What are the ‘standards’?

Plant0x84

Shame we’re aren’t more like Brighton
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Vault Dweller said:
I just feel the standards have been dropped so very low and there is no real desire to improve them.
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In another thread @Vault Dweller (hope you don’t mind me using this example) said this, and it’s a sentiment I’ve seen over and over recently. I think it warrants a discussion to explore the idea.

Traditionally I’d say win every game, dominate opponents, lay with style and challenge for the biggest prizes etc but I don’t think we are that club anymore currently. I’m not sure that is a realistic expectation right now. It’s more a hope than anything and takes a level of blind faith to believe in.

We have gone so far backwards relative to our competitors that what we have is a big rebuilding job. I don’t mean the team/squad but actually the whole club needs to be built up and our reputation restored.

Thats clearly going to be a difficult and painful process, but how many missteps do we tolerate in the meantime?

It’s made extra difficult by 10years of failure and now with INEOS in control I feel like this is a new start all over again, but others clearly see it as a continuation.

It’s got me wondering what are the expectations for the club, where do you place your red lines?
 
Supporting becomes far more easier if you accept the fact that it’s a mid table club and the manager considers winning a cup and being in the Europa league a successful season.
 
Players actually putting in effort for the whole game instead of only playing properly for about 15 mins per game would help.

This is one of the most expensive squad in the world but the way we play on the pitch, you’ll think we’re a newly promoted team hoping to draw every single fecking game.
 
Only at United is it constantly a rebuilding job. Look at the transformation of Villa under Emery to see what is possible.

Get it right on the pitch and suddenly everything else looks a lot better. I'm not saying things behind the scenes don't need to change, but there is no way we shouldn't be a lot better than we are with what we have currently.
 
The only somewhat plausible and sane explanation that we’re still managed by ETH is the hierarchy have quietly agreed that this season is ultimately pointless as the guy they want to be head coach isn’t available until next summer and as long as ETH doesn’t totally feck up to the point he puts us in relegation danger, then he stays.

Seems extreme to write off an entire season but if they’re actually doing that, then something good better be up their sleeve. Fans may as well mentally check out until June next year because all you’re getting is a manager scrambling to keep somewhat decent results going to probably keep his eventual severance package good and his reputation from being irreparably destroyed.
 
The minimum standards at any organisation is to do the best you can. We're falling far short. You cannot spend the amount we have and accept the results and performances we are producing.

The last 11 years leaves a legacy of failure built on excuses, ego, and lack of accountability. The standards throughout the entire organisation have been shocking, and fans have made the mistake of emulating the 90s Liverpool mentality of living in the past and thinking we're too big to fail and success will magically return with time, rather than smart decision making and being ruthless in persuit of success.

You can't even be critical of a lucky win without top reds jumping on your back. Despite our greatest manager having the same mentality of only accepting the best. He was pissed off with his Aberdeen players right after they'd won a cup because he deemed it a bad performance. That's the standard he set at United and unfortunately we've not maintained it
 
pocco said:
Only at United is it constantly a rebuilding job. Look at the transformation of Villa under Emery to see what is possible.
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And look how good Flick has Barca performing already after the utter dross Xavi served up. The only player of note he signed was Dani Olmo who's only played a handful of games because of injury. Yet, all we seem to do is fecking rebuild time-and-again. Funny thing is, every one of these "rebuilds" ends up absolutely disastrous.
 
@Plant0x84 don't mind at all mate.

I agree that a shocking state of affairs of a period of 10 years has led to where we are. But there are things we should have always been doing that others have already mentioned in this thread. Ultimately, I look at things like the humiliations off of our biggest rivals (I mean, take your pick from several) and excuses being made for performances in individual games and over longer periods of time that are just accepted as valid when really, if we are honest, are unacceptable. There will be mitigating factors of course, why ETH hasn't been sacked. But I do feel that if there was any ruthlessness, and were wanting to course correct and try to change our culture, then the manager would be good. And it made clear, to all squad and management and coaching staff, that underperformance will not be tolerated anymore.

But I digress, as I said in the quote you used, I'm really not sure that desire or ruthlessness is actually there. Certainly not right now, if we are just prepared to write off yet another season.
 
Technical ability wise, I feel like this is amongst the poorest set of players we've had in a while. We don't have a single top class midfielder or attacking player. Nor do we have any players that have the potential to be in that top bracket, aside from IMO, Mainoo - who himself needs to be in a better coached team with more like-minded players in midfield to really flourish.

