More positive context for Pep’s spoon fed job.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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Personally, I'm much more interested in progress and how the team plays. I can take the third spot again if I felt that the team would move towards something. If I remember correctly, Liverpool totally dominated almost every game. And I'm not talking about good spells here and there, they totally dominated from start to finish against almost every team. United are good in spells. 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there, and then Fernandes pops up and does something brilliant. And then we are poor for 20 minutes at home to Newcastle. For me, our team play and football, in general, isn't good enough for me to buy into Ole's plans. If something his back four has regressed. I can't really see any lines, any coaching being done in our defense (and let's not talk about set-pieces), and neither do I see the coaching improve much in our attacking play. What I see is that Ole has a better starting eleven and a better squad than before, and therefore we are a little bit better than before. I remember Klopp playing a b team, maybe against Arsenal, and they totally dominated the game, regardless of the players they had. Do you know why? Because Klopp is a sharp manager, and Pep has the same qualities. Is that the team, regardless of players, know what they should do when they play. Most Man United fans talk about new player's all the time, if we buy that, if we get him, and so on, then, THEN, then we will be best. But I never see anyone mention developing players. When we play our b team, then I really see what Ole is all about. Because that's when you see clearly that we don't have lines in our play and we play poorly because we don't have great players to fix it for him. I suspect that's why Ole wasn't successful at Cardiff.
Back to player development, Ole does not do that enough. Is Maguire or Lindelof better now than two years ago? Not really. AWB? I don't think so. Is De Gea better? Is Martial better? Is James better? Yeah sure, Shaw is better right now, but will that stand? And that's not maybe Ole's fault if it doesn't, I don't know, but I'm just thinking. Is Jordan Henderson that good? Liverpool has conceded fewer goals than United, with a high line, is their defensive players, individually, better than United's? Is Firmino so good? Is their squad good? Would Origi get into United's bench? Definitely not. What I'm trying to say is that Klopp is maybe the best developer there is, and I'm almost certain that Pep or Klopp would make Rashford world-class. But I don't think he will be under Ole. And I think people are really defensive about Ole, maybe because he is a club legend, Ole has done some good things and he has generally built a good squad, but why wouldn't people want to upgrade if we could? I think we have great quality in our squad, good enough quality to fight for the title for real. Maybe not be favorites, but fight for it if he maximizes the potential in all players. I have said it from the beginning: Ole will never win a big title in his managerial career. Two years later, I haven't changed my mind. For the record, I would rather have Ole than Mourinho and LvG. I just think that we can and should upgrade because I think this squad, with maybe two additions, can be the best in the world. But then we must have a top-class manager.
Don't tell me, tell the other guy. He's the deluded one trying to compare Ole's challenge to Pep.
But isn't he competing? We are second and not long ago we were on top. The issue is this city side are far ahead so they will eventually run away and many fans and Ole acknowledge that we need to fix some more areas, which he is not wrong to say considering most of the fans even acknowledge that.
Now to your logic of how pep started to dominate the league im 17-18 season, well again context matters. Firstly his closest challenge was us who on paper may be good but still were far behind than them. On contrary we have to topple a 97 pointer Liverpool side and a consistently amazing city side. See the difference.
Secondly pep failed in his first season. So let us put your logic now which is Ole has already spent 130m on defense so he shouldn't demand for more and compete with what we have, well if that was the case why did pep not win the league with Bravo and why did spend money buying another keeper. Also, why does he keep on spending momey on fixing the defense considering he has already spent so much on it. See how weird you logic looks. Just because ole has spent 80m on maguire doesn't mean we are automatically good to win the league. If you want to beat Ole with a stick that why he spent 80m on Maguire, then fine. But then you also should praise Ole for buying bruno for a mere 50 million. Also, taking the money aspect away Maguire has been decent, just not the 80m player.
I am all for getting a top class manager but we are not getting Pep or Klopp. Poch is no longer in the market and neither is Tuchel (if you call him top class). WHo else is available? Allegri, well will his football be appreciated, do we want another defensive manager? Who else, Julian Naggelsman won't just leave Leipzig now. Rest like Rose, Hassenhuitel, I don't know who you have on mind may not be really world class managers.
