Oh yes the young inexperienced team being inconsistent.
Who are these inexperienced players that can’t follow our instructions?
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Oh yes the young inexperienced team being inconsistent.
Who are these inexperienced players that can’t follow our instructions?
I am also of the opinion that when Ole sanctioned the sale and loan of Sanchez and Lukaku he was led to believe by the board replacements were incoming and he was let down by Ed and the board...as have every other manager has been let down since SAF left. Matt Judge our chief negotiator had zero experience before getting the job.
Judge, just like Woodward was a investment banker and he is now our primary negotiator. We have the blind leading the blind at an executive level and this is why any manager would find it extremely difficult to succeed here. We are not set up for success from a footballing perspective.
Ole was adamant at the start of the season that any players that left would be replaced, that did not happen as you wrote and I am also convinced that the reasons we didn't replace them isn't on Ole. Us fans saw how thin our midfield was, you can't convince me that Ole didn't. We sold/loaned two experienced attackers, you can't convince me that Ole was content with having only one (who was then unproven) 18 year old as back-up. He was blindsided by the board, it's obvious to me.
Now he's getting stick for trying to unravel the fecking mess the board left him. On top of that he doesn't have the experience maybe even knowledge to do so.
Excuses and excuses. These are not Sunday pub players. These are all International players apart from Periera. Yet when they play for their countries they can pass and move the ball and find their team mates and their movements. They can take a proper corner and free kicks. Yes when the play for United they are unable to do so because they are so poor and do not know how and are young etc etc.
Listen to what ex players have said about how they practiced and how and what SAF did and told them. Listen to Rio on the post Arsenal match what SAF told and did to Rooney and Carrick and Scholes if they did not pass to RVP when he is in a good position. Listen to him when he said that now we do not seem to have a plan and it looks like just give to Martial and Rashford and hope they can do something.
We had players like Anderson, Cleverly, John O'Shea and Wes Brown playing and defeating the best clubs. Add Welbeck to the names too. It is all down to the coaching.
Yes Woodward is to blame for appointing Ole Gunnar as the Manager and Ole is not going to resign and give up all the money for sure. No manager and including Jose wants to be a failure and neither does Ole but the man is more incompetent that even Moyes.
Listen to what ex players have said about how they practiced and how and what SAF did and told them. Listen to Rio on the post Arsenal match what SAF told and did to Rooney and Carrick and Scholes if they did not pass to RVP when he is in a good position. Listen to him when he said that now we do not seem to have a plan and it looks like just give to Martial and Rashford and hope they can do something.
We had players like Anderson, Cleverly, John O'Shea and Wes Brown playing and defeating the best clubs. Add Welbeck to the names too. It is all down to the coaching.
Yes Woodward is to blame for appointing Ole Gunnar as the Manager and Ole is not going to resign and give up all the money for sure. No manager and including Jose wants to be a failure and neither does Ole but the man is more incompetent that even Moyes.
Lukaku was sold on the last day of the market. We had spent 150m before it. I honestly can't take these "let down by Woodward" comments seriously. That isn't defending Ed but at the same tike that's not what happened. How many strikers were we even linked to during the summer?
Part of the reason Ole was hired was to be a shield for the ineptness of the board. Its the same reason Ed was interviewing Rio and Fletcher for the DOF job. This club just doesnt take footballing matters seriously. Its all about image and damage control.
Everything about this summer and the summers before reeks of poor planning at the highest levels. This falls mostly on Ed and the board, not Ole.
How so? We usually let the manager be the one planning for the summer business, while Ed being the negotiator. Of course, Ed is a crap negotiator, but most of players we sign and negotiate with in the market are manager choices, or you want to tell me Ed knew about someone like Daniel James? Now how many strikers were we interested in during summer? How many strikers did we approach during the entire market months? Only one was Mandzukic who we only approached after we signed Maguire and would have been a backup option to Rashford or Martial at best. How did Ed let him down if we barely approached any striker any way?