During the last decade we've had players that you couldn't bank on to either stay fit, or remain consistent and ultimately weren't solutions, but when they turned it on they played at a high level and were fun to watch. The ceiling of this squad feels so low and I just get no pleasure from watching any of them.

I honestly have zero expectations for this season. Feels like we're biding time in preparation of yet another re-build.
 
Robbie Boy said:
And look how good Flick has Barca performing already after the utter dross Xavi served up. The only player of note he signed was Dani Olmo who's only played a handful of games because of injury. Yet, all we seem to do is fecking rebuild time-and-again. Funny thing is, every one of these "rebuilds" ends up absolutely disastrous.
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I realised that this 3 year rebuilding thing was a scam after Jose. Real Madrid are the standard and they would never accept 10% of what we allowed since 2013.
 
Minimum standard should be top 4 or 5 in the league, score 70 goals in the league and have considerable positive goal difference. Cups are a bonus but we need to see a team that actually performs week to week. If a manager doesn’t produce that, it shouldn’t matter if he wins the Europa League, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season. If you’re moving towards something longer term then you have to keep a certain level of consistency in every game.
 
For the owners the standard are that clubs brings some profit and the fans are not too mad to boycott things or stop buying merchandise. Which is about the level Eth got us at - mid table with occasional second grade cup so that we can gaslight ourselves we have it better than Arsenal or Pool and surely next year we finally challenge
 
flappyjay said:
I realised that this 3 year rebuilding thing was a scam after Jose. Real Madrid are the standard and they would never accept 10% of what we allowed since 2013.
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Of course it is a scam. it just gives the manager and part of the fanbase an excuse when things are shit for years. Especially at United, it is toxic. But managers know this and know the fanbase is patient, so they use it to buy time. Like ETH, he is playing stupid currently.

Nowadays, one year or a year and a half at max gives you a good indication if a manager has it or not or if you should sack. There may be an outlier or exception, but a good manager will show progression nonetheless in a lot of metrics.
 
izec said:
Of course it is a scam. it just gives the manager and part of the fanbase an excuse when things are shit for years. Especially at United, it is toxic. But managers know this and know the fanbase is patient, so they use it to buy time. Like ETH, he is playing stupid currently.

Nowadays, one year or a year and a half at max gives you a good indication if a manager has it or not or if you should sack. There may be an outlier or exception, but a good manager will show progression nonetheless in a lot of metrics.
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Imagine what ETH has to think about a fanbase that allows him and still cheers on him after 0 wins in 3 in Europe and putting Maz as a 10. He could start Onana as a striker and lose 0-5 and Gary Neville et al would still defend him. It’s the easiest “big” manager job in the world, as long as you build relationships with the right people you can be as bad as it gets and still safe
 
Red Star One said:
Imagine what ETH has to think about a fanbase that allows him and still cheers on him after 0 wins in 3 in Europe and putting Maz as a 10. He could start Onana as a striker and lose 0-5 and Gary Neville et al would still defend him. It’s the easiest “big” manager job in the world, as long as you build relationships with the right people you can be as bad as it gets and still safe
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The idea ten Hag has an easy job when national media constantly associate him with the sack is tenuous.

To say the least.

The reason he is still in the job is there is no discernible replacement. Certainly not one available at the ready.

Maybe they'll go for broke in the summer. Maybe not. We don't know. But we do know they've tried, and failed, to replace him with what seems a plethora of 'sideways' managers.


Red Star One said:
For the owners the standard are that clubs brings some profit and the fans are not too mad to boycott things or stop buying merchandise. Which is about the level Eth got us at - mid table with occasional second grade cup so that we can gaslight ourselves we have it better than Arsenal or Pool and surely next year we finally challenge
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United's current status ten Hag inherited.

pocco said:
Only at United is it constantly a rebuilding job. Look at the transformation of Villa under Emery to see what is possible.
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Villa are doing rightly but if they finish fourth and win nothing it's a fantastic achievement.

If we do it, it's not good enough and the manager deserves the sack for letting standards slip.

Let's not pretend United and Villa's remit is equal.
 
flappyjay said:
I realised that this 3 year rebuilding thing was a scam after Jose. Real Madrid are the standard and they would never accept 10% of what we allowed since 2013.
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It really is a scam that has duped so much of the fanbase. When I heard the term rebuild being bandied about again when Ole came in, I thought it was a sick joke. Standards dropped further when the term "cultural reset" started gaining traction.
 
