Of course, as much as we should be rebuilding, it shouldn't be by finishing so low in the table. We should improve on last season, that should be the expectations. Arsenal, Chelsea and even Spurs are not that great, we should be aiming for at least 4th.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Perennially in transition mode....We always seem to be 4-5 players short....We are a shambles from top to bottom right now...
Source = Transfermarkt
Jose bought - €466,100,000
LVG bought - €351,350,000
Ole bought - €159,000,000
Moyes bought - €77,130,000
Given that most of the fans thought the squad was abysmal when Ole took over you surely have to point the finger at Jose who spent close to 500m euros. It isn't Woodward or the Glazers that select our transfer targets, thats purely down to the management.
Think Wum is a bit early with his prediction that Ole is turning the squad around. We still have no idea if Oles signings will be good long term investments, the early signs are promising but the situation can change fast. Lets at least have 6 months of decent form. It is clear to all of us that both midfield and attack needed rebuilding though. It's also worth pointing out that Jose was allowed to spend more than Ole in his opening 2 seasons while LVG spent more in his second season.
Whether results improve on the pitch is a different story, personally i'm not expecting much given how shite our squad is. Assuming Maguire, AWB and James have a decent 1st season would that indicate that Ole should be kept on and given another Summer window? Or if results are bad he should end up being chopped no matter what?
Jose bought - €466,100,000
LVG bought - €351,350,000
Ole bought - €159,000,000
Moyes bought - €77,130,000
Given that most of the fans thought the squad was abysmal when Ole took over you surely have to point the finger at Jose who spent close to 500m euros. It isn't Woodward or the Glazers that select our transfer targets, thats purely down to the management.
Think Wum is a bit early with his prediction that Ole is turning the squad around. We still have no idea if Oles signings will be good long term investments, the early signs are promising but the situation can change fast. Lets at least have 6 months of decent form. It is clear to all of us that both midfield and attack needed rebuilding though. It's also worth pointing out that Jose was allowed to spend more than Ole in his opening 2 seasons while LVG spent more in his second season.
Whether results improve on the pitch is a different story, personally i'm not expecting much given how shite our squad is. Assuming Maguire, AWB and James have a decent 1st season would that indicate that Ole should be kept on and given another Summer window? Or if results are bad he should end up being chopped no matter what?
6th means that we are better than Everton, Wolves or Leicester. Is that our ambition this year? Bloody hell, our squad is not some world class team but finishing 6th with this squad is something which any average manager should be able to do
People are far too obsessed with results as opposed to the bigger picture where Jose's football was clearly unsustainable and it was never reaching the standards set by City and Liverpool. Our whole approach has changed from an obsession with results and mercenaries to a positive style of football that, when properly backed, will get results and be enjoyable to watch.
We recouped what we paid for Lukaku. Pogba can easily fetch north of 120m EUR in the current market.
Just Pogba and Lukaku alone had 200m EUR value in them, which is half of what Jose spent for 3 windows.
It isn't Jose that chooses how much players go and come.
People here love to blame Jose... the malaise goes so much deeper and until the club admits this and does something about it, we will remain in a mess and be consigned to mediocrity
Hahaha, the jose haters love to set their own goalpost.
2nd is failure under him while 6th is lauded as the right direction.
Good football needs result to vindicate it, it's not the be all and end all. If you finished 3rd while playing beautiful football you can make a case against finishing 2nd playing dour football. Not when it's 6th vs 2nd.
How can you claim your football to be tantalizing and exciting when you lost more than you win?
Our club isn't working with an unlimited budget, it's not like our Manager can walk in and demand 10 new players. He's got a budget to work from and our targets will be carefully picked to ensure they fit inside that budget. Jose picked those players and spent a fortune, of which only 2 right now seem to be useful to our next Manager. We can argue whether Ole's judgement is wrong and whether these players shouldn't be sold. But ultimately the entire forum was crying out of frustration at the state of our squad in Joses' final season and yet he had spent almost 500m Euros. His targets were shite and that is on him.
It's too early to judge whether Oles targets are good.
A good time to play Chelsea, certainly. Lots of ifs buts and maybes, the results will be what decides whether progress has been made, ultimately.
Remind us again how many of moyes signings are still here and dont include the half of team of SAF that are still here ? Also dont see any of Jose signings being sold for 20 million less a year later like lvg's
As I said it wasn't up to Jose to whom we can get at what value. Especially when you consider the last season when it went tits up so he doesn't put the price tags on those players.
Besides my point was context. Just Pogba and Lukaku - both passed on the next manager hold more than 200m EUR in value.
Of course there will be some duds, but it's pretty unfair to compare just numbers like that.
