Yeah Ole's in trouble. I still think he's done a good job, both in how he has created the current team and lifted the mood around the club, but his amateur mistakes are starting to show, and at the highest level, you can't afford for that to happen. The biggest sign of this was our start to the season. The complete lack of preparation was evident, both in the fitness of the players and tactically. It almost looked all the good work he had done at the end of last season was torn to shreds, somehow this season we have been forced to revamp our system completely which is shocking.
Ole has the squad to challenge. It has some inconsistencies here and there, but its clearly enough to at least challenge. What is on display at the moment is a team that doesn't know how to play together, and that is on the manager. We are in his second season, and despite the improvement in the quality of players we have access to compared to the start of last season, we are still struggling to press teams, still struggling to break teams down and still don't have a preferred method of attack. My biggest problem with him, and maybe the reason he should go, is that he doesn't have unique tactical ideas or even the write knowledge of tactics to be able to skilfully maximise what he has at his disposal. What he is doing and has been doing is copying the tactical ideals of other managers. But since its a full copy, he hasn't been able to make the necessary adjustments to it to suit the team. For example, in AWB you have one of the best defensive full backs in the world, an advantage in this position that most teams do not have. Instead of finding ways to alleviate him of too many attacking responsibilities in shape and who he is playing with, Ole has simply just used him like any other modern full back. We struggle to bring the ball out of defence which causes us to waste too much time in our build up play and lose advantages created from any forward movement, yet Ole forces us to play out from the back. We have some of the fastest most aggressive attackers in the league, yet we have a weak press.
As at this moment we have a midfield that can be really aggressive, creative attacking midfielders, fast forwards, good defensive full backs and depth. Most teams don't have that level of quality. In fact, I honestly believe that we have a better first xi and squad than Arsenal or Spurs, maybe even Chelsea. I think, even with some of our players lacking consistency, this is on Ole.