Our great club has now become the laughing stock of world football, this has been allowed to happen under their watch so they have to take a large share of the blame, do I think it is all the fault, absolutely not. Since the last two years or so under Sir Alex we have made bad decision after bad decision at all levels of the club. During this time I can only really think of negatives associated with us, yes we have won the odd trophy but in my eyes those were due in large parts to luck on the day and we could have lost all of them. My memory isn’t great but these are the negatives I remember that have led us to this point;
Under Sir Alex ( last couple of years)
- Allowing key players (Ronaldo for example) to leave and replacing with squad players
- Allowing the squad to age to a state were the spine of the team were all over the hill and needed replacing at the same time, Rio, Evra, Vidic, Scholes, Giggs. It’s one thing to have experienced players in the squad but not 5-6 players on their last legs requiring replacement for the next manager. These 5 were all world class players and the money needed to be invested to move forward in one go was ridiculously managed.
- Allowing average players to stay at the club for too long, Nani/Anderson for example, this issue is still haunting us to this day, Jones/Rojo/Young/Pereria
- No cohesive team play, relying on individuals to win games (Van Persie)
End of Sir Alex era;
- Allowing Sir Alex and David Gill to leave the club at the same time, this was an unbelievably bad decision, this must have been known for a while so why we didn’t manage this better is beyond me
- Hiring Ed Woodward, a proven commercial deal genius to deal with the football side of things as well
- Hiring David Moyes, a slightly above average manager with no big club experience or even world class coaching skills.
David Moyes
- Sub title says it all really - the amount of times he admitted to being surprised to be asked to manage us told everyone what they needed to know but if that wasn’t enough.....
- Allowing Fellaini’s release clause to expire and pay more for him a couple of days later
Louie Van Gaal
- Buying Di Maria when he blatantly didn’t want to come to us and was desperate to go to PSG. Compounding this by playing him as a wide forward when he was man of the match in the previous Champions League final as an attacking midfielder. Since then we have continued this trend until this season.
- Stocking up on players with a serious lack of pace when everyone and his dog knows you need this to succeed in the Premier League unless your team is seriously well drilled which we weren’t / aren’t
- Throwing out his game plan when we lost to Leicester 5-3, after that game came the zombie midfield passing that we are still doing today
Jose Mourinho
- Took the job with a serious chip on his shoulder and was miserable throughout, clearly he should have had a break from football at that time but we took a chance on him and it backfired massively
- Instead of positive man management for which he was famous for he actively found reasons to pick fights with everyone, even belittling players in the media
Ole Solskjaer
- Back to the Moyes era, another manager with no big club experience or any noticeable world class coaching skills
- Agrees to let Lukaku and Sanchez leave but not demand a replacement. I have no issue with letting them go but it has left us far too light in terms of goals
- Allowed our midfield to get to the point were Andreas Pereira is now a first team player
- Some of the worst performances the team has put out in the last 10 years
- Preached that he would install a level,of fitness that meant even if we weren’t the best team we would be able to out run most teams and that we would press the hell out of them. I haven’t seen either of these promises so far. When we play Liverpool we’ll be able to compare ourselves to team with a real hunger to run and press. Just like we used to have
Scouting team
- Underpinning all of this is our scouting team, what the hell are they getting paid to do, whoever brought Fred to the clubs attention should be fired just for that.
- Not pursuing Bruno Fernandes because his passing wasn’t good enough? That sort of thing worse me massively cause it means we think our current players are actually good at it
- The number of players we have passed up on and not actively pursued is criminal, this may not be their fault but surely we should be scouting players and making sure we pick up some of the talented players out there.
Players
- Let’s not forget the players here either, over the last 10 years or so the number of horrendous individual performances that I’ve witnessed is staggering.
- The number of players seemingly happy to pick up their pay check without any perceivable effort is beyond belief, I have no idea how someone like Rojo for example is even a professional footballer.
- Our over estimation of our youth players. Lingard, Rashford, Pereria, McTominay, are all squad level players in my opinion but we are now reliant on these players. As this is the case I would expect a lot more effort from most of them and indeed the squad as a whole. I don’t know this years stats but it is no surprise we have averaged one of the least running yards in the league over the last few years. I don’t blame this on the mangers it is purely a lack of desire and professionalism from our players
Coaches
- No cohesive team play that I can see for about 10+ years
- Can’t put 2 games together with the same game plan
- What the hell do they do, this is serious question, they can’t be doing the same as everyone else as even Rochdale outplayed us
Medical teams
- I don’t believe that we have simply bought so many injury plagued players, every year we have multiple players out for long periods of time
Sorry for the rant but I see this club being mismanaged throughout every level, owners, ceo, manager, coaches, scouting, medical teams and especially the players. Until these are all addressed this situation will continue.
The only positive I have is that at least Ole’s transfers this season have so far proved good business for me. Due to his complete lack of any game plan or coaching skills I would be tempted to move him to the DoF position and bring in someone that can seriously coach a team of players to play above their level like Brendon Rogers. He would be my first choice with Pochettino second.
Feel free to cut this all to pieces
