Ralf Rangnick | ex-interim manager | does anyone rate him?

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Ateltico is one of the most defensively solid teams in the world.

To play against that - he goes and chooses Mctominay and Fred to go defensive against them. :drool:


What happens? Unable to be creative enough to snatch a goal whilst Ateltico get just one off us.

Rubbish manager that has no ability to look at the players he has, what gets the best out of them and his oppositions weaknesses.

Looking forward to the end of the season like it's my birthday.
But this is talking in hindsight, and in my opinion not even drawing the right conclusions. In the first leg Atletico started very attacking, and pressed United off the park. That didn't happen yesterday. Instead United played very well at the start, and Mctominay and Fred were arguably the best players in that period. Especially Fred showed a lot of creativity in the middle, so I don't know why you would argue they were the wrong choice just because United were unlucky that dominant phase didn't result in a goal.
 
Sancho is one, most of us felt we got done by dortmund again but ralf is getting a tune out of him.
You had to be pretty ignorant of all football outside of the premier league and ridiculously knee jerk to have that opinion about Sancho 3 months into his move here when the rest of the team has been a disaster. It's always been clear he's a ridiculously talented player who would get it together, just takes time.
 
I remember him being lauded by some as a tactical genius and that because of that people thought he could do us well in the champions league. That aged well
People are burying their heads in the sand if they think he's done a good job.

When he came in there was reasonable excitement that we could still make something of our season. Expectations weren't particularly high but we at least thought we'd be tactically sound and play good football. He's been shite across the board except a few areas like getting Fred and Sancho playing better. Even then they had already picked up in Carrick's tenure so what has he really done.

His best achievement with us so far is to not be Ole and to impress the those that think press conferences are important. We play shit football most games and even when we do play well it only lasts 35mins a game.
 
People are burying their heads in the sand if they think he's done a good job.

When he came in there was reasonable excitement that we could still make something of our season. Expectations weren't particularly high but we at least thought we'd be tactically sound and play good football. He's been shite across the board except a few areas like getting Fred and Sancho playing better. Even then they had already picked up in Carrick's tenure so what has he really done.

His best achievement with us so far is to not be Ole and to impress the those that think press conferences are important. We play shit football most games and even when we do play well it only lasts 35mins a game.

yeah. Top 4 was attainable when he arrived. Hes been utter trash tbf. Hung up on his own ego and trying to play football unsuited to the personnel he has. Though apparantly its all Ole’s fault hes shit though. I Personally think hes a one trick pony and just hasnt got the tactical nous to win games against Newcastle, Burnley, Middlesbrough and Southampton despite having the likes of Pogba, Bruno, Varane, Sancho and the GOAT at his disposal.

the club building bit is something i’m waiting to see - though I have a nagging doubt that its not applicable here because we arent a 3rd division club looking to make a run up the league ladder.
 
Back to blaming the manager when we’ve seen for almost a decade that it’s the structural issues at the top along with mismanaged recruitment that’s got us here. The players ultimately are to blame if they can’t finish chances and score. Now we need a long term vision and strategy from a club that has shown it doesn’t know what the feck it’s doing for almost a decade.
 
None of the players we have bar Sancho is used to playing in a technical team. The others are a bunch of individual players. I like the way he knows what needs to be done to build the team. Whether he is allowed to do so upstairs is a different story. Bruno is not a player who can play in a pressing team. He is not a midfield player who is disciplined enough to do so. We are always playing 10 men vs 11 and sometimes 12 like last night.
 
Manager's manage, to get the best out of what he's got. Regardless of these players, RR was brought in to improve the football and get results. He's failed, anyone can talk a good game regarding what United need to change.

He's a bluffer, his decision to stick with Maguire has hurt him. Regardless of what you think of Maguire, something very wrong with replacing a cb captain for Mata in the last 10 minutes, in the biggest game of season. It was a pure cop out, didn't have the balls to put Lindelof on at the start. Every United fan knew it was a risk starting Maguire. I'm not buying it, maybe sticking to recruitment will be better.
 
In few months, we will see threads created like "Poch the fraud " or "ETH - the overrated bald". No one can fix this mess if we until the players get their shit together. Until we have players who can be coached to play better.

Bruno was terrible over 2 matches. Pogba was just a passenger. Rashford has been horrible and don't even get me started about Harry.

Then people complain why do we start Matic or Scott in midfield. Simple - we don't have better options or the options we have is terrible.


