What went wrong with our squad

Njord · Sep 22, 2019

If you on average add 5 players to your squad each season through purchases and promotions, which you expect will give you an average of ten years of service each, you will with a 40 % succes rate have a squad of 20 top players at all times. The more money you use the higher the quality.

This rule seems to apply to every top team around Europe, except us. Looking at the squads of the best teams, several of them will have 3-4 players outside their starting XI which would be regular starters for us. I wanted to look at what happened to put us in this position.

I saw the thread about Anderson retiring at 31 recently, and felt it was weird that he could still have been playing for us if things workes out for him. Thinking back at all the signings we have made since we signed him kn 2007, there's quite a few players that could still have been playing for us.

Rafael could have been a world class RB in his prime, if not for his injuries. Cleverley once looked like a future superstar, and so did players like Jones and Shaw.

What do you think is the reason why so many of our signings failed and consequently left?

In my opinion I think there are four main explantions:

1. We had a lot of players who constantly got injured. There might have been issues with our training methods before Mourinho, when I feel this improved.

2. Some of our players succumbed to the pressure of playing for United, others believed their own hype, and thought they had made it before they had.

3. The appointment of van Gaal hurt us badly. His squad management were horrendous.

4. In general, we have bought way to many duds. It seems we have hsd big problems with our scouting these last 12 years. Hopefully this is improving, as ae seem to have made three good purchases this summer.

Tyrion · Sep 23, 2019

Njord said:
If you on average add 5 players to your squad each season through purchases and promotions, which you expect will give you an average of ten years of service each, you will with a 40 % succes rate have a squad of 20 top players at all times. The more money you use the higher the quality.

This rule seems to apply to every top team around Europe, except us. Looking at the squads of the best teams, several of them will have 3-4 players outside their starting XI which would be regular starters for us. I wanted to look at what happened to put us in this position.

I saw the thread about Anderson retiring at 31 recently, and felt it was weird that he could still have been playing for us if things workes out for him. Thinking back at all the signings we have made since we signed him kn 2007, there's quite a few players that could still have been playing for us.

Rafael could have been a world class RB in his prime, if not for his injuries. Cleverley once looked like a future superstar, and so did players like Jones and Shaw.

What do you think is the reason why so many of our signings failed and consequently left?

In my opinion I think there are four main explantions:

1. We had a lot of players who constantly got injured. There might have been issues with our training methods before Mourinho, when I feel this improved.

2. Some of our players succumbed to the pressure of playing for United, others believed their own hype, and thought they had made it before they had.

3. The appointment of van Gaal hurt us badly. His squad management were horrendous.

4. In general, we have bought way to many duds. It seems we have hsd big problems with our scouting these last 12 years. Hopefully this is improving, as ae seem to have made three good purchases this summer.

I think it's more point 4. Also, SAF seemed to dislike the methods of the modern transfer market so he refused to participate in the ratrace and we missed out on big names (Snjeider, Bale). Woodward addressed this but he lacked any football knowledge so we replaced a team of hard working good footballers (Valencia, Young, Fletcher) with more entertaining footballers who didn't fit into the team (Di Maria, Falcao, Pogba). As our experience has proved, the first is better.

Lee565 · Sep 23, 2019

Too much chopping and changing managers with different styles of football and wanting their own players for such styles, plus we buy flair players but they have suffered over the years from playing under either out of their depth managers like Solskjear and Moyes or shackled by conservative managers like van Gaal and mourinho.

Rightnr · Sep 23, 2019

No overarching structure above managers and we've not had one that can do the SAF 2-in-1 DoF and manager job (not many can). This has led to purchasing random players that do not fit a consistent style and generally overspending on crap. So, I'd say it's somewhat point 4 but not just that.

L1nk · Sep 23, 2019

What do we honestly use our scouts for? There have been so many good, young and talented players that have changed teams since Fergie has left us, a lot that have gone virtually under the radar yet have gone on to be great looking players, yet we never even seem to be interested/linked at all, we prefer to waste money on overpriced duds or players who City have been linked to.

marktan · Sep 23, 2019

Too much chopping and changing between managers who've all had 1-2 seasons to get immediate success, so they've signed big and binned predecessors players, and when they've failed the cycle has repeated itself.

For example, if SAF had stayed another 10 years, the likes of Rafael, Nani, Welbeck and RVP would've likely stuck around for another 3-5 years. Rafael was near world class in SAFs final season. Zaha would've grown here.

