We are an awfully coached team

Rash Decision

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You can have patterns of plays specifically targeted to run those tactics was what I mean.

I feel like we give our players too much freedom to wing it however they like and that just ends up with them looking like complete strangers at times when they try to figure out what they can do and if anyone is going to be on the same wavelength with them.
Ah my bad, I get you. And I agree with you.

When we played one of Tuchel’s teams last year in PSG I didn’t think they were well structured at all. We should have destroyed them in Paris second half and been well clear at home. They had a weak CM much like ourselves now. Ditto Klopp’s team last year minus VVD. Clearly personnel makes a huge difference.
Personnel certainly matters, and I’m not sure what happened with Tuchel’s PSG. You’re right, they weren’t very organised and therefore we were equal to them. I disagree about Klopp’s team though. From the few matches of theirs I watched, their structure and organisation were still clear to see. Even in the match against City that they lost 4-1, they were still very dangerous and organised, and really lost due to buffoonish errors and City being really clinical. Structure and organisation cannot completely overcome personnel deficiencies of course, but they can still make up for them to an extent by having the whole team work in sync.

And I don’t believe that McFred are so abysmal that we just cannot be well organised and well drilled with them in the team.
 

Bilbo

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To be fair, the language of football is pure hyperbole. It’s a running joke with my mates at OT that after every game we win, someone walking out says “We should have won by 6” and every game we lose someone says “In 30 years of coming to Old Trafford that’s the worst match I’ve ever seen”. That doesn’t bother me, it’s just the nature of the game.

My view on Ole is that, looking across everything that a manager does (coaching, motivation, tactics, buying players etc) he gets it right 8 times out of 10. An elite manager gets it right 9 times out of 10. And the difference is primarily around coaching and to a lesser degree tactics.

Ordinarily this might not matter, but we’re in an era of exceptionally high standards this season and probably for another couple more. The other three teams are all excellent. I don’t see how we make up a deficit in any area because our opponents match us in most ways. In motivation, team spirit, squad depth, individual quality there’s little to choose from. So while our coaching might not actually be “awful”, it’s not as good as Tuchel, Klopp or Pep and I don’t really see how we make up the difference.
I like your first sentence. Made me smile.

Lets wait and see what happens. I think for the first time in quite some time our rivals are all as wary of us as we are of them.
 

romufc

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I believe that the Ole outers are expecting instant success and an instant improvement in attacking play. It’s binary for them — either we are greator we are shite.

In reality, it’s much more complicated. Our problems ran so deep when Ole took over from Jose, from squad mentality to depth, quality, even scouting and contracts, that we really had a long way to go.

I think also that the Ole Out Brigade is expecting attacking that is easy on the eyes, dominating possession, a Guardiola-esque type of attack.

The criticism of Ole is irrational. If the coaching team was so under qualified, so inept, we would be much further down the table. The level of competition is so high that preparation, training and tactics are incredibly important. I agree that this group of coaches are not as talented or experienced as City, Liverpool or Chelsea. However, for all the complaints about attacking play, we scored the most goals in the league last season since SAF retired. We finished 2nd, closer to the top than any season since SAF retired.

Is Ole a master tactician like Tuchel or Guardiola? No. But he is good, as evidenced by results in the PL and the continued improvement of the level of play? Yes.

I for one, want to see where this team goes with Ole in charge. Remember, managers can get better as well. If we mount a serious title challenge and hopefully (finally) win a trophy, I’m happy to see him continue.
I am not saying that he is the worst manager or anything.

What we have seen is gradual improvement, I am also not expecting to see a scripted performance like Pep, United are different where we let players free in terms of ball carrying and trying things on the ball, which is why Bruno and Rashford get criticised yet they were our top scorers last season.

We have seen what Tuchel has done with Chelsea, the way they dominate games, on and off the ball, hardly does the opposition get a sniff, they are so difficult to play against.

That's what I would like to see from us, where teams have to really work hard to even get in our half.

If we mount a serious challenge and get far in the CL, then I am happy to see him continue however; he has to get out the group stage and challenge as a minimum.
 

Rash Decision

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I don't disagree, then I also feel that we do have a defined structure to our play. We dominate the ball against most opponents, and that comes from having a foundation to our structure, but it tends to fall apart a little when McFred are not together because we have an odd mix of players at our disposal in midfield right now.

