Boring, boring Man United

He'sRaldo

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It was the game against Mourinho's Spurs that made Ole extremely risk averse. From that game on it was Scott AND Fred in midfield, with nil-nil draws every big game. And tbh who can blame him, the pressure on his job was insane at that point.

The best football we've played in a while was post restart, and unfortunately it didn't carry on this season.
 

tomaldinho1

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This season is hard to judge, City are a lot more pragmatic than the team that ripped the league apart a few seasons back, Liverpool imploded although they might sneak back in, Chelsea now look good again albeit with a very rigid system, we are up and down like a yo-yo and our low level is truly tumescent.

Our tactical setup however 100% contributes to games being boring - that City 0-0 game was what happens when two teams with good players setup with a defensive double pivot and don't commit men forward, it was honestly a waste of 90mins of my life, same with Chelsea both with Lampard & Tuchel. Opposition managers know our real strength is broken play, counter attacking and there's a reason we've been shite against the better teams this season, they just don't attack us in numbers. Prime example is Pep, like the flawed purist he is, reverted back to type in the last PL game (bearing in mind it never works against us) and we beat then again.
 

GazTheLegend

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This forum is boring. Almost every season since about 2003 we have been called boring "in comparison with" and bla bla bla.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003–04_Manchester_United_F.C._season.

We were worse in 2003 and 2004 to be frank. We only started to kick into gear in about 2006 and after 2010 we were back to being "boring" again and being called the worst League champions ever in 2011 with 89 points.

This side is YOUNG, man. And their potential is -stratospheric-. There's been signs of how good we could be this season (like in 2004 I'd argue) but this endless revisionism is what's really boring.
 

Tom Cato

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I'm Ole in but do you watch other teams? This isn't even close to being true. I've watched the majority of prem games this season and I can tell you that Leicester, Leeds and Brighton play nicer football than us for starters.
They all score less and allow more goals in the net than us (granted its close with Leicester this season)

Is it the process before the goals that is so fun?

Leeds games are sometimes entertaining because Leeds overcommits and just sends people up, which is why they got dismantled so badly at Old Trafford.

Nearly every single team we play that isn't Liverpool or Manchester City comes out with a real nice defensive line of "everyone". Games like that are always going to be a tired affair unless they fall appart.

We've had a lot of real partygames this season. If they players arent able to replicate that, they are the problem.

Here, this seasons shooting stats: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_scoring_att?se=363

This seasons Goals stats: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/goals?se=363

We're 5th in shots taken and 2nd in goals scored. Where is all this external entertainment that other clubs bring that isn't visible here?

There is a lot of real "grass is greener" going on here.
 

OleTheGreat

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We don't have a lot of quality players on the pitch. Many might argue that Maguire, Pogba, Bruno, Rashford, Cavani are class but I personally think they're dragged down by the rest of the team and there is simply no cohesion in this team. Frankly the football we play is not entertaining in any sense. There are many teams in the PL who play better football than we do.

For those who think Man United fans are most boring in the world, that's probably because we have watched them for 26 years under SAF and we know what quality football is and right now we're not playing entertaining or dangerous football. Ole's team are getting away with strikes from a few players but overall it hasn't been entertaining at all. I'm not saying it has not improved, it certainly has but it is not up to the mark as yet. It is indeed boring and Man United has the largest fan-base in the world and I think the board along with Ole have to figure out a way to play better football and only then will the big players want to come to OT. We have got a few players based purely on our history but I don't think the younger generation (millenials) have any idea how good our team and club was in the past. We're just there and thereabouts and not winning anything these days. It definitely is not good enough.

Talking about the past does not justify that we don't have a great squad of players now and therefore it is harder to win things now. I think the fault lies with the board. Every club goes through transition but it has been 8 years since SAF retired and as Man United fans, we are quite disgusted about the developments at our club. We need a better head coach and a coaching team behind him. Ole has done amazing things since Jose left but it is now time to attract better players and only a high-profile head coach/manager can do that.
 
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Dan_F

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They all score less and allow more goals in the net than us (granted its close with Leicester this season)

Is it the process before the goals that is so fun?

Leeds games are sometimes entertaining because Leeds overcommits and just sends people up, which is why they got dismantled so badly at Old Trafford.

Nearly every single team we play that isn't Liverpool or Manchester City comes out with a real nice defensive line of "everyone". Games like that are always going to be a tired affair unless they fall appart.

We've had a lot of real partygames this season. If they players arent able to replicate that, they are the problem.

Here, this seasons shooting stats: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_scoring_att?se=363

This seasons Goals stats: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/goals?se=363

We're 5th in shots taken and 2nd in goals scored. Where is all this external entertainment that other clubs bring that isn't visible here?

