“We need better players....”

[marktan]

And they need him badly. That was tough to watch. There was no attacking plan whatsoever. Nobody knew what he was supposed to do on offense. Everyone just started headless runs and dribblings due to a complete lack of options. If this was the start of a coaches first season, that would be ok. But not at the start of the third season. That’s terrible. Mourinho doesn’t seem to have a clue about what to do on offense. The players are completely on their own.

We're not Bayern who can buy the best attackers from the rest of Bundesliga.

Our wide forwards are Rashford, Lingard, Mata, Sanchez. Not one can dribble between them. Martial's the only one that can but he blows hot and cold.

Yes it's the coaching but a lot of the players just aren't good enough.

 

[Roboc7]

Even with better players we still wouldn’t press, we wouldn’t have a detailed and dynamic attacking game plan and play like a modern team.

Not many teams will go to Brighton and allow them a foothold in the game which is how we play against everyone. It worked last week because we got gifted a penalty, today we only dominated when they allowed us to and even then we looked clueless.

 

[Aloysius's Back 3]

Fellaini comes on for Martial and plays upfront next to Lukaku - yet the manager refuses to play rash Ford or Martial as strikers in partnership with anybody.

How can the guy be so Damn deluded?

The 352 is our best formation & we have had some good matches playing that - yet we continue with a slightly modified 4231 with ppgba playing deeper & we played with a make shift LW, a Make shift RW, a makeshift target man and many more.

The manager refuses to build tactics around his squad & prefers to build a squad around his dry tactics. I'm glad Woodward stood up against Jose - the squad is blatantly miss-managed.

 

[JPRouve]

We do need better players in certain areas.

But most importantly we seem to need a better manager.

Honestly, I'm not sure if we even have a manager. There isn't a hint of team work and organization, better player will be useful if we want to be the best team around but we need to be a team first. If I'm the board, I don't spend a cent on that staff until they start showing why they are paid.

 

[Karappa]

"Better players" is a very generic term because there are so many aspects. But between some overpaid primadonnas who can't be arsed to show up at Brighton and Golden Ball winning Galacticos there are a lot of players that aren't at either side of the spectrum. The way I see the United squad at the moment it's a jumbled together mess and there will be a moment where either Woodward, Mourinho or a new manager will have to decide who can stay and who needs to be offloaded in a major overhaul. But first of all you need to have a philosophy, a clear style of play and then you can try to find "better players" for that system, with a better attitude and with better tactical awareness. The term "better players" gets thrown around so much these days but it should always be used in a certain reference system because otherwise it's meaningless.

 

[Enigma_87]

It's the players and always have been since Fergie left. We were punching above our weight in the last season with him and the squad was ageing. We replaced PL winners with a lot of average players and signed 2 average managers in Moyes and LvG.

Major overhaul is needed and I thought we were doing it this summer. Unfortunately it seems we'll falter even further.

 

[SAred]

We need a better coach, Jose is the past,

 

[SAFMUTD]

I wonder if Mourinho even train attacking football at all, we seem lost. We don't have a defined style, we don't press high, we don't counterattck well, we don't defend well, we don't have high posesion, I dont know what we do well except for hoping that the players solve the game by themselves in a lucky play.

We sure need better players to win the title, but we should be playing way better with the current squad. It’s going to be another long long season under Mourinho.

 

[Dominos]

I expected the focus to be on our defence after this defeat.

I'm glad our utterly hopless attacking play is also getting a mention.

We were 3-1 down at half time, and we didn't create a single chance in the 2nd half. Not a single chance, at 3-1 down, against Brighton, for 45 minutes. Not one. Yes I'm not counting them gifting us a pen in the 94th minute.

It's a combination of player quality and coaching. This is definitely not a well coached team though, there's absolutely no way our players are playing at their maximum potential, they pass the ball like a sunday league side.

 

[HTG]

We're not Bayern who can buy the best attackers from the rest of Bundesliga.

Our wide forwards are Rashford, Lingard, Mata, Sanchez. Not one can dribble between them. Martial's the only one that can but he blows hot and cold.

Yes it's the coaching but a lot of the players just aren't good enough.

What does Bayern have to do with anything? By the way, Sanchez is a great dribbler. Dribbling is not the issue. Not at all. There is just a complete lack of understanding for what the players are supposed to do. They are always on their own. The lack of runs to open up the defense is stunning. The lack of support the wingers get even more. With a guy like Lukaku, your wingers should have so much space, simply due to the cover Lukaku requires. But there is just nothing. You just slowly carry the ball to the box and nobody follows.
The distance between the defense and offense is always far too big. You don’t attack as a team at all. This incoherence is all down to the coach. You could have better players at some positions. But you should still do much, much better.
Mourinho doesn’t have a clue what to do to change this. Not at all. The guy is completely dogmatic in his approach and won’t change.