I still support Ralph because the team we inherited is horrible. Just an overpaid overrated group of people.
 
You had to be pretty ignorant of all football outside of the premier league and ridiculously knee jerk to have that opinion about Sancho 3 months into his move here when the rest of the team has been a disaster. It's always been clear he's a ridiculously talented player who would get it together, just takes time.
Should've seen the Sancho thread, it was ridiculous. This whole forum is filled with knee-jerk reactions, comments about Ralf after yesterday for example.

I don't think many here have a clue. For an interim manager, I do agree Ralf was probably not the right pick. I don't think his system could be implemented overnight as we have seen and ideally we needed someone who could turn results around quick. But, I really don't think many could argue that he hasn't improved our squad. We actually have a game plan and a system in place now, you can actually see the way we're trying to play, all you saw under Ole was a bunch of randomness especially this season before his departure. We're creating far more chances than we're conceding, but we're just not converting those chances right now. Anyone who can't see this logic must either forget how bloody bad we were under Ole or are too frustrated to have a logical view.
 
Ralf is trying to implement a system. It was all be useless if now next season we pick a manager who goes against whats hes trying to do. I assume we hired him with the consultancy role for a reason (well unless that reason was to trick him into taking the six month job cos nobody else wanted it).

We need continuity and echos what @Zen86 mentioned regarding managers. Each one after another has been completely different and not suited to the squad we had. But regardless, we probably need to 'write off' the rest of the season and work on an approach where the new manager hired will take over and add to it

Otherwise getting Ralf as interim has been a disaster.
 
People are burying their heads in the sand if they think he's done a good job.

When he came in there was reasonable excitement that we could still make something of our season. Expectations weren't particularly high but we at least thought we'd be tactically sound and play good football. He's been shite across the board except a few areas like getting Fred and Sancho playing better. Even then they had already picked up in Carrick's tenure so what has he really done.

His best achievement with us so far is to not be Ole and to impress the those that think press conferences are important. We play shit football most games and even when we do play well it only lasts 35mins a game.
He hasn’t been great, totally agree. Once you start to really analyze the situation from the point of view of the typical Ralf fan boy, it begins to crumble:

* Ole was terrible, a PE coach, the squad underachieved because of his poor coaching.
* Only individual brilliance was getting us 2nd in the table.
* Ralf Rangnick is a tactical genius, he’ll implement a style and patterns of play! We’ll be much better
* Yes, results are not great, but he needs time
* It’s 100% on the players — they are shite! Ralf can’t work with this squad, it’s not “his” team.

You can’t have “individual brilliance” and “100% of the squad is shite”. It’s nonsensical.

Fact of the matter is that it was time for Ole to go. Also, we know now that Ralf is pretty overrated as a coach. He may be a tactical innovator, but he has serious limitations as a manager of a large club. His challenge was to get top 4 and improve the squad performances, but he really hasn’t done that. Finally, we do need to improve the squad, mostly solve the very serious issues in the midfield.
 
I said this when Jose, Ole and now Rangnick were in charge and got accused of being a fanboy, but it’s the truth so it applies to any manager. I’m sure Rangnick didn’t tell Dalot to make sure he was the only defender marking 3 attackers.

The question I have for Jose and Ole is why they didn’t buy better players, but individual errors leading to goals is hardly their fault.

just go back and watch the replay...i've done it a dozen times....we had More than enough players in the box to defend but Maguire didn't recover to the correct space, McT didn't either. If they did, this would have pushed Dalot out to the wing back where he should have been most worried about to begin with instead of Koke around the penalty spot.

Just brain dead defending and clear lack of communication. A coach can't regulate for stupidity and lack of communication. It was a simple ball to defend.
 
Manager's manage, to get the best out of what he's got. Regardless of these players, RR was brought in to improve the football and get results. He's failed, anyone can talk a good game regarding what United need to change.

He's a bluffer, his decision to stick with Maguire has hurt him. Regardless of what you think of Maguire, something very wrong with replacing a cb captain for Mata in the last 10 minutes, in the biggest game of season. It was a pure cop out, didn't have the balls to put Lindelof on at the start. Every United fan knew it was a risk starting Maguire. I'm not buying it, maybe sticking to recruitment will be better.
Even more perplexing is his decision to continue playing Telles and Dalot as fullbacks. Yes, AWB has been pretty bad this year, and Dalot offers more as an attacker. But he’s a poor 1v1 defender and he frequently loses the attacker on the back side. How many times in the last run of games has the goal come from a breakdown on Dalot’s side where Lindelof/Varane need to slide over and we have Harry Maguire in no-man’s land? 7 times? 10 times?

