One would better create a poll "Would you sack or keep Woodward?" I guess 
Would you sack or keep Ole? (Poll reopened)
- Thread starter MrSingh2002
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Sorry, what? Maguire is brilliant on the ball. There have been multiple games where Maguire has literally done the midfield's job because of how cack Fred was ahead of him. The number of times we've had to rely on him making the forward pass is shocking (and an indictment of our midfielders barring Pogba). As for defending, he's made a few errors, but he's been by far our best defender this season. Smalling made errors too - and contributed nothing barring last-ditch defending. His defensive prowess is unquestioned and not the reason for his falling down the pecking order. You need to look at all that is expected of a defender in the modern game though. Smalling ticks only a few of those boxes (similar way to how DdG's stock has been falling as the expectations from keepers are increasing).
Just because it's harder to offload Rojo, Jones and Bailly doesn't mean we offload our best CB at the time. Axel breaking through is an obvious plus for the club (even if he does seem a little injury prone) so who's to say a pairing of Axel and Smalling wouldn't be as good as what we have now? Axel is an obvious talent so maybe it would of been better to wait to see how a partnership was formed before blowing all our transfer money on Maquire.
Like I said before, our defence had some of the best numbers in the league until the implosion last season which was mainly due to Mou setting us up to fail and Ole not having the tactical awareness in organising the defence so it shouldn't have been our main priority. If we had of signed Maquire and /or a midfielder/forward then we wouldn't be having this conversation but as we didn't here we are.
It's true we're in the middle of a rebuild but the squad never should of been left so unbalanced. It's like putting 10 people in a dingy and telling them all to go over to one side and hoping the boat doesn't capsize but the way it's looking now is everyone of them are going to get wet.
Let's say instead of signing Maquire we signed someone like Ndombele. He's very good defensively and can actually run with the ball, great passer and can link with our forwards, something we don't have at the minute so then we'd have a player who could play in a multitude of positions instead of Maquire who only plays one and would automatically make us a more balanced team.
What impact has that passing had on the team, though? I said earlier in my post that signing a defender who can pass is pointless when you have only one midfielder who can pass. In regards to what you expect from an £80m defender, he has been average for me.
He very rarely runs forward with the ball, which is supposed to be a major asset of his. Passing for a defender is massively overrated; it only has worth when you have a set of midfielders that can pass, which we do not have. In the absence of such a midfield, it is his defensive contributions that need to be assessed the most. This side of his game is not really an improvement on Smalling, which makes him an average signing.
The improvement from Maguire is minimal and, at the moment, has not been worth anywhere near the investment. I feel Bissaka has more to do with our defensive improvement than Maguire does.
The Bissaka improvement is massive in defence. Bissaka has made more tackles this season than Young made in the whole of last season.
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Ummm... Most fans saw the issues at CB the summer before (2018) and the only question asked was about the quality of target. Sorry, but Smalling was good only for playing a low-block style and even there, having him at CB ensured we'd not be able to play out of defence. If you differ, that's your opinion - but I think the vast majority of people will tell you the same - that United desperately needed to upgrade CB and that Smalling's shortcomings on all but "aerial duels" and "last ditch tackles" meant that he should just not have been a first 11 player heading into the season.
On the midfielder - why is this is a trade-off? We aren't Arsenal. Also, we clearly just botched that in the market. Ole spent all summer telling the Press that we'd replace all outgoing players. Said it right until it started becoming apparent that we were struggling to even close the most obvious deals (Maguire for example) which is when he said we may not sign a midfielder, but would replace outgoing attackers...and we all know how that ended too.
Bottom line - we absolutely did need a new CB. We needed to upgrade on Smalling for sure. Our not signing a midfielder has nothing to do with Smalling leaving. Or should not have had anyway (a policy of "one signing will be worked on at a time" is bizarre and not something any professional organization should be planning for).
Different point, surely? If Maguire has not had an impact (debatable), that's probably down to one or both of:
1. Coaching / tactics
2. His own confidence in his partners
His success or failure / impact are not connected with the point of "did we need a new CB?"
We needed a new CB. Whether the one we signed is the right one - or whether he is succeeding is a different point altogether.
