I think we all care in some way about the results but many of them would be easily accepted if we felt like what was displayed made sense and had a semblance of quality
We are an awfully coached team
- Thread starter bond19821982
- Start date
Im literally quoting others posts, im not plucking narratives out of thin air. Trying to pretend to be reasonable now doesnt work. Its out first away defeat in 13 months ffs. How easy do you think football is that we can achieve that and not be a cohesive side? Klopp wouldn't be 6th, Jose wouldn't be out of EL and mid table and Lampard wouldn't be fired.
Theres a difference in not liking how we play and pretending we dont know how to.
Theres a difference in expecting to beat Leicester and having a shit fit with the sky falling in because they beat us.
You talk about expectationss but feck me we are playing above expectations going by the pre season thoughts on here.
Because Ole thinks that by playing the ball to our CBs all the time, he will draw the opposition high, and will be able to play the only way he knows: counter attack.
Which could in theory be a smart approach, but not when the people in charge of initiating our attacks are Maguire, Lindelof, Bissaka, Fred and McT. It's not a fluke that 90% of our attacks go through the left side.
But then, once we get forward, other problems show up:
1. our attackers don't move into space, instead they pull back, return the ball to our defenders/fred, and then stay in non threateaning positions
2. when slowly manage to bring the ball forward, all our players condense in the same space
3. when we ultimately lose the ball, our players look stunned, and there is no sense of getting stuck in and fighting for it.
Rinse and repeat.
I keep seeing people say this but I don’t get why. Pretty much everyone had Liverpool or City as 1 or 2 and then United or Chelsea as 3 or 4. BBC did the poll and 22 of their 24 football pundits all had that top four.
Given we clearly aren’t finishing 1st (which no one expected us to) and there’s only 6 points between us and Chelsea in 4th, we’re very much bang on for what everyone thought surely?
Agree with every word.
Plenty of fans had us outside of the top 4 after the transfer window shit show we had or struggling for that 4th place. Hell fans had as struggling for top 4 as late as 3 weeks ago.
I don't know how anyone can watch matches like that and come away not wanting a new manager.
We have talented individuals but no system. We sometimes 'press', often don't - and when we do attempt to press it's such a disorganised, dogshit mess. No defined pressing triggers like Leicester and other top teams clearly have...instead we have maybe one player (usually Bruno) pressing by himself, not hunting in packs systematically.
We're woefully coached.
You can't be a truly top team in the modern era without being good at pressing. Truly believe that....and we're absolutely fecking awful at it. Prehistoric.
We have talented individuals but no system. We sometimes 'press', often don't - and when we do attempt to press it's such a disorganised, dogshit mess. No defined pressing triggers like Leicester and other top teams clearly have...instead we have maybe one player (usually Bruno) pressing by himself, not hunting in packs systematically.
We're woefully coached.
You can't be a truly top team in the modern era without being good at pressing. Truly believe that....and we're absolutely fecking awful at it. Prehistoric.
Spot on, nothing else needs to be said.
I'm beyond frustrated at this point, I just want to see something that makes me believe, but is it realistic to expect that to happen after literally seeing the same from us for years under the current leadership.
I agree with everything you said there, if we want to be a new Arsenal who's sole ambition is top 4 then yeah let's keep him in charge but if we want to challenge for any kind of honour then it's time to make a change because I'm sick of the constant shitshow as soon as the big trophies are there to be won
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/what-should-be-the-realistic-expectations-for-2020-21.456474/
Seems like everyone were quite optimistic in July.
You were also expecting us to finish second anyway :
Another thread in which the majority seems to think we'll finish top 4 in early Sep :
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/your-2020-2021-season-predictions.457331/
And we are second!
#cyberIn
Everyone saying we can’t compete with City due to their squad depth but even if we matched them their manager is leagues above ours so we would need a better squad. The best teams should have the best managers and we don’t have even a top manager. Ole has done well here but he won’t ever take us further
I know the media in the UK is full of ABUs but when I watch it in France, the comments about United being a boring team are basically the same. If a lot of neutrals don't enjoy watching us as a team (but appreciate the individual of some of our players) then it really isn't a conspiracy. Something isn't really working
In any case, we're not exceeding expectations, Liverpool and Chelsea are underachieving. You shouldn't be thanking Ole for 2nd position, you should be thanking Klopp.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/predict-the-top-6-20-21-in-order.456505/
If you look at this thread the overwhelming majority had us top four. The noticeable change only happened after 06/10 which is when we lost 6-1 to spurs which can just be put down to knee jerking and the disheartening nature of that game.
We'd be very much 3rd looking at a similar season to last season if Liverpool hadn't imploded. We're really not seeing the sort of improvement we were all demanding for this year. I don't believe this team is suddenly going to click, there's no evidence to suggest that really, we've played the same sporadic way for years now.
Jesse is looking more like Messi away from the awful non coaching on offer here. 8 goal involvements in 7 starts at West Ham.
Would like to agree but how many times we have seen those purple patches of Jesse? Last purple patch brought back quotes from SAF liking him to Tigana, I would like to see him keep this momentum until the end of the season before we can jump to conclusions...
He’s playing in a totally different team, the under dog team playing counter attacking football with acres of space to play in. Granted I’d love him back at united and he would have been effective for us today but don’t think his resurgence is to do with coaching
Last edited:
What would happen if we sacked our entire coaching team?