 

[Hugh Jass]

It tactical, as in the manager. If we had the same players but managed by Guardiola, we would have won 3-0 today.

The tactics away from home, whether we are playing Chelsea or Stockport, is to win 1-0. For the players we have it is just not good enough.

I have backed Mourinho all along, but getting fed up with watching us away from home.

 

[sullydnl]

Put it this way: Even if we sack Mourinho tomorrow and appoint a stone cold brilliant manager, that manager will still want us to spend a fecktonne of money in coming windows to improve the side.

 

[Slevs]

Our best CB is bambi on ice.

Our best defender is a past it 33 year old right winger turned left back turned right back.

Our world class world cup winning midfielder is heavily wound up by the simplest of things and proceeds to feck up play.

We have 4 strikers playing either right wing or left wing.

We have a past it cam whose playing rw.

Our best player today against Brighton is actively getting hounded out of the club by "fans" who have called him toilet brush ever since he came.

Still everyone thinks it is Mourinho's fault cause our players can't control a ball or pass it 10 meters to one another.

Still, the countless title winning manager's wishes were refused and we proceeded to not invest in the squad, citing the money Van Gaal spent as if its part of what Mourinho has spent.

 

[USREDEVIL]

Sorry but when Brighton are made to look like Real Madrid, we have a bigger problem than a center back or two. We look like the players assemble just before the game from their office jobs. No organization. no style or idea what to do with the ball.

 

[RedCoffee]

Whenever we put out a team these days it probably cost in the region of 400m to put together. It’s poor management and poor direction to say the 400m we have spent is not competitive. In any other business highly speculative investments that don’t pay off would be punished with the sack.

 

[Josep Dowling]

Players can’t pass. In the attacking third no one could control the ball.

Fred was always rash falling on the floor. Bailly was always rash falling in the floor.

I don’t get what these guys do in training. It’s the basics we are not doing. There is too much patience to attack without going anywhere.

Final straw for me. Nothing has changed from last season. Jose has to go now. I just hope the next manager they appoint has a primary tactic to attack. I watch football for entertainment, not just to see them win trophies. I barely want to watch games at the moment.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

It's not all on Bailly isn't it?

If Bailly was playing for Liverpool, and made the mistakes he did, would Klopp's Liverpool have came out in the second half, playing like we did, looking like we have no clue what to do in the attacking third?

It’s not all on Bailly, no. But anyone can see he’s nowhere near good enough to be a first choice CB at a team with aspirations of winning the league.

Anyone apart from the accountant/scouting genius who seems to be in charge of transfers, anyway.

 

[Hoof the ball]

Saying we need better players to play more progressive and cohesive football is an absolute cop out and anyone who has ever fed that line should be appalled for having said it. Football is replete; I repeat, replete, with examples of teams, both major and minor, big or small, top class, middle-table and below, of teams which are able to keep the ball, interchange, build an attack and complete attacking moves. No, they don't have to perform them to the level of Barca or Man City, however, playing with the fundamentals of progressive football ought to be easily accomplished with a squad that comprises of players technically able to do so. What we're looking at is a distinct lack of quality technical coaching. Coaching transitions, coaching possession build up, coaching positioning, coaching team pressing. These are coaching issues.
Van Gaal's United were utterly toothless but if it proved one thing, it was that we could play with the ball and dominate possession with the right coaching emphasis. So, that's fine, if he's decided we're going to relinquish possession to become a counter-attack team then there has to be something to show for it. We're in year three now. It's not just that we're unconvinced that we'll challenge for the title. It's that we're not convinced that our squad knows exactly how it's supposed to play, and so there's a lot of intuitive and spontaneous movement which leaves our players running into blind alleys.

 

[goin4glory]

Oh look, another attention whore who thinks his opinion is so important it requires it's own thread. Do one.

 

[el3mel]

We need better mentality, not better quality.

