I agree with Wilson but I swear he's written the same article 5 times now. All that was missing was a mention of Ole's Scandi-Manc accent, the sneering talk of that time the team trained at the Cliff, and the shoe-horning in of a Lobonovsky reference.
Would you sack or keep Ole? (Poll reopened)
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The defence needed upgrading but spending 130m on a fullback that can't go forward and a slight upgrade on Smalling was still crazy especially when you consider that the owners doesn't like spending money.
What has being from a different country got to do with anything you fecking loon?
what ain insightful comment
Nonsense logic
I love RedCafe
I am want Ole out but to be fair he has done fairly well to sitting in this position considering all the injuries and a thin squad. I am interested in seeing what he could do if he was to be backed with a couple of midfield signings but I won't accept the narrative that he need several windows to build a team.
He continues to be the public face for this fraud of a leadership group. Even leaving his inept managerial abilities aside the guy continues to spout utter nonsense whilst allowing this squad to further deplete.
He should have been out months ago.
He should have been out months ago.
We got a fullback who is one of the best in the league defensively with plenty of time to make improvement in going forward and no 1 current England centre back, there is zero justify in your statement to call it as slight upgrade when Smalling himself can’t even be in England squad.
Look at Arsenal, they chose your idea not to spend 130m in defense and spent it on somewhere else and they are way below us. Nothing to prove if we will be in better position if we don’t spend the money in defense.
Where's the rational option to wait as the season unfolds and make a decision by may?
Even though I wanted him gone strongly earlier this season I never agreed with sacking him before may.
Right now he's proving me wrong and has turned it around but let's not make the same mistake as last year when it all went downhill after that PSG game.
Even though I wanted him gone strongly earlier this season I never agreed with sacking him before may.
Right now he's proving me wrong and has turned it around but let's not make the same mistake as last year when it all went downhill after that PSG game.
So, the Ole In brigade have been dealt a blow here then. From the horse's mouth, Ole spent the entire budget on the defence willingly and chose to go into the season threadbare in midfield and attack. It was his decision, and he wasn't hamstrung by Woodward because he knew the limitations and made his decision. Terrible, terrible management. The bloke is nothing more than a sockpuppet, he continuously defends the board/owners like a yes man, and the fans continue to say "oh the board is the problem" but ignore the fact that this guy is in bed with them.
You do notice that the EPL is not the only league in the world? Spending 130m on a fullback that is a liability moving forward and a decent but not Wc CB is madness. May I remind you that even the legendary Maddison and the glorious Graelish struggle to name it with England
A 74m net budget is ridiculous considering the job at hand
Dont you guys ever get bored? The only people who are listening are the people who already agree with you. What a colossal waste of time.
Recycling the same old crap because we've won a couple of games. Give it a few hours and theres a good chance you'll have some actual football to moan about again. Fingers crossed we get stuffed 4-0 eh.....
Recycling the same old crap because we've won a couple of games. Give it a few hours and theres a good chance you'll have some actual football to moan about again. Fingers crossed we get stuffed 4-0 eh.....
I don’t get your point pal regarding the EPL.
You don’t think the full back can make improvement in his going forward? It’s not impossible.
List me those “Wc” CB, will you?
Maddison already in England squad, so what are you on about? While Grealish is not because there are Maddison and Mount as option. Are you telling me that’s a fair comparison to Smalling who can’t even make the CB option over the likes of Lewis Dunk, Keane, Stones, and Ming? Never mind Maguire, he can’t even get into the squad over those names.
Ole says a lot of things to toe the party line with regards to transfers, which is understandable. For example stating he was happy with the squad when we were clearly short. It's a bit like Fergie stating there was no value in the market in that period where the Glazers tightened the purse strings.
I do think Ole made a massive mistake in not strengthening more in the summer and we'll pay the price for it.
However, the idea that Ole's budget was X and he spent it all on defenders is clearly untrue. We agreed a deal for Dybala. If Dybala had wanted to join, Ole's net budget would have been much higher. So there was at least the cost of Lukaku that could be added to the budget for the right player.
