Big Sam: Recruitment Is Key

Vitali

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Big Sam: Water is wet.

More at 10
But water isn't wet.

He's definitely correct, though. The ideal situation would be to invest in scouting, in order to discover young talent who genuinely want to play for the club and buy into the romanticism Manchester United has had for countless decades now. The longer Manchester United go without trophies, the more the club will alienate these prospects, having not grown up with Manchester United being one of the top teams in the world.

The other necessity is to invest in experienced players, who are in or on the verge of their prime. They need to be of quality and have the correct mindset. Ander Herrera, for instance, seemingly had the passion, but I don't believe he had the quality. He was a player who could be utilised in a certain match but he was not a leading Manchester United central midfielder. He simply didn't have enough quality on the ball. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the closest to fitting such criteria, but he was simply too old to be a viable solution.

The fact that players like Marcus Rashford are on outrageous wages will only attract mercenaries who must think that the club have low standards.
 
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jeff gurr

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Big Sam is 100% right.

Recruitment is the foundation everything else is built on. Giving managers quality players who they can work with is key. Better to give the manager a young hungry Maddison or Grealish than a high maintenance mercenary. Man Utd need to be producing or buying the Maguires & Maddisons much earlier rather than waiting until their value has peaked

It seems that every time the Manager was changed so did the recruitment process. That cant happen every 2-3 years, the tail is wagging the dog.
 
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Jezpeza

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Big Sam is 100% right.

Recruitment is the foundation everything else is built on. Giving managers quality players who they can work with is key. Better to give the manager a young hungry Maddison or Grealish than a high maintenance mercenary. Man Utd need to be producing or buying the Maguires & Maddisons much earlier rather than waiting until their value has peaked

It seems that every time the Manager was changed so did the recruitment process. That cant happen every 2-3 years, the tail is wagging the dog.
Good post. I am tired of the argument on here that another manager can really tear up trees with this lot. Bit like saying if a shit IT company with loads of shit programmers with lacklustre skills changes the duty manager they’ll challenge apple all of a sudden. Such a fatally flawed but constantly brought up argument
 

BringNaniBack

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He's right. Other than Di Maria, I wouldn't have chosen to sign any of the players we have signed since Fergie left. Truly awful recruitment.
 

JPB

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Exactly, put a prime Rio, Scholes and Ronaldo in Van Gaal's, Jose's or Ole's team and we challenge for the league. Simple as that. No manager in the world will turn Rashford James Lingard into Rooney Ronaldo and Tevez.
 

SilentWitness

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Is that why you bought Theo Walcott and Cenk Tosun who are starting every we...oh. He also signed Mangala ffs.
 

JablatoRed

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The mere fact that any utterance from the Gravy Slurper is being seen as relevant to Manchester United is as sorry as it gets....
 

Hughes35

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Is that why you bought Theo Walcott and Cenk Tosun who are starting every we...oh. He also signed Mangala ffs.
Bit of a stupid comment. All managers get it wrong sometimes. Look at Fergie with Bebe, Kleberson, Bellion and Djemba-Djemba. When he got it right, he got it very right.

Big Sam has been a very good manager over the years. He's a prick but he deservers some credit. Signings like Okotcha, Campo, Chimbonda, Anelka, Speed, Kevin Davies, Diop etc are very good signings for lower clubs.

Even for West ham he made decent singings - Jarvis, Valencia, Downing,

Big Sam may have many, many, many flaws. Transfer signings are actually not one of them.
 

devilish

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Of course it is.

The Footballer Manager and FIFA brigade are obsessed with tactics, systems, style etc....in reality 80% of a football team is made up of the quality and mentality of its players

Do you think Pep or Klopp could have this mob playing like City or Liverpool? If you do, I’d just delete your account and start watching another sport
So basically all this outrage surrounding Sir Matt and Sir Alex is BS? Given the right tools we could have hired a dancing bear or even Ole instead and he could cruise to victory just the same?
 

Foxbatt

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Of course better players play better. It's not rocket science. We know our recruitment has been pathetic.
But that doesn't excuse the fact a good or even decent coach will make the current players play better. A good coach is not going to play the way Ole is trying to do with this team.
Put someone like Big Sam and we won't lose to Crystal Palace at home and Newcastle away either.
 