The bot posters planted by ownership would go away.
Anyone still think coaching isn't important and Ole is getting the most out of this squad?
In terms of our footballing prowess
And hire better coaches? We will start to play like a football team.
Which coaches
Yep. Imagine if Bruno were to want out, we'd be back to being painfully average, consistently. He really has papered over serious cracks.
You would have to give time to new manager and his staff.
First defeat and you would get posters calling for sacking.
Not playing Barcelona tiki taka after 1-2 years and you would get posters calling for sacking.
Amen. Some people just refuse to accept the truth.
So what is the solution
Fully aware of this fact, so my thinking is we'll be languishing in 8th in December.
Couldn't have played more into Leicester's hand if we tried today. Forget the personnel for a moment (although we fecked that up from the start too), every man and his dog know how Leicester play, and we just let them do it.
May as well have not bothered showing up.
May as well have not bothered showing up.
I am glad that I didn’t stay up till 3 am to watch my favourite team get beaten by Leicester. I doubt I will ever stay up to watch any game until Ole is out of Utd. Time to move on from this failed experiment. The real question is who is available to bring this club to the next level. I don’t think we will be in Top 4 next year. I see Chelsea improving, Liverpool’s swagger back, Leicester continuing to improve, City is City. With Ole still as our manager, we will be 5-6 in the table with Ole termination at the end of the season. I am quite sure about it.
Of the two options I can think of, I think the club will opt for neither: a) buy him enough top players that will in and of themselves improve the team and its performances or b) hire a manager who can improve players and develop a great team.
I’d love either of those. Can’t see either of them happening at the moment though
Nor can I
So basically there’s no point in going all in slating Ole. The problems needing addressing are at club level inNor can I
Thanks. Myself and a few others have been trying to get this point across for some time now - but the conversation always turns back to the usual. 'Shite fan', 'no patience', 'best manager since SAF', 'second in the league' etc. Context seems to completely go out of the window for Ole. When Jose had us in second, most people weren't too confident as the signs were clear that the results were in no way sustainable due to the football being played. Yet we supposedly haven't learnt our lesson.
The issue here being - a fair few of the 'top' teams are heavily underperforming this season and next season I do not see them getting any worse. On the other hand, I have not seen much, if any, evolution from this team for quite some time now. If anything, you could argue, our strongest asset - our ability to counter, has arguably gotten worse this season given the drop off in performances against the top 6. In the other matches - the ones that win trophies, we quite consistently are very predictable and slow in our offensive play. Players don't look like they have a proper understanding on the pitch. The movement off the ball leaves a lot to be desired etc. These are aspects of the game we desperately need to improve in as simply having a great squad isn't enough anymore. We aren't the only fecking club that has money these days. That's why in the major competitions - the coaching on display is very usually the difference. Look at the past few CL winners and how dominant their style of play was. Look at the last few EPL teams.
The fact that teams can be cautious in their approach against us - just about completely nullifying our ability to play football, 2.5 years into a manager's reign is worrying. Even the top teams have been more cautious in their approach against us this season, which is why we have dropped a level in those games too. We only seem to be able to consistently play football when teams give us space for our pacey as feck players to operate in. That isn't the sign of world class coaching.
You have teams like Barcelona and Juventus with the two greatest players of all time arguably struggling due to poor coaching and tactical set ups. You have teams like Leipzig with very underwhelming players playing some great football and are neck to neck with a far superior Bayern team in the Bundesliga. Coaching is the most important aspect. If signing a World class players and 'understanding the United way' was enough, Ed might as well hire one of the CAF.
No problem with the coaching today. Team shape was very good for the most part. Lack of quality in midfield killed us again.
You could question the team selection, too many changes, question marks over fitness of at least three starters, balance slightly off in that sense.
Players looked a bit knackered and lacking sharpness. Again, not a coaching issue.
You could question the team selection, too many changes, question marks over fitness of at least three starters, balance slightly off in that sense.
Players looked a bit knackered and lacking sharpness. Again, not a coaching issue.
That first bit is a philosophical question. Do people voice their opinions and frustrations on here in the hope that it will have an impact, or just to converse or get something off their chest?
Second bit is not exhaustive. We have problems with the ownership, of course we do. But it doesn't mean there can't be other problems.
I’m sure nobody wants him to fail.
I don’t agree with any of your analysis, though. I think we look better than most teams most of the time. Coaching is not the problem, it is the technical ability of a small number of players in key positions, primarily CM, that’s holding us back.
Now, obviously, you are looking for different things and I’m sure it’s true that you don’t like the way we play, but that’s a different thing to being badly coached.
It’s the same as ever, you get the best players you can. Every year you try to get better players. All the teams do it, and every year one of them wins (and the rest fail).
Sometimes a team seems to outperform its players and the coaches get credit there but, in most cases, these are purple patches, anomalies, coincidences where a collection of lesser known players turn out to be very good players (Leicester players of current and recent history are a great example).
History is littered with “great” coaches who did well at unfancied teams for short periods and then failed over and over. That time when they did well, it was probably the players, mostly.
I might have got sidetracked there. What I’m saying is: each time we get better players in, we will, on balance, get better results. Or maybe we won’t.
The great thing is, we’re going to see this all happen over the next couple of years.