I think you’ve made a very good point. We are probably the only club expecting an overhaul whenever manager got sacked and new manager coming in.
Who replaces Ten Hag?
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I dunno who can replace him but I don’t think De Zerbi, Emery or Ange would do with us what they can with their current players. Our squad have an attitude problem. That’s what’s stopping us being successful.
You're completely right, but you're also harsh. On the fans, not the club.
United is a club used to dealing with one manager. And for many years, we were praised as proof that keeping faith in a manager and giving them time would work by the media. The media has always taken a pro-manager stance, at least in England. So when Fergie left and asked fans to show patience with the manager, both the club and the fans took it as a continuance of a culture. With United not operating that way like others do. Not realizing that other clubs operated that way because they weren't lucky enough to have Ferguson/Wenger/Pep. It's harsh on the fans because a lot of them grew up with that idea, driven even harder by the media and the club, to the point of almost becoming cultural. Keeping the same players and the same manager for many years, as consistency in operations was apparently our key to success. Even during Ole's reign, the fact that Murtough and Carrick were seen as coaches that could handle the tactical aspect based on Quiroz' role with Sir Alex shows how deep that notion runs true. Like you said, other clubs would have sacked a manager for not being good enough tactically. Only United would have coaches and expect them to handle the tactical aspects of things.
Our fans have been conditioned to think this way, which is why the cult of the manager is so strong. The british media have also driven the pro-manager agenda, which has justified it in the eyes of fans. However, the club should have had structures strong enough to resist the urge to please these groups for football operations success and profit motivations. Yet they didn't. Instead they allowed managers to come through the doors with axes, tearing apart multiple squads, spending loads of money, whilst not ever truly showing any form of good football. Projects and 3 year plans have been the order of the last 10 years, with every manager given a blank canvas to fail during the first few months ( season), whilst these periods should always have been evaluation periods.
Fans complain about needing a structure now, but the same fans were against the idea of a Director of Football up until they realized that Jose was failing at United. The media had previously pushed against it and warned of how managers have been restricted by these structures; now their using it to defend our incompetent managers. People forget that the reason identified for not getting one sooner was an attempt not to undermine the manager, again presented as being in line with club values. When we then got Murtough in and changed the structure slightly, he wasn't even given the Director of Football title, in an attempt not to undermine the manager. Instead he was provided a Sporting Director title and sold as working in partnership with the manager. Now, everyone is calling Murtough a failure and holding him responsible, when he was never empowered to actually do his job.
The club, due to cultural issues based on our period of success, have had a hard time adjusting to the idea that managers are not as special, trustworthy or saviours. Fergie was a one off. So in the same breath, when they ask for a DOF, they blame everyone but the manager for failures on the pitch, and call for the manager to be given time and support. Despite the fact that these managers have only been able to have the type of financial support and time because of the passive structure and managerial sympathies existing at the club.This is the cost of having owners with limited expertise of the sport, who are supported by top management with similar knowledge. They give in to media demands and sympathies until the situation becomes so clear that they can't move on. That's why Ratcliffe's arrival with a team excites me. Pressures on the manager that have not before existed will now exist.
I'd like Keane for the interim role. We won't make top 4 and won't relegate and no top coach would come here right now anyway. It'd be real fun just to see what he'd do with the current bunch of pathetic losers.
Long term I have no idea though.
Long term I have no idea though.
It wont' matter, coaching staff can't tell Rashford to press or put more than 20% effort in every 50/50 challenge. He thinks he's beyond it and likely will outlast another manager or two with his current contract.
feck these entitled footballers.
feck these entitled footballers.
I heard the same thing about Spurs when they had Jose and Conte.
I don't believe in the attitude excuse. I think its always exaggerated and used to defend underperforming managers ( who part of their job is effectively communicating with their team). Last season and during Ole's years, the media was reporting that those attitudes disappeared. Those stories only come out when a team is not doing well. Other top clubs like Bayern also have these stories come out during spells with poor managers like Kovac. Big losses with poor tactical plans and poor preparation are always masked as players downing tools and being mentally fragile by the British press as the media is always pro-manager. Rio and Evra had issues with Moyes , despite the fact they didn't have them with Fergie. Varane and Casemiro, who have won many trophies are having those issues with Ten Haag now. Players will always have issues with managers who set them up to fail, yet fans expect players to be robots. Even when not publically complaining, they are accused of downing tools when collectively failing - something that the manager is supposed to be responsible for.
