United's on-pitch identity

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What type of team are we?

For me, we don't have an identity. Disappointingly, the only constant we have in terms of our style is that we react to our opponents. Call me idealistic, but aren't we big enough to enforce our will on other teams?

And this isn't Moyes' fault - it's a trend that was seen for a few years under Fergie too.

I hear people call us a side that loves wingers, but we've been incompetent in that area for a couple of years now. We're definitely not a side who controls the middle part of the pitch! We don't counter attack anywhere near as effectively as we used to.

Does anyone see any signs of what the new coaching team are trying to achieve in terms of instituting a style?
 
Nah lads - I just genuinely want to know what sort of football team we are. At the moment, we're just a mishmash of meh.
 
We chose to get a manager who had all his greatest assets in longevity rather than short-term success. Then we criticize him for not being better at short-term success than the absolute best in the world at it.

SAF was never near being the best manager for a team that looked for success in a 1-2 year period. Mourinho/Guardiola were always going to beat him in that race and Moyes is of course not at SAF's level in anything. What the SAF/Moyes/Klopp's have on the short-term managers is an absolute knowledge and control of a club. They can instill a philosophy that stretches all the way down to the youth players who later grows up to be first team players. They use this knowledge to make sure the team not only does well in the CL this year, but in 5 years as well. Do you think Mourinho/Guardiola would give a shit about how well a team they managed 5 years ago are doing? Most likely they are just happy they are doing terrible as they already left the club. Look at Chelsea after Mourinho, look at Inter after Mourinho and even look at Barcelona after Pep.

It is like going to the store to buy an apple seed then complaining that it isn't producing the first year.
 
Well one thing we're not anymore is an attacking team, which is a shame cause thats what characterized us, even remember Fergie saying something like we are going to attack we dont know how to sit back and defend or something like that before a Champions league game against a strong team where all we needed was a draw.
 
Annahnomoss said:
We chose to get a manager who had all his greatest assets in longevity rather than short-term success. Then we criticize him for not being better at short-term success than the absolute best in the world at it.

SAF was never near being the best manager for a team that looked for success in a 1-2 year period. Mourinho/Guardiola were always going to beat him in that race and Moyes is of course not at SAF's level in anything. What the SAF/Moyes/Klopp's have on the short-term managers is an absolute knowledge and control of a club. They can instill a philosophy that stretches all the way down to the youth players who later grows up to be first team players. They use this knowledge to make sure the team not only does well in the CL this year, but in 5 years as well. Do you think Mourinho/Guardiola would give a shit about how well a team they managed 5 years ago are doing? Most likely they are just happy they are doing terrible as they already left the club. Look at Chelsea after Mourinho, look at Inter after Mourinho and even look at Barcelona after Pep.

It is like going to the store to buy an apple seed then complaining that it isn't producing the first year.
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I'm so tired of hearing this, why does everybody assume Mourinho for example would be short term success? he has won everything with a load of teams one thing he hasn't done and might have wanted to do would be to match SAF's history/success. And why do we just assume Moyes has all the assets of longevity??
 
Annahnomoss said:
We chose to get a manager who had all his greatest assets in longevity rather than short-term success. Then we criticize him for not being better at short-term success than the absolute best in the world at it.

SAF was never near being the best manager for a team that looked for success in a 1-2 year period. Mourinho/Guardiola were always going to beat him in that race and Moyes is of course not at SAF's level in anything. What the SAF/Moyes/Klopp's have on the short-term managers is an absolute knowledge and control of a club. They can instill a philosophy that stretches all the way down to the youth players who later grows up to be first team players. They use this knowledge to make sure the team not only does well in the CL this year, but in 5 years as well. Do you think Mourinho/Guardiola would give a shit about how well a team they managed 5 years ago are doing? Most likely they are just happy they are doing terrible as they already left the club. Look at Chelsea after Mourinho, look at Inter after Mourinho and even look at Barcelona after Pep.

It is like going to the store to buy an apple seed then complaining that it isn't producing the first year.
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Yep.
 
UnofficialDevil said:
I'm so tired of hearing this, why does everybody assume Mourinho for example would be short term success? he has won everything with a load of teams one thing he hasn't done and might have wanted to do would be to match SAF's history/success. And why do we just assume Moyes has all the assets of longevity??
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Mourinho has a track-record of short term success then dumping the team for a new challenge. Porto, Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid have already taken punts on him being there for a long time and he has left them all.

Also I never said "Moyes has all the assets of longevity", I said that of the skills he does have - his best ones are those that one would relate to longevity.
 
