Bring him in now
Would you take Conte at United?
- Thread starter bond19821982
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I'd rather watch us win something of note and crash and burn in 2 or 3 seasons (CR7 will be gone by then) than stick with ineptitude for 4+ seasons and win nothing. The rebuild can wait. The time to win is now.
I look at it this way. Conte can't be worse than Ole and he won't stay forever so...
Van Gaal was considered a progressive coach, who tried to implement "total football".
Manchester United can't play with 5 at the back. It's simply unacceptable. If he does away with it, game on.
Formations are just formations. It's more fluid than just numbers on a sheet.
You can be attack minded with a 5 back.
It just depends how the manager sets the team up.
As I've said before, I'd prefer one of the promising coaches who have a modern attacking tactical philosophy (people say Ten Hag has one of the highest potentials from that lot). But obviously if we can't get any of them, Conte, one of the best managers on the planet, would be a huge upgrade on what we have.
Sancho?
Antonio Conte with Inter Serie A 2020-2021
Goals For:
89
Goals Against:
35
Ole with United EPL 2020-2021
Goals For:
73
Goals Against:
44
Accolades in top 5 leagues:
Conte:
4x Serie A (Ending Juves barren spell of no leagues then ending Inters barren spell of no leagues)
2x Italian Supercup
1x Premier League
1x FA Cup
Ole:
Signed Sancho, Maguire, AWB, Ronaldo, Bruno, DVB and some others for 450 mill.
Caf Summary:
Conte is too defensive for us.
Ole has done a brilliant job signing players, much more impressive than Conte's Accolades.
Sometimes I wonder if the majority of the Caf watches any league outside of the epl.
Goals For:
89
Goals Against:
35
Ole with United EPL 2020-2021
Goals For:
73
Goals Against:
44
Accolades in top 5 leagues:
Conte:
4x Serie A (Ending Juves barren spell of no leagues then ending Inters barren spell of no leagues)
2x Italian Supercup
1x Premier League
1x FA Cup
Ole:
Signed Sancho, Maguire, AWB, Ronaldo, Bruno, DVB and some others for 450 mill.
Caf Summary:
Conte is too defensive for us.
Ole has done a brilliant job signing players, much more impressive than Conte's Accolades.
Sometimes I wonder if the majority of the Caf watches any league outside of the epl.
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Ey hansi flick pal. You fancy another gig? It can be part time. We dont mind. Better than what we got
Nah, we've spent enough years going with this old approach to football. Not that I don't think Conte is an exceptional manager - he'll probably come in and win us some trophies, but I think more important than short term trophies is really modernizing this football club and it's footballing ideologies to set us up for the future.
Get a progressive coach in, he may not win straight away, but he'll set foundations in the players, the style etc. which will hopefully breed consistent results. It would make identifying players moving forward more consistent and simple, it would allow us to compete more consistently etc.
Get a progressive coach in, he may not win straight away, but he'll set foundations in the players, the style etc. which will hopefully breed consistent results. It would make identifying players moving forward more consistent and simple, it would allow us to compete more consistently etc.
I'd rather we got a caretaker and wait to get Ten Hag in the summer, Conte's football is negative and dull and he's a temperamental fanny, on top of that his system requires wingbacks that we don't have and would mean Sancho and Mason on the bench most of the time.
Most don't even watch the teams outside the top six in the Prem. (including now, us)
OP, I hear you but at this point I can't give a feck. All I care is that Conte won Chelsea a league title very quickly. If he does that for us, bring Conte in! I am sick and tired and we haven't won the title in 8 years. At this rate it can be 20 years and no title. Feck that! Bring somebody who can win and we can worry about long-term separately. The cases of successful long term managers is very far and inbetween these days anyway. Tuchel won Chelease Champions League, Conte won them EPL. Those are two big trophies since we had any big trophy. Give me that and change a manager every 2-3 years. I will take it over decades of being a joke, no problem.
Other than them being owned by a Russian oligarch's blood and oil money, I am jealous or Chelsea more often than not and as a Man United fan I shouldnt be envious of fecking Chelsea.
