I was one of his detractors. And i really didn't like the way he was so often clinging to the past instead of arguing his point. Part of me believed that this was intentional, too. Like a good "salesman" whose answers weren't directed to the press, but to an ownership and a portion of the fanbase willing to believe that the answers to today's problems will always lie in the glory of the past. Having said that, he had some good and some not so good moments during his tenure. This clip, however popular it seems to be to those who want to slate him, isn't one of his bad moments. The wording, perhaps, was unfortunate. But there is nothing wrong with what he said there. Absolutely nothing.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | Managerial Watch
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Yeah that clip is an odd one for me. There's plenty to criticize him for, but not that. I guess it is used to support the narrative that he was a braindead coach and a "passion merchant"?
Personally I would take 100% effort and simple tactics over highly advanced tactics and mediocre effort. I think we kept things simple in the Fergie days and Ole is very much his student. It makes sense that he would adopt a similar philosophy. It didn't work out for him in the end, but I don't think this proves that this way of thinking always is wrong.
Fergie, Ancelotti, Mourinho, Klopp and Pep are the 5 best managers in the last 20 years and they are all very different from each other. There are plenty of paths to the promised land. That's why football is the greatest sport.
Results improved initially for a short time as often happens when a new manager comes in. Then things quickly went tits up again from late February or March onwards.
Not necessarily Ralfs fault (though he didn't help) but something was wrong behind the scenes that season. Perhaps too many bad influences in the squad. Probably Ronaldo, Lingard, Henderson, Bailly etc.
I like how people still have a go at him when he clearly dug us from where we were.
Very good manager that was let down by players. Nothing more, nothing less. Just like Mourinho. Just like vanGaal. Just like Rangnick. Blaming should go towards players. Thankfully some of those players are gone so we can bulid a team. Not having players that used us to get popularity for themself.
Very good manager that was let down by players. Nothing more, nothing less. Just like Mourinho. Just like vanGaal. Just like Rangnick. Blaming should go towards players. Thankfully some of those players are gone so we can bulid a team. Not having players that used us to get popularity for themself.
I remember this. This is when I lost a lot of respect for him as a football coach. Really atrociously bad stuff
Ex legend and lovely bloke though.
Our longest trophy drought was under his watch
Agreed
That doesn't say anything when you get a team who was totally broken from inside and out.Our longest trophy drought was under his watch
He left the team more broken than he found it. What does that tell you
I can't believe this was bumped on the back of a joke post and nothing else and immediately turned into six pages of continuous shit-slinging. Unbelievable. Absolutely incredible.
What I was disappointed the most about Ole was not his trophy drought. It was his "cultural reset".
Under him, we were under the impression that a cultural reset was being conducted in the dressing room to address that longterm issue. Yet after his 2 years, the same issue remains and we are still looking to get rid a lot of players. Lingard, Pogba, Henderson, and a sense of favoritism still lingered around during his tenure.
That was what made me lose all trust in him, and felt like those were just empty words. He promised, and didn't deliver it.
And this is me NOT getting into other issues of him like tactics yet.
Under him, we were under the impression that a cultural reset was being conducted in the dressing room to address that longterm issue. Yet after his 2 years, the same issue remains and we are still looking to get rid a lot of players. Lingard, Pogba, Henderson, and a sense of favoritism still lingered around during his tenure.
That was what made me lose all trust in him, and felt like those were just empty words. He promised, and didn't deliver it.
And this is me NOT getting into other issues of him like tactics yet.
Ole took over a team that had cracks in it. He somewhat repaired those cracks and things improved in the first year or two. However the final season of his tenure is where those cracks turned into an absolutely broken team.
You say to blame the players, not the managers. All the managers had significantly different players in their squads, based on who those managers bought.
From memory LVG's failure was simply on the field as opposed to any issues behind the scenes. He seemed to have the right idea in theory, but in practice he proved unable to get the players he had to play the style he wanted, unable to buy the correct players to move towards that style, and unable to modify his style to get the best out of what he had. That was simply a combination that can't work.