There is a lot of real "grass is greener" going on here.
There’s a fairly obvious answer for why that is. Are you really expecting a team with the money spent and quality of player of Brighton to out perform our team in those metrics? I’m not even going to give my view on the topic either way, but the way you’ve argued it makes no sense.
 

Paul_Scholes18

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Funny how Moyes probably plays the most entertaining football and Mourinho has been more fun than usual this year.

We aren't that bad though, but when we can't counter it often turns a bit ugly.
 

K stand Red

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50% boring, 50% exciting. 50% better than before.
Did we go to the same school :):)

I believe it to be a combination of a few points, yes some of our players lack technical ability and dribbling skills, but many teams now play with the new fan dangled word of a low block which leads to defensive set ups, lack of space and so on.

The obsession with possession football which in part is in response and a reaction to the low block .

City are clearly the best at countering the low block with their possession football but my god you watch some of their matches its as dull as watching dish water for long periods
 

OleBoiii

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Leicester played enthralling football when they went out in this exact competition 2 rounds before us...

Rodgers is dead and Ole is not. Cause Ole had armor. And a big fecking sword.
 

Tom Cato

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There’s a fairly obvious answer for why that is. Are you really expecting a team with the money spent and quality of player of Brighton to out perform our team in those metrics? I’m not even going to give my view on the topic either way, but the way you’ve argued it makes no sense.
I'm waiting for the reason behind the argument that Brighton play more entertaining football, while their offensive and defensive outputs are significantly worse than ours.
 

Norman Brownbutter

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I think there is a real disconnect between what constitutes entertaining football and what fans can expect. Fans expect Manchester United to surpass every other club in the world in their playing style significantly.
We currently are playing better and nicer football than every team in England bar one.
Respectfully, disagree. Our football is some of the worse the premier league has to offer in terms of entertainment value. And thats a hard pill to swallow knowing that watching United brings special feels because its our lads.

Its as boring to watch now as it ever was under LVG.
 

SwedishFish

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I don't think we've been that boring apart from the last month or so.

The lack of creativity in attacking positions has harmed us somewhat and we've had to play Dan James consistently for over a month now which doesn't help.

People who think this is in any way comparable with the shit football under Van Gaal are having a laugh. That was truly tumescent football.
 

man united 4eva

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In today's world it's fashionable for a vast number English people to hate on all things English... just like a vast number of Man United fans hating all things Man United... I thoroughly despise these people.
 

Wumminator

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Respectfully, disagree. Our football is some of the worse the premier league has to offer in terms of entertainment value. And thats a hard pill to swallow knowing that watching United brings special feels because its our lads.

Its as boring to watch now as it ever was under LVG.
name ten clubs who are better than us then.
 

GueRed

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who was the lad on here who moaned and moaned about the football around 2009-2010??

he famously labelled it 'boring zombie football'.

i wonder what he thinks of the brand of football we play these days :lol:
 

KiD MoYeS

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I don't know if it's the social media age or whether football is constantly on and advertised but supporters nowadays jump straight to hysteria. Some people need to take a step back and relax. As boring as it was under van Gaal? Absolute nonsense, people were literally falling asleep in Old Trafford during his tenure.
 

Jezpeza

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I think there is a real disconnect between what constitutes entertaining football and what fans can expect. Fans expect Manchester United to surpass every other club in the world in their playing style significantly.
We currently are playing better and nicer football than every team in England bar one.
this is the best football i have seen post fergie, which seems to be a yardstick. Another yardstick seems to be whatever team scores 4+ goals a week in other 1 horse leagues. Dont think it helps we have lots of basically neutral ‘fans’, who only follow us in the expectation of a bag of goals week in week out and get salty in the face of reality.

the entertaining football thing is one of the last narratives that the ole outers can use to bash him as its not really quantifiable, so hard to prove or disprove. Like the drivel about luck and no patterns of play etc etc.
 

berbatrick

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Many posts here saying that entertainment means shots and saves and red cards. That's certainly one way to be entertaining (vs Leeds, Southampton, RBL, Sociedad). A counter-attacking performance with more emphasis on fluid and quick counters than on getting 9 behind the ball is another way of being entertaining (City away). High-intensity possession, with quick and difficult passing is another and is the rarest (parts of the Everton 3-3 game).

we've managed the first a few times, against defensively weak teams set up to attack. Unlike last season, barely done the second and almost never done the third. Last season a lot of games after lockdown had all 3 -decent amount of goals, good possession, and lethal counters. Even before lockdown there were decent counter attacking games (Chelsea, city*3). This season it's regressed.

Ajax v roma was a totally average game of football yesterday which had quick passing patterns that we barely do.
 

Dan_F

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I'm waiting for the reason behind the argument that Brighton play more entertaining football, while their offensive and defensive outputs are significantly worse than ours.
I think we’ve just covered why it’s okay to say a smaller team is more entertaining without scoring as many goals. The quality of players is lower, so it would be difficult for a team with Maupay upfront to out score a team with Rashford and Bruno. I wouldn’t have thought that wasn’t too difficult to understand.

