Was appointing an interim manager for a long period a mistake?

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I was in the camp of having an interim manager like Ralf for the rest of the season, and I'm starting to think that was a mistake. Say what you want about Ralf, but I honestly believe part of the problem is the players knowing he won't be here long term.

From the perspective of the players, it's very hard to buy into something that you know might change come May. We could be looking at another completely different approach, with completely new staff. The leaks to the press show that they don't believe in him or his staff and are already thinking about who should be appointed next summer.

I'm not saying the players aren't to blame, but I also don't think it helps when you know your manager won't be here for long.
 
Seems they don't buy in to anything this lot.

Getting more in favour of a near clean sweep by the week.
 
Rangnick can't polish turd.

Remove turd and see improvements and for that to happen we need to back the manager instead of protecting the turd.
 
Hard to say. It would have been worse to hire the wrong permanent manager. Hopefully we get things right and have the right man in by the summer. But we need to allow him to mold the squad properly. Right now we are an imbalanced team.
 
No choice really. The two managers we want were both in a job and no way to get them mid season. We could have hired someone and given them a longer term contract and sacked them in the summer but that would cost too much.
Ralf is not the problem, and he's not the solution. These players are at an all time low on confidence. We trimmed the squad so it's not so bloated and now have to pay for that. Losing players to covid and not generally having great options to start with will cost us in the end. Plus loosing Greenwood has pretty much left us with only two CF options. No too mention, we can't score more than one goal a game and our defenders have mental lapses after a 15' break it seems.
 
Yes. I'm struggling to see any positives that have from it. I don't think results would have been much different if we'd have just carried on with the old coaching set up. The players are just going through the motions waiting for a fresh start in the summer, many elsewhere.
 
I'm still hopeful it was the right thing to do, albeit it should have been done after Moyes or maybe even SAF.

I always saw Ralf as basically doing a report at the end of the season and changing a fair few dynamics at the club. Top to bottom. I was kind of expecting a bit if a shit show before it got better.

What is interesting is that there is an LVG feel to Ralf and I wonder if keeping him for that extra year would have paid dividends? Not because the football was good but more what he was saying at the time re the players and intelligence etc
 
No. Ralf has inherited a squad mostly built by Ole. And he didn't get to bring any player in January. Not a single one.
 
Amazed the penny hasn't dropped with this squad.


Needs overhaul at this stage. Damaged goods. Same players not performing
 
If Ralf is going into a consulting role, he will have a better perspective of what needs to change managing the team. But then again, who to say that Ralf ideas are not past it? Like biesla, mourinho, Rafa benetiz, etc. The players don't seem to buy into. Alot of them are wanting to leave and the one that are staying are not performing at their highest level. The board might not even buy into in either as they couldn't support him in the last window. The only positive I see from Ralf being interim is that he can work with the next manager more closely towards identifying what we need to get back where we need to be.
 
Amadaeus said:
If Ralf is going into a consulting role, he will have a better perspective of what needs to change managing the team. But then again, who to say that Ralf ideas are not past it? Like biesla, mourinho, Rafa benetiz, etc. The players don't seem to buy into. Alot of them are wanting to leave and the one that are staying at performing at their highest level. The board might not even buy into in either as they couldn't support him in the last window. The only positive I see from Ralf being interim is that he can work with the next manager more closely towards identifying what we need to get back where we need to be.
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Think Ralf will have a good idea who is now not up to it. He is an outsider, so isn't blinded by loyalty and keeping somebody because he's a good lad. He will be looking at the point of the type of players that will fit a new manager.
 
Possibly. But we left ourselves with little option by sticking with Solskjaer until there were no long term candidates available. Not sure we had any choice but to appoint an interim.

A more pertinent question might be whether Rangnick was the right choice given the teething problems trying to turn us into a pressing side was likely to cause. If we're just looking at this season alone, a manager with approach closer to what we were used to might have had better instant impact.

The counter-point to that though is if we get long term benefit from having Rangnick in this season. Either in terms of him having a better understanding of our issues as he advises us or (hopefully) his work this season meaning our permanent appointment will have less of these teething issues to deal with as he implements an aggressive pressing approach.
 