A player of Di Marias quality would've worked out.

Someone so slow and unphysical like Mata would never have started under SAF.

Unfortunately as others have said we just have no common theme or structure to our squad, as were still hanging on to finding the next SAF, whereas the world's moved on and finding a manager of that sort is rare, it took Liverpool 30 years for example to find a manager like Klopp. Wed do better by hiring 3-4 people as board for footballing matters and getting them to help build us a team over 2-3 years.

paraguayo · Sep 23, 2019

It all started going wrong when we replaced Ronaldo with Antonio Valencia. Who obviously is a good player, but there was a big shift in ambition there from the days we'd spend massively on players like RvN and Ferdinand, and even Veron.

Nucks · Sep 23, 2019

No institutional continuity, as others have said. Manager is in, makes changes, manage is out, new manager is in, makes changes, manager is out.

Sylar · Sep 23, 2019

paraguayo said:
It all started going wrong when we replaced Ronaldo with Antonio Valencia. Who obviously is a good player, but there was a big shift in ambition there from the days we'd spend massively on players like RvN and Ferdinand, and even Veron.

That wasnt even that big of an issue as we managed to get to another CL and win a few more titles with that. As we also went from losing RVN and only buying Carrick. When we lost Ronaldo, we had a shift in the way we played which included Rooney being up top and getting his best tally for us (and a huge number of assist for Valencia to Rooney). Rooneys injury came at the worst possible time (CL quarters and before our home game vs Chelsea which decided the title in their favour).

Although it only worked cos we had Fergie who had an idea on what he wanted to do and stuck to it. The big problem however was the lack of investment in midfield around that time which meant Carrick was a one man midfield.

(added to spending massively on players like DiMaria, Lukaku and Pogba after that period).

Once Ferguson went, we needed a winner, but we didnt get one. And instead were stuck with Moyes. He should have gone around December but for some reason we insisted on keeping him until top4 was unachievable (probably so we could sack him with as little as possible money to pay out).
We (Ed) then got LVG and for some reason tried to make him take three years even though LVG only wanted 2 and it looked like he was clearly ready for retirement. But whatever, we went with him and LVG seemed to have no idea what his philosophy was. It changed quite a bit but it seemed like he wanted possession however the formations and players he went with seemed to contradict it. However once we got rid of him, we needed somebody similar but went quite the opposite.

Anyway, we had no plan, no structure, spent on big names rather than names to fit a style / system. And we are now seeing a hybrid of players from Fergie, Moyes, LVG and Joses tenure.

Amerifan · Sep 23, 2019

5. We bought players for the wrong reasons.

We bought “name” players for the shirt sales. We bought players because someone wanted to sell them to us. We bought players to fill immediate needs with no follow up plan. We bought a player so we wouldn’t get shutout of the summer transfer window. None of those were good reasons.

RedDevilCanuck · Sep 23, 2019

The Lukaku and Sanchez nightmares and not getting a CB spelled the end for Jose.

ayushreddevil9 · Sep 23, 2019

Ed Woodward being in charge of fixing it.

Thats where it gone wrong and will stay like that

Ayush_reddevil · Sep 23, 2019

Year is 2049 and people are somehow still mentioning the final years under SAF with regards to our poor squad....

UNITED ACADEMY · Sep 23, 2019

Extend Mata’s contract & keep playing him instead of signing another attacking mid. Keep relying on Matic when there are better & more suitable player than him like Fred.

If we want to rely on Martial as our first choice striker, at least sign a backup for plan B like Mandzukic or Dzeko. Cheap, available, & offer different dimension to Martial & Rashford. Suitable for a game changer come on as a sub.

There are lot of issues but right now 2 main things have been stopping us getting the result are relying on deadwood & not having plan B on the bench.

VeevaVee · Sep 23, 2019

Shocking planning and vetting of players mixed with a shit setup for them to come into has meant for far too many failures. Getting rid of the wrong players after Fergie left also set us up for trouble with squad depth.

The Irish Connection · Sep 23, 2019

paraguayo said:
It all started going wrong when we replaced Ronaldo with Antonio Valencia. Who obviously is a good player, but there was a big shift in ambition there from the days we'd spend massively on players like RvN and Ferdinand, and even Veron.

Spot on. And not replacing Keane and Scholes in the midfield until Pogba, who is very inconsistent.

