I read this to often, "we've tried Van Gaal/Mourinho and id didnt worked out, having a proven manager is not the way" if we applied the same logic with players then we shouldnt buy anyone, need a new cb? No man we bought Jones, Smalling, Lindelof, etc it didnt worked out, how does that sound? Of course Mourinho and Van Gaal were not the right managers, but that doesnt mean hiring good managers is a mistake, we should keep hiring and firing until we find the perfect one for us.
I never said having a proven manager is not the way. I think it was a culmination of situations that led us to hiring Ole. Firstly, I think for a change we wanted to try doing things differently having a long term vision in mind where we don’t let managers come in who stamp their own footprint and then leave us having to do a major reboot. We wanted a manager who could bring us back to our own identity. Secondly, I don’t think many other good managers were available when we hired Ole. There was Allegri available but the rumours were that he either didn’t want to come to us during such a period of transition and also that maybe he didn’t suit our club that well. There was Conte but he was destined for Inter and Poch was an option but the way he was doing this season, we didn’t seem sure enough to take a chance with him.
You also have to understand that hiring Ole is not the end of the world. We can always hire another good/better manager but once we’re completely sure Ole isn’t the man to take us forward and when there’s actually a manager available who would compliment us well or at least better than we’re doing right now. I don’t think any other manager could’ve come in and suddenly made Lingard & company worldies. Mourinho tried and it didn’t happen. Can you recommend any other good managers that are available at the moment?
Firstly I must mention that everyteam has injuries, theres no excuse to say "we were plagged by injuries so let the manager have a free ride" second you speak as remaining a fighting distance as if it was down to Ole? Because I think it was because, as I mentioned in my post earlier, this season has been exceptionally poor for the top 4. In the first round we were 4 points off top 4 with 28 points in 19 matches. Totally unaceptable results points wise, however the other teams being so poor helped us.
To your first remark: I think it’s a little unfair to say that injuries are not to blame. I’d concede injuries are not to blame if our squad depth is like City’s where they’re well stacked in terms of replacing a quality player with another player of almost-or-equal quality.
When we lost our BEST players to injury while having incompetent players to replace them with, you have to admit even you as a manager, would have no other option but to accept whatever results come your way.
I think Ole did deserve some sort of a ‘free ride’ this season because he also helped us as a club figure out how good our squad actually is. He gave the entire squad a chance to play this season and prove themselves. Now we know exactly who is good enough to wear our jersey.
But next season I am right with you when I say I’ll be scrutinizing Ole much more harshly because now we have almost assembled a squad for him where injuries shouldn’t be any sort of excuse to cut him some slack.
Secondly we shouldnt evaluate Ole just for the second part of the season, the postBruno era. We should evaluate him for the whole season. My opinion? If we only look at the whole season he should be fired, his start was awful we were lucky Leicester had such a masive drop otherwise our top 4 chances would be slim.
I have evaluated Ole for the entire season. And in my opinion, he does not justify being fired at all. He actually did really well with the players he had available during the first part too. Fred & McT were given a chance by him and they had much better seasons than previously. Pereira, Lingard, Mata, James were useless and they cost us most of the points. Pogba, Martial & Rashford were unavailable at different points and we had no players of similar quality to replace them with.
And sure we got lucky other teams had a dip in form including Leicester’s late dip but luck is just luck. Last year other teams got lucky when DDG cost us top 4. Leicester got lucky when they won the PL cuz spurs fecked up. Liverpool were unlucky when Gerrard slipped.
I understand that we shouldn’t rely on luck but that’s the charm of the PL. There’s so much talent that as long as we do our best, we could always make a comeback. We could’ve given up the way our season started but after the liverpool draw, we locked down, played to our strengths, hid our weaknesses as well as we could, until we were able to bring in reinforcements and make a comeback. If Ole was actually that incompetent than for me at least, he wouldn’t have gotten the results he got against the top 6 sides and neither would he have suddenly started to do better when he got Bruno & Ighalo. It was clearly evident then that the strategies he had were fine, it was just the quality that was missing. As soon as Bruno got introduced, it was like check mate. Everything started to make sense, goals were being created and finished. I mean we have to cut Ole some slack for having to survive without even half decent players, let alone Lingard & company who are West Ham level, let alone top 10 team level.
