Christ we've been thoroughly embarrassed in Europe this season.
And I thought Jose's Sevilla moment was bad... just how low can we sink?
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And I thought Jose's Sevilla moment was bad... just how low can we sink?
He’s a far more cautious and conservative manager than I think his involvement in past glories trick is into believing sometimes. Tying in a major final against an inferior opposition and when you do eventually make a change you pull off an attacking player for a holding midfielder.
The football is often slow and laboured. It’s like Jose is still here but decided to become less of a prick
The football is often slow and laboured. It’s like Jose is still here but decided to become less of a prick
Did we play one cohesive attacking piece of football in the final, maybe one that could have been offside. The way we played in ET is unforgiveable, lack of intent and lack of fresh legs and ideas.
The following seven players were in our team on Wednesday. Where were these players in 2017?
Degea
Baily
Lindelof
Shaw
Mctominay
Fred
Pogba
Rashford
Essentially you can switch Bruno for Herrera and Cavani for Lukaku. Pretending our squad was a shambles then under Mourinho was as bad as pretending it was a shambles now. Of course it needed improving but this whole “dismantling” angle is unfounded hyperbole especially when you consider four years on most of those players still make up the crux of the team.
As @SAFMUTD pointed out too the squad actually won the Europa league and also finished 2nd under Mourinho who on here many deem to have been a failure at United. The hilarity is by taking the stance you’ve taken you’re essentially backing the guy who performed worse despite having a supposedly better squad. Just can’t have it both ways really.
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It's a bit weird, but I feel like jury's still out on how we did this season because it'll be largely dependent on how we do next season:
Will we make key signings and put up a more serious fight for the title and achieve better consistency (our #1 issue) or continue playing as we did last season and settle for yet another safely decent top 4 season? (or worse yet, regress from where we are)
Next season is make or break for me, but objectively speaking I'm probably giving Ole more patience than he deserves; just ask Chelsea how they'd be doing right now if they kept Lampard until end of the season.
Will we make key signings and put up a more serious fight for the title and achieve better consistency (our #1 issue) or continue playing as we did last season and settle for yet another safely decent top 4 season? (or worse yet, regress from where we are)
Next season is make or break for me, but objectively speaking I'm probably giving Ole more patience than he deserves; just ask Chelsea how they'd be doing right now if they kept Lampard until end of the season.
There is not really any room to spend more. The only place we can save money is if the Glazer's stop taking dividends, which amounts to $20m per year. That comes to 2% of our total outgoings. The rest is unavoidable.
To add to the list of the other poster, we are actually first in terms of net spend since Solskjaer took charge.
Look that’s a fair point. Mourinho was working with an older squad who did win a couple trophies and get us over the line. Strangely the final against Ajax was one of the more comfortable games in that Europa League run. Celta Vigo gave us a good run for our money if I remember rightly.
All that said though I reckon our team now is much better than the 2017 team. Maybe that isn’t borne out yet with trophies but that’s how I feel about it.
I was responding to the point about our rebuild taking 3-4 years. If you make 5-6 years of bad transfers it takes time to fix those. Unless the board sanctioned back to back 250m summers or you find some hidden gems it will take longer to be competitive at the top end.
And how convincing was it? The way I remember it we were quite lucky to make the final and then stifled Ajax in the final. It certainly didn’t make me think that team was on the cusp of greatness.
I don’t see the foundations being laid on the field. I think I’d be more on board if I could see what he was trying to do even if he was failing to do it or even if I didn’t like it. I hated LVG approach but I backed him because even though I didn’t like it it was at least a direction. Two and a half years is enough time to build some kind of tactical identity. We’re completely undefinable as a unit. That’s what worries me.
I can’t look at this team and how we play and think we’re signing or two away from kicking on because I honestly do not think we’ve got past the starting blocks.
We should have an identity that we build towards mastering but were among the most tactically nondescript teams around.