Exactly.
But I wonder why we are starting with Jose, who during his "mess" won us the Europa League, a very respectable second place, and could've had an FA title if not for a bungling Jones. Things did go south at the end of his tenure but I don't think Jose left us a mess. (And it didn't help his cause that we got Maguire after his exit.) I think he was sacked later than he should have been, for the simple reason that if he wasn't going to be backed (for the likes of Perisic) we should have cut ties earlier.
And maybe he did leave us a "mess", but I wouldn't blame him for spending to clean up LVG's mess, who thought he was cleaning up Moyes' mess, who was, well, Moyes. As far as Ole goes I think the honeymoon period was over after his interim feel-good stint. I love the team and wish him all the best but we're still seeing shades of style from the LVG and Jose era (predictable, sideways passing and incredibly slow buildup play).
Maybe it's not the manager(s) but, save Pogba, the sub-par engine room they are working with.
yeah, agree with that.
I don't know how anyone could say Jose spent worse than LvG, especially when LvG actually bought more players, and was operating at a time when transfer fees were about half what they were when Jose took over. They both have two players left in the first team squad but Jose's (Pogba, Lindelof) are arguably better than LvG's (Martial, Shaw).
Both were really shit in the transfer window and both left us in a mess but LvG was marginally worse.
Both were really shit in the transfer window and both left us in a mess but LvG was marginally worse.
Probably because we are obsessed with always going for the best and paying over the odds. That ends with us having to ignore other areas and having to play players in unfamiliar positions.
We seem to want to go for players who want to spend their whole careers here. Just get really good players who are specialists in specific positions. Keep them if they are a success, or else move them on for better players. At least they will be a relative success if played in their natural position and we can get decent money for them. A lesser player will be several times better than a world-class player if the lesser one is playing in a natural position and world-class player is not.
There were players like Ziyech and Partey who we could have got relatively cheap and would have fixed major issues in the right wing and midfield. But we wanted unattainable ones like Sancho and Longstaff and seemingly willing to wait for them to come.
Likes of City never seem to pay stupid fees like we have chucked out in recent times. They go for specialists for the role even if they are somewhat lesser players than their main target. We get Pogba and play him as DM, Mata as right winger, Young as full back, even going as far back as Fergie when we played Jones in midfield. These middle tier players always seem to elude us for some reason.
I think you're over-emphasising what a few comments from Ole will achieve. Jose didn't get what he wanted by publicly throwing his toys out of the pram. The club will continue to make money and the Glazer's will continue to line their pockets, regardless. The only thing which will affect their ambition in the transfer market or worry the sponsors is if United miss CL qualification again.
In my view, there are more downsides to Ole having a pop at the board than upsides. This is besides the fact that it's a moot point as he's never going to do it.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that Mourinho left behind a worse team....United were appalling under LVG...Winning the EL and finishing 2nd were very very impressive achievements given the state of our squad.We probably sacked him at the right time(should have backed him in 2018 summer window though),but I can assure you we won’t finish anywhere near 2nd under Good old Ole.
Ole will be given as much time as everybody else...We sack managers if they don’t finish in the top 4(or qualify for CL) after a full season...Moyes and a LVG were sacked as soon as they failed to qualify for CL and Mourinho was sacked when it became clear that we weren’t going to finish 4th.If Solksjaer fails to qualify for the CL,then he will be gone...as simple as that...There’s no plausible reason to give him more time than managers who came with stellar track records...
Going to go even more downhill from here. Going to be as bad or worse than Moyes's season.
He's still selecting those players. He's hardly expecting to buy those players on the cheap is he? He's going to say "I want Pogba!" and he'll be told "Well his club values him at x amount". That then has a knock on effect of who else he targets. Hence budgeting. It's not like he just hands Ed a list of names and says "get on with it".
If the fans are complaining about the state of the squad, then thats down to the Management and who they've targeted to bring into the squad. Of the 11 signings Jose made, only 2 have had minutes this season. If we're saying Van Gaal fecked up our squad then Jose must also take the blame as well right? He bought in 11 players spending the most money and fixed feck all squad wise. Neither LVG or Jose helped repair the squad, they were both as shit as each other.
The defense Jose gets on this forum at times is bizarre.
Not necessarily, not right now. After years of chopping and changing philosophies, it's going to take time for United to fully instil this new approach. It's worth noting that even the best managers in this league took time to get the results to match their style of football. Pep's City finished 4th on goal difference in his first season. Klopp's Liverpool finished 8th in the season he arrived. We might finish in the top 4, we might not, what's important is if a positive change in style has been implemented and the players we have grow more used to what we want to achieve. If our style of football doesn't look like it's going to produce results by the end of the season then maybe it'll be time for Ole to go, but only if we bring in a manager who also wants to bring attacking fast paced football. Or else we'll be back to chopping and changing the team yet again.