UnofficialDevil said:
I'm so tired of hearing this, why does everybody assume Mourinho for example would be short term success? he has won everything with a load of teams only thing he hasn't done and might have wanted to do would be to match SAF's history/success. And why do we just assume Moyes has all the assets of longevity??
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It was a great post. Your one is mental though. Mourinho would never stick around long enough to attempt to try and match SAF's history or success. Do you really see him staying on at any club for 10 years? You are probably the only person in the world who thinks Mourinho is the person for longevity over Moyes. What about their past clubs? How many clubs has Mourinho managed in the time Moyes has stuck with Everton?
 
Annahnomoss said:
Mourinho has a track-record of short term success then dumping the team for a new challenge. Porto, Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid have already taken punts on him being there for a long time and he has left them all.

Also I never said "Moyes has all the assets of longevity", I said that of the skills he does have - his best ones are those that one would relate to longevity.
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So? like I said Mourinho has done everything else one challenge he might be up to would be to match the greatest manager ever and go down in history, surpass SAF, we just don't know do we. The one thing I would agree with is that Moyes is known to work with tight to zero budgets where as Mourinho is known to spend millions, now that might have balanced our decision.
 
No, we do know. That would not have happened. You reckon Mourinho thought he would stick around for 20+ years and beat his record? He wouldn't have lasted half of that ffs. Literally nothing is there to make you think he would stay on longer at a job than Moyes. Even when he has won everything, the pinnacle at Inter, what did he do?
 
Hectic said:
It was a great post. Your one is mental though. Mourinho would never stick around long enough to attempt to try and match SAF's history or success. Do you really see him staying on at any club for 10 years? You are probably the only person in the world who thinks Mourinho is the person for longevity over Moyes. What about their past clubs? How many clubs has Mourinho managed in the time Moyes has stuck with Everton?
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Did Moyes have offers from other clubs better than Everton that he turned down? So he was stuck at Everton for years so what? Mourinho was moving up a step on every move and left Madrid to return to the best league in the world.
 
Hectic said:
No, we do know. That would not have happened. You reckon Mourinho thought he would stick around for 20+ years and beat his record? He wouldn't have lasted half of that ffs. Literally nothing is there to make you think he would stay on longer at a job than Moyes. Even when he has won everything, the pinnacle at Inter, what did he do?
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So moving from Inter to Madrid wasnt a step up in his career? a tougher challenge?
 
UnofficialDevil said:
The one thing I would agree with is that Moyes is known to work with tight to zero budgets where as Mourinho is known to spend millions, now that might have balanced our decision.
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So in the 11 years Moyes has managed Everton and in that same period Mourinho has managed 6 different clubs, they concluded that Moyes is better because he's good with a string budget (something we don't have), not longevity, (something we desperately wanted).
 
Obviously Moyes was picked over Mourinho because of his longevity and mindset, not because he could run Everton on a budget that would never apply to United. Mourinho has shown throughout his footballing career that he isn't a long-term manager, the longest spell he had at a club was well under half of Moyes. It's no slight against him, he obviously wants different things, but that's clearly a major factor in us not going for him or someone like him, because they aren't stable, long-term options.
 
Hectic said:
So from the fact that in the 11 years Moyes has managed Everton and in that same period Mourinho has managed 6 different clubs, they concluded that Moyes is better because he's good with a string budget (something we don't have), not longevity, (something we desperately wanted),
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You could ask your self why Moyes was at Everton for 11 years, why did better clubs not go for him? Or is it only we that like long term success? surely you dont believe that? Like I said Mourinho was moving up on every move and there is nothing wrong with that, United would have been the ultimate challenge for Mourinho. And yes I do believe that Mourinho's transfer's budget might have affected our decision, if he was going to ask for millions in his wages and loads for transfers then yes.
 
Annahnomoss said:
Look at Chelsea after Mourinho, look at Inter after Mourinho and even look at Barcelona after Pep.

It is like going to the store to buy an apple seed then complaining that it isn't producing the first year.
Click to expand...

Didn't they won the league with 100 point last season despite their manager had cancer and was out of job for almost half of season?

Annahnomoss said:
Mourinho has a track-record of short term success then dumping the team for a new challenge. Porto, Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid have already taken punts on him being there for a long time and he has left them all.
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To be fair, people have gone a bit overboard about Mourinho liking to change clubs. He was sacked from Chelsea and Madrid. Every manager would have left Porto after Chelsea's offers (it isn't like SAF stayed at Aberdeen forever, right) so the only example when he left a big club at top was Inter. Not as loyal as Moyes of course, but not also the one who likes to change clubs every 2 years as has been portayed here.
 
