Would anyone explain why this season all went to hell?

Really shit midfield and even the decent players dont fit well with each other.
 
CloneMC16 said:
Our 2nd place last season wasn't great. We played awfully in a good 70% of our games, but somehow kept coming back and winning them. No crowds massively helped this. We went the whole of last season not losing an away game. That never happens with crowds in the grounds. We only finished on 74 points. Liverpool and Chelsea had disastrous seasons. If they had more 'normal' seasons, at best, we'd have finished 3rd. The squad as a whole were better last season.

We didn't get the players that we really needed. We needed a defensive midfielder and right winger. We had players that weren't happy, but were kept at the club. We tried to play more attacking football. It massively failed. It then took way too long to sack Ole. He should have been sacked after the Liverpool game. I think some of the poorer performances at the start of the season really hit the players' confidence. There were way too many games where we almost abandoned defending. We got countered so easily. A big chunk of the goals we conceded were on the counter. I kept reading so many people saying that we're playing Fred and McTominay, so we we're being defensive. I must have been watching different games to them. Our whole team were pushed into the oppositions half in most games when we had the ball.

When Rangnick came in, we started to defend a bit better, but our finishing was absolutely dreadful. We went through a good couple months when our xG was looking good, but Ronaldo and Bruno were missing chances for fun. The manager can only do so much. I think losing Greenwood during this period really cost us. I think he would have played and scored some goals when Ronaldo needed a rest. After going out of the CL, I think the confidence was completely gone. The wheels have really fallen off since then. Any of the progress we made under Rangnick has gone.

A big issue is our key players have been woeful this season. Maguire, Shaw, Bruno, and Rashford. We count on them to perform and they've been nowhere near good enough.
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We did sign a right winger, RR's just chosen to play him exclusively from the left and tbh yes Ole should have gone after the Liverpool game but then RR coming in any sooner than he did wouldn't have made a jot of difference based on what we've seen since he has been here
 
Didn’t buy DM and CM
Persisted with Mctominay
Persisted with Maguire
Awful fullbacks
 
Unrealistic expectations at the start of the season after signing Ronaldo, a signing that compleatly unbalanced the squad and quite clearly sent the hierarchy of the dressing room into turmoil causing the morale and team spirit to fall apart and continue to spiral downwards.

Sacking the manager and having no clear plan what to do afterwards and throwing a really second rate manger into an interim posistion who missed the brief about improving the current group and making the best of this season and instead has made the whole situation worse and has blamed everyone but himself.
 
Agree 100%.

Ole probably got the best out of the team last season. The squad didn’t have more potential. Can’t believe some people blaimed Ole for bad possession play and that we didn’t control matches against the best teams. How on earth are we suppose to do that with players like McT, Fred and Matic witch are a light year behind players on City, Liverpool, Chelsea and even Arsenal.

United did a grande mistake when they didn’t buy one or two more world class central midfielders during Ole’s reign. If we did, we probably had been able to keep the momentum from last season and at least given Chelsea a good fight for the third place.

I don’t know if it was:
1. Ole who overrated our midfield players
2. United wasn’t able to attract the right players, example Camavinga, or
3. If Uniteds’s preferred targets weren’t available or was priced out, example Rice.

It’s unfair to blame Ole before we know why United failed to recruit midfielders last summer or before.
 
charlenefan said:
But to flip that we're having a nightmare season this year so you can't use it as a reason for our success last season and ignore it being a factor this

74 points isn't a bad return for a top 4 finish, the maximum Chelsea can get this season now is 76, the max Arsenal can get is 75. Will either side actually get maximum points? I doubt it so both might actually finish with less than that
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Because also Arsenal and Chelsea this season are trash.

74 points this season will be behind the champions by over 20 points.

How that's a good point value in the league?

Ole has managed 64 66 74 points.

Nothing extraordinary.