Lentwood

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So basically all this outrage surrounding Sir Matt and Sir Alex is BS? Given the right tools we could have hired a dancing bear or even Ole instead and he could cruise to victory just the same?
Only if a dancing bear could adequately add the missing 20%....

You’re missing the point by talking about Sir Matt and SAF, they managed in different eras. They controlled everything, top to bottom. Brian Clough used to paint the lines on the pitch and drive the team coach at Hartlepool

Nowadays, the manager is very much the Head Coach. The manager is increasingly not responsible for many of the things posters seem to judge them by i.e. recruitment and contracts

Put simply - a good manager plus a good DoF plus a good team of analysts, scouts and coaches = City or Liverpool

A good manager (Jose/LvG) plus no DoF plus a seemingly disjointed team of analysts, scouts and coaches = Man Utd
 

devilish

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Only if a dancing bear could adequately add the missing 20%....

You’re missing the point by talking about Sir Matt and SAF, they managed in different eras. They controlled everything, top to bottom. Brian Clough used to paint the lines on the pitch and drive the team coach at Hartlepool

Nowadays, the manager is very much the Head Coach. The manager is increasingly not responsible for many of the things posters seem to judge them by i.e. recruitment and contracts

Put simply - a good manager plus a good DoF plus a good team of analysts, scouts and coaches = City or Liverpool

A good manager (Jose/LvG) plus no DoF plus a seemingly disjointed team of analysts, scouts and coaches = Man Utd
United still work with the same structure used by Sir Alex.




I think you have it wrong here. We've got a bad manager plus no DOF plus a seemingly disjointed team of analyst, scouts and coaches.
 
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Lentwood

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United still work with the same structure used by Sir Alex.

I think you have it wrong here. We've got a bad manager plus no DOF plus a seemingly disjointed team of analyst, scouts and coaches.
I know we do. That’s my point. It hasn’t evolved whereas teams around us have evolved.

I’m not saying Ole is a good manager, I’m not even saying he isn’t a bad one. I’m just saying we will keep burning through managers until we give them the right conditions to suceed
 

Farfetched

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Probably the only piece of useful advice we could get from ‘Big Sam’ is how to take a set piece. In general our use of free kicks, corners and throw-ins is woeful.
 

devilish

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I know we do. That’s my point. It hasn’t evolved whereas teams around us have evolved.

I’m not saying Ole is a good manager, I’m not even saying he isn’t a bad one. I’m just saying we will keep burning through managers until we give them the right conditions to suceed
I remember a time when if a club started the season well, you were heading for trouble. A charity shield win was seen as a curse. That's because that would mean that the club had peaked the season early and will run out of juice sooner or later. It was Mourinho who changed all that by building a side who could start well and end well. That changed EPL football.

My point is simple. Football has changed. The room for error has become so small that its impossible for the manager to control everything. Hence most things had been delegated elsewhere whether its scouting, recruitment, youth training etc. Sir Alex himself did that. Instead of hiring friends or some relic rotting in the Australian league, he usually went for the best personnel he could find. Carlos Q, Rene M, Mclaren, Smith and Harrison could easily be managers elsewhere.

Manager's jobs had become more focused but that doesn't mean that the manager's job is easier, quite the contrary. Players have huge egos these days and unlike the dumb players of the past, they are all armed with agents. That means they need to be properly man managed else they cause problems in the dressing rooms or leave on free (even 18 year olds do that this days). Also tactics has become increasingly important same as fitness. Schmeichel used to turn out to training heavily overweight and it would take United till January to get him sorted. You won't do that these days.

Having people like a football CEO and a DOF is a must. That doesn't mean if you have those guys you can get away with a clown as a manager. It doesn't work like that.
 

SilentWitness

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Bit of a stupid comment. All managers get it wrong sometimes. Look at Fergie with Bebe, Kleberson, Bellion and Djemba-Djemba. When he got it right, he got it very right.

Big Sam has been a very good manager over the years. He's a prick but he deservers some credit. Signings like Okotcha, Campo, Chimbonda, Anelka, Speed, Kevin Davies, Diop etc are very good signings for lower clubs.