Would you call Mourinho’s Spurs more entertaining to watch than Leeds?
 

gerdm07

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I think there is a real disconnect between what constitutes entertaining football and what fans can expect. Fans expect Manchester United to surpass every other club in the world in their playing style significantly.
We currently are playing better and nicer football than every team in England bar one.
I think it's easy to argue that our club has not "surpassed every other club in the world in their playing style" since Ronaldo left and that was a long time ago. I'm a realist and have known that Man Utd. have been behind Messi's Barca in style since 2009. Then there were the great teams from RM, Bayern, MC and Liverpool at various times that surpassed us in style substantially.

I'm a fan and I don't expect Manchester United to surpass every other club every year and every decade. I'm hoping Ole gets us in the conversation about style, but best all the time? No.
 

sunama

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It was the game against Mourinho's Spurs that made Ole extremely risk averse. From that game on it was Scott AND Fred in midfield, with nil-nil draws every big game. And tbh who can blame him, the pressure on his job was insane at that point.

The best football we've played in a while was post restart, and unfortunately it didn't carry on this season.
Agreed on all of this.
LVG also had the same experience with Leicester, when we lost 5-3. Even in that game when we were winning 3-1, we were playing free-flowing very attractive football. It was a carnival-type atmosphere with Angel Di Maria given full license to score and assist from all areas of the pitch.
Then Jamie Vardy happened and LVG went into his shell, parking the bus in every match by hogging the ball.

Ole's Leicester moment came against Spurs and from that point onwards playing dire football has been the order of the day.

Jose Van Solkjaer.
 

sunama

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I think there is a real disconnect between what constitutes entertaining football and what fans can expect. Fans expect Manchester United to surpass every other club in the world in their playing style significantly.
We currently are playing better and nicer football than every team in England bar one.
Spoken like a wind-up-merchant.
HAHAHA.
 

cyberman

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It was the game against Mourinho's Spurs that made Ole extremely risk averse. From that game on it was Scott AND Fred in midfield, with nil-nil draws every big game. And tbh who can blame him, the pressure on his job was insane at that point.

The best football we've played in a while was post restart, and unfortunately it didn't carry on this season.
Risk averse my balls, the CL campaign says otherwise!
 

He'sRaldo

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Risk averse my balls, the CL campaign says otherwise!
The CL campaign is the perfect example. Especially the ultimate game Vs Leipzig where we played 5 at the back and 2 DM's, and were still knocked out.

Ole's setups have been risk averse for quite some time now. Easy to forget, but Fred and Scott usually didn't start together until the Spurs game happened.
 

jackal&hyde

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I still feel the coaching is average at United which is one of the main reasons why we play shit football. When pogba and McTominay gets pressed why don't they play 1 2s between each other and beat the press? We struggle to move from midfield its just side way passing between the defenders and midfielder.

I've seen many times when they could have passed the between the line but refused and passed it sideways. I don't think they ever passed the ball between the lines in training to even to try to do that in a real match.

All I'm seeing is attempting to hold possession but even then we're not very good.
What is your experience in that department and what would you do different for United?

I'm not being funny here but what you describe is exactly what Liverpool have been doing this season. So is it a problem with coaching with Klopp, and Ole, or is player quality essential to implementing it?
 

hubbuh

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this is the best football i have seen post fergie, which seems to be a yardstick. Another yardstick seems to be whatever team scores 4+ goals a week in other 1 horse leagues. Dont think it helps we have lots of basically neutral ‘fans’, who only follow us in the expectation of a bag of goals week in week out and get salty in the face of reality.

the entertaining football thing is one of the last narratives that the ole outers can use to bash him as its not really quantifiable, so hard to prove or disprove. Like the drivel about luck and no patterns of play etc etc.
Can people drop this fecking nonsense that those with something unenthusiastic to say about the way we play as not being proper fans, or not understanding what football is? It's immature as feck and just lame. People have dedicated a good chunk of free time and money throughout their lives to talking about and watching United. Grow up, seriously. I'm not a 'neutral' United fan, I don't watch us and expect us to score bags of goals every week, I'm not swinging from the rooftops calling for Ole's head etc. There aren't any raving loons in this thread and this isn't some tedious Ole in, Ole out debate.
 

AltiUn

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Granada are like the Spanish Burnley, it was always going to be a slog. I'm back in the mindset that I'm just happy to be winning games, I'd rather we be able to grind out these dull games 1-0/2-0 than draw and lose them like we have done in the past. We obviously have goals in us, we've scored 5+ goals times under Solskjaer and recently pasted Southampton 9-0. The reality is, few teams regularly play swashbuckling football, this season in particular has been full of ugly football for every team. City are dull as dishwater but no one cares because they always win.
 

