That I agree with. Also they dont look for some continuity or dream of it. If manager is underperforming they kick him out without sentiment as you say.
The clubs willingness to write off seasons
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Good post.
Saying that I hope they'll win the title this year if we wont (and we most probably wont
). Lesser of the 3 evils.I actually think that they run the club like a sport entity and not like a business. We are the ones being run like a family business which makes little sense most of the time, if you have someone like SAF or Wenger that model can work because the manager is an actual mainstay but that's a rarity in sport, it's not a model to aim for but one you stumble on. The common model is the one where the head coach is changed regularly because you need to continuously adapt to a new reality whether it is the nature of the game or the nature of your squad, most managers are limited by these things and can't evolve endlessly, that's why the star managers of 2005 aren't the ones of 2021.
It's incredibly annoying
Man, we are such an embarrassment. Even Merson, who I rarely agree with, is saying that rivals are hoping Utd win tomorrow so that Ole stays in the job. Our board is beyond incompetent. When you have a club run by businessmen it's hardly surprising. Even Barca who are a total mess, made the move and replaced Koeman. What the feck are we waiting for?
We're scrabbling around looking for a folder marked "Plan B", which just about sums us up.
The fact that they seem to have this approach shows they’re not planning correctly and the fact they don’t have alternative options in the background if the shit hit the fan, looks incredibly bad.
Do Utd have a risk department or internal audit team who basically tell them “Putting all your trust in this one guy seems extremely risky. Do you have an ongoing shortlist of people who could come next week hypothetically?”
The mid to lower table PL teams have zero interest in admirably and honourably going down with the ship as they get relegated to the Championship. They are sacking that manager and getting a new one.
Do Utd have a risk department or internal audit team who basically tell them “Putting all your trust in this one guy seems extremely risky. Do you have an ongoing shortlist of people who could come next week hypothetically?”
The mid to lower table PL teams have zero interest in admirably and honourably going down with the ship as they get relegated to the Championship. They are sacking that manager and getting a new one.
That's exactly it, mate. Complete incompetence bordering on neglect of the club. The writing has been on the wall for a while that form was dropping and the Leicester and Liverpool results were predicted by many. The club should have been tentatively exploring alternatives just in case. But no. It is so clear that we have no such alternatives. Ridiculous.
Barcelona waited a long time and started the season with no hope of competing, it doesn't matter who takes the team until next summer. United are in a completely different situation if they want to compete this season they need a competent manager and the question becomes who is that competent manager, someone like Conte seems obvious but as you can see on this board many people have issues with him and it could be true for the board too. All that is without taking into account the financial and legal implications of sacking a manager and his staff when they have 3 years left on their contracts.
I take your point mate but I would argue that makes it even worse - Barca, a team who have already written off the season still made the change. It would have perhaps been cheaper to keep Koeman and replace him at the end of the season, but they have standards. We, it appears, have no such standards and getting humiliated by liverpool at home with the stadium half empty at the final whistle is acceptable. I take your point about Conte too, but there are alternatives to him, we just didn't have any contingency plan so we are sticking with Ole.
What I mean is simply one is a business that only looks forward, United are a business who still haven't really moved on from 2012.
Agree re Head Coach model and that is the future for football, United talk a lot about this but their actions suggest it's only ever been lip service.
But you are in a better position to make the change of you write off the season, any change will have little short term consequence and in the context of constant politics in clubs with socios, getting rid of Koeman for someone like Xavi is a relatively easy decision when you have fixed the potential money questions. And Barcelona have no standards, lets not make things up just to pile on United, Koeman should have been sacked after the second CL game after they lost 3-0 to Benfica, Koeman was on the hot seat since last season and he still survived a pretty bad start of the season in all competitions.
What are the alternatives to Conte, who is available in October and would guarantee short term success?
I guess I don't understand your logic. If their season is a write off then why not just keep Koeman? Why make the change? Would it not be more logical to keep him until the summer when the financial situation might be better and change him then, when the new manager could actually affect change? What will Xavi be able to do at the minute? He will have the same financial limitations as Koeman and the club is in turmoil.
Alternatives to Conte would be Rodgers, Potter, even Poch. It wouldn't be easy to get some of them, but possible. And no one can guarantee success.
I see your point I'm just being pedantic because I believe that it's important that people understand the actual situation, take your second sentence as an example. The head coach model is the present since the 50s-60s. I believe that I mentioned it in the past on a similar topic but the manager system is a british thing and fairly archaic, on the continent head coaches have been the dominant model for more than 50 years, head coaches rarely stay more than 3-4 years and it has been like that since ever, clubs have sports directors who are the ones in charge of the long term.
You don't keep him for several reasons, first politics and optics, at Barcelona it's important to be popular because you are elected. Secondly if the season is over you don't need to persist with a manager that isn't working, you can bring someone else that can experiment and prepare the next season in advance without the pressure of needing immediate results.
