I feel like we are finally seeing the football Ole wants us to play. We need better options up front though and we also lack a lot of midfielders. The likes of Lingard, Pereira and Mata are not good enough. Matic too old too. Rashford and Martial are also very much up and down.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Because the other teams come out and play against us and plays to our strengths which is pace on the break.
Pace on the break is nullified when teams sit deep usually so you need someone to open up something.
We do look better since Martial came back in for sure and there is some nice interchanges.
I'm pretty certain both sides are as bad as each other. The in brigade will find any reason no matter how small to defend him. The out brigade start their nee naw nee naw sirens every time a goal goes in.
Should be picking holes at the right time and enjoying the wins when they come. Instead of point scoring on each other.
Neither do Leicester or Chelsea really. We’re level with Chelsea on xPts and a good 5.5 ahead of Leicester. Leicester are converting a ludicrous percentage of chances: 29 goals from 15.66 expected; also 8 conceded from 13.15 expected. They won’t continue to get those results unless they improve. Chelsea’s results are sustainable though. It’s more that we’ve not picked up as many points as you would expect based on our performances.
Christ, some of you are really hard to take seriously.
Those games, the result tells a different story than what went on in the actual game. The first Chelsea game, many pundits said and the statistic showed that, “they have never seen a 4-0 result that didn’t look like a 4-0 result before.” That game we showed dominance on the counter but Chelsea was the better team. Similar to the second Chelsea game, we had to rely on set pieces for victory. The second goal, Rashford won’t score another goal like that if he had 10 plus tries at it. The leceister game, it was also a game with many deception. Both team was bad and we didn’t play the current leceister team. We barely created a chance either and our only goal came from a mindless penalty. Simple put, those result was as deceptive as our psg victory. I won’t come out with confidence to say we were the better teams in those matches.
Do we win an extra point for style?
The facts show that Ole has been able to set up against this calibre team and more than not get a result. The issue is teams such as Partisan and Brighton, who would normally just set up to defend.
I’m level with Jeff Bezos in expected wealth and Leo Di Caprio dates more models then me because he has more actual wealth.
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Because the shit that has been spewed on this forum and everywhere else while we had signficant injuries to key players, has been nothing less than short minded stupidity.
He's consistently getting good results against strong opposition while being hamstrung by a side that needs investment in key attacking areas. According to the caf you can coach around that, but its absolute horseshit. At somepoint coaching only gets you so far and you need individual talent. Anybody who thinks United post Ronaldo didn't have that needs their heads checked.
As usual, wins = Ole. Losses = players.
I love Ole. Finally a Utd manager (after Fergie) with a clear long term plan, club first approach and instilling the right values in the players to fight for the shirt. Long may it continue.
There'll be more bumps on the road for sure (it's not supposed to be easy and it'll never be perfect). But when we finally turn it around for good (hopefully by next season with a couple more quality additions), I'm convinced we will have an exciting team that'll get us back to the big time. I for one will enjoy the ride and support the team through this clear transition period.
There'll be more bumps on the road for sure (it's not supposed to be easy and it'll never be perfect). But when we finally turn it around for good (hopefully by next season with a couple more quality additions), I'm convinced we will have an exciting team that'll get us back to the big time. I for one will enjoy the ride and support the team through this clear transition period.
We are well below Leicester and Chelsea because cannot break down packed defences nor get points from a losing position either.
Ha ha. A timely reminder that his favourite Poch led Spurs to a 3-0 loss to Brighton a few weeks ago but he was confident that United would win. Hmm...
Credit to getting the wins and performances. Some of the football has been really good. It's too dismissive to say that well Partizan, Norwich and now Brighton let us play as though it's a forgone conclusion that teams that give us space, that we'll be able to play good football. That they've been able to execute in these games means at least some good work being done in training.
Yes, we did lose to Bournemouth and it was a poor performance but, having realistic expectations, there are going to be games like that while we go through the process. The games since the International break have been a step in the right direction but, a long way to go. For one Ole is going to have to continue to show that he is not married to one style for the sake of it, if we don't have the players to play our preferred formation, then don't throw players that aren't suited to it. He finally did that in this during this run.
I haven't doubted what Ole has in his mind for us long term but, for him as manager to be successful here, has to show a lot more nous in games where things aren't going right. So let's see what happens when we are chasing a game or the next time we get put under the pressure, how he makes adjustments.
Yes, we did lose to Bournemouth and it was a poor performance but, having realistic expectations, there are going to be games like that while we go through the process. The games since the International break have been a step in the right direction but, a long way to go. For one Ole is going to have to continue to show that he is not married to one style for the sake of it, if we don't have the players to play our preferred formation, then don't throw players that aren't suited to it. He finally did that in this during this run.