This season we can finish with 61 points, yes it's the lowest but it's in the range of 60 - 75 points which we've had since 2013.

Only Mourinho has had over 80 points in 9 years.

The problems have been systematic.

That's why we've not won anything major in the last 9 years and absolutely NOTHING in the last 5 years.

The problem is our "9 lives of a cat" are well and truly over.

Everything wrong we've done in the last 9 years has grown to what we have now.

Just like pregnancy, bad management can never be hidden forever.

The main thing is how do we move from here, selling around 8 players or papering the cracks again?
 
charlenefan said:
We did sign a right winger, RR's just chosen to play him exclusively from the left and tbh yes Ole should have gone after the Liverpool game but then RR coming in any sooner than he did wouldn't have made a jot of difference based on what we've seen since he has been here
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Ole mostly played him on the left as well. It makes sense him being on the left. Most elite teams are playing inverted wingers/wing forwards. Ole mostly played Greenwood on the right and Rashford/Sancho on the left. A left footed player for the right side would be nice. Yeah, Ralf likely makes no difference if he arrives earlier, but Ole still needed to be sacked. It put us in an even worse position. We had additional losses to City and Watford under our belts, and lower confidence levels.
 
We are miles behind City and were last season

Liverpool were fecked last year by their injuries and not having a crowd at Anfield

Chelsea rectified things under Tuchel and are deservedly ahead of us

Spurs got a world class manager in to save their season

Arsenal are benefitting from sticking with Arteta and committing to his project

We are deservedly behind the clubs we currently are, and if any had performed then the way they have this time around, I think there's a good chance we wouldn't have finished second.

On the fan note, I think we have a lot of players who play worse in front of crowds, which is largely the reverse for most PL footballers/clubs. Weak mentalities.
 
CloneMC16 said:
Ole mostly played him on the left as well. It makes sense him being on the left. Most elite teams are playing inverted wingers/wing forwards. Ole mostly played Greenwood on the right and Rashford/Sancho on the left. A left footed player for the right side would be nice. Yeah, Ralf likely makes no difference if he arrives earlier, but Ole still needed to be sacked. It put us in an even worse position. We had additional losses to City and Watford under our belts, and lower confidence levels.
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Nah you're reaching, as RR has proven he'd of made no difference in those games given his own hammerings to City/Liverpool and Brighton today. It was RR's job to turn confidence around and he's failed, like he has in every other conceivable aspect

As for Sancho he was brought as a RW, Ole in what part of the season he had barely played him anyway but when he did he did so (wrongly) from the left due to not having Rashford (injured) and Greenwood's good early form on the right.
 
hobbers said:
Yeh but just say we got 74 points and that was "okay".

Saying we finished second without context is just an insult to the effort Liverpool have put in this season, or City/Spurs etc have put in in previous seasons to be in second while in genuine title fights. We were never in a title fight last season, we melted as soon as anyone mentioned the possibility.
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Meh when City finished 2nd behind Liverpool they were never in a title fight
Spurs finished 3rd when they were in a title fight with Leicester

when the season ends you finish where you deserve to finish so last season the fact is we were the 2nd best team in the league, you can point to whatever circumstances other teams had to deal with but them the facts same as us this season we'll finish 6th or 7th there's circumstances behind that as well but it's where we deserve to be
 
Well it has been depressing as hell. But despite everything, it could have been worse.

It’s been a perfect storm of stuff going wrong but I think it is two main issues. First, we didn’t strengthen the parts of the team most in need over the summer. Then, after we rightly sacked Ole, we appointed an interim manager who was the wrong fit for the circumstances. That’s all it takes to go from decent to average.

If I’m right about that, our fortunes can be reversed with a new coach and a good transfer window. Yay!
 
Few things.

we weren’t as good as we thought last season. In the second half of the season Cavani Fred and Bruno basically carried us.

Cavani and Bruno have been in poor form this season. Cavani obviously unhappy too.

