Not a bad shout if Woy fails
Solskjaer's legacy and his future
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That's a staggeringly one sided view of the situation
Not disagreeing with your point that pampering players is not necessarily good man management, but what you've described there is horrible man-management and actually 100% abuse if that ever happened.
Question, a bit of an extreme analogy as well, but would you call a psychologically abusive trafficker a good man manager because their co-dependent victims are kept in line?
Probably not, good man-management cannot be viewed as mutually exclusive from the general well-being of the person being managed.
Tell me, what's better getting 2nd and 3rd with a Utd who had been 6th the season before (their only two consecutive Top 4 finishes post-SAF, might I add) or... getting a solitary 4th place with a Chelsea team who'd been 3rd and EL Champs the yr before?
Nah, it's pretty accurate.
Fair or not, it will take him a while to get past the lowlights because they're what's currently on everyone's mind. The general impression of Ole outside the United bubble currently is of someone who was obviously never good enough to be our manager, who was only here because of his past connections to the club and the fact that we're not well run, who didn't win anything and who left us in a mess. People might want to make fair arguments for things he did well here, but they don't really register right now outside of those who are inclined to defend Ole.
Time might help and the players he brought in proving to be successful certainly would. But as is his reputation isn't in a particularly good place with the media constantly full of stories about how his "rebuild" has left us with an unhappy squad, needing a clear out and requiring someone like Rangnick to come in and teach us basic parts of the top level game like pressing. None of the vibes around Old Trafford right now do anything to frame Ole's time here in a positive light.
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Agree. I think his stock is much the same as Moyes was when he left United, probably worse. He had to take that job at Sunderland to rebuild his career and probably only got it because of his reputation at Everton. If he didn't have a decade of decency I doubt he'd even be at West Ham now.
Ole has two massive blips on his career (United + Cardiff) with the only upside being a good job at Molde. He's back to the point of using that as leverage, which is always going to limit he amount of clubs coming in for him. I think it's an entirely fair position to be in, speaking neutrally.
Wish him luck and everything but I can't see a PL club coming in for him except perhaps as an interim.
good move
Yeah, he could play always the same players which likes him so much
*Who lost the best player in the league and had a transfer ban
Maybe i have a biased viewpoint on this, but I think a lot of what has happened since Ralf has come in has vindicated Ole as opposed to show up any obvious flaws
How so?
I could understand arguing that Rangnick's struggles have shown that the team is fundamentally flawed and a lot of managers would have struggled as Ole did this season. In fact a lot of Rangnick's issues and comments have echoed Ole's.
But the difference is that Rangnick inherited this squad of players, whereas in Ole's case the building of this squad of players was his prime claim to having done a good job as manager up to this season. The justifcation for his time here was always that he was rebuilding and leading a cultural reset. If there isn't currently a good squad with a good attitude then that torpedos the idea that he was a worthwhile investment of time and patience, because he can't be divorced from the state of the side as is.
What would vindicate Ole's time here is quick success upon Rangnick's arrival, or subsequent success with Ole's players under a new manager. Because although that would suggest we were right to lose Ole this season, his overall time as manager would be viewed more positively because you could claim that he turned us around as a club and delivered the rebuild that was promised, with subsequent managers building on the foundation he laid. And that would bolster his reputation, with the caveat that his final months were an unexpected disaster. Whereas now it's his entire body of work here that is viewed negatively.
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That's exactly what happened to Lampard once Tuchel came in and might well explain why Lampard is seen as an option while Solskjaer isn't.
I can't see how that can be the case since it was Ole who put the squad together creating a happy bubble for the players in the process and shielding them from any outside criticism. That might work in an U11 team where sensitivity is an important issue but not at an elite club.
Rangnick has basically had to come in and be the bad guy by dropping players like Rashford, Bruno, AWB and Shaw amongst others which is why it's taken him longer than it could have if the players were already up to the task of already having the attitude of playing for an elite club. Of course it's not going to be chocolates and roses the first few months after 3 years of the players being put under little pressure but I do think once discipline is instilled and the weak are weeded out we are going to see a very different United than what we've been witnessing for the last number of years.
Lampard is seen as an option for the likes of Everton because he's English football royalty; is part of a family that has fingers in pies of the media and he used to score belters for Chelsea and England. Ole's reign as manager in the PL was far more successful.
Obviously this is a grey area, not black and white, and down to opinions so I won't disagree with you but instead offer an alternative viewpoint.
The main criticism of Ole has usually been about his tactical acumen, or general style of play. While I think this is overplayed by those that never backed him, it's true that we've seen an uncoordinated football team at times. That, aligned with Ole's reluctance to discuss tactics publicly (who does that anyway?) and his sometimes uncomfortable demeanour in front of the camera, has led some people to conclude that there wasn't enough focus on the details. I'm not on board with that. There wasn't enough there to label him a tactical visionary, but there was enough to say that he was a competent manager holding his own against some of the best in the world. Until this season of course when it all went wrong.
