Solskjaer's legacy and his future

FFSL__fX0AUnQva
Yet somehow its the players. what those stats tell you is how difficult we found it to win back possession and why. We were horrible at having a coordinated press. Unless you think our players are championship level, that's the only explanation. Our attacking when we did attack, was quite ok. Also shows you how our defenders haven't been helped this season.
 
Your defensive stats are horrifying. If that was Norwich I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. How can anyone say you were heading in the right direction.

You underestimate the Ole fanboys and 'I will support the manager no matter what' mentality that many of the supporters seem to have. The only thing he's done well was to bring some positivity to the side after the final Mourinho days, and buying some quality players.
 
He did serious damage to this club.
Do people see now how much damage can manager does with "give him few seasons and let him to build his squad"?
He left us with Maguire and AWB who are not good enough. Maguire is even a captain ffs.
Team is not coached at all. Rashford, who is top top talent, stagnated in his general play. He is still great in one on one but the rest of his game is not good enough.

Thank feck that Hendo was injured this summer. Otherwise he would be our no1
 
Last edited:
Utter trash. Disjointed. No idea how to pass, how to move, how to create. Nothing. We're clueless and its down to him. 3 years down the drain.
 
At least Moyes only was here for 8 months, the damage he did in terms of signings cannot be understated either. Not brought a single proper midfielder and brought AWB and Maguire for combined 130 Million. Criminal.
 
gotta give it to Ole in that he talked a good game. All that talk about pressing and "no one should work harder than us" at the beginning was nothing but talk. Even with neglecting our midfield by filling it with nothing but workhorses didn't help.
 
I think today highlights so much of the damage he did being here for so long. It’s a massive mistake from the club that borders on negligence.

Good players, that don’t seem to know what to do most of the time. AWB and McTominey as consistent starters is really bad.

We look lost, and that’s his legacy.
 
I don't know how anyone can say he's left us in a much better place than when he joined us, and still keep a straight face.

Our team is appalling, he's left behind a shambles. We look closer to a team scrapping for relegation than we do a team at the top tier of football.

Before anyone cries about signings he brought in, I emphasise the word team, not individual players.
 
There is no legacy considering how much he squandered on nothing players.
 
Most worrying thing is that this is not like it was under Mourinho when players were demotivated, that could be fixed easily.

We look totally lost coaching wise, can't even do the basic well. It's going to take a lot of work and time to come out of this shit hole.

Leaving us in a better place? We'll definitely not as toxic but football wise were way way worse at this point.
 
The way we played is like these players went 3 years without a manager. Has only been a week but you can tell the previous manager left the team with zero tactical identity.
 
I honestly thought people knew but just chose to ignore it. There were stories about it on Twitter too.


Wow that is a shocking story

Ole has set us back by years...he had no plan and wasted so much money. AWB and Maguire for £130m. Signed Donny for £40m and never used him and probably lost value if we sell him. Lingard is probaby better than Donny and was loaned out and now is going to be lost on free. Pogba contract situation never sorted out and will be lost on a free. Ronaldo and Cavani our best two attackers old as hell. Juan Mata given a new contract for being a nice guy.

Honestly he's left such a mess that needs to be fixed. He's no legend for me
 
His legacy is that he turned us into a Cardiff-esque footballing side at the end.
 
A lot of wins in the past 18 months were all on a knife edge and games that could have easily swung the other way. Lots of 1-0 wins and 2-1 wins, or a 2-0 or 3-1 when we got a two goal cushion very late in the game, inevitably on a counter attack when the opposing team threw everyone forward thinking they could get a point, but lead to us getting an easy counter attack goal.

There really havent been many games where Utd comprehensively beat a team, or won by a 1 goal margin despite being completely in control and the opposing team completely nullified.

A lot of games under Solskjaer were not relaxed viewings.
 