Mourinho was simply a selfish prick who falls out with players everywhere he goes and blatantly bullies them and tries to turn the fans against them. The toxicity surrounding the team was completely on him. There was also a very obvious issue with the playstyle and coaching being a decade out of date.
Ole got rid of that toxicity, which is why there was an instant significant improvement. He wanted to do all the right things in theory. The issue is that he simply had no idea of how to do it. He bought the wrong players, and once again there was an obvious issue with the playstyle and coaching. When he took over he had a bunch of still young talented players coming through that needed coaching and guidance, but by the time he left they were in the middle of their career and really hadn't developed much at all. And when things did go wrong in the dressing room he seemed to let it fester and grow, and it all came to a head in his final season.
Ole did a good job in the short-term. If we'd replaced him after the first 6 or even 18 months we'd be looking back on his time as a success considering what he walked into. But he was doing a different type of damage to the team, and it was ultimately under his direction that things reached their lowest level.
I think it has to do more with the "lowering of the bar" which is also a misconception because it wasn't Solskjaer himself who was coming up with the excuses in the pressers but a minority among the fans who got his back no matter what on here.
I know where you're coming from, but i disagree. Perhaps that's why i found myself in the other camp quite early. For better or worse, we're living in the age where micromanaging every single tactical detail on the pitch is becoming the norm. Don't forget that when Mourinho broke into the scene, his breakdown of the game in four "moments" was lauded by his players. Nowadays, it seems a bit of a relic from another age. As much as we need an overarching philosophy running through the club from top to bottom, we also need someone able to modernize things on the pitch. It's not "do the one first and then the other or deal with general principles and the matters on the pitch will be solved on their own". We needed a manager able to get down to brass tacks and modernize our playing style. No matter the direction or the more generic tactical preferences.
Ancelotti, i guess, is a lone rider of sorts since he managed to stay at the highest level in this environment. He's the last of the "devise a good defensive plan and keep everything else simple" managers that continue to enjoy success. Pep and Klopp pay a lot of attention to details. I would also argue that, in this era of overexposure to different games, leagues, articles and analyses, people often forget how good a tactician Sir Alex was. He didn't revolutionize the game, like Pep, Cruyff, Michels or Sacchi, but he was always willing to stretch the limits of his 442-ish formations. He may not have been a tactical mastermind, which has led some to believe that he kept things simple, but he never lacked acumen and imagination. And his students, like Solkskjaer, who was more than adequate in wriggling himself out of a tough spot, usually don't lack the acumen. It's the imagination they don't have... the ability, after analysing the problems, to "see" the way forward.
Legend of the highest order here. No doubt about that.
But he never should have been hired in the first place and was kept on way too long to the point where it was embarrassing him and tarnishing him. Shame of the club for that.
I knew quite early he wasn't a good manager. After the initial good run the football was horrible. And Paris was a huge fluke.
PsG players showboating at times and 2 keeper errors and a dodgy last minute pen got us a win. After the match Ole was acting like a fan and not a manager - his ear to ear grin and saying we could win the whole thing. A proper manager comes out and says we are delighted and have to be better next round and are up for the fight.
Paris got him the permanent job. The clowns got it way way wrong. And yes I'm aware that Ole got us 2nd place and a good run with empty stadiums.
But he never should have been hired in the first place and was kept on way too long to the point where it was embarrassing him and tarnishing him. Shame of the club for that.
I knew quite early he wasn't a good manager. After the initial good run the football was horrible. And Paris was a huge fluke.
PsG players showboating at times and 2 keeper errors and a dodgy last minute pen got us a win. After the match Ole was acting like a fan and not a manager - his ear to ear grin and saying we could win the whole thing. A proper manager comes out and says we are delighted and have to be better next round and are up for the fight.
Paris got him the permanent job. The clowns got it way way wrong. And yes I'm aware that Ole got us 2nd place and a good run with empty stadiums.