So yeah, the hell with the long term!
I don't want Conte specifically and I understand concerns about his style but I do want somebody who will win us something big quick. In a year or two. Whoever that is - bring him or her and the long-term can feck itself
Other than them being owned by a Russian oligarch's blood and oil money, I am jealous or Chelsea more often than not and as a Man United fan I shouldnt be envious of fecking Chelsea.
So yeah, the hell with the long term!
I don't want Conte specifically and I understand concerns about his style but I do want somebody who will win us something big quick. In a year or two. Whoever that is - bring him or her and the long-term can feck itself
I agree but you have to be realistic. There aren't any available right now, all the progressive coaches that are being mentioned haven't proven it at the top level, you can risk a Ten Hag/Poch but then, you also have to agree to give him another 3 years to change the fundamentals of the club and coach the players into doing what he wants. But, even then Ten Hag hasn't proven it in a top league yet with competition like the prem. Klopp won the league and ended Bayerns dominance in Germany, Pep did what he did at Barca, Tuchel did the same with Dortmund then took PSG to their first UCL final. These managers were all proven, all the names being mentioned haven't won anything of note in the top 5 leagues and so it's a bit risky to start another 3 year transformation with these managers. Especially, when there's Conte and Zidane available.
The general consensus of the fans are we have a world class team that should be challenging for major honours in the immediate future, they won't have the patience for a progressive manager that will need ball dominant, fit as a machine players. If one of these progressive managers win something of note then we can take notice and bring them in till then they're unproven.
We need to be looking for the next breakout manager. Ten Hag, Rose, someone like that. Not another one on their down axis like van Gaal or Mourinho. We also need someone who'll iron in system play like Klopp and Guardiola do. Conte (and Zidane for that matter) just feels like one of those guys like Mourinho in better days, who comes in for a while and then moves on, not somebody who builds for the future.
Any manager who has the ability to transfrom Lukaku into a world class striker is probably worthy IMHO. Imagine what he could do with the likes of Maguire/Shaw/Martial etc.
Ah yes Conte.
Let's leave 5 out of Ronaldo, Cavani, Rashford, Greenwood, Bruno, Sancho and Lingard on the bench so we can play more of our shit defenders and defensive midfielders at the same time.
Then when that doesn't work, let's give him another 300m to spend on players that only make sense in his system, so when he fecks off 6 months later after someone pisses in his hair glue or whatever, we'll have a load more overpaid players on fresh contracts for the next name off the block to come in and weed through.
Let's leave 5 out of Ronaldo, Cavani, Rashford, Greenwood, Bruno, Sancho and Lingard on the bench so we can play more of our shit defenders and defensive midfielders at the same time.
Then when that doesn't work, let's give him another 300m to spend on players that only make sense in his system, so when he fecks off 6 months later after someone pisses in his hair glue or whatever, we'll have a load more overpaid players on fresh contracts for the next name off the block to come in and weed through.
Tuchel didn't really win any big titles pre Chelsea. If we have to give a quality manager a year or two to implement a progressive style so be it. The right man wouldn't take that long with this group plus two additions, but we can avoid the modernisation of this team for only so long imo. It should have happened these past 3 years but sadly we had Ole at the wheel.
No, keep him away.
I only mentioned Tuchel because you think of him as progressive, he plays the exact formation and style Conte plays. In fact, I would not be surprised if he based his whole tactical approach at Chelsea on Conte's Juve teams of the early 10s.
https://themastermindsite.com/2021/...nter-milan-tactical-analysis-2020-21-edition/
This is a good article on Conte's tactical approach to the 2020/2021 season. You only have to look at Chelsea's last couple of games against Brentford/Norwich to see the similarities.
In fact, you can speak to most Chelsea fans, they usually describe Tuchel as a Conte/Sarri Hybrid. Instead of Conte's more direct game they dominate possession with the defensive/midfield stability of a Conte team.