Running around a bit trying to close down isn't pressing. We press without any coordination. We don't squeeze the pitch, block passing lanes as we press, or set traps.
We never sustain it because it's aimless. Teams that are coached to press well, can do it for longer because there is coordinated press being done. Which is why Liverpool played a bunch of kids today and still pressed well because they are coached well to do it by good coaches. As opposed to whatever it is we do in training.
Counter pressing, and the forward line does it. Only the instructions are to get it as soon as possible to trigger an attack. Now if the ball passed the first wave of counter pressing, we don't press, which is fair, or you would run aimlessly as you said and waste a lot of energy. Once that happens, we drop deep and compact and let them come.
And this kind of counter pressing / dropping deep is something that most pressing teams are doing because otherwise, you are going to burn out. But yeah, just see what you want to see. For me, training or not, those things are being instructed. If you can't carry instructions correctly, the instructions are not the problem, but it needs to be addressed indeed.
For those who say we don't have any pressing and it's cranky. Those 2 games are widely documented so I am sure you can find videos and all explaining, but since it doesn't matter apparently, let me sum this up.
Game against Spurs
We played narrow, very narrow, and Lingard + Greenwood are pressing the 2 CBs. The objective was for Spurs to be forced to clear the ball wide because we were happy to see the ball go there. The analysis was that at that time, both Mouras and Son like to get inside, and their full backs have to provide width. It's a similar strategy Barcelona has used against us last year when they let Young go up by defending the other side against Rashford and Pogba. And they were not afraid of letting Young move up. Well, same thing for us. Call it whatever you want, but it's effective pressing with clear instructions that has a clear objective. We did the same against Spurs. Also, James is pretty good at tracking back when he's allowed to speed up so.
You pointed out that running around a bit trying to close isn't pressing. But it is. We were very happy to let the Spurs defense have the ball and pass to each others. The objective for us was to cut the ball supply to the midfield. As a results, Spurs played long. Those long balls were easier to deal for us. Also, there was one player in the defense line United tried to pressure, and it was Vertonghen. Usually, that pressing would give the ball back to United so it was a calculated risk.
Now when Spurs went through the press occasionally, United defense line was high and defended it, and since we were compact, it wasn't easy for Spurs to play the ball quick. In that game, you will notice the defense line is always higher than the box.
Game against City
In this game, instead of doing the same thing as against Spurs, it is clear that we decided to not press at all. The defense line here is always in the box, very very big difference. They wanted City to come up as much as possible. This is actually the game where Scott and Fred did a lot of work to protect the half space between our CBs and our full backs, and they defended against De Bruyne like that. So much, that De Bruyne, instead of trying to get into that half space as City would normally do, ended up changing side and going wide, very wide, and crossing, instead of being able to pass inside or have a chance to score.
Now in this game, that is fundamentally played differently than the Spurs game, and during defensive phases, one of our wide man, James, came into the midfield to defend in numbers. Martial was going to the right for the defensive work. When City moves the ball wide, James and AWB defend the right side, and that's when Scott goes into that half space created, tracking any of their players. Same setup on the other side with Rashford, Shaw and Fred.
When we attack, James goes up wide on the right again. This was a strategy to exploit the fact that City had their full backs playing pretty narrow, and that use of the position gave us balls to exploit in attack. Again, despite not pressing at all, there was one player in City's defense we tried to pressure, and that was Walker. The objective was to force the ball to go left, because we wanted to get Walker to be out of position, and that would have pushed City's team forward, meaning any counter was for us to take on that side. The other objective is something we have often see with that United team. We want the ball to go on their left, or our right, because we are now very confident with AWB ability to defend. But if the whole team was defending low, AWB was instructed to defend very high and tight on their winger. So to be simple, on the right, AWB defends alone, on the left, Shaw defends with the help of other players, more conventional. From that position, what we wanted was to have the first pass to bypass any pressure and launch and attack. So our first pass needed to be executed perfectly, or the pressure would come back.