However, I do think what we've seen since then has vindicated him to an extent. Ralf hasn't yet been able to instil a balanced team out of this squad either. We are still suffering from basic mistakes by players. We don't look like we know how to score goals. We don't have a team capable of pressing well. We haven't seen a noticeable improvement from any player, bar perhaps Dalot, that would suggest these players were demoralised by a sub-standard management team.
Ralf is using all of the 'more passion, win our individual battles' soundbites that Ole was derided for, but the message is largely the same from both. Tactically he has abandoned his philosophy and at this point is pretty much going with the same setup that Ole was using. A competent & very experienced manager hasn't been able to come in and make an immediate difference, as you would expect from a squad that had been free-wheeling it under a poor coaching setup. You say that quick success would have vindicated Ole, where I believe it would have been a sledgehammer against him - 'look how easily a competent manager has been able to turn this around'.
Now, I'm aware of the counter-argument here. This is not Ralf's team, Ole built this squad. That's inarguably true, but I don't think they thought that this team was finished. I'm sure he wanted a midfielder or two. Instead he ended up with a last minute Ronaldo, who has caused us to rethink our approach and broken some of the continuity. It's notable that Ralf hasn't bought a midfielder in this window either, perhaps for financial or political reasons or more likely because we just can't get the players we want at the moment. Either way we haven't really seen any signs that would suggest that any of our problems were easily fixable by either manager.
I think it's also because his best season was working under a ban, albeit with a very good squad and successfully bringing through youth players he knew well in order to play in the first tam or simply to sell for good money (like Abraham). That was kind of what we'd hoped with Ole (particularly because, like Lampard, he'd coached a lot of our youngsters) but he ended up going big every transfer window.
If you're an owner of a club who can spend as much as United (of which there are 2 or 3) you will be going for the creme de la creme, if you're Everton, Leicester, Spurs etc. you aren't going to be going for someone who needs £300m+ to setup a counter attacking team, especially when they aren't winning trophies with that style.
This is the man that claimed football is an easy game and went on to say its about desire. This is a man who only ever looked half decent as a manager when he was facing better coached and better manned sides because he could sit back and counter attack. i.e. a style of football that is by far the simplest kind. He had nearly 3 years and our best period results wise and performance wise was when he had literally just taken over. We were outplayed by I would say probably 70% of teams we played. I would watch us against a relegation team and they would have a better shape and transitions than us but were hamstrung by poor finishing and we would string a couple of high difficulty passages together and sucker punch them and win. I would watch Chelsea, City, Liverpool and numerous other teams play and just pull my hair out that our own fans couldn't see the huge gulf in coaching between us and them. Ole deserved pretty much every shred of criticism he got with regards to tactics. He put this team together, he oversaw their development as a team and decided on tactics and what to focus on.
RR has come into a squad that has been bereft of coaching for years, is low on morale and is trying to fix god knows how many issues in the middle of a busy season. Not to mention he is currently an interim and we know how awful players can be when they decide they don't want to buy into a managers ideas or the manager has simply pissed them off. I have no idea how good a job RR is doing but this has 0 reflection on Ole other than negative. Our players are unfit, unmotivated and under-coached. Who takes the blame for that?
This again makes no sense. Of course you need these things. City are the top team in the league because they are fantastically coached, tactically astute and they work their arses off and want to win. If your players don't want to work, run and contest 50:50s on the pitch then the best tactics in the world won't be enough. That doesn't mean that those tactics aren't absolutely vital. United haven't had an issue with work rate or desire for the past 3 years solid, they have had an issue with the technical side of the game and finally the "desire" side of the game went down to match the level of technical execution they were delivering.
Ole has had nearly 3 years to fix these issues. I have no idea about the Ronaldo transfer and how much Ole wanted him. I would suspect that he didn't want him that much and Ronaldo was a board signing. That being said, he has spent nearly half a billion on this squad. He should have sorted out these issues if they were holding him back so much.
I genuinely think a top manager would have this team easily in the top 4 and challenging for the title for at least half of the season if they had complete buy in from the players and had a summer to work with them. RR doesn't have that luxury and hes working with one hand tied behind his back. There is a reason why plenty of people said that we had to challenge this year. Ole had spent massively and we just got Ronaldo, Varane and Sancho. How many thought we would is another matter.
Like it or not, the writing had been on the wall for Ole from about 3 months into his tenure. People just don't like to be analytical and are blinded by stupid ideas like "giving a manager time" being an absolute rule. Or that being a good supporter means that you cannot be critical of a manager who isn't showing signs of being capable of achieving your goals.
Management is hard and its even harder at the top clubs. That doesn't mean that whoever is in those positions should not be judged against those standards. Ole fell short in most areas.
