That's fine, doesn't matter how we win just as long as we do that, it's about being effective now and that simply means scoring more than the opposition.
United under LvG: verdict so far!
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That's fine, doesn't matter how we win just as long as we do that, it's about being effective now and that simply means scoring more than the opposition.
We've been riding our luck a whole lot and De Gea's brilliance for a long time now. Just wondering if the continuance of this style of play bodes ill for us in the long run. If you ask me I'd rather throw our position to show that we can play better and more progressively.
I'm sure a lot of supporters will agree with that sentiment. But I'm also sure that Woody and the owners prefer us getting to 4th this season playing ugly. Let's see how the next ten games go
That's what worries me though. Even without the burden of having to play more games against arguably tougher or at least different opponents in the CL, we've made things difficult for ourselves by mucking around with selection and bizarre tactics. If we can't get things right now, getting ourselves into Europe only to be murdered by better teams, and there will be better teams than Burnley and Newcastle who have opened us up easily enough, we'll be back to square one in no time. Better to lay the foundations now than bung rush back into fourth for the sake of it.
The thing is that faster more agressive football will not mean worse results for us. Nobody's against of possession-based football per se, the main concern is inability to do much with this pissession. We are still vulnerable against counter-attacks, which shows that we are far from being fluid in collective defending; we still pretty much rely on individual brilliance upfront, which is a hint at our problems with attacking as a unit. Its difficult to describe how we play. You can describe how Bayern play, how Atletico play, PSG, Bayer, Southampton, Liverpool etc. However, being into the last ten games of the season, it is still pretty much unclear to figure out how exactly the team is responding to LvG's instructions. For me our main contributor to our current league position is DDG, which is not a very good sign.
I agree with you especially the part about individual brilliance. I saw alot of that at the World Cup with the Netherlands and it worried me quite a bit. It hasn't help that we've decided to play everyone out of position, which makes absolutely zero sense.
Just reading in the Guardian now, Martinez under pressure and could lose his job if results don't pick up.
This time last season people were seriously arguing we should have brought him, not Moyes, to United.
We need to be very careful when considering managers who have had short periods of success or playing pretty football. Doing it for a season doesn't prove anything.
This time last season people were seriously arguing we should have brought him, not Moyes, to United.
We need to be very careful when considering managers who have had short periods of success or playing pretty football. Doing it for a season doesn't prove anything.
Does that also mean a manager could have a poor first season only then to show his skill in the second? And so we should be careful about sacking managers so soon, especially when they have a good track record?
He has said 'difficult' or 'very difficult' to almost every team this season. And he is right, winning matches in the premier league is difficult but also the best managers will do that consistently because they conquer the challenge.
If anything it boosts his ego because he did something 'very difficult'.
Merson saying LVG disrespected the league.
He's struggling to adapt as it is, blatantly making stuff up isn't needed.
If anything he's given our rivals too much respect at times
He's struggling to adapt as it is, blatantly making stuff up isn't needed.
If anything he's given our rivals too much respect at times
he knows his club is on the ropes. if he takes the same approach he did in the second half v le arse he will be doing a very difficult post match interview.
That wouldn't be the example I'd use to make that point. The one I'd reach for is SAF's early years. But yes, I would be careful of that.
How is he disrespecting it?
The Martinez hype was crazy. Very overrated as a manager IMO.
we hired moyes who played shi7 football for years instead. everton did nothing to improve the team as far as buying players not already there on loan.
Merson is an idiot, I can't believe he has a job with the stuff he comes out with.
Yep. It was infuriating reading all the nonsense about how he'd outdone Moyes's whole history at Everton in his first season.
Who thinks he's great now? Doing an appalling job this year
I think there are many examples, SAF needed a number of years, in the modern game I think one season to lay that manager's foundations is reasonable. A recent example is Rodgers' first season where he finished seventh but he put in very good foundations and from that he launched a title challenge the following season.
The point essentially was it's difficult to judge a manager after one season, success or failure. In the case of Louis van Gaal it appears likely he will be better next season and if the team can have a good window then they should elevate themselves to a title race.
