I don't think that's solely the role of the manager anymore, at least not in the top European clubs. United's problem is that we are trying to stick to 'tradition' and give our managers full autonomy to build a team in their own vision or likeness. What's the average life of a manager these days? 2-3 years? Is it feasible to hit the reset button every 2-3 years, or are we so naive as a club that we believe the next SAF is just around the corner?
Now I'm not saying that recruitment should be completely autonomous from the manager, of course the manager has to have a say. What I'm saying is that the club should have a vision of the type of football we want to play, the type of players we want to sign, the foundations upon which each team is built. That should to a point remove the need for a manager to come in and instantly have to sell this 4 players, need 3 transfer windows and another 300m to shape the team how the like. You can't go from Moyes, to LVG, to Mourinho to Ole as managers. What does that say about us?
'Oh, we want someone to come in and take a long terms view. Actually that didn't work, LVG just had a pretty good World Cup, and has experience, let's give him a go. Oh no, bad idea! Let's change our outlook completely and go with a guy that will guarantee us sort term success. This really isn't working, let's revert to the 'United way' and give time and money to a completely unproven manager who knows the club.'
Does that sound to you like a club that even has any sort of strategy beyond what the manager themselves believe in? The problem is that there is this belief that no good can come from sacking Ole because we'll have to start again. Why? Why do we have to start again? This club needs an overhaul, from top to bottom. And that includes Ole, because it is the complete ineptitude of the board above him that has resulted in him managing this team for the past two years, but that still does not absolve him of his lack of ability as a manager.
Sorry, I know my reply is a bit off topic in the context of your discussion, but just reading that first line, and hearing people like Keane talking about giving Ole time to get things right has me wondering. I think a club with the resources of Manchester United should he ahead of the curve with regards to the way a modern club is operated, and our philosophy should extend beyond the manager of the club, especially when the average life cycle of a manager is so short these days.
In short, I think we're refusing to pull the trigger on Ole because the people running the club are afraid of looking foolish again, and don't have the ability to set the club on the right track themselves. Look at Bayern. They sacked their manager and won the CL later in the season. Zidane is under pressure at Real, after how many league and CL titles? Imagine if Ole won the league with this team. He'd have a Moyes-like 6 year contract the next morning. We're so juvenile and badly run its sickening. The only thing that separates us from any other poorly run club right now is how much money we have available to spend, and our reputation.
Good post. Just to be clear, all of this is not aimed at you, but i found this one worth highlighting
The manager does not have full autonomy though, we have the infamous transfer committee, which both Jose and LvG expressed dissatisfaction with. We are owned by foreign venture capitalists who dont give two shits about the club as long as it keeps making them money. And our CEO and head of transfers are both investment bankers with no footballing background "
The club is not run by footballing people" i think LvG said.
For example there were rumors that Jose did not really want Sanchez, but it was forced on him by the board because they wanted a big name signing to silence some critical voices in the press. AWB, Maguire and Bruno i think is safe to assume are "Ole players" since they have played pretty much every minute since they arrived. This summer it was plain obvious Ole wanted Sancho, that did not happen and then out of the blue and with little fanfare we sign DvB. Now Donny is a decent player, but why spend 40 million on a new player if you're not going to play him? Then you have the case of us giving out new contracts to deadwood because we "want to protect our assets". Like why the feck do we still have Jones and Lindgard on our books when its clear as day the manager does not rate them. Have they even been in the squad this year? The amount of shite and ineptitude our managers have to deal with above them makes this (probably) one of the hardest managers jobs in the world when you factor in the clubs status and the expectations tied to it
And its not some law of nature that a manager only stays at a club for 2-3 years. That's entirely up to the clubs to decide and it
not feasible to hit the reset button every 2-3 years, especially in our case when there is no overarching philosophy or strategy from the top.
Based on this forum i would split the "Ole out" people into two groups.