In those 2 games, we didn't face teams that like to cross, so we now know what we need to do to defend better against teams that like to cross, we need a better defender, but the ideas are there.
In mathematics, when you state a theorem, and you can find counter examples, the theorem is invalid. Or at least, it needs to be revisited. You say we have 0 training and 0 tactical understanding and no coordinated pressing. Those 2 games show that we absolutely have coordinated pressing with clear instructions designed to exploit opponents' weaknesses and our strength, by trying to get the ball to be in areas we like. I hope that stops the nonsense that our manager doesn't have a tactical understanding of the game.
Our problem is probably more related to the players and all, but the ideas are there. And yes, I dare say that it is for me a bit of mystery but I do think that players consistency is slightly different than the manager being out of depth or whatever is the new trend on Twitter.
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I'm resigned to the fact that he'll be our coach for an indefinite period that will see us fall even further into mediocrity. I hope OGS proves me wrong but I honestly feel he is one of the worst three managers in the EPL. Loved him as a player but can't see us winning League or UCL whilst he's in charge even if he was manager for a decade.
I think more people need to be aware of this because it just shows how naive it is to decide to let Ole oversee the rebuild. There's is absolutely no shred of evidence to cling onto that gives you hope he might be good enough, but a mountain of proof that he is not.
Woodward knows that sacking Ole will be his undoing and will cling on. But keeping him any longer will make his legacy 10x worse than it us already going to be. I shudder to think where we could end up.
It would seem they are trying to cover themselves with a shield of nostalgia, in an attempt to keep the fans quiet. It’s nostalgia that is going to kill this club in the near future.
Honestly would have felt Ole was the right manager if we were playing like Leipzig or Ajax. And please don't bring up the case that we need good players to play good football because we've played bad even with Pogba in the team and have been outplayed by teams with a weaker starting 11
Im still abit confused with statements like these. So you say he was promised this and that? Who did as he promised was he just promised a striker and Woodward was going to give him a birthday present?
This is why people believe Ole is backwards just like the board. Where was the planning? Did he just hope Woodward would get him anyone. We luckily ended up with a situation where we could have got Dybala but I doubt that was the ‘plan’ if so why did it take a magical swap deal which Spurs also got a chance at for it to happen.
So we know are board are incompetent already but what in the world is Ole’s plan. We aren’t leak proof and all we have been linked with in January is a striker, we need midfielders and like the silly strikers options in the summer there is no plan to get one.
There is no planning, the board is not pro active, they are reactive.
It is currently the blind leading the blind.
And they are succeeding beyond their hope by the comments on CAF. If an idiot like Trump and Boris Johnson can be the heads of US and the head of government of UK, why not? It is very easy to fool a lot of people for some time.
I think Ole was promised more than he got, why did he openly promise replacements on several occasions if this wasn't the case? From all that talk about United needing to compete at all levels, to now all the talk about rebuilding takes time.
I don't think Ole decides the ambitions of the club, the owners and CEO do, which seems to change from season to season, or mid season in this case. On top of that I personally believe this job is too big for Ole, that can well explain some of the indicisive decisions you're talking about, but then again who hired him and who's keeping him on? We've seen our board make some ridiculous decisions in the past. I'm pretty sure the background at the club is like a fecking tele novella my wife watches.
Ole accepted the job of his dreams, we all would have. He clearly cares about the club, which we can't say for half our squad. I have no doubt he's giving it all he has but the inexperience at this level shines through more often than not. I just feel that Ole is getting the stick for a lot that should fall on Woodward.
Ole may not be the right manager long term, but for now, I think it would be unfair to sack him. When we sacked Moyes, LVG and Mourinho I was all for it, as I thought our team were collectively under performing. I don't think this is the case with Ole yet.
