Why did our football peak during lockdown?

Steve 007 said:
Anthony gets a lot of stick but I’d argue Pogba was our worst signing ever. Payed a world record fee for someone we let go for nothing and he probably had 5 good games where he justified his fee.
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Mental illness

 
Steve 007 said:
This is nonsense. Pogba played for years and apart from the odd moment was rubbish. Martial never ever reached his potential. Matic had one good season for us.

One of the reasons we did well during covid was because all the teams played like training matches. This would have suited Pogba and co.. effort was never his strongpoint.

Anthony gets a lot of stick but I’d argue Pogba was our worst signing ever. Payed a world record fee for someone we let go for nothing and he probably had 5 good games where he justified his fee.
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If ever there was proof that media narrative and discourse influences public opinion, then this statement is it.
 
Steve 007 said:
This is nonsense. Pogba played for years and apart from the odd moment was rubbish. Martial never ever reached his potential. Matic had one good season for us.

One of the reasons we did well during covid was because all the teams played like training matches. This would have suited Pogba and co.. effort was never his strongpoint.

Anthony gets a lot of stick but I’d argue Pogba was our worst signing ever. Payed a world record fee for someone we let go for nothing and he probably had 5 good games where he justified his fee.
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You don’t deserve nice things if you want to argue something so moronic. You deserve a team of Sancho’s.
 
horsechoker said:
I don't think we'd have won the league that season but we'd have probably finished top 4 again without Ronaldo. Pogba and Varane's injuries, Greenwood from January, Cavani not interested and Sancho not materialising would probably have left us muddling through anyway.

It would have been interesting where Ole would have been had he finished top 4 again. Would the board have kept him on? Probably, but with ten Hag (don't at me) looking promising we may have gone with him anyway.

Had we not signed Ronaldo also, it's possible we would have signed an attacker in January as Cavani had checked out so we might have got lucky like we did with Fernandes.
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Cavani checked out because we signed Ronaldo, who was basically his replacement.
 
elmo said:
Cavani checked out because we signed Ronaldo, who was basically his replacement.
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Then it says he had the wrong mentality. It was Ronaldo sure but it wasn't prime Ronaldo. If it had been the other way round, I think Ronaldo would have worked hard to prove "I'm the main man".
 
horsechoker said:
Then it says he had the wrong mentality. It was Ronaldo sure but it wasn't prime Ronaldo. If it had been the other way round, I think Ronaldo would have worked hard to prove "I'm the main man".
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This is the guy who rowed with Neymar over being the main man for PSG
 
HJ12 said:
If ever there was proof that media narrative and discourse influences public opinion, then this statement is it.
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No.
I think people forget things easily
We hammered Southampton 9
Leeds got hammered 4
We were 2-0 down a few times , and I remember we won 3- 2
Pogba, Greenwood,Rashford, Martial and Bruno caused havoc in counters
that Newcastle goal that Bruno scored .. I don't think we will score that goal with the current team/manager
We had 4 strikers .. Cavani scored a goal from halfway
I don't think anybody in our team can score a goal like that right now..
Players are trash
Coach is worse
 
horsechoker said:
Then it says he had the wrong mentality. It was Ronaldo sure but it wasn't prime Ronaldo. If it had been the other way round, I think Ronaldo would have worked hard to prove "I'm the main man".
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He wanted to leave originally to play in another league but we convinced him that we had big plans for him only to sign Ronaldo and strip him of the number 7.

He was basically conned into re-signing.

Ronaldo’s mentality? Have you forgotten how he orchestrated his way out of our club? Ronaldo is professional until he doesn’t have his way and starts being like a spoilt brat.
 