Lampard was the wrong man at the wrong time, and Chelsea were never going to give him time like the inept United board did with Solskjaer. However he clearly had a vision for how he wanted his teams playing, unlike Solskjaer.
Solskjaer achieved nothing at United despite having the largest net spend in the league during his time at Old Trafford. Those league positions meant nothing as we never came close to challenging. Lampard was given significantly less in transfer money overall but he was fully backed in 2020 and got overwhelmed just like Solskjaer did when he finally got a team ready to challenge
Surely those things help Lampard.
But whether Ole was more successful depends on which aspects you look at. Yes Ole finished higher up in the PL table and reached an EL final, but in the end both did not win titles, in that regard they are on par. Lampard however left a valuable squad that needed a new impulse to quickly improve performances and that contained a lot of players who might not be right for Chelsea, but who played and impressed enough that they could be sold for good money.
United created so called deadwood (I hate that term as it is just offensive and dehumanizing) while Chelsea had actual valuable assets.
To be fair, the fact that Chelsea went on to be successful could either be a positive or a negative for Lampard, maybe he massively underperformed, or did he set them up for future success? Signing the likes of Maguire and AWB has to go against Ole, though. Despite that, he deserved this season based off the work he had done prior. The way it subsequently fell apart is slightly bewildering.
Lampard lost the plot and was rightfully sacked, I think any sane person agrees on that. Same thing happened wirh Ole this season. But as that is just the normal cycle with almost every manager no one will see that as a red light. Maybe for the absolute elite clubs, but not for PL midtable jobs like Everton.
Arguably Ole burned money while Lampard created value (though he also failed because of his expensive signings, but at least most of them had some important influence, albeit not the impact Chelsea hoped for) and this might be the one big difference in their rating. Neither are top managers, I won't be dying on the Lampard hill though.
There are too many individual points here to break down, so I'll just say good post. As I said earlier, this is a very grey issue so I'm not going to tell you you're wrong or die defending my own points, but there are alternative views to this and I happen to be one of those people that have them.
It seems that some of your points are insinuating I'm saying things that I'm not though. I don't think we did, or should have, given Ole more time for the sake of it, I think we got rid of him at about the right time, and I think its possible to hold the view (as I do) that Ralf or whoever is next can elevate this team without having to tear down what Ole accomplished in the process, because my opinion on him from the start was that he was most likely 'the guy before the guy'.
I've had my fill of defending Ole really. The thread that was started asking why Ole isn't being considered for roles was a trigger for me because I often have that thought. He might well never get another PL offer because the narrative was set early on by a media that had it in for him for some reason, but hopefully in time United will get back to challenging for the big ones with a lot of the players that Ole put together and some of our fans will see that his work had a part to play in that.
I honestly can't disagree with this.
Utd also lost their top goalscorer of the past two seasons, their most consistent midfielder, and their starting CB from the season before, with only the latter being replaced.
I mean, that's all patently untrue. Ole had the youngest squad in the league when he got 3rd, wasn't backed at all in his second season and still got 2nd, and then was backed in his third season but let down by those above him when they decided to get a sex pest in instead of the midfielder he needed. And he also got outspent by fecking Arsenal too.
And as you can see, getting a tune out of this set of players isn't the easiest job in the world. Compare and contrast that with the post-Lampard Chelsea, and there just isn't even a comparison. One was hideously out of his depth and exposed by the next man, the other's job is looking better and better to all, but the most agenda-driven, judging by the struggles of his successor.
Also, Lampard actually had c.£90m of recruitment in his summer where he had the "transfer ban" and "no backing" in addition to the £200m+ the season after.
How can you possibly say this when Tuchel walks into the middle of the season and wins the CL with the same squad. Just his handling of Rudiger alone is pretty damning of his 'vision'. Mount also looked pretty bad under him, I mean he knew there was a player there but couldn't really get a tune out of him. Bruno looked like a ballon d'or contender under Ole.
I think the issue with judging Ole's time here has been that people who seem to say "Ole wasn't as bad as people make out" or "Ole was a decent manager here" are thought to be saying "Ole is the best manager". There is nothing in between.
I still fail to grasp the point, how hard can it be to accept that we did a decent job till last season - exceeded expectations in the league arguably in both the seasons - but struggled to find balance in the team this season.
We'll never know whose decision it was to sign VDB and Ronaldo as one was hardly ever fancied and the other seemed like a signing the setup wasn't prepared for. Irrespective, I'd say most of his signings were good (and next manager not rating AWB doesnt make him a poor signing), and while we may have overpaid for a few players, the only valid complain on this side can be around having way too large a squad.