Ronaldo was the wrong signing for a club with low standards and I feel his arrival split an already vulnerable group of players.

Ole and his staff kept making the same mistakes though he had me fooled for a long time.

Greenwood and Rashford are overrated. It’s not and never will be a good enough attack to challenge for the league. They have major problems behind the scenes and don’t work nearly hard enough. Also throughly selfish players on the pitch

Varane not as good as expected and injured while Maguire and Shaw having the worst seasons imaginable

Our owners are terribly slow to fix anything and the fact they are absentee clearly doesn’t work for this organisation
 
Ronaldo’s signing was like the Jenga that caused it all to topple over. Ronaldo’s scored goals himself but the team has collapsed since he arrived. A horrible team spirit has formed, added Ronaldo, Varane and Sancho without letting players go. Keeping players against their will, then watching them leak to the press and ruin the squad. Then Rangnick has just added fuel to the flames. He hasn’t tried to unite and has only created further divisions.
 
I am shocked. Last season we could defend, but we have been awful this season.

Varane has been awful. Maguire even worse. Mctominay has declined as well.

Something is not right in the dressing room. If Ronaldo is the issue who knows or if it is Lingard etc.
 
I think signing Ronaldo and Sancho over a CM was a massive factor. It’s easy now to say if we didn’t sign Ronaldo where would the goals come from but the answers simple they’ll come from where they’d been coming from before. Even if we got Ronaldo the Sancho money could have got us a world class CM. That was our downfall.
 
We were second because Liverpool had injury crisis and Chelsea had a shit manager sacked midway in the season, so that's about last season. We weren't 2nd because we were top notch, for feck sake, we only gathered 74 points. The season before it we finished 3rd with 66 points, all indicating the low level quality of competition we were facing thanks to the oppositions conditions. This season was just back to normal.

With Ole in charge it was inevitable that we were going to implode at one point. There were ton of signs for this during his tenure, we points them ton of time but his cult were refusing to listen.

For many of us it was no shock or surprise. We saw it coming miles away.

The only surprising thing was Ralf turning out to be a shit coach as well.
 
Strelok said:
We were second last season. This season we're supposed to be even stronger with the arrival of Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo. Lot of talks about us challenging or even winning the PL before the season started.

Why and wth went so wrong in your opinion?
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We were extremely lucky to be second - Liverpool had a freak of a season where all their defenders seemed to break down, Chelsea focused on the cups and managed to win the Big Ears and Arsenal/Spurs seemed in transition. People who expected a jump after Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo with Ole at the wheel were naive imo
 
Suedesi said:
We were extremely lucky to be second - Liverpool had a freak of a season wher e all their defenders seemed to break down, Chelsea focused on the cups and managed to win the Big Ears and Arsenal/Spurs seemed in transition. People who expected a jump after Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo with Ole at the wheel were naive imo
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Well said. It's all about consisent quality of football and since it's never been there for years, the results from season to season are all over the place.
We don't have the basic baseline of football on which we can build and add some extra talents to shine to improve us. You don't build a solid house without good foundation
 
Suedesi said:
We were extremely lucky to be second - Liverpool had a freak of a season where all their defenders seemed to break down, Chelsea focused on the cups and managed to win the Big Ears and Arsenal/Spurs seemed in transition. People who expected a jump after Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo with Ole at the wheel were naive imo
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We may have been lucky to be second with Liverpool’s bad form but we were still the level of the average 3rd team in any season. There’s been a massive decline. We put it up to City in the games we played them under Ole and in almost all big games. This year we lost 15-1 on aggregate to Liverpool and City. You can’t compare.
 
Your guess is as good as mine, because there's no way we are as bad as league form suggests. This is why those who say we need a whole new team doesn't wash with me. Don't get me wrong, of course we need players. We'd need players if we won the league because you always want to try and improve the squad, but we have talented players in our squad, who are nowehere near the level they have showed in previous seasons. Hopefully, ten Hag can change that beause we're not getting a brand new team!
 