The_Midfielder said:
No.
I think people forget things easily
We hammered Southampton 9
Leeds got hammered 4
We were 2-0 down a few times , and I remember we won 3- 2
Pogba, Greenwood,Rashford, Martial and Bruno caused havoc in counters
that Newcastle goal that Bruno scored .. I don't think we will score that goal with the current team/manager
We had 4 strikers .. Cavani scored a goal from halfway
I don't think anybody in our team can score a goal like that right now..
Players are trash
Coach is worse
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Dont forget the rashford goal vs sheffield united

Current rashford stops and passes back into midfield
 
HJ12 said:
If ever there was proof that media narrative and discourse influences public opinion, then this statement is it.
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Some of us have been lucky enough to have watched Utd all through the 90s from when the class of 92 came through.

I’ve seen a midfield Scholes and Keane Beckham and Giggs. I’ve seen Butt and Ince run their socks off. It’s no media narrative to be annoyed with an overhyped and overpriced Pogba throwing his arms everywhere and looking knackered and like he couldn’t be bothered every time he had a run that didn’t come off. Thinking he was worth a record fee just bemuses me. Him thinking he could have got in the Real team makes me laugh. If you ask me which player didn’t reach his potential in that team I’d probably say that the player who did have it but couldn’t rise to it was Martial.
Let’s compare the impact of Bruno and Pogba. Bruno also has terrible body language and attitude sometimes but at least he’s a good player who’s done things for us.
 
Rashford, Martial, Greenwood and Bruno were all in fine attacking form. First Premier League team ever to win 4 straight games by 3 goals or more. I don't know if that record's been broken since then.

I thought we'd build on it. It was the first time I thought we had a core capable of competing for the title.

We never took that next step for a variety of reasons.
 
Would Ole succeed if he took the United job right now? We finally have Ugarte, the type of midfielder he desperately needed.
 
Steve 007 said:
Some of us have been lucky enough to have watched Utd all through the 90s from when the class of 92 came through.

I’ve seen a midfield Scholes and Keane Beckham and Giggs. I’ve seen Butt and Ince run their socks off. It’s no media narrative to be annoyed with an overhyped and overpriced Pogba throwing his arms everywhere and looking knackered and like he couldn’t be bothered every time he had a run that didn’t come off. Thinking he was worth a record fee just bemuses me. Him thinking he could have got in the Real team makes me laugh. If you ask me which player didn’t reach his potential in that team I’d probably say that the player who did have it but couldn’t rise to it was Martial.
Let’s compare the impact of Bruno and Pogba. Bruno also has terrible body language and attitude sometimes but at least he’s a good player who’s done things for us.
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Agreed on the midfield of the 90's. I was also lucky enough to watch them play, and would never put Pogba in the same bracket of our 90's legends. My reply was in reference to a previous poster's comment that Pogba was our worst signing ever - that's a highly questionable statement.
 
HJ12 said:
Agreed on the midfield of the 90's. I was also lucky enough to watch them play, and would never put Pogba in the same bracket of our 90's legends. My reply was in reference to a previous poster's comment that Pogba was our worst signing ever - that's a highly questionable statement.
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No signing of ours could ever be as much of a disaster as Alexis Sanchez.
 
Sir Erik ten Hag said:
Would Ole succeed if he took the United job right now? We finally have Ugarte, the type of midfielder he desperately needed.
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Sadly not. Would be liked by the players but never feared and respected enough ie insufficient aura/too nice. The most ruthless finisher on the pitch but not sufficiently ruthless off it. Too loyal to the club and its players for his own and their good. Elite players/businessmen would, at times, take advantage of his inherent deceny.
 
Skills said:
Ole inherited the most talented/capable squad out of all our managers.

Rashford, Greenwood, Martial, Pogba and then we added Bruno Fernandes soon after. That was a very capable attacking outfit.

The crazy thing was that, despite all that attacking talent he was still so incompetent that we only ever scored a maximum of 73 league goals under him - a total that was bettered by 7 clubs in the league just last season.

