Solskjaer's legacy and his future

Shark said:
Why did he almost instantly make him captain then.
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Yes, that was one of the reasons why he was targeted to be bought, seen as a future leader in the dressing room.

He was made captain only half a year after arriving, because Ashley Young left the club in January (probably didn't expect this the summer before).

At that time, what were the realistic alternatives for captain?
De Gea? Who rarely speaks up? And ideally you want your captain up field to talk to the ref. We've had good keeper captains in the past, but the rule of only the captain is allowed to talk to the ref in heated moments was introduced in 2017.
Rashford at 21 years who had enough pressure already?
Pogba and all the noise around him? Plus he was injured from October until June that season.
Matic or Mata who rarely played? We had years of the club captain rarely starting before this, and it felt a bit silly.

The only realistic option was Maguire, and I'm sure everyone would have preferred the changing of the guard to happen the next summer as probably intended before Young moved on.
 
Matriac said:
Yes, that was one of the reasons why he was targeted to be bought, seen as a future leader in the dressing room.

He was made captain only half a year after arriving, because Ashley Young left the club in January (probably didn't expect this the summer before).

At that time, what were the realistic alternatives for captain?
De Gea? Who rarely speaks up? And ideally you want your captain up field to talk to the ref. We've had good keeper captains in the past, but the rule of only the captain is allowed to talk to the ref in heated moments was introduced in 2017.
Rashford at 21 years who had enough pressure already?
Pogba and all the noise around him? Plus he was injured from October until June that season.
Matic or Mata who rarely played? We had years of the club captain rarely starting before this, and it felt a bit silly.

The only realistic option was Maguire, and I'm sure everyone would have preferred the changing of the guard to happen the next summer as probably intended before Young moved on.
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De Gea should have gotten the captaincy without a doubt at the time. The only player aside from Phil Jones that was playing under SAF and won a title. No brainer to me. Matic also played a lot more also then compared to now and is a title winner with Chelsea. Choosing Harry Maguire isn't as clear cut a decision as it's being made out.
 
De Gea should have got it, no questions asked. Lloris doesn’t sepeak that much and he’s comfortably captained France to the greatest of all trophies. And they recently added another one with him guiding them again.

Giving Maguire the captaincy so soon was just as big a mistake as signing him for that insane fee in the first place.
 
Bebestation said:
I mean people are crying about Maguire but what about Varane? That's someone Ole signed.

Bruno is arguably our best player.

Maguire is better than Bailly, Smalling and Jones imo. Lindelof arguably improved under Ole aswell. Maybe even Fred is in that list too.

He bought Sancho- arguably our first RW that wanted to be here since Valencia replacing Ronaldo and Di Maria left us.

Cavani was a great short term buy. Telles is better than young as a back up LB.

I dislike Romero for Henderson decision. I liked wan bissaka at the start but has arguably been found out a bit.

I just find that people complain much more on things like the money spent on a player - like it's their money that we will never get back.

He sold Fellaini, Lukaku, Darmian, young, Sanchez, Smalling, Fosu mensah, Rojo, Romero, Herrera alongside nearly 30 other youngsters.
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Yeah agree with you.

Some fans want absolute perfection. Yet at any club, with any manager, you could pick holes in their trasfer dealings. The overall picture should be looked at rather than nitpicking.

I think Ole negelcted the CM positions and after cutting the squad down he somewhat reclogged it with unnecessary contract extensions.

But some mistakes doesn't equal total failure. Which is the binary viewpoint some fans have.
 
Pintu said:
De Gea should have got it, no questions asked. Lloris doesn’t sepeak that much and he’s comfortably captained France to the greatest of all trophies. And they recently added another one with him guiding them again.

Giving Maguire the captaincy so soon was just as big a mistake as signing him for that insane fee in the first place.
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Clearly alot of our fans love hindsight. I am not sure you re-call but at that time, DDG was looking ify in goal. There were question marks over him and Ole had bringing Henderson into the fold once his loan was complete.
 
Shark said:
Why did he almost instantly make him captain then.
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Players are usually made captain for reasons that we do not see. Its not always around on-pitch performance, although often their 'captain' like personality is reflected on this field. With Maguire that doesn't seem to be the case too often, but its logical to imagine that he has a leaders presence behind the scenes.
 
I wonder, now that he’s had a few months to think it over, what Ole himself believes were his mistakes.
 