Conte's Inter team was a lot more possession based than his usual teams btw, Conte is for some reason misunderstood as a sit back and counter manager when he has many varieties to his game depending on opposition.
You definitely know nothing about Conte and you should seriously do some research before you post such utter nonsense. For your first point, we do that right now and it's working out well isn't it. We've just lost 5-0 at home to our biggest rivals and you still don't see the problem with having 5 lazy attackers on the pitch.
For your second point which is by far the dumbest. He took over Juve when they were 7th (and hadn't won the league 9 years prior) won the league the next season and for 2 more seasons after that, he left, Juve went on to win the next 6 league titles. I thought he leaves teams in bad shape.
Fast forward to last season, Juves dominance was ended by guess who ?. Oh yh Antonio Conte, who won Inter Milan their first league title in 10 years. He also won the league scoring the second most goals in the top 5 leagues (Only Bayern scored more), scoring 89 league goals (We, under Ole, managed 73). Inter Milan were forced to sell their two best players because of financial difficulty (Hakimi and Lukaku) and so Conte left. Despite this, Inter Milan are still 3rd and firmly in the race for top 4.
Or maybe you're talking about when he was at Chelsea. When he equalled the record for most consecutive wins in the premier league (13). Or when he won a record 3 premier league manager of the months in a row. Or when he won a record 30 premier league games out of 38, with an ageing squad consisting of Fabregas, Terry, David Luiz, Cahill, Pedro, Diego Costa and Willian. He also scored 85 league goals that season, more than any of our managers post Fergie. The following season (which was probably the worst of his managerial career). Terry and Costa left. His squad was ageing and he had trouble with Abramovic because he wanted Lukaku and he ended up with Morata, that's also the same season we ended up with Lukaku. In a season where injuries to key players (Hazard, Rudiger, Alonso and Moses were all out for lengthy spells) he still beat us with Mourinho and won the FA cup. It also didn't help that the signing he didn't want (Morata) couldn't hit a barn door and he finished 5th. So in his worst season he outperformed any Ole season considerably.
Also about Chelsea being left worse off he brought probably their 2 most important players in the UCL win last season (Kante and Rudiger). Sarri the following season won the Europa league and that's when they were hit with a transfer ban and couldn't buy any players, they also sold Hazard and Courtois before Lampard (an inept manager as proven by Tuchel) came in, oh and Tuchel won a pretty big trophy last season.
I pray Conte comes in and leaves us worse off. We might win the champions league. If you consider 80 odd league goals scored defensive, We've been playing ultra defensive football with Ole.
It's actually mad the disrespect Conte gets in here, it's like someone saying I don't want Fergie cos of what happened to us when he retired.
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A little Tifo vid on how Conte set up Inter
And a Football Made Simple one
And a Football Made Simple one
Make Ten Haag an offer he can’t refuse. And dispose over-rated players like Lindelof, AwB, Fred, mctominay. Okay the youngsters who are hungrier like Hannibal, Laird.
2 titles and CL.
I'll take Conte. Changed vote. This squad needs structure and we already have the personnel to satisfy Conte so he won't be too bitter. Also, he is available. Just do it.
Good post. Conte gets hate more than anything because people are stereotyping his football because he is Italian so therefore it must be defensivd, and personality wise he is a bit crazy so they just assume he is Mourinho mk2. Conte is a terrific manager and would have us competing for all trophies during his time here. Why the feck does anything else matter? We have a squad built for now. Not 5 years from now. Get a manager who won't waste the squad.
I am certainly not anti Italian but Conte is a bad fit for us
A- He's as toxic as Mou is
B- Conte utilize a 3-5-2/5-3-2 system which would lead to yet another radical overhaul of our team.
C- Conte simply can't settle down.
We need a manager whose philosophy fits the current side. That means a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1 formation. Zidane and Ten Hag are better options then Conte.
We need to win trophies NOW i.e. this season or next season. This whole idea of squad progress is bullshit. As if the rest of the football world stays still while we 'progress'.
We have a strong squad which is capable of winning things. I don't care if the coach has to be fired 2-3 seasons later. That's modern football.
