Should United be expected to compete with City in Pep era.

This isn't just about City, we've struggled to play regularly in the CL for a decade now, let alone fighting for the title
At the moment we are struggling to score goals, have no recognizable style of play that seems to work, have a ludicrous transfer policy, and by far most importantly we are still owned by the Glazers.
Reaching City isn''t a top priority right now, I'd say. There are other things to sort out first
 
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I’d say yes. The only time City’s dominance comes into view is the twice yearly ordeal of us playing them. They don’t affect the other 36 games we okay. City won’t win every match (knock on wood). So can we compete with the other clubs in the league? Sure. We should have enough firepower to beat any league opponent, we rarely get blown out of the water. If we focused on the other 36 matches and won them it wouldn’t matter if we got a result against them or not.
 
Yes, City is a great team and Pep is one of the greatest of all time, but to concede that we can't compete against them is a very small-time mentality.

With the right management in place, thoughtful recruitment, and correct long-term strategies, it is possible to beat City. It may be easier still in Cup competitions. We can do it, Liverpool can, Chelsea can, maybe even Arsenal can.

The assumption that City have far outspent us is incorrect. The underpinning point is that we've spent badly.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
I’d say yes. The only time City’s dominance comes into view is the twice yearly ordeal of us playing them. They don’t affect the other 36 games we okay. City won’t win every match (knock on wood). So can we compete with the other clubs in the league? Sure. We should have enough firepower to beat any league opponent, we rarely get blown out of the water. If we focused on the other 36 matches and won them it wouldn’t matter if we got a result against them or not.
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I don't really get this notion about "we only play City twice" that is coming up. I mean, I get the premise but it seems a rather obvious observation. Who would frame a league victory in terms of 2 games to begin with? It's not really anything to do with why it's difficult. City's dominance comes into view every week in truth, we can bury our head in the sands as if they're not playing and say that if we win 36 games we'll be fine, but that's the trick really isn't it?!

I think the point is really around building a team that reaches the consistency they show. That's the real problem and why they have been regularly scooping league titles. I think that is not just something that we can look at across a season but also the way in which they do it within matches which seems to remove all the variance in games that is abundantly present within our basketball matches. I think that's why it's such a high bar, it comes from a relentless ability to have complete control, across matches, into seasons and across multiple seasons and of course the opposition aren't mugs these days, they just look like it against them. Okay they don't win every single game but they don't leave too many points on the table and there isn't a huge prospect that they will under the current management because of this control they maintain so the benchmark is set.

It's a big question about how we bridge that gap, even when the ownership changes. Arsenal got reasonably close but a one season wonder so far. Liverpool have disrupted them in a completely different style at times. But you definitely need a very clear vision and recruitment policy. Liverpool had a identifiable method which seems to be relatively short lived. I don't know exactly how we do it. I guess that's why we need smarter people than me figuring that out! It's easy to say "sign good players" and put them into a system but we'd have dozens of Peps walking around if that was easy.
 
Bring in new owners, a new training facility, half a new squad and maybe we could…

We’ve barely got into the champions league two years in a row for a decade. Our level isn’t great and it’s something we’ve had to come to terms with.

Brutally honest we have been a lower level than Sevilla the past decade… I mean we aren’t really the team to beat City Pep or no Pep going on evidence.
 
Trex said:
You'll need to pick points at a similar/higher rate to them. Its quite a task. They're hitting points tallies every season that's among the EPL all time record.
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Little bit of a myth this. Funnily enough City haven’t got more than 90 points in 3 of the last 4 seasons and under Pep they’ve accumulated less than 90 points in more seasons than they have accumulated more than 90 points. Those two years of 100/98 points seemed to have skewed people’s perception of how many points they actually get. That’s not to say these aren’t impressive points totals but they’re not this out of this world, never been done before total that people make out. I’ve heard so many people say “city hit 90 plus points every year” they don’t…
 
Not under this ownership. It's clear they are out of their depth.
 
I'm fully resigned to the fact that we'll more or less be like this as long as the Glazers are in charge. This summer was supposed to be a fresh start with the ownership situation but it didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, we'll still win titles every now and again (maybe even the Champions League if we're lucky) but with these leeches around competing consistently with a well-oiled machine like City is a pipe dream.