Which of our players has performed at a higherlevel previously than they have this season? Pogba of course, but he has been injured all season. Matic, Mata and Young yes, but I think most would agree they are over the top. De Gea too, but I wouldn't blame Ole for his lack of form.
Martial and Shaw showed promising signs as teenagers, but after that there's nothing indicating their level should be higher than what they have shown this season. Lingard had a run of form two or three years ago, but over his entire career, this season seems more representative of his level.
Meanwhile Rashford, McTominay and Fred are having their best seasons ever. James, Greenwood and Williams are breaking through. Even Pereira is gradually improving. I think this id enough to give Ole some more time, at least till the end of this season.
Which of our players has performed at a higherlevel previously than they have this season? Pogba of course, but he has been injured all season. Matic, Mata and Young yes, but I think most would agree they are over the top. De Gea too, but I wouldn't blame Ole for his lack of form.
Martial and Shaw showed promising signs as teenagers, but after that there's nothing indicating their level should be higher than what they have shown this season. Lingard had a run of form two or three years ago, but over his entire career, this season seems more representative of his level.
Meanwhile Rashford, McTominay and Fred are having their best seasons ever. James, Greenwood and Williams are breaking through. Even Pereira is gradually improving. I think this id enough to give Ole some more time, at least till the end of this season.
There is absolutely no way that OGS is getting anywhere the maximum out of this squad. He's failing in development as well as from a tactical sense. He's not even close to being a top 50 manager in world football. But yet, people want to persist. Laughable.
Best seasons? Fred just got a run of games and has acclimatized. SM is entirely overrated. And Rashford still makes the same mistakes and demonstrates the same lack of vision. He's just not on a horrible run of missing chances. Shaw is trash. Lindelof has not improved. AWB is not demonstrating improvement. And Maguire looked better for LEI and England. Lingard shouldn't even be on the bench. Gomes has been exiled. James is a speed merchant.
His assembled coaching staff is poor. The physio staff is awful. But lets judge the EW puppet next season?? Ok, Chief.
Very good to see people thinking objectively and criticising the manager for once. There was a point where it didn't get vocalised enough. Some Ole in fans seem to think that posters of negativity want the very worst for the club but the concensus in reality is that Ole is bad short term and long term. He might have nailed the "culture" part but he's severely lacking in the managerial department.
So Ole is a poor manager that doesn't get anywhere the maximum out of the squad? Then what is the maximum you can get out of the squad? You don't seem to rate Lindelöf, Shaw, Lingard or James. You don't see development from AWB who has been here half a season, but when Fred shows development he's just getting acclimatised, since it's his second season.
Rashford is having his best season, but let's disregard that, as the only thing he's doing better, is something irrelevant like no longer missing a lot of chances. Maguire was better last season with Leicester, but should he not get some time to get used to his new team mates? He's also playing between a LB and a CB that you don't seem to rate.
I agree that Solskjær has shown little proof of being a top manager, but his job at United have been extremely difficult, and he might still prove that he's the right man for the job. After all, he has won matches against Pep, Mourinho and Pocchetino, and he has never lost a game to Klopp.
Transfers will go a little way to fill a void but won't make up for the complete lack of coaching or plan that we have in place. He's been in the job for over a year and we still look like we don't have a clue when we are in possession of the ball to open up opposition. We made a couple of defensive additions in the summer and somehow we still look just as vulnerable in defence.
Players will only take you so far as a team and won't make up for the huge incompetencies that Ole has as a Coach. 5 points separate us from 4th and 6 points separate us from 13th. We're lucky our competitors for top 4 have been just as dodgy and shite as us tbh else we'd be miles behind. He shouldn't be having to deal with this mess tbh.
So you're a Manchester United supporter, who endorses a managerial apprenticeship program??? He's relying on a pretty laissez-faire counterattacking system as his base system that is totally obsolete for elite sides in 2020. If you watch Liverpool, City and even Arsenal when they press, it's organized and effective. After 10 years, OGS's level is the Norwegian league.