A lot of wins in the past 18 months were all on a knife edge and games that could have easily swung the other way. Lots of 1-0 wins and 2-1 wins, or a 2-0 or 3-1 when we got a two goal cushion very late in the game, inevitably on a counter attack when the opposing team threw everyone forward thinking they could get a point, but lead to us getting an easy counter attack goal.

There really havent been many games where Utd comprehensively beat a team, or won by a 1 goal margin despite being completely in control and the opposing team completely nullified.

A lot of games under Solskjaer were not relaxed viewings.

We've had I think basically 3 comfortable wins all season.

Opening day vs Leeds, probably the only genuinely good performance
Home to Newcastle, don't think we played well to be honest but was a pretty easy 4-1 win
Away to Spurs, they were so awful they sacked the manager 24 hours after the game.

Every other win, not that there's been many, have been shite performances where we've scraped the win.

Was the same for the last 2 or 3 months last season.
 
Wow that is a shocking story

Ole has set us back by years...he had no plan and wasted so much money. AWB and Maguire for £130m. Signed Donny for £40m and never used him and probably lost value if we sell him. Lingard is probaby better than Donny and was loaned out and now is going to be lost on free. Pogba contract situation never sorted out and will be lost on a free. Ronaldo and Cavani our best two attackers old as hell. Juan Mata given a new contract for being a nice guy.

Honestly he's left such a mess that needs to be fixed. He's no legend for me
This.

A lot of fans hitched their bandwagon to OgS on nothing but romanticism so can’t bring themselves to fully climb down & admit that he vastly underperformed. He spent 3 years at the biggest club he’ll ever have the chance to manage with more good will than any manager could dream of & a vast budget. With that he failed to sustain any sort of playing style, bought a number of players who have large question marks hanging over them & failed terribly in vital moments.

As a player I remember him fondly but his tenure will only look worse with time one emotion leaves the discussion. I genuinely think he’ll look back in years to come & wonder how he got it so wrong.
 
This.

A lot of fans hitched their bandwagon to OgS on nothing but romanticism so can’t bring themselves to fully climb down & admit that he vastly underperformed. He spent 3 years at the biggest club he’ll ever have the chance to manage with more good will than any manager could dream of & a vast budget. With that he failed to sustain any sort of playing style, bought a number of players who have large question marks hanging over them & failed terribly in vital moments.

As a player I remember him fondly but his tenure will only look worse with time one emotion leaves the discussion. I genuinely think he’ll look back in years to come & wonder how he got it so wrong.
I'm sorry but that just isn't true. The cultural reboot was something that he drove. He got Murtough and Fletcher into their roles, he got the data analytics and analysis departments off the ground, he reinstated the use of tech such as GPS in the sports science department after Jose forced us to do away with them.

The club was in a word, a basket case when he arrived with the brand being toxic both inside and outside the club. There was certainly no clamour for the manager's position when Jose left, like there seemingly is and was after Ole left. That Pochettino was apparently actively looking to leave PSG midseason and Rangnick has taken this interim job on when he absolutely didn't need to, should tell you of the quality foundations laid by Ole for the next man, as well as the fact that Rangnick isn't being brought in as someone to undo the work that Ole did, but to build on it.

He also was the only post-SAF manager who achieved two back to back top 4 finishes. Something that neither Jose or LvG could achieve despite spending more than Ole did at the same point in their tenures.

Yes, it ultimately went wrong at the end but he absolutely did a good job up to this point. Unfortunately it didn't work out and the blame is going to be laid squarely on him for that, but he wasn't exactly helped along the way either.

Not sure where we've been set back by years in either. We have a young team who are continuing to grow and develop with a ready supply line from the academy coming through as well. Literally the only areas which need investment in are found in deep midfield, everywhere else has quality and depth and for the first time since SAF, we actually have a coherently built squad. From GK, to CB, to the wings, to up front. We have legitimately top class players like Varane, Ronaldo, Sancho here. We certainly didn't have that in any of the other managers' time at the club. To hear you say we've been set back years you'd think Ole did what Jose did and proceeded to buy shit on top of the shit purchased by the previous manager and didn't bother to actually rebuild the squad. The fact we all went from looking to break top 4 to actively trying to challenge for the league is proof positive of the job he did. We certainly weren't thinking that in Jose's third season, or LvG's second, for example.