Telles is also a problem. He’s also frequently out of position and doesn’t have the pace to make up ground like Shaw does. He offers less than Shaw going forward IMHO.

Rangnick seems obsessed with “control”. Atletico didn’t have “control” yet they won the tie. This idea of control is an illusion when you spend large periods of possession passing between your CBs.
 
I find it really odd that people are demolishing him today for last night's exit. We were totally dominant until Elanga didn't bother to track back, Maguire gets pulled out of position (shock!) and they punish us on the counter. He set us up perfectly in my opinion, but the likes of Dalot, Maguire, and Telles in defence just aren't going to be good enough and will be got at against half-decent sides.

People need to get real. This is where we are at the moment. Literally 10 players could leave this summer, and more should. Until we rebuild and restructure the squad, managers will continue to be let down by this lot. They aren't up to it technically or mentally.
 
Even more perplexing is his decision to continue playing Telles and Dalot as fullbacks. Yes, AWB has been pretty bad this year, and Dalot offers more as an attacker. But he’s a poor 1v1 defender and he frequently loses the attacker on the back side. How many times in the last run of games has the goal come from a breakdown on Dalot’s side where Lindelof/Varane need to slide over and we have Harry Maguire in no-man’s land? 7 times? 10 times?

Telles is also a problem. He’s also frequently out of position and doesn’t have the pace to make up ground like Shaw does. He offers less than Shaw going forward IMHO.

Rangnick seems obsessed with “control”. Atletico didn’t have “control” yet they won the tie. This idea of control is an illusion when you spend large periods of possession passing between your CBs.

its all bollocks. One thing matters - sticking it in the opponents net more times than they do yours. Doesnt matter what you do to achieve that.

we’ve generally been bad at scoring and defending under ragnick. All this guff about ‘controlling games’ and ‘trying to do the right thing’ is to try and put a good spin on that.

hes actually very similar to LVG to me - all the pointless harmless possession, fans claiming we are ‘unlucky to not put the chances away’ even though thats happened in about 15 games. We sacked LVG for this sort of stuff. RR no better
 
I find it really odd that people are demolishing him today for last night's exit. We were totally dominant until Elanga didn't bother to track back, Maguire gets pulled out of position (shock!) and they punish us on the counter. He set us up perfectly in my opinion, but the likes of Dalot, Maguire, and Telles in defence just aren't going to be good enough and will be got at against half-decent sides.

People need to get real. This is where we are at the moment. Literally 10 players could leave this summer, and more should. Until we rebuild and restructure the squad, managers will continue to be let down by this lot. They aren't up to it technically or mentally.
Out of curiosity, which 10 players do you see leaving and which players would replace them?

Clearly, Lingard, Pogba, Mata Cavani are certain to leave. Ronaldo, Matic, Bailly, DvB, Jones, Henderson are strong maybes. You see where I am going with this. Other than Ronaldo, there is no player in that group that is usually in the first 11. After that, you are looking at Rashford, Maguire, AWB, etc.

People think that there is going to be a huge turnover, but the sheer logistics of even bringing in 5 players is huge. And ostensibly, we’ll want guys who are better than what we’ve got, so the cost for even 5 replacements is going to be 300m at least.

I’m fairly sure that the spine of the team will be very similar to what we have now. The question is whether ETH or Pochettino or Ancelotti will be able to turn this squad around.
 
I don't particularly rate Ralf but I am glad the club seem to have realised that it's better to wait 6 months to get their desired target than just trying to appoint someone else instead full time and seem to realise that interim manager should just be an interim manager, Ole should never have gotten the job full time really, he did great as an interim and if that was all he'd done he be very fondly remembered as manager for steadying the ship and allowing us to appoint a proper manager in the summer
 
I think Rangnick has done a reasonable job in ridiculously difficult circumstances. My criticism of him would be confusing the team during the spell when he had 2 up front with Sancho and Fernandes playing as wide no 10s. That and failing to remove Maguire from the starting line-up. There were occasions when he hasn't recognised the danger of trying to protect a lead with wide forwards that make so little effort to help the team defensively; Greenwood at Villa and Rashford against Southampton, cost us points by failing to do the basics.

The vast majority of the issues with the team were inherited. The squad has far too many big ego stars that expect to start every PL and CL match, throw tantrums if things go against them on the pitch and in several cases, think the rest of the team should do the hard work for them. Our patterns of play are still poor, we don't move the ball quickly enough, movement off the ball needs tons of work.