Infordin · Sep 23, 2019

It’s actually baffling to think that half the West Ham team would get into the Man United first XI.

Haller, Felipe Anderson, Rice, Cresswell & Lanzini

finneh · Sep 23, 2019

Playing catch-up has been a big problem.

Fergie deliberately left an aging team, but one with a large transfer budget to refresh. Any competent manager and CEO approaching that transfer window would have bought a central defender, a central midfielder and a left back. Over the next two transfer windows we addressed none of those issues. We bought a big lump of a number 10 and a small creative number 10; both positions that weren't a real issue.

The following Summer we still needed a midfielder, a left back and a central defender from the previous Summer; but also needed another central defender, another central midfielder, a right back and a winger on top. The problem with needing 7 players is you're never going to find the 7 you want... You either blunder-bus and know that some won't be the right fit (as we did) or you are patient and probably lose your job. We went for the former buying a mix of players who weren't up to it (Rojo) and players who weren't commited (Do Maria).

The next Summer comes around and we still need 5 players merely to tread water (let alone improve). A right back we didn't buy, a CB we didn't buy, a central midfielder as Blind had become a (mediocre) CB, a winger to replace Di Maria and a striker to replace the aging RVP.

Again due to the quantity required we look for quantity and seem to just buy whoever is available at a reasonable cost in the positions we need (Darmian £14m BFS £6M, Schneiderlin £25m, Depay £25m and a late £36m Martial).

You can see the pattern... The board are now risk averse. They will not sanction 5-7 signings on one window (rightfully in some senses), because the chances of signing this quantity of players who're right for the team are small. However their ineptitude over the last several years has caused the problem in the first place.

Overall we need a strategy. That can be 3 signings a year who're 100% suited to what we want to do. Klopp signed Mane, Wijnaldum, Matip... Then VVD, Robertson and Salah... Then Fabinho, Keira and Alisson. That's three windows that took them from mediocrity to exceptional with a quality manager with clear direction.

I have no issue with that. If this season it's Maguire, AWB, James; with next season being a RW, CM and CF that we've scouted well and fit our profile and in 2021 it's a LB, DM and AM. If we have a clear vision I think fans would subscribe to a progressive 3 year plan. You need the right manager to do it of course...

RedRonaldo · Sep 23, 2019

1. Change and chop manager with different style/approach/philosophy way too frequent.
2. Not signing the right type of players
3. Post Fergie syndrome
4. Keep too many deadwood at the club
5. Offer big contract to too many average players
6. Not hiring the right manager

kouroux · Sep 23, 2019

UNITED ACADEMY said:
Extend Mata’s contract & keep playing him instead of signing another attacking mid. Keep relying on Matic when there are better & more suitable player than him like Fred.

If we want to rely on Martial as our first choice striker, at least sign a backup for plan B like Mandzukic or Dzeko. Cheap, available, & offer different dimension to Martial & Rashford. Suitable for a game changer come on as a sub.

There are lot of issues but right now 2 main things have been stopping us getting the result are relying on deadwood & not having plan B on the bench.

I couldn't agree mord there. The specially the striker point. Our club doomed itself by believing such a shit squad would be enough.
Martial, Rashford, Pogba and many others just aren't reliable fitness and football wise

elmo · Sep 23, 2019

Ed being in charge sums it all up.

Icemav · Sep 23, 2019

We had a squad in decline

An inexperienced CEO with no football acumen

A terrible midtable manager in Moyes.

That transition period was crucial. We had to signal to the world that life would go on without Ferguson and we would be one of the best run clubs with one of the world's best managers. Instead we got complete incompetence that gutted the experience, both coaching and player personnel and left us with mediocrity. We then followed this up with LVG who many talented players didn't want to work for. Those first 2 years destroyed us. Now we cannot change our stripes and it will be literally time and luck before this club sorts itself out. At the moment the experienced players are garbage and the kids are green as hell and several will probably turn out to not be good enough. And Pogba I doubt stays. The reality is that things might even get worse from here.... but then again this is footaball and a miracle might happen, no matter how illogical.

Sky1981 · Sep 23, 2019

This is what happens when you pluck a manager from Norwegian league.

What do you expect? We're shit enough as it is that even jose couldnt win with us. But hey... let's hire a Norwegian league manager while we're at it.

And here we are asking what's wrong with our squad.

