So i have vehemently defended Ole so far and had plenty of discussion with people on this forum on the subject. Yes i have given him more rope because i loved him as a player, i am fully admitting that, but considering our situation i would have been willing to give most managers plenty of time.
Aston Villa was a breaking point for me though. Not because that game was so much worse than any other game this season, but because it became abundantly clear to me that this "progress" i thought i was seeing was just wishful thinking. We started scoring again, but at the same time we forgot how to defend. The squad is the worst United squad i have seen, but we should be doing better than this. In other words: Ole isnt making the most of this squad, but the big question is why?
Tactics gets mentioned a lot, which is something i disagree with. Yes 4231 when all of our #10 options are terrible seems like a bad idea, but we dont really have the right players for 433 either. Team selections have also largely been pretty decent in my opinion. Yes Pereria is fecking horrible, and lots of people are crying out for Garner, but throwing an 18 year old into a dysfunctional side like this could be disastrous both for the player and for the team. We also had a couple of matches: Liverpool, Chelsea, and the comeback vs Sheffield where Ole has shown some tactical nous, so i dont think his tactics are all that bad.
What i do see though is a bunch of players, limited as they might be, constantly making the wrong decisions and lacking any real fight and THAT is on the manager. Just at the top of my head and in no particular order of importance this is what i see again and again it is absolutely infuriating
1) We put in cross after cross with no one at the end of it. Very often its James who gets down to the line and he zips one in between the goalie and their defense. Everyone who has watched football knows where that fecking ball is going to come, yet time and time again there is just one maybe two players even near the goal, and both of them are hanging out at the edge of the box or maybe one of them has taken up some useless position at the back post. Every other team seems able to do this, yet we dont
2) There is no fight in us. Ole has talked loads about improving fitness and mentality, which i thought looked better for a while, but turned out to be nothing. It seems pretty much every lose ball ends up with the opponent because no one is willing to get stuck in so we have 5 players ball watching, hoping that someone else goes into the duel because they wont.
3) The distance between defense-midfield and midfield-attack is fecking huge and that link is just not there. I watched a few Sheffield games this year and how they move as a unit is fascinating to watch. Everyone is moving all the time so they are never outnumbered and thus often have plenty of passing options. When we try to play for the back though we end up wide 9/10 because our CB's only have our fullbacks as passing options.
4) This is closely connected to #3 and #1, but we never seem to attack in numbers. Once one of James, Rashford or Martial has the ball it seems everyone else just stops and hope they will sort it out. I am not saying our CM's should charge into the box, but at the very least they should move up to pile on the pressure and be the first on on lose balls that fall down around the box.
5) Our mentality is severely lacking. We seem to be playing with a sort of an arrogance we have NOT deserved. Time and time again this year we have only started playing only after we have went down and we cant hang onto a lead if our lives depended on it. It seems these players think they are much better than they actually are and its unacceptable that it keeps happening. Fergie would never let this kind of nonsense stand
6) Movement is fecking shit. All over the pitch. Zombie football is not something new under Ole, but it has not improved either
All that taken into consideration, does Ole deserve to be sacked? Yes, he probably does. This squad is bad, but it is not THAT bad either, but i still think its a bad idea to sack him now for a couple of very important reasons.
1) The only available "top" coaches who are available now are Poch and Allegri and i dont trust either of them to turn this around. Allegri would be Jose v2 in my eyes and that is not what we need right now. Poch is a favorite among many here, but i dont trust him either for some key reasons
1a) Despite popular belief he never built that Spurs side and had nothing to do with transfers
1b) He had a very good squad at his disposal and never won a thing. No offense to Poch, but he seems like a massive bottler to me
2) Taking over this fecking trainwreck puts any new manager in a very difficult spot. The only thing you can realistically change right away is tactics and i sincerely doubt that would be enough to turn us around. Coaching and change in mentality takes a lot of time, so realistically we would be around March-April before we could see some real changes. People will point to the new manager bounce we had under Ole, but that had more to do with the players being relieved of Jose being gone and it seemed many of them had a point to prove (which is pretty maddening to be honest, they play like demons when they wanted to one up Jose but cant be bothered now? Feck off)
3) If we change managers now we wont be doing any business in January, which we badly need
Ole looks like he was the wrong man for us. No shame in not being a Man Utd manager, very few are but i firmly believe the best thing for us is to stick with him until the end of the year and then let the new manager have the preseason and the transfer window. Who? Julian Nagelsmann looks very impressive to me and hopefully we can convince him to come here. I read some articles about him and what he has done is incredibly impressive for a 32 year old. But even if he was available today i would have waited because i don't want any manager to get thrown into this shitshow. Let them start the new season with blank slates and hopefully a better squad