Unless all goes tits up and we completely bottle the top 4 and end up 6th or 7th, I don't see Ole getting the boot this summer. Smart thing will be to give him till the next summer and hopefully we win the title but again that depends on how we do the job this summer. We have a good squad but we still need a CB and a DM, whether that is with Ole or not with some other "world-class" coach.
Don't ask lazy questions and check for yourself? I recall Kompany, David Silva, KDB, Augero as a few to name the spine that Pep went on to inherit.
And you've overlooked fact that he spent a bucket load more to get his titles, so it's just daft to expect the same from Ole.
I don't mention any tournament. You brought in winning the Europa Cup to try and claim Ole inherited a cup winning team and fell short. You fell on your own sword after I pointed out the team he fell short to is the exact same team Jose Mourinho fell short to himself in the CL Round of 16. So yeah, it's a wank point when you consider your example of a manager "getting it over the line" couldn't produce the goods against the team Ole failed against either.
It's like when you hear illogical posts point to LVG's cup victory when he played feck all along the way, and then have them complain about Ole after he just knocked out Liverpool in the FA Cup, which was a harder tie than all of what LVG faced in his run. This is why its daft blindly comparing one campaign's cup run to another. Just don't do it.
Among the commonly used players- Aguero, Kompany, Otamendi, Fernandinho, Sterling, Silva (all these players had 20+ appearances in the league, except Kompany who had injury issues). Add to that, he had KdB as well!
Using the same logic on our side last season, Dave, Martial, Lingard (who wasn't an essential in the 2nd half of last season), Rashford, Shaw(who wasn't an essential member of EL side), Pogba.
And this despite you comparing a league winning side with a side that won a knockout tournament - where luck matters a lot!
What?
How did you came to that conclusion?Mate Im sorry but I completely disagree, if we were creating limited chances then ok those chances would be distributed amongst all attackers and yes the goal tally wouldnt improve much because the chances are limited. But we have a clear definition problem, missing chance after chance the stat is there.Im just being logical. I’m telling you we are currently top goal scorers in the league. Some further down to this post also showed stats that where we scored more goals in 1 game I.e 3 or more than anyone else.
So what I’m saying is does a better striker mean instead of 9-0 against Southampton the game ends up 11-0. It’s not logical
But to make my point more simple. If we had CR7.. we might have an extra 4 goals this season but all the goals Bruno got would no be CR7 goals. First of all Bruno wouldn’t be taking the pens or free kicks and opportunities trying to generate chances for the team would now be directed to creating chances for Ronaldo.
Look at our strikers goal returns last season are you telling me if we had Haaland they’d still have that return but on top of that an extra 25 goals from Haaland? Do you get what I’m saying now?
Bringing a top striker would just mean he will be scoring those chances at a higher rate I dont see how or why that would affect Bruno for example. He wouldnt be taking Bruno's chances away just burying the ones that our strikers currently miss.
You dont remember correctly. They constantly fluctuated between laughable and and brilliant and for Klopps two first years we had "Klopp sack watch" thread on here and took the piss out of them daily, like when they did that ridicolous arm in arm celebration after drawing WBA at home.
And what happened with them now? Did the coaching suddenly turn to shit? Did Klopp lose the plot? And who the hell can see coaching? This is not FIFA mate. Its not like the managers are controling the players from the dug out. I'll agree that us leaking goals this season is a big concern, but how can you so confidently claim its a coaching issue?
To go back to Liverpool, they leaked like a sieve before adding VVD and Allison, which in turn made them incredibly solid. To put it in other words: If we had 17-18 DDG between the sticks instead of this terrible version i am pretty confident we would have conceded about 10 goals less in the league, maybe even more.
The younger players. AWB, Greenwood, Rashford and McTomminay are developing. Greenwood is having a bit of a second season syndrome and Rashford i think badly needs a long rest, but AWB and McTomminay are improving. I really think this is a strange stick to beat Ole with, because pretty much all the players hes brought in (Cavani and Telles aside) have been young and developing.
Maguire and Lindelof are about the same yes, but in the case of the latter i think this is his ceeling and he wont become any better. AWB is definately better than when he arrived. Martial is a strange case but as many have pointed out, he probably lacks the desire and mentality to fulfill his potential.