Our failures are over-analysed by our own fans, and I understand that, but every team struggles at times. Chelsea should have been behind at half-time in both of their last two league matches. They were fortunate that good chances were missed, and they had good fortune themselves. Even the Zenit game was a slog I hear, but I didn't catch that one. City were very poor against Southampton, who also had good chances to win it. Palace gave Liverpool a lot of problems. We shouldn't sit here and claim that our rivals do not give up good chances, or have periods in games where they look second best, because it happens fairly often. We don't tear those apart and hyper-analyse them though because we aren't emotionally involved. They find ways to win, just like United usually find ways to win.

I said in another thread that, only five games in, United have scored tap-ins, 30 yard screamers, counter-attacking goals and even from delicate passing moves inside the area. We've had assists from full-backs and centre-backs. Every goal has been from open play. I'm happy to get behind a team that does that.
Yeah we’re not terrible, and we definitely do have our structures and patterns. I think the issue is more that they’re either not good enough, or not rehearsed enough. We always complain that our play is too slow except for in short bursts. Sometimes we spend long periods passing the ball around looking clueless until someone tries to force issues. Too often we lose control of matches when our opponents play aggressively and are well-organised. I think these problems are directly related to how drilled and organised our players are, and that we are seriously handicapping ourselves by not improving in this regard.
 
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. I don't dispute 'patterns of play' is a thing - what I have a problem with is that every criticism of Ole seems to be focused around this notion that we can't or haven't coached 'patterns of play' into our attackers.
This is where you probably need to make a distinction between people that think our attacking patterns and off-the-ball movement could be better, and the much louder masses that don't really understand what any of it means but don't like the manager and have read the phrases "no coaching" and "patterns of play" over and over and like the sound of them. Just gotta ignore the latter and focus on the ones with substance.

We obviously do have patterns of play, and they're obviously effective as hell. The only issue is that they don't work as well against massed defences which you've already pointed out are the majority of teams we play against. You've also pointed out that the quality and speed of passing is one of the key factors against these kinds of defences - that's something I think we can (and should) improve with coaching even without changing or improving the personnel, to go from a 74-point team to an 85-point one (90+ now that we have actually improved the personnel - massively :cool:)

Even so, I have often read that even Pep has the approach that, when it comes to the final third, he largely relies on his players to figure it out for themselves
This definitely isn't true.

Like a bunch of people have already said, City have been repeatedly opening defences up and scoring with near-identical moves - the Pro Evo cutback, if you will - for four seasons now, which doesn't just happen by itself when you rotate the attacking players as often as they have been. And there are multiple stories of Guardiola working obsessively on details with individual players - like telling Sterling how to position himself to receive the ball, telling him exactly where he should be when they have the ball - as well as the entire team - splitting the pitch into five zones across its width, and making sure there's someone in each zone when they have the ball. Guy's a complete maniac about detail, and this idea that he leaves it to the players seems to stem entirely from that Henry interview floating around (which may have been true for the first couple of seasons at Barcelona but definitely isn't anymore)

It's the same reason we were so effective under Fergie even in the later years. We weren't necessarily playing the most scintillating football in the league and every team knew how we were going to attack - Scholes/Carrick/Rooney switch of play, get the wingers running at their fullback, reach the byline and cross - but it was so well-ingrained across the entire team that it worked.
 

Faetheshire86

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Yeah I mentioned Lukaku but forget to include Herrera in the parenthesis. But again, my point is that I just don't believe he inherited some inept squad, particularly when many of those same players came in 2nd the season before Ole arrived and won multiple trophies the year before that (I think their collective talent, rather than Jose's coaching, is what led to that.)

