And being in the fa cup semi final. And being in the Europa League quarter finals. Very different being level on 3rd when you are succeeding in every cup competition vs someone who has done nothing but focus on the league essentially.
Howe has done a great job, but purely results wise, United is having an excellent season. Because cups obviously matter and cups obviously have an impact on league games.
That might be true but you listing our cup achievements this season is also a mere results-based view. The results have been very good under ETH, no question about it. Even with the little dip in recent weeks. Style of play is an issue. Long ball United is more or less back in full flow for at least a couple of month. Yes, we are more organized, yes, we have a better builtup. But chance creation is weak, nobody can deny it. I wouldn't even use that as a stick to beat ETH. He has to use the time he has on all the things on his radar. We certainly look more like a semi-recent football team with players who see and play football with each other every day than what we looked like under Rangnick, Ole and Mou.
Still, I think, some of the early praise was a little unjust. Let him do stuff before he gets praised for it. He is the manager, if he decides to play the same players over and over it is on him when they look burned out. And the replacements look shite when they usually get little chance to play themselves in any kind of form. And if the manager decides that he doesn't want to change the little "style of play" we were able to achieve until now EVEN WHEN two of the main cogs for this system aren't available, that is also on him.
As far as I read, ETH has a certain reputation of a bit of stubbornness. And he wasn't particularly good in rotating the squad. What we see now is confirming those things. He isn't the finished article, even Pep adjusted to the PL - I hope ETH does as well. I think, if we can stop the overly ethusiastic celebration for the most mundane things, there wouldn't be conflicts when we witness little flaws. He is allowed to have them. The trajectory of the team and the club is upwards. This partly due to him but he needs to stay on top of things. And he should question himself if sometimes he wants to be the smartest guy in the room by ignoring issues that re-occuring like Brunos inability to play in midfield without one Casemiro or two players behind him (just an example, another would be Dalot in my point of view, I'm sure there are more).