I think Ole failed in his coaching appointments more than anything. He didn't appoint a tactician who is amazing on the training ground. I've heard McKenna is very adept on the traininig ground but he was new to senior role and a massive ask for him to step up. Phelan by all accounts is all about his man management of players rather than a tactical genius. Carrick was new to role and wasn't Fletcher also a coach at some point? Ralf has that tactical knowledge on the training pitch that Ole didn't, and has also brought in some coaches that are highly rated.

City and Liverpool have two training ground managers as well as elite coaches who are often spoken about as tactical geniuses. Liverpool also scored loads of goals from throw ins, corners etc due to having specialists in these positions. Football is about fine margins these days and more about winning the tactical battles. You need the best in class on the training ground to really implement a philosophy and the more Ole's tenure went on, it seemed we didn't have one.

I do feel if Ole could have surrounded himself with 2-3 world class coaches, then we may have been able to make more of a success of it. He was improving most seasons apart from this one, where we just played as a team of individuals with no set style and looked woefully coached.
 
lex talionis said:
I wonder, now that he’s had a few months to think it over, what Ole himself believes were his mistakes.
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i think it would be his lack of squad rotation when needed. He stuck to the same players regardless of form, that was a main issue. It was as if he didn’t trust players outside the starting 11. Even substitutions were late, or even none. I know squad depth was an issue, but not to the extent he took it to. I wish he had handled this better. We probably lost the europa league final because players were out of gas. I wonder what would have been had we won that cup. I supported him when he was the manager as i saw good football at times; but unfortunately it all crashed this season
 
Marwood said:
Maguire and AWB were positive additions. They did really help us. They should still be really helping us.

But no manager can guarantee a players form forever. If a player has the ability to really help a team but doesn't perform that's on the player.

The only incoming signing Ole really messed up on was DVB. That and maybe ending up with Ronaldo and Cavani.
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Maguire and AWB looked like great additions up till the point where we stopped playing counter attacking football. Which is around the same time that their weaknesses started to show and also around the same time Ole's job became increasingly threatened.
 
lex talionis said:
I wonder, now that he’s had a few months to think it over, what Ole himself believes were his mistakes.
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I think it's clear as day his only real mistake was getting Ronaldo instead of pushing for a centre mid. This meant we were worse instead of better going into year 3. He wouldn't think that though. It would be interesting to hear because it would provide real insight into the club I think. He might think he made no real major mistakes but ultimately wasn't a good enough coach to get to the right level, and I don't think that's a billion miles from the truth
 
shamans said:
No they don't. This is Ole's legacy. He wasted money on Maguire, AWB, Donny, James, Diallo, Martial(contract) etc He has left us in this absolute shit show of a mess with nothing to show for it. Ole assembled a team of names and nothing else. 3 years of an incompetent man. At least give the new manager one transfer window before judging.
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Look mate I like to tackle little Ole like most of the other guys in here. However let's get real here. Sure he was lazy as he never coached the team and went for a holiday in the middle of a crisis. Meritocracy went out of the window during his time as well as he hired half of his people from his doomed Cardiff time or/and his mates. However its unfair to put the blame of our disastrous transfer campaign solely to him. Let's not forget that we've been shit on transfers long before he came and he was only part of a transfer committee which also had Jon Murtough in it.
 
devilish said:
Look mate I like to tackle little Ole like most of the other guys in here. However let's get real here. Sure he was lazy as he never coached the team and went for a holiday in the middle of a crisis. Meritocracy went out of the window during his time as well as he hired half of his people from his doomed Cardiff time or/and his mates. However its unfair to put the blame of our disastrous transfer campaign solely to him. Let's not forget that we've been shit on transfers long before he came and he was only part of a transfer committee which also had Jon Murtough in it.
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We've been shit due to shit managers.

Ole got every player her wanted. These are the facts. He wasted a crap ton of money because he couldn't get a bargain deal if his life depended on it.
 
90 + 5min said:
It is wierd that people still have a go at Solskjaer. He did good job until this season when things just went bad. We showed progress and suddenly players decided to play like they came out from pubs.

Put blame where it should be. On players. Their character. Their passion. Their desire. Solskjaer isn't blameless but majority of the things that went wrong are on players. Not Solskjaer. Not Woodward and directors. Not Glazers.
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I hate this take.

