He’s not manager now Jesus lads
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | Managerial Watch | Reports: Being considered for Canada job
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Largely driven by his immense love and admiration for ten Hag I think, which drives him to depreciate anyone other than him and get touchy when someone compares Ole to the best manager we have ever had.
Yeah it’s revisionism to suggest a Manchester United manager used tactics
You’re a bit of a parody at this point. Always on here criticising Ole at every opportunity, while singing hymns for ETH and Rangnick (of all people) at the same time.
He did the same with Rangnick as well, another manager whose reign was vastly superior both on and off the pitch.
I said he didn't value tactics or have enough of a grasp of it. That is a fact and this is an Ole thread. I've actually said ten hag has no leg to stand on if he continues poor form despite having players back, so next time you want to make shit up about singing hymns I suggest you read the posts better.Yeah it’s revisionism to suggest a Manchester United manager used tactics
You’re a bit of a parody at this point. Always on here criticising Ole at every opportunity, while singing hymns for ETH and Rangnick (of all people) at the same time.
450m spent, 9th in the league, 3rd fewest goals, finished bottom of a piss easy CL group, eliminated at home in the cup yet for some reason he's still the dog's bollocks according to the deluders.I see VP is bigging up Ten Hag and laying the snack down on Ole despite their PL stats being almost identical. I think Ten Hag has 1 more point combined? Conceded more goals and scored a lot less, has a better win percentage but a significantly worse loss percentage. Spent roughly the same amount of money no?
It's a lesson against fanboyism. Don't do it lads, stay clear! Good night.
I genuinely think his fanboys are amongst the worst in football. With the likes of Messi and Ronaldo you kind of get why their fanboys behave the way they do. They've been relevant for decades and performed at insane levels. So much blind love for a nothing manager though, that's mind-bogglingly worrying.
I suggest you learn what a fact is, because you don’t seem to know the meaning of the word.
Think it's evident you don't. The man himself said he doesn't value tactics as much as others do, that is a fact. Me eluding to that coupled with the eye test is not unreasonable. Stop trying to defend something that's not even got a case, and move on.
He was an utter waste of 3 years. ETH being terrible this season doesn't vindicate him.
Because the 7-0 happened on ETHs watch, because the 3-0 loss to fecking Bournemouth happened on ETHs watch, because 9-2ish happened on Oles watch
Can you provide that quote? I don't remember Ole saying that, but I'm happy to be wrong.
I can't be arsed to dig it up but he got annoyed when Carl Anka sort of called him out on a tactical point with a question in a press conference. He revisited a tactical point Ole made earlier in the season. When asked if his approach is to do xyz tactically he said football is about passion, desire, winning second balls etc.
There was also an Athletic article (or similar) I think that basically insinuated he suppressed the styles that Carrick and Mckenna would have favoured (or at least showed no interest in it). And that was revisited in another thread recently after the latter novice coaches have gone on to do well in their own roles.
Exactly!Don't forget the protests that lead to us having 3 games in 5 days. From one Thursday to the next we played an unprecedented 4 games.
With a normal season (the first month not being a pre season as you mentioned, and the end not being completely bonkers) we'd easily have ended up on 80+ points.
That was the most fun season post Fergie (not saying much but still a big samle size). And that on top of a disastrous summer window where the hierarchy didn't sign one useful player.
People forget that we had 3 games in 5 days, we had 0 pre-season (and our 1st 3 PL games were effectively our pre-season). We'd have comfortably finished over 80 points that season.
Add to that, that was the closest we've finished to 1st in PL in the post-SAF era in terms of # of points
I think people forget that we had a pretty decent injury list in 19/20, especially when you account for the fact that the squad lacked depth. We were playing Williams, Martial was injured for a while, and Rashford as well. Pogba was ofcourse injured for majority of the season. McT missed quite a few games as well.
Also, I don't have that much sympathy for ETHs injury list. It's mostly on him, as he didnt rotate the side at all. We were playing the preferred XI every game, including vs Reading ffs when we had to play 2 games a week!
Hence the ‘at home’ part
I guess you've gotten a lot of negative responses to your post but I think it's very balanced. His time at Utd had quite a lot of highs, and with regards to the tournaments, yes he "lacked something to capitalize", but to an extent that something was also just a bit of luck. Had we won that pen shootout in the EL final, his time would overall look just slightly different (and probably more representative of his body of work, I'd argue).