What the feck does even mean? He's benched Maguire and even played Shaw and Lindeloff ahead of him when Varane and or Licha were unavailable. Short of not playing him, what else can he do? It's on the club that offered Maguire a contractual agreement to find a solution
I agree 100%.
For sure. As so often, Ole also was targeted with unfair stuff like taking sentences out of context. Stuff like this happens when debates get tense and personal... This should serve as a lesson actually.
Those things aren't binary though, arent they? Obviously everybody has to take their share but acting as if the managers weren't able to achieve something because of the players is just misguided. Mourinho at least has a successful past, was a good manager at some point in time, Van Gaal the same. Rangnick has a past in German football (although for sure not as a manager i.e. coach). I'd be fine if people put Ole and Rangnick were put in the same "tier" in terms of good or not but at the end of the day it means nothing. Of course that is a bit pedantic but at the end of the day, even mistakes are ok when you use them to learn something. And calling our managers after Moyes very good and the reason for not existing success were the players would create the risk of repeating those mistakes over and over.
Those cracks were deeper and longer than people want to acknowledge. I don't blame managers in this case. I don't. We know what kind of players we had. We know how they behaved on the pitch. We know how structrue of the club was.
Ofcourse everybody needs to take some blame. I can criticize managers but whole situation after Ferguson should be blamed on players and club. There was lot of wrong decisions by the club when it came to buying players. We had some great managers and still they couldn't do anything. Managers that were successfull everywhere but apparently not us.
Why is Ole the manager a topic of discussion again? Is he line for another job?
I heard there is an available spot at the Manchester elementary school.
I hoped, in vain, that when Ole finally got a proper midfielder with something approaching a passing range, and a decent DM, we'd see the kind of football he played at Molde. But the midfielders never arrived, and I just gave up after the 2021 summer window. I wonder to what extent he was responsible for buying all of one CM (that he didn't even seem to fancy) during his reign.
Ole at United seemed very old fashioned, with a very simplistic view of football.
Ole at United seemed very old fashioned, with a very simplistic view of football.
I just laughed out loud at this
My favourite is when he very nearly quoted Simon Foster with the "Climb the mountain of conflict"
Its passion.. the way he says that. its like a comedy sketch.
No. I would agree with you, that the whole "they were champions just a year ago" was wrong because everybody knew that Rio and Vida were old, midfield was an issue, Evra was old and while Rooney and RVP were scoring, we create very very fecking little and they feeded on scraps. But still, indication as if the managers didn't do anything wrong is completely crazy in my eyes. Wasn't it an unnecessary problem, that Moyes removed all of the backroom stuff, showed videos of Jagielka and read some improvement books for everybody to see? And didn't he stop the Tiago transfer? Wasn't it incorrect from Van Gaal getting rid of so many players which gutted the squad and produced a painful reset, to stay adamant and insist to play his fecking dire way of football even though it obviously didn't work out as he didn't have a standout player in attack delivering moments of brilliance? Was Mourinho right in opposing half the team in public, going for instant success players without an actual future and appear like a miserable twat completely stuck on his past reputation? Of course it wasn't right. It was often unnecessary and downright foolish. Should the owners provide a better environment? For sure. Should the players stay focussed and work as hard as they can even though the environment sucks eggs? They should. But the manager is part of all of that.
Thats bonkers man. Nobody looked at Van Gaal as a top manager when we brought him in. People at Bayern (including fans) were happy when he left, the football he made his Holland team play was dire. Mourinho went out crashing at Real and Inter and Chelsea. He obviously has been a top manager at some point, but when he joined us, the question marks were already huge. Again - maybe it is redtinted goggles or something. But all this putting blame from one party to the next is BS. At the end of the day, it always ends at the Glazers. Great job, nobody will fight that notion and we can join in being angry. And we never have to question ourselves (i.e. the club) because as long as the Glazers are around, the manager is always faultless. Times have changed. Approaches change. Who knows how top managers from the past would fare these days.