Sure we could have kept Jose and finished 2nd and 3rd every season, winning the odd cup here and there. But we'd have been bored to tears and we'll be gutting young players to make way for experienced mercenaries and for what, finishing behind City and Liverpool every season as they win the big trophies and entertain their fans to boot.
No one said Jose left a brilliant squad or he isn't blamed for some of the shite he brought. That doesn't mean that he get all the shite as he's the only culprit of them all. If Moyes gets the blame for leaving a squad as it was, so should LvG, so should Jose, so should Ole..
Yes he left done players like Matic and Sanchez, but also he left us with the two best players we had last season in Lindelof and Pogba. Apart from Matic, Zlatan and Sanchez the profile of the players he brought in was hardly 30+.
You always need mixture of experienced and young players - not the extremes.
I wouldn't say his profiling of the players was pretty good. Of course some won't make it and turn out to be shit choices, but generally a mixture of the age group he went for was pretty much spot on.
The individual estimation of the qualities of some of the players let him down and at the end disrupting the harmony and sour results got him sacked. Deservedly so. He was shit in the 3rd season but in the first two did more than any other manager has done post Fergie..
2 players a squad does not make. He signed 11 and left us with 2 despite spending almost 500million euros. That is not something id be proud of, in fact it's a clear signal that he failed miserably at repairing out squad, he didn't even repair our first team let alone the squad. Granted Jose didn't exactly have a brilliant squad to work with initially, but 4 of LVGs signings were decent, Martial, Herrera, Shaw and Romero are all decent. I'd throw in Blind in that list as well despite Jose selling him. Our wage bill wasnt anywhere near as bad back then either from memory.
As amazing as calling 3 wins in 15 "turning it around"?Amazing Jose fans are celebrating 2nd when Jose himself said it's just the best loser. All his career he played down managers who came 2nd or didn't win big trophies but somehow did amazing salesman job at ManUtd.
On Grant
I'm not asking for Ole's head. In fact even though we only have 4 points on the board we are very unlucky not to have all 9. My issue is we are getting rid of some of the dross but you need replacements. And once again we get rid of the better quality dross whilst the likes of Young, Smalling, Jone, Darmian, Rojo and Lingard remain. Young, Smalling and Jones in particular have been here since the rot began, they should be first out the door.
Too many fans on cafe just think the youth players can step in and everything will be hunky-dory. It just isn't true. Since the class of 92 there has only been a handle of quality youngsters that have come through out youth ranks. And of the current crop I would suggest only Greenwood will make it. He's 17 years old, lacking first team experience. He will and should get 20 minutes here and there and maybe a League cup game, that should be the expectation for any player under the age of 18 unless they are a Rooney.
We needed to buy more. We don't need to spent £50m plus for every single purchase. With Lukaku sold there should have been money available. There are plenty of options out there. This obsession with buying British all of sudden is just odd. It's nice to have British core but it really limits who we can get in due to availability, quality and price. Maddison will be next one, no doubt costing us £90m and once again all our budget will be gone on a player who simply isn't worth the money.
Too many fans on cafe just think the youth players can step in and everything will be hunky-dory. It just isn't true. Since the class of 92 there has only been a handle of quality youngsters that have come through out youth ranks. And of the current crop I would suggest only Greenwood will make it. He's 17 years old, lacking first team experience. He will and should get 20 minutes here and there and maybe a League cup game, that should be the expectation for any player under the age of 18 unless they are a Rooney.
We needed to buy more. We don't need to spent £50m plus for every single purchase. With Lukaku sold there should have been money available. There are plenty of options out there. This obsession with buying British all of sudden is just odd. It's nice to have British core but it really limits who we can get in due to availability, quality and price. Maddison will be next one, no doubt costing us £90m and once again all our budget will be gone on a player who simply isn't worth the money.
The wage structure isn't up to the manager mate.
He left us with 3 players last season who have generally a good to very good value. For all his deficiencies Lukaku will score goals if you use him properly. Of course you can't expect him to work in all kinds of formations.
Matic was decent signing for him in the first season later fell off a cliff. Lindelof is pretty good one, Pogba is world class one. Zlatan was a stop gap and played well for us.
I'd say he has about 50-50 record.
Bailly was a poor one - you can put it down to injuries. Micky was very poor one but easily recouped. Alexis turned out to be a disaster, but you couldn't really call it from the off. Fred is an abysmal one so far but I guess he has some value left.
Jury is still out on Dalot I guess.
I'd say LvG signings were worse.
