Would anyone explain why this season all went to hell?

Someone said:
Spot on. In addition I believe that having a short term manager for the rest of the season had a negative impact. I appreciate the input Ralf will have about the team, but I think players were never going to full embrace someone they know won't be here for long. It also meant no investment in jan, and no long term decisions can be made about any player.

The whole thing was a recipe for disaster.
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Of course its not spot on. If that was the main issue, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for a good interim manager to lift the club - but it's actually got worse under Rangnick after a decent start.

Right now - the main problem is that we have some players who doesn't want to play for Rangnick and some players who are so low on confidence. The only way to restore confidence is to work twice as hard and win matches. But when you have players who are both low on confidence and dont want to work - then you have a problem.
 
We don’t build teams. We buy incompatible players. We ignore the massive hole in our midfield.
 
Lazy spoiled players.
Buying names instead of needed players.
Think TH is last hope. If he fails then I do not see any solution.
If he does not get full control to get the players he want and to kick the ones that will work against his projekt, then it will be same same for us
 
  1. The squad wasn't good enough to begin with. They were overpaid and overrated, and didn't even get enough game time. They were low on morale. None of these players were moved on and we added Varane, Sancho, Ronaldo to the mix to create a bloated underperforming squad.
  2. Not a balanced squad. We desperately needed a DM "last season" - didn't even sign one this season.
  3. Mixture of players not suited to a particular style.
  4. Firing of a manager of 3 years and hiring one completely opposite to previous manager's philosophy.
  5. Poor man management and tactics by interim manager.
  6. Losing a striker in Greenwood.
  7. Rift and cliques in the dressing room.
  8. Slowly losing confidence since Liverpool thrashing in October.
 
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Years of uncoached players, unhappy bench players, out of form starters and new tactics which exposed the starters. Also, unreasonable hopes and expectations, due to not understanding our previous luck.

We were out of the title race from February last year. We didn't dare to attack Liverpool when they couldnt score a goal and their whole defence was out. We played a final of 120 minutes and didn't make a single change. Yet, people believed that we could challenge for the title?
 
I actually think we should explore the legal possibilities of holding both Jim Lawlor and Marcel Bout to account, suing them for dereliction of duty. They were responsible for vetoing Ralf’s urgent plea to dip into the January transfer market. They’re the chief culprits in my opinion and partly the reason why we’re stuck with a dysfunctional squad of players on enormous contracts.
 
RopersReturn said:
I actually think we should explore the legal possibilities of holding both Jim Lawlor and Marcel Bout to account, suing them for dereliction of duty. They were responsible for vetoing Ralf’s urgent plea to dip into the January transfer market. They’re the chief culprits in my opinion and partly the reason why we’re stuck with a dysfunctional squad of players on enormous contracts.
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How, as supposed professionals, did those guys look at the January transfer market and not find ONE player that could have improved us? Madness.
 
Cantonagotmehere said:
Greenwood. For me that is when it went to utter shite. At least we could have watched him grow and see Ronaldo in red again as well. ETH would have been announced and we could have dealt with it.
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That certainly killed my optimism. I thought he was the one bright spark in this hellish season. One of the very few reasons to tune into our games. Such a massive shame.
 
We went into this season yet again existing as a football club in a time warp without a structure, style, identity and philosophy, thus retaining a bloated squad of misfit players who are either not good enough technical footballers and/or don’t know their purpose within the team and squad. The managers debacle has just amplified this.
 
Because the club gave up on the season in October. That's why.
 
The Owners.
David Moyes. A terrible appointment, we have been playing catch up ever since.
Pogba.
Maguire .
Last year’s position was totally false.
The Owners.
 
So many reasons:

1. Not buying the CDM we needed in the summer
2. Lot of fringe players who should not be in that dressing room. Doesnt help the overall morale
3. Lack of leadership from Maguire on and off the pitch. Ronaldo presence probably a reason
4. Poor board decisions in delay to sack Ole and then replacing him with a temporary manager who no one respects and doesnt command anything in the changing room as he is a temporary fix
5. Letting go off whole backroom staff, lost any consistency we had at the club
6. England players coming back after the world cup have been absolutely horrendous (Maguire, Shaw, Rashford)
Sancho been meh!!
 