Starting with Ancelotti, we must go for 3,4 short-term (2/2.5 seasons) appointments. The manager has a target to achieve within these two seasons. That's the only way you move the power away from the manager.
On the question of who should we go for, it's Carlo Ancelotti.
On the question of who should we go for, it's Carlo Ancelotti.
Not that he deserved the permanent job. But he did come up with the gap analysis at the club pretty quickly and I guess that's why he was hired but he never knew ETH would be a snitch.
So no different to how things have played out in last 10 years .
The appointments in the last 10 years have all been with the view of them being a long-term project. The difference is that the managers are given huge funds to spend on the squad and completely try to change the dynamics of the team and then they fail. As I said, this is our only way to shift the power away from the manager.
With short-term projects, managers like Carlo and Allegri can be asked to provide their best with what they have in terms of squad.
That's bs if you just apply any sort of critical thinking Ironically only Moyes was touted as long term manager with 6 year contract but he got booted out as soon as Champions League qualification became out of reach , Van Gaal was given 3 year contract and was suppose to retire after that and he also lost his job once we missed out on Champions League qualification , next appointment Mourinho if anybody thought he was anything other than short term fix they need their heads examined , I could go on similarly about Ole and Ten Hag .
United clearly sets target for their managers and as soon as you fail to achieve it you are out , you can accuse them of actually giving managers more time then they deserve to get things right but make no mistake about it once they miss the targets of Cl qualification there is no coming back .
And the point about spending money is neither here or there United would always be spending money till the time they get it right irrespective of who the manager is , only thing I can agree with you is Managers should have limited input in terms of recruitment team building should not be their domain .
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Top post, mate. Some of the most successful clubs of the past decade have had more managers in that period than us. The whole idea that you have to wait an arbitrary X amount of years under a manager to see a marginal improvement is hilarious. Any other club Ten Hag would be on the brink of getting sacked but not here. Ibrahimovic was right.
I think he's getting close to the brink. It's feasible if results go wrong over next few weeks he could be gone. The club aren't that blinkered.
We've sacked four/five managers in ten years. I don't think the club can be criticised for being sack shy.
This is true but lacks massive context. Comparing the ownership model and club structure of United with Madrid and Bayern is like comparing the playing quality of Luton and City.
The manager job at Bayern and Madrid is very different from United. Precisely the structure at these clubs is why managers like Flick and Zidane could work out. Put either of those to United and they would fail.
Chelsea is a great example here. They used to have a fantastic structure and would be quite ruthless with managers. Now they are still ruthless (see Tuchel) but given that the structure is a mess they are all over the place.
Potter went from a fantastic structure at Brighton to a mess at Chelsea and he flopped hard.
I do think Ten Hag was a worth a shot and saying otherwise will be rewriting history but going by how things turned out to be there's no reason to keep going further with him. Similar to Mourinho. He was the right appointment at the time but things didn't go as planned so moving on was the only logical outcome.
I was never so sure about ETH mainly because its the Dutch league, also the issue of wanting to sign players he knows was already flagged. He may have been better in a proper football structure but I think his Ajax time was overhyped, the Dutch league is so poor these days.
Those clubs have football structure, United don't.
Easy to chop and change manager at Bayern Munich because he is just a cog in a system. At United, we operate differently, manager have to do all scouting, recruiting, training etc...do at Bayern Munich, they do the same?
Only at United, manager gets criticized for overpaying players...because apparently, chief of football is just a glorified manager's assistant.
"United should be like Real Madrid, be like Brighton" whilst ignore the fact that we literally fecking can't unless INEOS makes a complete overhaul of the structure. If our problem could easily be solved by just changing manager then United would've won major trophies even by pure luck, consider how many we had spent in the last 10 years.
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At this point can we not just get an AI to replace ETH? sure the players will have 6 fingers but at least we won't be able to blame the AI when it all goes wrong because it will also control the media
His analysis was spot on but in no world was he a good enough manager.
As highlighted in the initial post people wanted him on the reflection of his Ajax team. By the managers own admission he's incapable of playing that way. You have to ask yourself at this point given the circumstances why would the club persist with him then. He's failed every fans expectation but the success of last season is what majority are holding onto but if the manager changes the vision of the team every time summer comes around there's no stability.