We have a strong squad which is capable of winning things. I don't care if the coach has to be fired 2-3 seasons later. That's modern football.
I am sorry but this is nonsense, we have tried it before and won two trophies. Now we are on one of our longest tropyless streaks because our board foolishly thought they could forge Fergie MKll by giving a copycat time and a bottomless pit of money - getting dry bummed by our oldest rivals in the process so getting in a lottery winner isn't working either.
Mourinho eventually failed obviously but we can't discount Woodward and the board's part in that. For example we eventually bought the player we denied him, the two players he wanted out aren't kicking up trees now and Ole's nice guy routine hasn't brought in much success.
This is from me who wanted Mourinho out early doors into his rein. Bring in Conte or whoever, back them and add to the trophy cabinet. The mandate for the long term health of the club should be vested with Murtough and Fletcher anyway and let the manager focus on short term results.
A bit rich coming from a club that has blown £400m in two and half years. City and Liverpool aren't changing managers, why would they? Look at their results, are they stuck in a never ending rebuild? No they are winning stuff so why change it?
Conte always wants control of transfers and that has never ended well for us when we have managers like that
I was thinking the night before the Liverpool match -
- Conte will 100% go hard for Haaland and no one else. He has a history with very bulky strikers like Lukaku, Morata, Giroud, wanted Higuain etc.
- I can see him coaching Wan Bissaka in to a back 3 player(azpilicuetta) but he needs heavy coaching with regards to positioning; I can't say it's impossible because it's something that many say is not good enough here (coaching level).
- Maybe he could get the best out of Pogba as a previous manager (if he decides to stay but I think he probably wants a change of environment now).
- VDB & Bruno - Conte has a history of using support strikers like Tevez and Giovinco. If not on midfield areas or CAM areas like when he bought Eriksen - I can see him using such players quite further up the pitch
- New attacking fullbacks
- The choice of 352 vs 343. Both have been used at Chelsea and Juventus. The 343 can utelise players like Rashford out wide or Sancho as we saw with Pedro at Chelsea. The 352 will be a more striker partnership depending on which striker we have, if we buy another etc. (Ronaldo + Haaland partnership), Bruno + Ronaldo partnership, Rashford + Greenwood etc.
I disagree, I think you're confusing formation with system. For example: A 4-2-3-1 pressing style in the Ten Hag mould would not work with our lazy non pressing forwards. Our forwards have the lowest presses per game out of all the top 6 maybe even top 8 iirc. Meanwhile a more solid 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 from Conte could work.
The problem we have right now is we've got too many attacking players. Pogba, Bruno, Sancho, Ronaldo, Rashford, Greenwood, Cavani, Lingard are all trying to be shoehorned in to a team, what we're left with is a team very unbalanced. Now realistically Ten Hag, Conte and Zidane will only pick 4 of those players at max.
Ten Hag wouldn't be able to fit Bruno and Ronaldo in his system. Unless Bruno is a false 9, I also have reservations about Greenwood/Sancho in his system as well. (he can't drop Ronaldo and we all know that and I find it extremely unlikely that Ronaldo will suddenly press 20+ times per game). Unless our wingers suddenly find a miracle tank of stamina they aren't pressing and running all game. Our press is all over the place and if we decide to do that now we're basically forfeiting this season. Now it can be coached, but, you're looking at 1-2 years to get his system instilled in our young players. It's probably the better option long term. But, we have Ronaldo, all long term planning went to shit with that signing, we need to win short term and imo Ten Hag is not the man for immediate trophies.
Zidane would definitely drop Bruno as he'd play Pogba as the more free midfielder, in his 4-3-3 at Madrid he played without a 10 and had 3 dynamic midfielders. The only problem is Bruno doesn't fit that mould for a similar reason he wouldn't fit with Ten Hag in his midfield (overall positioning and ball retention doesn't fit a midfield 3). Rashford would be dropped for the more technical Sancho but Ronaldo would play and he could get the best out of him, we also have a problem with AWB as Zidane does rely on crosses and balls in behind from the fullbacks. Shaw would be good but our right side would struggle. He also depends on our wingers to contribute defensively a lot as his fullbacks are always overlapping, something I see Sancho and Greenwood struggling with, the good thing is he'd have a more solid midfield base to support so it could work.