I haven't doubted what Ole has in his mind for us long term but, for him as manager to be successful here, has to show a lot more nous in games where things aren't going right. So let's see what happens when we are chasing a game or the next time we get put under the pressure, how he makes adjustments.
Because there is no balance with the so-called Ole-out crowd in their criticism of the manager. Even after the last 7 games since the international break, in which you can find a lot of positives, there is a barrage of constant negativity that is quite unhealthy. You see people with comments like its only brighton, or only Norwich, Ole is still shit, and when you point out our results against the top 4, then it is how the top 4 played into our hands. Personally, Saturday night was the lowest I felt this board descended to in a long time with so many posts of “United in 14th, sack Ole” when we had not even played our match. At least the Ole-in crowd are balanced in their praise and analysis and criticise the manager for what they feel he has done wrong. Can’t say that for the other side.
I think Ole was brought in to steady the ship and reconnect the club with its culture.
I'm not sure he is the man to take us forward, though i would love nothing more than him establishing himself and staying.
I doubt we're looking to change managers mid season, so i'm going to reserve judgement till around April-May. I wanna see where we would be if we have our established 11 fit and available for a decent run of games.
I'm not sure he is the man to take us forward, though i would love nothing more than him establishing himself and staying.
I doubt we're looking to change managers mid season, so i'm going to reserve judgement till around April-May. I wanna see where we would be if we have our established 11 fit and available for a decent run of games.
Really? That's nonsense. Because all I'm seeing that every loss is thanks to the squad being shite, players being poor, what he inherited was bad, then once we win it's all thanks to Ole and suddenly players look good enough. No doubt the next time we loss the Ole in crowd will be in force slaughtering the squad and players and putting the full blame on them. At least we are giving him credit for the few wins he got with perspective of the condition of few teams we faced like Partizan and Norwich, but acting like the squad is hot garbage whenever we lose then suddenly they become good enough thanks to Ole whenever we win throws any logic out of the window.
This board isn't two homogenous blogs of fans though is it? I don't think it helps to divide it up like that (I don't mean to single you out as we're all doing it at times, me included)
I've always been Ole in (but been close to wavering once or twice) but criticised him at times (I thought he made a mistake playing a strong team mid-week, for example), and IMO being supportive but critical when its warranted is how it should be.
I've largely given up joining the debates about Ole in here, it has been overwhelmingly negative at times. This recent up-turn has made things a bit more balanced which is nice to see.
That's fair enough. I don't have any problem with balanced opinion, and I have been happy with the recent wins and gave him credit. Yesterday was great. What I was pointing to was those who slaughter the squad whenever we lose and say it's garbage and Ole inherited a terrible squad etc.
Yeah I see what you mean. The squad is bloody thin though, but I think Ole should shoulder some of the blame for that too. He clearly wanted another forward (Dybala) but it was a mad scramble at the end of the window, once again. Though admittedly, I expect Ed is more to blame.
I'm seriously worried about how this squad will cope come the end of the season, if we don't strengthen in January. Ole should demand at least one signing, and hopefully the board oblige.
The one thing I'll credit him for doing is that he sees Martial as a striker and Rashford as a wide player instead of the other way around. Experienced managers like Jose and LvG did the opposite of this and it might have slowed down the development of Rashford and Martial.
The amount of activity on the player and Ole threads after a loss or win would suggest its the opposite. After ever loss, all of the Ole threads have 5 new pages within half an hour and everyone is losing their fecking minds. After yesterday, the player performance threads were bumped much more frequently and several new ones discussing players and player pairings popped up.
Good managers win trophies, but those good managers also tends to have the best squad of players, so no matter how you spin it its a joint effort both in victory and defeat. Spurs for example are 14th right now. That does not mean Poch turned into a shit manager overnight. From what i have seen of them this year they've had multiple key players deliver shameful displays and that cant be blamed on the manager alone
Exactly the same thing happen to players threads, or are you convinced otherwise? Rashford and Fred were getting slaughtered by everyone during our losing period.
Of course they join effort in both victory and losses. That's not the case for the majority of the Ole in crowd though. Once we lose a game they will say the squad is crap, players he inherited are shite, Poch, Lampard and Klopp inherited better players, and you can't do much with these players etc. No doubt that's what will happen again once we lose. I for myself gave him a credit whenever we played well, Liverpool, Chelsea and yesterday.
If we can play as good football as we have seen yesterday then it means the main lineup isn't as shite as people were making it out to be and can still finish high up in the table.
No, we've been saying that when we're missing key players our best 11 isn't very good so poorer results are to be expected. Do you disagree with that?
Surely you can admit that we look better in attack with Martial up front? That's what 'we' (if you want to call us 'Ole in') expected, where as 'Ole out' seem to believe that you can just coach anyone else to give the same qualities at number 9.
The criticism of not buying back up quality is valid.
