Why are Man United playing worse than last season?

We weren’t particularly great last season. As many pointed out, the 2nd place finish was somewhat deceptive, 74 points would be 3rd or 4th most seasons. Home form was abysmal for a team that’s supposed to be challenging, many dodgy games against mid table teams where we just landed on the right side of the result.

Players are out of form and his luck has finally my run out, many of the critics said his football was unsustainable, and the results have finally caught up with the performances.

For me, the warning signs were in place 2 years ago just before signing Bruno, who dragged us to CL football after an abysmal start to the season, weren’t we in 8th? But after the Europa League final, I was amazed so many people still supported him. We finished last season so so poorly across the board, and I thought that would have been the switch for most, if not all.

By the way, I don’t think the players are faultless, but it’s clear many of them have no idea what they are supposed to do beyond pass and move sideways, or hope Rashford or Greenwood go on an adventurous run and beat the man for a cross.

Its quite simple really, last season he got away with playing cautious defensive system because of injuries, lack of players.

We also have to remember, we got bailed out numerous times going a goal down in the league. We played for 0-0 against the big teams and done ok through the season getting draws.

We saw in the CL and Europa final, when it matters he cant get us to win.

Now, this season with the signings, the pressure has been on him to play a better brand and challenge the league, unfortunately, he cannot coach a team to dominate a game. He is throwing players out there and saying do what you do.

Greenwood isn't a winger, AWB is one of the worst full backs in the PL. So the right side is closed off. Shaw has been playing of plaudits, he hasn't come back from England camp yet, Pogba is doing what he always does. Bruno is not being told what to do, how to play. McFred been told to run around, that's all we are getting. Bunch of good and average players playing together with limited coaching.

MasterCode said:

I know all of this, and since you know all of this. You will also know that bad presses being picked through is not unique to Manchester United.

There is no team in world football who get their pressing co-ordination right for 90mins of the game every match. Break downs happen for Liverpool, City all the top teams who press well. They have moments where it goes to shit.

Difference is they have a Dias, a Marquinhos, a Van Dijk, or even Mid Tier Cbs (forget the world beaters) as a safety measure to READ the situation and deal with it as effectively as possible and not look lost at sea.

I've seen Virgil drop off become last man and deal with threats when a press has failed. Heck I see Kompany with his limited athleticism towards the latter of his career READ situations and deal with them accordingly. (Pep was playing with a very high line even with Kompany)

As mentioned before yes there is lots wrong with tactics and coaching anybody with a brain can see that.

But I'm not going to absolve the players.

Particularly one who has TEN DIRECT errors that have led to goals in the last four games. Thats not a stat that I come up with. That just exists on any platform you want to look up.

I don't think Lindeloff is all that great but even he reads the game far better and has less errors.
I get it on paper we can poke holes in almost any tactic, and McKenna for all his "talent" 4-2-4 is the most daft thing I have ever come accross. But you still have to question, we look defensively better with Varane, Lindeloff doesn't have as many errors. There is one common denominator in multiple matches. Whether teams go 3 at the back, like Atalanta, or it's set pieces, or overloading the left hand side like Liverpool yesterday. Its one person always found wanting.

I've said it multiple times on this forum. We look as wide and open as Liverpool did last season. Only difference is we don't have makeshift CBs. Tell me how that happened?

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Those are interesting points, but sorry, which player are you talking about with those ten direct errors in the last four games? AWB?

romufc said:

Its quite simple really, last season he got away with playing cautious defensive system because of injuries, lack of players.

We also have to remember, we got bailed out numerous times going a goal down in the league. We played for 0-0 against the big teams and done ok through the season getting draws.

We saw in the CL and Europa final, when it matters he cant get us to win.

Now, this season with the signings, the pressure has been on him to play a better brand and challenge the league, unfortunately, he cannot coach a team to dominate a game. He is throwing players out there and saying do what you do.

Greenwood isn't a winger, AWB is one of the worst full backs in the PL. So the right side is closed off. Shaw has been playing of plaudits, he hasn't come back from England camp yet, Pogba is doing what he always does. Bruno is not being told what to do, how to play. McFred been told to run around, that's all we are getting. Bunch of good and average players playing together with limited coaching.

