Would you take Conte at United?

Would you want Conte at United?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1,013 47.1%
  • No

    Votes: 1,140 52.9%

  • Total voters
    2,153
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Sviken

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:lol:

I'm sure the same lot being adamantly against Conte were signing Tuchels praises in the past in spite of him having a similar pragmatic style and set up for his teams
No, that's the funny part. Go look at the Tuchel thread. Most people here said he'd fail terribly, that he is not good enough, that Chelsea's problems run far deeper etc. It's really a wonder what a competent manager can do. But people here have this romantic belief that if the manager is unable to perform, then the players are at fault and a whole "rebuild" needs to be done. This is eerily reminiscient to what we witnessed with Moyes.
 

Van Piorsing

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Ole is not lasting this season, so regardless the new manager would have Ronaldo and Cavani. Mata and Matic are goner regardless if Ole stays or not (unless he decides to give them another 5 years contracts because they are his mates).
That's the problem I'm having with all this. This time, I don't trust in decision making in this club and so far looks like they could give him time till the end of the season, maybe even longer.
 

Spoony

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Ok, now you are shifting your posts. He leaving after 2 years has nothing to do with a club needing a rebuild. Juve,Chelsea and Inter has not needed a rebuild after him ( his last 3 jobs).
Again,.a new manager will want his own players. We'll be back to square one very soon. That's the issue and perhaps the reason we probably don't fancy him.
 
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Skills

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Again,.a new manager will want his own a players. We'll be back to square one very soon. That's the issue and perhaps the reason we probably don't fancy him.
Sack him if he throws a fuss about wanting more players in the summer.

You shouldn't let managers dictate spend/recruitment. He either wants the job to work with the players we've got or he wants the job with the idea of using our financial muscle to get the players he wants. If it's the latter just sack him - you don't have to tell him that while you're recruiting him though, if you feel like he'll be good for you at this moment in time.

At a higher level, there's nothing wrong with keeping a few cards hidden behind your back.
 

Sviken

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That's the problem I'm having with all this. This time, I don't trust in decision making in this club and so far looks like they could give him time till the end of the season, maybe even longer.
That's not gonna happen. Ole has already lost the players. There's literally no way to turn back from this and our incompetent board is just delaying the inevitable.
 

Dobba

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If he was in for 2 years and made you better in both the league and Champions League (which would be a certainty) then why would whether he won the CL or not be a massive issue? You’re a million miles from winning it right now. Delaney is right: ”Conte is Mourinho mk2” is pathetic and totally wrong.
'Which would be a certainty' is doing some very heavy lifting here, especially in regards to the Champions League. Ole needs to go (in part) because he failed to get out of the group last season and we're worried we won't get out of it again this. His replacement? Failed to get out of the group in his last two attempts, winning a combined 3 matches.
 

bond19821982

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Again,.a new manager will want his own a players. We'll be back to square one very soon. That's the issue and perhaps the reason we probably don't fancy him.
It holds good for any new manager and that's not a reason not to hire a winner. For that, you need to get your recruitment structure correct . That has nothing to do with Conte .

Any other reasons ?
 

Spoony

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Tuchel has a fairly similar history of falling out with his bosses. At Mainz he left in anger, at Dortmund as well and as far as I can tell he wasn't really on good terms with Leonardo towards the end either. Both Tuchel and Conte are very inflexible characters and if the bosses think things should do differently or don't allow them to things their way fecal matter is going to hit the rotary impeller.
Then Tuchel suits Chelsey and Roman's model. Perhaps the manager won't be an issue in future as long as we've implemented a footballing strategy
We need footballing people calling the shots and everything to fit into that system rather than our scattergun approach by money men.
 

Carolina Red

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Can't believe this Delaney tweet didn't make the cut. Him being demonstrable shit in the Champions League? Nowt to do with him, guv.
Are we really going to worry about a manager's record in the Champions League when we've not won the Premier League in almost a decade?
 

Infra-red

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Has he ever had success with 4 at the back? And what's this nonsense about high pressing? He is exactly like Mourinho in that they prefer dropping off after losing the ball instead of trying to counter press and try to recover it quickly.