Also, its not like developing a player is just talent + good coach and then *poof* you have a class player. Fergie bought plenty of talanted youngsters that never amounted to anything special. Its not an exact science and there are plenty of factors in play besides coaching and guidance from the manager
Yes their squad is better than ours. Firminho might be shite, but other than that they have a really good squad. Origi only makes the bench because Jota has been injured the whole season.
Its not weird logic. Yes to a point we are competing. But no-one actually believes we are in this race when we have a squad to compete.
There’s actually no point discussing Pep as some people have some weird observation with how great he has done that no other manager can do it. Yet he can’t get a championship league to save his life. At the end of the day he had a plan and because of that he was successful it had nothing to do with who he already had but he’s the money helped. We did compete we had 82/83 points... that’s a solid Premier league winning season and we was no different to the Chelsea team that won it two years before. The only difference was Pep had a Phenomenal season which meant you had to come with a little more than what would previously win you a title. It’s not by chance that they lost it eventually to a Liverpool team that had to smash near 100 points. This is not normal.. but history shows this can happen. When Jose came in he changed the game with his Chelsea side and SAF can out and publicly said he had to adapt to win a title. No more slow starts. This is where managers earn their craft.
On the Bravo point. He signed a £20m keeper and then got a £50m? Keeper. The value alone shows a difference in quality. So therefore logic says United need a £100m defender to improve? Clearly there’s an issue there don’t you think?
Okay. So I had a look. These are are the players Pep had from their last title winning team.
Hart (loaned out)
Kompany
Aguero
David Silva
Yaya Toure
Im open for anyone to explain to me what they meant when they said he had a title winning team.
You recalled wrong again.
Okay so both teams went from the Champions League to the Europa. But obviously our fall in grace was worse than there’s. Obviously. Care to tell me who they retained and what positions they improved to make their fall from grace less worse than ours. Did they sign a £80m centre back?
Jesus Christ you people are boring.
No I didn't. You brought up Pep and Klopp. Then after being rebuttled on that you brought up inheriting a Europa League winning squad to draw a blind and rubbish comparison like it's the same as inheriting a squad with title winners.
Honestly I don't think even you have a clue what you're talking about anymore.
So we're back to comparing Ole with Pep, Klopp and Fergie again?
What a time to be alive.
Because he wasn't ever a tactical genius. He never introduced anything new to the game in that respect. If we are holding him against Guardiola as a tactician then he falls a mile short, and your definition of what makes a world class manager seems to be heavy on the tactical side while ignoring a lot of the qualities that Ole (and Ferguson) bought to the table.What?
There are some outlandish things being said in here and it's honestly very embarrassing.
First I dont think you'll find many that agree with you about Ferguson not being a genius on everything he did. His record speaks for itself and he is arguably the best manager of all time. You don't achieve that if not being absolutely top class in every aspect of the game.
Secondly please do not compare Ole with Sir Alex, thats a poor argument.
Falls a mile short of Guardiola?
We can argue for hours on end on this and you wont change your mind so, all I will point out to you is the PL win in 2013.
Go have a look at the team we won the league with.
Guardiola could never win a league with those players, why do I say this? It is proven that he can't. Until he does so, its not proven.
A neutral take on Solskjaer:
Personally, I believe that an elite coach these days has to be great at man management but even more importantly needs to have a clear playing philosophy. Their most important responsibility is to implement a systemic way of sustainably creating a surplus of goal scoring opportunities. When a coach like that takes over a team, you usually see some of those patterns immediately. Even if not everything is working out from day one, you can see his handwriting.
So when you guys appointed Solskjaer, I was skeptical for multiple reasons. First, I believe the tactical coaching described above is highly complex and a manager who really excels in has to spent so much time in developing and implementing automatisms and patterns of play that he doesn't have enough time to cover the responsibilities of a director of sports, too - especially since scouting and transfer business also become more complicated year after year. Thus, even if Solskjaer was a coach fitting the above description I doubted he'd be able to implement his brand of football while he simultaenously had to manage a squad.