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We don't have a squad of 10 year olds. Pretty certain if this group of players went out on the pitch with no instructions and no coach on the sideline they'd put out better performances than they are now. Well, maybe some of them wood. Still unsure about players like Jones 2.0 and McTominay. Which leads me to a thought I have frequently, whats stopping them from doing just that. Granted, they'd all need to be on the same page otherwise it's just a bunch of chickens running around with no heads. Pretty much the same that we see now with Ole's coaching and tactics.

How different is Greenwood to a player like Sancho? He might not have the tricks and dribbling ability of Sancho but he's got pace and is arguably our best finisher from both feet. Sancho is not found his form yet. Whether that's down to Ole's tactics and instruction he's given or he's still beading in after the move, who knows.

AWB is a liability for sure.

bosnian_red said:

Multiple reasons.

• First 2 years with Ole we played a cautious style and attacked on the counter with star players. Very inconsistent but it worked enough to get top 4 twice.
• Increased expectations and increased backing meant Ole had to be more progressive. He doesn't know how to do it so it's exposing us as he can't coach anything differently.
• Increased expectation from players as a result of new players mean we now expect to be challenging for the title and playing like it. It's a lot more difficult to do and a lot more fragile to handle, and leads to much more dramatic collapses (confidence has a huge role in football)
• Disappointment post Europa League final defeat probably exists in the squad and coaching staff where they feel last season was ultimately a failure anyway (which of course it was, trophyless after getting knocked out of the group stage of the CL), and so the confidence people had in Ole was already shaky

Once a slide starts happening like this, it's pretty much impossible to stop unless we change managers

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I really don't recognize the team of last season (to say nothing of the team of post-january the season before) in the description "cautious style and attacked on the counter". We scored the second most goals in the league, while pretty much every team were playing a careful style against us, or downright parked the bus. That doesn't add up - if you play a cautious style relying on counterattacks against opponents who almost invariably play low-risk cautious football, you don't score so frequently. And we scored a lot more goals from established play than we did on the counter, especially in the PL. As far as I can make out, we weren't all that different stylistically last season compared to this. It was pretty much 424 then too, although Ronaldo represents a further turn of the screw.

peridigm said:

We don't have a squad of 10 year olds. Pretty certain if this group of players went out on the pitch with no instructions and no coach on the sideline they'd put out better performances than they are now. Well, maybe some of them wood. Still unsure about players like Jones 2.0 and McTominay. Which leads me to a thought I have frequently, whats stopping them from doing just that. Granted, they'd all need to be on the same page otherwise it's just a bunch of chickens running around with no heads. Pretty much the same that we see now with Ole's coaching and tactics.

How different is Greenwood to a player like Sancho? He might not have the tricks and dribbling ability of Sancho but he's got pace and is arguably our best finisher from both feet. Sancho is not found his form yet. Whether that's down to Ole's tactics and instruction he's given or he's still beading in after the move, who knows.

AWB is a liability for sure.

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Yes, they would put on a better performance against most teams. When you come up against a top tier coach and team, this is what you get.

When the opposition coach studies your game and exploits all weaknesses, you cant just be a good player. When you don't know whether to press or drop, how to move as a team.

It is 100% on the manager when Bruno, Rashford, Greenwood, Ronaldo have no interest in defending and walk around the pitch. Bruno is a very good presser but when it comes to tracking a man, he is just as bad as the rest of them.

Surely, you drop them, try different players and see if that works. There is no point persisting with the same players and same tactics week in week out.

MasterCode said:

I've said it multiple times on this forum. We look as wide and open as Liverpool did last season. Only difference is we don't have makeshift CBs. Tell me how that happened?

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Well, in my opinion, Lindelof doesn't DO anything, that's why he rarely makes a mistake. When did you see him win a commanding header, or step in in-front of an opposition forward to win the ball back? I'd call him a 'passive' defender. Might be OK in a mid-table team, but needs to be far more aggressive in a front-foot side.