Not just because of that but because it's true. No need to get uptight and be in denial about it, Solskjaer is not the right man and most likely never will be. We have gone backwards since he has taken the job.
I certainly agree that the amount of money we are spending on players "is not the money spent by a top club in the middle of a rebuilding process." I suggest the situation is even more dire when one considers the loss of Herrera with no replacement. If he is conservatively valued at 40M, that reduces the clubs investment in players to 34M which means we are seriously falling behind our primary competitors.
Both Woodward and Ole have said that Ole does not negotiate over the amount of money the club spends on a particular player nor does he decide how much money and how many players can be bought. That's a decision made by Woodward and the owners. All Ole does is to recommend players he wants subject to approval by a committee.
The owners and Woodward decided to start the season with one proven Premier League central midfielder, Pogba. Under Ole's management McT and Fred have developed into quite decent Premier League quality players. So we have three CMs on paper with no available backup. That's a recipe for disaster as we are finding out with two of our three CMs injured.
My suspicion is that the owners, who proved they are venture capitalists by the manner in which they "bought" the team, may be doing what venture capitalists do. That would be stripping the assets for their personal benefit and selling what's left. .
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very good article? It tells us nothing new or of any real substance and despite the usual pseudo pretensions of the author could have been written by any fool on Twitter
The timing of it is peculiar, on the back of a few positive performances and on the eve of our biggest game of the season. The same article is at the top of the Guardian Football page despite telling us nothing.
It reads like he wrote it to post after Liverpool drubbed us but accidentally published it early.
Now the issue of Maguire and Wan-Bissaka is being brought up again, which is repeated over and over and over in previous pages......
Here again is my viewpoint, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka are decent players on their own, whether they justify their price tag is another issue. Problem is, whether it is worth to spend a lump sum on these two positions (CB & RB) with a limited budget? With Valencia leaving and Young declining, Dalot became the only reliable option on RB at the beginning of the season, so the introduction of Wan-Bissaka was understandable. However we already had 6 players at the CB position (including Smalling), was it necessary to purchase Maguire?
I've emphasized again and again, it's all about urgency and priority. With Fellaini and Herrera gone (in which I have no opinion), our midfield is definitely our weakest link and should be prioritized in the market. Yes even Mourinho wanted a CB, but he knew our midfield was worse and he brought in Fred. Yes Arsenal spent on attack with no significant improvement, but their major weakness was at the back and Emery was sacked. I agree we may not be necessarily better with a midfield signing, but it is a more logical way to do the job I believe.
Here again is my viewpoint, Maguire and Wan-Bissaka are decent players on their own, whether they justify their price tag is another issue. Problem is, whether it is worth to spend a lump sum on these two positions (CB & RB) with a limited budget? With Valencia leaving and Young declining, Dalot became the only reliable option on RB at the beginning of the season, so the introduction of Wan-Bissaka was understandable. However we already had 6 players at the CB position (including Smalling), was it necessary to purchase Maguire?
I've emphasized again and again, it's all about urgency and priority. With Fellaini and Herrera gone (in which I have no opinion), our midfield is definitely our weakest link and should be prioritized in the market. Yes even Mourinho wanted a CB, but he knew our midfield was worse and he brought in Fred. Yes Arsenal spent on attack with no significant improvement, but their major weakness was at the back and Emery was sacked. I agree we may not be necessarily better with a midfield signing, but it is a more logical way to do the job I believe.
Who would people have chosen as new captain if Maguire wasnt an option? You're response to that will highlight why we decided to overpay for that player.
Did he not say majority?
It's the same one's over and over. They need attention.
I'm really not sure you got the point of my post at all, and that's fine, you keep shouting into your echo-chamber thinking I'm uptight.
If it bothers you so much don't enter the thread. Every single thread where there is a discussion about the manager, inevitably you turn up to complain and then make a strawman argument like we all want us to lose today. Every single poster who wants the manager gone does so for the best of the club, so get off your high horse making out people are willing us to lose.