Also, to conclude this embarrassing tangent.

United have never had a manager from outside the British Isles. (Frank O'Farrel was from Cork, Ireland; let's not open that can of worms)
Personally I love that about our club. It's increasingly less likely to continue in todays football world, and if it where ever to hold us back of course the principal would be abandoned. So far that is nowhere near the case and Moyes is hopefully going to prove to be another in a succession of world class Scottish managers.
 
UnofficialDevil said:
You could ask your self why Moyes was at Everton for 11 years, why did better clubs not go for him? Or is it only we that like long term success? surely you dont believe that? Like I said Mourinho was moving up on every move and there is nothing wrong with that, United would have been the ultimate challenge for Mourinho. And yes I do believe that Mourinho's transfer's budget might have affected our decision, if he was going to ask for millions in his wages and loads for transfers then yes.
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I'd imagine there were offers for him, or that if he wanted to leave, he could have had better clubs than Everton coming in for him. His time at Everton was positive, so I don't see why that would have worked against him. I imagine other clubs didn't go for him because it wasn't known he was leaving. He wasn't planning on going anywhere so why would offers have come in for him, had SAF not retired, Moyes wouldn't have left. I don't really see it, I think he'd have love to come and win here, but he wouldn't have left a legacy after him. Maybe 3-5 years, but I wouldn't expect more than that.
 
Hectic said:
I'd imagine there were offers for him, or that if he wanted to leave, he could have had better clubs than Everton coming in for him. His time at Everton was positive, so I don't see why that would have worked against him. I imagine other clubs didn't go for him because it wasn't known he was leaving. He wasn't planning on going anywhere so why would offers have come in for him, had SAF not retired, Moyes wouldn't have left. I don't really see it, I think he'd have love to come and win here, but he wouldn't have left a legacy after him. Maybe 3-5 years, but I wouldn't expect more than that.
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Well we are both entitled to our opinions arent we and I don't want to disagree with you any longer as you promoted me 7 years ago.. :)
 
No problem, yeah there's no right or wrong here anyway I guess. Hopefully you last longer than Moyes.
 
Duafc said:
Also, to conclude this embarrassing tangent.

United have never had a manager from outside the British Isles. (Frank O'Farrel was from Cork, Ireland; let's not open that can of worms)
Personally I love that about our club. It's increasingly less likely to continue in todays football world, and if it where ever to hold us back of course the principal would be abandoned. So far that is nowhere near the case and Moyes is hopefully going to prove to be another in a succession of world class Scottish managers.
Click to expand...

Moyes has been the best British manager after SAF on the last 10 years or so. But it is undeniable that like British players, nowadays British managers are far behind managers from other nationalities. There is a good reason why 5 from 7 top clubs in EPL have foreign managers.

Personally I don't care if we continue this tradition or not. If a manager is great and British I would have preferred because for British players/managers usually there isn't something above United. But the first criteria shouldn't be the nationality IMO.

Hectic said:
I'd imagine there were offers for him, or that if he wanted to leave, he could have had better clubs than Everton coming in for him. His time at Everton was positive, so I don't see why that would have worked against him. I imagine other clubs didn't go for him because it wasn't known he was leaving. He wasn't planning on going anywhere so why would offers have come in for him, had SAF not retired, Moyes wouldn't have left. I don't really see it, I think he'd have love to come and win here, but he wouldn't have left a legacy after him. Maybe 3-5 years, but I wouldn't expect more than that.
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Hmm, we didn't hear anything about him having offers. There was some talk I think about Spurs but they chosen AVB (which IMO has proven so far to be a better manager than Moyes despite being 15 years younger). We don't know for sure of course, but if he had offers from bigger clubs, likely there would have been some noise on media.
 
Revan said:
Hmm, we didn't hear anything about him having offers. There was some talk I think about Spurs but they chosen AVB (which IMO has proven so far to be a better manager than Moyes despite being 15 years younger). We don't know for sure of course, but if he had offers from bigger clubs, likely there would have been some noise on media.
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The main point being there probably weren't offers because it wasn't known or considered he was leaving. Moyes said himself he had no intention of leaving Everton until SAF called him up, I assume a lot of the clubs that would have taken Moyes wouldn't have bothered making an offer because no-one assumed he would be leaving Everton after last season. Had Moyes made it known that he was, I think there is no doubt better clubs than Everton would have been in for him.
 
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