The sickness started when the Glazers gave basicall6 sole control of the club to an overrated merchant banker who had arranged for them to,but the club with no,outlay, and receive ongoing dividends while watcn8ng the asset increase in price.

With absolute no football knowledge Woodward proceeded to staff the place with similar cronies, despite acknowledging this weakness the signings were made on the basis of media profile, and managers were hired similarly for their profile not style of play.

To believe basically more than 10 years of abject club and player building neglect will be turned around with absent owners, and the shuffling of the deck chairs in the front office, good luck.

ETH will need to see off a few people In high places and reinvigorate the club form the bottom up, take no notice of past academy graduates and make hard nosed decisions on retention, and move away from splash signings to a more rigid will they fit my style regime. Let’s hope the future is brighter than watching Woodward and Judge stumble around, briefing the Glazers when they had no substance or idea. Tomorrow hopefully is the start of a new Man Utd.
 
This season is the manifestation of 10 years of mismanagement by Woodward

It’s still amusing all the same to see the lack of Ralf Rangnick’s name in this thread though, that fella is made of Teflon.
 
Too many egos, too big of a squad poorly utilised with many being promised game time under ole if they stayed and then were betrayed, too many players on their last year, trying to fit square pegs in round holes, lack of ambition in terms of managers we had (ole could not take us any further and was a serial bottler and ralf is not a good manager and way past it).

Oh and fergie comments undermining ole's team selection going public didn't help either.
 
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RR was just a terrible choice. Should have let Carrick take the interim job. And no, I don't think Carrick would have saved our season but RR was just waaay too out of his depth. He may be a good manager but not in a team full of stars such as ours...
 
So many good answers so far. But imo the arrival of Ronaldo and Greenwood's charge have been the biggest two factors.

The arrival of Ronaldo fecked up the whole dressing room dynamics. I still remember how the caf talking about our togetherness and how likable our squad was last season. There's even a number of threads about that. Now all that is gone. Basically the whole caf hate the current squad. And they seem to hate each other too. The moment Ole subbed Cavani off for Ronaldo in the Everton match I knew Ole was doomed and this season would be a disaster.

Tactically it's impossible to have a logical and suitable game plan with Ronaldo against the top teams. You can't play counter attack because his pace is gone. He still can be quite fast in a short distance but in medium/long distance he simply can't keep his top speed against the top defenders. You can't play high pressing. Our fullbacks can't cross. Our midfield can't keep nor pass the ball.

Then the Greenwood's charge just killed everything left.

I don't know what's next but if ETH has to play Ronaldo too and won't be allowed to sign at least a new striker next season then my guess is next season gonna be the same. Tbh I don't look forward to next season at all.
 
Yeah all Ronaldo fault isn’t it? Christ, the problem is the coaching, the poor signings ie maguire awb, the lack of recruitment in midfield, in my opinion next season will be a lot better, we will have a system a good manager not ole, signings that fit the system, the likes of Pogba lingard Cavani all shifted, yesterday was embarrassing but hardly evidence of next season, half the players won’t be there, we will be okay, I had to reply to this because it’s a load of crap

Nordmore said:
So many good answers so far. But imo the arrival of Ronaldo and Greenwood's charge have been the biggest two factors.

The arrival of Ronaldo fecked up the whole dressing room dynamics. I still remember how the caf talking about our togetherness and how likable our squad was last season. There's even a number of threads about that. Now all that is gone. Basically the whole caf hate the current squad. And they seem to hate each other too. The moment Ole subbed Cavani off for Ronaldo in the Everton match I knew Ole was doomed and this season would be a disaster.

Tactically it's impossible to have a logical and suitable game plan with Ronaldo against the top teams. You can't play counter attack because his pace is gone. He still can be quite fast in a short distance but in medium/long distance he simply can't keep his top speed against the top defenders. You can't play high pressing. Our fullbacks can't cross. Our midfield can't keep nor pass the ball.

Then the Greenwood's charge just killed everything left.