Instead of stressing out what I'm going to do instead is sit back and, until real change occurs, celebrate the small wins. And hope City or Liverpool don't win the quadruple.
 
We should be able to compete with them. We don’t have the consistency to do so though. We can’t play 2 good halves of football. Most of the time we only play 1 good halve and other times we’re just rubbish all together. Since peps been, klopps won the league, Conte has won it and Arteta was his closest challengers last season. Alls it takes is city to have a few bad games but then us and others have to be ready to take Advantage. It’s all about consistency and playing well every single game. The Liverpool and city rivalry didn’t last that long, Liverpool turned into a mess. I don’t think any team in the prem can keep up the consistency the way city can.
 
As mentioned, we play city twice. We are so far away from the top, partially because city have their resources and manager, but also partially because we have owners with no ambition and the club is run horribly. If we do our part, and get our team up to standard, and compete regularly, then if city win it fair play to them. But seeing Arsenal and Liverpool compete with them while we are scraping top 4 is definitely not acceptable.
 
Chelsea have gone through a plethora of managers and burn through players like there is no tomorrow, yet they have won a lot more than us in the last decade.

Maybe we shouldn't be expecting to dominate like City, but we've spent enough and with the history and pull that we have for players, fans and managers etc, we should have picked up a couple of titles and some proper CL runs in the last few years.

Just like Liverpool and Chelsea have managed. I agree with your overall sentiment though, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse for where we have been this past decade.
 
Not under the Glazers. It’s a lot more about United the club and City the club. They are miles ahead of us in this regard.
 
Our 2021-22 starting squad:

GK: DDG, Henderson
RB: AWB, Incognito Dalot
LB: Shaw, Telles
CB: Varane, Maguire, Bailly, Lindelof, Jones
Midfield: Bruno, Fred, McT, Matic, Mata, Pogba, Lingard, DVB
Forwards: Ronaldo, Cavani, Rashford, Sancho, Martial, Elanga, Greenwood

We've made rapid improvements since we got ETH and are proceeding in the right direction to compete with City. It will take a year or two but we'll get there if ETH isn't thrown out for one bad season.
 
Trex said:
I was reflecting on united place in football at the moment especially post SAF. My thought process was why do united fans expect united to better every team in England. Fact is we're one of a couple of teams with the resources to get the best people from playing and coaching staff so we're rightly suppose to be one of the top side, and already we're actually one of the very best. We finished third in the league last season won the league cup, and got to the cup final.
In the last four seasons we've been 3rd, 2nd, 6th and 3rd. We have failed to win the league and make a mark in the UCL. But how high is the ceiling of United really. The team who have dominated the league in recent years City have done so largely due to their "all time best contender" manager Pep Guardiola raising their ceiling. When we dominated it was because of our "all time best contender" manager as well. Should we expect ETH to match the heights of Pep. A manager like Pep and SAF are so rare that even with all the resources in the world you don't get one. Pep I think have won the league 11 out of 14 times in his career. Aside the first year at City when he was still putting his side together only Mourinho 100pts Madrid and Covid season Liverpool have beaten him to league titles.
Should we come to the realization that due to Pep presence we can only hope but not expect or feel entitled to united reaching the height City play at.
A more realistic aim would be to better the likes of Arsenal, remain ahead of Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea and improve our showing in the UCL hopefully till Pep F*cks off or have a uncharacteristic poor season. I think judging United by City standard is maybe a bit reaching unless you have a Pep clone.
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We dont expect to finish above City. We WANT to. We should want to be the best. There is no trophy for finishing second in England and there never will be. Finishing second is a failure for Man Utd. But its all relative - finishing second is better than bottom for obvious reasons, and finishing in the top four is important likewise. Does that mean we don't think we can win the league this year? No we're not delusional. We just want the club to want to be the best and most successful club in the world. The club should target, as a long-term objective, the winning of the League, FA Cup and Champions League every single season and then work out a plan to try and get as close to that objective as possible. At the moment their objective is probably to be the most profitable club in the world as far as they can instead.
 
eire-red said:
Chelsea have gone through a plethora of managers and burn through players like there is no tomorrow, yet they have won a lot more than us in the last decade.

