Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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The thing is, if Ole changes a 'winning formula' in the next game and it doesnt work out, he'll be crucified for not knowing what he's doing. Mata was played at the 10 a couple of times, most notably against West Ham, where the game completely passed him by. It's not like we have many options. I bet you if he starts Pereira on Sunday, this place would be up in arms.
They did but your comment assumes that Brighton will play the same way as Partizan?
It's not like we haven't played the same 4231 vs deep defences and failed every time this season...
Just because i'm not getting carried away by tonight's performance against extremely weak opposition, i have an agenda?
Could we show some respect to Partizan players and not call them farmers?
Latest Ole position:
We've 4 wins from 5,admittedly decent fixtures, yet the Bournemouth performance suggested we haven't improved at all really.
Pros at the moment
Rashford and Martial in good form.
Team spirit still looks positive (as opposed to previous tenures where sack looked imminent)
There have been (all too few) glimpses of good football leading to goals. Goals v arsenal, Liverpool, Norwich, partizan and some early in season were all the result of the type of football I like to see.
Cons
No indication whatsoever that we will deliver against any solid pl team that performs well and invites us to break them down.
I still don't think Maguires partner has been found and though he hasn't been bad, lindelof has been very disappointing. I thought he'd really kick on this year. Left back is a shambles but not on solskjaer at the moment as Shaw had a good season.
Incredibly inconsistent. It would take a huge run of form to actually build confidence again.
Summary
I think solskjaer is safe until March or April no matter what. I love the man, desperately want him to succeed and am more optimistic than others that he actually has some sort of plan. All this said, our season depends on 10 points at least, from our next 12. Anything less and it really is just an endless cycle of false dawns.
We've 4 wins from 5,admittedly decent fixtures, yet the Bournemouth performance suggested we haven't improved at all really.
Pros at the moment
Rashford and Martial in good form.
Team spirit still looks positive (as opposed to previous tenures where sack looked imminent)
There have been (all too few) glimpses of good football leading to goals. Goals v arsenal, Liverpool, Norwich, partizan and some early in season were all the result of the type of football I like to see.
Cons
No indication whatsoever that we will deliver against any solid pl team that performs well and invites us to break them down.
I still don't think Maguires partner has been found and though he hasn't been bad, lindelof has been very disappointing. I thought he'd really kick on this year. Left back is a shambles but not on solskjaer at the moment as Shaw had a good season.
Incredibly inconsistent. It would take a huge run of form to actually build confidence again.
Summary
I think solskjaer is safe until March or April no matter what. I love the man, desperately want him to succeed and am more optimistic than others that he actually has some sort of plan. All this said, our season depends on 10 points at least, from our next 12. Anything less and it really is just an endless cycle of false dawns.
Oh I agree... And that kinda proves my point, does it not? The obvious answer being "well Mata in a 10 against West Ham away isn't as good a tactic as Mata in a 10 at home to so and so" because ...well, obviously! Discerning those things are what managers are supposed to be for.
If you canvassed fan opinion (by which I mean a reasonably culled, overly invested fan opinion, disenfranching anyone belonging to a facebook group of any kind) most would've told you 4 years ago that Mata in the 10 was a good idea... and also a much better idea at home than away...Especially traditionally physical aways like West Ham, where his lack of strength and time on the ball is likely to prove ineffective....
Again, this is fecking basic seeming stuff... but stuff it seems to take every new United manager a whole season to learn. Which is frankly insane.
One of the things Ole is being currently celebrated for, is the deadweight shifting sales of Lukaku, Sanchez and Fellaini....Ironic lack of foresight notwithstanding, all of which were sales most fans were calling for way ahead of time... We're literally celebrating one of the highest paid managers of one of the richest clubs in the world, belated reaching the same conclusion as a bunch of forum gimps!.... Which is why I'm reserving real enthusiasm for when our performances seem genuinely planned, rather than randomly chanced.
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Nobody asked you to get carried away. Maybe don't come in to the manager thread ranting and criticising straight after a good performance that most normal people enjoyed though. That's what someone without an agenda would do.
This is sadly true. Enjoyable win but that’s where it ends, I still have very little optimism in Ole when he goes up against solid opposition.
Well according to a lot of you on here, we did that tonight.
Why can't "fans" actually enjoy a win for what it is and stop moaning for one second?
I don't think Ole is just realizing it now, i think that his options are incredibly limited. With injuries to all our strikers and Pogba, the only other choices were Pereira and Lingard, who is a shadow of his former self these days. I remember being linked with Coutinho in the summer, how we could have done with him now at the 10 position. But for one reason or another, it did not materialize.. besides the player being uninterested, my speculation is that perhaps we could not afford his wages. Not without offloading the likes of Sanchez and Lukaku first, anyways.
Is everything ok? That an incredibly miserable outlook.