I can’t look at this team and how we play and think we’re signing or two away from kicking on because I honestly do not think we’ve got past the starting blocks.
We should have an identity that we build towards mastering but were among the most tactically nondescript teams around.
You've got to be joking.
United absolutely coasted to 2nd (ahead of some really good teams) and would have been competitive for the title if it wasn't for an incredible run that City went on. City found a really solid centre back pairing and adding that to their quality attack made them a formidable outfit.
In a season of a crazily congested fixture list, that was a run nobody could match.
People don't want to admit it but the protests completely derailed the season. It led to a ridiculous fixture list for the run in and broke the momentum of an excellent run that the team was on.
Momentum is huge in football, especially when you had a knackered squad at the end of last season, had 2 weeks off, added a 34 year old free agent and a couple of squad players and then played weekend/midweek every week for the entire season with the exact same squad.
Prior to the protests, United were odds on to beat Liverpool and end their top 4 hopes. Instead they had a crazy schedule, lost to Leicester and Liverpool, lost all positive momentum and were so knackered they could hardly move in extra time of the Europa League final.
Of course, it's all for the greater good. Glazers will leave any day now.
Tottenham collapsed, Liverpool collapsed, Chelsea had an appalling start and who even are Arsenal any more?
Go back and look at all the runners up over the last 20 years whether they missed out on goal difference or 20 points behind. I struggle to see any side I think this team is better than or even as good as and in the majority of cases it’s nowhere near being a close call
Go back and look at all the runners up over the last 20 years whether they missed out on goal difference or 20 points behind. I struggle to see any side I think this team is better than or even as good as and in the majority of cases it’s nowhere near being a close call
What did it for for Mourinho the very next season?
No matter how lucky it was the fact that that squad was able to achieve something that the current squad hasn't means that we weren't as bad as people like to say.
We weren't a team in shambles we were just a team with a toxic atmosphere, but we had a decent squad.
So what? You could argue the same when Liverpool won the league, replace Liverpool with United. Football happens in cycles. United aren’t as far away as you think
It was clearly Mourinho's fault for getting a toxic environment rather than lack of quality, everyone knows we were better than what we were performing.
That whole "rebuild" fact that has been going on for almost 3 years now is based on a 6 month performance, isn't it funny? People thinking that squad was only as good as it lower point and not at their highest.
You say we had a decent squad but the knuckle draggers still wanted smalling gone, blind gone, Shaw was crap, young wasn’t good enough etc
See my next post
Having a few bad players doesnt mean the squad needs a whole rebuild, it's literally the same situation we are in right now.
But Liverpool were a good side. They would have won the league or at least been challenging for it regardless. I don’t think we’d have a shout of second on our own merits this season without benefiting from misfortune of others
We can agree to disagree but look at our league record. We’d have been there or thereabouts
A few bad players. This forum wanted half the squad gone. Different players from now. It wants another half a squad gone now. At what point do we let a manager get on with his job and we stop pretending that we know better?
This is all plausible but if you look back and assess our final performance alongside various semi final performances it does suggest a manager at the helm who isn’t a great motivator. He also bought James and VDB I believe who he didn’t rate to use on the night and many nights. Now his transfer record for me holds up, just unfortunate with our budget and chasing down better squads, we couldn’t really afford another 50m wasted...he needed instead a great bench option. The summer will decide his fate now and strangely he’s not really the decider on how that pans out. Zero credit in the bank now amongst the majority it feels.
Yep, it is better. Which is why I don’t think the whole “huge rebuild ongoing” angle is suitable at the moment.
Regarding set pieces the problem is complicated.