They both feel very comfortable with a set defence, pouncing on errors by opposition attackers and counter attacking directly, at pace.
This is largely correct re the high pressing - Conte is much closer to Mourinho than he is to, say, Klopp, in that regard.

One significant difference from Mourinho though is Conte's focus on build up - his sides are very, very good at playing out from the back (something which I can remember Guardiola singling his Chelsea out for praise for a couple of years ago). Mourinho declared all out war on possession football over a decade ago, whereas Conte is a known admirer of it.
 

bond19821982

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Are we really going to worry about a manager's record in the Champions League when we've not won the Premier League in almost a decade?
Exactly. We are struggling for top 4 now and people are worried about winning CL. Joke of a club.
 

NoLogo

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Then Tuchel suits Chelsey and Roman's model. Perhaps the manager won't be an issue in future as long as we've implemented a footballing strategy
We need footballing people calling the shots and everything to fit into that system rather than our scattergun approach by money men.
I agree. I would love us to get ten Hag or someone like him next season and a football director that will make sure we follow up on ten Hag with managers who have a similar approach to football. It all has to start with our board and director of football having a clear vision of what they want to see and then reworking everything at the club from top to bottom to fit within this philosophy. Even though I like the Ajax philosophy about football and would love to see something similar implemented here it doesn't have to be that, if we say we want to go more along the Klopp route and in the future want to always play high intensity pressing, attacking football then everything needs to follow this idea, the next 10 managers need to fit that style, the coaches need to know how to train and drill our players to excel at this style and our recruitment needs to find players who 100% fit that philosophy, may they be young or old.

It's really not that difficult unless, which I suspect to be our problem, there are very different ideas at the board of our club on what our actual philosophy should actually be.
 

Van Piorsing

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That's not gonna happen. Ole has already lost the players. There's literally no way to turn back from this and our incompetent board is just delaying the inevitable.
Men in charge, on top of the usual incompentece also have no clue who to hire and and what is the plan for next 5 years. Just weeks ago the news were, our board trusts Ole for next years to come.

Delaying the inevitable in Man United sounds exactly like clearout that any person would think it's gonna happen inside the squad previous or this summer... It will really take time till any trust will be restored, especially after such spending, which is now on oil club scale.
 

Spoony

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I agree. I would love us to get ten Hag or someone like him next season and a football director that will make sure we follow up on ten Hag with managers who have a similar approach to football. It all has to start with our board and director of football having a clear vision of what they want to see and then reworking everything at the club from top to bottom to fit within this philosophy. Even though I like the Ajax philosophy about football and would love to see something similar implemented here it doesn't have to be that, if we say we want to go more along the Klopp route and in the future want to always play high intensity pressing, attacking football then everything needs to follow this idea, the next 10 managers need to fit that style, the coaches need to know how to train and drill our players to excel at this style and our recruitment needs to find players who 100% fit that philosophy, may they be young or old.

It's really not that difficult unless, which I suspect to be our problem, there are very different ideas at the board of our club on what our actual philosophy should actually be.
I can't disagree with any of that.
Sadly City can do this but our lot can't see anything other than having money men in charge of footballing decisions. Idiots.
 

Dobba

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Are we really going to worry about a manager's record in the Champions League when we've not won the Premier League in almost a decade?
Exactly. We are struggling for top 4 now and people are worried about winning CL. Joke of a club.
Just the tiniest bit of consistency would be nice. The prospect of getting knocked out of the groups two years running is too bad to continue as United manager. Actually doing it, coming bottom of the group the second time around? "Welcome to the club Sir. How much do we need to spend in January?"
 

Carolina Red

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Just the tiniest bit of consistency would be nice. The prospect of getting knocked out of the groups two years running is too bad to continue as United manager. Actually doing it, coming bottom of the group the second time around? "Welcome to the club Sir. How much do we need to spend in January?"
To reiterate: We haven't won the league in almost a decade.

Maybe we should win that before worrying about what we do in the Champions League.
 

Skills

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Ideally yes but would our board do that? I also can't blame managers wanting their own players.
I think a lot of clubs have now successful stripped recruitment away from the remit of the manager/head coach.

There's too much money on the line now, for it to be driven by the whims of one man. I think you let them have their input into the areas the club could focus on (forward, defense, midfield) but ultimately the actual recruitment should have nothing to do with the manager.
 