Of course the thing to evaluate is do we think Ole can sustain the team performing consistently like the second part of the season? If you do, then I understand you wanting him to continue.
This is the best part of your post. I say that because I get to honestly point out that I’m not one of those blind Ole fans. I myself would like to see how he does and then judge him once he cannot be afforded any excuses which for me, is by the end of next season. If he can sustain the team performing then sure, otherwise yes, he’s not the man to take us forward. He was good for this rebuilding phase and that’s about it. Because now we won’t be recycling the squad like we did under LvG and Mou. The next manager will surely bring in a handful of players but the core will remain the same for the next decade almost.
Finally had players coming around to his philosophies? I dont know but that doesnt sound right. Magically a bunch of players clicked into his system after a whole year? I think its more about Bruno changing completely our system, as I said in my previous post, I dont think this is a system based performances I think its players naturally performing because of their qualities.
I think when a new manager comes in there’s surely a phase where players have to change their playing styles from a previous managers teachings to a new one. Ole himself mentioned how our work ethic and fitness levels were well below par under Mourinho. Then comes the defensive approach that our players had been used to and now they had to become more progressive and more attacking. It takes time to suddenly start making perfect passes suited to a totally different style. In Pep’s first year, city players made countless errors. Likewise in Klopp’s first few seasons. It was evident that A) players needed to adapt to a different style, and B) which players were needed to replace since they couldn’t adapt to the new system.
Same thing happened with us. When Ole took over from Mou, he gave everyone a chance and it became evident that players like Lukaku, Smalling & Sanchez, no matter how good they were, did not suit our system or possess the quality to survive.
When a system works you can have good or bad results, but the style of play is there. An example of this is Norwich, they get awful results but the style is clear for everyone to see, no matter which players are on the field.
When we dont have the full XI available our performances drop massively, and more importantly our style dissapears. We are not playing tiki taka or anything like that so we shouldnt rely on one or two players to develop our whole game.
I know the gap quality between the starters and the squad players is considerable, but thats the managers job to implement a system that hides the players weaknesses and functions with different variants. If not then your only setting yourself for failure, theres no way a team can sustain the same starting XI for all the season or have the same quality on the bench to replace a player, it doesnt work that way.
"Proper squad" is a very subjective term, I hate to bring Klopp in to this but were Salah, Mane, Firminho, Virgil, Allison, Robertson, TAA a "proper squad" when he arrived/bought them? Players are as good as they perform. You cant expect patience eternally for a manager to perform until he completely changes the whole squad and fills it out with already made superstars.
The manager should be given time as he gives results, of course there are short, medium and long term goals and should be judged accordingly but theres no such thing as being not judged until having a "complete proper squad".
Referring to the bolded parts:
A) This all refers back to whatever I have mentioned above in this post. It is the managers job to make do with what he has but let’s be honest. Our bench is full on incompetent players way past their prime. Even Mourinho who got us 2nd place said he couldn’t have done any better than that with this squad and I fully believed him. There’s only so much you can do. If the term ‘quality’ wasn’t relative than we’d see managers like Pep winning trophies with championship players too. Which doesn’t happen does it. A managers philosophies are only as worthwhile as the players capable of applying the teachings. Why did Pep & Klopp get so much free time to build their own squad before they were answerable for their objectives? Why did we even bother hiring Ole when we knew were in transition and he obviously doesn’t have that prominent of a resume? It’s because we knew this rebuild will take time and we don’t a manager who will feck off in 2/3 years time if it doesn’t work out. We wanted someone who will think long term for a change. And one that will bring us back to our identity. A club like ours will never remain successful by always hiring the best managers and then getting rid of them to start a new cycle. We have been successful because our plan was always wholesome and long term enough to guarantee decades of success, not a mere handful of years.
B) As for the Liverpool players that you mentioned, they were good that’s why they stuck around. It’s the players you didn’t mention that weren’t good enough and needed replacing. That has been my whole point. Similarly, in our team, sure Pogba, Rashford, Martial had potential and we weren’t worried about them. But we were worried about players like Lingard, Pereira, Mata etc who we knew will cost us points, results, performances etc. And that is literally what happened. You think if we had better players and Ole still couldn’t get results, I would continue supporting him? Hell nah.
. You stated that Oles “qualifications” for the job weren’t enough and that we should have looked at someone with a mighty CV like Poch. I pointed out that Ole has won more trophies than Poch.