No. A proper coach like Tuchel or Conte would be completely different.

Hate to say this, but Ralf is out of his depth. He's got great ideas and philosophies, but his CV as an actual manager is even worse than LVG.

He's had a good run with that 4 wins and 3 draws in the beginning, but the big games are coming up in a few weeks.
 
Judas said:
Yes, we should have rushed into hiring big Brendan instead!
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DomesticTadpole said:
So who would be our manager at this stage if Ralf wasn't. The managers you all hanker after are in jobs.
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Not pretending to know the answer to our situation back then, though I do think we made a mistake by not going for Conte.

My point is that not having a long term manager is impacting the players. It's not easy to buy into something when you know it could be changed in few months.
 
Doesn't help the players see his assistant as a spoof character in an Apple+ TV show
 
we have a core group of players that clearly arent upto it mentally or physically for that matter, whenever theres a manager that tries to affect some change, they down tools. so lets just keep changing the manager isnt the solution.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
Think Ralf will have a good idea who is now not up to it. He is an outsider, so isn't blinded by loyalty and keeping somebody because he's a good lad. He will be looking at the point of the type of players that will fit a new manager.
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Yes, my only concern is what we are seeing on the pitch. Even though our performance has improved over Ole, it is still not good enough if we are to win the league. Some player have even complained about ralf outdated ideas and his coaching staff not being adequate. The next manager will have to help modernize Ralf ideas and make the players enjoy implementing it in real-time. I would not want Ralf giving as much input if we don't see an upturn in performance in the last few games of the season.
 
Someone said:
Not pretending to know the answer to our situation back then, though I do think we made a mistake by not going for Conte.

My point is that not having a long term manager is impacting the players. It's not easy to buy into something when you know it could be changed in few months.
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Conte would be here about one season. Then what. They would have been constantly trying to foist unwanted signings on his for social media clicks.
 
Roane said:
What is interesting is that there is an LVG feel to Ralf and I wonder if keeping him for that extra year would have paid dividends? Not because the football was good but more what he was saying at the time re the players and intelligence etc
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Was thinking about that earlier today.

Bored my tits off but controlled games, knew what we were playing at and executed it reasonably well. It was dull as feck bar a brief period we twatted all the big rivals with Herrera, Mata and (Lingard?) having something special going on out right, for a change.

We didn't like the football, the signings were underwhelming and it didn't look like we were going anywhere good. No brainer... but then, here we are, huh?
 
The clubs rotten to the core. The results would be the same regardless of who came in. Things won’t change until we get these toxic players out the club for good.
 
No.

For me Rangnicks job has always been to come in, give an outside experienced opinion and assessment just how bad things are and how rotten the club is. From there decisions can be made how to take things forward and the best kind of manager to do that. Not to mention what changes need to be made to the clubs hierarchy. Also to begin to address the obvious lack of work on the training field that has been present under the last 2 managers.
 
Hard to say it's a big mistake, the results were awful under Ole. They've not improved dramatically that is for certain but it at least took away that unending Ole narrative, which in theory gave the players the best chance to perform.

The fact they're not is disappointing but not totally surprising, we've got a lot of holes to patch up this summer. Impossible to imagine we'll get everything done.
 
ShinjiNinja26 said:
The clubs rotten to the core. The results would be the same regardless of who came in. Things won’t change until we get these toxic players out the club for good.
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The club is also rotten from the top. Things won't change until we get new owners who understand we're a football club, not a corporate/social media cash cow.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
 
Ralph1386 said:
No. Ralf has inherited a squad mostly built by Ole. And he didn't get to bring any player in January. Not a single one.
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Well he is not supposed to be the manager after the summer so every notion of the club bringing in a player for him was not realisic to begin with.

With the answers in hand, in hindsight it was a mistake going by the results. The team was putting up a good effort in Carricks few games at the helm, perhaps things would have been different had he chose to stay on.

I dont think anyone legitimately has all the answers to fix the current situation anyhow. This team played so well for large parts of last season, brought in genuine reinforcements in Varane, Sancho and Ronaldo, and here we are, much worse off.
 
