The hero we all need 
Ralf Rangnick | Austria manager
- Thread starter Livewire1974
- Start date
Agree. Casemiro and Eriksen need to remove 8 years on their career to actually be of long term use to us.
Anthony was a knee-jerk buy.
Varane is his best defender and OGS got him in
.Mount has created another problem for ETH to solve and this club isn't going anywhere on a first class train.
The buck stops at The Glazers imo, completely stop the club from winning things by lack of club structure and blocks in the transfer market.
So were most armchair football fans, him observing that our squad was a mess doesn't mean anything.
I would have liked to have seen him retained involved to help squad build, but unfortunately he was so unbelievably shit as a manager that his position would have been completely undermined and by extension so would have Ten Hag's had he remained at the club.
As with all our managers the blame for that rests solely with our owners and execs, appointing someone with barely any managerial experience in the past ten years and expecting him to implement his high press style of football in 6 months while having zero authority as an interim was beyond stupid.
It fecked our season, made our dressing room issues even worse, and it ensured that Rangnick as a figure at United in any capacity was no longer tenable. Fantastic work all round there.
The difference is exactly that. We are armchair fans, but Rangnick was possibly only person in world of football to have any connection to Manchester United to call things the way they were supposed to be called. ten Hag obviously dissmised his advice, and he's obviously going by his own shortlist which is terrible as of now.
He was terrible as a coach but it is telling that the one person who has been inside the club and has been a DoF before, had a long list of transfer targets (whatever you make of those targets) most of whom we didn't seem to know, look at or want.
We lost a game of football.
I remember he recommended Enzo Fernandez, Gvardiol, Julian Alvarez, Luis Diaz, Konrad Laimer, and Nkunku to Man Utd.
To be fair there were probably a shit load of other scouts and coaches that recognised those talents as well. I’m surprised he didn’t mention Mbappe and Haaland in there too.
He probably did mention Haaland given his background and connection.
He said he was surprised our scouts had no reports on Nkunku. He actually said this year that it was too early for him to make the move to Chelsea.
There was a few that he actually pushed for, Amadou Haidara being one of them.
One thing for sure he is not a very good man manager, and probably not a good football manager at the highest level. He probably won't be a very good DOF in terms of managing relationship with the senior management.
I agree with everything you've said.
What did ETH see in Antony that he was so keen on him ? I appreciate his defensive work but after that he's zero out of 10 for me.
It depends how much leeway he is given like any DoF. Noone in such a role will succeed within the current United recruitment structure where all contracts need to bounce backwards and forwards through timezones because the Glazers need to sign off every expense.
Get a DoF who can assess the current squad, planning for the teams needs going forward, planning incomings and outgoings well in advance including plan A,B,C scenarios and give them the budget to work within.
Bring him back!! He would surely see the merit of starting McTom every game!
You can never tell -- best fighter jocks don't always make the best commanders or generals.
It was reported ETH declined the opportunity to meet him. ETH thought he knew better, seems he was wrong
It's so strange that people still cling to the views of a bloke who won about 3 proper trophies in his managerial career - and that is if we're counting a second division title and an Intertoto Cup over 20 years ago as proper trophies. Heck even if you ignore that and look at him being some Director of Football extraordinaire, he oversaw a couple of promotions without actually winning the league at Leipzig while they were pumping in money way beyond their opponents at levels 2 and 3, they continued to spend big money year on year after promotion. Given he was such a brilliant Director of Football, always finding players to sell for big money, it's odd that they were losing money every year under him, only making a profit in the transfer market once in eight years, 18/19, and even that was a slight profit of a few million euros due to somehow getting £55m out of Liverpool for Naby Keita. He's never been at a huge club or really even come particularly close to joining a huge club, during his trial period with United he was a disaster and made matters worse at every turn by constantly opening his mouth to the press, which obviously the club would have seen as a huge red flag given the work they were doing behind the scenes to eliminate leaks from the dressing room.
There's just no redeeming factors with the guy and it's mad that people still go back to him saying "we need 10 players" as if that was some kind of mystic-ball statement, especially given the one player in the squad he told the world was good enough is currently sat on his arse with no club and nobody in Europe wanting to sign him seemingly.