If Ole said that, then yeah it's amazing. He didn't spend his career shitting on other managers for not winning trophies or downplaying other managers work. Shat on Europa league when Rafael Benitez won it, played down 2nd position when Grant and Pellegrini achieved it. Later he want everyone to believe what an unbelievable achievement it was to win Europa and finishing 2nd, 19 points behind City.
I keep reading this and I really don't know which Manchester United games you are watching. Ole's a very good talker and keeps saying what he want, the execution on the pitch is very different. No matter which United manager has come in I still see the same slow tumescent build up that doesn't create enough chances to score.
Jeez. You don't half talk some rubbish. Give it a rest.
The king is dead, long live the king. Meanwhile the owners are rubbing their hands together at the numpties lapping it up.
If he says he wants Sanchez and makes it clear to Woodward that no matter what we sign him, then our wage bill going insane is on him. The Managers will have a say on the finances of the club, thats part of the Managers job. Woodward is simply the go between, he's the one that negiotates with Jose and co being kept in the loop. But the Manager is ultimately the one to have the final say. The difference in Joses 3rd season was the Glazers had decided that Jose shouldn't keep demanding more money.
I'd say they're both equal in terms of transfers. They both had fairly decent signings and both had disasterous signings. Neither were successful in improving the squad and both left the squad in a fairly shite place. It's subjective at the end of the day so nobody will agree.
What I think Ole has done well on so far is reducing the wage bill by taking out the higher earners that are under achieving while bringing in some decent players who so far have looked promising. Results wise Ole is still fairly shit, but his transfers have looked good so far. If nothing else the signs are promising that he might do a fairly decent job of rebuilding, whether he has the ability to get the results is a different scenario. But i'd be happy with him rebuilding the squad and then handing over the keys.
Not Jose. Woodward.
I guess we will never know the truth there or how bad Jose wanted Sanchez as Woodward is also the type that would relish the opportunity to sign a shiny name.
Yeah that's a balanced view I'd say. The biggest problem that LvG and Jose faced is that one wanted possession based football the other counter attacking one - so you naturally would need more money to fix the "mess".
The only beef I have with Ole in terms of transfers is focusing on British players and missing on on very good and even cheaper alternatives from the continent.
Apart from that the three we already have look quality ones with the jury still out on James.
Mou criticism was initially received well by fans and pundits alike who started to support him and turning the pressure on to Woodward. However being the self destructive man he always was he overdid it by constantly moaning about everything, from preseason games to individual players right to club's legends. Ultimately it became evident to everybody that what Mou wanted wasn't the club's support but his big pay cheque so he can leave.
No one is expecting that from Ole
Jose, LVG, Moyes are all in the past. What is the point of this thread? Is it yet another attempt to bash Mourinho by some on here, this time laying all of Ed Woodward and Matt Judges poor negotiations on him?
He was rightly sacked for the poor results in his 3rd season, not Ed’s incompetence.
And Ole ultimately needs results too despite being very popular with fans.
Contracts aside, does anyone think the transfer targets are all from the manager anyway? Like Fred, who Mourinho wouldnt start but fitted Eds Brazilian marketing gap well, was really Mourinhos choice?? He wanted defenders and a RW. The manager Ed and Matt Judge can all veto a transfer but in practice what manager would veto an additional player. No way all our transfer targets are on the manager alone in recent years.
He was rightly sacked for the poor results in his 3rd season, not Ed’s incompetence.
And Ole ultimately needs results too despite being very popular with fans.
Contracts aside, does anyone think the transfer targets are all from the manager anyway? Like Fred, who Mourinho wouldnt start but fitted Eds Brazilian marketing gap well, was really Mourinhos choice?? He wanted defenders and a RW. The manager Ed and Matt Judge can all veto a transfer but in practice what manager would veto an additional player. No way all our transfer targets are on the manager alone in recent years.
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Ole will be our director of football inside two years.
A world class coach will get a rejuvenated squad challenging again.
A world class coach will get a rejuvenated squad challenging again.
That's blatant cherry-picking.
12 of those games took place last season by an overly tired squad of players who had not yet adjusted to Ole's new physically demanding system.
Such as?
This is Woodward saving money without any replacement.
Why is mata, darmian rojo Jones still here ?
Why is mata, darmian rojo Jones still here ?
I do understand your point but there is no middle ground in it. Even if he said I would have wanted more players would have created unnecessary controversy. By not saying he is not supporting Ole, he is just trying to do his job and focus on creating a positive atmosphere. This season may be a write off and Ole could very well be sacked before it even ends but trust me keeping Sanchhez, Lukaku and others who don't want to be here should be the last thing we the club should be doing now.
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