50 percent of our maladies is the manager. We keep hiring the wrong one. Jose wasnt doing a bad job getting 2nd with this squad yet you all thinks a modern unknown fresh manager can win the league.

Tarrou · Sep 23, 2019

Poor planning and managerial recruitment is the crux of the matter.

And a CEO in favour of penny pinching by retaining clearly past it / not good enough players instead of upgrading. ‘Making do’ with the likes of Young, Valencia, Mata, Jones, Fellaini for years when no other top team would accept that.

I fear Ole is at fault too, though it’s impossible to know what power he had. He should not have let Ed gut the squad without bringing in adequate replacements.

Ole being so desperate for the job put him in a weak position IMO. If we’d brought in an outsider that outsider would’ve able to demand assurances of a big budget, which is what was needed to fix this mess. No fecker worth their salt would’ve taken the job knowing they couldn’t buy a midfielder, a right winger, and a striker if Lukaku was leaving.

ash_86 · Sep 23, 2019

A proper dof would have smacked some sense into our manager if he had indeed said he's happy with attacking options. Woodward in turn having zero footballing knowledge would have said fine and would have went back with a smile thinking about the money he's saved for the owners. Fecking state of the club.

Red_toad · Sep 23, 2019

We retained players who never looked the part. We have key players who regularly miss 10 to 15 games per season. We’re overly stacked in central defenders and have limited attacking options. Right wing hasn’t been addressed for donkeys years.
We’re now left with a team packed with youth players and no leaders in key areas. Looking at the west ham match, aside from Maguire we no one organising and ended up with a shit show.

Revaulx · Sep 23, 2019

Amerifan said:
5. We bought players for the wrong reasons.

We bought “name” players for the shirt sales. We bought players because someone wanted to sell them to us. We bought players to fill immediate needs with no follow up plan. We bought a player so we wouldn’t get shutout of the summer transfer window. None of those were good reasons.

I’ve never been convinced by the shirt sales thing, but the bolded bit is absolutely spot on and gets mentioned far too little. We seem far more in the power of certain agents than other clubs, which highlights the naïveté of our “negotiating” team. Also, would we really have been interested in Dybala if we hadn’t been trying to offload Lukaku to his club?

Mata, Di Maria, Falcao all cast-offs. Zlatan and Mkhitaryan part of the Pogba package. Sanchez?

Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber · Sep 23, 2019

Ed Woodward

paraguayo · Sep 23, 2019

I don't understand why the owner, or an owner of any big club just goes to Hoffenheim or Watford who had amazing success scouting and hire their whole football staff (their salaries must be piss poor compared to what we can offer). I mean if they can do so much good work with pennies, imagine with our budget and technological capabilities, also more ability to pay plane tickets etc.

amolbhatia50k · Sep 23, 2019

I think logical 'rules' go out the window when

You have managers doing a poor job - buying/keeping players who they can get a tune out of or don't fit their system, and unable to build a team a proper collective football as opposed to a dysfunctional mess.
You have an ownership/chief officer who have no real plan in place other than quick fixes - Rooney contract, Sanchez signing, Jones contract, going from possession of LVG to counter attack of Jose to what's that? of Ole.
No real ability to identify talent that doesn't cost a billion pounds.

amolbhatia50k · Sep 23, 2019

paraguayo said:
I don't understand why the owner, or an owner of any big club just goes to Hoffenheim or Watford who had amazing success scouting and hire their whole football staff (their salaries must be piss poor compared to what we can offer). I mean if they can do so much good work with pennies, imagine with our budget and technological capabilities, also more ability to pay plane tickets etc.

I've often wondered about this. How come a big club like United can't just poach entire staffs of other clubs. I suppose there's a feeling that it wouldn't be possibly to replicate the success at a completely different environment? Maybe Germany to Germany would make that feasible?

Hawks2008 · Sep 23, 2019

LvG and Mourinho made many recruiting errors that have left us bogged down with shite. Also this squad is gutless and know when to throw a coach under the buss in self-preservation.

Basically.

New manager comes in and everyone gets a fresh start.
As the season progresses the manager makes his decisions on who will be kept and who will be moved on.
Players down tools in hopes the coach is sold before they or their mates are sold.
New coach comes in and the cycle starts again with these wasters getting another clean slate.

Florida Man · Sep 23, 2019

One poster suggested a certain poor attitude that's been passed down from former players to each new group of players and continues to this day. This likely started with the senior members during Moyes' tenure, no longer having the rock that was Ferguson. It's as if we're like a teenage boy that grew up without a father figure.