De Gea has never been good at coming of his line and dealing with set pieces (i dont really know about Hendo) and outside of Maguire whos fantastic in the air, none of our other players are really that great at it. Pogba, Cavani and McTomminay are decent, but other than that i cant think of many players that are particularly dominant in the air. Another problem is that we play zonal marking and way to often we see players losing focus and leave their zone completely open. This is 100% a coaching issue imo
Playing from the back is also mostly a player issue imo. Fred and McTomminay are good/decent at breaking up play and screening the defense, but none of them are great passers. Considering Bruno is man marked by everyone these days it cuts of the supply completely when we try to build through the middle and we end up going wide instead. Pogba does solve that in some way, but as we know playing him as CM brings a lot of other problems. If Matic was 5 years younger we would have been golden, but sadly he isnt. A press resistant CM with some ability on the ball and some passing skills would make a world of difference imo
I said it before in this thread, but if all it took to defeat a parked bus was a good system, then no one would bother with it. We have gotten better at it though. This season in the league we won 21 games and scored the 2nd amount of goals behind City so its not like we are completely hapless. Room for improvement? Definitely, but imo we are not as clueless as many on here think we are
Another bit of progress that often gets overlooked is how nicely the squad is shaping up. We have a very decent core of starters now, and loads of players in the squad we can sell/release without it weakening us significantly
Romero, DDG, Baily, Dalot, Jones, Mata, Pereira, Lindgard, Matic, Martial and Chong are all surplus to requirements and players we realistically can sell/release this summer without it affecting us too much. Not saying its realistic, but if all of those left it would lighten the wage bill considerably, and probably bring in around 100 million £
In the completely unrealistic scenario that all of those leave this summer we are left with
----------------------------Hendo(24)--------------------------------
AWB(23)---Maguire(28)--Lindelof--(26)---Shaw(25)
---------------------Fred(28)---McTomminay(24)-----------
-----------------------------Bruno(26)--------------------------------
Greenwood(19)------Cavani(34)-------Rashford(23)
Subs: Telles, Williams, Tuanzebe, Mengi, James, Diallo, Pellestri, VdB, Garner, Mejbri, Pogba, Elanga, Shoretire
If we add Sancho, Pau Torres and Rice (personally not that convinced about the latter) and sell someone of the ones i listed above, we are looking at a net spend of around 100-150 million maximum which should not be impossible
The average age of that lineup is just 25,4 years, swap out Cavani with someone like Sancho and it goes down to 24,2. Considering most teams peak when their average age is around 26-28 is tells you this is a line up with plenty of potential and room to grow. Oles transfer strategy might not have brought instant success, but it puts down some solid foundations and it means we are going to reap the benefits for years to come
Just to be clear, Ole and his staff needs to show improvement next season as well for them to keep their jobs. A decent league challenge, 80+ points at least in the league and some sort of trophy is the bare minimum imo
Losing the final in that manner was gutting, but honestly i think the future looks bright. Even if Ole fails to deliver next season and gets the sack, i think hes done well in rebuilding the squad and whoever comes in next is going to have a exciting young team to work with
Still this forum wants at least a new keeper, a CB, a CDM a CM a RW and a ST. That's about half a team if you ask me.
All your are asking is to have blind faith. How much time do you think a manager needs/deserves?
Now we are talking about upgrading the team which is completely normal for every manager. Even Fergie had people complaining about his midfield and wingers at one stage!
I think Ole deserves to have in place what he has asked for and given another year to see if we move forward. Btw I don’t consider it blind faith, I have seen enough to suggest he’s slowly turning this thing around. Our fans need to have patience. Good job social media wasn’t around when fergie was starting, we’d never have known 20 years of success!