Roane said:
I'm still hopeful it was the right thing to do, albeit it should have been done after Moyes or maybe even SAF.

I always saw Ralf as basically doing a report at the end of the season and changing a fair few dynamics at the club. Top to bottom. I was kind of expecting a bit if a shit show before it got better.

What is interesting is that there is an LVG feel to Ralf and I wonder if keeping him for that extra year would have paid dividends? Not because the football was good but more what he was saying at the time re the players and intelligence etc
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Do you think the board and owners are ready to listen to him? I certainly don't. They just want a yes-man.
 
Someone said:
I was in the camp of having an interim manager like Ralf for the rest of the season, and I'm starting to think that was a mistake. Say what you want about Ralf, but I honestly believe part of the problem is the players knowing he won't be here long term.

From the perspective of the players, it's very hard to buy into something that you know might change come May. We could be looking at another completely different approach, with completely new staff. The leaks to the press show that they don't believe in him or his staff and are already thinking about who should be appointed next summer.

I'm not saying the players aren't to blame, but I also don't think it helps when you know your manager won't be here for long.
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If RR way was something like players doing feck all on training pitch, bet they would buy into it really fast, regardless what happens at the end of season.
 
We don't know. If we had wanted a pragmatic short term interim to secure top 4 there were a lot of options better than Rangnick. However if the goal was to identify issues internally, look at coach recruitment, evaluate player recruitment and identify issues within the squad it might still pay off... maybe.
 
Tom Cato said:
I dont think anyone legitimately has all the answers to fix the current situation anyhow. This team played so well for large parts of last season, brought in genuine reinforcements in Varane, Sancho and Ronaldo, and here we are, much worse off.
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I totally disagree. They were decent at times but that's about it. Ole almost lost his job towards the beginning of that season before the Everton home game. Then we totally bottled the CL group, then we played defensive to grind out results. The performances were starting to get bad again towards the end of the season. It was only at the beginning of this season that the results caught up with these bad performances, and the rest was history.
 
Ralph1386 said:
The club is also rotten from the top. Things won't change until we get new owners who understand we're a football club, not a corporate/social media cash cow.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
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The fact of the matter is we aren’t getting new owners anytime soon so we’ll have to hope we can be successful despite them. The only way we can do that is to be a lot smarter in the transfer market and the next managerial appointment absolutely has to be the right one. No one thought much of FSG before Klopp came in especially Liverpool fans but through hiring a top coach and being clever in the transfer market they’ve managed to be successful again.
 
Utd must be setting some sort of record in buying and selling players because there was zero thought process going into getting them in the first place.

I've got to this stage that these players are uncoachable because you cannot make the same mistake every game for an entirety of the season. Football is a team sport, and we haven't had one for years, just a collection of players that most of the time go through the motions for 90 minutes. That the saddest indictment of the last 10 sorry years.
 
ShinjiNinja26 said:
The fact of the matter is we aren’t getting new owners anytime soon so we’ll have to hope we can be successful despite them. The only way we can do that is to be a lot smarter in the transfer market and the next managerial appointment absolutely has to be the right one. No one thought much of FSG before Klopp came in especially Liverpool fans but through hiring a top coach and being clever in the transfer market they’ve managed to be successful again.
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But what can we do when the owners turn away from any manager who might question the way the club is run ? And when they only want a yes man who smiles to the cameras? This is the problem here.
 
If we get Ten Hag at the end of the season - no, it will be worth it in the long run.
 
Ralph1386 said:
But what can we do when the owners turn away from any manager who might question the way the club is run ? And when they only want a yes man who smiles to the cameras? This is the problem here.
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There is probably a middle ground between a guy like Jose who complains at every turn, and Ole who spends more time fronting a positive outlook than fans deserve, to appease those who enjoy conflict.
 
It's not the manager. We could have had Pep here and it would've been the same.
It's the bad attitude from our players and the lack of quality we have in the squad. I mean, other than DDG, Sancho, Varane and Pogba, all the other players are Spurs level at best, including Bruno.
You can't tell me that players are out of form for 6 months, that just doesn't happen. Or that Rashford couldn't be bothered to press or run because he suffers after his missus, that's just doesn't happen in real life.
 
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