People over look this bit, but it gets excused away as was only finished 3rd on low points total means nothing, new arsenal.
But if he finished a point lower and finished 5th I'm sure he have got double barrels, calls everywhere to be sacked.
Said it at the time our chase and finish to the season was as good as anything we have shown in the league since fergie gone. Genuine pressure and we managed to keep the run up to win the last night game away against Leicester themselves. No one was really celebrating the coming 3rd doing a arsenal, more just feeling alot more positive going into the following season, as we shown we could hit form and go on a long unbeaten run like good teams do.
So you have to ask yourself, should Ole be in a position where it's 90 minutes between success and failure against a side that had equally terrible injuries, with a manager with less time in the job and far far less money spent? Is that what it has come down to? That if he wins that game he's brilliant and if he loses he's sacked?
The evaluation lies deeper than this, and that's where you look at performances against sides where even with your injuries, you should have more than enough quality to do better. That's what hit us in the first half of the season to put us in this position.
We weren't in great nick first half of season. Managed to hang in there with big wins in big matches with makeshift teams out.
Please can you expand on this? In our big wins vs City, Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea + and our draws vs Liverpool we weren't missing that many key players relative to the other team. For example we missed Rashford when we beat Chelsea 2-0 and they missed Pulisic. We had Rashford + Martial both available for City, we had a full side available when we beat Chelsea on the opening day of the season. When we drew to Spurs 1-1 we had a virtually a full side available and when we lost to Arsenal we virtually had a full side available.
Taking some games where we lost points:
We lost 2-0 to West Ham with a better XI (Granted no Pogba/Martial but Rashford started, Mata in the 10. Lingard/Pereira were playing but we had a stronger squad and better XI than our opposition). Moreover the performance was atricious, you can park the 2-0 defeat but zero press, zero aggression, zero system. I didn't see Lingard and Pereira like that under Jose in fairness.
Same for our 3-3 draw to Sheffield, where we only missed Pogba but had Rashford + Martial.
We drew 2-2 with Villa who were a relegation fighting side all season, and had virtually a full squad again just missing Pogba.
We drew 1-1 with Everton with the same as above
Drew 0-0 with Wolves this time with Bruno's introduction
Drew 1-1 (again) with Everton this time with Bruno, Rashford and Martial playing
We lost 2-1 to Palace with Martial + Rashford playing (ironically it's Dan James who got our goal)
I want to get into how injuries in the first half of the season hamstrung Ole. Because it sounds like a narrative to just explain away a string of very poor performances. By the way, wild results with a full team go beyond that season after Ole was given the perm job. He was thrashed 4-0 by Everton with a full side the season prior. Huddersfield were already relegated and we got thrashed with a full side. I am unsure how this can be explained away when the players are actually a lot better than the opposition, he's had time in the role and extremely poor performances are too frequent to be called "occasional".
Yep. He wont ever get the credit he deserves for last season from the people who want him out so that's a losing battle. They'd rather talk about Cardiff because it fits the argument.
I'm more than happy to talk about last season. This concept that he has had a makeshift team for most the season is overcooked. He certainly had injuries but there are various matches where he had a stronger team than the opposition team and performed badly. I dont even look at the results at that stage as long as we play good football and it shows a direction, but there was too big a stretch of us looking lost along with the bad results together.