Ole hasn't finished 2nd yet, and it's immaterial in any case. Other factors go into play rather than dick comparing between 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
Knew you were a closet spurs fan.Id take 4th with 75 points over 2nd if it meant I could see what was being built and that the football was exciting. There's no prizes for being 2nd or 4th anyway
Yes, that must be it. I wanted a progressive style that turns 4th into a PL and CL. I must support Spurs.
You wouldn't have known that at the time though
You would have known they would challenge for silverware, because the manager comes with established pedigree, the style of play was progressive and the outlook was clear. And it was all done with less money spent, on top.
Better games. Palace was boring. West Ham was you guessed it. Boring. Add that to the majority of our season.
Those 3 Chelsea games was every bit as "boring"
Do you watch Tuchels Chelsea? It's fecking tedious, none of his games were any more entertaining than ours.
Did they dominate the game?
Yeah they are boring if you don’t like possession football. But they are always in control of the game.
They are boring generally. LVG was possession based, he was still boring as feck. Their wins were no more convincing nor entertaining than ours.
So was they in control and dominating the game?
They controlled the game, I never denied that. I said they were no more entertaining, and actually more boring to watch than we were. In fact in 2 of their games they had similar possession to ours (v Palace and v West Ham).
Aye, not a fan so far. Maybe when he has a transfer window this summer, they'll play better stuff next season. I'm not hugely well versed on him, but given what I know of him, he's one of the ones I didn't want when Ole looked on the brink.
I do not watch foreign football as much as I used to, but thanks for the compliment
I dont agree overall but do so far, Tuchel’s teams are not boring he has a good style but so far at Chelsea he has done some amazing work defensively but hasn’t got the attack going at all so it looks kind of boring but I feel he will eventually get the right balance plus the forwards firing or replace them. Remember he has only been there over 2 months and got them from 8th to 4th plus past Athletico with ease so I wouldn’t compare to LVG who had 2 years to fix the attacking patterns
Klopp finishing 4th the year Mourinho finished 2nd. A lot of neutrals that year still picked Liverpool as the most likely team to go on and challenge City simply based on the football that Liverpool played and the fact that it was obvious they only needed a CD and GK.
Cheers mate, brilliant response and thanks for taking the time to write thatI do not watch foreign football as much as I used to, but thanks for the compliment
I think he can get his teams to have more of a cutting edge with time but broadly if I'm not mistaken this is very much his style, and I think he has players already in his squad to implement this quite well, so that might explain the quick impact. He will likely find good use out of players like Havertz and even Werner who are intelligent and know how to use find pockets of space and exploit.
For what it's worth I rate Tuchel but I for some reason I didn't love him as a choice for United's role, probably too much burn from our LVG experience! But I prefer a more direct approach to our games as that's what I grew up associating Manchester United with. For that reason Ole's style actually suits us more, in my opinion. He might have us on the counter a bit too often but he is more direct and tries to hurt teams quicker.
What I wish Ole can learn more on compared to his counterparts (Tuchel, Klopp, Pep, to an extent Arteta all included) is improvement in team press. It's a bit of an art I think, and not just a "press high" and job done. There is likely an element of coaching for team pressing which Ole needs to implement better.
Chelsea look to press a lot better now under Tuchel, he's actually gotten the best out of Kante since what, Conte days. And collectively there is a systematic approach to how the team will win the ball back. I get that vibe with our rivals but not often enough with us. Part of that is tactical, for example I think Ole purposely leaves Rashford and one other high up the pitch without duties to track back as much, so that he's set up on a counter easier. At least thats how it looks. Some of it may be personnel too - for example Martial isn't one to press proactively.
That's a very good insight and I had slightly misjudged his style of play. I never said Chelsea was boring. I said they play possession football.
You said United were boring, and our games were no less boring and hardly less controlled than theirs bar City, which was a test they never faced.
I did. But now you are just giving me your opinion. I also said Chelsea are boring if you don’t like possession football. So I take it you don’t like possession football.
Relatively speaking we are no less boring than Chelsea, was the point I made.
Okay. So you find possession football boring?
Thought we controlled both teams just fine and that's reflected in the possession stats.
Possession Chelsea had in their 3 Premier league games in March.
I guess, Possession doesn't equal control for everybody. I know it doesn't for me - control for me is creating chances to score goals and stop the opponent from creating own chances. I'd say the term control leans a bit more into the direction of containing the opponent so yeah, Possession isn't irrelevant but context should be seen. If an opposition team decides to back off, close the spaces and let us going sideways for the majority of the game then the majority of possession is not really control. Control would be us being able to keep the ball while the opponent actively trying to get the ball. That's why we would never say that City were really in control of the game against us despite having more possession.
Yes but our less possessive game was our best came and most controlled game. So it doesn’t prove what my actual point was. Chelsea controlled their games we didn’t. I mean come on. We are United fans we watched our matches. We wasn’t entertaining at all. The West Ham game was as bad as Palace.
It's all relative. Fans usually accept boring football as long as they're successful. While Tuchel hasn't won anything he's got them into the habit of constantly winning football matches. For the short term that will always please the fans considering the first half of their season. If in the long run his football is boring he won't last unless he wins big trophies. That's how it is at the larger/richer clubs.
When you write it like that it's almost as if the players you have available to you actually matters for results in football.
If we sign Van Dijk and Allison we might.
It's down to perception but I found them incredibly dull to watch of late, I found Southampton and Leeds games as good examples where they could exploit open defences and just played square balls too many times without hurting them - resulting in lost points. Leeds in particular I think they may well have lost all 3 let alone 2 form the draw.
You will always need a manager who's capable of maximizing the abilities of the players in the squad, and you will always need quality and top class players to compete at the very top level.
That Galacticos team was unbalanced as feck. Zidane himself said that it was absolute madness to get rid of Makelele. Here’s what he said after Makelele left and Becks came in:
Galacticos was a weird vanity project. Of course great players isn’t enough, but it’s not exactly a good argument against the idea that we would improve with better players.
They lost the guy that glued them all together. Another great player. Claude Makelele.
There are quite a few threads right now suggesting that we should add 1st teamers on around 3-5 positions... So the idea of getting 2 starters in to challenge for a point record is very very optimistic, don't you think? I know you didn't meant it like that but if we start to consider all scenarios and their outcome then it would be an even more open door to invide speculations where we could have been with another manager.