They say the darkest hour is before the dawn. Feck the EL.Yes we were absolute garbage. Yes the manager was totally found out like a rabbit in the headlights but everything’s been called out. Rashfords injuries and form. Overplaying players. Not using his signings. It’s all on the table. Ole is still learning and growing as a manager. He needs to make the tougher calls and if he doesn’t he’s gone soon. I’m sure he realises that. If we’d won the EL it would only be papering over the cracks of how much work still needs to be done and how flat we've looked for too long this season. I hope this is also another reality check for the owners. It’s going to be a bloodbath this summer with Sancho on the market, Pogba probably wanting to leave etc
Precisely how I feel. Ole has been turning this correctly around, slowly. Even if we don’t have patience we should acknowledge he’s done a good job relating the foundation and digging out the dirt. He deserves to be backed this summer and see how they progress this new season
Christ. There’s that word “embarrassing” again. You must have a perfect life if you think the result of one final is embarrassing. Give your head a wobble
Liverpool and Chelsea would consider this a pretty crap season in the league for themselves, very much below par. Finishing above them is better than finishing below them... But it's not some massive success.
Anybody got stats for goals conceded from set pieces in the league? We conceded 44 goals this season, only 2 less than Brighton and Villa. We did however finish 2nd highest goal scorers, but we're far too easy to score against and until we address that we ain't winning shit.
There would be room to spend more if we didn't have so much interest to pay annually on the debt (let alone paying it off).
But yes the main problem has been how we have spent money, not the lack of spending.
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So having a squad that finished second with above 80 points and everyone wanted half a new team it's called a rebuild, but having a squad that finishes second with 70 points and everyone wants half a team is called "upgrading" the team. Sorry mate but you are just changing the narrative.
Every manager wants to improve their squad, and every manager brings and sells players but only Ole has been given this "rebuild" narrative which is basically a excuse to freeze all the titles demands. I just don't buy it.
So having a squad that finished second with above 80 points and everyone wanted half a new team it's called a rebuild, but having a squad that finishes second with 70 points and everyone wants half a team is called "upgrading" the team. Sorry mate but you are just changing the narrative.
Every manager wants to improve their squad, and every manager brings and sells players but only Ole has been given this "rebuild" narrative which is basically a excuse to freeze all the titles demands. I just don't buy it.
You do realize the shit he was left with after Lvg and Jose broke everyone?
I agree we don't have specially dominant players in the air besides Maguire, but we are not talking about being an average side. We are talking about being the worst side in the whole league I mean surely there something really wrong with out coaching in that regard it's can't all be on the players.
I don't think that one is that easy to solve at all, bringing a new CM press resistant or whatever won't magically make our defense know how to move in blocks how to isolate the pressure, it will still be the same improvised playing out from.the back that as soon as it's countered with a high pressing team we crumble.
That's one way to look at it, but scoring lots of goals is not necessarily an indication about how good a team is breaking down a side. Since the only goal that break the defense is the first one you score. The way I look at it is we had 7 0-0 draws in the league, we definitely need to improve on that. This team can score the 2nd, 3rd and 4th goal after breaking up the defense with ease that not the problem. The problem is scoring that first goal which is the hardest.
I agree we do look like a team with potential, but we should be more than that by now. Still you talk about 3-4 new players, just like it was before Ole came. Nobody matter who comes, we will always ask for a new player. No team sudden says "well this is it, now I'm complete we don't need nobody else" it's constant changing and while we definitely have specific positions that are way below the requirements I think that we also have crucial coaching problems that won't be magically solved just by bringing players.
This narrative has been going on here for some time now, I don't agree with it at all. I think it's a narrative to ease up the pressure on Ole. "Sure he must deliver, but even if he doesn't it's not failure because he's building something for a future manager". Like I said I think it's just a narrative to lower the expectations bar so Ole doesn't fail.
broke everyone? what does that even mean? players fall appart with managers all the time. Chelsea went through the same shit with Mourinho, Conte went there and won. No one was crying about a whole 3 year rebuild that was needed because "Mourinho broke everyone".
That excuse cant be used anymore, not after 2 and a half seasons.
It’s like banging my head off a brick wall for no reason. I’m done with this thread
The squad isn't anywhere near City, Liverpool and Chelsea when they are injury free and managed correctly. It's still 250m worth of players behind them to challenge them seriously for a title. Conte or Zidane might get closer but they aren't winning.