Ole Gunnar Solskjær | Beşiktaş J.K.

[Gandalf]

None of us were in that dressing room, but we hear bits here and there. Lingard after he left, described the dressing as catastrophic. Ole himself said that even though it seemed like a good idea to bring Ronaldo back, it still turned out to be a mistake. Just recently, Mike Phelan, described in a podcast how Ronaldo used to roll his eyes whenever Maguire entered the room. Ronaldo wanted to be the captain, and Maguire's struggles started when Ronaldo arrived. Just a couple of months earlier, everyone pointed out how much Maguire was missed in the EL final, and how we probably would have won with him in the team. You had Cavani feeling forced to give away his shirt and also struggled to get game time, after just having extended his contract. In sum, I don't think it is so far fetched to suggest that Ronaldo's arrival contributed well to Ole's failure.

I think it is fair to say that Ronaldo did not really do his homework on the club before agreeing to come back, understandable considering how rapidly the deal developed. Ronaldo himself has admitted how shocked he was at the clubs decline, the run down and outdated facilities, the personal standards of the squad etc. It was a poor fit in truth, driven mostly by sentiment on our side, because Ronaldo was not the player to sign for the tactical changes we were trying to make that season and it contributed to the disjointed style of play on display under Ole.

Ronaldo himself did not help matters much though. His pursuit of individual glory is admirable in some respects, he is an incredibly driven man, but he is also not a team player and remarkably petulant when things are not going well. It was clear he regretted the decision to return shortly after arriving and he misbehaved increasingly publicly until the messy exit via Piers Morgan.

 

[Irwin99]

I never got why people kept demanding we move away from counter attacking football. It was then that it all came undone.

He says it himself, you just can't do that at United forever. I admire his honesty but he couldn't take the team further.





Now you can be cagey and ultra defensive in some games (Barca 2008 anyone?) but this is Manchester United and people are so fed up of United being the underdog in these big games. I'd argue Jose, Ole and EtH all set us up to be negative in a lot of their time here and, although both EtH and Ole tried to evolve the approach, they couldn't get the team to move on from that template.

 

[criticalanalysis]

But we had the team for it, we just needed to tweak a few things. Sancho and Ronaldo coming in made sense to unlock those tight defences, but we then decided to defend on the halfway line with harry Maguire. It was a total contradiction.

You do understand to be able to counter attack, you need to be attacked by the opposition? So you need to give up the ball, sit deeper and encourage the opposition. Unless we were playing top four teams, that would have been inexcusable for our standards and in reality it didn't happen anyways. Some teams did attack us and then some realised that if they didn't press us high, they could very easily hold a mid to low block and get results, which happened a lot.

There is no 'he could have tweaked it and we would have been more successful'. No, he took us as far as he could and should have been sacked after the EL final loss.

 

[2 man midfield]

You do understand to be able to counter attack, you need to be attacked by the opposition? So you need to give up the ball, sit deeper and encourage the opposition. Unless we were playing top four teams, that would have been inexcusable for our standards and in reality it didn't happen anyways. Some teams did attack us and then some realised that if they didn't press us high, they could very easily hold a mid to low block and get results, which happened a lot.

There is no 'he could have tweaked it and we would have been more successful'. No, he took us as far as he could and should have been sacked after the EL final loss.

Yes, I’m not a moron. I meant tweaked in terms of breaking down teams that low block - it’s a problem every big side faces.

You don’t play a counter attack style by parking the bus all the time. But it also isn’t a crime to not have 70% possession and constantly live in the opponents half like many seem to think. You said ‘inexcusable for our standards’ - why? Why does being a big side meant you aren’t allowed to play counter attacking football instead of playing Pep-ball?

 

[criticalanalysis]

Yes, I’m not a moron. I meant tweaked in terms of breaking down teams that low block - it’s a problem every big side faces.

You don’t play a counter attack style by parking the bus all the time. But it also isn’t a crime to not have 70% possession and constantly live in the opponents half like many seem to think. You said ‘inexcusable for our standards’ - why? Why does being a big side meant you aren’t allowed to play counter attacking football instead of playing Pep-ball?

My bad, I misunderstood your initial point but it still doesn't change my overall sentiment. Ole couldn't coach us to be better in possession, to be able to counter press, to be able to open up teams that had a low block and neither were we some great defensive team. So yes, it's not a crime to not have 60-70% possession but when you can't open teams that sit back and then you also can't particularly defend well, why would you choose to cough up possession? It's basically gambling that an 'open' game would go in your favour, which worked half the time because you had 3-4 young talents (Pogba, Greenwod, Rashford, Martial) and a star man (Bruno) to provide the attacking impetus whilst the rest of the team sat back. However, this was simply because we had more individual quality and not because the system or style was overwhelming the opposition. The other times, it didn't work because we would often come back from behind and not actually win a lot games over the course of the season because teams just figured us out. It showed in our points tally and league positions. It wasn't a case of 'tweaking', it was a case of Ole at his tactical/coaching limits.