 

[Rash Decision]

What does Bayern have to do with anything? By the way, Sanchez is a great dribbler. Dribbling is not the issue. Not at all. There is just a complete lack of understanding for what the players are supposed to do. They are always on their own. The lack of runs to open up the defense is stunning. The lack of support the wingers get even more. With a guy like Lukaku, your wingers should have so much space, simply due to the cover Lukaku requires. But there is just nothing. You just slowly carry the ball to the box and nobody follows.
The distance between the defense and offense is always far too big. You don’t attack as a team at all. This incoherence is all down to the coach. You could have better players at some positions. But you should still do much, much better.
Mourinho doesn’t have a clue what to do to change this. Not at all. The guy is completely dogmatic in his approach and won’t change.

I mean when a team like Brighton attacks and defends better than us, and yet some are blaming our players for being shit, I don't know why you even bother explaining yourself.

 

[RedB4ndiT]

If only Mou spent as much time working with the squad instead of being insecure with Pep's and Klopp's squads we'd be in better shape.

 

[Tyrion]

I mean when a team like Brighton attacks and defends better than us, and yet some are blaming our players for being shit, I don't know why you even bother explaining yourself.

Exactly. Many of the players look poor but Martial, Pogba, Mata, Sanchez and Rashford have all either never played as well for United as they did their previous clubs or have stagnated under Mourinho. The "Buy better" complaint doesn't stack up.

 

[Kag]

It’s not all on Bailly, no. But anyone can see he’s nowhere near good enough to be a first choice CB at a team with aspirations of winning the league.

Anyone apart from the accountant/scouting genius who seems to be in charge of transfers, anyway.

Ed Woodward was responsible for the scouting and final decision maker with regard to the signing of Bailly? Not the manager at the time?

Get a grip.

 

[anant]

If anyone thinks that we need better players to beat Brighton then they are just kidding themselves!
Had we had this result against any of the other top 6 sides (including Arsenal), I would have accepted that point, but not a side which cost them less than what we were willing to pay for Maguire and Willian!
It's literally the same mistakes as last season, we have absolutely no idea of how to defend a set piece, whether it will be one of the outfielders who'd clear the ball or the GK is supposed to come out of his line. The defending is absolutely haphazard and while there were individual mistakes, these mistakes are pretty common and it raises doubts whether the player is the right person for the club, and in case he is, what are we doing to cover for these lapses!
Going forward we have literally no plan whatsoever. I mean, what is our go to plan moving forward? It's definitely not wing play and crosses as who ever the RW is (Mata in 1st half, Jesse in 2nd), they move inside which means that's an instruction from the manager to congest the middle, but what next? Its not counter attacking as you hardly see any penetrating runs from any one in the side, it's not pumping the ball in and neither are we stringing passes to push them back or through them and find some space to shoot. And that entirely lies on the manager not on players as its the manager who has to bring his players on the same page.

 

[Damien]

Still everyone thinks it is Mourinho's fault cause our players can't control a ball or pass it 10 meters to one another.

Still, the countless title winning manager's wishes were refused and we proceeded to not invest in the squad, citing the money Van Gaal spent as if its part of what Mourinho has spent.

Thing is, you say our best CB is bambi on ice. We spent money on two CBs in 2016/17 and 2017/18 under Mourinho and for our best to still be a CB who has been here since 2010 is pretty damning. You talk about our world cup winning midfielder - again, someone Mourinho signed and we're not getting the best out of for whatever reason. Whether that being the player or coaching it doesn't reflect well on us. The four strikers playing right wing or left wing - we knew for a while our weakness was on the right wing and in January we listened to the countless title winning manager's wishes and swapped a player for another one who prefers to play on the left.

The signings for the first two summers were:
Pogba
Mkhitaryan
Bailly
Zlatan
Lukaku
Matic
Lindelof
Sanchez

How many of those can we say have been an unquestionable success so far? At the moment we can't even say half of them have been and we've paid up to 300M for them.

 

[marktan]

What does Bayern have to do with anything? By the way, Sanchez is a great dribbler. Dribbling is not the issue. Not at all. There is just a complete lack of understanding for what the players are supposed to do. They are always on their own. The lack of runs to open up the defense is stunning. The lack of support the wingers get even more. With a guy like Lukaku, your wingers should have so much space, simply due to the cover Lukaku requires. But there is just nothing. You just slowly carry the ball to the box and nobody follows.
The distance between the defense and offense is always far too big. You don’t attack as a team at all. This incoherence is all down to the coach. You could have better players at some positions. But you should still do much, much better.
Mourinho doesn’t have a clue what to do to change this. Not at all. The guy is completely dogmatic in his approach and won’t change.

Sanchez is a great dribbler? Clearly you haven't watched him for the last 2 years, he might've been good at it once but in all his games at United I can't recall him doing a useful or succesfull dribble once.