There's just no redeeming factors with the guy and it's mad that people still go back to him saying "we need 10 players" as if that was some kind of mystic-ball statement, especially given the one player in the squad he told the world was good enough is currently sat on his arse with no club and nobody in Europe wanting to sign him seemingly.
You have to think he sees potential there, he's 23 and so has a bit of time until his physical peak. I do think he's looked a little bit quicker this season incidentally and I think he will be a good player for us - if you think of City's wide attackers, they don't usually put up silly numbers for G+A, Mahrez usually got about 15 G+A combined as a reference point (compared to say Pool when they had Salah and Mane scoring/assisting insane amounts between them) but they are consistent, they are defensively extremely good and they have excellent ball retention/close control. At a basic level, Antony has all those things bar consistency (the hardest one) and is he in a team that will score far less, and therefore it is harder to assist in, than City. If he can just up his output steadily he will be a great option, it's just about decision making/being clinical in his case - he should really already be on an assist and goal just from the Spurs game. You can say the same for many of our attackers to be honest even just from that game, there were a few sitters missed.
Have a little hope!
Ole recommended Halaand TWICE, and still United didnt make a move. This club is hopeless until we got rid of The Glazers and Murtough.
Yet another caf myth. We tried for him and Bellingham and both chose Dortmund over us, I doubt Haaland was interested in us when he left Dortmund.
yeah a myth
“I remember one day when I was watching Erling train,” says John Vik, formerly Molde’s chief scout. “He had been with us seven or eight months, he was training really hard and he had become part of the squad. I walked down to see Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who was Molde’s manager, and I said, ‘You have to call Manchester United, mate – this is unreal what we are looking at.’
“Me and Ole understood that this kid was so good we were not going to be able to keep him.
“Ole agreed with absolutely everything. ‘I will put a phone call in’, he said, ‘they need to hear about this kid’. We had friends at United. I used to work closely with United, in the early 2000s, and most of the guys I knew had gone. But Ole was Ole. ‘For God’s sake’, I said, ‘call Nicky Butt (then United’s head of academy), or call somebody, because this kid is unreal’.
“This was even before Erling had really started to play for Molde properly. Ole put the phone call in. So the name was put in. Then, how or whether United followed it up, I don’t know.”
Vik is the New York-born talent-spotter who brought Haaland to Molde as part of the chain of events that now sees the striker wearing the colours of Manchester City"
https://theathletic.com/3589492/2022/09/14/erling-haaland-manhester-united-transfer/
https://theathletic.com/4515644/202...edirected=1&access_token=2489584&redirected=1
https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...chester-united-haaland-transfer-news-26906753
say what you like about Ole as manager but the man knows quality striker when he sees one.
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I’ve been saying this in the Antony thread.
He’s much more of a City type winger: ball retention, playing the overlap with their fullback, with good defensive qualities. And as you said, their wingers never put high numbers, but they’re important for the balance of the team.
That’s part of the reason why the Caf hates him, he’s basically the anti-United winger, we like them fast, direct and able to wreak havoc in the other teams half almost only by themselves
Permit me, if you will, to educate you on the history of Manchester United and Ole Gunnar Solksjaer's scouting side job.
There was once a striker at Molde, he was faster than Haaland, he scored the same amount of goals as Haaland in about half the time, he also scored 4 in one game, he also cost £4m. He came to United after Ole recommended him to SAF, scored a single goal and was eventually sold to Wigan after some loans. That man was Mame Biriam Diouf.
Is it that crazy that United did not act on buying a teenager from Norway who scored 12 in 25?
The realistic windows for us to buy him were post Salzberg (we tried and reportedly did not want to put in the release clause) and post Dortmund (I assume we tried but had no hope at that time). His time at Salzberg and Dortmund were key in his development, if United had signed him from Molde as a kid who knows how he would have developed but we'd been burnt before in that exact scenario.
To some extent I can understand the people who still have some affinity for Ole, Jose or even LVG, but my goodness, Rangnick was an absolute disaster and he is not someone we should be pining for.
We have had 10 years of mediocrity.
There's a contingent of fans who like to make out the people with legitimate concerns and criticisms are knee jerkers and moaners by cherry picking with lines like "it's only one game" or "the season has just started" conveniently overlooking the past decade. The same decade where the "knee jerkers" and "moaners" have been the ones in the right more often than not.