I'll give Ole unqualified credit for Shaw, but Martial has had both his best and his worst season under Ole, as has Fred, so I don't think their form (or lack of it) is particularly done to Ole's management. Pogba certainly suffered under Jose, mostly because Jose's an insufferable clown, so I think he's now playing to the level of his talent - I'll give Ole credit for not antagonizing him, ala Jose, but I don't think he's really improved Pogba. As for Rashford, I'd say it's mostly been a case of a great talent starting to hit his peak and that coinciding with Ole's being the manager (although I do think it's fair to point out that Jose would likely have actively stifled him, so I suppose Ole gets credit for again not being a confrontational buffoon like Jose.) One valid grievance that Jose can point to is Woodward and co absolutely refusing to back him going into his 3rd season (Fred, Dalot, and Grant in a pre-Covid period is absolutely outrageous!)
The people in the 19-20 and 20-21 league position threads would have disagreed with you. On average most people had us finishing 5th-6th, some were making genuine arguments for us to be 8th-9th.

You mentioned Rashford and Martial as quality players, but that was 2 (that I would have classed as "top 4" ability-wise players) for the front 4 positions. An aging Matic and an un-settled Pogba was a good midfield pairing, but our entire back 5 looked like it needed replacing. That was 7 first team spots that needed filling, not to mention squad players. I remember around that time Sky did a combined United/Spurs XI.... we had two players in it. Spurs were exactly the type of team we needed to leapfrog to become a consistent top 4 side.

Thankfully Ole was well backed in the transfer window, although there was still a few hiccups (Not signing Fernandez in the summer, the second season was a bit of a farce). The spending was desperately needed, but just because we are spending good money, was no guarantee the players would be a success. The job Ole has done improving our squad from where it was, to where it is now, should absolutely be commended.
 

Lentwood

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Its more that after 3 years we still havent got a way of dominating football games.

In respects to believing it, Wolves away they had the better chances, Southampton away they had the better chances, West Ham we had the better chances.

How often do you see Liverpool, Chelsea, City giving away better chances in games.

Well Chelsea and Liverpool haven't even conceded a goal from open play yet this season which shows how good defensively they are, which comes as a result from dominating football games and winning the ball back asap.

We struggle to do so, even in the last 10 mins against West Ham, it was not as if we piled on the pressure on them.
We struggled against Wolves and Southampton because we abandoned the double midfield pivot, something which most of Ole's critics have called for continuously
 

Lentwood

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We will have to wait for all other top teams to become crap for us win the title then. As long as Klopp, Guardiola and Tuchel now are around, we will forever be 2nd or 3rd or 4th.
Doesn't make much sense considering Ole finished above Klopp last season - Tuchel obviously only had half a season but points per game was similar to Ole
 

cyberman

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Fine, let's accept McTominay's return solves those problems single-handedly.

That's still a coaching problem, because McTominay's teammates shouldn't need him on the pitch to know what positions to take up in relation to each other. The distance between defence/midfield/attack, the number of players ahead/behind the ball while attacking and Fred's understanding of when to counter-press or drop off aren't supposed to be things Scott McTominay controls. And they're what we're talking about here.

Nobody is doubting that McFred make us more resistant. But that doesn't mean they magically make specific structural or coaching problems vanish, or that fixing those problems wouldn't make us better. Particularly given we presumably want to move away from having to rely on McFred.
Different players bring different attributes. If you could coach different players to do what Scott does then no big side would ever need to make a big money signing. Look at City’s forums and their opinion on playing without Rodri and how they struggle.
you’re stating a lot of opinions here on how we play as facts that I just don’t agree with. Im not taking wanting to get away from McFred as fact nor should it be presented as one.
We push up and defend high, our fullbacks are always getting to the byline and our two DMs are the support players for the attackers. There aren’t any great gaps between the lines.
 

NZT-One

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Lack of coaching.

That is not your typical pass into space and hoping for the best. That was intricate passing with moderate speed of building up play.
...
One passage in the 92th minute after the opposing team got a late goal against and fecked up a penalty. After a turnover deep in our half, we were able to string a few passes together. Guess we can delete the thread, you proved us all wrong.

It was a nice bit of play - I think, many football supporters would look at you a bit puzzled if you rave about in public.

For this to hold any weight it needs to include games of McFred since that’s our first choice midfield. We don’t tend to struggle against counters with our first choice midfield, it’s why the opposition went wide and our CBS kept losing headers and that weakness was exposed.
This is debatable I guess. Of course McFred provide the best protection for us but in the situation shown by the twitter thread, McTominay would struggle just as much. That isn't even a question of quality, it is about numerical advantages. I agree with the poster, it isn't wrong for Fred to counter press instantly, but it creates big trouble if the rest of the team doesn't act accordingly (defense playing a higher line, more players engaged in pressing, somebody ready to make a tactical foul). That is, what is a topic with us, sometimes, it doesn't look that we are having a "plan" that everybody follows. Either be aggressive or be patient - both are valid approaches but both of the approaches suffer when 5 players have a different plan than the other 5.

