The Overlap - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

crossy1686 said:
Still the best manager we've had since Fergie. Nice to hear him speak on the things that happened, sounds more clued up than any of the managers we've had.
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I think he probably was purely because he's the closest thing in trying to give those few old lads still in the dressing room at that time, the feeling of what it was under Fergie with the simplicity of stuff. It probably helped that purple patch of adrenaline and then teetered out due to his limited managerial ability in other capacities.
 
Awful manager but top bloke. He is very direct and honest which is refreshing to see in these kind of shows.
This was good episode.
 
Being so close to signing Bellingham and Haaland but not doing it is the most frustrating thing for me. So much of our current state is self-inflicted.

Got to hope Ashworth, Berrada and co know what they're doing and we get it right next time
 
Nickelodeon said:
Met him recently when he visited India last month. Was fortunate enough to shake his hand and sit on the next table while we watched the Villa game in the hotel pub. Seems really earnest and his love for United is also undoubted.

However, in his interactions in India and also on the Overlap, he wasn't asked any tough questions. Particularly regarding the money spent on Maguire, AWB, Sancho. He's sitting there saying that Sancho didn't want to play on the right and also that we chased him for a year and a half. Think Ole wants back in PL or another top job and hence the PR (Bayern links and all) has been in overdrive.
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I swear we are the only top club that still blames coaches for the amount spent on certain players. Which in itself tells you everything that is wrong with this club. Do you hear Poch getting blamed for Caicedo, or Pep getting blamed for Grealish?
There is no structure. Because we are weak, so many things that should not be the responsibility of the manager are, at this club.
 
I do not care if he is a good manager or not.

I am just proud he is such a classy man of a United legend.
 
The Ole/Keane stuff at the beginning over the Leverkusen game was great.

I'd watch a TV series of Roy Keane slagging off teammates for missing half chances.

Don't think it was that bad a miss really!
 
SilentWitness said:
I think he probably was purely because he's the closest thing in trying to give those few old lads still in the dressing room at that time, the feeling of what it was under Fergie with the simplicity of stuff. It probably helped that purple patch of adrenaline and then teetered out due to his limited managerial ability in other capacities.
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Some will say he was the best by virtue of him being Ole, which is fair enough. However, Jose was clearly more successful but happened to be a monumental prick. @RedSky recently had some stats up, and Jose's record here wasn't actually too bad. He would be remembered far more fondly if it weren't for his antics.

To say Ole was 'the best' is incorrect and subjective. He's probably my favourite as he's obviously a legend and he clearly had the clubs best interests at heart. Beyond that, he's an average manager who achieved more than I thought he could. Jose is clearly a better manager but I would take Ole ahead of him, due to Jose being a self-serving cnut. Jose was still the better manager, though.
 
He's a lovely man, a great servant to the club and should have been just a wonderful interim manager after the dreadful interpreter. While limited in talent as a manager I think he is a good judge of character.
 
devilish said:
I was watching Italian TV the day we signed Ronaldo. There was some very reputable Serie A experts there and they were literally ripping us to shreds. The genuinely believed that spending 12m (who was decent money at the time) for an 18 year old boy was madness. Ronaldo was being described as a tall and skinny kid, with good technique but zero football brains who would dribble himself to the corner flag. Few years later those same people were saying how stupid Serie A clubs were not to invest on such talent.

Haaland was a more of a finished product that young Ronaldo was and United in its prime would have signed him irrespective of the money. The only issue with Haaland which might have been a deal breaker was Raiola.
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Not sure i understand your point.

By all means, Ole might be telling the truth and the United higher ups didn't sanction any potential deals, but apart from the "shocking story where United turned down Haaland for feck all", it's all rather irrelevant as Haaland&Co weren't interested. They didn't want a big move after Molde, they had always set out on a path to build him up and then cash in bigtime. His father made close to £30mill on the Manchester City deal alone. Haaland has had a team around him for years and it's always been about the next 10 years rather than instantly going for the top.
 
Honestly I don't remember that Ole miss against Leverkusen.
I do remember that volley from Forlan though. Seemed to spend an eternity in the air before being cleared off the line.
 
Still gutted how it ended under Ole. Finally losing on penalties in the Europa League final, then signing Ronaldo feel like such a pair of sliding doors moments. Would love to see how it would have all worked out had De Gea managed to save just a single penalty, and then hadn't been lured in by the romantic return of Ronaldo.
 
