do so. You can all throw in all the British youngsters but he is not going to win anything. Simply because no one is going to come to play for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Players come for three reasons. One if the money is very good. But money is very good for top players at most of the top clubs. Then they want to win trophies. They will not win trophies at Manchester United in the next few years. 3. They want to have the hope of winning and wanting to play under a top class manager. Manchester United also do not have that.
This is why when SAF was there we were able to get top class players because they knew they would win something and at the same time get paid well and become famous playing for United and also playing for Sir Alex Ferguson.
We could get rid of every player and start afresh but we still will not get the top world class players to win trophies with a manager who has never won anything of any prominence. Top class players will not come to be part of a struggling team.
At what point did Lampard's Chelsea become the ideal to look up to? 
Besides the 4-0, which shouldn't have escaped anyone, they have struggled in all their other games so far this season. It's a strange way to bash Ole.
Besides the 4-0, which shouldn't have escaped anyone, they have struggled in all their other games so far this season. It's a strange way to bash Ole.
Of course you are munchkin, I'm sure you're delighted to be where you are... I mean, why else would you be posting in the main forum when you could so easily be having razor sharp conversations with other likeminded people in the newbies forum?
After all, there's nothing stopping you from staying "where you want to be"
I agree that the board are to blame, nothing will change until the changes are made, not just in the managerial position.
I don't think EL and 2nd should be celebrated as an achievement for Manutd because as you said no player will come on the promise we will compete for EL or 2nd place?
Ole is not a manager to win us leagues either but I feel he is a good transitional manager for us. He will get the team ready for the next manager who will not only attract players but make our current bunch better.
Everyone points at Rashford, Pogba being mediocore but when you look at Pep and Klopp, could you imagine what these two would be doing under their guidance?
I just cannot point my finger to why we are so bad, our team isn't bad. We have one of the best GK's, CB, RB, CM and very talented strikers.
Spurs have also lost to Newcastle at home and were close to a similarly disappointing draw v Villa on the first day.
They've been worse than us thus far this season, and its only because of VAR that they aren't further behind.
Yeah they lost to Newcastle but they did beat Villa, even if they were not that great. Point is we could not break down a 10 man Soton, so we are not really that good ourselves. We got beat by Palace too, who are far worse than Newcastle.
Newcastle will probably win at OT with their style of play.
I'd argue breaking down teams is not the issue we have. It's not taking the chances we create. We created 9 big chances across the 4 games which under normal circumstances would be scored. We've missed 6 of them.
Also, Newcastle are worse than Palace.
Breaking teams is a problem for Ole's team. There is no creativity.
Except that's not even remotely true this season. We're 4th in terms of xG for, with only City, West Ham, and Liverpool ahead of us. We're comfortably ahead of Arsenal (9th), Chelsea (5th) and Spurs (7th) and if you take into account xG against as well as xG for, we're actually second only to City.
https://understat.com/league/EPL
You say that but Poch and Klopp have both been notoriously bad at subs, and influencing matches from the sidelines; they've only just started to improve at this, though that is debatable with Poch.
By your argument, they are not PL managers since they have that weakness, and we both know that is inaccurate.
Pogba is never mediocre. He is among the best midfield players but when you use him in the wrong position then it is bound to be terrible. For the life of me I cannot understand what Ole is doing or trying to do. The team makes too many basic mistakes. Too many. I do not know what Phelan and Carrick does on the pitch. Last year Pogba was telling that Carrick told him to push forward and get into the box more and that is why he is getting more chances. Now Pogba is the holding midfield player. So something is wrong.
You simply do not play your most creative player as a holding player. Since he started playing everyone knows how he plays and so why suddenly now he has been asked to play in that position. As a manager you do not call your players, Rashy, Ash, Bosh, Haz, Tone, jlingz etc. These players know they will not win anything under Ole. So all we will get is mediocre players.
We need someone who has a track record of competing with the "big" boys. We are no longer big boys. We may have the money but on the pitch we are a mediocre team. Look around Europe and get someone who has been able to compete in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Seria A, Ligue 1 or even the Eredivisie. They all will be better than Ole. They all would have managed bigger clubs than Molde or Cardiff.
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