12 months without a win in Europe. That should tell you the standards are absolutely down the toilet and this includes our fanbase. Vast majority of people wanted to keep this fraud after he fluked a cup win, despite this shit show for an entire season

Any club who thinks of themselves as European royalty wouldn't even stand for one month of shit which we have been eating for more than a decade now

Robbie Boy said:
It really is a scam that has duped so much of the fanbase. When I heard the term rebuild being bandied about again when Ole came in, I thought it was a sick joke. Standards dropped further when the term "cultural reset" started gaining traction.
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Even bigger joke is a certain section of fans wanting Ole back once we get rid of ten Hag...
 
The standards are top 4 and cup runs. That's how far they've fallen and we are falling even below that threshold, considerably.
 
Kush said:
Even bigger joke is a certain section of fans wanting Ole back once we get rid of ten Hag...
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To be fair, I don't think you'll find many wanting him back as a full time Manager. More a case of bringing him back as a Caretaker so we have more options come Summer and we know he wouldn't be able utter disaster like Rangnick was.
 
The standards for Man Utd should be anything less than winning the league is a failure, unless the season ends with the Champions League trophy.

It can be considered a good season if you qualify for the Champions League but it cannot be considered a successful season.

Winning an FA Cup or a League Cup is to be celebrated and enjoyed but its not enough.

Accepting that there's no sniff of a title challenge before pancake day is utterly unacceptable. If United are not involved in the league title picture at Easter, everyone should be ashamed.
 
Ineos spoke a lot about different types of standards, especially on the pitch. So far, we have seen none of it
 
I don't think we have any anymore, which is why this question is being asked in the first place. Not a crazy thing to say considering we're just ploughing along as a club as if nothing is happening, breaking all the wrong records game after game.
 
This will read like a FM checklist, but here goes. The standards should, in my opinion, be:
  • Challenge for the title every year. Win it with some regularity.
  • Be in the Champions League every year and make it to the knock-out stage. Win it on occasion.
  • Be competitive in the domestic cups.
  • Play attacking football.
  • Bring through players from the academy.
We are so far off this that it seems totally unrealistic, but that is was SAF did. If we want our actual performance to match our reputation as a club, this is what needs to happen on the pitch.
 
There was a spark of hope during the INEOS takeover that football was going to go back to being the club's main priority, but that was very quickly snuffed out and they have made it very clear they intend to treat Manchester United as a logo that sells merchandise when they decided to back a manager who just put up the worst season this club has had in most of our lifetimes at the end of last year.

Ten Hag isn't some secret saboteur sent to relegate us, the club doesn't have a hex put on it by Sir Alex. We're just playing like a midtable club because we have a midtable manager. Ten Hag is doing this good because this is as good as he can do. Put him on any other top club and they'll be midtable too. This is just his level. And our management has decided that this is "good enough".
 
It's very easy to talk about standards though. The biggest myth on here is that if you keep standards high, you are somehow always going to be good, the typical post goes something like this:

'Real Madrid would never stand for this etc.'

Whilst conveniently forgetting La Liga is arguably the most artificial league in Europe, with the league setup to keep Real/Barca at its summit and push other clubs down as aggressively as possible.

Man City's fraud is somewhat masking how much better the PL has become for the neutral, it really should be a league where we would have seen 6 different winners in the last ten years (Chelsea, Leicester, United, Arsenal, Pool, City would likely have still won some as well). That is phenomenal for the league but it means we can't just chuck money at players and get better, there has to be plan and we are 3-4 months into the plan.

I can't help but think all these threads are just ETH out threads, it seems that is what people are judging our standards by and not a lot else.
 
Kush said:
12 months without a win in Europe. That should tell you the standards are absolutely down the toilet and this includes our fanbase. Vast majority of people wanted to keep this fraud after he fluked a cup win, despite this shit show for an entire season

Any club who thinks of themselves as European royalty wouldn't even stand for one month of shit which we have been eating for more than a decade now



Even bigger joke is a certain section of fans wanting Ole back once we get rid of ten Hag...
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I said last week after the win against Brentford that where positives and negatives.

Positive we won, negative he keeps his job for another few games.

I was told there was no negatives because we won. Proceed to go 12 months without a win Europe, but that's OK, we beat Brentford less that 5 days previous. Just wow.
 
pocco said:
Only at United is it constantly a rebuilding job. Look at the transformation of Villa under Emery to see what is possible.

Get it right on the pitch and suddenly everything else looks a lot better. I'm not saying things behind the scenes don't need to change, but there is no way we shouldn't be a lot better than we are with what we have currently.
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Villa did not even overhaul their squad to get here. The core is largely same / similar, they have filled a few gaps but nothing overly dramatic in terms of roster turnover.
 