PS: Interestingly, some fans have slated him for missing some of our highest-xG chances to score. He's also come up with some field-splitting passes forward. For our CB to be expected to do it at both ends says a lot about the expectations he's carrying and how cack we are in midfield.
It's like people have forgotten how bad our defence has been the last few years - especially considering not even Jose himself could sort it out. Maguire's leadership at the back was worth the money - and will definitely be worth the money over the course of his contract. The alternative was what? Lets say £40m on Ake and £40m on Longstaff? Would we really be any better? We certainly wouldn't have leadership.
This is very important, it will be an utter disaster if we lose the potential to get a viable manager in the hope that Solskjaer can miraculously transition from a poor coach into a good one. I think Ole being sacked is the most realistic outcome it's more a question of when not if.
I posted another post about our midfield problems, and i am not going to bother quoting it, but basically smaller teams dont afford us any space whatsoever and for various reasons that makes our midfield utterly toothless. Mostly because without Pogba we cant transition fast enough from defense to attack and we lack someone who can unlock defenses. Against better teams we can pretty much bypass our midfield woes since James/Rashford is afforded plenty of space to operate in
I agree that we need to try something new though, but i dont think Greenwood is the answer, regardless of where we place him
Its funny that people are now claiming that our defence didn’t need improving that much as it had the best numbers in the league in 2017/18. I remember most of the posters at that time not crediting the improvement in defensive stats to Jose and claiming it was all due to David’s heroics. So which one is it? Or is it ok to change your tune just to vent against the manager ? Because from what I can see our keeper is worked much less than he used to be under LVG and Jose.
Oh, I've read that post and like I said before, there is no doubt in my mind that we have issues of quality. But that bolded part is the disappointing thing for me. Ole has known since last season about this issue. He had the whole of pre-season to see that too. And yet, even with a third of this season gone, we're not changing anything. We have no clear pattern of play in the attacking third, our passing makes even teams below us look better than us and our formation and tactics remain the same game after game after ruddy game. Nothing new at all is tried. Even more damning is how we fail to react even when opponents change formation / players. We stay stagnant and stubborn - which is why we suddenly stumble in the second halves of games even if we've dominated the opening 45. It points towards poor tactical / strategic thinking.
As for Mason not being the answer, that's still speculation, isn't it? He's not been tried at all - so who's to say? Don't think too many were clamouring for Brandon Williams to be pushed up either, but he's proving his worth (and still not making the PL first 11). For all you can say about Mason's youth / inexperience, how good has Pereira, Mata or Lingard been to deserve to continue being picked ahead of him?
I do agree that Smalling had very little composure on the ball but as a defender he was always pretty solid. I'm not denying we needed to sign a CB. What I'm saying is it shouldn't of been our main priority, especially the state our midfield was in, not having a productive RW and not having a proper number 9.
The club obviously knew in the summer exactly how much money they had to spend on transfers and at the time CB wasn't an obvious priority with us signing AWB to help shore up the defence and Axel coming through. All summer we were hearing of AWB and Maquire but not once was a midfield player mentioned and the only forward mentioned was Dybala. So it looked like the club had no intention of signing in these areas after spending that much on Maquire. It's not even a question in hindsight but if we went back to the summer who would you have preferred to have signed? AWB, James and Maquire or AWB, James and Ndombele? Knowing we had Axel coming through.
I'm not a great fan of Pogba but I can just imagine how he felt knowing that we didn't make any signings to help take the pressure off of him which signing a player like Ndombele would of done. It would of showed a sign of intent but ended up leaving us in the position we're in which is deep shit.
I suppose that's for me? And no I'm not venting against the manager. I'm just giving my opinion on why I think CB shouldn't of been the priority when we were weaker in other areas of the park.
You may be right about DeGeas heroics but what didn't help was having Darmian or Dalot or Young or valencia playing at RB the last few seasons and having Matic sitting in front of the back 4. It's not always because our CBs are shite.
We strengthened well in signing AWB so that obviously helps our defence and imo if we had of signed a player similar to Ndombele we would of been far better off in keeping with Smalling/Axel and Lindelof if the choice was between Ndombele and Maquire.
Signing both would of been perfect but as always with this club we do things in half measures.
It's a funny old game isn't it.