Fred always had quality, he was just performing levels below his baseline. AWB is performing at his baseline. James is a championship player who Leeds wanted. Under this coaching, Maguire needs a different partner to look like a good CB. If you were serious about transforming this team, the recruitment would have been of a higher quality (and more numerous), but even those players most likely would be performing below their baseline in this system.
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Ole badly needs some experienced coaching around him because I just don't feel that either Carrick or McKenna are good enough to challenge some of his crazy tactical decisions and because of that we aren't seeing any improvements in patterns of play
Liverpool is a counter attacking team. A lot of teams are counter attacking teams (Athletico, even Juventus to some extend, etc...), the ball possession is just more frequent when the opponent fears you.
Anyway, some games show that it’s not just counter attacking but it’s a pressing and counter pressing that aim to control where we want the ball to go. We have games where we do not press, e.g. City, but we also have games where we press pretty well, e.g. Spurs. You can’t say this team is not being coached in that regard when games show it. Again, going back to my theorem analogy but if you can find counter examples, the theorem is invalid in mathematics. The theorem to say we do not have a pressing strategy or that we do not press well is wrong, pressing is not just about getting the ball back right away, it’s also forcing the ball to go where we want, which in our case is mostly the right side where we don’t have to defend in numbers, etc... we should also note that the way we defend is not always the same so clearly there are some adaptations that are discussed and prepared.
Now if you have clear instructions that are simple but effective and you have individual mistakes for whatever reason, does that somehow erase all the instructions?!? Cause that’s what you’re saying.
LVG had one of the best defensive setup in the world and tactically he was a nerd. This is a guy who congratulated Herrera because he took one control before shooting (and scoring) in the box on a low cross, because that would increase the probability of scoring. He brought a lot of interesting things including high lines and compactness to remove space for the opponents etc but he didn’t like training for offensive actions. For him, that was where the talent should express itself. Fine.
Jose play compact but way lower and likes the go up there fast. Also a guy who doesn’t overly train offensive patterns because again, talent.
Sure, on paper, it sounds familiar but you would be blind to not see the difference between the Spurs game (high line, a lot of pressing and counter pressing to get the ball on the right and then press the full back) vs the City game (low line, zero pressing almost and the only full back we pressed was Walker to get him out of position). Which means we change and adapt the setup. Offensively, we do not hoof the ball now, we try to go through the middle and break lines. We may fail more often than not, but intentions and instructions, which are down to the manager, are there and being executed.
We can always argue about some of the instructions on the offensive aspect, on why Lingard didn’t pass the ball faster when he intercepted against Arsenal early on, why we didn’t do this or that, but in other games, we press the full back with Pereira and we pass it to Martial to score. We can also argue why we do not seem to be able to get anything out of corners, but we don’t know what’s being trained or not. Maybe we still have positional issues and the players are not fully able to execute, so we need to keep drilling it, who knows? But to say Ole is simply out of depth is fallacious. There are progress but it’s taking time
Was reading the Ancelotti thread and the amount of disrespect in there, for a manager who has managed top clubs across the top leagues in the world and won trophies while maintaining a win rate of around 60 percent across more than 1000 games, is mind boggling.
It would basically seem that Everton have appointed a hobo.
I wish the same folks berating Ancelotti would bring their knives for our revered managed too.
It would basically seem that Everton have appointed a hobo.
I wish the same folks berating Ancelotti would bring their knives for our revered managed too.
Clueless.
My favorite post on here for ages, spat out my morning coffee.
That just your standard reply?
I swear Steve, we could drop to 12th in the next few weeks & I’m 100% certain you’d still back him to the hilt.
I have no idea so many try reasoning with the likes of you, people would have more luck trying to convince a bible belt Christian that Jesus was just a bloke.