"And my players are doing their utmost"
It seems there is lots of rumours going around that we will spend £150million again in the summer. Ffs, I could get this team back in the Champions League if I had £300million to spend.
Tomorrow is literally the first of many invisible cup finals, he has to show in those games that he's capable of turning this squad into something better and different for next season.
Tomorrow is literally the first of many invisible cup finals, he has to show in those games that he's capable of turning this squad into something better and different for next season.
I (and am sure there are so many fans out there) am sick and tired of hearing these kind of spending prospect. Like you said you and some Joe Blow can make a team top four with that amount of money to spend! People keep talking about how Fergie had left a team without signing big names for years etc... It is the manager who can make use of what they have and who they have and get them to play to their strengths and play as an attacking team which also has the required passion and motivation to play to win for the club. That's what Fergie and United has always been about.
United is not a spending club regardless. People need to get a grip.
I'm not sure whether this money is desperation or ambition either(Maybe both). I mean why didn't Ferguson get access to all these funds, It's not like Fergie didn't like a big transfer or two either, and I keep wondering how good we could have been if he was the one spending all this cash.
Also If LVG can't even get the best out of the last £150million batch of players, why on earth should he get to spend that again if he doesn't achieve a top 4 finish?
Ferguson did well on a lower net spend after the Glazers took over however by that point the man was the most experienced manager in the league, he had mastered winning that competition, he knew exactly what needed to be done and he did it and furthermore he had a lot of experience in his dressing room, Evra, Ferdinand, Vidic, Scholes, Giggs and more, he had players who had mastered winning the premier league!
Had Mourinho, Ancelotti or Guardiola, a top manager like that the drive to stay at one club and so that level of experience in a league, I think they also could operate after 20 years on a lower net spend than they had previously.
As for Ferguson let's not pretend we weren't amongst the biggest spenders in the premier league prior to the glazers and even after he lost the title to City on goal difference he spent £63m in total and £51m net.
The board seem to want a dominant club both domestically and in europe, they probably feel this will help them maximise profit. They think the best way to go about that is to build a team with an identity independent of the manager which can be easily continued after the manager leaves even without a top top manager, both Bayern and Barcelona are examples of how the manager only needs to continue what is already in place.
Your approach is fine but it is reliant on finding and attracting that excellent manager that has the ability to make the most of what he has at his disposal but without that excellent manager we might not be challenging domestically nevermind in Europe.
When Louis van Gaal leaves, if he does build the foundation he has been tasked with building there are quite a number of managers who play a similar style of football that could come in, continue his work and we will be very successful.
The board have made their decision and I'm happy supporting them in that instead of clinging to the past. If you don't change with change you'll be left behind, I think the board have made a sensible decision.
Yep, agreed.
We will spend big though because there isn't any other alternative, if we were to appoint a new manager he is going to want new players, LVG clearly wants a number of new players so one way or another there will be another huge investment. Since SAF the club has been run so badly in terms or recruiting managers and signing players that despite spending a fortune the squad is a mess. We have spent over 200m and still not addressed problems that existed when SAF was in charge, all our other big rivals are going to invest and improve so only way forward is to bring in new players.
LVG isn't as anywhere near as good as SAF, Moyes was clueless and top managers who are available are virtually non existent so big spending to try and get back to the top quickly to protect the owners investment, get champions league revenue and keep signing sponsorship deals is going to continue.
The game has changed from when Ferguson took over, the bigger clubs are so much wealthier than the rest that you could put a gimp like me in charge and United would probably be in the top half of the table. The Rodgers comparison is much prescient given that it's much more contemporary and he took over a club in a similar position (albeit with not the same amount of money to spend). Liverpool were really poor for much of that season but improved massively as it went on, they were arguably the form side over the last 3 or 4 months playing exciting football and successfully immediately integrated a couple of young signings in Sturridge and Coutinho.