Looking at the season in 6 game intervals.
W-D-L
3-2-1 - pretty average start, not the worst
0-4-2 - terrible 6 games.
3-0-1 - things possibly changing?
We are very fickle fans sometimes. I think Ole needs to stay to keep going - we can't just keep changing managers.
Looking at the season in 6 game intervals.
W-D-L
3-2-1 - pretty average start, not the worst
0-4-2 - terrible 6 games.
3-0-1 - things possibly changing?
We are very fickle fans sometimes. I think Ole needs to stay to keep going - we can't just keep changing managers.
Those 3 wins were against a Norwich side gifting goals to every team, partizan in Europa league and a 2nd string Chelsea side in the league cup, then reality hit once again when we faced a decent Bournemouth side and even bigger worry is how even during our measly few wins the team is still massively struggling to score in open play like we have all season.
I see the Palace game. The Newcastle game. The Bournemouth game. I do not see one jot of change between those three "performances".
If results continue in this vain he has to go. It's indisputable.
Not particularly at you but the general sentiment that Ole made a huge blunder by prioritising Maguire over other needs.
Lets say we had got Ndombele, from whatever little I have watched of him, he isn’t particularly great defensively but adds some creativity. I don’t think it would have actually made much difference to our results. Without Pogba, a midfield of McT, Ndombele and Fred still doesn’t have enough creativity particularly with Martial missing. And arguably we would be worse of defensively with lack of Maguire’s presence in the box. With smalling in there, the midfield would have had to drop deeper to collect the ball due to Smalling’s inability to do anything useful with the ball.
All I am saying is this squad has gaping holes and unless we sign 2-3 first team players in a short period of time, we won’t really see much improvement in general play. We needed to have a big summer window with at least 5 first team players coming in but the board screwed up.
Yesterday I saw Juventus with all their midfield and attacking talent struggle to break down a dogged Lokomotiv defence. It took one moment of magic from Douglas Costa to unlock the defence and score. Unless we add more players like him, like prime Giggs/ Rooney /Ronaldo /Nani, we will always struggle to score against a low block. Sadly, there aren’t that many of these players that are readily available and we must bring them to this club whenever they become available, irrespective of budget/ immediate need etc. Thats what we should have done during SAFs last years, building from a position of strength so that we are not left with a huge void all of a sudden. The board handicapped him and his genius papered over the cracks.
Of course you can keep changing managers when the one you've got is clearly way below the needed quality?
"can't keep changing managers" is such a tired and pathetic excuse thrown out on here these days. You know what most top clubs do in the modern era? Keep changing managers.
I don't get this logic, If you let me handle the summer window I would have probably done even better as I would have bought bissaka, Maguire and Bruno Fernades instead of James (I know he looks great but we needed other positions more). He isn't playing good football and isn't getting results which is about 98% of a managers Job. He could have bought three absolute no bodies and if he was getting results and and playing decent football all three of those would be considered good signings eg, Wijnaldum, people laughed at Liverpoool when Klopp bought him.
Point being a manger should be judged solely by what goes on the pitch, and before you say his transfers are playing well and he just needs a few more, they weren't exactly cheap they cost the best part of 160 million. If he was any good he wouldn't need roughly 300-400 million just to challenge for top four with Arsenal Chelsea and Spurs.
I was really rooting for him and had high expectations going into this season but it's clear as day now he is out of his depth. I've come to terms with now and I'm looking forward to snapping up one of these young German coaches.
I will add that while he is charge I will hold hope he can turn it around and that I will look stupid for saying the above but after that Bournemouth game that fairy tale seems further away than ever, he can't even string two Prem wins together!
Personally I think CB was one of the areas we needed to improve the least when assessing the team overall. I was against the Maguire transfer purely because we had a lot of 6/10 maybe 7/10 CBs already and for £80m we were buying a very slight upgrade. He's our best CB but it's come at the cost of a more integral potential signing. Having said that, I'm sure Ole was looking at other players but the likelihood is many didn't want to come here so I don't really blame him for much transfer wise.
It's absolutely crazy and shows just how much bullshit is spoken on here that people are rewriting history and suggesting a CB wasn't desperately needed.