I think the fans who are 'Ole out' think the opposition fans are 'Ole in' when that's not the case. It's more a case of supporting the notion of 'give the manager time'. If we fire Solskjaer anytime soon we're just hitting reset yet again which means the last year and a half is absolutely wasted, and there is zero guarantee's that the next appointment will be any better nor can we trust the board to make the correct appointment.
The position we're in is mainly down to player recruitment and an accumulation of players from 3 to 4 different managers. The vitriol Solskjaer receives for trying to rectify the board and other managers mistakes is completely uncalled for by the 'Ole out' minority. There's nothing wrong with criticism as long as it's objective and constructive.
The “reset” nonsense infuriates me.
We’ve only reset before because we’ve gone from manager to manager with completely polar opposite ideas/tactics/philosophys.
Poch has a similar philosophy to the club’s vision, we’ve seen that at all his club’s. And the club clearly has a vision now because that’s why Ole got hired (when Poch wasn’t available) and that’s why we now have a transfer board.
People being terrified of a “reset” is blinding them into wanting to keep a manager who clearly isn’t proving he’s anywhere near good enough.
Give the manager time is more dumb than Ole in. I’d rather people had actual views instead of the belief in time things just come good. We don’t hit resit everything that is currently here still remains, it’s just the management that changes. How many times have we changed managers and our best players have been affected?
Very good post. You are an oasis of sense in a desert of insanity.
Ah yes, all of these regular internationals who play fantastic pass and move football for their international teams like:
Wan Bissaka - 0 caps
Luke Shaw - 2 caps since 2015
Fred - 5 caps since 2015
Mata - Last cap in 2016
Lingard and Young - Dropped from the England squad.
Martial - Can't get in the France squad.
Greenwood - 0 caps
Tuanzebe - 0 caps
James, Matic and McTominay play for some pretty average international teams.
Not sure where you are watching all of these United players playing fantastically well at international level but it's not in real life.
Asked and answered.
Any structure that allows a short term role to dictate a long term strategy is flawed.
It also makes absolutely no sense crossy, if you guys are convinced we’ve done such a good job behind the scenes, why on Earth would a new manager who also believes in youth etc want to rip it all up and waste it 
Bizarre logic
Bizarre logicCome to Manchester United to kill your international career.
That doesn't answer how we let him down in the market. I get that "let down" thing if we try to sign someone and fails, but the reality is we weren't even interested in any strikers in summer bar short term back up and cheap options as Mandzukic. Otherwise he was brought a 50m fullback and a 80m defender, the most expensive defender ever. Doesn't look like he was done by Woodward for me. Of course Ed is a crap negotiator, but we have to negotiate with targets first to blame him for failing to land them.
It also makes absolutely no sense crossy, if you guys are convinced we’ve done such a good job behind the scenes, why on Earth would a new manager who also believes in youth etc want to rip it all up and waste it
He might believe in youth but does he want a slow centre back who spends 30 seconds holding the ball at the start of every attack? Or a right back who contributes nothing offensively? Or a genuine winger when he rarely played with wingers at Spurs.
Are there people out there who believe United have got a good structure behind the scenes? The recruitment is an utter mess, the squad is a disgrace. Spending £130m on 2 players when the squad needed 6 or 7 players shows what a joke it is.
The strategy is not "invest in youth". It's to return to the mentality, character and culture of Manchester United. That's why removing players like Lukaku and Sanchez was seen as more important for the culture than replacing their talent. It might not be a good strategy but it's the only one they have.
If Ole leaves where does that leave the rebuild? A manager trying to return to Manchester United culture who has never been at the club before, a recruitment strategy that still relies on a manager to decide on targets and a coach needing years to be able to get a squad anywhere near the quality and style required.
It's a response to a post without any substance.
If we lose another couple of midfielders to injury and drop down the table as a result you are correct. I will back him. You actually need players to win matches.
Do you honestly think Matic, Pereira, Mata or Lingard get games in a top 4 team? They don't. Fred at a push on his good days. Yet were still in the fight for 4th and in all the cups. It's not bad in the circumstances.
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