Maybe I misunderstand you. I'll happily admit that the not existing structure in the club meant that we didn't create a very productive environment for those managers. Some were given too much power, too much decisions. But I am pretty sure Van Gaal and Mourinho were more than fine appearing as the top dogs because it suited their egos. It still isn't a carte blanche.
We didn't sign a midfielder because we had Pogba, supposedly our midfield dynamo. We signed Fred and Matic to compliment him. Another midfielder was never a top priority, sadly.
Ole was not sufficiently prepared for the job.
You don't think the manager has an impact on that? Both in how he manages in the dressing room, and in the players that he buys to add to the playing roster (and which ones he sells).
The situation was still quite recoverable when Ole came in. The right manager coming in then could have got things back into shape without needing a huge rebuild. A small-medium one certainly, but not the complete re-do that we needed by the time he finished. Buy the right players, install discipline in the team (without being a paranoid feckwit about it like Mourinho), know what you're doing on the training ground. Basically what ETH has already shown a decent amount of, even though he started from a significantly lower point than Ole.
Both LVG and Mourinho were great managers. LVG hadn't been that for about a decade, and Mourinho had already had probably the biggest and most sudden decline I can ever remember a manager having. At the time he came here we were just hoping it was the circumstances around him at Real and Chelsea, but during his time here it became obvious that it was just him becoming incredibly paranoid and set in his ways (ways that were no longer working). Hence why no top club is remotely interested in him anymore and he had to step down to the second-tier clubs, where he also failed at the first one.
That was in the aftermath of the Liverpool 0-5 loss. Ole was spot on about the players. The tactics weren't the problem on that day. It was the lack of effort.
Ten Hag also demands passion from his players:
I think the problem is that a lot of people assumed a lot of things about Ole on day 1, and then revelled in getting their biases confirmed by out-of-context quotes.
You don't finish 3rd and 2nd with Dan James, Andreas Pereira and McFred as first choice unless you're a good manager. Not even Pep or Klopp could have done better with that team.
And of course he had tactics. He sold his top scorer (Lukaku) in order to change tactics with Martial up front instead. He also made a clear change in tactics in 2021 which caused Maguire to get found out. Solskjaer wasn't clueless. He just lost the confidence of the dressing room after Ronaldo came in and upended the family atmosphere. It can happen to sometimes. Some of the best managers in history have got sacked for similar reasons.
Also, for what it's worth, Ole got 17 points from 11 games in the season he got sacked. Klopp got 16 points in 11 games at the start of last season. Solskjaer deserved to get sacked. But better managers have done worse with superior squads.
I think the sad truth is easy to see when you take away the name and fact he is a club legend; he simply wasn't qualified.
Best we all just think of him as an ex player and a coach who gave his best when we had made an awful hire in Mou.
Rangnick took over a team with poor morale and made it exponentially worse. He's basically the worst manager I've seen in a top 6 team in the last 25 years (and I've seen the likes of Hodgson in Pool, Potter & Villas Boas for Chelsea and Moyes for United) for the way his mouth filter kept breaking and words freely flowing in the press conferences. He should be no where near anything to do with the remotest part of our club.
Ole took over a team with poor morale. The team that Rangnick took over felt a hell of a lot worse than just that. Seemed to be completely and utterly mentally broken, to the extent that it felt like even Fergie himself wouldn't have been able to get that team working again without significant player turnover. A short initial improvement sure (which we saw under Rangnick as well), but the instant even the slightest little thing went wrong the entire lot just collapsed again.
Could Rangnick have done better about improving it? Yeah, a bit. But I also don't think he actually made it worse, things just were actually that damn bad. He just called it how it was. Even with fairly significant player turnover and a manager who has obviously done a great job improving the mentality around the side, there were still some glaring signs of that fragility lurking under the surface as we saw in the first couple of weeks last season and also in those couple of hidings where our players just looked absolutely shell-shocked.