Going back to the point on Maguire and your comparison with Liverpool/City...there is a big difference between having your press bypassed once in a game and having it bypassed 7/8 times. Maguire is clearly a good player. Automatic starter for one of the best national football teams on the planet currently. At the moment, he's being made to look an absolute mug because he's constantly scrambling to fight fires.

Did we play better against Villa or Newcastle or Wolves or Villarreal with Varane? Definitely not. In fact, I distinctly remember, in the Wolves game, it was only brilliance from De Gea that bailed out Varane twice. Against Villarreal, Varane got away with a terrible unforced error when allowing a simple long ball to slip away from him. We're not currently scrutinising Varane because he's a flavour of the month signing and he's been fortunate to not play anybody good yet in this formation. The best team we did play, Villarreal, tore us apart more than any side this season.

Remember when Villa beat Liverpool 7-2 with van Dijk in the team? It's not because van Dijk is a poor defender, it's because he was ruthlessly exposed over and over again by holding a line on the halfway line with an ineffective press in-front of him.

I won't judge any of our players on any of their performances this season (as long as the basic effort/attitude is there) because I really do think they are being hung out to dry right now, especially the defensive players.

You changed the way your team plays to fit a certain new player.

Mason, Fred, mctominay etc know no matter what they do will get picked. This is a disaster formula as player won’t listen to instructions and become complacent. Morale of overall team will go down as others will know they won’t be picked even after good training. It’s just matter of time before the castle crashes down.

In all fairness, the problem is a combination of:

Poor management -- 75% of the problem
Poor individual play - 20%
Bad luck -- 5%

We're rightly focused today on the poor management, but a word or two about poor individual play is appropriate. The diabolical shot by Bruno was beyond all belief. A score there would have been significant. Liverpool might still have overrun our outrageous defending, which leads me to Maguire, about whom little more need be said. The Lingard back pass, the Fred "challenge" in midfield. These mistakes are down to the player, not to Ole. But in the end Ole has fecked himself with so many mistakes that his role in our demise this season cannot be overlooked.

Fox_Chrys said:

You changed the way your team plays to fit a certain new player.

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What did we change in our collective play style that we did last season? This is the same United minus the outflow of penalties.

I thought this was quite obvious. The other 3 big teams were relatively poor some much worse which made us look a lot better than what we actually were.

The rails fell off for us in the new year. Any other manager would have pounced and won the league.

Ronaldo affecting things tactically is as good an explanation as you can find.

Fox_Chrys said:

You changed the way your team plays to fit a certain new player.

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I’m not convinced it’s all that tactical. I mean we’ve tried to play a higher line and upped our ball possession which has left us vulnerable considering the number of turnovers Bruno et al do but I genuinely think Ronaldo has upset the Apple cart team spirit wise as opposed to playing style. Him coming in means Pogba has been shunted to the middle/bench again, Greenwood wide, sancho can’t get a game and Cavani is surplus to requirements after begging him to stay. Plus our squad is huge, so add all that to Donny, Lingard, martial, Bailey, Telles, Dalot and Henderson being pissed as they never play then a happy camp it is not anymore.

Problem-free Philosophy said:

As a minor reason, I don't think fans returning has helped our results:

- Our squad generally don't look good under pressure, imo. Nor do they react especially well to moments of adversity in games.
- We have a bad habit of giving moments of encouragement to the opposition (and their fans) out of nowhere with sloppy play. I think the momentum that generates against us is huge, whereas without fans it seemed easier to recover from those moments (including the many comeback wins).

Not that having fans back is bad in any way, obviously, just something I think factored in our favour last season.

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This is particularly true of our defence. They are nervy deer in headlights.

Fox_Chrys said:

You changed the way your team plays to fit a certain new player.

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Nah. We were outplayed horrifically by Wolves before Ronaldo came in. It hasn't been different. The difference is Ole had to implement a more front footed approach - and we've failed horribly at it.

VivaRonaldo85 said:

In the space of two months, the team has regressed dramatically culminating in todays humiliating defeat at home to Liverpool.