Anyway, at some point I believed he actually proved me wrong when United went on two amazing runs, one culminating in the club leading the EPL table just a few weeks back. I must admit that I didn't watch much of United and primarily followed positive developments under Solskjaer such as Greenwood, Martial, Rashford etc. through match day highlights. So I decided to watch the Sheffield game, and well, no need to go into further detail.
I can't help but believe that Solskjaer simply isn't the coach you guys need. I've watched quite a few United games by now and I just don't see any patterns or playing style. He has no real handwriting. And even though United assembled a great squad again over the past few years, that's also true for City, Liverpool and the likes - and they can trust their managers to create a team that's larger than the sum of their parts.
And IMO, this is a very unfavourable situation for United. The reason for that is that Solskjaer is arguably performing too well to be sacked but not good enough to be happy with his work. If the next top coach was available tomorrow, you guys will most likely miss out on him because of Solskjaer.
Might very well be the case I'm wrong but I feel you'd be best off going separate ways rather sooner than later. If you want to compete with City and Liverpool, you probably need someone a coaching tier above Solskjaer.
Personally, I believe that an elite coach these days has to be great at man management but even more importantly needs to have a clear playing philosophy. Their most important responsibility is to implement a systemic way of sustainably creating a surplus of goal scoring opportunities. When a coach like that takes over a team, you usually see some of those patterns immediately. Even if not everything is working out from day one, you can see his handwriting.
So when you guys appointed Solskjaer, I was skeptical for multiple reasons. First, I believe the tactical coaching described above is highly complex and a manager who really excels in has to spent so much time in developing and implementing automatisms and patterns of play that he doesn't have enough time to cover the responsibilities of a director of sports, too - especially since scouting and transfer business also become more complicated year after year. Thus, even if Solskjaer was a coach fitting the above description I doubted he'd be able to implement his brand of football while he simultaenously had to manage a squad.
Anyway, at some point I believed he actually proved me wrong when United went on two amazing runs, one culminating in the club leading the EPL table just a few weeks back. I must admit that I didn't watch much of United and primarily followed positive developments under Solskjaer such as Greenwood, Martial, Rashford etc. through match day highlights. So I decided to watch the Sheffield game, and well, no need to go into further detail.
I can't help but believe that Solskjaer simply isn't the coach you guys need. I've watched quite a few United games by now and I just don't see any patterns or playing style. He has no real handwriting. And even though United assembled a great squad again over the past few years, that's also true for City, Liverpool and the likes - and they can trust their managers to create a team that's larger than the sum of their parts.
And IMO, this is a very unfavourable situation for United. The reason for that is that Solskjaer is arguably performing too well to be sacked but not good enough to be happy with his work. If the next top coach was available tomorrow, you guys will most likely miss out on him because of Solskjaer.
Might very well be the case I'm wrong but I feel you'd be best off going separate ways rather sooner than later. If you want to compete with City and Liverpool, you probably need someone a coaching tier above Solskjaer.
I completely disagree with a need for a philosophy. I've seen plenty of coaches immediately show their philosophy in the first few games, then fail miserable because they're weak tactically (F de Boer) or poor man managers (LVG).
IMO the things all top managers have in common is that they're strong tactically and are good man managers. At a club without a DoF recruitment should be added to the list as well.
Philosophy is a distant 3rd/4rd and more of a marketing gimmick really. The only time philosophy is relevant is when a manager has multiple years and unlimited funds to buy whichever player he wants.
Playstyle should be dictated by the strengths and weaknesses of your squad and players. You don't impose the same philosophy on different sets of players, unless you're okay with remaining trophy-less for a few years while you spend a billion to replace an entire squad.
Let me ask you this:
1 What was SAF's philisophy?
2 Why did LVG and Mourinho, 2 coaches with very recognizable philosophies, fail at United?
You may be right. I don't think many Manutd fans are deluded in thinking that Ole is the man for the job or he will guarantee titles.
The reason why Ole is being backed is because when he first got the job, the club and team was in free fall, poor morale, poor performances.
He was given a task to reset the culture, a 3 year plan. He has had his ups and downs throughout but he has built a squad as a fan that I like in comparison to previous tenures.
I would say we are 2/3 top players short of being a very competitive team. He has done just enough to keep himself above board and the aim is to get a trophy this season.