Under Van Gaal there's no such sign of improvement or that he's putting foundations in place. The football has been awful to watch, he's playing what people called Moyesball despite Moyes pretty much never doing so, the results have slightly dropped off since the turn of the year, the players brought in have largely struggled and it needs to change quickly otherwise we're not going to go into the summer and next season with anything like the positivity or momentum that Rodgers and Liverpool had built up.
By the same token, your view would have applied to Moyes from last season. Had he stayed, this season he might have improved from 7th to 6th, 5th or even 4th who knows without a tin cup for example. LvG with his reputation, track records (albeit not so updated and he's in a new kind of football league) and so called footballing winning philosophy etc... the fist year for a club like United (plus what money he spent so far), achieving 4th at the minimum, without a trophy would have been below the basic requirement already. It is disappointing he couldn't even help us win a domestic cup or progress a bit further (for pride if not anything else)
Otherwise why on haven't we just held on to Moyes who might still have achieved the same (should LvG comes away empty handed this season failing to get top 4). The question is, how long are we going to give LvG, without giving him bottomless pocket to dig into? Like someone said, with the kind of transfer funds people are speculating, anyone who has some football coaching experience would be able to achieve something, why bother with LvG!
We still hope in the next 10 games our manager would take it seriously making sure we play every game like a cup final. And to some, that would have already been a success. I am still disappointed but that's me. There is no debate how the next 10 games should be played. Losing out top 4 is just too devastating.
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Although I don't quite agree spending big is necessarily the answer (on the contrary, spending big without direction will do a disservice to how existing players react and play etc). But for the sake of argument let say we do need to spend big. The critical question is who is making decision to spend. Are we going to trust LvG to spend big for next season, if, God forbid, we fail to achieve top 4? New manager will want new big players yes, but if that manager is the right fit, the prospect of improving might be higher. If after this season, LvG still needs big spending to improve his team, this season would have been looked like a total write off, don't you think? A good/great manager do not do that. They must make use of who they have (with some new signings and use the academy as well for next season), instead of keep replacing players.
It has to be done with a plan and a direction which has been lacking but this team isn't going to improve to the level of winning titles by using what we have and promoting players from the academy, the talent just isn't there and the wrong players have been signed. This season is effectively a write off, the manger came in too late and didn't know anything about the squad and a last minute panic was never going to resolve that. We couldn't afford to wait for LVG and as soon as we did we were in trouble just as soon as we appointed moyes we were in trouble because he wasn't competent.
You speak about can LVG be trusted which is a fair point but who can be trusted to appoint a replacement, the people running the club are clueless based on the last two appointments, we 're pretty much rudderless at the very top of the club. It's a gamble either way but I think it's the lesser of two evils to go with LVG for another season whether we make top four or not, as long as we recruit in the right position and look for players on the way up rather than being sucked in by big names or players on the way down LVg should hate enough about him to take us forward.
With respect, you are wrong about "the talent isn't there part" and then "the wrong players being signed" part goes to show LvG is not the right man for the job (when he can't get the best out of what he has not to mention to improve what talent he already has!). Make no mistake he's nowhere near SAF but at the minimum taking us to top four with the existing talents is NEVER TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR. Lesser team with lesser talents are trailing us or even above us at some point (Ronald Koeman's team for example, and then LvG was talking about being afraid of Pochettino's Spurs)
If he's to be trusted with some bottomless pocket, where will it end? Where do we go from there? Title chasing or just improving by getting top 4? There's still no guarantee we can even get to final of an FA Cup campaign. As we saw already LvG is trying to get his team to slowly slowly gel without much big leap forward. Talking about throwing good money after bad. Not on. Careful signings is better than just spending for sake of spending
I think you are wrong yourself, we have the 4-5th best roster in the league and we are showing that.
I'm not wrong at all the talent genuinely isn't there and most people can see that, whoever we appoint as a replacement would see that straight away. Also our academy isn't a producing the kind of talent we need so players have to be brought in. Bringing in the wrong players goes back to moyes and even SAF, that was never going to be solved in one late panic, important players are past their best, too many injury prone players, squad lacks balance and is too one dimensional and one paced. Our squad is dramatically over rated by too many of our own fans, the players really aren't that good.