Look, Mourinho is probably the best manager post Fergie (although I have a good feeling about Ten Hag), but boy did he leave behind a mess! Not just in terms of morale. Which players from that team were actually good enough to start for United? DDG, Shaw, Herrera and Rashford (although he was still a rough diamond back then). And he chose to bench one of these four!
In other words, not a single player signed or promoted by Mourinho stood the test of time. Pogba had the qualities but was inconsistent as hell. Fred, Dalot, Lindelöf and Matic were all decent bench options, but not more than that. His best transfer was Zlatan, but that was hardly a transfer for the future was it? This is especially bad when you remember that adjusted for inflation he was the highest spender.
Ole also left a messy squad behind, but it wasn't as bad as that Mourinho team in my opinion.
I still think people are too harsh on Rangnick though. He did a poor job yes, but being an interim manager is not easy.
The team that Mourinho left behind had quite a few talented youngsters that still had to come into their prime or were just starting to reach it. The likes of Rashford, Martial, Shaw, Pogba, hell even McTominay and Lingard. Not to mention Greenwood on the verge of breaking into the team. Also the likes of Dalot and Lindelof. If I remember correctly, in Ole's first season we had the youngest team in the entire league. Sure the team needed work but it had some good building blocks for a fairly significant improvement. Mentally the only real issue seemed to be bad morale directly due to Mourinho's stupid games and bullying, which is why there was such a huge instant improvement as soon as we got rid of him.
At the time Ole left, those young players were now in the middle of their career and hadn't really developed, and the players that had been just entering their prime were now approaching 30 and had gotten worse. Not to mention a few of them seemed to become very injury prone after they'd consistently played through injury under him. Greenwood of course was now on the verge of being kicked out of the team. The only improvement any of them had really done was what you'd expect purely from getting older and more experienced (and they were VERY inconsistent about showing it), rather than any significant development. And mentally the squad was much more broken and fragile than it'd been when Ole took over.
Those young players are probably the biggest issue I have with Ole in fact, and the main reason I wanted him replaced a good 12-18 months before we did it. That entire group of talented younger players seemed to be going to waste. A better manager could have helped them develop both tactically and mentally. Even Greenwood had already seemed to stagnate. Obviously they wouldn't have all been good enough, but there should have been more improvement than what we got.
Also just a point about you saying Pogba being inconsistent. Yes he was, but no more inconsistent than any other player in the team. Indeed if we take his first four seasons overall he was probably the least inconsistent player in the squad. Sure it was in the sense of him being the tallest dwarf, but it was still the case. It was only once the injuries took over in his last two seasons it was obviously a different story.
Let's see...
Rashford: promoted by Van Gaal, became truly good under Ole.
Martial: signed by Van Gaal and has been inconsistent and injury-prone for most of his time here. His best season came under Ole.
Shaw: signed by Van Gaal, benched by Mourinho, regained his form under Ole.
McTominay and Lingard: never good enough to start for United.
Greenwood: Ole gave him his professional debut, not Mourinho. And he was one of our best and most promising attackers when Ole got sacked.
Pogba, Dalot and Lindelöf have already been discussed.
Honestly, Ole left behind a better team than Mourinho did. He did a worse job, but the team was better. Bruno, Varane, Rashford (improved), Shaw (improved), Greenwood (developed), De Gea (not as bad as in 2018) and AWB (better than Valencia/Dalot). It's still nowhere near good enough of course, but it's better than Pogba, Herrera, undeveloped Rashford and benched Shaw.
Rashford: Was at his best in Ole's first full season, then got respectively worse each season.
Martial: Was at his best in Ole's first full season, then got respectively worse each season.
Greenwood: Had his breakthrough in Ole's first full season, then got respectively worse each season.
Pogba: Had his last decent season in Ole's first full season, then got respectively worse each season.
Shaw: Breaks the mold by being at his best in Ole's second season, then followed the pattern by getting worse anyway.