I don't know what's next but if ETH has to play Ronaldo too and won't be allowed to sign at least a new striker next season then my guess is next season gonna be the same. Tbh I don't look forward to next season at all.
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Lots of reasons but I think big ones are Rashford and Sancho missing pens for England and getting abuse from everyone. Their form has been dreadful this season.
Greenwood not being available! Left a massive hole in the team.
Maguire having a nightmare season.
If I'm honest I think Utd losing on pens last season was just the breaking point for everyone.
 
Our league positions with Ole in charge have been the biggest flukes ever and had nothing to do with us being decent, it all had to do with other teams like Liverpool having an extremely bad seasons by their standards. If you watched our games you could see that it was not sustainable as we were pretty much always outplayed by literally everyone. You just knew that if Bruno stopped scoring goals and carrying the team on his own in every game, we are fecked. Unsurprisingly that's what happened. Ole was clueless and the longer he stayed the more damage he did. Then when we finally replaced him, which was long overdue, we got someone just as bad as him. I never understood the hype around Rangnick, father of gegenpressing or not, his career has been mediocre.
 
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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Still said even with them we greatly lack quality in midfield and threat down the sides
 
Its a good question, as this is easily one of, if not the worst season in the past decade.

The attitude of the players has hit an all time low for me. Pretty no much confidence, no fight and no cohesion. In past seasons we had one or two leaders who could step up and bring the fight back to our opponents. It's a sad situation to be in, and ETH has one monumental task of getting this club into shape.
 
hobbers said:
We were second last season because Chelsea and Liverpool had nightmare seasons. We finished with 74 pts. We were shit, just less shit.

The reason we are where we are is Ole built a team around Maguire, AWB, Shaw, McTominay and Rashford and they’re all either shite or had shite seasons. And all the squad players are either justifiably pissed off and/or toxic characters.
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Good to hear people acknowledging that second place was down to Chelsea capitulation under Lampard and the scousers missing Van Dijk for months
 
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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This is close to my thinking. However, I don't know how RR steers us out of this mess as a consultant with little authority. And the fact he has been a terrible manager will not help him convince others in the organization to follow his advice. I really hope ten Hag, as part of his contract, is given a large say in all matters football. Otherwise, we'll just keep making poor decisions with the latest the hiring RR as interim manager.
 
cabbs1989 said:
Yeah all Ronaldo fault isn’t it? Christ, the problem is the coaching, the poor signings ie maguire awb, the lack of recruitment in midfield, in my opinion next season will be a lot better, we will have a system a good manager not ole, signings that fit the system, the likes of Pogba lingard Cavani all shifted, yesterday was embarrassing but hardly evidence of next season, half the players won’t be there, we will be okay, I had to reply to this because it’s a load of crap
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No of course it's not all his fault. I only said those were the two biggest factors.
 
I think there are some similarities between a large group of fans, and a large group of players. And that is entitlement. Living on past glory, not being able to recognise what work they need to put in, or where we are.
we still have a large group of players to offload. And could do well without a big fraction of our fans.
 
haru krentz said:
NOT at all. if anything I'm suprised many here thought Ralf was an excellent coach. His Schalke's side got done in 2 legs by SAF's united which features the likes of Anderson and Gibson.
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Even though I do agree with your other points, losing to Sir Alex when the quality of our team was poor, does not necessarily mean that you're a bad coach. Sir Alex beat Wenger 2-0 with this team:

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That midfield was horrific. He also beat him 8-2 with Cleverly and Anderson in midfield. I'm pretty sure most of us agree that Wenger was an excellent coach. Sir Alex was a magician that could win with lower quality players. I'm not trying to say that Rangnick is good, but I think your example as to why he's a bad coach isn't good.
 
The optimist inside me hopes the capitulation was the required precursor to fundamental change.

All the posts about Ralf being a crap appointment completely miss the mark. That, I hope (I did say optimist), was to set him up for his next role. Which is to drive change. His job wasn’t to come in and get us to win. And that’s actually a good thing in the long run.