Too many players have either already made the decision to leave or have treated this season as a gap year after putting so much energy into the Euros.

Rangnick has got decent performances out of Dalot, Telles, Elanga, McTominay, Fred, Lindelof and Sancho on occasion. The supposedly better players have tended to produce one or two very good performances in the time since he took over.

While I seriously doubt he will be in consideration for the permanent job given the results, I think he would do ok with a bit more time to coach the team and adjust the playing squad slightly. Of course, we need our next permanent manager to do a fantastic job, rather than just ok.
 
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I still like Ralf, this isn't all on him but I also can't believe people were already asking to extend him. We were just over this. Didn't even take long before people tried to repeat the same mistakes that got us here. Thank God that amateur Woodward is gone, he often caved to some very naive fan requests. Would have opened talks for a 6 year contract.
 
Unbelievable that a group of players aren't able/willing to pull off any kind of pressing system.

Perfectly believable to me, some of our players think they're the dogs bollocks and no one should tell them how to play.
 
I see a lot of people saying "We are a good manager away from getting back where we belong".

That statement would only make sense if we had a decent squad.

Apart from Sancho, Varane and maybe DDG, what's left..?
 
I don't think it's the unwillingness, but more so inability.

We have a squad suited to a Conte and got Ralf. Our upper management and decision makers will be the end of this club. Constant terrible decision making and no changes in the personnel.
With conte our coddled players would have mutinied by now. They would have downed tools massively to ensure conte isn't there next season, we would be languishing somewhere in mid table. And mind you conte wouldn't be at fault for that either.
 
None of the players we have bar Sancho is used to playing in a technical team. The others are a bunch of individual players. I like the way he knows what needs to be done to build the team. Whether he is allowed to do so upstairs is a different story. Bruno is not a player who can play in a pressing team. He is not a midfield player who is disciplined enough to do so. We are always playing 10 men vs 11 and sometimes 12 like last night.
Two negative managers has taken its toll on the squad construction. Jose never wanted the ball and Ole didn't know how so we're left with a team lacking in technical ability. Passing talent and close control specifically. You have to amaze how it's even possible to spend half a billion and not even luck into a couple technical talents. I wonder if we've broken some kind of record. Even our best players don't have it. Nearly all our players are awful in narrow corridors. I can't believe we spent 3 years rebuilding this. Very very symptomatic of the managers that built it.
 
The key here is intertim. I don't know why some people moaned so much about us getting knocked out. Who in their right mind would expect us to win the CL this season? at this point you're just moaning at every single thing that went wrong, something you should have done 1-2 years ago when we're getting beaten not by Atletico but by lesser club in Europa League which was welcomed with smiles and happy giggles.

I don't want Ralf as a manager but he is the intertim till the end of season, what do you want to do? replace the intertim with another intertim? Next season is when you should start expecting things again, under a new manager and under Ralf consultancy which should be better than the previous clueless businessman running the club. The current season is too deep in the shithole that even Pep wouldn't get anything special out of this. The last 3 years of rebuilding had been a massive fraud, if there was anything close to toxic positivity in the club it happened during the last three years where we were just happy to play along, all smiles and "well done boys" and assembled a squad of overpaid, top professionals that have a cohesiveness of a 9 y.o football team during their first day at school.
 
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With conte our coddled players would have mutinied by now. They would have downed tools massively to ensure conte isn't there next season, we would be languishing somewhere in mid table. And mind you conte wouldn't be at fault for that either.
You're probably right, I was talking more in the sense of tactics and the shape of the team/style of play.
 
It's the same old complete lack of continuity at the club. We went from LVG to Mourinho, Mourinho to Ole, Ole to Ralf. All completely different managers, all resulted in outcries about money wasted and players not fit for purpose. We once again appoint a manager whose ethos is in no way suited to the players we have in the squad and then whinge that the players aren't good enough when they can't execute. It's the board who aren't good enough I'm afraid. They're the people who have continually insisted on square pegs for round holes.
Amen.

I'm glad I'm not the only one so can see this.
 
He has done an okay job of being an interim. The squad was unhappy, bloated and dysfunctional when he came on. I do think we have more control in games than under Ole as a system. But the players have more often than not let us down due to defensive mistakes. And I would say that we have scored less than we deserve, sometimes again due to players missing chances. But maybe due to bad luck as well.