Last season, whilst we were in no way perfect by any means, we didn’t appear to have too many ‘major’ issues flaring up to resolve apart from an agreed need for more quality to our starting XI. This was addressed over the summer with three world class players added to the squad. In the space of just over two months, the issues Ole has watched brew to a horrible crescendo today are:

1. A major RW signing in Sancho after two years of chasing unable to be deployed in the first XI.
2. An appalling defensive record despite having signed the star CB we all craved to partner Maguire and the employment of a set piece coach.
3. Two of England’s summer heroes in Shaw and Maguire being unable to adapt back to club life.
4. Pogba’s final year of will he or won’t he leave on a free. I can’t believe we’re still having to consider does he want to be here.
5. Last season’s hero Fernandes looking half the player he did back then.
6. A disgruntled Cavani having been begged to stay now ousted to the bench as a bit part player having had a fantastic season last year.
7. A club legend in Ronaldo having the potential to act bigger than the club and affect what was being built within.
8. The trusty McFred ‘solid’ partnership last season looking like a miserable wet weekend now.
9. The ongoing Van de Beek saga made worse being his second season sat on the bench.
10. Players like Mata, Martial & Telles dismissed from even getting into some match day squads yet picking up hefty salaries for sitting in the stands.
11. No faith in Bailly whatsoever to replace an unfit Maguire.
12.The media finally latching on to the fact we are a poorly coached team relying on individual brilliance, something this forum has discussed for the past 12 months or so.

Any more reasons we’ve gone back or is it an accumulation of all the above? Am I being harsh in some of these reasons?

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In short, all the investment in a RW and a set piece coach is a waste of money, at least at this point. McFred downhill being the main problem on our side, but the return to normal of Liverpool, City and Chelsea, is obvious.

In my opinion, it's because we have too many star forwards in the squad and hence the team. The team is unbalanced. Our manager knows enough to put midfielders on the teamsheet, but not enough to balance a team entirely. We play a 4-2-4 and our midfield is cavernous, with 4 players waiting up top for service. Last year, we had Cavani and James who would occupy space in midfield.
The other issue is it seems that bringing in Varane has damaged the confidence of our existing defenders.

Truth is, we have had periods like this every seasons, ever since Ole took over. The thing is, there are also periods of amazing runs which kind of save his job, over and over again. We will have to see whether this time will be same or not.

But whatever it is going to be, we won’t win anything with Ole. He has been far too inconsistent ever since he took over, with no sign of improvement at all. It has always been a cycle of very shite performance and then amazing run out of nowhere.

And then of course this season, we have City, Chelsea and Liverpool both in amazing form, it’s going to be even tougher.

Highfather_24 said:

We have too many passengers(defensively) in this team, its unbalanced. Adding Ronaldo and removing Cavani, made it worse. Having a 4-2-4 formation where the four attackers dont track back is suicide.

We need to play a 4-3-3 to add more bodies in the midfield, and play with 1 less attacker. Its often the opposing fullbacks causing the most damage, so we have to setup to make sure we always track the runners. A team like this is balanced imo :

-------------------DDG
AWB--Varane--Maguire--Shaw
------------------Matic
-----------Bruno-----Fred
----Cavani--Ronaldo--Rashford

We can also play Lingard and Sancho to add more running and creativity in the attack when required. VdB and McT can also play as #8s. Bruno would need to change his game a bit, sacrifice his freedom for the team, but he can do it.

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Enough with the 4-3-3 crap. It's terrible for this club and it has been that way since they've used it under LVG. Ferguson never used it. I don't understand this need to play it.

darko said:

Enough with the 4-3-3 crap. It's terrible for this club and it has been that way since they've used it under LVG. Ferguson never used it. I don't understand this need to play it.

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Ferguson regularly used it in big games. What the feck are you talking about?

I absolutely feckin hate saying it, but I think it might be because this is the first time under Solskjær that we have a degree of expectation to be at a certain level and potentially achieve and win.

With Ronaldo, Varane & Sancho came the pressure to go up a level and compete, and I don’t think he’s been able to handle it.

darko said:

Enough with the 4-3-3 crap. It's terrible for this club and it has been that way since they've used it under LVG. Ferguson never used it. I don't understand this need to play it.