Conte on the other hand would give us defensive stability through the 3 CB's which would also allow our fullbacks to push forward and one of his 3 midfielders, would probably be Pogba as he's already done it at a Conte team when they were together at Juve. He has options with our attacking talent so could go for a 2 man midfield and 3 up top or like he did at Inter a 3 man midfield with 2 up top. So for his 3-4-3 it would be something like:
De Gea
Maguire Lindelof Varane
AWB Pogba Fred/Matic Shaw
Greenwood Ronaldo Sancho/Rashford
Playing a 3 man defence like so reduces the pressure on our midfield 2 as we have 3 defenders and our wingbacks as cover, so it's very different from the midfield 2 Ole plays where Bruno is more of a second striker, (basically replacing Lindelof with Bruno).
Or for his 3-5-2 He could go:
De Gea
Maguire Lindelof Varane
AWB Pogba Matic/Mctominay Fred Shaw
Bruno/Sancho/Rashford Ronaldo
This formation is what he did with Inter against the big teams, it's how he beat your Juve team last season, Pogba in the Barella role and any one of Sancho/Bruno/Rashford in the Martinez role. I think he'll probably lean with Sancho as his control in tight spaces, dribbling ability and quick link up play will compliment Ronaldo well in quick, direct counter attacking situations.
It's all about balance and stability, and all of those managers imo would drop one of our attacking players for a more defensive minded player, so it wouldn't just be Conte. Bruno is too far isolated from the midfield in our current setup, it's as Scholes and Keane said recently, our midfield is too vulnerable and are constantly outnumbered fighting a losing battle.
Ironically we're in a very similar situation to Chelsea as they had Lampard playing a 4-3-3 sometimes 4-2-3-1 then Tuchel came in and made it a 3-4-3 / 3-5-2 and they automatically looked a lot better and solid. Everyone also thought that he'd play a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 but he settled on a 3-4-3 straight away.
Basically in summary, any team with Ronaldo as its cf will not be able to play a progressive pressing system which will automatically rule out Ten Hag, I do agree with you about Zidane as he could work, but tactically and with the players we have at our disposal I think Conte would be our best shot at winning something in the near future.
If you're talking long term and most attractive then I agree Ten Hag, however getting Ten Hag and him being forced to play Ronaldo is a clear issue imo and let's be honest, our board won't hire someone who will struggle to fit Ronaldo in.
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I am also not sure about Conte but the idea is growing on me. Some good background on him in this video.
Barca will get him and that ship will sail too.
He's better than Ole but do we really want to play the Italian way? His formations of 5 at the back and 2 at the front is not our style. We'd need a squad re-vamp
IMO, we shouldn't gamble like that. What we really need is a short term fix and see how we go from there. Offer Conte a short to medium term contract and let him bring winning football back again and instill that winner's mentality. And the board should be wiser this time to prematurely offer contract extensions. Prior to Conte's contract expiration, the board can then evaluate his achievements and squad harmony and see where we go from there. If Conte doesn't show any intentions to remain at the club, we can always hire the next one after that. I'm not really a fan of gambling on the next breakout or flavour of the month manager. Not discrediting Ten Haag but what if he can't adapt to PL football? Then our club will still be stuck in the abyss. Heck, even Ole could've been considered a breakout candidate following his Molde achievements.
In Mourinho's two full seasons we conceded less than 30 goals in the league. Somewhere along the line we have decided defending isn't important and we just need to stick as many attackers as possible on the pitch, the "United way" I suppose. I don't know of Conte is a long term appointment but he would surely get us better organised at the back at least, we're not going to achieve anything with 1 clean sheet in 21 games, a manager obsessed with 4 forwards and a set-piece coach that seems to have made us worse at defending them.
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