Incredible, they're absolutely loving him in the hot seatI hear your point but I disagree. I think for the last week there has been intense scrutiny for this club. I am no fan of Ole but of the board do truly want to back him, then they have to come out and say he has there support. The way i see what has happened, Ole has one gane to prove himself, how on earth can he do that if the entire media, pundits and fanbase has turned.
I do agree that things change week by week but in football it is common to have the backing one week, and then be sacked a few later. The indecisiveness of the board is killing the club though, we being made a mockery of in the real world.
Why not? Manchester United doing well on the pitch is going to add even more commercial success than it is now. What they are doing is slowing cutting open the goose that lays golden eggs.
And that's one of the most ridiculed thing in Football which has led to the idea that when a club gives you public support you are a dead man walking. Your point is essentially that you want the club to purposely fool the fanbase for no obvious reason.
I don't think SAF still being here helps much. His words still carry weight and apparently he is also of the opinion that OGS should continue.
I would just like to say, thank you Klopp for taking mercy on us, and not completely wrecking us. Ole should send a thank you card, seriously!
Barca are actually very trigger happy when it comes to managers. They've only waited Koeman so long because of their financial difficulties, they would have sacked him ages ago if it was prime Barca. Hell, even with managers that deliver amazing results they have no problem sacking. Sometimes that is detrimental, but often times it helps them.
Same with Abramovich. He's a football fan first. If he sees a manager is not good enough, he shows him the door. Sometimes that backfires. I think he fecked up with Ancelotti, personally. But often times that ruthless behavior is very efficient at getting results. In comparison with us, we seem to always wallow, wait and wonder what has gone wrong instead of acting steadfast. Moyes should have been sacked way earlier. They, surprisingly sacked LVG on time, but then blundered it with Mourinho when he was having a mare. And Ole is the shiniest example of their incompetency. Gave him a 3 years contract before the season even ended, we ended up in the same situation Mourinho left us. Then gave him 3 years despite him being utterly out of his depth and finally gave him another 3 years old contract. Now we're wondering what to do. This is what happens when you have incompetent businessmen running a football club.
Barcelona have always been trigger happy and my point is that Koeman sacking isn't an example of quickness or decisiveness, it's the complete opposite there are reasons for it but it doesn't change the fact that it's not remotely comparable to United whether we are talking about the months that it took or where both clubs are in October 2021 and where they hope to be in June 2022.
And as I said before we are definitely not normal in the way we operate and expect every manager to be the new SAF.
It’s not only the board. Look at posts after we’ve lost to Sevilla, Villareal or even Leicester in cups recently & posters are falling over themselves to call them insignificant losses. We wasted some prime opportunities recently with no one really being held accountable.
Because the board is afraid the likes of PSG and Barcelona are going to poach him.
Do we actually have any proof that the board have ever “written off” a season?
I wondered that. We do have plenty of proof that fans "write off " seasons long before they are over though. See any number of comments in Ole out threads over the past few years where people declare that we would never make top 4, before we went ahead and made top 4 anyway. I wonder if these people have any awareness before complaining about the board writing off the season. Perhaps the reason Ole is still in the job is precisely because the board haven't written off the season prematurely, unlike many supporters. It's possible that all these people crying wolf every single year after a bad run is the very reason that the board pay no attention to their opinions, even when they might finally be correct.
IMHO. The real problem is that the board know literally nothing about football. They have been duped into believing that Ole was a great long-term fit for the club (and a model for future appointments) by a combination of Fergie and ex-players talking up 'The United Way', and a realisation that a 'nice-guy' ex-legend is a great barrier between themselves and fan criticism. On the back of this they have structured the club around having Solskjaer as manager, bringing in an inexperienced ex-player as Technical Director (Fletcher) and an uninspiring internal promotion as Football Director (Murtough). They have wagered everything on Ole being a success, in spite of it being pretty obvious to the majority of football fans around the globe by the end of his first season (and tbh even before his appointment) that Ole wasn't of the calibre required to take United back to the pinnacle of the game. They even gave him a bumper new contract in the summer, when there was literally no need to - I mean, were they worried that Madrid were going to sneak in and poach him?
Now things have gone south so quickly they are absolutely screwed - hence the dilly dallying around Solksjaer's position, and the '3 games to keep his job' situation, which is really just them praying that he does just enough in those 3 games for the criticism to die down, so we can get back to the only thing that they really care about - securing a top 4 finish. Laughable.
Now things have gone south so quickly they are absolutely screwed - hence the dilly dallying around Solksjaer's position, and the '3 games to keep his job' situation, which is really just them praying that he does just enough in those 3 games for the criticism to die down, so we can get back to the only thing that they really care about - securing a top 4 finish. Laughable.