We didn't show progress, the table was misleading last season because Liverpool lost their defence and also their first choice midfield (because they had to fill in deeper roles).
We'd have been very far off first and second had Liverpool not collapsed.

Ole's the one that kept playing the players that "played as if they came out of pubs".

Ole also indulged some of the shitty characters you so desperately want to blame.
Which other top club has so many disgruntled players? Blame the players all you want, Klopp and Pep don't promise their 30th squad player game time or their backup GK a starting spot.

Our players are terribly unfit. They clearly can't execute Ralf's game plan for the full 90 minutes. You don't think there's a relationship with Ole being absolutely okay with Rashford or Greenwood never tracking back?

A lot of our current problems are down to Ole's management
 
The cultural reboot and all that is now complete waffle, mainly by the class of 92. Bought poorly, team of individuals - worse than when Jose left.

Ole is a lovely person, genuine out. But he did not bring us into a better place, still tons and tons to do. Buy more players, sell the ones he gave new contracts too. A lot of mistakes, he gave his all but not good enough sadly
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
Who were the alternative players at that point in time and what were the alternative options to us?.

For the cb options at the club we had Mike Smalling who was getting hounded every week? Phil Injured Jones? Rojo and Bailiy injured all the time?.. Blind was underplayed and hounded out of the club.. No other suitable CB options were available to us mate.. Maguire came in and was solid enough to shore up our cb defence but if he doesn't get shielded then we'd have had DDG to be the last man in yard m street
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It’s this kind of thinking that is why we are in such a huge mess, and it’s probably close to what all the incompetent people at the club thought at the time. What else could they do but massively overspend on two players who weren’t good enough. The lack of accountability and forward planning has been apparent for years and we’ll continue to pay the price for it.
 
VanDeBank said:
We didn't show progress, the table was misleading last season because Liverpool lost their defence and also their first choice midfield (because they had to fill in deeper roles).
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United got 8 more points last season than the one before. That would qualify as progress regardless of whether Liverpool should have been 2nd or 3rd.

There are almost always teams that do worse than expected, it almost always has an effect on the table. We could argue that Conte and/or Arteta will 'misleadingly' benefit this season from United's shocking collapse.
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
Again slow and inexperienced and Juve offered him over 200k pw and he's not set the world alight and been criticised and benched.
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What? No he's not. He had a slow start but he plays every game now and is one of the first names on the teamsheet.
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
Again slow and inexperienced and Juve offered him over 200k pw and he's not set the world alight and been criticised and benched.
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Just because someone is young doesn’t mean he is inexperienced. He has played at Ajax and Juventus, at a Euros and in the Champions League. Most players reach the end of their careers with less experience.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
United got 8 more points last season than the one before. That would qualify as progress regardless of whether Liverpool should have been 2nd or 3rd.
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We got more points because we had Bruno for a full season in 2020/21 rather than half a season like in 2019/20. That was about it.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
United got 8 more points last season than the one before. That would qualify as progress regardless of whether Liverpool should have been 2nd or 3rd.

There are almost always teams that do worse than expected, it almost always has an effect on the table. We could argue that Conte and/or Arteta will 'misleadingly' benefit this season from United's shocking collapse.
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We got more points because we were playing in empty stadiums. Our team is full of bottlers who crumble under pressure. Having no fans watching was a big advantage
 
It's very difficult to win the Premiership against the current Man City side, if you do manage to get above them then you have to beat a Liverpool side with 5+ years playing under one manager.

I doubt very much any manager could takeover at United and win the league in 2-3 seasons. So any shortcomings Ole had were no greater or worst than others before (and probably after him)

During Ole's good moments it was wonderful to see United free scoring again, something he has only been able to achieve with this group. Since SAF retired I think Ole's reign has been the most enjoyable for me tbh.
 
Roboc7 said:
It’s this kind of thinking that is why we are in such a huge mess, and it’s probably close to what all the incompetent people at the club thought at the time. What else could they do but massively overspend on two players who weren’t good enough. The lack of accountability and forward planning has been apparent for years and we’ll continue to pay the price for it.
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We had no fit CB at one point, many of us have forgotten about that. One of the main reasons why we went for Maguire was his fitness record was ace and hardly ever injured.
 