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We basically played 4-3-3 in Europe in 2008 when we won the Champions League?

If you are just going to post "because Ole is shit", please dont. Well, you can, but try and put a bit more effort into it.

The point of this thread is discussing and trying to figure out why it went so incredibly wrong this season and why Ole failed so spectacularly when many thought, or at least hoped, we would make a serious push for the big prizes. Maybe i'm a fool, but i was really brimming with confidence for our upcoming season in August, finishing second last season and adding two serial winners and a very promising young player, i honestly thought this year might be it. Also going by the caf, it seems many shared that optimism, where most posters saw a good run in the CL and a proper league challenge as the bare minimum

That didnt happen though and even though the clubs leadership are a bunch of indecisive plonkers, its clear as day that Ole is done and dusted as manager here. So, back to my original query, why did it all unravel in such a spectacular fashion this season?

1) Coaching: This has been discussed to death already, and yes, its clear this is one of the issues. Ole by his own admission is little involved in the day to day coaching and neither is Phelan, so its mostly Carrick and McKenna who is responsible for the coaching sessions, alongside of course the specialist coaches like Eric Ramsey. Now, i think even the most ardent Ole fan must admit we never have looked particularly well drilled under him, especially when you compare him to the likes of Pep and Klopp, but i'd still argue we have had periods where we generally looked pretty solid

Post lockdown and until seasons end we had a league record of 9-4-0 and we actually played some good stuff with Bruno pulling the strings and MMM scoring for fun. We had a similar run last season between the start of November and the end of January where we had a record of 10-3-0 before losing to SHU at OT

Now these runs are by no means evidence that the coaching is good or even decent, but imo they still are a stark contrast to the absoloute shambles we have seen this season, especially in defense where we at times have seen like a non-league team, just a bunch of lads having a kick about in the park. Now i did read a "leak" in Manchester Evening News that some of the players found the coaching sessions "uninspiring", whether its true or not i dont know.

2) Tactics/team selection: Did Ole suffer some sort of head injury during the summer? Now i think most would agree hes not a brilliant tactician, but during him time here he has pulled some really good tactical performances and i refuse to believe you can beat Pep H2H just on luck and "vibes" and despite having a good squad you dont end up 3rd and 2nd in such a competetive league if you have zero clue on how to set up.

This season though, its been a complete farce. A barely fit Maguire gets picked vs Leichester and produces a stonewall 1/10 performance and generally our tactics have been completely laughable this season. A front four that "presses" without really attempting to win the ball, leaving our midfield and defense completely exposed. Meanwhile, said midfield and defense have taken up positions in complete no-mans land, meaning that most teams we face can cut right through us with ease.

Its been slight better in attack, but not by much, and again and again we've seen players making greedy/stupid descisions instead of making an easy pass to a team mate in much better position. Now i am no fan of LvG tactics where he essentially wanted us to walk the ball into the net, but this season we seem to have gone to the other extreme where in attack its every man for himself like its a competition between our players.

3) The players have lost faith in Ole/downed tools: Now, i am pretty sure that after the Liverpool result, many have, and it sure seemed like it based on our performance, but its not like that was the first poor performance of the season. In fact besides a few games, we generally have looked like we could not give a feck if we lost or not, with several players strolling around, not comitting in duels and 50/50's and just looking completely detached.

The thing is though, despite all of this we had a second half against Atalanta that did not at all look like a group of players that had downed tools. In fact, it was a pretty familiar sight of a group of players giving their all when the chips were down and the manager were under pressure. Now we have seen countless "news reports" the last few days that talks of player unrest. Maybe (probably) some truth to some of them, but others have been exposed to be complete BS.

4) Ronaldos lack of defensive work rate creates problems: This one i personally dont buy because unless Cavani was playing, none of our other CF options were particularly hard working in that regard

Those are the four that comes to mind. If anyone have any other theory as to why it all went to hell this season i'd like to hear them

Ronaldo's signing is a problem I believe, because I think it messed up Ole's planning. I am quite sure that he would have liked to play a front three of Rashford, Greenwood and Sancho this season, due to Rashfords injury maybe Pogba on the left for the first games.