In respects to style of play, managers could have their styles but generally after 2 seasons they get found out, Ole not having a style might be decent because it makes opposition managers think.. how will they line up? what will they play? counter attacking? defensive? park the bus? high press? attacking?
Finally, apart from Pep and Klopp, there isnt a manager out there that would be a clear upgrade to Ole. We have seen LVG and Jose fail, our next appointment has to be perfect to win us a title.
"I didn't watch much of United. Then I watched the Sheffield game"
Thanks for that, Zehner. Good talk...
Fully agree. Many managers with "philosophy" fail at bigger clubs because they cannot deal with top players egos. At lower levels, it s easier for them to replace players but at top clubs, things become more complicated.
What a Load of absolute bollocks!
Do people realize that "Ferguson not being good tactically" was supposed to be a dig used by rival fans to take at our club and our legendary manager to downplay his achievements here and we shouldn't repeat it behind them because it's BS ?
Ole's doing a fine job so far, he's improved our squad, our attitude and style of play. He's still learning as he goes and sometimes he's overly cautious as he generally plays the team in front of him. Ferguson was the same, he changed our style of play depending on who we were playing and got it right more often than not but often got accused of going too defensive against bigger teams, at least in the later years.
Ferguson's biggest strength was his man management, not only his players but his coaching staff as well. He knew to delegate a lot of the coaching and tactical play, which allowed him to keep up with the times and have such a long career at the top. This is touching on the point being made about Ferguson tactical and coaching ability not being world class; I think he was never the top tactician or coach and the reasons for his success was that he was a very high level tactician/coach but an absolutely world class man manager.
Ole doesn't need to be the best tactician, if he can surround himself with the right people and continue his excellent man management, I think he'll be a success here.
Ferguson's biggest strength was his man management, not only his players but his coaching staff as well. He knew to delegate a lot of the coaching and tactical play, which allowed him to keep up with the times and have such a long career at the top. This is touching on the point being made about Ferguson tactical and coaching ability not being world class; I think he was never the top tactician or coach and the reasons for his success was that he was a very high level tactician/coach but an absolutely world class man manager.
Ole doesn't need to be the best tactician, if he can surround himself with the right people and continue his excellent man management, I think he'll be a success here.
WTF are you on about. I never say anything about Delph never play or needed the rest. Are you so desperate to win your own argument that you needed to make things up that I never said?
The thing that I said was if you got four top players in five position in defense, that’s nothing. 4 Top players can make one player (Delph for example) better and that’s why we all here saying top keeper and top centre back will make our defense and team much better. This is basically countering the Delph argument which now gets us back to my questions again,
Why are you trying so hard to also make the current Telles & Dean as top centre back and top keeper?
They were signed to provide squad depth. And you are so desperate that you need to include Dean who is not even a signing.3 players?
Come on let’s not play dumb here, if you are going include Telles then at least include everyone. Despite of having Kompany, Pep still asked for Walker, Mendy, Danilo, Bravo, Ederson, Stones total 290m for his first league trophy with City. Klopp asked for Fabinho, Allison, Robertson, VVD, Matip, Klavan, Karius total 200m for his first trophy with Liverpool. Both managers needed to change the whole defense including the squad depth by signing lot of defensive players before they can start challenging the league not just three!And why would I care about City before Pep. That’s not my argument, that’s someone else argument so deal it with yourself and the other guy.
As long as United has a strategy they are loyal to (identity, style of play ++) and recruit managers according to these defined criteria, the recruitment of players should be easy.
Our recruitment has improved and we have soon overhauled the squad. Our squad was very fare from the City standard. It’s still work to do, but the gap is smaller. We need at least three more players to close the gap.
I think we are doing fine and should maintain a steady course. I prefer incremental more lasting progress.
Changing course now has much bigger downside than upside. We shouldn’t feck things up now.
Our recruitment has improved and we have soon overhauled the squad. Our squad was very fare from the City standard. It’s still work to do, but the gap is smaller. We need at least three more players to close the gap.
I think we are doing fine and should maintain a steady course. I prefer incremental more lasting progress.
Changing course now has much bigger downside than upside. We shouldn’t feck things up now.