At the end, it was the right thing for him to go and probably to an extent he had his own limitations, of course, but there is definitely an argument to make that in a fully functioning structure, e.g. one that doesn't bring in Ronaldo that summer, the team maybe carries on progressing in a different way. Maybe not - it's football fiction at this point. What we do know however is that the structure at the club was terrible. And the football under Ole was at times a lot of fun.
Actually I just got one response a pair of days ago and it was positive. But I'm well aware many people don't share my views here. No problem with it, though.
I agree on the luck, not only Villarreal but Sevilla in the EL semifinal we had 20 attempts against 9. I remember the start of the second half with our attacking trio missing one after another. The cup against Chelsea during the congested calendar, when they had 2 days more to rest which was visible during the game, and DDG had a bad day. Ole should have played Romero, but there's no guarantees either.
My defense for Ole has never been about him being excellent but as you say trying to add some balance and find the positives too, because there were plenty of them and he wasn't as bad as painted by many. I don't think the club had the pillars and the structure to do much better than 2nd in the league, winning the EL and scoring those 120 something goals, so I think he did well until that point.
Maybe he could have done it in a more elegant fashion, being more dominant, but I think after he took a look above him (the club, recruitment) and below (the players) he tried to find the most realistic formula to get results, trying to get a good balance attack-defence and and trying to highlight the qualities of these players (fast, direct play) and hide their flaws, which he did for a long time.
Many thought that bringing someone with more ambitious ideas would automatically make us more exciting and dominating, but after his pragmatic approach last season ETH opened the floodgates to build his thing and he's failed miserably.
Even ETH himself backtracked at mid way ("we'll never play like Ajax", "we'll be the best transition team") and he's completely lost since then. Outside of 'his system' he doesn't seem to have a flying clue about anything.
Maybe another manager can pull it off, but the risk will be always there when trying to develop a dominating, creative style of play with the natural pressures of this club, in the current PL where any Joe has money to burn, and a very mixed squad in terms of profiles to start building from. And this counting on the new structure orchestrating everything being a good one, which is yet to be seen.
What Ole, Carrick and McKenna did was reading the room, realizing where they were and applying common sense. It wasn't pretty at times but still miles better than the garbage we're being served right now.
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Yeah I think we mostly agree about OGS - I just want to clarify that I'm not personally using that as a dig against ETH who I think is in a worse position that OGS ever was. I still have faith that things can get better (it might be without him, considering how football works), but I don't think the current situation shines as bad a light on him as a lot of people do.
Actually my main problem is not with ETH, but the club taking decisions based on pleasing the fans, and then gifting the manager the keys of the club without any method or strategy in behind, but playing the roulette and hoping for the best.
I think ETH is flawed from many angles, but I agree in the sense that just removing him and bringing another one won't fix everything. Especially if we keep chasing this kind of idealist coaches who are a round peg in a square hole at a club like ours at the moment.
Yeah it seems we agree on most things in fact
Ah yes the tactical “eye test”. And please provide that quote in full, because this all sounds awfully made up.
Its not, he said it in a presser to Carl Anka. Go find it.
Do you really think he'll disclose the tactics in a press conference right before the game vs Liverpool?
Secondly, if a manager does not value tactics and yet gets those results, feck, let's hire motivational speakers and cheerleaders instead of a manager because we've successfully proven that having a manager does not have nay value.
We've successfully proven a manager with no idea on tactics and one who places lesser value on them is the most unsuccessful manager in the last 30 years. Good one.
If no tactics can get us to 2nd in the league, surely for tactics to have a positive value, we need to win the league now, no?
If we finish lower than 2nd, having tactics implies that it has a negative impact.
P.S. : Weren't you one of those guys who believed we'd win the league with any other manager? Tried referring to multiple news outlets as well, just in case I missed out on us winning the league, but wasn't able to find anything there as well. Could you please share the link to us lifting #21?
Every manager that has been successful with their career through tactics and gunning for silverware has actually won silverware and delivered tangible success at the club. Ole is the only manager who hasn't. I guess you can throw Moyes there too, so that's his company. Your point is nonsense, Mourinho for example was much, much better than Ole and we don't even need to throw Ten Hag into it.
Regarding to your second point, I don't know what you're on about.
Dont bother its a same shit with every manager in here, camps make their ditches and turn into gold fish. OGS being one of the worst things that could happen to us post SAF has nothing to do with current shitshow.
Uncomfortable truth: at their peak, Solksjaer's United played the best football United have since Fergie left.
