I just think that if Rodgers is going to be considered among "the elite" than so should Ole. Look at their accomplishments. Ole winning with Molde is much bigger than Rodgers winning with Celtic. And last year Ole helped lead this team to 3rd place, which is something most fans had already giving to Leicester. I called it back in December last year that Ole would pass Leicester and finish 3rd. Most thought I was crazy. Now, do I like all the decisions Ole has made? Not even close. There have been so many things that I would do different. But you can't deny the results. The biggest thing now is that the board didn't back him. We were the 3rd best team in the league last season. With the transfer window that went by we should have been trying to improve our team. Unfortunately our board failed in that department. Bottom line is with the squad we have we shouldn't be able to finish anywhere higher than 5th with Chelsea and Tottenham having better transfers than us. Hell, even Arsenal had a better transfer window than we did. So I find it hard to blame our manager when he wasn't given the proper tools to succeed and I don't think that bringing in a new manager will change things....
Rodgers is a better manager than Ole and by quite a margin.
As has been said before it isn’t just looking plainly at results. He finished four points above Rodgers last season but what of their not so comparable budgets?
Rodgers also has his teams playing in a defined way. You knew what style his was at Swansea, Liverpool, Celtic and now at Leicester. We’re almost two years into Ole’s reign and we still haven’t got a style of football.
“You cannot deny the results” Again, this festering of the lowering of standards. Whilst I don’t expect us to be at the levels of city and Liverpool, we won less than half of our league games last season. Oles record here is just over 50% league wins. I shouldn’t need to tell you that is not even close to being the level a club like United should attain to be at. If you win 50% of your games most seasons in the league you will finish between 5th and 7th.
I agree the board let him down in the summer (in the context of closing the gap on city and Liverpool and staying above Chelsea ) but Spurs and Arsenal? Do me a favour. We spent a similar amount to Arsenal and about twenty million less that Spurs. The difference being the managers of these clubs identified weaknesses in their squad and addressed it with the minimal funds they were provided because they’re more clued up than Ole.
Thomas Partey was available for 45 million all summer, the type of player we badly need in our midfield and we go and spend the same amount on another central attacking midfielder. Now I’d love to pretend Ole doesn’t have a say in transfers but if there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the years it’s that our board do allow our managers to pick their transfers for the majority of time and Ole chose to bring in James, Wan Bissaka and Maguire last season for a combined total of 150 million and in all honesty we simply haven’t got our monies worth. It also shows a limit in Oles knowledge on players.
All that being said, I don’t think anyone would be complaining if we sat between 4th and 7th in the table right now as opposed to 15th.
Not Signing Jadon Sancho shouldn’t excuse comprehensive home defeats to Palace and Arsenal.
Not Signing Jadon Sancho shouldn’t excuse us from losing to Istanbul somethingshakir.
Not signing Jadon Sancho shouldn’t excuse us from losing 6-1 at home to Spurs.