For all of Ole's faults, there's no way his game plan is for players to half ass it and not try. We've seen these players do great things when they feel like doing so. Most times these days, they just go through the motions.

Asger · Sep 23, 2019

Lee565 said:
Too much chopping and changing managers with different styles of football and wanting their own players for such styles, plus we buy flair players but they have suffered over the years from playing under either out of their depth managers like Solskjear and Moyes or shackled by conservative managers like van Gaal and mourinho.

Sorry which flair players do we have now?

Njord · Sep 23, 2019

Florida Man said:
One poster suggested a certain poor attitude that's been passed down from former players to each new group of players and continues to this day. This likely started with the senior members during Moyes' tenure, no longer having the rock that was Ferguson. It's as if we're like a teenage boy that grew up without a father figure.

For all of Ole's faults, there's no way his game plan is for players to half ass it and not try. We've seen these players do great things when they feel like doing so. Most times these days, they just go through the motions.

I think there could be something in this. When I wrote about injuries in the opening post, I wad mainly thinking about the team Fergie built for the managers who came after him. Rafael, Jones, Smalling, Evans, Fabio, Cleverley, Anderson, Nani, Welbeck, Hernandez could have been a very good team, but all of them had trouble with injuries or didn't have the mentality to play for United.

As Fergie left and we lost a lot of leadership at the top, there should have been a transition where his staff and his senior players helped. Unfortunately, his entire staff was kicked to the curb, and over two or three seasons the new managers got rid of every senior player, except Rooney.

After that, the players who were supposed to take charge were players who had been injured over half their time with us. We also got the "my captain should alwayd play", and I believe it would be different to take charge, when everyone looked at Rooney as the leader, and saw how he performed.

I think this is what we see a result of now. Ten years with a corporate management who seems more interested in making money than winning football matches, several managers who have failed to come close to the leader Ferguson was, constant changing of backroom staff, and a group of players with a rotten group culture, without any leadership.

1988 · Sep 23, 2019

Four different managers has stuck with Young, Jones, Rojo, Lingard etc. Has taken us forever to offload just a few of the done players. We also seem to breed a cringe, toxic or even unhealthy environment. Take the latest Greenwood social media behavior etc. Pogba, Lingard, Rashford are much the same. Doesn't strike me as a very competitive or "win at all cost" mentality. It's all about trending.

ivaldo · Sep 23, 2019

Sky1981 said:
This is what happens when you pluck a manager from Norwegian league.

What do you expect? We're shit enough as it is that even jose couldnt win with us. But hey... let's hire a Norwegian league manager while we're at it.

And here we are asking what's wrong with our squad.

50 percent of our maladies is the manager. We keep hiring the wrong one. Jose wasnt doing a bad job getting 2nd with this squad yet you all thinks a modern unknown fresh manager can win the league.

We could’ve created a manager in the lab using Fergies and Busbys DNA to lead this team and it wouldn’t have mattered. Incredible that you expect Ole to be doing better than he has when his squad is made up of players signed by five different managers, all with a different ethos, no natural leaders or experienced players capable of playing in the starting XI, one creative midfielder who is out injured, and no fit strikers. The players he has brought in have coincidently been our best performers, so maybe we give the manager more than 8 months to sort out a team that has been rapidly declining for 6 years.

ivaldo · Sep 23, 2019

1988 said:
Four different managers has stuck with Young, Jones, Rojo, Lingard etc. Has taken us forever to offload just a few of the done players. We also seem to breed a cringe, toxic or even unhealthy environment. Take the latest Greenwood social media behavior etc. Pogba, Lingard, Rashford are much the same. Doesn't strike me as a very competitive or "win at all cost" mentality. It's all about trending.

Josh 76 · Sep 23, 2019

Infordin said:
It’s actually baffling to think that half the West Ham team would get into the Man United first XI.

Haller, Felipe Anderson, Rice, Cresswell & Lanzini

I wouldn't be surprised if 4 or 5 players of most teams in the premier league would walk into Utds first 11. That's how fecked up it is.

Foxbatt · Sep 23, 2019

Infordin said:
It’s actually baffling to think that half the West Ham team would get into the Man United first XI

Haller, Felipe Anderson, Rice, Cresswell & Lanzini

Only half? Apart from AW and Maguire and maybe DeGea they will will.

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