But now Ronaldo blocks the CF position, Greenwood is stuck on the right were he does feck all except sometimes scoring a great goal, Sancho is stuck on the left and does not understand how that happened, Bruno and Ronaldo don't work well for the national team and are just replicating that.

At the back you have a similar situation, Varane was signed while Ole apparently also made promises to Bailly that he would play more, and this does not work out at all.

Midfield is obviosly an old story now, where van de Beek does not get a chance.

So my guess is, that the summer signings and their usage in the first games brought some unrest to players who expected to play more or in a different position and maybe that caused a rift between them and Ole that lead to him not trusting them anymore, but focusing on his core of players even more. And that is something that we might see spiraling out of conrrol at the moment.

It looks like Ole wanted to rely less on counters and implement a tactic where we control the game and tempo, problem seems to be that he lacks the experience and knowledge to do so successfully. Not saying that he'll never get there as a manager but he needs more time in lesser leagues before making the step up.

1) Ronaldo replacing Cavani up top meant that the wingers had an increased workload and I don't think Greenwood is adapting well to that work load. Sancho isn't doing too well either.
2) Maguire and Shaw are still drunk from the Euro celebrations
3) Smaller problems from previous seasons still not cured i.e. Bruno and Pogba's sense of positioning, Fred and McTominay's control of the midfield, the lack of width in attack, De Gea as a static GK, no idea how to press etc etc etc

We added 2 big problems and solved none.

Denis79 said:

It looks like Ole wanted to rely less on counters and implement a tactic where we control the game and tempo, problem seems to be that he lacks the experience and knowledge to do so successfully. Not saying that he'll never get there as a manager but he needs more time in lesser leagues before making the step up.

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This echoes my sentiments. We've relied on counterattacks and playing very direct football for the last couple of seasons. The opposition figured this out long ago and hence we struggled against park-the-bus type tactics. Strengthening in the summer was the catalyst to play a more aggressive and controlling brand of football, but we've struggled to get the balance right and been carved wide open as a result. Now, the team is shot of confidence and we're in somewhat of a spiral.

stefan92 said:

Ronaldo's signing is a problem I believe, because I think it messed up Ole's planning. I am quite sure that he would have liked to play a front three of Rashford, Greenwood and Sancho this season, due to Rashfords injury maybe Pogba on the left for the first games.

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It’s funny that none of them offer much in pressing, while one of them has 0 goals 0 assists in 11 games, and was largely a passenger throughout. That could result in an even bigger problem, to be honest.

Similar to what’s already been said-

Personally I think Ole has tried to move us away from the counter attacking style to be more dominant with the high press. Unfortunately we/he don’t know how to press as a team and it’s left huge gaps in midfield for good teams to play right through. If I was Ole I’d take us back to sitting deep and counter attacking again because he doesn’t have the ability to get us pressing as a team and timing presses correctly.

RedRonaldo said:

It’s funny that none of them offer much in pressing, while one of them has 0 goals 0 assists in 11 games, and was largely a passenger throughout. That could result in an even bigger problem, to be honest.

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I do believe that Sancho did not take it well to be moved to the left when he expected to be the new RW and the star signing of the season. Lots of speculation obviously, but I do think that signing Ronaldo and shifting Sancho around did not help his confidence and performances.

Simple.

1. He's tried implementing new tactics and failed miserably at it
2. His favorites are completely out of form, yet he persists with them or plays them half fit.

Seems obvious, but there's a ton of people here thinking VDB and Bailly can't do a better job than Maguire and McTominay right now. Delusional.

Your preferred center back pairing is injured, Shawberto Carlos suddenly looks like he sees Jose at every turn.

We switched from counterattacking football to kamikaze football. It's that simple.

The team shape is not compact in attack or defence. There is always tons of space between our lines that opposition sides can play in.

Fortunately DeGea and individual quality have bailed us out lots e.g. Villarreal, Atalanta. However, we have not been able to rely on that against the better English teams e.g. Leicester, Liverpool.