Yet we have somehow managed to finish 3rd and then 2nd, with a young squad which most posters agree, in terms of quality and experience, was probably 4th or 5th best in the league.

Not bad to say we were awfully coached during that period
I think, that is pushing it pretty much. I mean, I'll happily give you City and Liverpool but Chelsea squad was certainly not undeniably better in all aspects and then who? Spurs? Arsenal? Leicester?

Squadwise I think we belonged into top4 definitely in all those years.
 

TheMagicFoolBus

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Agreed, but I mentioned in a later post that I believe the key strengths of Pep and Klopp lie in other areas rather than detailed patterns of play. Its just my opinion. People have a fundamental misunderstanding of tactics and the work that is done behind the scenes. Armchair tacticians were fawning over Tuchel's 'tactical changes' at half time vs Spurs, until he himself admitted he didn't change anything tactically, and used phrases such as 'lacking energy & intent' 'winning duels' 'aggression'. The type of things Ole talks about regularly and is vilified for. These things are still vital components at every level of football, and I don't think that any of Pep, Klopp or Tuchel over-coach their teams in an attacking sense.

I believe in what Ole is trying to do here. I agree with previous posters when they've said that, if there was any kind of sub-par or systemic failure in our coaching, then it would have been revealed by now. Players do due diligence on clubs just as much as clubs do on players and we simply wouldn't be signing the likes of Varane, or retaining the likes of Cavani, if there was a problem here. Footballers talk. Ole's decisions have been found wanting at times but I can live with that. You can't & won't always get it right in football, but I believe that we are moving towards having a formidable football team that will deliver trophies and I've always been prepared to be patient. Its vastly unfair to call this an awfully coached team. Its over the top, like so many other criticisms on social media, but people tend to use over the top language these days.
Well to be fair this is because he'd made the change 15 minutes before halftime - we started with 3-4-3 but were giving up too much space either side of our midfield vs. Spurs' 3 man midfield, so Tuchel moved Mount deeper and we went 5-3-2. That effectively shut down Spurs' best route of attack, and putting Kante on therefore wasn't a tactical change but one to improve our ability to recover the ball higher up as we now had an advantage in midfield.
 

Foxbatt

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Forget about patterns of play. What it is that we don't know what to do with the ball once we have it. Lots of times our players stop once we get the ball and look and wait for a while to decide what to do with it. Players like Bruno, Ronaldo and Pogba know what to do with it. Even before Bruno crossed it I knew he was going to try to put it for Ronaldo. At the same time, other players hold on the ball and delay it. That's because there is hardly any movement of our players.
 

reelworld

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Believe that we need to up our tempo, intensity and concentration as much as to develop those patterns of play.

Too often the team look slow, letargic and even unfit. It becomes especially evident during first halves of games when we don't concede first and can't add any momentum afterwards.
Knowing where your teammates position would help a lot in our tempo I reckon. Less time think to pass the ball, which would speed up the ball movement, and in effect our tempo of play.
And that again, also comes with coaching.
 

#07

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Who are we supposed to trust when it comes to the standard of coaching at Man Utd? Twitter tacticians and FM legends or Champions League Varane?
 

stefan92

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I'd be very interested to see what the people who have been driving this thread forward have to say about this quote
It is a loyal answer as any player should give when asked about the training sessions. So I don't think it proves much.

And if you want to you can interpret this as "we work on details, but on the wrong ones". I believe no one acccused Ole of being lazy, so that possibility still exists.
 

Bilbo

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It is a loyal answer as any player should give when asked about the training sessions. So I don't think it proves much.