The point about Bayern is that you guys have a far better attack than us. Even 35 year old Ribery and Robben would be an upgrade for us.

Your point about there being no space, no attacking cohesion is valid - but a huge part of that is because of the attack (aside from Lukaku). There's a severe lack of quality there. Usually you give the ball to the attackers, and they attempt something or make something happen. Two of ours - Lingard and Rashford - are pretty terrible with the ball at their feet (but have good movement). Mata's good at playing passes ocassionally but that's about it. Sanchez we were hoping to be good but he's been pretty terrible and imo looks like he's lost a bit of his touch and pace based on his 20 games with us. Our midfield is good, but they look so static because the attack can't do anything with the ball.

Of course, a lot of the fault for that lies with Mourinho for not buying better players. But saying it's only becuase of Mourinho's approach is wrong because he's played great football with all his teams before us - Chelsea twice, Real and Inter. If you put Mourinho in charge of City for example they'd play good football. I do want him gone though because I was giving him one more summer to make the attacking signings we need and we signed nobody.

 

[johanovic]

We need a plan and vision for the team. Wingplay and fullbacks are awful compaired to other top clubs, same could be said for the centrebacks. We are very far from the
Neville-Rio-Vidic-Evra days when we had one of the best defences in world football. Same could be said about midfield and attack. Lukaku and De Gea are the only players that would have been part of the strong teams we had in the past. Bring in a young modern manager as Nagelsman, keep Carrick and McKenna and start a proper rebuild. Give Chong,Garner,Gomes and more youngsters a chance. They would give a effort and surely not do worse than some of the players we have playing today.

 

[Slevs]

Thing is, you say our best CB is bambi on ice. We spent money on two CBs in 2016/17 and 2017/18 under Mourinho and for our best to still be a CB who has been here since 2010 is pretty damning. You talk about our world cup winning midfielder - again, someone Mourinho signed and we're not getting the best out of for whatever reason. Whether that being the player or coaching it doesn't reflect well on us. The four strikers playing right wing or left wing - we knew for a while our weakness was on the right wing and in January we listened to the countless title winning manager's wishes and swapped a player for another one who prefers to play on the left.

The signings for the first two summers were:
Pogba
Mkhitaryan
Bailly
Zlatan
Lukaku
Matic
Lindelof
Sanchez

How many of those can we say have been an unquestionable success so far? At the moment we can't even say half of them have been and we've paid up to 300M for them.

The best CB I was referring to was Bailly.

It was obvious the guy wanted Perisic and settled for Sanchez when the board wouldn't sanction Perisic. Do we even have one winger? Do we have someone who can constantly beat a man and put a cross in?

He got Sanchez instead of Perisic because the board couldn't get Perisic. Plus Sanchez is miles better than Mkhi (and I'm telling you this as a Lebanese-Armenian) both mentally and skill wise. It was a no brainer to swap those two.

 

[lysglimt]

Sanchez is a great dribbler? Clearly you haven't watched him for the last 2 years, he might've been good at it once but in all his games at United I can't recall him doing a useful or succesfull dribble once.

The point about Bayern is that you guys have a far better attack than us. Even 35 year old Ribery and Robben would be an upgrade for us.

Your point about there being no space, no attacking cohesion is valid - but a huge part of that is because of the attack (aside from Lukaku). There's a severe lack of quality there. Usually you give the ball to the attackers, and they attempt something or make something happen. Two of ours - Lingard and Rashford - are pretty terrible with the ball at their feet (but have good movement). Mata's good at playing passes ocassionally but that's about it. Sanchez we were hoping to be good but he's been pretty terrible and imo looks like he's lost a bit of his touch and pace based on his 20 games with us. Our midfield is good, but they look so static because the attack can't do anything with the ball.

Of course, a lot of the fault for that lies with Mourinho for not buying better players. But saying it's only becuase of Mourinho's approach is wrong because he's played great football with all his teams before us - Chelsea twice, Real and Inter. If you put Mourinho in charge of City for example they'd play good football. I do want him gone though because I was giving him one more summer to make the attacking signings we need and we signed nobody.

Sorry - but so did Moyes and LvG - if Mourinho after 2 years cant get his players to perform how he wants - how shitty of a manager must he be ?

 

[Quizierda]

NOT.

For the last time, the problem is our shit coaching and shit tactics. We don’t need a Galactico team to beat bloody Brighton. This should be painfully obvious by now. Basic simple shit like moving off the ball we can’t do.

100% agree. We could have prime Barca or whtever team you like. With Mou on the sideline Messi would have propably been sold as he is not big enough..