Agreed. Fergie always had good coaches alongside him too like Queroz and Muulenstein who were both excellent in their field though not as successful as managers.
Ferguson excelled at getting the best of the members of his extended team (including coaching staff)
Do I honestly have to go back to what we experienced under Van Gaal or Mourinho? Our football is soooo much better, in fact it’s chalk and cheese. We are flowing going forward. To come back to your point about De Gea, he was on the wane way before Ole. He’s improved Rashford massively even after the back injury, he’s our only manager to get half a tune out of Pogba, Martial (although he’s having a bad season) was our top scorer last year and Greenwood was superb and is getting better again. What about Fred, how bad was all he under Mourinho? Mctominay is scoring a few too, so let’s not pretend Ole and his team can’t coach.
Do we dominate games now? Do you remember our last FA cup tie?
No, we're not. And where did I say that LvG played better I pretty much said quite the contrary? Either way doesn't matter. He doesn't get off just because LvG played shit football. Has Ole developed Rashford or is he just a 20-year old that got better at football? Anyway, I'm not really impressed by Rashford, Greenwood, or Martial this season so... I'm not saying he hasn't done good things, but he hasn't done enough, and yet again, when he puts Bruno aside, we look rather clueless. Always the same when he changes a few players. Disoriented.
Spot on.
RVP also mentioned this before in the interview podcast MUTV that under Sir Alex he was given more freedom and less strict in tactic while LVG is the opposite, you stick with my principle, tactic rule and philosophy. And RVP admitted he prefers Sir Alex way. There are many players prefer to get more freedom than just being programmed like a robot. Ole has his system but he doesn’t do those complex philosophy like LVG. His style is much more suitable for us as we used to witnessed SAF, the United way.
Not an Ole outer, not sure you can be when we're sitting second in the league.
However, his game management is questionable to say the least. He was playing with fire again tonight but got away with it. How does it make sense to use a full 5 subs in a cup tie with the full 30 minutes of extra time remaining. An injury which is entirely possible, indeed likely with tiring legs would leave us with nowhere to go. I know risk is required at times but this one was dodgy imo
However, his game management is questionable to say the least. He was playing with fire again tonight but got away with it. How does it make sense to use a full 5 subs in a cup tie with the full 30 minutes of extra time remaining. An injury which is entirely possible, indeed likely with tiring legs would leave us with nowhere to go. I know risk is required at times but this one was dodgy imo
Ok shoot me down but why is there such lack of energy coming from him? He has the demeanour and energy of an old man. I know this is a strange observation and it’s based primarily on his incredibly passive presence on match days but when the team and individual players seem to play so often with perpetual lethargy it makes me wonder if it’s feeding down to the players.
If you think about his age and what he has to prove and the job he has he sounds be frenetic with energy. Young man in a huge job. Yet he has less energy than Fergie even when he was in his 70s.
I get there isn’t just one style of management but I wonder if there’s not a link between how laboured we are and how the manager has the presence of an old man as if weather weary already
If you think about his age and what he has to prove and the job he has he sounds be frenetic with energy. Young man in a huge job. Yet he has less energy than Fergie even when he was in his 70s.
I get there isn’t just one style of management but I wonder if there’s not a link between how laboured we are and how the manager has the presence of an old man as if weather weary already
It this was Jose, LvG or Moyes you would have crucified him
Rashford is definitely has developed to be better footballer than under Mourinho. The goals and his end products last season are something that he never produced before and the same with this season. The same with Martial last season even though he’s poor this season but we can’t deny the last season one under Ole. Greenwood had off the pitch problems this season and now he started to look much better and Ole even started to play him more regular recently.
Ironically, our xG before Bruno came actually 4th best in the league last season (picture below). And today before Bruno came in, we had 9 shots while west ham only had 1 shot. We could create chances but not ruthless enough to finish them without Bruno. You notice the difference between Bruno & Cavani and the others are mentality and leadership, if they and others fail to do something, they keep their heads up and shouting. While the likes of VDB, Rashford, Martial & Greenwood are natural born nice and soft, if they and others fail, they give thumb up and not complaining.
He knows he’s not getting a contract extension that’s why.
You expect that team to get past a semi final, playing like that.
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