1. Sensible posters who think we can do better and can put forth somewhat reasonable reasons and arguments, although i find some of them speculative (you are here)
2. Knee jerking moaners and/or entitled children who throws a tantrum every time we lose a match and simply cant tolerate a world where we dont win the league every other year. These are the ones who shouts the loudest about everything from coaching to tactical set ups, and are a walking Dunning-Kruger effect. Engaging with them is as fruitful as running head first into a lamp post. Their emotional range mostly goes from soul crushing bitterness to seething, unbridled rage and this in turn has made them vindictive. Ole hurt them by not winning all his games, so they want to see his head on a pole as a reprisal. They've also convinced themselves that being uncompromising and intransigent in their beliefs makes them clever, but fail to realize that functioning adults who engage in critical thinking actually doubt themselves and change their stances and views when presented with new information or evidence.
To the first group i would say that i get your concerns, but i dont think the time to sack him is now. In my opinion, you should only sack a manager mid season if one of these occur:
1. You go on a ridiculously bad run like not winning in 10 games and/or you lose the dressing room completely. Say what you want about player power, but thats the nail in the coffin for anyone
2. A clearly superior manager becomes available. Poch is not it imo. I'd have no problems with giving him a shot if/when Ole is sacked, but hes not so valuable that we need to bring about a massive upheaval mid season. We all know damn well that there is no such thing as a guaranteed bet when it comes to manager appointments and believe it or not, this might actually get worse
3. Progress grinds to a halt and/or you fail to meet the minimum expectations for that season. And lets get one thing clear.
We dont set those standards. As much as we hate him , its Ed and co who does and we as fans are really just along for the ride. If the subway is late and you stand on the platform shouting to the other passengers that they are "lowering standards" its about the same as shouting at other fans here. By all means, when fans are back in the stadium, make a poster and boo your heart out, but dont try to infect others with you misery. What were the expectations this season? For those who say league challenge i'd say you are either wildly optimistic or full of shit and want to use that argument as a crowbar to force the view that anything other than silverware would be unacceptable. We ended last season on a positive note, but that whole momentum was squandered after that calamity of a summer window. Now to be fair, it was not all bad as we added some depth, but considering our closest rival spent north of 200 million and brought in some proven quality i'd say the balance of power definitely shifted in their favor this summer
I was as gutted as everyone else when we crashed out of the CL and no doubt Ole fecked that up with his cowardly line up. Leipzig had weaknesses to exploit, and if we score first that tie is in the bag imo. That being said, and despite what some people want to think, this was not all on him and it was a collective failure on our part. If Martial puts away those sitters vs PSG, if we dont play like complete morons vs Istanbul and if our defenders dont start out half asleep vs Leipzig, we go through.
If you take a step back and look at the bigger picture its not that bad though. Since we signed Bruno/2020 we sit at a 63% win rate (which is higher than both Jose and Fergie), You might say thats a completely arbitrary starting point, but i'd argue it was not. Before Bruno we struggled with a complete creative void. No creative fullbacks, no creative wingers and no creative midfielders. When it came to scoring goals, the entire burden was put on our forward line and that simply does not work unless you play hoofball with ballplaying CB's and big target men up front. One of the most common complaints i see on here is that we are "uncoached" because we lack patterns and only rely on "individual brilliance", but thats willfully ignorant at the best. We score a lot of goals, a lot of good goals and you dont do that with just a thumbs up and "do your thing" from the coaches. Even if that was true (its not) dont you think the players would have ousted Ole a long time ago? Most of these players have ambition (i hope) and i dont think they would stand for it if their manager was that much of an irresponsible simpleton
Since Jan 2019 we score 3 or more goals in 41% of our games. Thats pretty good and it is entertaining since i think everyone agrees goals = fun. Also, we all experienced LvG and there is actually such a thing as too much coaching. LvG wanted to micro manage every single aspect of the players behavior and it completely stifled their creativity. It produced little in terms of results and watching us was like taking a bath in chloroform. So we have a decent win rate, we are in my humble opinion fun to watch again.