How is observations i witnessed multiple times throughout tonight's match ranting and criticising?
I acknowledged the win tonight but what we perform like vs Brighton is much more important to me. Is it not to you?
What i saw tonight was that we played the same way as we normally do. Lots of static movement, sideways passing and too many touches on the ball slowing play down. The goals we scored were from magic individual play. It wasn't an emphatic performance tonight by my standards. The only difference was the level of opponent we faced.
There is no agenda. I just can't celebrate tonight's win, because i'm fully aware of how much we still need to improve.
There was heaps of nice link up play for the first hour. Between Rashford and Martial in particular. We could have scored 7.
I really hope he isn't safe no matter what, could be a complete disaster. We played some great football tonight but they were absolutely awful, both technically and tactically.
Jury is still very much out on ole and if our points per game doesn't start to improve in the league he needs to go.
It was much better tonight & where I give him a lot of flack it’s deserved & tonight in fairness was obviously a lot better, but the opposition was terrible in all honesty it’s hard to really gauge too much from where we are right now on that game.
Unfortunately Oles previous performances and results against better opposition in the league suggest he isn’t the best man for the job & I feel we can do much better as a club. First half tonight was enjoyable at least for first time in a while
Unfortunately Oles previous performances and results against better opposition in the league suggest he isn’t the best man for the job & I feel we can do much better as a club. First half tonight was enjoyable at least for first time in a while
I really don't know how you made this conclusion after reading my post.
Maybe you misunderstand. I agree. The link-up play between Martial & Rashford in the final third were the only positives of the match for me. But you can say they were only able to get so much space between themselves due to the level of opponent we were against. They afforded us a lot of space to do our thing.
Against tougher opponents, there won't be as much space for them both. We just saw that very thing vs Bournemouth where they were both starved of service. I saw the same thing at times tonight, when Partizan were very deep and we were starting our build-up with Maguire or Fred/McT, the amount of sideways/backwards passing due to no options ahead of the ball was there to see.
That is what i'm talking about, when i say i want to see what we're like vs Brighton at the weekend. As i know this type of match has been our main weakness for as long as i can remember now.
I agree. We don't know how players will develop. For long time we were thinking Rashford is sure shot #9 but turns out not. I'm just happy he' getting minutes in the front 3 at this point.
Our only creative midfielder is injured. The others are more of the water carrying variety. We can come in here and throw that at Ole but in reality it's what he inherited. Had Dybala or Eriksson agreed to come things may have been different.
We knew going into the season creativity would be an issue when depending on the likes of Fred, Matic, Pereira, Mata, Lingard etc. There's no magic wand or training drills that will get these guys unlocking defenses. Incremental improvement is about as much as can realistically be expected without signings.
Bournemouth was our 4th away game in 11 days. We've still won 4 out of the last 5 so that has to suggest something is working a bit better at least.
Well, again... without wanting to seem cynically over-negative after a pretty good win, the reason Pogba has been MIA for nearly 2 months now, is entirely because Ole played him for the full 90 minutes in a pithy League Cup game, despite being notably only half-fit!... And whilst I did greatly enjoy our performance tonight, I also became increasingly annoyed by every passing minute beyond the 3rd goal, that any one of Rashford, Martial, Maguire or AWB stayed on the field... Because you'd like to think any manager who'd lost their best player very recently by needlessly risking them in a cup game, would be extra-wary of losing more of his first XI (especially those who'd only just returned to fitness - like Martial or AWB, who both played 90 - or were severely overplayed, like Rashford) by playing them in a competition where we already topped our group, and were in significantly less danger of decline than our disastrous League campaign!
I'm not gonna get into whose responsible for our transfer window. None of us really know, and anyone on either extreme of the Ole-Woodward blame spectrum can probably make a viable case for any of it.... However common sense dictates that it's hard to give Ole all the credit for our (so far) successful signings, whilst also fully absolving him of our horrendous squad management... just as it's hard to blame Woody solely for our pathetically overpaid squad, whilst pretending he had nothing to do with Ole's player recruitment. Common sense dictates that the state of our squad, our team, and our general style of play, has at least something to do with the manager that's been in charge for nearly 11 months now. Agreeing with that doesn't mean you're excusing the Glazer regime, or being irrationally impatient... Just as questioning it doesn't necessarily mean you're a daft nostalgic fantasist!
As for Coutinho... From what I remember, that was a very fleeting late window thing, no? We were never really in for him (and he was prominent enough at 'Pool to be aware of the backlash were he ever to do so, making it pretty improbable) ... Unlike Bruno Fernandes, for example, whom we were linked to throughout the entire window, was practically begging for us to sign him, and has subsequently proved to be a proper talent.... but whom (according to who you believe) we either weren't in for (making our scouting system potentially shitter than Goal.com and The Caf!) decided against due to price (despite spending £80m on Harry Maguire) or was turned down by Ole/United-Way Inc for not being young or British enough (making us the obsolete football equivalent of the "Ok Boomer" meme")..... None of which reflects particularly well on us.