Would you rather us win the next 5 games or lose the next 5 games?
All well and good saying this but the fact of the matter is, Lukaku essentially paid for Maguire, so take out 80m of that supposed budget. And that's not including the fees we got for Sanchez's loan and Fellaini. So if we did indeed have a budget of X amount and Ole decided to spend it on the defence, I'd like to see what anyone else would have come up with considering midfield and attack are the two most expensive areas to recruit for.
You know, there is a way of looking at this as Ole spending most of his budget on defence but also saying that Woodward is at fault because structurally, there was very little else Ole could do with the funds that he was given, the deadwood that we were all crying out to be cleared, and the extensive recruitment needs throughout said squad. That he chose to fix a defence that had become a joke by the end of that season, is perfectly reasonable considering that almost every title winning team has its defence as its base and foundation.
I repeat: I'd love to see what others would have achieved in terms of squad building with such a sum at their disposal.
Win obviously. What an absolutely stupid question.
This poll should be shut down for a few days given we have a game against the Dippers and any negative (or positive for that matter) outcome is probably going to shift the balance from 10 to 15 percent in one direction. Except a draw I guess
I think his point is that the same nonsense gets regurgitated in cycles. If we lose/draw, people moan about results (which is fair), but a couple of wins and people dig up some old hits like "players bought", "players sold", "Smalling being the best CB in the league" etc. "something about coaching", "injuries" and the list goes on.
@devilish for example is no fan of the manager, but at least he has the decency to admit the club did not spend nearly enough the past two years considering the state of the squad. Last summer we only bought Fred, this one we bought AWB, Maguire and James, but we also sold Lukaku for a decent sum of money. Combined net spend over the last two years has been less than 150 million. Thats not exactly a huge sum in todays market. What we need to do is
1. Trim the squad, trim the wage bill (which is the highest in the league) and get rid of all the deadwood and passangers. This is still a work in progress
2. Get new players in. And just not any players. We need young, hungry, quality players who wants to play here for the right reasons. No more of this short sighted shite of overpaying for mercenaries, older players with max 2 years left in them and mopey superstars who only come here for the money
3. Get results. Of course we could just try and stay afloat like we did with Jose and get more Sanchez and Matic kind of players, but that wont win the league
And yet plenty on here want us to lose, for “the good of the club”
I have no idea what you're trying to say in this post.
Are you saying it's alright to criticise Ole if we recognise that we should have spent more? Well Stevie Wonder on a galloping horse could see we need more investment. A large point of contention is the admission by Solksjaer that he prioritised the defence while leaving the squad bare in other areas. This is what many of us have umbrage with. Ole gets praised by many for his transfers, but without any bias they have not improved us and frankly were not the most pressing areas we needed to fix.
Quote someone who has said this and I'll put then on ignore, because I havent seen anyone hope we lose, especially against liverpool.
Let me guess, you voted Keep?
People talk about Ole’s managerial credentials as though he’s not part of a team... but I do wonder if anybody considers that letting go of Ole probably means losing Mike Phelan again. There’s plenty of experience there, but I do worry that Ole isn’t being used as a fall-guy. He’s clearing out squad players & people that don’t want to be here, promoting and putting faith in youth, and doing it without some important players. I want to see him backed, but I think it’s obvious that we have an unofficial Director of Football who decides that it’s better to have no midfielders & blame the manager, than to spend an extra £10m and possibly make top 4.
Problem is people are selecting what they discuss and they focus on the negatives. Yes that bothers me. It bothers a lot of people, many of whom have gotten tired of it and do stop posting, which has hurt this forum considerably in my view.
All this talk about wasting money. Always comes up when we've won matches and there is nothing to attack there. I put out a perfectly reasonable question about who would we appoint captain if we hadn't bought Maguire - no responses. Why? Because there isn't one apart from the concession that leaders are desperately needed and Maguire certainly is one. We paid a premium for that.