It's pretty much all on the coaching staff and the approach they've taken. An approach, I add, they did not need to take.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, Scouting.
It's just not sustainable to have 50m players all over the pitch, we need to get signings like James right.
We have bought some very expensive players, but are any of them the result of "scouting"? Maguire and AWB had a breakthrough season right under our noses, Bruno was top scorer in Portugal, Cavani is one of the top strikers of this generation and he was out of contract, Sancho since he started playing in Germany was second to only Lewa in goals and assists.
We paid 50m for Fred and he's a very limited player.
This isn't down to Ole either, even under Jose our transfers have been similar.
Players like Mikhi, Lindelof and Bailly weren't exactly cheap, but they failed to nail down a starting spot in the lineup.

Where are signings like Evra and Vidic, why aren't we spotting a Kante or Mahrez before he moved to Leicester?

Denis79 said:

It looks like Ole wanted to rely less on counters and implement a tactic where we control the game and tempo, problem seems to be that he lacks the experience and knowledge to do so successfully. Not saying that he'll never get there as a manager but he needs more time in lesser leagues before making the step up.

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Funny how this is glaring obvious to us amateurs yet the coaches/manager clearly haven’t seen it. If they had they would have altered for the Liverpool game knowing they would kill us when getting the press wrong

The Ronaldo signing is a red herring as a reason for our problems. The club has always said it has kept a "warchest" of money available for a "headline" signing like his would be. For a number of years we have struggled because we have only had limited threats on the pitch. If teams could deal with Pogba, or Zlatan then we were largely ineffective.


Through some better signings like Bruno, Cavani / Sancho and players like Rashford / Greenwood maturing we know have multiple attacking threats and options going forward. However we have no plan B in the middle of the park and are overly reliant on Grandpa Matic's legs having a good day. As we can't depend on that we have McTominay and Fred in the middle as it seems Ole doesn't trust VDB.

So while we sorted our limited attacking threat - we are down to limited options in the middle of the park. The fact that so many teams have now done their homework on how to beat McFred means our Defence is overexposed all the time and trying to cover mistakes made by others.

Always playing the same way, with the same players is going to end up coming apart these days. Everyone does the basic analysis and it doesn't take a genius to exploit our weaknesses. Ultimately Ole has had the chance to mix things up by bringing in the fringe players or youth prospects like Mebrijj or Elanga. he hasn't done it and now it's probably too late for him to try.

Each of our attacking options should have been workshopped and formations / positions / responsibilities at transition / pressing on or off should all have been drilled into the team from the start of the season. This clearly hasn't happened so ultimately it's down to the manager and coaching staff who have not identified patterns of play, not been brave enough to mix things up and hoped gut instinct and individual talent would dig them out of the hole.

VanDeBank said:

Simple.

1. He's tried implementing new tactics and failed miserably at it
2. His favorites are completely out of form, yet he persists with them or plays them half fit.

Seems obvious, but there's a ton of people here thinking VDB and Bailly can't do a better job than Maguire and McTominay right now. Delusional.

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Our tactics are all over the place, doesn't matter who plays, it won't be any better.

We rode the shit out of our luck last year, had crap home form and had to come from behind so many times after a ridiculous number of awful first half performances. Those comebacks saved the season and gave people a false impression of how well coached we were (or not).

We are all over the shop tactically, even last season for the most part.

Greenwood doesn’t work hard up top, nor does Martial and Cavani missed a shit tonne of games, so the Ronaldo excuse is a load of tosh.

Clear favouritism, coupled with poor results has started to turn the squad bitter. Confidence in the manager is shot.

Ole is trying to play more expansive, not rely on counters and staying deep and it hasnt worked in a most disastrous way. Our midfield options are limited and average at best, press doesnt work and our defense gets exposed. He doesnt know how to solve this, made himself a problem, mismanagement of the squad, same players are playing week in week out despite being out of form, completely frozen some other players. Always going with the same formation, not knowing how to change things during games. Some of the problems were there last year too but this year its all coming together to cause one big clusterfuk.