Robbie Boy said:
Some will say he was the best by virtue of him being Ole, which is fair enough. However, Jose was clearly more successful but happened to be a monumental prick. @RedSky recently had some stats up, and Jose's record here wasn't actually too bad. He would be remembered far more fondly if it weren't for his antics.

To say Ole was 'the best' is incorrect and subjective. He's probably my favourite as he's obviously a legend and he clearly had the clubs best interests at heart. Beyond that, he's an average manager who achieved more than I thought he could. Jose is clearly a better manager but I would take Ole ahead of him, due to Jose being a self-serving cnut. Jose was still the better manager, though.
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It's a weird one due to the trophies that Mourinho won but Ole was the perfect appointment after him as the wrong one could have really made a lasting destructive impact even worse than it currently is!
 
Nickelodeon said:
Ten Hag can very well say the same about Antony but doesn't reduce his accountability.
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The Athletic covered something recently where they identified that ETH had asked for a striker the entire window, and right at the end of the window where it was obvious he wasn't going to get one went for Antony. Paying three times as much as they had identified as probably to pay for him a season earlier. ETH has got a lot wrong and should / will go in the summer (and shouldn't have played Antony so much though having paid through the roof for him I can understand why), but the price paid and the accountability factor does have mitigating circumstances.
 
SilentWitness said:
It's a weird one due to the trophies that Mourinho won but Ole was the perfect appointment after him as the wrong one could have really made a lasting destructive impact even worse than it currently is!
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He done an amazing job at galvanising the club after Jose left. His interim spell was fun, but we should have thanked him at the end of it and moved on. All the talk at the time was of a new DoF coming in who would have a hand in choosing the next manager. The Glazers/Woodward struck gold with Ole as they got to appoint him and not bother making any structural changes.
 
LawCharltonBest said:
Being so close to signing Bellingham and Haaland but not doing it is the most frustrating thing for me. So much of our current state is self-inflicted.

Got to hope Ashworth, Berrada and co know what they're doing and we get it right next time
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I don't think the Bellingham one was one that got away , as Ole said did everything to convince him but his mind was set on elsewhere and getting regular first team football straight away. At 17 and then unproven he was never going to get that assurance at any top Premier league club.

But listening to Ole the Haaland one was there early in his career and we turned it down , Ole seems convinced for 20M and it would have been a done deal but the club ignored Ole's recommendation and never considered him.

Ole also seems to suggest we(The club) never put any effort into trying to sign Rice and we should have and maybe could have got him if we really wanted to.
 
Ish said:
Yep, and being advised by Raiola (& his dad)....they mapped out that career path to the tee, using each club as a stepping stone to the next (I'll even include City in that, as he'll probably end up at one of the big 2 in Spain at some point - assuming Barca get their finances sorted etc.).

Also, isn't he on an astronomical salary at City? Not to mention the sign-on fees his dad and Raiola's agency pocketed out of his transfer to City.

Still, would have been interesting to see if Ole could have convinced him. From what I recall, he played under Ole at Molde?
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His father made close to £30mill on the Manchester City deal, considering the amount that Raiolas firm pocketed, it's rather insane really. His father recently moved from Norway to Switzerland, which is obviously linked to financials and the difference in taxes. In terms of his wages, i have no idea, but Haaland increased his net worth with close to £180mill between 22 and 23 and instantly made number 240 on the list of the 400 richest people in Norway. That number isn't going to be very accurate, but it's high enough, and it wouldn't surprise me if the actual number is 2x that.

Either way it's somewhat besides the point, anyone thinking that Haaland was available on the market to be snapped up by any big club after Molde is completely wrong. It's always been about long term planning to put them in a position where they can have clubs outbid themselves for compensation fees, wages, image rights, whatever, where Haaland&Co can dictate terms. The structure of the Dortmund deal should be more than enough really. The notion that we missed out on Haaland for £20mill is bonkers.
 
NotChatGPT said:
His father made close to £30mill on the Manchester City deal, considering the amount that Raiolas firm pocketed, it's rather insane really. His father recently moved from Norway to Switzerland, which is obviously linked to financials and the difference in taxes. In terms of his wages, i have no idea, but Haaland increased his net worth with close to £180mill between 22 and 23 and instantly made number 240 on the list of the 400 richest people in Norway. That number isn't going to be very accurate, but it's high enough, and it wouldn't surprise me if the actual number is 2x that.

