Still unemployed after 3 years
The Overlap - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
- Thread starter UnitedSofa
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Still obsessed 3 years later.
Imagine being rich enough that you don't need to work
When was Zidane last employed?
Did Fergie push for the signing or did he just help once the club decided to do it?
One way or the other, this isn't on him.
No, not still. He's been working for UEFA.
Yeah ut the quote wasn't "how do we compete with City and Liverpool." That wasn't happening anyway. It was "How do we defend." This idea that if one player runs a bit less the whole team can't compete is just silly in my opinion.
He didn't do much off the ball at Madrid. They seemed to cope OK.
Cavani was constantly injured that season. Mason played on the right. Was never ready for the central role nor was he upto much off the ball himself. Even now isn't his off ball distance covered rock bottom? It was in Spain anyway.
As above, Cavani and Martial were both plenty injured that season. Ronaldo scored 18 league goals that season. You can't call that guy a passenger. The only guy putting the ball in the net.
Well here's the thing. He wasn't actually all that lazy off the ball. I'd go as far as saying he worked harder off the ball during his second stint than he did his first.
The comical thing is people or in fact McKenna/Ole blaming Ronaldo for our inability to defend as a team.
The alternative was an injury prone Martial. Who absolutely nobody would call a pressing monster. If somebody could find the stats I'd bet there's almost nothing between the two in terms of off the ball work.
It also ignores that we couldn't defend as a team before or after Ronaldo.
Edit: found the stats. Martial the season before covered less ground per game and sprinted less per game than Ronaldo did the following season.
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If Ronaldo went to city, there is no chance he would have been a sub. He would have been first choice striker considering City didn’t even have a proper striker at the time after missing out on Kane.
By choice though.
Considering how he performed, he would not have remained first choice for very long I think.
Cavani was supposedly not really that much injured his last season, sure he wasn't 100% dependable the season before either, but a lot of his unavailability was down to him ruling himself out of playing because he didn't like having to be second fiddle after we had begged him to extend his contract and stay instead of going to play nearer his family as he wanted to in the spring of 2021. We convinced him to stay because he was gonna be the main man we depended on as a transitional figure before a new main striker the next summer, but then Ronaldo came in just as the window closed with no time for him to arrange a different deal, had to give up the number 7 jersey and be the backup striker instead. It was said he didn't want to be in the squad if he wasn't promised a certain amount of minutes in a game.
I meant he would've been out of the starting XI pretty quickly, because Pep wouldn't have tolerated his laziness and he didn't bring nearly enough offensively to justify letting him do whatever he wants either. It would've been Foden or someone else preferred in the false 9
I think he was injured plenty as he was the season before. When you say not 100% reliable, we got 8 or 9 full league games out of him in 20/21. Martial scored 7 goals in total 20/21. He also covered less ground and sprinted less than Ronaldo did for us the following year.
Cavani incredibly unprofessional to spit his dummy out because we signed another No.9. He was nowhere near reliable enough to say we shouldn't be looking to replace him. Whilst still getting paid. He dodged a lot of criticism for that somehow.
He scored 24 goals in a crap team. Running as much as Haaland currently does.
Playing for City he'd have scored another 10? Seems reasonable.
We shouldn't have signed him, we should have bought a 9 who could serve us for years. But that wasn't happening. That 21/22 season without Ronaldo would have been even worse.
I mean, you also didn't say " how do we defend without conceding many goals", but I assumed that's what you meant from the context.
Same way, for the Ronaldo signing, the context is that we finished 2nd the previous year. What did you think the aim should have been for the next season? Top-6?
But he wanted to be replaced. He wanted to leave. But the club convinced him to extend and stay instead, with certain promises of what sort of role he would have if he stayed.
But then that all changed when Ronaldo decided he needed to leave Juve.
And in 20/21 for the prem he was in the starting eleven 13 times, on from the bench another 13 times. He was unavailable for 9 games after joining. First due to corona, 6 as injured, 1 for suspension and last game of the season he wasn't in the squad.
Yes he missed out on the first EL games. Out of the 55 games he could play he missed 17. 2 from covid, 3 from suspension, 1 not selected. So he was injured 11-12 games in total.
We all knew he wasnt gonna play 90mins every game when he joined, but he still played 2182 minutes compared to just 912 the season after when Ronaldo joined.
Anyway, this thread is about Solskjær, but Cavani gets talked about by too many like he was the one that did us wrong. We should have let him go when he wanted, or not break the promises we made him.
Why do YOU think our team suddenly became shit when Ronaldo joined then? Tactical issues? Dressing room issues?
I didn’t say it, McKenna did. He was panicked because he thought the whole team couldn't defend with Ronaldo up front. But presumably thought we could with Martial up top. Which is very strange.