Good post.
I would add that at Barcelona and Real Madrid there is a general attitude that, good or bad, a manager's time at a club is limited. Guardiola and Zidane both left on their own accord. Ancelotti's contract hasn't been renewed yet, and there's a good chance it won't regardless of the results. Luis Enrique didn't renew his contract after three years. Valverde would have likely not gotten a renewal. You come to do a job, you contribute, if you're great you set some foundations, but you're not going to spend your whole life here. Same with players (Ronaldo, Varane, Ramos, Benzema, Casemiro). No need to squeeze every last drop of juice out of a lemon.
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We can always just lean heavily into doping the players at this point? Best case scenario we win lots of games, worst case scenario they get caught and banned. So win, win really.
Keys thinks we should go for Xabi Alonso.
I was hoping we had seen the last of him when he was sacked by sky. He’s such a clueless twat
Yeah but just get in Alonso and give him Saudi money. Bing bash bosh, job done. In 5 years we're gonna be Kings.
his idea is to guarantee a coach 5 years and allow them to revamp, while talking about sacking Ten Hag 18 months in. An absolute tool.
Yeah... guaranteeing 5 years to the next manager... what could go wrong
Part of the issue with this is that each time we have brought a new manager in they have been totally different stylistically to the previous manager so older players likely won't fit in. You're then left with a horrible Mish mash of types of players that can't play in a cohesive way to a high standard.
Years before city got pep they got the right structure in and started buying players they thought would suit him and his style of play. They had a long term vision of what they wanted to do and brought in managers and players that suited that.
We went from Ferguson to Moyes to lvg to Jose to ole. No cohesion whatsoever there and all wanting different types of players.
Tottenham manager brought revolution. ETH did not.
Have your considered the possibility that these might already be doped and this is their peak level of performance?
They must doped on Nyquil considering they barely look up for it. Give them some cocaine!
Scaloni who has done brilliantly with argentina, Thomas Frank who plays attractive football and always seems to be able to give the big sides a run for their money when they face Brentford or Imanol Alguacil of real sociedad who has done really well with them since taking charge and I would like to see Spanish manager in charge as the Spanish sides seem to constantly outplay us for as long as I csn remember.
We should try avoid the really obvious big name managers like nagelsmann or conte as it has not worked out so far for us.
We should try avoid the really obvious big name managers like nagelsmann or conte as it has not worked out so far for us.
Whoever is flavour of the month. We'll give him £400 million to spend and get rid in a couple of years, then rinse and repeat.
Look at our full-time post-Fergie appointments: Moyes, LvG, Jose, Ole, ETH. There's literally no commonality with any of them. The most ludicrous change was going from LvG to Jose, from a stylistic perspective.
We have had zero footballing structures in place with qualified personnel, for at least a decade now. That's why we have gone through a list of utterly random managers and players. We have been nothing other than directionless, which has led to us spend a billion odd quid in a decade with minimal success. On Saturday, we lined up with a random set of players who were either youth products, or acquired across 4 different managerial regimes. It's madness.
Honestly, it's been a farcical decade. Fans have clung onto vague notions that 'x' or 'y' manager would be the one, when in reality, they all achieved very little.
We will be stuck in this expensive barron wasteland until we change our sporting structure and actually strive to be a serious club again.
People saying there is no alternative need to get their heads checked.
The power and time you are given at Utd (from both fans and board) is something a manager will die for. Our managers have pretty much been given the powers of a CEO that they can sign and sell anyone. The only complain our managers can have (and that too just Mou and Ole) is that certain commercial signings were made during their time which possibly led to their downfall
The power and time you are given at Utd (from both fans and board) is something a manager will die for. Our managers have pretty much been given the powers of a CEO that they can sign and sell anyone. The only complain our managers can have (and that too just Mou and Ole) is that certain commercial signings were made during their time which possibly led to their downfall
I think Xabi would absolutely be a top manager for us if we had the right scouting and technical setup. Which we don't.
I'd also worry about the siren song of Madrid calling for him. Unless you're a Barsa/Bilbao boy, that's a hard call to ignore.
Rumour is he's Madrid bound.
But then you would really just be making excuses for 2 failed managers.
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