The big issue this season is how we concede way, way too many unnecessary goals, most of which comes from daft personal errors or simply our defensive organization being all over the shop. Last season we had the 3rd best defensive record in the league, only slightly behind Liverpool who most would argue have an excellent defense. The way i see it, there can be two reasons behind this.
1. Our coaching staff all suffered some sort of brain injury during the summer and forgot how to set up a defense
2. Our players individual performances have dropped a level or two compared to what they managed last season. Now you can say its the coaches responsibility to sort them out, but its also up to the players to sort themselves out. They get paid a lot of money to play football and if you dont perform at the level you should you simply cant shuffle that blame over to the guys above you
"A winning team is built from the back" is a saying with some truth to it. Its disappointing that we somehow started out worse this year and is no doubt the key component as to why we seem so inconsistent. If we keep scoring at the same rate and perform roughly as we did in defense last year then we suddenly become very hard to beat.
Lastly i want to address the issue of squad strength compared to expectations. I see critics here say that "he should get more out of this team" ALL. THE. TIME. Its not a completely unreasonable statement, but i've yet to see any compelling arguments as to why he should get more out of them. We dont know the ceiling or potential of these players so some blind demand that they should be performing at a higher level is not grounded in anything really. If you can point to one or more players that were brilliant under another manager than turned to complete shit under Ole then you'd have a case, but are there any? Pogba has produced his absolute worst and best form under Ole, but we know that down to other reasons.
The likes of Shaw, Lindelof, McTomminay, Martial, DDG, Matic and Mata have gone in neither direction imo. Some good displays, some bad ones, but at the end of the day inconsistent players are going to be inconsistent and age catches up with everyone and even Fergie could not fix that. If he could, then Anderson would have become a top midfielder instead of a meme-tier footballer. Meanwhile i'd argue Rashford and particularly Fred have blossomed under Ole so hes done some things right regarding man management and coaching.
Another common argument i see is the cost of our squad compared to others, but cost does not equal value/quality. Silly anecdote time, but this
absolute eye sore was sold for 138 million$. For that amount you can buy a fecking castle, a life time supply of Stella and still have more money than you ever could use. Since Fergie quit we have spent over 800 net on new players and in my opinion, most of that has been spent incredibly poorly and we have little to show for it in terms of squad quality. Why? Its a combination of poor scouting and Ed and co being utterly useless at negotiating transfer deals. Other clubs know we have a lot of money, but that still does not excuse us spending like drunk sailors. Not saying Ole has been completely shafted here, but he took over a pretty poor squad imo and he has spent much better than his predecessors which he does deserve credit for. One thing that gets overlooked by some is that most of the players Ole has bought has been young, so they are long term investments rather than instant impact players that Jose went for. The latter might make you better then and there, but its not a sustainable model
Coaching is no doubt important Take Klopp and Liverpool as an example (In before YOU CANT COMPARE HIM TO KLOPP !!!11ONE!!, its an example). Henderson and Firmino aside, hes pretty much replaced the entire starting XI and bench through buying and selling and he rid himself of cloggers like like Benteke as soon as he could. No doubt Klopp is a great coach and motivator, probably the best there is, but lets not pretend its all coaching. Most of it comes down to excellent recruitment. And before someone counters with "
we saw what he was doing bla bla bla" Did you? Because Liverpool from 2015 - 2018 were languishing in a place between brilliant and utterly laughable
and plenty of people on here were happy to take the piss on his behalf and the phrase "serial bottler" was widely used. Only when he signed the worlds best CB and an actual competent GK did they turn shift from wildly inconsistent to champion material. My point is that you simply cant coach anyone into league winners. More often than not, the big trophies are won by the best teams with the best individuals. Not trying to claim we have a bad squad, there are plenty of good players here, but i firmly believe they are not as good as some would claim and we are still a few pieces away from being league contenders.
Is Ole perfect? Not even close, and if he fails to meet reasonable expectations this year and keep on improving us then i'd be happy to see him leave.