Shane88

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You'd wonder how many elite coaches would actually want this job at this moment.

You're getting shitloads of money and you get to manage Ronaldo, Varane, Bruno, Pogba, Rashford, Greenwood. But you're also into instant desperate firefighting mode with Maguire, McTominay and Fred.

If I'm a top manager I'm telling United come back to me in the summer where I have time to implement new ideas and get rid of shit.
 

Zaphod2319

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Again... he used a 4-3-3 for a good part of his undefeated first season at Juventus, and is also pretty well known for having success with using a 4-2-4 / 4-4-2 throughout his career.
He adapts to what he has for players. It is weird the misconceptions people hold on to. You always hear he is a defensive minded coach because he has solid defences. He is an attacking coach that expects everybody to play defence when they lose the ball.
 

Dr. Dwayne

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Seems to like. Look, like I said above we've got to implement a holistically approach and have coaches and players fitting into that system. That's how I see it, Doc.
To be fair, he's purchased a lot of them. I think we need to get used to the merry-go-round. Sir Matt and Sir Alex were anomalies. Changing managers every couple of years is the norm.
 
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Carolina Red

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He adapts to what he has for players. It is weird the misconceptions people hold on to. You always hear he is a defensive minded coach because he has solid defences. He is an attacking coach that expects everybody to play defence when they lose the ball.
Exactly! Agreed on everything there.
 

Skills

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You'd wonder how many elite coaches would actually want this job at this moment.

You're getting shitloads of money and you get to manage Ronaldo, Varane, Bruno, Pogba, Rashford, Greenwood. But you're also into instant desperate firefighting mode with Maguire, McTominay and Fred.

If I'm a top manager I'm telling United come back to me in the summer where I have time to implement new ideas and get rid of shit.
Loads because there's more of them out there, relative to the number of top jobs available. It's why the likes of Conte and Zidane are actually unemployed at the moment (was the case for Allegri too)- there's just not enough top jobs going, and there's a lot of talented managers around.
 

croadyman

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Clearly there is a real split in the board about his suitability for the job which is clear from him not being put in place
 

bosnian_red

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In Fabrizio's own words, he loves the 'structure' at United and thinks we're 'perfect' to start winning immediately.

If that means Conte doesn't see the need to buy/sell a bunch of players, that would be ideal.

My only worry about him is that he'll undo all the foundations that Ole has built, like LvG and Mourinho did before him.

The current squad, their mentality and their age profiles are good. But Solksjaer made a rod for his own back by bringing us to the cusp of being competetive but lacking the managerial nouse to take us that final step. What I want from the next manager is somebody who can pick up the reins straight away without skipping a beat.
Of course he wouldn't need to do that much, look at our squad! It has an abundance of quality in the starting 11 and depth. If anything he'd have to likely sell off a few players who aren't needed anymore, and obviously will want to sort out the midfield and Pogba/Bruno situations, but in terms of the pieces we have, I think he'd be delighted with them.
 

bosnian_red

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Thread that pretty much summarizes my thoughts on Conte too. He's a top manager and is unfairly being compared to Mourinho. And in fact is probably more suited to our squad than any manager out there right now and the biggest guarantee to turn us into a title challenging team as soon as possible.

 

Flytan

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Thread that pretty much summarizes my thoughts on Conte too. He's a top manager and is unfairly being compared to Mourinho. And in fact is probably more suited to our squad than any manager out there right now and the biggest guarantee to turn us into a title challenging team as soon as possible.

It doesn't matter, the people against him because he isn't Ten Hag or some other "small name" that looks to be on the up will never change their minds. Which is fine, they have their belief of who the best replacement of the club is.

"The best ability is availability" - Brian Dawkins . None of the other managers are available, our choices are limited because the club and fan base didn't push out Ole despite lowering expectation for him every season. Conte is the best option left and if it fails we'll just be in the same situation we are in 7 months. Not much difference.
 

Dan_F

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Poch has yet to do feck all in Europe after inheriting a CL runner up with Neymar and Mbappe.

If he doesn't reach a final now with Messi as well then I see his stock taking a drastic hit but I'm sure even that wouldn't ward off the hard on the board has for him
So we’re saying that Poch should have won the Champions League in his first five months at PSG, despite hammering Barca, knocking out the champions and only losing to Man City who have one of the best managers, who has had five years to set up his team? Bizarre expectations to place on a new manager.
 