Even for West ham he made decent singings - Jarvis, Valencia, Downing,

Big Sam may have many, many, many flaws. Transfer signings are actually not one of them.
Bolton was 12 years ago. His recruitment at Everton was nothing short of terrible. His recent managerial career is very poor. I’m sure people will tell me how he managed to get us to 8th and we are now 18th but I can’t stand his style of football, it’s painful to watch when he’s your manager and in Walcott and Tosun he’s left us two players that we don’t want on the books.
 
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-Supreme-

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Chelsea is a good example of this, they may not have been challenging for titles but consistently getting top 4 spot having had so many managers over the years and with Lampard coming in doing a decent job it just got to show the players they bought in have played a key part of this.
 

SteveW

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In the absence of a good structure, top director of football/sporting director etc you could argue that having a manager that at least gets the recruitment right is vital to our longer term goals.

A new manager might get better out of these players in the short term (also might not) but we simply can't afford to get more recruitment wrong under the next manager, spending on fortune on his own targets (or worse Woodward's ideas) only to be seen as deadwood further down the line he's inevitably sacked.
Recruitment is by far the biggest factor in being a good manager. A managers job is to build a squad or quality and character. The squad with the best players wins the league 90% of the time.

This idea that you can easily turn bad payers into good ones on the coaching ground is just weird. It rarely ever happens. It certainly doesn't happen quickly. Anyone who thinks some other manager is going to come in and turn a team with Young, Matic, Mata, Pereira, Fred and Lingard into winners is an idiot plain and simple.

Ole is the first manager since SAF who actually seems to know how to pick the right players for the club. We cannot afford to let him go.
 

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So he said recruitement is key, which it is, I assume he didn't say he has been recruiting perfectly himself, so that discussion is irrelevant because the main point is obviously true and United have been recruiting terribly up until last summer, when we recruited well, but not enough.
 

Patience

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I believe poor recruitment contributed the most to our downfall. If LVG or Jose spend more than 300m each on the right player so they wouldn't be in mess in the first place.

It's not so much that they bought wrong players...

The big problem is that LvG followed Moyes/fergie and played a totally different brand of football so needed players to suit his style..

then we sack him and bring in Mourinho. Another new style. Another 250m spent on players which add to the mess the squad is in (Fergie/Moyes/LvG signings)...

The squad was an absolute mess. An expensive mess.

Then we bring in Ole who has done - on my opinion - a wonderful job of clearing out the mess... but obviously results and performance on the pitch as been woeful because the squad is bare.

HOWEVER; I firmly believe we are in a better position now, than we were 1/2/3/4 years ago when our squad was just a mess.

At least now the squad just has bare bones, but bare bones of players who WANT to be there. Yes, I would go further and get rid of Rojo, Pogba and Bailly...

..but then - after that - it's all about recruiting and adding to the bare bones.

WHAT IS PIVOTAL here is.. the recruitment must be made with a long-term vision. NOT just one manager's vision, who might be sacked 18-months later.. There needs to be an overall future vision, so that if we do fire and hire, we hire under the notion that the transition is fluid.

My opinion: Keep Ole at the club for two more seasons, beginning this transition. I don't care if we finished 10th and 7th in the leagues.. I just want the whole mess sorted out. Then bring in a manager to take us back to the top, who only has to spend a few quid making niggly changes to the squad.

The one thing that I believe and I don't think a lot of United fans believe is that WE HAVE TO take this massive step backwards - like we are this year - in order to clear the decks and start again with a clear plan. This is the quickest way back to the top; much quicker than hiring and firing managers every 18-months.. that will just lead us down the same path to a mess of a dressingroom. That's what happens when you chop and change managers without a long-term vision.
 

SilentWitness

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So he said recruitement is key, which it is, I assume he didn't say he has been recruiting perfectly himself, so that discussion is irrelevant because the main point is obviously true and United have been recruiting terribly up until last summer, when we recruited well, but not enough.
I just really dislike him and find it hard to be rational based on that. Should probably scoot myself out of the thread now before I moan about how much he winds up again. :wenger:
 

Denis' cuff

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Well when the poor sap was Sir Alex Ferguson none of this was a problem :D

Expecting the current or next manager to be able to replicate the way he operated just isn’t going to work, is it? He was a master delegator for a start.

Recruitment is only part of it. If I were manager I’d be wondering why our players seem to take longer to recover from seemingly minor injuries than our rivals’. I’d also want to think about why no other club has so many players with weight issues.