I think most people who want to give more time to Ole before judging him recognise that this is a young team with a few gaping holes i.e the cm, am, competition to front three. Therefore, it is expected to get inconsistent performances and results that goes with players who have not yet reached the footballing maturity. Coupled with this, injuries to key players have definitely disrupted the team evolution. This explains the difference in reaction to a player’s performance from game to game. Doesn’t mean the player is ‘shit’ but could have delivered a bad performance on the day which might have nothing to do with the coaching or tactical instructions. Then there are the other players, who are back-up options or current first teamers who are either over the hill or simply not good enough, these are the players that are referred to as ‘shit’, slightly harshly.
That being said, people do acknowledge that Ole could be doing better in finding solutions with the existing resources when it comes to breaking down resolute defences. I don’t think you will find many who have blind faith for Ole without recognising any weaknesses. This is further explained by the fact that a vast portion of the 47.xx% of Ole in crowd are in the wait & watch/ ‘seen something positive lets see how it works out with more time’ mode, rather than ‘lets give Ole 3 years time irrespective of results’ mode.
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But player and manager performance is not the same thing, and the former is much, much easier to make an informed decision about since we can actually watch them preform live and we have loads of stats to pick from. Rashford has always divided opinion, but that's because hes the very definition of inconsistent. Yesterday for example he had a brilliant game overall, yet that miss from James's pass in the second half for example was laughably bad. Fred's career here so far has been one disaster after the other, but hes really stepped it up lately and if it turns out hes actually a competent player i would be thrilled.
A mangers "performance" though is much, much harder to make a fair judgement off. We dont have the faintest clue of what is happening at Carrington, yet people are more than willing to make bold claims about him and our coaches being utterly clueless based on a couple of bad performances. A manager also needs much more time when he takes on a new job as the things he is responsible for: Squad building, coaching, implementing tactics etc can take months and years before you see actual results, where as an individual player has to play football to the best of his ability and most people can spot pretty fast if hes doing a good job or not.
People love to throw around the "10 months" argument, but when you take over an utterly demoralized squad mid season with a busy schedule, there is little you can do in terms of squad building and coaching. You have to pick up the pieces and try and make the best of it. The circumstances he inherited was also incredibly difficult. You have a huge club with big expectations, yet the squad had massive holes in it, fitness was shite, morale was rock bottom and there were plenty of bad apples in the dressing room that was creating unrest in the squad.
I know your stance on Ole, and i know you give him credit when we are doing better. But just because you are reasonable does not mean others are.
I don't find the hard thing in evaluating managers. You look on the pitch and you can obviously see how the team plays, the style tried to be applied, even if inefficiently due to lack of some key players, patterns of play, the tactical response to going down, the timing and choice of subs, and the tactical shuffling that happened after each sub. You can comment on all these after each game it's not rocket science, and developing a style of play isn't that hard, the hard thing is applying it efficiently but any manager with a clear style will apply it immediately, the question will be whether the style is good or not and how much it's missing to click.
What I told you previously is that what's happening currently in Caf isn't specific to Ole. People here slaughtered the previous 3 managers and will most probably slaughter the next one too, regardless of the circumstances of each manager of them.
No one had high expectations for Ole. The biggest expectation was just finishing top 4. However most people were fine with being around 4th and playing good football while developing youth. No one had been asking him for a title challenge and I don't think these requirements are unreasonable either.
Yesterday was great so we can all hope we will build up on it and you can bet if we produce the same football for the majority of our games with several youth developing and ended up finishing 5th or so the stance of many fans, including me will change and we will be willing to give him a new season.
I don't know how on one hand people can go out and say that Ole is green and inexperienced and on the other, blame him for the squad being thin. It takes a lot for a young manager to be successful and its quite clear United do not have that organisational hierarchy. It would have surprised me if he got everything right in his very first transfer window.
Credit to him that he stuck to his targets and did not panic buy only to load the club with players they cannot get rid of even by paying them to play elsewhere. Bigger managers have failed at that.
He made mistakes and by all accounts he's a bright enough man to learn from them. You're not only seeing the squad grow in age and maturity but you're also investing in Ole to grow with them.
If you can find a poster who's said both these things, respond to them and ask them.
So can the Ole Out brigade now kind of see what type of football he is attempting to play, that was a brilliant watch yesterday, pace, pressing, attacking, creativity.
Give the lad a little bit of time to get it right, more of the same please Ole, 5 wins from last 6. All the Ole/Rashford haters must be spitting feathers right now.
Pogba in for Pereira and we may well be onto something!
Give the lad a little bit of time to get it right, more of the same please Ole, 5 wins from last 6. All the Ole/Rashford haters must be spitting feathers right now.
Pogba in for Pereira and we may well be onto something!
We still don't look good at breaking down teams that sit back though. Brighton played into our hands perfectly, it was a naive performance by them, I'm glad they played like they did though, it helped us.