We were lucky last season there were no fans. We showed our identity when the fans came back, couldn't play when under pressure. Too many shit quality and shit mentality.
 
Last year we rode our luck loads of times.

So many turn arounds from being goals down was never going to be sustainable.

Our amazing away form carried us through the season - you have to say our players clearly thrived in the no crowd area for some reason compared to others.

As others have stated though clearly squad harmony got effected this season. Ronaldo arriving seems to have rocket the boat but I wouldn't blame him personally.
 
1. The poor coaching caught up with us and lack of a tactical game plan. 2nd last season was a fluke. How many games last year did we start slowly, give teams a headstart and have to come back in? Also got lucky on Liverpool/Chelsea having poor seasons with injuries/change of manager. Can't be relying on that to continue.

2. The toxic dressing room. Whether that be squad players who never got a chance or camps within the team. Equalling in an awful team spirit.

3. They clearly down tooled under Ralf and didn't want to put the effort in for an interim. Top 4 was still on the cards though but the final nail was the Greenwood situation just after Martial being loaned out, Cavani semi retiring and Rashford forgetting how to play football. Left us with a bare bones forward line... On top of that, Bruno out of form and we have bang average full backs and midfield.
 
My view is pretty simple.

Ole, upon having built a side that was the best in the world at counter attacking and very good at digging out results from losing positions, due to his naivety changed tried to change tactically to a style he wasn't equipped to coach. The man said "press them" against Liverpool ffs.

He made his position untenable in doing so, prompting an inexperienced setup to get in the Lokomotiv Moscow Sporting director as manager. The idea presumably being to get the father of gegenpressing to turn a side built for counterattacking to reverse its nature.

That led to the weakest 'new manager bounce' the world has ever seen, and just as it started to click, the events of January 30th killed the dressing room. The interim we hired began taking shots at the fractured team and eroded its confidence further, unto the point where either Ronaldo puts in a MOTM performance or we lose.
 
All the above and absolutely no luck what's ever.
When's the last time we scored a deflected goal or a goal like Tielemans goal or Rodrigos goal both crosses.
Of course when we had great players and great teams we made our own luck.
No leaders in the team and the real reason the players are not good enough.
 
We had/have a board that for years now base decisions on the commercial outcomes with a lack of football knowledge.

The board continually gave average players massive contracts, limiting our ability to move them on while also removing the financial incentive that would come from success.

The board encourage players to have a brand outside of football to further act as PR for the club, unknowingly sending the message to players that they have made it before they have done anything meaningful on the field.

They left the football management to a manager who got Cardiff relegated and then managed in Norway. Allowing him too much time to assemble a squad, deliver poor coaching and develop and entitled culture where players were bigger than the manager and club.

They continually retained a recruitment team who for a decade had only proven they can perform worse year on year.

They then hired a sporting advisor who hadn't managed in years as interim to the end of the season.

In January the board decided there was ZERO players on the market better than what we have already.

I think that about sums up the sins for this season. The only good things has been Rangnicks honesty, however I even see that losing impact now with each bad result damaging his credibility.
 
A) Summer was good, but not perfect. We needed a DM at least.

B) Last season, a number of top teams underperformed. We slightly over performed.

Ole mismanagemed the team. Overplayed some players, neglected others. When his plan A failed, he had no plan B. Morale dropped. Once that happened, we realised points a and b were true. Some players gave up. Even a new manager couldn't change the course. Greenwood news I think definitely affected us as well, but it wasn't the killer. That was failure to evolve after last season.
 
As a Milan fan I consider myself an expert on mismanagement and mediocrity.


The CR7 return reminded me of our Kaka return in 2013.
A purely nostalgic and idiotic decision which went against the values of the team that had previously managed to finish in top 3.
The 2012 Milan team was a youthful, energetic team which compensated what they lacked in experience and talent with sacrifice and a strong unit.
You were going for high press and then you signed a 37 year old Cristiano Ronaldo?