 

[Rash Decision]

100% agree. We could have prime Barca or whtever team you like. With Mou on the sideline Messi would have propably been sold as he is not big enough..

Nah, Mou would have been sacked before that happened. Messi is bigger than Mou.

 

[Siorac]

The best CB I was referring to was Bailly.

It was obvious the guy wanted Perisic and settled for Sanchez when the board wouldn't sanction Perisic. Do we even have one winger? Do we have someone who can constantly beat a man and put a cross in?

He got Sanchez instead of Perisic because the board couldn't get Perisic. Plus Sanchez is miles better than Mkhi (and I'm telling you this as a Lebanese-Armenian) both mentally and skill wise. It was a no brainer to swap those two.

Settled for Sanchez instead of Perisic

I also settled for a good steak instead of eating plastic the other day.

 

[Quizierda]

Nah, Mou would have been sacked before that happened. Messi is bigger than Mou.

Of course he is. I was just trying to draw the picture that Mou would have also managed to sacrifice one of the all time greatest because he wouldn't fit his criteria of a player.

 

[Slevs]

Settled for Sanchez instead of Perisic

I also settled for a good steak instead of eating plastic the other day.

Great debate mate point well made.

If you don't think swapping Sanchez for Mkhi was the correct decision you need to give your head a good wobble.

We have no winger at the club.

 

[Fosu-Mens]

Changes needed to fix this club(sorted relevant to importance):

1. Hire a Director of Football: Change in the governance of the club. Woodward/board should not be involved in football related decisions other than giving the limit to the DoF and manager for how much can be spent on transfer and wages each season. Football decisions should be made by people with competence and experience within the field, not an accountant/owners with zero footballing experience.
   
2. DoF(with certain persons in the club that is not outdated/class of 92) benchmarks how the best clubs play their football, train and other aspects. Create longterm strategy for how to play, squad building and infrastructural improvements of training facilities.
   
3. Hire a manager(and the coaches that he would like to bring) that is capable of playing "modern" football and has shown evidence of being able to improve players under his tutelage.
   
4. Manager and DoF uses the rest of the season to determine which players that have a future at the club, and which players that does not.
   
5. 2019: Winter and summer window used to make the required changes needed in the squad.

Example:

1. Pay Roma £X millions to let Monchi come to us. Woodward solely focus on the financial aspect of this club, and only sets a limit to how much we can spend.
   
2. Monchi does step 2 from above.
   
3. Hires Eusebio di Francesco or another manager that has shown abilities for improving players and playing football that is not outdated.
   
4. Monchi and Francesco does step 4 from above.
5. Sell/release x number of players (example: players that might be judge not needed: Mata, Darmian, McTominay, Mata, Darmian, Herrera, Jones, Mata, Darmian, Rojo, Mata, Darmian). And Monchi gets the players we need.

 

[Rash Decision]

Of course he is. I was just trying to draw the picture that Mou would have also managed to sacrifice one of the all time greatest because he wouldn't fit his criteria of a player.

Don't think that's entirely fair. Jose would have recognised Messi's unearthly ability, just wouldn't have known how to maximise it. Would love to see him trying to convince Messi to defend though

 

[Seij]

We haven't had a decent right winger who will actually stay on the right for years.

We haven't had fullbacks go can attack and cross for years.

Our CB's don't know how to bring the ball out and pass forward. We kind of had that with a makeshift CB in Blind and signed Lindelof with hopes that he'll be the one to solve this problem but neither of them seem good enough to handle the pace and physicality of the league.

I'm sure coaching/tactics share a big portion of the blame but after spending so much money, it's clear that we still have glaring issues and that we have not spent our money wisely.

 

[Siorac]

Great debate mate point well made.

If you don't think swapping Sanchez for Mkhi was the correct decision you need to give your head a good wobble.

We have no winger at the club.

It was the correct decision. It's just that you were painting it as if poor little Mourinho was forced to settle for one of the best players in the league instead of Ivan fecking Perisic who has seemingly reached absolutely astounding heights of ability on the Caf in the last year or so. It's like when we were pining for Hargreaves back then, with each game he missed through injury his legend got greater.

 

[Kag]

I've been asking this question (to some agreement, in fairness) for a long time now. In a slightly different way, of course.

How many good players do we need to buy, to watch them bask in the shithousery that is our football, before we conclude that maybe the players aren't the real problem here?

Just how many previously-successful-at-other-clubs/national team lads do we need to buy before that bloody penny finally drops for some of you?