If we are talking about why it went wrong overall, I would say a combination of false expectations (meaning we are judging against a bar which wasn’t ever realistically achievable) due to the illusion of our 2nd place finish last year, a fundamentally poor transfer window (yet although somehow better than the last few years, failed to address our number 1 weakness), and finally seeing the effects of an experienced coaching staff and manager.
 
rpitroda said:
All the posts about Ralf being a crap appointment completely miss the mark. That, I hope (I did say optimist), was to set him up for his next role. Which is to drive change. His job wasn’t to come in and get us to win. And that’s actually a good thing in the long run.
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I fully agree with this. I‘m still disappointed because I thought he‘d be able to have us in the top 4, but I think he‘s the least of our problems. I‘m very happy with the way he stirs shit. He has been worth it just for highlighting some of the dirtbags in our squad. He seems blunt, analytic, and is pulling everybody out of their comfort zone. If Ralf had been popular with the players and been a bit more successful, would we be on the fringe of change? Or would we have tried to get by with him in charge?

I think he has broken us beyond repair and I think it‘s a good thing. We are forced to rebuild. Truth hurts and many of us are hurting now, but I‘ll happily have a season or two out of Europe if we get to completely reset.

The real problem this season as others have already pointed out, is that we were winning against all odds under Ole, then we had our downswing where we missed every open goal in sight and now we are performing to our true capabilities with this ridiculously poorly balanced squad in addition to bad attitudes and poor morale. We are paying the short-term price for long-term mismanagement on so many levels.
 
A lot of you keep repeating you were second last season but I always thought you were wank under Ole the few matches I would watch in UCL or in the league here and there. So it most likely was an illusion and the best it could get. To be fair the team was already relying on outdated tactics and lagging behind since the last seasons with Ferguson, so there's that and some of your managers have also complained about the lack of structure within the club and how the old fashioned ways it has been run.

To make things worse the current coach has been undermined like no one other, couldn't make any signings, everyone knew he wasn't going to be managing beyond the remainder of the season and his style and methods clashed with the lax culture ingrained by Ole and the club. You have a lot of players who have won nothing on huge wages and the list could go on; it's a mess top to bottom.

Not gonna lie, I always thought the club was one of the worst top clubs currently that was regressing/stagnating each season under Ole but it seems the team has reached a new low, which is a feat on itself. There were some external factors as well but the positive thing, if you want to look it that way, is that it doesn't seem it can only get better from now on, right?

At least it appears the club is committed to developing a progressive football style and hopefully with this season the club has identified the players that need to leave and will fully support the new manager. It can still take a while to challenge for a major title but sometimes it takes a season this bad to get a reaction and do what it's necessary.
 
Ole was an outdated and quite frankly limited manager. That reflected on his tactics who were, for most of the time, counter attacking football that relied heavily on individual brilliance to score. This tactic forced Ole to keep as many attacking players around as possible as he simply couldn't afford bad form. If a player is injured then he needed to be quickly replaced by someone who could pick up the tab and create magic. This lead to Ole promising alot to everyone which in turn would come back to bite him and us throughout the season

This tactic served him well for quite some time but was starting to look predictable towards the end of last season. Thus why Ole tried to switch it to a more attacking football with Sancho and Ronaldo. Varane and Telles were meant to add much added pace to a defence that was set to start playing with a high line, Sancho was meant to stretch defences from a much unutilized right flank while Ronaldo was meant to score goals. That backfired spectacularly. Varane was injury prone and couldn't possibly carry a defence that was built around a low backline. Ole's overutilization of Rashford meant that the guy was burnt out which meant that Sancho would be needed on the left thus not creating the width we needed on the right. Meanwhile Ronaldo dropped in a somehow complacent and lazy United dressing room like a bomb thus disrupting a rather complacent United built around good vibes. Our CM was already weak at it is, it certainly couldn't afford a 37 year old strolling upfront and demanding high level passing.

It became quite obvious that Ole would not keep his promises to players which added dissent towards him and the club. He was replaced by Rangnick, a no nonsense type of manager, who had no experience dealing with huge egos and who utilized a style of football which played against our weaknesses (ie workrate and a pacey defence). This added fuel to the fire which lead to this mess.

Bottom line of the story. You don't give an amateur level manager 420m+ to spend + you don't hire a temporary manager whose style of football is built around your weaknesses rather then your strengths.
 
People underestimate or don't appreciate the psychological damage the first half of the season did. The team is fecking fragile.