They didn't change though did they? the loss to Bournemouth put an end to that. That's 3 lots of 6 games back to back where he has been average at best if you want to break it down like that. Are we just going to keep giving him another 6 games after every batch of 6 poor/average games? where do you draw the line?
Everybody forgets last season, he has literally had one good spell which was about 7/8 good games and that was 90% because of Pogba playing like superman.
The main reason for my optimism going into this season was that I though he was going do all this fitness rubbish he was talking about and then he was going to build a team around Pogba like he did in the beginning where we looked rampant. Instead Pogba sits deep in midfield and we look awful as a whole with or without him.
I think the misuse of Pogba at the start of this season hasn't got the abuse it deserves. It was bizarre and frankly dreadful management, maybe he'd have realised it eventually and changed if Pogba had stayed fit, but he was badly wasting him.
I truly could not understand it one bit. When he first arrived, he declared he knew how to get the best out of Pogba. He actually played him further up straight away to great effect, with Pogba showing supreme form.
Why he would move away from that setup baffles me. Over the past few years, we played our best football with Pogba & Rashford/Martial linking up on the left. All that was missing was a RW to occupy defenders. Now that we got an actual RW in James, i thought we would be finally start to see some decent play. How wrong was i!?
It's not even like his defensive 4-2-3-1 system is the issue. Brazil under Dunga back in 2010 played a counter-attacking lop-sided 4-2-3-1 with Robinho, Kaka on the left. We could have recreated a variation of that maybe.
With his changes, we lost the attacking style that we were actually good at and have gained nothing in return.
Yeah I'm a national treasure. I make sure to CC Woodward everytime I post.
Depends who the 1 or 3 signings are, if we go for potential again any improvement probably won't come soon enough for those that already think Ole is out of his depth, get the right players in and who knows especially if Paul Pogba pulls his finger out once in a while.
And the belief i'd imagine comes from the fact Ole 'get's' the club, and that he's already made decision that will benefit the club going forwards that he knows he may not himself benefit from. That and because he's lovely.
This isn't specifically directed and you, but "pattern of play" must be the new buzzword at the Caf. What does it even mean? I get you can practice certain attacking moves in training and coaches can tell players to move into specific areas during certain situations, but this isnt chess. Anyone who has ever played football in any sort of organized capacity knows that directions and tactics are all well and good, but once you are on the pitch its ultimately the players who have to make the decisions, and you have to make them fast
That's why players with vision, awareness and "intelligence" are so sought after and highly valued because they can make those right calls regardless of who the manager is or what system they play in. Take players like Xavi, Iniesta and Pirlo for example, they would be amazing for their club teams but also look world class for their national teams, despite them only training together a couple of times yearly, and NT coaches sure as feck don have the time nor the chance to coach advanced attacking patterns or stuff like that. And that's not even factoring in physical attributes like strength, technique, speed etc.
Our defense is not half bad now, we are a good LB and CB away from it being quite good imo. We are ridiculously thin in attack , but if they can find some consistency and stay fit i can see the trinity of Rashford, Martial and James actually being quite capable. The problem, and even more so with an injured Pogba, is midfield. Its a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. As i am sure you have seen, its not like we have been bombarding the opponent and we have lost/drawn because we have useless attackers who cant hit a barn door, its because we fail to create good chances for our attackers and that responsibility falls mostly on an utterly dysfunctional midfield unit. As i said in my other post, Fred and Pereira cant hold onto the ball if even if their lives depended on it, and that in turn creates a whole host of other problems. Most notably how slow and ponderous we are in our transition from defense to attack, but also because we dont have midfielders that can picklock compact defenses either with nice passes or dribbling and creating space for others. If these midfielders of ours had been pulling up trees elsewhere and suddenly turned shit under Ole, there would be a case to be made, but they have not, and that's our main issue imo.