His subs however have been questionable. And last game was just abysmal. We lost all ounce of control we had in the game, and it just reeked of desperation, when we could have comfortably created a chance or two with more control in the midfield. Bringing Rashford and Mata on, taking Bruno and Fred off was suicide.
 
I think we still have slim hope of getting Top 4. But for the last 9 games, RR has to be more pragmatic. We have seen vs City if we go gegenpressing against extremely fit big team we got nothing left in the tank for the second half and opponent easily killed us off.

With our lot lack of fitness, the best way to win vs Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal is via counter attacking football. The rest of the games we can still go toe to toe playing modern attacking football.

9 games are a lot of points still to play and things can change very quickly.
 
Manager's manage, to get the best out of what he's got. Regardless of these players, RR was brought in to improve the football and get results. He's failed, anyone can talk a good game regarding what United need to change.

He's a bluffer, his decision to stick with Maguire has hurt him. Regardless of what you think of Maguire, something very wrong with replacing a cb captain for Mata in the last 10 minutes, in the biggest game of season. It was a pure cop out, didn't have the balls to put Lindelof on at the start. Every United fan knew it was a risk starting Maguire. I'm not buying it, maybe sticking to recruitment will be better.

That concept seems to be foreign to half the posters on here sadly.

Carrick was doing better than Rangnick and I really think we picked the worst candidate out of the reported 5 shortlisted candidates for the job.
 
It's the same old complete lack of continuity at the club. We went from LVG to Mourinho, Mourinho to Ole, Ole to Ralf. All completely different managers, all resulted in outcries about money wasted and players not fit for purpose. We once again appoint a manager whose ethos is in no way suited to the players we have in the squad and then whinge that the players aren't good enough when they can't execute. It's the board who aren't good enough I'm afraid. They're the people who have continually insisted on square pegs for round holes.

Yup, biggest problem, right there.
 
i can’t say I have seen anything that can be called real progress. The run he‘s had since taking charge until March was relatively easy - small teams we ideally should defeat but we haven’t. Some of the games we played were horrible; players haven’t helped either. But what is more worrying is that we still do not feel stability in the dressing room and this is the first thing the new manager should address to have a chance to succeed.
 
Out of curiosity, which 10 players do you see leaving and which players would replace them?

Clearly, Lingard, Pogba, Mata Cavani are certain to leave. Ronaldo, Matic, Bailly, DvB, Jones, Henderson are strong maybes. You see where I am going with this. Other than Ronaldo, there is no player in that group that is usually in the first 11. After that, you are looking at Rashford, Maguire, AWB, etc.

People think that there is going to be a huge turnover, but the sheer logistics of even bringing in 5 players is huge. And ostensibly, we’ll want guys who are better than what we’ve got, so the cost for even 5 replacements is going to be 300m at least.

I’m fairly sure that the spine of the team will be very similar to what we have now. The question is whether ETH or Pochettino or Ancelotti will be able to turn this squad around.
Realistically 10 won't be allowed to leave, purely because it'd be a nightmare to adequately replace them as you said (although the likes of Jones and Mata hardly need accounting for..). But as you also said, Lingard, Pogba, Mata, and Cavani are gone, so that's already 4. Ronaldo is a dead cert to leave, surely? He isn't going to want to be part of a complete rebuild in which we aren't challenging for trophies. Pereira is going to be sold, Henderson will be desperate to leave and will push for it, Jones and Bailly are surely off. That's 9 players that I'd say are extremely like to leave or are guaranteed to leave. Martial and Donny probably want to leave, but it won't be sanctioned by virtue of the fact that we need the numbers (although Donny might want to stay to try and prove himself to the new manager - if it's Ten Hag he'll obviously stay).

It's insane and such a mass exodus feels quite unprecedented. I think we'll sign about 4 and bring the likes of Hannibal, Garner, and Diallo into the fold.
 
It's the same old complete lack of continuity at the club. We went from LVG to Mourinho, Mourinho to Ole, Ole to Ralf. All completely different managers, all resulted in outcries about money wasted and players not fit for purpose. We once again appoint a manager whose ethos is in no way suited to the players we have in the squad and then whinge that the players aren't good enough when they can't execute. It's the board who aren't good enough I'm afraid. They're the people who have continually insisted on square pegs for round holes.
This about sums it up. Which is why when Ralf moves upstairs I pray to god they'll listen to his recommendation for the next manager and not just appoint the guy they want (likely Poch).
 
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