Ralf came in and at least solidified them for a bit, but once City carved us open again at the Etihad they were never going to recover.

There's a reason the likes of Madrid, Bayern and co don't let their teams get humiliated week after week in the fashion we did until we finally sacked Ole. But the ship had well & truly sunk by then.

It's why I'm worried about next season now. We might have finally landed a good manager but we're going to give him an incredibly fragile team.
 
We were only challenging last season as Liverpool had major injuries and Chelsea were poorly managed for the first half of the season an dplayers not settled and the covid seemed to benefit us behind closed doors.

We made three quality signings when we needed 5 that summer, the failure to sign two central midfielders convinced me we wouldnt compete as predicted. Add alll the negativity and Greenwood situation, they are the main reasons among many more for me why we have failed.

This summer we need 7 signings I feel, If we make 3/4 we are doomed to another season of failure I believe no matter who they are. We also NEED to rid the club of at least 10 players
 
Didn't we implode under Jose too in his final year (before Ole did well as Interim)? Chelsea under Mourinho too? I think there are clues there too as to why a group of decent/good players can under perform severely like we have.

  • A bad dressing room. This has become common knowledge and usually kills the team's collective effort as you tend to consistently come up against a more unified outfit that works harder for one another, even if some of them have less ability.
  • When you have high expectations - Ronaldo/Varane/Sancho after 2nd place and being the record PL title winners - and start poorly with everyone having huge question marks, it makes the whole season an uphill struggle.
  • Interim manager who stands for a style of football that is the polar opposite of what we've been doing the last 6 years. It's not as easy a switch as made out especially when the manager is temporary.
  • Complete individual collapse of the likes of Martial, Rashford and Greenwood has destroyed the only good thing we had going for us really.
  • Finally, Rangnick has been honest with the team and club's issues which can't have gone down well, and also he hasn't done a particularly good job as manager either following on from Ole's disaster show.
 
There's plenty of good points regarding the board and long term planning which of course contribute however football is played on the pitch and we've a big squad with plenty of talented players who should be achieving more than they currently are regardless of the state of the board

Main issue of course is we give up way too many chances, this began last season when we regularly conceded first and had to recover results from losing positions (and tbf we got away with it a hell of a lot). This continued at the start of the season too with Leeds and Newcastle having bags of chances in games we won. Defending is a team effort and our attackers are as much to blame as the defenders, we aren't compact enough, our strikers don't work hard enough off the ball, perhaps the Ronaldo signing contributed to this, sancho too maybe but ultimately this is a coaching issue and something the manager/a this season should've been able to address this instead it's been allowed to fester and actually get worse. RR keeps banging on about conceding less goals since his appointment but we've not stopped conceding chances - I've never seen a United side as open as this one

It's curious that perhaps our best defensive performance was likely spurs away under Carrick - we were noticeably compact, I remember Nev referring to it constantly during the game and it was a great away performance and an excellent result. That we were able to produce that immediately after Ole and the run of results he'd had showed these players aren't useless - what they are however is temperamental and clearly need a strong hand to lead them. Carrick may not have been an established manager but he's achievements in the game we're respected and I saw more in his handful of games and anything under Ole or RR this season.

Midfield or course is a massive issue and has been for years. Many here bemoan McFred but without them we're an even bigger shambles. Neither are good enough long term though so even though there were times last season they worked well once their form fell off this season all our chickens came home to roost, trying to shoehorn pogba in there made things even worse as he's probably the most defensively neglegant player in the squad. Midfield is called the engine room for a reason, it sets the tone and teams turn up against us and know they'll be able to dictate the game.

Finally momentum is huge in top level sport. Once the wheels started to come off we didn't do enough to correct it allowing the poor form to manifest and worsen. The compete and utter lack of effort on display over the 3 months has been a disgrace. The appointment of RR and all the narrative around it has only made things worse. Announcing an interim position essentially wrote the season off there and then, this coupled with the amount of players out of contract left the squad in a limbo with no motivation to get out of it.

I'm hanging on to some hope for next season though. If we get a bunch of midfield upgrades and ETH gets a shape back into the side I think we'll comfortably get CL and can go from there
 
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