Yep, Sheffield United next will be very tough. Seems like just the kind of team we'd struggle dearly against because we don't have the creativity to get through a packed defence. Hopefully I'm wrong.
I'm definitely an advocate for giving Ole more time, but I still don't think Rashford is very good. He's on a better stretch of form and he has his uses. But let's be clear, over the last 3 years he has oscillated between mediocre and awful more often than he's been decent.
It was a brilliant watch StrettyEnder07 I agree and for the first time in a very, very long time we looked like a team with some promise and yes, when Pogba returns that should make a real difference if Fred and McT can continue to play well. But 'attempting' to play a certain style of football is one thing, delivering it is another thing entirely and we will see if that can be done against harder tests than Brighton. We absolutely SHOULD have played as we did against Brighton and although Sheff Utd will be a tougher nut to crack than Brighton, we absolutely SHOULD be beating them too.
The problem is though that Brighton were really easy to play against, they gave us loads of space. We were still pretty profligate with chances as well, which was fine on Saturday but there's no guarantee of getting so many chances against teams that sit further back than Brighton did.
If Saturdays form continues until December then Ole should get supported during the January window and hopefully any new players in will perform as well as the 3 he bought in the summer. If then there is continued improvement, Ole should get the next summer window and so on. He shouldn't just be given 'time' as a right, that time has to be seen to be taking us in the right direction. But yeah, I do agree with you.
Yeah mate I agree, we should be, the worry for us has not been against the better sides as we seem to turn up against them (Chelsea twice this year, Liverpool), it is the Brightons/Newcastles/Bournemouths that we are struggling so badly against, sounds strange but watching us tear Brighton open time and again was a lot more enjoyable than usual as it has been such a struggle.
Just want to see a run of games with our best 11, if we can keep Rashford Matrial James and Pogba behind them fit and firing with Fred hopefully coming into form and McT to, with Williams looking brilliant, Tuanzebe for me as the perfect partner for Maguire and AWB, could be a decent lead up to Xmas.
Just turned 22, scored what 7/8 goals against top 6 maybe more so far, got 5 in his last 6. If you are one of them who wants rid of him because he has not been exceptional during his development then thats your issue.
For me having a 22 year lad who can play from the left (best position) and fill in up front when required, forming a class partnership with Martial. 10 goals in 15 games for United this season plus 3 assists, thats virtually a goal or assist every game so far.
Not to shabby for someone who just has their uses hey.
Thats fair. As far as i know, the main focus up until now as been fitness and mentality. Ole had said so himself on numerous occasions and its pretty well documented that it was never a focus under Jose, both because we were rock bottom in distance covered and number of sprints, but because hes always had a style that conserves energy. How we ended last season is also a testament to how bad fitness really was, with half the squad falling victim to muscular injury after shifting to a more intense style, and everyone looking like they had ran a marathon by the half hour mark from March-May
I think its pretty clear how Ole wants us to play. Win the ball in advantageous areas and then go straight for the kill, by having inverted wingers use their pace to sneak in behind the fullback and CB, or play it in behind for the CF. A big problem earlier in the season was having Martial injured and being in forced to play Rashford there. Rashford is dreadful when being asked to play as a lone CF, and he simultaneously hit a rough patch of form as well. Another problem was Pogba being injured, and our midfield being utterly unable to transport the ball forward in any decent manner. September-October we hardly managed to get a shot on target, and with Martial back and Fred/McTomminay gaining some understanding and confidence we are suddenly creating loads of good chances.
Most of the job regarding tactics and "style" is getting the right kinds of players who fit that style. That's why you see Pep and Klopp always going for hard working and technically superb players wherever they are, and thats why every Jose team has exceptional long range passers in midfield and big strong CF's up top. That's why i think us looking clueless in many games this season is not because of lack of tactical direction or coaching, its because the players we had available were ill fitted to perform their roles
The thing is though, despite our first XI not being half bad was are just one or two injuries away from another crisis, and i can almost guarantee that if we draw or lose to Sheffield next game, the pitchforks will be out again in full force. 4/11 starting players yesterday were basically just kids from the academy and on the bench its just more kids and dinosaurs like Mata, Matic and Young
City and Liverpool are pretty much guaranteed to make top 2/3, and if Chelsea and Leichester keep delivering, that advantage they have now is going to be pretty hard to catch up. If we manage to qualify for EL next season and Ole keeps playing and developing our young players, i would say thats pretty decent considering our cirsumstances
Every striker misses chances but we don't all watch every minute of every other striker so it's only the highlights reels we end up. Naturally they all then look clinical.
Take the age of Rashford, the responsibility hes had with Martial being out, the creativity struggles the team are having. His stats are actually pretty impressive all things considered, and it's no accident that hes looking a different player now with Martial sharing the load
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