AR87

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They also knocked us out of the FA Cup.
They did. I just don't think there's anything about them that's more exciting to watch, and I also think the results matter in terms of dictating excitement more than people care to admit. It also seems like when we do have a negative result, like that loss to Leicester, the negative perception of how we're actually performing overall is extreme.

If we'd won that match, right after knocking out Milan over two legs, followed up by a comeback win over Brighton, and a drab, but professional 2-0 win away to Granada, I don't think we'd be hearing a whole lot about how we're boring, and teams like Leicester are far more thrilling to watch.
 

UnofficialDevil

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We continue to be boring, Jose was boring, Van Gaal was boring, Ole is boring, The football we play is shite and certainly not what he promised when he took over “attacking football the way Man Utd are supposed to play” two years later and 4 transfer windows we are playing Jose football.
 

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It's definitely not as bad as it was under Van Gaal - his football was utterly mind-numbing - but there's not much there for the neutrals to like.

We only really have one world class player, so there's not much intrigue on that level and we don't really have anyone who would get you off your seat with a slalom run through a load of defenders (Sancho might change that). The results are largely OK but the actual quality of the football generally isn't great - certainly we're not known for our intricate passing moves or one touch play. I suppose we are quite unpredictable (largely due to inconsistency), but Ole is primarily a pragmatic manager and that is never going to win many admirers.
 

hubbuh

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They did. I just don't think there's anything about them that's more exciting to watch, and I also think the results matter in terms of dictating excitement more than people care to admit. It also seems like when we do have a negative result, like that loss to Leicester, the negative perception of how we're actually performing overall is extreme.

If we'd won that match, right after knocking out Milan over two legs, followed up by a comeback win over Brighton, and a drab, but professional 2-0 win away to Granada, I don't think we'd be hearing a whole lot about how we're boring, and teams like Leicester are far more thrilling to watch.
That's disingenuous. As pointed out earlier in the thread, Roy Keane and Gary Neville have both called United boring this season. And those two are either close friends with Ole and/or are still closely connected to the club. It's not just a bunch of whingers on the 'caf, it's been an accusation consistently levelled at United by plenty of football watchers, United fans or otherwise.
 

JustinC00

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Leicester, Leeds and Brighton play nicer football than us
Leicester- Same Leicester whose beautiful football got them bounced from Europa by Slavia Prague and has 1 win in their last 5 matches against United?

Leeds- Same Leeds that got thrashed by United 6-2?

Brighton- Same Brighton that United has now beaten 6 times straight with an aggerate score of 16-5?
 

Borys

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There was a period this season, I think around October-November when we played some really cool stuff. Bruno was in World Class form, but Martial and Rashford couldn't finish their breakfast, Greenwood was injured and Cavani was in/out of the team. We've had some issues defensively as well.

Now the second half of the season is quite the opposite, we play rather slow and unimaginative football but still somehow do "just enough" to grind out results. We're also scoring more goals than expected (only Tottenham ahead of us, probably because of freak show from Son and Kane earlier this season), so overall we can't moan about finishing either. We've also improved defensively (which was expected considering we were conceding goals from low quality chances).

I think we're pretty average in terms of "excitement". I barely watch United games so can't speak about other teams, but my biggest concern is we don't control games, seems like every opponent can push us back if he wants to. Most of them however are happy to sit back, which makes the football game not-so-entertaining because we don't like not having space behind. Our football is direct and we don't know much else.
 

Bastian

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Ole has quite clearly made progress on last season. No two ways about it. And that in a difficult climate. But I do agree, I'm finding the games more and more boring. I was going to post about it, but I was going to do so in the "fatigue" thread. It's either that or the "patterns of play" thread :D

I think it's down to both. It's the coaching, and it's the physical fatigue that our players are feeling. I mean, look at Rashford, he's too important to leave out but he could be doing his career a serious disservice playing through these injuries (plural). Pogba also looks a bit off it too. And of course, Bruno hasn't had a rest since arriving at United.

Now, the setup isn't ideal, as we struggle against teams who have a high work rate, not always in terms of results, but almost always in terms of performance (Leeds being the exception, and that spell against Leipzig).

And to think the Euros will nullify any meaningful rest for most elite players this summer.

But yes, we are rather boring to watch. Which has been the case for years, but it was pointed out more under LVG and Mourinho (and Moyes).
 

SqualorVictoria

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Leicester- Same Leicester whose beautiful football got them bounced from Europa by Slavia Prague and has 1 win in their last 5 matches against United?

Leeds- Same Leeds that got thrashed by United 6-2?

Brighton- Same Brighton that United has now beaten 6 times straight with an aggerate score of 16-5?
I don't know if Brighton or Leicester or Leeds play nicer football than United and nor do I care that much, but what on earth are you trying to prove or disprove with such remarks? :lol: