Personally, i'm at the point of fecking off from everything related to online discussions about football. This will be my post number 1992, if you do a quick, but low, estimate and say that each post takes 5 mins, we're talking a minimum of 166 hours, which is clearly not healthy in any perspective whatsoever.
Unfortunately there's not much room for intelligent debates with a bit of perspective, hoping for the majority to notice that everything isn't black and white is apparantly a bit too much to hope for. There's too many, and lets be somewhat blunt here, complete idiots presenting absurd theories as facts without even getting the basics right. So you can't even register what we're doing on the pitch, but you do have all the answers for that the club should do next, mint, join the lot of taxi drivers wo have all the answers to Brexit and everything related to immigration. You'll have people who claim we aren't pressing high, that teams are happy to allow us to have the ball, that we're only a counter attacking side, that we don't actually play as a team and that all the goals we've scored so far this season are down to individuals, grass is always greener on the other side. There's the moaning about how it's going to be difficult to find a decent manager as anyone coming in will have to accept not being backed.
I mean, really ? Last time i checked, we've invested over £850mill in transfer fees alone since Fergie retired, spread over 4 managers, and our squad still resembles swiss cheese in terms of holes...Every one of them has been given full autonomy, to the point where we still have a solid core of players from Fergies days while the managers have mostly been replacing the players that the previous manager brought in..But yeah, we're most certainly not backing them, great logic there. At times, reading some of the shit that gets posted here reminds me of the Clayton Bigsby sketch by Chappelle.
In terms of the style we're trying to play, naive or not, good enough manager to get it working or not, it's still pretty damn obvious what we're trying to do on the pitch. We generally stick with a high defensive line where we try to win the ball back high up the pitch with close distance to the oppositions goal so we can take advantage of players out of position. We want defenders that are comfortable on the ball, both in terms of getting forward with it and being able to stay calm and pass our way out of trouble if the opposition presses us high up the pitch. Our goal against Crystal Palace is a pretty decent example, win the ball back high up the pitch and play quick one touch passes. Crystal Palace isn't in balance whatsoever, when James gets the ball inside their box we have as many attackers inside the box as they have defenders (3), with passing alternatives as well because they haven't had time to get back in position, their entire right hand side was completely exposed. Essentially it's the result of two things, we stand high up the pitch and when we lose the ball we immediately try to win it back by collective pressure instead of falling off to form a tight defense. Obviously it has it's risk, easily visible for Crystal Palace's second goal. For the vast majority of the match against Leicester we were high up the pitch, essentially giving them no passing options go forward to the point where they just kept giving the ball away without getting close to the midfield. The majority of this is visible in stats, how high up the pitch we stand, how much we press and how much we sprint, but people still argue against it and pretend we're doing something else. Weird. Do we struggle against compact teams ? Sure as hell, but we're still trying to form triangles out wide where the player with the ball should always have two passing options close by, where we try to outnumber them wide in order to force them to move another player out of position. Great success so far ? Nah, but that's hardly expected either, we're just getting started and we've been without two key players for too many matches, we'll be without 3 given Rashfords injury, expecting a squad that was already thin with attacking options to instantly cope with that is just absurd. Playing against teams that defend deep is one of the most challenging aspects of modern football, i'm hardly surprised that we haven't unlocked that bit yet, for a long period it was an easy tactic for teams in the league to stiffle Liverpool under Klopp by simply staying deep and compact, allowing Liverpool to dominate the ball without being a threat. It took Klopp a long time to get the right players, balance their playing style in order to last the full season and adapt to different type of oppositions. By all means, it's highly unlikely that Ole will ever get us that far, but people are comparing present day Liverpool with what we're doing and completely ignore that it took Liverpool a long long time to get there, and during that time plenty of fans in here took the piss out of how Klopp was never going to achieve anything with Liverpool.
Ref the structure of the club and the overall situation we're in, it's another black and white scenario that i don't fully understand. Again, since Fergie retired we've given every manager full autonomy to improve the squad, we've spent over £850mill on transfer fees, wages have been increased a lot. The notion that it's our current owners (and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon) holding us back has certainly nothing to do with the amount of money we spend both on transfer fees and wages ( a lot ). That they are refusing to change how the club functions, that Woodward is blocking things because he wants to hold all the power, stooges etc, seems to be very naive given the money involved here. As if it's some divine plan to spend absolute mental fees on transfers and increase our wage bill to the 4th highest in football with about feck all to show for it, but apparently all they think about is the dividends
People need to take into account that the club has operated in certain ways for a very long time. Fergie needed, and had, full autonomy at the club, we then gave the job to a similar type of manager in Moyes, someone who refuses to give the go to sign a player unless he's had ample time to scout the player himself, then to Van Gaal who has no issues with allowing someone else to make decisions on player signings, happy that the club had already done extensive scouting on Shaw and Herrera, then over to a manager that needs full autonomy, and then some, in Mourinho. I mean, it's hardly a surprise that things haven't progressed in terms of how the club operates when we've generally viewed finding the right manager as the solution to a bigger problem, and the majority of them have had the same stern view on having full control. Things take time. Lets not forget the amount of people in here who took the piss out of Liverpools transfer committee when Rodgers was around...
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/feature...utd-sporting-director-ed-woodward-van-der-sar
We need to be realistic and accept that there will be plenty of downs and a few ups. The first 11 isn't bad, but there isn't much depth at the moment and we desperately need our key players to stay fit. Given the uncertainty surrounding Tottenham and Chelsea, it's hardly impossible to finish in the top 4 and hopefully build on that.