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Since newcastle we have had 4 good performances, today norwich liverpool chelsea, and 2 bad vs partizan away and Bournemouth. There is a decent lift in form at a time when fans were talking about 'the next 5 games'.
If we win this weekend we could technically be in 6th and a point behind arsenal for the international break, with Pogba to come back in and hopefully dry gun powder for january. If we can add some creativity in january and keep key players fit I think Ole could stay in the job til end of season. We are good enough to get results - just not convinced it will ever be pretty
If we win this weekend we could technically be in 6th and a point behind arsenal for the international break, with Pogba to come back in and hopefully dry gun powder for january. If we can add some creativity in january and keep key players fit I think Ole could stay in the job til end of season. We are good enough to get results - just not convinced it will ever be pretty
I mean blimey.
It was a risky gamble in some ways to start such a strong side tonight given that some players are looking tired and we have a big match on Sunday but I think Ole got the call right. After the international break the fixtures are going to pile up and at least we have the Europa League virtually put to bed now, although there's still 1st place to get in the group which avoids the champions league dropouts.
Yeah the real test will be on Sunday, still unsure whether Brighton are going to come out and attack us like Ole wants or decide to just adopt the sit in approach and make us break them down which we look clueless trying to do.
Mot sure what this has got to do with watching the game last night.
Warning signs.......
We havent been able to break teams since forever...............for once we showed some intent last night and the movement up front was really good. Maybe a warning sign of things to come
They will do that of course. We still have the ability to win a game like that though.
Spot on. Pretty entertaining game with some nice goals but has no bearing on Oles standing. It'll be two steps back again come Sunday.
I guess many are the players who will stay home from a six timezone travel to Astana now when it is already a deal done. Probably why Ole choose a relatively strong team. Great though that most of the players can stay at home from that world trip.
We will find out after Sunday.
He's up against a half-decent side again this weekend at home - let's see how he fares. I feel he's dropping points and delivering a bland performance again.
I've seen nothing in the league for me to be in anyway confident. This is the exact sort of game we've dropped points in.
It's normally the away fixtures that I feel we have no chance in. The OT fixtures as a minimum tend to have better performances, bar Palace.
Dude has managed 25 teams?! I will absolutely defend Ole against this no mark journeyman looking to make a name for himself off the back of someone else's success.More bitter than David Moyes.
So what you’re saying is that once Ole gets us into League 1... our football will be good week in week out when we’re playing the likes of Mk Dons, Oxford, Fleetwood etcMot sure what this has got to do with watching the game last night.
Warning signs.......
We havent been able to break teams since forever...............for once we showed some intent last night and the movement up front was really good. Maybe a warning sign of things to come
I'm saying nothing.
Was making a point orginally about what game he was watching and he kept going on about warning signs after claiming it wasnt a good game on the football side of things.
If we are going to be negative about everything by saying warning signs after a good attacking display, I was sarcastically pointing out maybe it a warning sign of better play to come.
Yeah I know what you did. Don’t think you know what I did.
Fecking hell. The amount of revisionism in there is simply baffling. Lukaku ? Decent player, but ultimately he was lazy as feck and incredibly unprofessional. He was decent his first season here but was fecking shite last year. Sanchez was deadweight from the moment he arrived. Scored againt Arsenal? Wow, that accounts for about 50% of his output here.
Sanchez a model professional? He is and was a greedy, moaning cnut. He was incredibly unpopular at Arsenal and the same here because he was "unhappy". https://www.express.co.uk/sport/foo...-Alexis-Sanchez-Man-Utd-Arsenal-transfer-news
I simply cant believe what i am reading. Lukaku? Fair enough hes a decent goal scorer when in form, but fecking Sanchez? He is without a shadow of a doubt the worst decisions the club has ever made. Not only was he shite, but the fat contract that Ed handed him that ridiculous contract had severe consequences
You have not provided a single piece of evidence that suggests Sanchez was a bad apple for us. He's not referring to performances or being overpaid. It's on reference to attitude, workrate and mentality. Sanchez was actually ticking all boxes at least on that front. Ole said he had a good attitude, hunger to play and Sanchez himself never put down the club in public.
Lukaku is another story. He was definately a bad apple and there are multiple interviews and instances pointing to it. Coming underweight, flirting with moves abroad, name dropping Conte, sharing personal teammate fitness data, etc.
That's wrong mate. His record against the good teams is quite decent, its the shit teams we struggle against for some reason. Granted that Partizan is not PL, quality, but it was nice to see us put a worse team to the sword for once
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