I am willing to give him time, but he's had the whole of this year and some of last December. There should be evidence of the positive changes he is making by this point, and to be honest it is quite hard to pinpoint what those changes are.
He has been very vocal about having an identity, being fitter, being hardworking, using players who want to actually play. It all sounds good, but it's all just words. The problem is that when it comes to the actual reality:
- Our performances are little different to under Jose. Last week a team sits off us and we looked dissinterested, clueless, and devoid of life. Concede a pathetic goal and end up losing. This week a team presses us and it's the same old story of getting the lead then trying to sit on it for 60+ minutes, to the point we actually stop playing football entirely. We sit back and defend but then don't even defend competently.
- We STILL have not bothered to sort out our weaknesses with set pieces and balls into the box. This is quite unbelievable. It has reached a point where it is just blatantly unprofessional. It is costing us games. We are a professional football team who's job it is to be as good as possible at football, and we do not bother to practice the most basic fundamental of that. If Ole isn't going to sort out stuff like this it isn't even worth worrying aboout whether he can sort out anything else. You wouldn't expect a driving inspector to teach you how to drive if they repeatedly ignore the fact you don't know the basic rules.
- He's deliberatelly left himself short of goalscorers. I have no idea why. He must have had some say in it. What is the plan?
- He's now let Smalling leave but on the evidence of this season so far, Lindelof is a liability.
- In general, he's been here long enoughto know the strengths of his players now...but he is playing Pogba in the same role that Mourinho and the rest of us have already spent over 2 years learning he can't play in. He's left himself short of forward players and then is wasting one of his best ones in a defensive role that they aren't even very good at.
I mean, we're 4 games into the season,, but these are all things that are quite alarming to me, because they just shouldn't be happening at this point. It's not really an opinion anymore that Pogba is better used further forwards, or that we need to woork on set pieces. These are just thing that anyone who watches our games, knows. They are things that from a manager's perspective, are actually relatively obvious, and relatively easy to sort out and offer easy wins or gains in terms of showing an actual improvement. If the obvious things are being ignored then it is much more likely to get worse than better. You can't repair a house if you can't even figure out where the damage is, even when it's blatantly staring you in the face.