Either way it's somewhat besides the point, anyone thinking that Haaland was available on the market to be snapped up by any big club after Molde is completely wrong. It's always been about long term planning to put them in a position where they can have clubs outbid themselves for compensation fees, wages, image rights, whatever, where Haaland&Co can dictate terms. The structure of the Dortmund deal should be more than enough really. The notion that we missed out on Haaland for £20mill is bonkers.
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Yep, even if you did get him from Molde, I can’t see him or his advisers staying at any one club long term - not at that point, as they’d have had to forgo lucrative signing on fees, bonuses, double/triple digit wage increases from moving around etc. I read something on here (but not sure if it was true, but he was on circa £900k per week).

But from the little I do know, it’s all been one carefully planned out career path trying to maximise earnings on top of finding the fastest route to propel him directly to the top at super clubs, competing for honours & the balon d’Or. Ruling out moving to a super club before the right moment - which happened after his performances for Dortmund (& having a release clause inserted in their contract).

Will be interesting him moving away from City. I can only really see Madrid as his next destination but if they sign Mbappe, I’m not sure they need him (albeit Mbappe and Haaland could be complimentary) as it would be next on impossible to handle both egos and/or favor one over the other when it is balon d’Or time. But yeah, it’s football, a lot can happen in a year or 2 and if any club can handle a group of galacticos, it’s Madrid. I just can’t see him being interested in moving to PSG.
 
NotChatGPT said:
The notion that we missed out on Haaland for £20mill is bonkers.
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Ole said when he was at Molde he rang Utd and told them they have to go for this kid , he is going to be phenomenal. He said 20m would have def got him before he moved to Salzburg , no big club was looking at him at the time.

I am not saying the club were negligent or anything , you can't act on every tip you get about an unknown player but looking back it was a missed opportunity.
 
All in all that seemed a bit of a waste. 80mins but none of it was particularly insightful or telling us what we didn’t know already.

Normally these episodes are great but I think there were just too many people at the table, it probably would’ve just been better off with Roy, Nev and Carra asking the questions.

While he’s been better than EtH, he still had the same issue of not being able to take us up that extra level and he pretty much alluded to that himself.
 
Betson said:
Ole said when he was at Molde he rang Utd and told them they have to go for this kid , he is going to be phenomenal. He said 20m would have def got him before he moved to Salzburg , no big club was looking at him at the time.

I am not saying the club were negligent or anything , you can't act on every tip you get about an unknown player but looking back it was a missed opportunity.
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Again, Haaland&co weren't interested in going directly to a top club.
 
I very much doubt that Haaland would ever have wanted to join us given the history with city, leeds and his dad. They hate United.
 
NotChatGPT said:
Again, Haaland&co weren't interested in going directly to a top club.
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For all we know Bellingham would have been signed for United's reserves/youth team, but signed for Dortmund's first team. He went to the bigger team (although not club). Bellingham clearly was interested in going to the highest team he could get.
 
Gabriel Djemba-Bebe said:
Confirmed my suspicions of how things fell apart in those last few months. You could tell at the time that he wanted to transition us from a counter attacking team that finished 3rd and 2nd to a team that dominated games and had more control. It was the right idea but the wrong execution in terms of the players we signed. When you spend big money on Ronaldo, Sancho and Varane in one window and they're not willing to work hard during difficult moments in games, then you know it's the beginning of the end.
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We're probably seeing it again with ten hag as well, had pretty decent first season as a counter attacking outfit and it seems to all go in flames the season after which i surmise he tried to move us to a more possession oriented approach (certainly looked like in those first few games) and has mostly missed the mark on his transfers.

A terrible sign for the squad.
 
crossy1686 said:
Still the best manager we've had since Fergie. Nice to hear him speak on the things that happened, sounds more clued up than any of the managers we've had.
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Cheeky but no. I'd love to see him get another gig somewhere. He deserves another chance in the PL.
 
NotChatGPT said:
Again, Haaland&co weren't interested in going directly to a top club.
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Maybe so , but also maybe Ole who was at the Mode at the time and talking to Haaland etc knows a bit more the real situation than most.
 
Betson said:
Maybe so , but also maybe Ole who was at the Mode at the time and talking to Haaland etc knows a bit more the real situation than most.
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yeah I don't think Ole would have mentioned him to the club if he had any inkling they wouldn't have went.
 
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