Another thing which reminds me of our decade long mediocrity is the constant change of systems or "tactical revolutions", new gimmicks.
A classic British manager in Moyes, 90s totaalvoetball with Van Gaal, then ultra pragmatism with Mourinho, "the United way" with Solskjaer, now gegenpressing with Rangnick, next season modern totalvoetball with Ten Hag?
It's as if the club is ruled by the dumber half of online communities, who can't look beyond hype and end product. The players and coaches that the club is signing are the ones that create most fan excitement, initially at least. Corporate people with no football vision.

I don't think you'll get out of this cycle until your upper management give the keys to proper technical directors with a vision that doesn't depend on fan sentiments.
Rangnick was never good as a coach, as Milan fan I'm glad we dodged that bullet. But he might be able to steer you out of this in an executive non-coach role.
 
didz said:
My view is pretty simple.

Ole, upon having built a side that was the best in the world at counter attacking and very good at digging out results from losing positions, due to his naivety changed tried to change tactically to a style he wasn't equipped to coach. The man said "press them" against Liverpool ffs.

He made his position untenable in doing so, prompting an inexperienced setup to get in the Lokomotiv Moscow Sporting director as manager. The idea presumably being to get the father of gegenpressing to turn a side built for counterattacking to reverse its nature.

That led to the weakest 'new manager bounce' the world has ever seen, and just as it started to click, the events of January 30th killed the dressing room. The interim we hired began taking shots at the fractured team and eroded its confidence further, unto the point where either Ronaldo puts in a MOTM performance or we lose.
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Can’t disagree with any of this really.
 
Strelok said:
We were second last season. This season we're supposed to be even stronger with the arrival of Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo. Lot of talks about us challenging or even winning the PL before the season started.

Why and wth went so wrong in your opinion?
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This is just a repeat of 17/18 and 18/19 under Mourinho.

When you’ve assembled a shit squad and an unsustainable style of football to go along with it, eventually the overperformance disappears and you get sth like this, not much more to read into it.

And we finished 2nd with one of the lowest point tally for 2nd place at least in the past 10 years or so (Chelsea 10/11 is the only one lower off the top of my head), got dumped out of the CL rather ignominiously, failed in the domestic cups and managed to bungle the EL final, so the cracks were already there.
 
wrepdrep said:
As a Milan fan I consider myself an expert on mismanagement and mediocrity.


The CR7 return reminded me of our Kaka return in 2013.
A purely nostalgic and idiotic decision which went against the values of the team that had previously managed to finish in top 3.
The 2012 Milan team was a youthful, energetic team which compensated what they lacked in experience and talent with sacrifice and a strong unit.
You were going for high press and then you signed a 37 year old Cristiano Ronaldo?

Another thing which reminds me of our decade long mediocrity is the constant change of systems or "tactical revolutions", new gimmicks.
A classic British manager in Moyes, 90s totaalvoetball with Van Gaal, then ultra pragmatism with Mourinho, "the United way" with Solskjaer, now gegenpressing with Rangnick, next season modern totalvoetball with Ten Hag?
It's as if the club is ruled by the dumber half of online communities, who can't look beyond hype and end product. The players and coaches that the club is signing are the ones that create most fan excitement, initially at least. Corporate people with no football vision.

I don't think you'll get out of this cycle until your upper management give the keys to proper technical directors with a vision that doesn't depend on fan sentiments.
Rangnick was never good as a coach, as Milan fan I'm glad we dodged that bullet. But he might be able to steer you out of this in an executive non-coach role.
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Good post. Quite an interesting thread this.
 