Maybe we shouldn't be expecting to dominate like City, but we've spent enough and with the history and pull that we have for players, fans and managers etc, we should have picked up a couple of titles and some proper CL runs in the last few years.

Just like Liverpool and Chelsea have managed. I agree with your overall sentiment though, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse for where we have been this past decade.
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I agree with this, judging by last season overall how far are we from getting to this point, I know we haven't started the season great but we could still kick on, so why the current negativity among the fan base.
 
Our decade of struggling doesn't have a lot to do with City.

If they didn't exist, Liverpool would've been the team that dominated the PL these last 5-6 years and we would've been the same top 4 side that were anyways...it's not like we've missed out on titles against them by a few points...it's a genuine question for Liverpool though, because they've maximized their potential under Klopp even if it was only enough for 1 league title because of City.

We didn't do that. If anything, we sabotaged ourselves by making really bad footballing decisions.
 
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Of course.

It's undoubtedly harder when they're playing to different rules than everybody else but we are still the biggest club in the country and we have plenty of money ourselves. I don't expect us to beat them but 2nd is achievable every season.

The worry for me is when Newcastle get it right, the rest of us will be playing for 3rd place.
 
Rojofiam said:
Our decade of struggling doesn't have a lot to do with City.

If they didn't exist, Liverpool would've been the team that dominated the PL these last 5-6 years and we would've been the same top 4 side that were anyways...so it's a genuine question for Liverpool and their fans, because they've maximized their potential under Klopp even if it was only enough for 1 league title because of City.

We didn't do that, if anything, we sabotaged ourselves by making really bad footballing decisions.
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Liverpool have finished ahead of us as much as we've finished ahead of them this past few years. They've hit higher highs though. If you remove Pep city from the equation they'll have 3 leagues and we 2.
 
Trex said:
Liverpool have finished ahead of us as much as we've finished ahead of them this past few years. They've hit higher highs though. If you remove Pep city from the equation they'll have 3 leagues and we 2.
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Of course it's impossible to know this, because things would've played out differently, but I don't think 81 and 74 points would've been enough for the title if City weren't a thing / top team in the last couple of seasons. I don't think Mourinho's or Ole's best teams were good enough to win the title, whilst Klopp's Liverpool managed 92+ point seasons 3 times since Pep came to the PL.
 
TheLord said:
Yes, City is a great team and Pep is one of the greatest of all time, but to concede that we can't compete against them is a very small-time mentality.

With the right management in place, thoughtful recruitment, and correct long-term strategies, it is possible to beat City. It may be easier still in Cup competitions. We can do it, Liverpool can, Chelsea can, maybe even Arsenal can.

The assumption that City have far outspent us is incorrect. The underpinning point is that we've spent badly.
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Agree. Also, they've built a top notch organisation end to end - scouting, recruitment, academy, medical. We clearly haven't.
 
11101 said:
Of course.

It's undoubtedly harder when they're playing to different rules than everybody else but we are still the biggest club in the country and we have plenty of money ourselves. I don't expect us to beat them but 2nd is achievable every season.

The worry for me is when Newcastle get it right, the rest of us will be playing for 3rd place.
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It won't happen because City's domination is not only due to their resources but Guardiola as well and there isn't another one like him ,Once he leaves City though they will remain force but don't expect them to be so dominant .

Can't see Newcastle separating from the pack at all .
 
Rojofiam said:
Of course it's impossible to know this, because things would've played out differently, but I don't think 81 and 74 points would've been enough for the title if City weren't a thing / top team in the last couple of seasons. I don't think Mourinho's or Ole's best teams were good enough to win the title, whilst Klopp's Liverpool managed 92+ point seasons 3 times since Pep came to the PL.
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We would have won it though we were literally the second best teams those seasons regardless of point total. Maybe a Mancini type version of City would have still bettered us but who knows. Let's focus on the present, it took Klopp a while to build a team as good as the side that got those 92+ tallies and also Arteta time to get to the level they reached last season. Why is the perception towards the current version of united already turning sour unless if people expected a Pep from ETH.
 