You can't appoint someone who has no knowledge of the squad and is at the world cup and expect him to take a team that finished seventh right back to the top, a top four challenge was what to expect as is so far what he has produced.
This team needs 5 new players, they don't have to all cost a fortune but you are looking for £80m as an absolute minimum, they just have to be the right players. A new manger will guarantee nothing other than a clueless heading and more time spent assessing, maybe they get lucky and get the right way but I wouldn't bet on it.
Define your definition of talent!! Mark on the following list which one player you define as "no talent" or "lacking". If you have a bunch of famous players without the required manager and coaching staff, they can't and won't work as a team and win games. How many CR7 who can almost a single handedly win games for their team. How many Cantonas? If we still had SAF, we would have been up there challenging for title with this same squad there's no doubt about it. Using this squad for top 4 is not an uphill battle. The essential element is THE manager! and coaching staff. How they deploy tactics, formation, strategy and guvanisation technique. All the time LvG was saying his players were doing their utmost. Really?!!! Some players played like they were afraid of the ball with lack of confidence. Why? Talent-less? Give me a break. It's a team sport
No. Position Player
1 GK David de Gea
2 DF Rafael
3 DF Luke Shaw
4 DF Phil Jones
5 DF Marcos Rojo
6 DF Jonny Evans
7 MF Ángel Di María
8 MF Juan Mata
9 FW Radamel Falcao (on loan from AS Monacountil 30 June 2015)[161]
10 FW Wayne Rooney (captain)
11 MF Adnan Januzaj
12 DF Chris Smalling
13 GK Anders Lindegaard
16 MF Michael Carrick (vice-captain)[162]
17 MF Daley Blind
18 MF Ashley Young
20 FW Robin van Persie
21 MF Ander Herrera
22 MF Nick Powell
25 MF Antonio Valencia
31 MF Marouane Fellaini
32 GK Víctor Valdés
33 DF Paddy McNair
39 DF Tom Thorpe
41 DF Reece James
42 DF Tyler Blackett
44 MF Andreas Pereira
49 FW James Wilson
It's not about being talentless but how many of those players are in the top two or three in their position In the league, how many are in the top five even, how many compliment each other and how many have under performed under three different managers now. LVG hasn't done a great job but he hasn't done a terrible one either.
Who would you appoint to do better next season who isn't going to want to spend a fortune? Who is coming through from the academy to improve the squad? Who at the club is qualified to pick a replacement for LVG?
We have to accept SAF is gone, no doubt we would be better of if he was in charge but he isn't and the only man who pretty much guarantees success now is mourinho a dew aren't getting him.
Disagree, SAF knew this team was done so he went out on a high instead of a low, he could've easily done another couple of seasons.
Still can't stand LVG though, I don't like his general attitude (in interviews or during a game) and I hate his playing style and the way he approaches games, We are probably one of the most boring teams In the league to watch now.
My point wasn't about not accepting SAF is gone. We are asking for top 4 with the current players we have. SAF would have been challenging the title with the current squad. See the difference? Top 4 vs challenging title + remaining in the domestic cup title chase... SEE THE DIFFERENCE??!!! I am asking a lot less from LvG. Can you see the difference?!!!!
Even Giggsy can help us with a top 4 position but you and some on here will disagree. So no need to debate. Thanks
SAF did not know THIS TEAM. Players are signed by LvG, not SAF. SAF had no obligation to do the job of his successor. As far as he is concerned leaving a champion team who had won by a country mile for his successor is good enough. It is up to the new manager tweak, to replace and add players at will with full support of financial support. His job is done and had retired gracefully with nothing to taint his conscience. Stop blaming him!
I dont think you see the difference to be honest, it's irrelevant what SAF would be doing he isn't here and won't be coming back. SAF was the difference and we could employ another ten mangers and still not come close, I really dont see the quality you believe we and you don't even seem to see it yourself other than just the misguided belief a lot of the players are better than they actually are.
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