Last season’s result looked miles better than it was. We were nearly as poor as this but we had a fit squad that took advantage of empty stadiums and top teams in turmoil. This season, we have done nothing but maintain and probably decline whilst all those other teams have kicked on with full grounds and firing teams. Any negativity has been amplified by dreadful characters riddled throughout the squad
 
It's nothing to do with Ronaldo. That's just reductionist in the extreme. It would be so simple if we could just assign blame there, but it runs much deeper.

There's an argument that Ronaldo had been overplayed, that we put too much emphasis on him. His playing time should be managed. That's on the manager, not the player.

But signing a goat with impeccable standards is exactly what we should be doing, given the lack of character in this squad that has become apparent this season. If he put some noses out of joint then fair enough.

Cavani didn't want to be here. Greenwood blew it all. Rashford had dropped further in output. Martial gone. Sancho bedding in. Without Ronaldo we'd be even worse.
 
Tragedy in three acts

1. Ole assembled a horribly disbalanced team for the start of the season, ridiculously failing to sign a DMF and having too many choices on too many positions elsewhere (not qualitt choices, quantity)

2. Morale in the team went to shitter

3. They unacceptably delayed firing Ole, which made things worse and then hired a wrong interim manager that hasn't been able to steady the ship because he wasn't supported in the transfer window, is a temporary manager who the team doesn't respect, is a strange fella himself and honestly is more of a director of football than a manager, esp at this level.

All that said, the core issue is that we have a lot of irresponsible, not good enough players who are paid way too much and are arrogant beyond belief
 
kouroux said:
The two times in recent years we finished 2nd never felt like we were the 2nd best team in England to me
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We weren't.

Our 2nd half of 2017-2018 was terrible. It was obvious we stagnated under Mourinho and then were slowly declining while Liverpool were on the ascendency(making a CL final in the meantime).

We just haven't been good at all since SAF retired.
 
wrepdrep said:
As a Milan fan I consider myself an expert on mismanagement and mediocrity.


The CR7 return reminded me of our Kaka return in 2013.
A purely nostalgic and idiotic decision which went against the values of the team that had previously managed to finish in top 3.
The 2012 Milan team was a youthful, energetic team which compensated what they lacked in experience and talent with sacrifice and a strong unit.
You were going for high press and then you signed a 37 year old Cristiano Ronaldo?

Another thing which reminds me of our decade long mediocrity is the constant change of systems or "tactical revolutions", new gimmicks.
A classic British manager in Moyes, 90s totaalvoetball with Van Gaal, then ultra pragmatism with Mourinho, "the United way" with Solskjaer, now gegenpressing with Rangnick, next season modern totalvoetball with Ten Hag?
It's as if the club is ruled by the dumber half of online communities, who can't look beyond hype and end product. The players and coaches that the club is signing are the ones that create most fan excitement, initially at least. Corporate people with no football vision.

I don't think you'll get out of this cycle until your upper management give the keys to proper technical directors with a vision that doesn't depend on fan sentiments.
Rangnick was never good as a coach, as Milan fan I'm glad we dodged that bullet. But he might be able to steer you out of this in an executive non-coach role.
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Good post, I agree with this. Too many signings of 'names' rather than any actual consideration of the fit and style of play of the player, and the team we should try to build. Very few of our signings recently have been good - even this summer out of Ronaldo, Sancho and Varane I'd consider none of them really necessary or good value for the spend.

It's not really rocket science on how to build a good team but our higher ups really try to make it look so. Liverpool and Real for example provide a good template for the type of players you should sign for each position. Curiously what changed at Milan recently? Maldini being good or other people? I've been very impressed with the signings you've made recently, a lot of young and technical players like Leao etc. In my opinion if you guys manage to sign a good striker and a RW, and keep Kessie or sign a good replacement you have a team that could grow into a strong contender in Europe.
 
Group of players may be insufficient for a title race but it should do better. Manager is a theoretical and a *********** of football(no sarcasm), it might work at some environment where he is highly respected, but its clearly not enough to deal with players that are all internationals, despite how we rate them in this site.
 
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