If we keep Ole for the foreseeable future yes. Let's see what happens on that front. We sure are acting way too slow though.
The only time the board will write off a season is when top 4 is gone. As long as its possible to qualify for the champions league then the season is still alive.
I think the Mourinho debacle has spooked the higher ups because it was the first time that a manager really exposed them. Now they want a choir boy who will toe the party line and they have that with Ole and won't be sacking him until it turns into an actual disaster, which it won't because the squad is too good to stay in this malaise and not achieve top four.
People say Conte is hard to handle but was SAF that easy to handle when he was complaining about the wage structure that cost him the chance to sign Batistuta, for example? I know he didn't up and leave but he had his run ins with the board but at the end of the day he was so good he was worth keeping. I'd say it's the same with Conte and he could come in and give us a short against Chelsea, Liverpool and City before they break away and form a 'big three'.
Mourinho didn't expose them, he exposed himself when Ole went on an incredible streak with the same players, now maybe they didn't like the way he acted but I don't think that it has much to do with it. I think that there are two issues with sacking Ole and hiring Conte, sacking Ole and his staff would be expensive because they just got an extension and logically they will need to convince themselves that it's the right move. Regarding Conte, I think that we are at fault, the fans, the club clearly monitors social media and I don't think that it's a coincidence that there are talks about a progressive manager and even mentions of ten Hag, it's a populist move while Conte is the pragmatic move which is not really popular.
The fans are saintly. What more can you expect? We put zero pressure on managers and players no matter how pathetic the performances and results.
Yeah and it comes from some ancient pride of supporters and club officials to "back the manager" as if this is Fergie in his early years. Meanwhile we had to watch that joke of a Chelsea team last year sack their club legend and go on to win the fecking UCL with Tuchel.
It's like watching a tree fall and saying you won't move out of the way until you can confirm it's definitely going to crush you. At which point you're already dead.
I think the ship has sailed for a progressive manager this season unless we pay off Ajax which isn't feasible if it comes after paying off a three year contract for the manager and his staff. Conte is the most practical move for now and in the medium term, say until 2023.
Whilst we might like a progressive manager to come in we have to accept things for what they are currently. Ole is not sustainable and a season out of the CL with Leicester and Newcastle potentially emerging as a contender could be disastrous. If we miss top 4 and Newcastle bring in a decent DOF then proceed to spend £300m we could be in for a tough few seasons in the wilderness with every season regressive undercutting our ability to spend our way out of trouble.
Remember, once you fall out of the top 4 you need someone to also drop out for you to rise because teams in this league can be relentless. Chelsea look ominous, Liverpool have their groove back along with the benefit of a world class manager whilst City have a bottomless pit of money and arguably one of greatest ever managers to grace the game. If Newcastle get their act together quickly we could be locked out of the CL for the foreseeable future so its imperative that we approach the next summer and the following season from a position of strength because financially its us and Liverpool that will always be at risk of dropping out. In short we need to arrest the slide.
I fully agree with that and I like 2023 because I have high hopes for the likes of Rose, Marsch and maybe Seoane. We also have a team that is split between very young players that hopefully will be superstars such as Sancho, Greenwood, Mejbri, even Rashford and older players like Maguire, Varane, Ronaldo and a bridge player like Fernandes. In my opinion we are in a great position to get someone like Conte today and if needed move to the progressive managers in 2023 with a core of young players that hopefully tasted success under Conte and can support a young progressive manager that most likely will need to get used to elite football and star players.
Spot on.
Sadly, under Ole, I can't see us improving enough. We are already out of the EFL Cup and are riding our luck in the Champions League. Realistically we only have the FA Cup to play for.
On the positive side we have a very strong squad (bar the obvious) and are only 9 games into the season. Not doing something now is crazy.
On the positive side we have a very strong squad (bar the obvious) and are only 9 games into the season. Not doing something now is crazy.
Changing a manager mid season doesn't guarantee success but there's must be standards and consecuences for someone underachieving. It also depends in how good the current team actually is.
United hasn't won a league since SAF retired and hasn't won anything since Mourinho, so the standards have been degrading little by little but steadily speciallyu under Ole. So while it doesn't guarantee anything to sack him and hire a new manager I do think it sends the wrong message to allow a manager out of his depth to keep his job. Is pure mediocrity and it permeates to the players, if they're competitive they're gonna be angry and lose respect for the manager or would just become lazy if the standards are that low.
United hasn't won a league since SAF retired and hasn't won anything since Mourinho, so the standards have been degrading little by little but steadily speciallyu under Ole. So while it doesn't guarantee anything to sack him and hire a new manager I do think it sends the wrong message to allow a manager out of his depth to keep his job. Is pure mediocrity and it permeates to the players, if they're competitive they're gonna be angry and lose respect for the manager or would just become lazy if the standards are that low.