Jackal981

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To reiterate: We haven't won the league in almost a decade.

Maybe we should win that before worrying about what we do in the Champions League.
Agree. Another thing is we got dumped to EL every year so whats the difference
 

bosnian_red

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It doesn't matter, the people against him because he isn't Ten Hag or some other "small name" that looks to be on the up will never change their minds. Which is fine, they have their belief of who the best replacement of the club is.

"The best ability is availability" - Brian Dawkins . None of the other managers are available, our choices are limited because the club and fan base didn't push out Ole despite lowering expectation for him every season. Conte is the best option left and if it fails we'll just be in the same situation we are in 7 months. Not much difference.
IMO Conte is currently a no brainer. He directly addresses very quickly our problem of being horrendously under coached and a mess defensively. It instantly improves our results on the season and brings consistency, and has us compete for trophies. This season. No other manager coming in would I say we would instantly compete for trophies. He's available, others are not (or would require bigger pay outs, which is always a factor). He's a proven manager across multiple leagues, which only applies to him.

People want Ten Hag, I get it, Ajax look great. Ajax always look great. Frank De Boer won the title 4 years in a row there when he took over. Ajax has a lot of factors at play behind them as to why they always play great football. Those don't exist at United. People can shout at the sky all day about saying we need this and that, and that Glazers need replacing, Woodward needs to go asap and replaced with Van der Sar or whatever romantic appointment... but that's not happening. So let's deal in reality here. What manager can come in, and be the most successful despite the board/structure. Sir Alex was dominant despite it. Because that's the question. What manager can come in, and make up for the structural issues we have, or make them seem not so problematic by just getting top players, with a year on year high transfer spend, and a year on year high wage budget, to play successful football. That is literally the only question that is being asked. And the answer, IMO, is unequivocally Antonio Conte is currently that guy. It's low risk, it's high reward. It's so low risk that he's the type that will actually just walk when he doesn't like a situation too. So it's a no brainer.
 

Teja

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This is largely correct re the high pressing - Conte is much closer to Mourinho than he is to, say, Klopp, in that regard.

One significant difference from Mourinho though is Conte's focus on build up - his sides are very, very good at playing out from the back (something which I can remember Guardiola singling his Chelsea out for praise for a couple of years ago). Mourinho declared all out war on possession football over a decade ago, whereas Conte is a known admirer of it.
Yup that's a good point. Mourinho wouldn't even be interested in building play out the back against a high press or from GKs. We went long to Fellaini quite a bit as our out ball or gave it to Valencia and just asked him to run up the field with it with a fair number of players still sitting back.

Conte has played Playmaker (Fab / Matic) + #8 (Kante) quite a bit in his title winning season. I suppose it could be Fred + Pogba for us this season and we'll go buy a technical playmaking types for the next one.

Again... he used a 4-3-3 for a good part of his undefeated first season at Juventus, and is also pretty well known for having success with using a 4-2-4 / 4-4-2 throughout his career.
Even with Juve, he ultimately went to a back five. I'm not saying he's incapable of it .. I just don't think we should go off the assumption that if we get Conte, he'll find a way to play Bruno, Ronaldo, Rashford, Sancho and Pogba all together in the same side. I think it's just fundamentally broken regardless of who the DM is in that lineup.
 

Carolina Red

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I thought we'd have to wait until Conte got appointed before the 'Who cares about the Champions League anyway?' style stuff started.
I'm sorry, I just don't see the logic in hemming and hawing about a manager's record in the CL when we aren't even in the ball park of winning domestically.

You're putting the cart before the horse.
 

Carolina Red

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Even with Juve, he ultimately went to a back five. I'm not saying he's incapable of it .. I just don't think we should go off the assumption that if we get Conte, he'll find a way to play Bruno, Ronaldo, Rashford, Sancho and Pogba all together in the same side. I think it's just fundamentally broken regardless of who the DM is in that lineup.
Because it suited the players better. Juve was weak at left back and started leaking goals, but they had 3 world class centerbacks. He recognized this, and adjusted his formation and tactics and it worked.
 
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