He cheats. The teams he manages either cheat or have by far the most resources, or both. Yet everyone in here seems to credit him with all the success. You'd think he came into a tiny club and won it all straight away, not cost that crazy squad he's got multiple chances of winning the cl through ridiculous tinkering.

But yeah, the point of the thread does have some validity. 2nd never feels good enough for United, even if the playing field isn't level. It adds a pressure which doesn't help at all.
 
What type of mentality is this? I sure hope the people at the club don't think this way.
 
Absolutely 100% we should be competing. We're Manchester United. With that comes the history and the expectation.
 
ayushreddevil9 said:
Not under this ownership. It's clear they are out of their depth.
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This. Wait till takeover is complete. Give new owners a season or two to start changing stuff by laying in new foundations. Pep will leave city by then and they will hit a downward spiral for awhile.
 
We've wasted a collosal amount of money and continue to do so. You'd think a slightly competent club would've been able to build a decent squad by now and challenge City.
 
Take city out of the equation and with our resources and money spent on players we should be aiming to hit the 80 point mark year in year out. We should also have been CL quarter final regulars. These are things we have failed to do far too often.

Regardless of City we should have been better than we have been.
 
Trex said:
I was reflecting on united place in football at the moment especially post SAF. My thought process was why do united fans expect united to better every team in England. Fact is we're one of a couple of teams with the resources to get the best people from playing and coaching staff so we're rightly suppose to be one of the top side, and already we're actually one of the very best. We finished third in the league last season won the league cup, and got to the cup final.
In the last four seasons we've been 3rd, 2nd, 6th and 3rd. We have failed to win the league and make a mark in the UCL. But how high is the ceiling of United really. The team who have dominated the league in recent years City have done so largely due to their "all time best contender" manager Pep Guardiola raising their ceiling. When we dominated it was because of our "all time best contender" manager as well. Should we expect ETH to match the heights of Pep. A manager like Pep and SAF are so rare that even with all the resources in the world you don't get one. Pep I think have won the league 11 out of 14 times in his career. Aside the first year at City when he was still putting his side together only Mourinho 100pts Madrid and Covid season Liverpool have beaten him to league titles.
Should we come to the realization that due to Pep presence we can only hope but not expect or feel entitled to united reaching the height City play at.
A more realistic aim would be to better the likes of Arsenal, remain ahead of Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea and improve our showing in the UCL hopefully till Pep F*cks off or have a uncharacteristic poor season. I think judging United by City standard is maybe a bit reaching unless you have a Pep clone.
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I have made this point. City have embarked on one of the most prolonged, ruthlessly efficient cheating campaigns in the history of sport. If you take them out of the equation, we'd have two more PL titles at least and an FA Cup.

The fact is, even in a period of chaos and mismanagement, if you take out the oil cheats, we'd still have been one of the Premier League's most successful clubs - albeit not dominat like we were in the 90s/00s.

That all being said, we are perhaps the only club in England who could have competed toe for toe with City, had we been managed and run more efficiently...so City's cheating doesn't absolve the fact we've failed to do that
 
Trex said:
We'll only know when he eventually leaves if he's the main factor or if its city structure. His track record over multiple leagues means I believe its more him than the structure just like it was more SAF than the structure at united. We even go for similar target Sanchez, Maguire, Fred, Bailly are some we beat them to yet their success with signings are at a very high rate. It reminds me of when SAF use to win the league with not so great players like a welbeck or cleverly.
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Happens every team.

He's reaching that point where he's been there so long now, there will be a drop off when he eventually goes. It might not be massive, but there's no way they keep hitting 90+ points every year without him as coach.

They'll go back to winning 1 in 3 and changing manager every other year.
 
Not with the current owners. The team is handicapped and them doing well will be in spite of the owners. They just don’t know what they’re doing and have no interest in learning. They just want to cash the check at the end of the month.

They put their banker friends like Woodward and Arnold in charge to run the football side of things, not football people. Everyone else in world football at that level has football people running them. Someone who’s football savvy would have taken the money we’ve spent over the past decade and done much better than what we’ve actually done. Woodward is up there with Ridsdale for worst CEO ever at a football club.
 
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