And then I can talk about the improvement of the likes of McFred and Shaw who were seen as legitimate joke figures among the fanbase. Or the fact we were much more enterprising under Ole than we were with the other guys 5+ goals scored 10 times in c.160 games: the previous 3 managers? twice in 302 games.
 
It was a disgraceful display last night from Manutd, how a club with so much resources can't bring in players who aren't afraid to play football is beyond me.

Last night felt like I was watching prime Barca versus Chelski in 09, the gulf in class between Chelski and us is almost a trillion mile, I can't believe how awful Ole has left us after spending close to half a billion pounds on dross players.

Every one of his signing seem like a push and run footballer, can't believe how shit we are in possession seems like we have absolute no idea what to do whenever we got the ball, to leave it short we are a disgrace to watch... the only legacy Ole and Co has had is having us play like Stoke city after SAF retired.
 
And then I can talk about the improvement of the likes of McFred and Shaw who were seen as legitimate joke figures among the fanbase. Or the fact we were much more enterprising under Ole than we were with the other guys 5+ goals scored 10 times in c.160 games: the previous 3 managers? twice in 302 games.

:lol:

McFred still are.
 
The more I reflect on it, the more I realize Ole completely failed in his task and we’re not much better off now than when he took the wheel. . Obvious on one level of course — the debacles v Liverpool and City — but we went into the new season with no plan whatsoever other than hoping all this talent would deliver results. Yes, he did clean up the toxic mess José left behind but the squad never pushed on to become a legitimate title contender. The absence of tactics and rank favoritism did him in. A really nice guy, but his luck ran out.
 
Ole's legacy is shit - he was not even good at what he was mocked off as - a Phys Ed teacher gets more effort out of his pupils.
 
People that still think the amount of times we scored over 3+ whilst knowing that our xG over seasons, goals scored over seasons (at least league wise) was nothing special.

Those games were nice but absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme. We were terrible at breaking teams down consistently, terrible at taking the game to the top opposition and always rely on sit back and counter. All fun that we beat Southampton 9-0 but much more were we playing shit on a stick, which will never get you anywhere, and hasnt gotten us anywhere.
 
We've had I think basically 3 comfortable wins all season.

Opening day vs Leeds, probably the only genuinely good performance
Home to Newcastle, don't think we played well to be honest but was a pretty easy 4-1 win
Away to Spurs, they were so awful they sacked the manager 24 hours after the game.

Every other win, not that there's been many, have been shite performances where we've scraped the win.

Was the same for the last 2 or 3 months last season.

More like the entirety of last season except against Leeds, Southampton, City, and maybe a couple of others I'm forgetting.

Every other game, the result was up in the air till the last 10 minutes and so often we needed some luck to get the win.
 
More like the entirety of last season except against Leeds, Southampton, City, and maybe a couple of others I'm forgetting.

Every other game, the result was up in the air till the last 10 minutes and so often we needed some luck to get the win.
Penalties and no fans. There you go
 
I'm sorry but that just isn't true. The cultural reboot was something that he drove. He got Murtough and Fletcher into their roles, he got the data analytics and analysis departments off the ground, he reinstated the use of tech such as GPS in the sports science department after Jose forced us to do away with them.

I'm not sure a manager should be bringing in DOF's and Technical directors. Not real ones anyway (I still have no idea what Fletcher is actually doing).

The club was in a word, a basket case when he arrived with the brand being toxic both inside and outside the club. There was certainly no clamour for the manager's position when Jose left, like there seemingly is and was after Ole left. That Pochettino was apparently actively looking to leave PSG midseason and Rangnick has taken this interim job on when he absolutely didn't need to, should tell you of the quality foundations laid by Ole for the next man, as well as the fact that Rangnick isn't being brought in as someone to undo the work that Ole did, but to build on it.