And if you want to you can interpret this as "we work on details, but on the wrong ones". I believe no one acccused Ole of being lazy, so that possibility still exists.
So what we have here is a long running debate about something none of us have any real in depth knowledge on - ie our training sessions and quality of coaching. Many people are firmly entrenched in their views on the negative side of the fence. Now we have a player who has seen it all saying those words and they will just be dismissed as irrelevant to the argument?
 

stefan92

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So what we have here is a long running debate about something none of us have any real in depth knowledge on - ie our training sessions and quality of coaching. Many people are firmly entrenched in their views on the negative side of the fence. Now we have a player who has seen it all saying those words and they will just be dismissed as irrelevant to the argument?
Welcome to the Internet :lol:

Yes I believe you are right, there are not enough facts known to come to a consensus, so most people just keep their opinion.
 

Dve

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Yes, but it´s also a chance the training sessions under Moyes were good. He did well at Everton and now also at West Ham. There are many factors involved whether you succeed at a club or not, and it does not have to be all down to the training sessions.

And who are these people anyway, that seem to believe they can have a qualified opinion on the coaching without knowing anything about it.
 
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Bilbo

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Players obviously aren't going to criticise these things in public, but then they also don't have to say anything at all.
 

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jamesjimmybyrondean

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The thing is even if our style of play or tactics since Ole started is not convincing some people including me, we've still been doing pretty well. People act like just because we aren't playing as good as City or Pool did it means we can't achieve our objectives when that's what we've been doing in the league mostly and we are still on course to challenge for the title despite having "awful or inferior tactics"
 

CG1010

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Regardless of whether Ole can win trophies with us and whether should be kept as a manager for the club (a question which is best answered after this season), the fact that we are a legitimate title challenger even when Liverpool , Chelsea and City are all looking strong is so important. Ole has restored us to our rightful position as a elite team compared to the dark times we were stuck in. If not for Ole, we would have been looking wistfully at the our rivals teams while camping in the "top 4 race" thread comparing ourselves with the likes of Spurs and Arsenal. The squad building has been enormous and has cemented his status as a successful manager for us. Which is huge after the exploits he achieved as a player for us.
 

Bestietom

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We are only 1 month into the season and some players haven't hit their heights yet.
We still have Rashford and Cavani to come back and then we should see a big improvement. ( I hope)
 

Borys

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People seriously giving a feck what a player says about his manager in public?
So what we have here is a long running debate about something none of us have any real in depth knowledge on - ie our training sessions and quality of coaching. Many people are firmly entrenched in their views on the negative side of the fence. Now we have a player who has seen it all saying those words and they will just be dismissed as irrelevant to the argument?
I don't need to watch our training sessions to conclude we're poor coached team. The same applies to players that perform badly in games, I don't care if they do well in training.
 

Harold_Giles

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People seriously giving a feck what a player says about his manager in public?

I don't need to watch our training sessions to conclude we're poor coached team. The same applies to players that perform badly in games, I don't care if they do well in training.
No offence, but I'd rather listen to Varane's take on training than yours.
 

Amir

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No offence, but I'd rather listen to Varane's take on training than yours.
Except Varane is never going to talk differently, as long as both he and Solskjaer are in the club.

It's a worthless view right now. If he says the same after one of them is gone, then it's worthwhile information.
 

cyberman

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Except Varane is never going to talk differently, as long as both he and Solskjaer are in the club.

It's a worthless view right now. If he says the same after one of them is gone, then it's worthwhile information.
So is worth listening to? Somebody who isn’t there and relies on Martin Tyler to guide them through a game from home?
 

romufc

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Except Varane is never going to talk differently, as long as both he and Solskjaer are in the club.

It's a worthless view right now. If he says the same after one of them is gone, then it's worthwhile information.
If he thought the training was poor, he wouldn't have mentioned it in the first place.

I am sure If a player said something that fit your narrative of training being poor, you would listen to that?
 

Bilbo

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People seriously giving a feck what a player says about his manager in public?

I don't need to watch our training sessions to conclude we're poor coached team. The same applies to players that perform badly in games, I don't care if they do well in training.
What do you think the reaction would be should a player come out with a critique of our coaching? Would it be considered irrelevant?
 

Borys

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No offence, but I'd rather listen to Varane's take on training than yours.
No offence but I think you're being very naive if you believe a player will tell you his real opinion on manager/club-related things. He might think it's a good training session, he might think it's shockingly bad - he'll always say the same things to public.