There is so much more to being a good manager than simply coaching and tactics. Fergie for example who i would argue is the greatest manager or all time was not a great tactician, and coaching he left mostly to his coaches (Quieroz and then Phelan). What Fergie was on the other hand was a master motivator, leader and squad builder. His book is 90% about leadership and the reason he was called all over the world to talk at seminars to people in fancy suits was not about offside traps and overlapping fullbacks, it was about leadership and how to create an organization where everyone pulls in the same direction. Fergie did not become the most decorated manager of all time because he tactically outsmarted everyone or because his coaching was so much better than everyone elses, he did so because we had the best squad of players and those players were
So even if we accept the premise that Ole is the worst tactician of all time and knows the square root of feck all about coaching, less that a year ago we had Jose Mouhrinio as our manager and he has won pretty much everything there is to win. I know that skills and tactics have to be worked on and refreshed, but i find it really hard to believe that our entire squad has suffered from mass amnesia and has somehow forgot to play football in the space of a year. Yes, Jose came second in 17/18, but he only managed 5th the year before and that was with an arguably even stronger squad that had Zlatan, Miki, Herrera and a non-dead Matic in it. In any case, Jose tends to squeeze his players until they cant take it anymore so his style of management is not really sustainable for more than a couple of years, something exemplified by his last three jobs
Ole is not the best manager in the world, far from it, but even then i think sacking him now and replacing him with Allegri or whoever wont magically solve all our problems. Ole inherited a complete mess, and any new manager will inherited a complete mess as well.
Excellent post.
You mean playing him as a DM in a double pivot ? Yep he’s been bloody shite! Thing is when Ole initially came in that’s the first thing he did, free up Pogba and put him in a midfield 3?!?
I didn't think that a CB was desperately needed and I know that many thought the same. It's not to say that we couldn't do with an upgrate but for me it wasn't the most pressing issue to fix.
For me it was one of many pressing issues I hoped would be fixed.
For you maybe but you are not History, people disagreeing with it aren't rewriting it. For me we needed 2 CMs, a RB and a RW before thinking about spending 80m on a CB who is good but not Baresi.
If you read the earlier posts you can see that's not what is being suggested. By signing AWB the defence was automatically in a lot better position than it has been for quite a while. While a CB is (eventually) needed instead of signing another defender we should of been looking at other players to improve the team as a whole.
Like I said before. If we had of signed Maquire AND a solid midfielder or number 9 then I would of more or less classed the summer transfer window a success but just by signing defenders (and James) it wasn't enough which is why we're seeing the shit show on offer. Yes we've had injuries but that should always be fractured in when trying to rebuild a squad. Priorities weren't looked at especially when we also had Axel coming through.
Explain yourself now!!!
Vardy hits 18-20 league goals a season for 4 or 5 years now, Martial hits on average 12. Martial is obviously a more talented player imo but Vardy scores most weeks.
I presume this is what he means and I think he’s right but Martial is on for a good season this year. So is Vardy for that mstter. I wouldn’t swap them don’t think 99% of the caf would
It's not indisputable. Any decision on his future would be based on a close look at what he's doing within the club. Is he signing the right players, are the players improving, do they believe in him, is he having a good influence regarding the academy, is his vision and plan for the future solid and sustainable etc.
Sometimes results don't quite match the work being done behind the scenes. I know plenty Liverpool supporters who wanted rid of Klopp because of the poor results but the club never considered it because they could see that he was improving things and that results would come in time.
Injuries and a weak squad have derailed things in term of results but outside of that I've seen plenty to like about what Ole's doing. I see an honesty in the players that I haven't seen for years. There's plenty of youngsters coming through. He has plenty of good tactical ideas and seems to consistently get performances out of them against the better teams. When injuries allow us to get 2/3 decent attacking players on the pitch we can play some nice stuff. The players are hugely behind him. And I get the impression he will will make good signings who will actually succeed here and stay for many years as opposed to the previous managers who's signings have caused our decline.
If the club feels the same they will give him time and rightly so.
Thank goodness, somebody saying it as it should be said. Half of United supporters would have had SAF out after a year if they could and look what he did with the club. I'm totally with you on this SteveW, well said.
We are. It's a very emotional game and defeats feel much more strongly then victories.
Good post. With our squad being paper thin, it's always going to be an inconsistent season. Sooner we realize that sooner we can stop going up and down changing our views.
They would have had Klopp out as well after that first season. That's why fans shouldn't make decisions. We are to emotional and usually focus on the negatives so much that we can't see the good points or the "project"; this is where good, clear headed CEOs and owners have to come in.
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