Crostien said:
Villa are doing rightly but if they finish fourth and win nothing it's a fantastic achievement.

If we do it, it's not good enough and the manager deserves the sack for letting standards slip.

Let's not pretend United and Villa's remit is equal.
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That's true, but there's a big grey area between between what Villa are doing and what we are. They are most certainly heading in the right direction at least, and the turnaround was pretty rapid. With the resources we have, there's no reason we couldn't do it even better within the same timespan.
 
Sarni said:
Villa did not even overhaul their squad to get here. The core is largely same / similar, they have filled a few gaps but nothing overly dramatic in terms of roster turnover.
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Exactly. But for some reason, our supporters just automatically think 'rebuild' every time there is strife or a new manager. It just lets everybody off the hook, lowering standards day by day.
 
vibe said:
There was a spark of hope during the INEOS takeover that football was going to go back to being the club's main priority, but that was very quickly snuffed out and they have made it very clear they intend to treat Manchester United as a logo that sells merchandise when they decided to back a manager who just put up the worst season this club has had in most of our lifetimes at the end of last year.

Ten Hag isn't some secret saboteur sent to relegate us, the club doesn't have a hex put on it by Sir Alex. We're just playing like a midtable club because we have a midtable manager. Ten Hag is doing this good because this is as good as he can do. Put him on any other top club and they'll be midtable too. This is just his level. And our management has decided that this is "good enough".
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I don't believe that. I think Ten Hag is a goner, it's just a matter of when. The contract we gave him screams interim.
 
Given the amount of fans money they've spent, the standards should be champions league semi finalists and premier league contenders, anything less really is a failure. You can't watch your club spend a billion pounds and end up worse than Brightons level and accept that as a fan.
 
Crostien said:
The idea ten Hag has an easy job when national media constantly associate him with the sack is tenuous.

To say the least.

The reason he is still in the job is there is no discernible replacement. Certainly not one available at the ready.

Maybe they'll go for broke in the summer. Maybe not. We don't know. But we do know they've tried, and failed, to replace him with what seems a plethora of 'sideways' managers.
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get real. It’s an easy job because pressure from the fans and the structure is non existent. I’m not sure if eth cares what papers say, especially when many of former players trying to influence the club still defend him in the media.

Ineos decided he’s better than alternatives so have to take the blame for choosing eth over anyone else. It’s the easiest “big” job, I repeat, and I’m pretty sure Erik is also laughing at his invincibility
 
For the most part the club and most fans have given up on all standards.

The United managerial position appears to come with no goals that you need to meet. It's really quite an easy job now as the manager just needs to draw most games to stay.
 
Red Star One said:
get real. It’s an easy job because pressure from the fans and the structure is non existent
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No pressure from the supporters? Take a look at the poll on this forum alone.

What would you classify as 'real pressure'? Chaining ourselves to his house? Get real.

nickm said:
I don't believe that. I think Ten Hag is a goner, it's just a matter of when. The contract we gave him screams interim.
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I agree. ten Hag is his own interim. But, I do worry about the quality of replacement. There are some enticing names but nothing particularly alluring.

We'll see.
 
Red Star One said:
get real. It’s an easy job because pressure from the fans and the structure is non existent. I’m not sure if eth cares what papers say, especially when many of former players trying to influence the club still defend him in the media.
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This is crazy. No pressure? He can't even get 5 minutes after winning a cup final without getting hammered by pundits and fans.
 
By "standards" all we ask is that excellence in footballing performance be made the highest priority. We can't win every trophy, no club can, but we can and should be able to compete for every trophy.

But this is no longer the way of Manchester United, whose owners are obsessed with maximizing revenue for themselves, come what may on the pitch. That the owners of the club have allowed ETH to maintain his position at the club for as long as he has betrays everything Sir Matt and Sir Alex dedicated their managerial careers to.
 
Standards at Manchester United should be to win every game, compete for the league every season. That's the standard that made this club famous. Having spent a decade in the wilderness, the standard that I expect from this club is to be a consistent top 4 team, for now.

But since even that seems unachievable, the bare minimum that I want to see from my team is the desire to actually win a game. The urgency to win, to throw everything we have to get the victory, the never give up attitude that was once the very essence of the club-that's gone. Nowadays the team doesn't even try. So nearly every week I have to ask myself, if the team doesn't care, why should I?
 
Our standards should be to try as hard as you can and leave it all on the field as well as to try and win every game. We should never see players walking around the pitch and basically putting in half arsed performances and we should never stop trying to win games. Anyone who doesn't do this should be shown the door.
 
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