I think injuries in a struggling team are more of an indication of players hiding. Happens all the time with players at struggling clubs with recurrent sore thumbs etc. Rojo, Lukaku, etc prime examples of zero connection with the club yet turn out regularly for their national sides whilst constantly injured/overweight for their club.

Lentwood pretty much spot on btw.
 

Denis' cuff

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It's not so much that they bought wrong players...

The big problem is that LvG followed Moyes/fergie and played a totally different brand of football so needed players to suit his style..

then we sack him and bring in Mourinho. Another new style. Another 250m spent on players which add to the mess the squad is in (Fergie/Moyes/LvG signings)...

The squad was an absolute mess. An expensive mess.

Then we bring in Ole who has done - on my opinion - a wonderful job of clearing out the mess... but obviously results and performance on the pitch as been woeful because the squad is bare.

HOWEVER; I firmly believe we are in a better position now, than we were 1/2/3/4 years ago when our squad was just a mess.

At least now the squad just has bare bones, but bare bones of players who WANT to be there. Yes, I would go further and get rid of Rojo, Pogba and Bailly...

..but then - after that - it's all about recruiting and adding to the bare bones.

WHAT IS PIVOTAL here is.. the recruitment must be made with a long-term vision. NOT just one manager's vision, who might be sacked 18-months later.. There needs to be an overall future vision, so that if we do fire and hire, we hire under the notion that the transition is fluid.

My opinion: Keep Ole at the club for two more seasons, beginning this transition. I don't care if we finished 10th and 7th in the leagues.. I just want the whole mess sorted out. Then bring in a manager to take us back to the top, who only has to spend a few quid making niggly changes to the squad.

The one thing that I believe and I don't think a lot of United fans believe is that WE HAVE TO take this massive step backwards - like we are this year - in order to clear the decks and start again with a clear plan. This is the quickest way back to the top; much quicker than hiring and firing managers every 18-months.. that will just lead us down the same path to a mess of a dressingroom. That's what happens when you chop and change managers without a long-term vision.

Agree with this in theory but who is going to choose players? ... and is EW going to bring them in? Anyone “in charge” of recruitment still has EW and his masters to deal with. In the unlikely event of recruitment being granted, what happens if the team still fail to perform? Manager gets sacked and again is left with the previous manager’s players and has to model his team around them. Great in concept but seldom works. Not even for Madrid who only have one other team to compete with. Works for Munich who have even less competition but who could you trust to recruit even if money was granted? Then any incoming boss still has to model a team with players who don’t fit his strategy. Just don’t swallow the DOF idea. People like to point out where it works ie City... erm... right. I can’t honestly say this with conviction but the only way forward is to suffer short term pain and stick with the manager (even Ole) and stop this idiotic merry go round of players and managers. We’d be in a better position had we stuck with either of the past two managers and backed them. (I know you were making some of these points btw) ;)

edit: Quoted the wrong post .. never mind eh?
 

Jezpeza

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It's not so much that they bought wrong players...

The big problem is that LvG followed Moyes/fergie and played a totally different brand of football so needed players to suit his style..

then we sack him and bring in Mourinho. Another new style. Another 250m spent on players which add to the mess the squad is in (Fergie/Moyes/LvG signings)...

The squad was an absolute mess. An expensive mess.

Then we bring in Ole who has done - on my opinion - a wonderful job of clearing out the mess... but obviously results and performance on the pitch as been woeful because the squad is bare.

HOWEVER; I firmly believe we are in a better position now, than we were 1/2/3/4 years ago when our squad was just a mess.

At least now the squad just has bare bones, but bare bones of players who WANT to be there. Yes, I would go further and get rid of Rojo, Pogba and Bailly...

..but then - after that - it's all about recruiting and adding to the bare bones.

WHAT IS PIVOTAL here is.. the recruitment must be made with a long-term vision. NOT just one manager's vision, who might be sacked 18-months later.. There needs to be an overall future vision, so that if we do fire and hire, we hire under the notion that the transition is fluid.

My opinion: Keep Ole at the club for two more seasons, beginning this transition. I don't care if we finished 10th and 7th in the leagues.. I just want the whole mess sorted out. Then bring in a manager to take us back to the top, who only has to spend a few quid making niggly changes to the squad.

