I posted in the newbie forum that for me Im 50/50.
I love the guy as a player/person, but as a manager Im still torn as to wether he has the balls to clear out the deadwood and start again. There's just far too much of it in our club and that includes Rashford and
Lingard.
I pointed out that he reminds me a bit of Steve McClaren when he took over England and tried to be too chummy with the players, calling them by their nicknames and the performances suffered because it then made it hard to drop his mates.
Ole has started doing that with 'Rashy' and 'Lings' it makes me shudder. Fergie wouldn't have done it, he didn't even do it after the charity match the other day against Bayern. When I hear Ole doing it, it says to me he's not going to have the power or the balls to drop players who are under-performing. I'm already getting the impression he sees Rashford as undroppable. A manager needs a certain distance from the players so they still know whos boss.
If he's going into next season with Rashford and Lingard leading the line I will know he's not good enough, regardless of who we buy. Its average players like those 2 that we've come to accept these days and why we're in the position we are in.
Im prepared to give Ole the chance though because he's inherited this team off Mou so will be interesting to see who he brings in and what style he has in mind. But a big part of me says nothing much is going to change, that the spine of the team is still going to contain the deadwood like Smalling, Jones, Matic, Young, Lingard, Rashford etc it needs a major overhaul and clearout the likes never seen before, but is Ole the man to do it? I just don't know.
I hope he is, I really do, but he's got to get like Fergie right now, stop with the first name chummyness with players and have the balls to drop or even offload the players who just aren't fit to wear the shirt.
Also I don't buy into this fitness excuse 100% as fitness comes and goes throughout a season anyway. People who exercise will know that a certain level of fitness can be obtained through regular exercise and maybe Ole will have them training more to keep that up, but if he thinks that a big part of why we were crap last season can be turned around in a 6 week pre-season fitness camp then he hasn't got a clue. Its going to take a lot more than regular treadmill work to improve the dross we have at the club and wether they help themselves and keep that fitness up is another thing.