Mate, the point is if Ole had 0 tactics and delivered 2nd in the league, all other managers should have been able to improve on that league finish as they had something that Ole didn't. League is the one competition that actually determines how good or bad the side is, not FA Cups and League cups where how deep you go is often determined by luck of the draw and a team having 1 bad day (like City had vs Southampton last season).
Winning a cup competition should not be a reason to back a manager, else LVG should have been back unequivocally. League positions are the best indicator of where the team is (along with metrics like xG, xGD).
Not having a sustainable style of play and showing a failure to develop your tactics is reason to sack a manager, which is why Ole was sacked. Having a purple patch in a season of empty seats doesn't change that. His point tally overall wasn't exactly groundbreaking.
One Ole!
Solskjaer was a complete waste of time outside of his caretaker period.
ETH was a worth a punt, but should've been sacked months ago now. Every single club in Europe hires a manager on sound logic, who doesn't end up working out. It's part of football and it'll happen more often than not.
Not many are stupid enough to do what we did with Solskjaer though. And not only, we fecking extended his contract.
ETH was a worth a punt, but should've been sacked months ago now. Every single club in Europe hires a manager on sound logic, who doesn't end up working out. It's part of football and it'll happen more often than not.
Not many are stupid enough to do what we did with Solskjaer though. And not only, we fecking extended his contract.
He was sacked because he lost 5 of his last 7 PL games you miserable twat.
100% this.
Lets park the name calling, no one is sacked just for losing 5 in 7.
Literally happened half an hour ago - Mou at Roma! 4 losses in last 7 games
After failing to transcend the team adequately in 3 years. He doesn't get sacked of he lost 4 in 7 in season 1 or even season 2. He's only one 8 games in 20 in the Italian league.
Ole's administration was a shining beacon of the chasm that exist within the football structure. First of all Ole should have never been made manager of Manchester United. United are a sleeping giant, there are plenty of departments that are failing (ex fitness, leaks etc) and we expect too many things from a manager (he needs to cover the role of coach, manager, sporting director and head of recruitment). Thus I struggle how one whose only previous experience at top level was tanking at Cardiff could succeed in that job. Anyway many of the issues we've seen during Ole were present before and after still present now. For example we sign the wrong players we spend too much on them and we give them silly contracts, our fitness is not up to scratch and we leak like a sieve.
So what went wrong? Ole inherited a Mourinho's team ie a team built around a deep line and playing counter attack football. It was apparent even from that time that such tactic was in the way out. Unfortunately due to a list of inexperience and incompetence at both managerial level and DOF level we noticed that far too late. Thus we ended up bringing players like Maguire and AWB whom while good for that style of football were unsuited for modern football. Add that to our inability to negotiate advantageous deals and our inability to do adequate research on whether players have the right talent/character to succeed at United (ex Sancho and VDB) then no wonder why things degenerated the way they did.
What I do blame Ole for are
a- his lack of discipline
b- the fact that we signed a RW who wanted to play LW
c- the fact that he left for a holiday to Norway when the ship was actually sinking.
d- he seem to have promised everything to everyone (Hendo, Lingard) when he knew very well that it couldn't be done
There also reports of him refusing to implementing new ideas from McKenna and Carrick that could add to that list as well. All of that are damning irrespective of the manager's experience and/or character. Its undeniable that United have far more problems during Ole's reign that prior. Again, mostly not his fault.
That doesn't take the shine from him as a person and as a United legend player wise and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
So what went wrong? Ole inherited a Mourinho's team ie a team built around a deep line and playing counter attack football. It was apparent even from that time that such tactic was in the way out. Unfortunately due to a list of inexperience and incompetence at both managerial level and DOF level we noticed that far too late. Thus we ended up bringing players like Maguire and AWB whom while good for that style of football were unsuited for modern football. Add that to our inability to negotiate advantageous deals and our inability to do adequate research on whether players have the right talent/character to succeed at United (ex Sancho and VDB) then no wonder why things degenerated the way they did.
What I do blame Ole for are
a- his lack of discipline
b- the fact that we signed a RW who wanted to play LW
c- the fact that he left for a holiday to Norway when the ship was actually sinking.
d- he seem to have promised everything to everyone (Hendo, Lingard) when he knew very well that it couldn't be done
There also reports of him refusing to implementing new ideas from McKenna and Carrick that could add to that list as well. All of that are damning irrespective of the manager's experience and/or character. Its undeniable that United have far more problems during Ole's reign that prior. Again, mostly not his fault.
That doesn't take the shine from him as a person and as a United legend player wise and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.