We brought in Solskjaer very quickly after Mourinho was sacked. I'm not sure we can say there wasn't clamour for the job as there wasn't time to start one. We were supposed to have months to decide the new permanent manager anyway. United will always be an attractive option for managers.

As for Rangnick being someone to build on the work Solskjaer did, well, that work doesn't include the actual playing football part, which could also reflect on squad changes. So we'll have to see about that. I'd say his appointment and future role is a clear indication that we WILL be heading towards another direction, at least in part.

He also was the only post-SAF manager who achieved two back to back top 4 finishes. Something that neither Jose or LvG could achieve despite spending more than Ole did at the same point in their tenures.

Finishing top-4 back to back should only be meaningful as a stepping stone to bigger things. That shouldn't be our target.
 
Your defensive stats are horrifying. If that was Norwich I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. How can anyone say you were heading in the right direction.

It’s even funnier because Ole preferred a midfield partnership specifically to be workhorses and this is what that got him. But hey, Ole sent us in the right direction.
 
He also was the only post-SAF manager who achieved two back to back top 4 finishes. Something that neither Jose or LvG could achieve despite spending more than Ole did at the same point in their tenures.

Top 4 finishes are not what this club is supposed to be aiming for. Under Jose and Vangle we were spending more than anyone, just like under Ole. No one was claiming at the time that Jose and Vangle were doing a good job either, so saying Ole achieved marginally more than them while falling short of what we should actually be achieving is not any great accomplishment.
 
I think Ole has done a good job, but ultimately it reached a point where he had taken the team as far as he could. Jose left us in an absolute mess - he may have won some silverware, but it was at the cost of any semblance of long term potential. Ole came in and instilled the first bit of genuine positivity I have seen in the club since Fergie left. He revitalised the team, got them (at times) playing some great attacking football, cleared out some of the galacticos and instead built a team with a core around young English players, that will leave the next manager with a strong side to work with.

Having said all that, it became very clear - especially this season - that something was missing on the coaching and tactical side of things. The players looked lost, there was no particular effective system of play - you want a team to be more than the sum of its parts, ours was the opposite. I said that the board would give Ole until Christmas to turn things around, but the Watford result was simply too much, his position became very much untenable at that point, and it was the right decision to part ways.

I will remember Ole as the one who managed to bring back a bit of the 'old' United, who started building what will hopefully go on to be a successful winning squad, but who fell short on the coaching and tactical level. I still think he would be make a good DoF for us, when paired with a master tactician to sort out the day-to-day/match tactics.

Henderson, Maguire, AWB, Shaw, Sancho, Rashford, Greenwood - thats 7 English players who could form the core of our team over close to the next decade. It may not be fashionable to say this right now - but they (along with others in the squad such as McT and Donny) are good players, capable of a lot more than they have shown lately. We also have an abundance of quality youngsters coming through the system.

The job for the next manager is relatively simple - sort the midfield out, and get the players playing as a team. Ole's job when joining was a much harder one. I think he has left the club and the squad in a much better state than he took over, and he deserves credit for that.

Agree 100%, spot on !
 
I'm sorry but that just isn't true. The cultural reboot was something that he drove. He got Murtough and Fletcher into their roles, he got the data analytics and analysis departments off the ground, he reinstated the use of tech such as GPS in the sports science department after Jose forced us to do away with them.

The club was in a word, a basket case when he arrived with the brand being toxic both inside and outside the club. There was certainly no clamour for the manager's position when Jose left, like there seemingly is and was after Ole left. That Pochettino was apparently actively looking to leave PSG midseason and Rangnick has taken this interim job on when he absolutely didn't need to, should tell you of the quality foundations laid by Ole for the next man, as well as the fact that Rangnick isn't being brought in as someone to undo the work that Ole did, but to build on it.