The one thing that I believe and I don't think a lot of United fans believe is that WE HAVE TO take this massive step backwards - like we are this year - in order to clear the decks and start again with a clear plan. This is the quickest way back to the top; much quicker than hiring and firing managers every 18-months.. that will just lead us down the same path to a mess of a dressingroom. That's what happens when you chop and change managers without a long-term vision.
i agree with it being a long term plan - we aren’t competing with liverpool and city for the next couple of seasons anyway. We should be looking a couple of seasons ahead.

i like the clearout so far - and i fully expect that matic, rojo, mata, bailly, young, jones etc will follow, probably Fred as well.

what has alarmed me is the lack of recruitment. Maguire, AWB and James are three very good signings, but we needed another 2 or 3 this summer if we were letting that many go. The squad is wafer thin and we still dont have an out and out striker or a right winger, or a cutting edge in midfield. As far as I see it, we have a good back 6 and need a front 5 now, Pogba is hiding and will be gone in January i think and no one else is showing too much to say they should be an automatic starter. Martial and Rashford can be good when on form, but If i’m really harsh, we have to think of the level of those above us as to if players are good enough. is martial comparable as a striker to Kane or Aguero, and rashford to Salah or Sterling? Even looking back, would you choose rashford over giggs or ronaldo or martial over RVN, RVP, peak Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Cole, Yorke? Probably not, though they are good players to have in the squad. Indicative of the level of players we need if we want to challenge again. If you think of it like that you realise that 4th is going to be our level until these Opposition players are over the hill or leave, and even then you have to hope they dont get replaced with equivalents.
 

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I think injuries in a struggling team are more of an indication of players hiding. Happens all the time with players at struggling clubs with recurrent sore thumbs etc. Rojo, Lukaku, etc prime examples of zero connection with the club yet turn out regularly for their national sides whilst constantly injured/overweight for their club.

Lentwood pretty much spot on btw.
Oh I'm sure there's a lot of truth in that.

Why then have United seemed to have masses of lengthy injury layoffs even when we haven't been a struggling team? Which despite what it feels like right now we haven't been for most of our recent history. Rooney and Anderson had weight issues when we were a title winning monster.

The point re. club v country is an interesting one. Rooney in particular played in two world cups when he clearly wasn't fit, which did his body absolutely no good in the long term, and for his pains he got pilloried in the press for his poor performances. Was that because he felt no connection with United? I'm by no means certain he did, but if we're only going to employ players that "get" united we aren't going to end up with many.
 

Foxbatt

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The lack of recruitment is the main issue we are not competing.
But any decent coach will get this lot to play in a way that they can play. That's the problem now.
Not what may or may not happen in three or four years time. It's entirely Ole's fault that he is not getting the best out of this lot.
 

Foxbatt

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Since when did Rojo refuse to turn out for United and yet played for Argentina? The same with Lukaku. He may be overweight but he has never failed for Belgium. He has never said he is injured to United yet played for Belgium.
It's becoming a bit like the blame on Mustafi of Arsenal. He is now being blamed for mistakes in matches he has not even played.
 

Jezpeza

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The lack of recruitment is the main issue we are not competing.
But any decent coach will get this lot to play in a way that they can play. That's the problem now.
Not what may or may not happen in three or four years time. It's entirely Ole's fault that he is not getting the best out of this lot.
poisoned chalice at the moment the managers job. Half seem to want Ole to implement a style he doesn’t have the personnel for, the other think we should just be getting results any which way, which is kind of what Mourinho did/tried to do and was hated for
 

Di Maria's angel

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Good post. I am tired of the argument on here that another manager can really tear up trees with this lot. Bit like saying if a shit IT company with loads of shit programmers with lacklustre skills changes the duty manager they’ll challenge apple all of a sudden. Such a fatally flawed but constantly brought up argument
I had a teacher who'd give us the hair dryer treatment every lesson. We ended recording the highest number of As for a GCSE class in science for our school. Absolutely no way many of us, myself included, would have gotten an A if it wasnt for his mad man teaching style.
 

Jezpeza

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I had a teacher who'd give us the hair dryer treatment every lesson. We ended recording the highest number of As for a GCSE class in science for our school. Absolutely no way many of us, myself included, would have gotten an A if it wasnt for his mad man teaching style.
Irrelevant rationale, Our first team squad isn't a youth team where everything is a learning process and results only matter to an individual.
 