Similarly, while people complain about lack tactical acumen, and individual brilliance, I find it amazing that a side with quite a few players who are criticized for their decision making were producing some really enjoyable football at times without coaching, and were holding their own vs the best managers in the world. If those results were inspite of Ole, I'd say the complaints around poor squad building are hilarious.
All in all, as is always the case, the truth lies in the middle. He wasn't able to help us take the final step and make us champions, but he wasn't "The worst PL manager ever" and whatever else he's been called on here
Agree with close to all of this.
Premier League teams aren’t going to hire him, ‘knowing the club’ was best thing he has going for him and that doesn’t apply anywhere else other than Molde.
Agree 100%.
Good response to my post. The point I was making, that whilst believing that Ole wasn't a good enough manager for Manchester United (his shortcomings were ruthlessly exposed this season), he wasn't anywhere near as bad or hopeless as his detractors would have you believe,
It is a bit odd that Lampard gets a chance at Everton and Solskjaer doesn't. They both appear to be shite coaches, mind.
Well put.
Indeed he can't have been holding back a great squad due to lack of coaching as was repeated on here many a time as the main reason he needed sacking but somehow he also left a poor squad. A narrative now being peddled by many of the same posters. If he left such a poor squad then how did he push that squad to two consecutive top 3 finishes and reaching 4 semi-finals and one final in two seasons. Did he overachieve through individual managerial brilliance?
As you rightly say though the truth will be somewhere in between.
Ozil then went to have the best and most successful season of his career, it's pretty obvious to me that Jose knew how to deal with a person like him and how to push him to the edge to get the best out of him , because after that Ozil career went downfall when he has softer manager who doesn't demand as much. If you consider that as abusing then why don't you try to go to military to see how harsh the treatment there ? But those that survive harsh treatment become strong mentally , in football they becomes a winner.A good man management isn't about making people happy , because happy people has the least drive to be successful compared to angry and disappointed people ,just look at OGS happy-go-lucky approach ,did it brought the club any success ? I heard how Mourinho was harsh to a player he rates because he knew they can do better than a player who lacks talent but already done their best. Those that doesn't want to do their best must be binned because they can influence others to also not doing their best as well. One of the reason why Mourinho failed here was because he wasn't allowed to bin those kind of players.
Lampard is a far better coach then Ole.
Lampard operated with no money spent and bigger constraints than Ole faced. Expectations for Chelsea weren't that high that season and Lampard has met it or even exceeded it. Next season expectations were raised, and on the first sign of trouble Lampard was removed.
Compare this to Ole, who was fully backed to the hilt with the highest net spend, sky high wage bill. He was given chance after chance despite long spells of bad performance but ultimately failed to turn this around. He was also the manager that our opposition cheer for when we played them, we simply had to remove him to prevent further damage to his reputation.
Lampard is seen as prematurely removed and not fully given a chance to show what he can do despite some good flashes. Ole is fully fleshed out and we needed to to remove him to save him and us from further embarrassment.
I'm not sure why people here think we are being too hard on Ole. Mourinho had far better results and achievements than Ole but yet he is endlessly shit on here with barely anyone trying to redeem him. Compared to him, Ole is already receiving the far lighter end of the stick and he should be grateful. Is it so hard to ask for the same standards to be applied to all our managers? No one is accepting the Mourinho has done a good job yet we are expected to accept that Ole has done a good job for the first 2 seasons?
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I find it hard to square a post like this with the reality that in Ole's two full seasons, United had a combined 14 losses in the PL.
Being consistently "outplayed" by teams who consistently lose the game suggests that this definition of "outplaying" is not very useful.
It's actually very significant to why we're on our worst trophy spell since SAF retired. That inability to control games fecked us when there was anything to play for. We'd beat PSG, RB then crash out of the CL because we couldn't outplay some no name team when it was time to take initiative.
*Who spent nearly £100m on Kovacic and Pulisic that same year despite that transfer ban.
I agree.
I am a self-confessed Ole sympathiser but even I knew he had to go after the Leicester result and it got a hell of a lot worse afterwards. Those last few games are not representative at all.
Ole elicited quite polarised opinions because of his personality, in my opinion. He doesn’t come across as a natural leader in the typical style associated with successful managers of the past. He led by forming bonds with his players as a group and as individuals and inspiring loyalty. They followed him because they liked him. Unfortunately this is not a sustainable model. One reason the wheels came off is that some of the players stopped pulling for him and the others noticed it and resented it (probably a factor in the reported divisions in the squad).
Lampard, for example, escapes a lot of criticism and gets plenty of excuses made for him because his personality appears consistent with a successful leader as most of us perceive such a thing.
As humans we are susceptible to making judgments based on our fundamental attitudes. Ole does not fit the recognised profile of a successful manager therefore losses must be his fault and wins must be down to the players.
I’ve no idea what the real truth is but I know the results and league positions in his two full seasons were pretty good. To my mind that is the only rational way to judge him.