Ronaldo averaged 9.3km per game in his first season. 15 sprints per game. That's enough from a CF in terms of off the ball work.
If a coach can't make that work something is badly wrong.
For reference, the season before, Martial rarely got above 9km per game and sprinted less per game. Whilst scoring a total of 7 goals and being frequently injured. Yet even with hindsight plenty still think he was a better alternative. I think he's only scored less than 10 goals since the 21/22 season.
Haaland walks more than any other player in the league. I know in Europe he averages less than 9km per game. Salah I think averages about 9.5km per game.
For Ole and some fans it's too easy to blame Ronaldo and running.
When McKenna came into Ole's office saying "how can we defend with Ronaldo" the answer should have been "find me players who can control and pass a ball."
OK using the same logic, why did it stay shit after Ronaldo left?
In large part due to Ten Hag's tactics.
My question was not a gotcha. I'm not saying you are wrong, because I'm yet to really figure out what went wrong that season. What do you think?
I don't speak the language to listen to the podcast and therefore i can't be sure about the context of the quote but, in general, i tend to agree with you.
Firstly, it's not even a coaches' thing. At most clubs, the main goalscorer is often left off the hook (somewhat, at least) when it comes to defensive duties. Neither Bayern Munich nor Barcelona, for example, are asking Kane and Lewandowski to track back and press like mad dogs. It has always been a fair tradeoff: The defensive system "allows" them to save their energy for runs in the final third and, in return, the team gets prolificacy & consistency from its goalscorers. It has always been this way. Even at City, who are a machine, Pep has made concessions, both on & off the ball, to Haaland. If you watch Liverpool, admittedly one of the hardest working sides on the pitch, you'll notice that Salah (especially since he hit 30) is given the privilege of self-regulating his condition throughout the game.
Ronaldo, being the greatest goalscorer ever, had always enjoyed the same treatment under all his managers, from Ferguson and Mourinho to Ancelotti and Zidane. There were two main issues with his return to OT, and neither had to do with his defending. The first one was that, at the tender age of 36, he wasn't the difference maker he once was any more. "Getting the best out of him" required so much effort and accommodating that he wasn't worth the fuss any more. There were endless discussions in Italy, among Juventus fans, about how building the first team around his needs was gradually making them a worse side than they were before signing him. And they were the top dogs in the Serie A back then. Not like United, who were playing catch-up for years. Perhaps, our scouts should have paid more attention to actual games instead of just looking at his stats on the internet.
The main reason his defending is mentioned so much on here as a problem is because of the United side he joined in 2021. The "how do we defend" quote frankly sounds comical coming from the staff that fully indulged Rashford and Martial's blasé attitude toward their own defensive contributions, while Greenwood was also looking miffed whenever he was being asked to do it as the "new kid". As the midfield battle was growing fiercer each season and managers were turning to full-backs as creative outlets, we were wasting time playing with two off-the-ball workhorses in the centre of the park and two defensive full-backs basically to make up for an entire frontline not giving a toss off the ball. And some of these behaviours are still prevalent at the club.
But the biggest problem was that McKenna was asking the wrong question. It's not "how are we going to defend" as much as it was "how are we going to attack" without everything unravelling. A poacher with two wide forwards. None of them willing to create spaces for others, all of them waiting from their teammates to create the openings for them to finish. Three catch and shoot attackers, with a single play-maker trying to find them. Martial wasn't anything special but his single move, when deployed as a #9, to drift into the left half-space actually created one of the very few attacking patterns we had against set defences. Similar with Cavani's off the ball movement. Football isn't played on a sheet of paper, and goals can't be simply added and subtracted. If that was the case, we wouldn't need managers. It shouldn't really come as a surprise that everyone else's numbers plummeted for Ronaldo to get his 24 goals.
Neither were United able to build around Ronaldo nor was Ronaldo able any more to be the difference maker he once was.
I think you can't put a teams performance down to one variable when there were also lots of other variables happening at the same time.
It started going wrong the second half of the season before he returned. From Jan 20/21 we were trending downwards. Rashford and Bruno's goals dried up(especially in the league) from Jan onwards culminating with that awful Europa final performance. It was getting worse and worse the entire second half of that season. Remember Martial only scored 7 that year.
The signs were there this team was creaking. That has been wiped from most memories that badly want to believe Ronaldo was the cause.
Come 21/22 the poor form just continued. Rashford and Bruno continued as they'd left off the season before, struggling for goals.
Cavani is injured/on strike. Greenwood wasn't firing as he didn't for a spell the season before then obviously we lost him for the second half of the season.
Shaw only made 27 appearances. He made 47 the season before.