Di Maria's angel

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Irrelevant rationale, Our first team squad isn't a youth team where everything is a learning process and results only matter to an individual.
Well yeah. The point is leadership and management can bring out the best in even the most average of people.
 

Thaila-X

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Take the fastest race horse in the world on the flat and ask it too run over jumps.

Yes, with training, it might do alright, might even win a few but it simply won't be as effective as it is on the flat.

Point is, you need the right players, in the right system. Could have the best crosser of the ball in the world, but if there's nobody there to attack it, he's not going be as effective is he?
 

AneRu

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It's not so much that they bought wrong players...

The big problem is that LvG followed Moyes/fergie and played a totally different brand of football so needed players to suit his style..

then we sack him and bring in Mourinho. Another new style. Another 250m spent on players which add to the mess the squad is in (Fergie/Moyes/LvG signings)...

The squad was an absolute mess. An expensive mess.

Then we bring in Ole who has done - on my opinion - a wonderful job of clearing out the mess... but obviously results and performance on the pitch as been woeful because the squad is bare.

HOWEVER; I firmly believe we are in a better position now, than we were 1/2/3/4 years ago when our squad was just a mess.

At least now the squad just has bare bones, but bare bones of players who WANT to be there. Yes, I would go further and get rid of Rojo, Pogba and Bailly...

..but then - after that - it's all about recruiting and adding to the bare bones.

WHAT IS PIVOTAL here is.. the recruitment must be made with a long-term vision. NOT just one manager's vision, who might be sacked 18-months later.. There needs to be an overall future vision, so that if we do fire and hire, we hire under the notion that the transition is fluid.

My opinion: Keep Ole at the club for two more seasons, beginning this transition. I don't care if we finished 10th and 7th in the leagues.. I just want the whole mess sorted out. Then bring in a manager to take us back to the top, who only has to spend a few quid making niggly changes to the squad.

The one thing that I believe and I don't think a lot of United fans believe is that WE HAVE TO take this massive step backwards - like we are this year - in order to clear the decks and start again with a clear plan. This is the quickest way back to the top; much quicker than hiring and firing managers every 18-months.. that will just lead us down the same path to a mess of a dressingroom. That's what happens when you chop and change managers without a long-term vision.
I hear you and agree with you, in principle, that we need a step back to clear the decks and the balance and character of the squad right but to do that you have to do it with the right manager in the dugout or else it will all be in vain. If we are going to stay with Ole we will hand hundreds of millions of pounds to him over a few windows but if he isn't delivering the required progress he will obviously have to go and what if the new man comes in and doesn't like Maguire and AWB? The club takes losses with them like we did with Schneiderlin, Blind and others then its expected to foot the bill for replacements. The structure we have right makes it impossible to have a long term vision that's not the manager's, do we even people to draft and drive towards that within the club?
 

Jezpeza

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Well yeah. The point is leadership and management can bring out the best in even the most average of people.
to a point. Not in the case of players like Mata, Matic, Rojo, Jones, Bailly, Fred, Young. They’ve either been in decline for years or just obviously have a clear ceiling in terms of football intelligence and ability or are always injured. Add the fact we have no top striker, no right winger, no creativity in midfield and the fact our best midfielder doesnt want to be here any more and it just simply doesn't matter who manages us, at the moment. A different manager might do slightly better or worse, but the idea changing manager will push that lot into the top 4 is utter drivel, its a fantasy
 

GGT

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Feb 12, 2016
Messages
137
We need at least 3 points from the next 2 games, and for sure 4 from the next 3.
If not the above, then although many here won't like it, the press will be speculating on his arrival at OT.
 

Hughes35

Full Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2014
Messages
2,536
Bolton was 12 years ago. His recruitment at Everton was nothing short of terrible. His recent managerial career is very poor. I’m sure people will tell me how he managed to get us to 8th and we are now 18th but I can’t stand his style of football, it’s painful to watch when he’s your manager and in Walcott and Tosun he’s left us two players that we don’t want on the books.
His managerial career is not poor in the slightest. He's done at least an ok job at every club he's been. If you look at his signings, any club he has been at for more than a couple of years he's made good signings. It's just that in recent years he's taken over temporary roles to save teams from relegation (Which he's done brilliant by the way) and he hasn't had to time look at scouting teams etc like he did at Blackburn and Bolton.