Soon after him, his mismanagement (especially with injuries) permanently damaged potentially 3 of those players.
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....Sorry, what? That squad, especially before Bruno was brought in, was full of holes and clearly not competitive. I for one didn't think at the time it was realistic to expect them to seriously compete for top 4. Which indeed they didn't, until Bruno arrived. Greenwood hadn't even made his debut when Ole took over. Midfield was thin to say the least, there was no one capable of functioning as the creative hub in the midfield, the defence was hardly even mediocre.
 
Without a crowd there’s less pressure. These players have mentality issues.
 
Ole had some attacking options: Pogba, Bruno, Greenwood, Martial and Rashers but it's not for nothing we had to sign Cavani, Oghalo and Ronaldo.

We scored but rarely definitively.

This is because our midfield was invariably McFred, with Maguire and Lindelof behind them. He sacrificed our defensive spine in the name of attack.

This meant we would score but concede in equal
measure. Waste chances and go behind, chase matches. Then we'd trash whoever and lose at home to Sheffield United.

The pro-Ole nostalgia burst is because we are still mentally weak, defensively porous and profligate with our chances.
 
Combination of things; less pressure, Rashford was much better then, obviously the RW at the time was much better offensively than what has come after him and we had older but formerly elite strikers.

My question is why people think that was the peak? The best we’ve consistently played re counter football was the Jose second season - multiple games winning with a lot of goals, generally a lot better defensively and we basically had 2 terrible results (Huddersfield and WBA) all season. Conceded 28, scored 68 and never got turned over badly once - our worst loss all season was 0-2 away to Spurs and that the stupid Eriksen goal and an o.g.
 
A lot of people ignoring that we were already in decline at the end of the season, playing poor and struggling. Teams just adapted to us, we were not doing anything great, we were just different and that doesn't last long.
 
DJ_21 said:
Without a crowd there’s less pressure. These players have mentality issues.
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This 100%. I thought the same at the time too. Obviously we'll never know but I just can't see that squad going 29 games unbeaten away from home if crowds were in. Or even anywhere close to.
 
Hammondo said:
A lot of people ignoring that we were already in decline at the end of the season, playing poor and struggling. Teams just adapted to us, we were not doing anything great, we were just different and that doesn't last long.
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Absolutely. It just wasn’t sustainable and it eventually caught up with us. We came back from goals down so many times with bursts of 5/10 mins of some really good stuff.

There was always gonna come the time where those bursts didn’t happen and the comebacks disappeared. It was why so many were mentioning ‘patterns of play’ over ‘individual moments FC’.

Those clamouring for Ole this last couple of weeks forget this. Some brilliant moments no doubt, but some big caveats throughout and shouldn’t be seriously considered.
 
Swedish_Plumber said:
Absolutely. It just wasn’t sustainable and it eventually caught up with us. We came back from goals down so many times with bursts of 5/10 mins of some really good stuff.

There was always gonna come the time where those bursts didn’t happen and the comebacks disappeared. It was why so many were mentioning ‘patterns of play’ over ‘individual moments FC’.

Those clamouring for Ole this last couple of weeks forget this. Some brilliant moments no doubt, but some big caveats throughout and shouldn’t be seriously considered.
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Throughout history, Manchester United seems to be a club that thrives on "memorable moments", instead of detailed pattern of plays (The Barca, Ajax...of this world) though.
 
Sir Erik ten Hag said:
Throughout history, Manchester United seems to be a club that thrives on "memorable moments", instead of detailed pattern of plays (The Barca, Ajax...of this world) though.
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Sir Alex had a way of playing that meant we consistently won. It wasn’t individual moments that lead us to 13 league titles and so much more on top.

When playing poorly it was the mentality of the team that helped create such memorable moments. That comes from management and recruiting the right men for the job too.
 
Swedish_Plumber said:
Sir Alex had a way of playing that meant we consistently won. It wasn’t individual moments that lead us to 13 league titles and so much more on top.

When playing poorly it was the mentality of the team that helped create such memorable moments. That comes from management and recruiting the right men for the job too.
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But maybe part of the reason we didn't do as well in Europe as we should have.
 
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