Hopefully we're not right again but the concerns are warranted. Recent history shows they are.
Thank you, well said. This is spot on.
So if I ignore the 2 emergency loans and 3 players who played only 0- 2 games , he got only one wrong?
I will take it.
using your logic we should never sign another player from another club just because the previous signing didnt work outwhat next? shouldnt we bought anyone from Leicester because of Harry Maguire? and yes let me educate you about the history of man united, because Mame Diouf signed for United in 2009 while Ole only became Molde manager in 2010. Hillarious isnt it?
Because people love to moan and he's the football hipsters darling.
A LOT of people in here where very adamant that we definately did not need 10 players to really compete. Now when he has been proven right its suddenly "Well any idiot knew that"
I think thats disingenuous.
Rangnick was not good for us, he was probably not the level we needed but it didnt help that the players cleraly didnt give a feck either.
All in all it was the wrong appointment but hindsight and all that.
Rangnick was a good director of football and his coaching work at Schalke was very good. Simply pumping a ton of money in to a club doesnt mean you succeed automatically, just look at how much money we have spent after Fergie left.
Capital letters, grammar and comprehension are important. The point was Ole’s previous recommendation that bore striking similarities to Haaland on face value was a bad one.
You said he knows good strikers when he sees them, Diouf casts doubt on that statement.
Some of the names attributed to Ralf were said in a press conference right? I seem to remember him mentioning haaland, Alvarez,Diaz,gvardiol
But I weren't some of them already signed or in the defenders case, he wasn't exactly an unknown?
I also don't trust united in getting some of the cheaper signings before they are big and using them correctly. I reckon we sign them when they are young and unless they come from a medium/ big team or spend lots of money we end up sending them on loan (and probably choosing bad clubs for the majority before giving up)
I have no reason to believe if we got caicedo for 5m he would be the player he was for Brighton last season. There's not much of a record to say he would be.
Same with Bellingham or haaland if we got them when we had the chances. The latter two imo made right choices not coming to united when they had the chance especially with going to Dortmund where they will get the minutes and platform
But I weren't some of them already signed or in the defenders case, he wasn't exactly an unknown?
I also don't trust united in getting some of the cheaper signings before they are big and using them correctly. I reckon we sign them when they are young and unless they come from a medium/ big team or spend lots of money we end up sending them on loan (and probably choosing bad clubs for the majority before giving up)
I have no reason to believe if we got caicedo for 5m he would be the player he was for Brighton last season. There's not much of a record to say he would be.
Same with Bellingham or haaland if we got them when we had the chances. The latter two imo made right choices not coming to united when they had the chance especially with going to Dortmund where they will get the minutes and platform
It’s almost like the job of the scouts is look deeper over period of time and make a judgement on how they are going to develop. I’m not sure it would have been a massive reach to suggest that Haaland was going to be a better player that Diouf, despite similar goal records.
That's what you'd hope but then if I think back, I don't really remember any big team being linked with him then. Given how scouting works at all the bigger clubs now, there's no way they wouldn't have known of him (their regional teams would have lists of any young players who look like good prospects) but I guess he was deemed too high risk at the time? Real after all sanctioned buying 16 year old Odegaard, there is the appetite there if these clubs think a player is exceptional.
I don't think it's that bad if a club misses a young player who then becomes great years later on, there's so many intangibles to their development. Our issue with transfers has been signing players who are known entities and still messing it up.
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Yeah I think you're right
Also I think this mythical list of Rangnick's is gradually growing in size, with every new young star getting added to it by his acolytes.
just like i said how come ole made recommendation to sign a molde striker when he wasnt even their manager at that time? and how come the club just accepted his recommendation when they knew was still managing united youth team and didnt even spend a single day training in norway? please use your logic in this one to enlighten me. otherwise you just made it up.
It is the truth. We had calls for Solskjaer to be basically upgraded to DoF because of his assumed astute recruitment. Also, how many trophies had Solskjaer won before some in this forum decided to defend his cause tooth and nail for three years? More than three? As you said, Rangnick was an abject failure here as a manager. But he was only an interim, he didn't stay long enough to bring players in and leave a lasting negative impact behind him. Why so much hate toward the man? Because he spoke against the narrative a lot of were pushing back then?