Sorry if it offends your delicate sensibility, but there are undoubtedly people on here who, while not necessarily wanting us to lose today, are anxiously looking forward to the prospect because it will enhance their 'position' in all of this and they will exercise their right to fire both barrels for a week afterwards. Compare the size of today's post match thread if we lose to the last two that we won, and then ask yourself what kind of poster is dominating this forum nowadays.
I've been a member here for 15 years and this is my go to place for discussing United. I'm seriously considering getting off my high horse and throwing in the towel because it's just not a pleasant experience anymore. I wont be missed, I'm not a prolific poster here, but I wonder how many others are feeling the same way or already made that decision.
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This. Its moaning for the sake of moaning. I'm certain that someone who cared enough could find many old posts from these guys hammering Young and Smalling, who were first choice last season, yet are now criticising us for how the money was spent, as though we could have predicted that Pogba and McTominay would miss large chunks of the season
He decided to purchase Maguire for two reasons: The first one was his leadership skills and the lack of many commanding voices in the dressing room. Maybe the club needed to make a statement too, that we're still a primary destination for top local talents. The second one was that he saw in him and Lindelof a partnership that can treat the ball well, read the whole game from their deep-lying position and, subsequently, influence our build-up in a meaningful way. You can see it in the way Maguire (more often than Vic) drives the ball forward and tries to play a direct ball through the lines. Furthermore, when you want your midfield to be the engine of your side and not exactly a fulcrum of creativity, it's essential to have ball-playing defenders (not necessarily Beckenbauer but you get what i mean). People go on about "Smalling this and Smalling that" but can you seriously imagine a midfield of Fred and McT with Smalling behind them? The ball would probably never leave our half of the pitch. And don't forget that the initial thought was for Pogba to be utilized as an AM.
The fallacy in all this is that high energy levels, aggression and urgency alone don't make for a good midfield. Positional awareness, adequate passing ability and good first touch/protection of the ball are also very important. Perhaps, even more than being young and British... Anyway, McT has the drive but he still doesn't possess the ability and Fred, despite his recent good performances (which in the absence of a good midfield have been exaggerated just like Herrera's before him), is a bit all over the place more often than not. And this leaves the back-four with way more work to do in the build-up than they would have liked. Add to this the fact that, in the middle and final thirds, we lose the ball very easily and that we are one of the worst sides in the top-six when it comes to winning the second balls and you'll understand why so often our lines' distances are all wrong with the defence being often reluctant to push up or be very proactive. Liverpool's midfield isn't very creative but it's a midfield of three, their positioning is good, they can string more than two passes together and they excel at winning 50/50s and collecting the second balls. They don't just "run & cover much ground".
Long story short, Maguire was a good signing but, right now, it looks like we didn't need to spend so much money on him because of the several other issues in the squad. Which points out to the need for further reinforcements in the next couple of seasons. That's the good case scenario. But, contrary to popular belief, i believe that Woodward would have signed a midfielder last summer if that midfielder hadn't been Longstaff or Rice with a price tag of around 50-60 million. According to the transfer rumours, Solskjaer was very adamant about who he wanted. Woodward did not indulge him in the end but on that kind of money, Longstaff/Rice was edging the Willian/Perisic territory: Players the managers want badly for a variety of reasons but very few others can agree with the notion that you can't do better with the same amount of money. For better or worse, i believe Woodward did the right thing on both occasions. Now, it's up to Solskjaer to either convince Ed with his work this season that these players are the real deal or change his mind and look at other possible targets.
There’s plenty of comments from this branch of thinking knocking around the forum, not that I’m going to go looking for any. My ignore list has grown significantly the last couple months.
We can all talk about how Ole's doing a good job rebuilding, clearing deadwood, promoting youth instilling the culture etc. But the fact is, if the club actually gets a DOF, Ole would be highly dispensable. Which is why I'm asking Ole supporters - Would you still want Ole to coach this team if we got a DOF?
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