Then you get that horrible snowball effect that happens at United when it's going wrong. Tends to just get worse and worse.
Could go on but ultimately what's really crazy is thinking, even with hindsight, that Martial was a better option at the time. He ran less, sprinted less, scored less, played less.
He’s not though, he’s just not managing
Good post that and agree with a lot of it. The mix was wrong as it is now. The coaches were indeed looking at it wrong.
I'd agree to some extent the goals of other reduce when you have a major goalscorer up top. That's somewhat natural and not always a bad thing.
But actually Rashford's and Bruno's goals were drying up the season before. From Jan of the 20/21 season they barely scored in the league from open play. And as we've seen since, with Ronaldo gone, they've struggled for goals. Rashford's a 1 in 7 scorer now. I'm a Bruno fan but his finishing has dropped off so much regardless of who's on the pitch with him. Martial only scored 7 the season before Ronaldo and has barely scored since. His career basically finished after 19/20. Greenwood obviously was finished for us halfway through Ronaldo's first season.
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I highly doubt it would have been.
He would not have been dropped. United did not sign Ronaldo because they thought he was the best striker available, we signed him to stop him going to City. The commercial clout that man has is obscene, people don't really realise what signing him would have done for them to legitimise themselves i.e. to bring in more actual sponsors and not just UAE or UAE affiliated brands. Even as an old wreck of a player he'd have won things there and their brand would have ben plastered across the world, piggybacking on his.
All the factors you mentioned were valid. But I think Cavani/Martial just suited our wide forwards Rashford and Greenwood better. Also didnt Pogba recently say that last season he didnt really wanna play? Missing his creativity also was a factor.
Agreed, those 18 premier league goals at 37 were nothing.
Weigy doing his 18 doggies a game with 1 goal a season helped us a lot more.
We shouldn’t have signed him but he would have scored loads of goals at city. Easily.
Pep was a god at City already by that point. Do you think they wouldn't have binned Ronaldo if Pep told them he didn't want him anymore? Not to mention it likely wouldn't have been Pep vs City in this case anyways. City are a well-run club whose board is focused on winning things. They won't put someone on the pitch, especially week in week out, that's a net negative for them. They would've been in agreement with Pep that getting Ronaldo was a monumental mistake and the drama around the situation would've been hilarious.
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Why would Pep not use him - he currently plays Haaland who is basically an elite poacher, it's not like Ronaldo would be competing with a player doing shit loads of build up/pressing etc. Pep really wanted Kane because of what he brings to the build up, I don't think the purist in him really likes Haaland but he cant ignore his output.
Ronaldo to City would have been a commercial move for a couple of years and they'd have milked his brand, he'd have won some stuff and they'd have quelled any negative media by offering him some hotel development in the UAE off the books to avoid the Piers Morgan fiasco even if they did start rotating him.
No he stepped in when the club asked him for help. The decision to go for Ronaldo was made by Woodward and Ole. Ole was on record saying how much he wanted Ronaldo and thought he was the missing piece we needed.
I don't know why some fans have it in their heads that Fergie was pulling the strings behind the scenes when Ole was manager. He had a rocky relationship with Woodward and couldn't stand John Murtough. He didn't have much power at the club, that's why when Richard Arnold took over as chief executive he made it a point to bring Fergie back into the fold.
Team didn't have to become shit. It was already there. Way too many people, fans and fans of other clubs only looked at results which created a wrong impression. Even in that "good" season, the underlying numbers weren't good. Granted - at the end, the only thing that matters is the number of points but if used right, you can use underlying numbers to maximize yoru output. Our rivals started doing that long time ago. We haven't. Not even by now...
Well said.
Ronaldo was going to continue playing until he got those 1000 goals, but if anything would have broken even the greatest of spirits it would have been getting dropped for Wout Weghorst. I dont see how Ronaldo would have continued after that, the poor cnut.
He wasn't. Weghorst was brought in after Ronaldo left.
I never said he was.
Oh, hypothetically you mean. Sorry, that flew past me.
I doubt it. He scored 24 goals for us while unraveling the squad, creating splits and being so demanding that our attacking play basically became spam the ball to Ronaldo in the box at any given opportunity.
He undermined the captain, the coaching team and the manager. Just brilliant.
We needed a proper CF willing integrate into the squad and work for the team, Cavani did that the season before, and it's no coincidence that when fit and firing we looked a proper team with Cavani up front. We CR7 upfront never looked like a good side.
CR7 wanted it to be all about him, and team and squad collapsed as some tried to feed him others hated him.
You doubt he'd have scored more in a very good City team as opposed to a massively struggling United team?
Ole's new Island Lair is coming together, why would he want another job while he is plotting world domination.