Gopher Brown said:
Just because someone is young doesn’t mean he is inexperienced. He has played at Ajax and Juventus, at a Euros and in the Champions League. Most players reach the end of their careers with less experience.
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He is experienced. Over 200 club games. He has played a EL final and a CL semifinal for Ajax.
He played a Nation league’s final for his country. He’s won a a league and a Cup for both Ajax and Juventus.

And he is certainly not benched. He is the most used field player this season for Juventus.

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This year has proven while he had his shortcomings, our players are the main issue
 
An awful lot of rubbish gets talked around here by fantasists.

The simple truth is that to win stuff you need a top class high press coach and top class high press players in every position who will be fit, fast and technically and positionally aware. They are most likely to be in their mid twenties.

We have had none of that and it will take years to develop it and get rid of that which is incompatible. The rest is noise.

Many of our players were fine in a counter attacking team designed to finish fourth in a weaker league. That model no longer works.
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
We had no fit CB at one point, many of us have forgotten about that. One of the main reasons why we went for Maguire was his fitness record was ace and hardly ever injured.
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Which is a stupid reason to spend £80m on someone, just underlines my point. Poor
decision making, poor planning and this only causes more problems further down
the line.

This stupid logic of who else could we have bought or what else could we have done is exactly why we’ve been going nowhere post SAF. It’s people not up to the job just shrugging their shoulders or deluding themselves everything is on track when they make a huge mess.
 
Roboc7 said:
Which is a stupid reason to spend £80m on someone, just underlines my point. Poor
decision making, poor planning and this only causes more problems further down
the line.

This stupid logic of who else could we have bought or what else could we have done is exactly why we’ve been going nowhere post SAF. It’s people not up to the job just shrugging their shoulders or deluding themselves everything is on track when they make a huge mess.
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Better than having no fit CB and no decent CM and getting relegated isn't it?. Not that I would mind too much because it'll get rid of the egoistic deadwood straight away :rolleyes:
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
Better than having no fit CB and no decent CM and getting relegated isn't it?. Not that I would mind too much because it'll get rid of the egoistic deadwood straight away :rolleyes:
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Getting relegated is a bit dramatic, again just roving my point if that was kind of logic used to sign someone for a world record fee.

There is no justification for paying £80m for Maguire, it’s as simple as that. Teams have bought players to every bit as good or better for way less, we’re the only ones stupid enough to pay £80m for him.
 
Ole is quite simply the worst manager we’ve had post SAF. The state of the club, playing squad, recruitment, coaching and fitness levels are as bad I remember. All that talking him leaving the club in a better state is utter rubbish. He created an environment for mentally weak players to thieve in a world of blame shifting and hiding.
RR and his team have the impossible task that won’t be achieved as the payers will do their usual.
 
Rampant Red Rodriguez said:
Better than having no fit CB and no decent CM and getting relegated isn't it?. Not that I would mind too much because it'll get rid of the egoistic deadwood straight away :rolleyes:
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The team in 2019 was getting clean sheets against Liverpool, the Champions of Europe to be, with this CB pairing. (+ Bailly and Jones available). There must have been other alternatives to burning the entire budget on an average CB like him.

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soapythecat said:
Ole is quite simply the worst manager we’ve had post SAF. The state of the club, playing squad, recruitment, coaching and fitness levels are as bad I remember. All that talking him leaving the club in a better state is utter rubbish. He created an environment for mentally weak players to thieve in a world of blame shifting and hiding.
RR and his team have the impossible task that won’t be achieved as the payers will do their usual.
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Agree. And let's not forget RR is not our new manager, he is just stepping in until the manager arrives.
 
Wonder who spent money on those players, who extended/green lighted contract extensions of those players who should be long time gone from our books. He applied weights on our ankles just like other managers and left with bags full with cash, life is good.
 
Pintu said:
The team in 2019 was getting clean sheets against Liverpool, the Champions of Europe to be, with this CB pairing. (+ Bailly and Jones available). There must have been other alternatives to burning the entire budget on an average CB like him.

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So a clean sheet against Liverpool is your only measure of good defence?. Not the fact of conceding 54 league goals at the end of the season? You forgot to consider what injuries we have had in Jones and Bailiy.

And Ashley Young at Rb to be burned by pace every game who was a mid 30 former winger/am?. I'd rather have AWB to stop us getting bummed by attackers with pace..
 
Couple of rumors going round linking him with the Aberdeen job, only way that'd be a good job for him if he's able to break the top 2 but i doubt it.
 
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