De Gea: Had his best ever season 6 months earlier, and although he'd dropped off a bit at the time Ole took over nobody was too worried. Wasn't until a few months after Ole took charge that his form absolutely plummeted and he was downright poor for most of the time since.
McTominay: Had the occasional period where he showed some potential, but never developed whatsoever. His best patch was late 18/19 and early 19/20 (so once again just after Ole took over) before dropping off and absolutely stagnating since.
Lingard: Obviously not a starter, but was decent squad-player level for LVG, Mourinho and Ole's first half a season. Went to shit in Ole's first full season.
Dalot: Talented young fullback that never showed any development until after Ole left.
At the point Ole took over, not many people wanted many (or even any) of these players sold, whereas by the time he left it was a very different story. They'd all gone from being fairly young players with promise and potential that everyone was hopeful could be developed, to now being around the middle of their career with most of them considered downright failures. In pure ability, the post-Mourinho vs post-Ole teams were fairly even. But the former had a hell of a lot more potential to grow and develop.
Of course, all this ignores my original main point that it was the mental aspect that was the biggest difference between them. It was 'only' bad morale at the end of Mourinho, which could be recovered from relatively easily. Whereas at the end of Ole the mental aspect was in a much worse situation with no easy way back.
This is probably my 10th time quoting posts of you to say something along the lines of bravo. No different this time too,
@MadDogg why are you giving Mourinho credit for players having their best seasons under Ole? That makes no sense to me. Especially when exactly none of them were signed or promoted by him!
Mourinho was probably the best of a bad lot, but his transfers were generally shit and he didn't really develop any of the existing players much. I actually think both Van Gaal and Ole did better than Mourinho in these areas.
Mourinho was probably the best of a bad lot, but his transfers were generally shit and he didn't really develop any of the existing players much. I actually think both Van Gaal and Ole did better than Mourinho in these areas.
Thanks mate.
I'm not giving Mourinho any credit at all. He was an absolute prick who sabotaged people and things around him so that they would take the blame for things not working and he could sit back and pretend it wasn't mostly his fault. He was worse for the young players than Ole was, publicly criticising them and looking to throw them under the bus whenever he could. Most of those players he either had nothing to do with bringing to the club and the ones he did he quickly decided he didn't like anyway. So trust me he's not getting any credit from me at all.@MadDogg why are you giving Mourinho credit for players having their best seasons under Ole? That makes no sense to me. Especially when exactly none of them were signed or promoted by him!
Mourinho was probably the best of a bad lot, but his transfers were generally shit and he didn't really develop any of the existing players much. I actually think both Van Gaal and Ole did better than Mourinho in these areas.
However the key thing is that we fecked him off early enough that those players were still in a good position to develop for the next manager who came in. That's not a credit for Mourinho, just a statement about the make-up of the squad at the time.
Ole came in and believed in them and gave them the freedom to express themselves, which is why almost all of them had a noticeable sudden improvement. The issue is that it was a short-term boost but he didn't seem to have any ability to develop them further, which is why they all just fell away and got worse as time wore on. Being 'better than Mourinho' was still nowhere near good enough, and unfortunately by the time we sacked him it was too late for most of those players to reach the level that they potentially could have. Six years of Mourinho followed by Solskjaer was just too much of a black hole at the absolute pivotal point of development.
It's a similar story with the mental issues I talked about. The original issues really started under Mourinho, but we got rid of him early enough that they were recoverable. Especially as the negativity was mostly focused (and rightfully so to be honest) at him specifically. A manager coming in at that point and building discipline throughout the squad and bringing in some players with leadership ability (something we basically had none of as seen by the options when Maguire got captaincy) could have turned it around. Ole did seem to try to do the latter to be fair with the likes of Bruno and arguably Varane and Ronaldo. Originally he bought a feel-good factor, but long-term it seemed he allowed negativity, laziness and lack of consequences to fester throughout the squad. Once again it wasn't necessarily him being worse than Mourinho in that regard, but more that six years of Mourinho followed by Ole ultimately did more damage than three years of Mourinho by himself.