He also was the only post-SAF manager who achieved two back to back top 4 finishes. Something that neither Jose or LvG could achieve despite spending more than Ole did at the same point in their tenures.

Yes, it ultimately went wrong at the end but he absolutely did a good job up to this point. Unfortunately it didn't work out and the blame is going to be laid squarely on him for that, but he wasn't exactly helped along the way either.

Not sure where we've been set back by years in either. We have a young team who are continuing to grow and develop with a ready supply line from the academy coming through as well. Literally the only areas which need investment in are found in deep midfield, everywhere else has quality and depth and for the first time since SAF, we actually have a coherently built squad. From GK, to CB, to the wings, to up front. We have legitimately top class players like Varane, Ronaldo, Sancho here. We certainly didn't have that in any of the other managers' time at the club. To hear you say we've been set back years you'd think Ole did what Jose did and proceeded to buy shit on top of the shit purchased by the previous manager and didn't bother to actually rebuild the squad. The fact we all went from looking to break top 4 to actively trying to challenge for the league is proof positive of the job he did. We certainly weren't thinking that in Jose's third season, or LvG's second, for example.

And then I can talk about the improvement of the likes of McFred and Shaw who were seen as legitimate joke figures among the fanbase. Or the fact we were much more enterprising under Ole than we were with the other guys 5+ goals scored 10 times in c.160 games: the previous 3 managers? twice in 302 games.

Pretty sure Rio refuted some of these "reforms" on his podcast when Stephen Howson said the same. Ole didnt really have a hand in updating the data analytics, improving training ground etc these were improvements made by the club not Ole. In fact some of the training ground improvements were implemented by LVG in his time here.

Also just as its pretty clear that Ole was out of his depth tactically its looking pretty clear his "cultural reboot" was to drag this club back to the dark ages of less tactics, inexperienced buddy coaches, less structure and what seemed a priority of a good vibe over a winning mentality.

Which when you step back and realise a man who had no experience of managing a top club, never showed any tactical ingenuity in his career, never rebuilt a club, never showed any great genius in recruiting, was given the keys to man united, I think his legacy will end up being a caution tale to other clubs that for every Pep, theres an Ole.
 
He left Stoke-like Manchester United, as proven yesterday again by Chelsea. If anything, Manchester United has regressed in comparison to other big sides in his three years. There is practically no difference in how Burnley played Chelsea and how United have played Chelsea.

That is Ole's legacy, spending 400+ milion pounds to have his side play relegation style football.
 
I'd say his appointment and future role is a clear indication that we WILL be heading towards another direction, at least in part.
I think his appointment is meant to give us SOME direction because we were clearly having none. Our football is bland nothingness these days, philosophy wise we're a blank slate. Even the squad is a mishmash of footballers suited for several different ways of playing.
 
Players have lost years of development, the young ones are no better than when they broke through, Bruno has become a frustrated headless chicken, VDB went from CL finalist to a nobody, defenders are a joke. The only player who is on high level is the one who is not affected by Ole and the coaches - De Gea.
 
It really isn't just the coaching either.

People still shit on Jose's recruitment and rightfully so but there was a real effort to push the narrative that it had improved under Ole.

£130m spent on Maguire/Wan-Bissaka is just an unforgivable allocation of resources. Some of the worst business in the club's history. They were signed because they were perceived as sure things, safe bets and neither look remotely good enough. Maguire can probably slot back in as the starting CB but he's really nothing that you couldn't buy for £20-30m while AWB is the antithesis of what a modern full back should be.

Ironically our best players yesterday were all holdovers from the squad Ole inherited and mostly Jose guys - De Gea, Bailly, Lindelof, Fred, Matic, McTominay - That's a pretty shocking indictment of how poor our supposedly "safe" recruitment strategy has been. It's been lazy and nothing short of cowardly - we're suffering for it now.
 
The less said the better. Let’s just remember him as a player.
It got to a point where I don't even want to see his feck face because of all his good work for the last 3 years.
Let alone remember him in any capacity, even as a player.