Of course he'd say that to cover his ass. On the other hand he supposedly rejected Kroos.
Bye bye Van Gaal | Really enjoying managerial retirement
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
Yeah Football manager absolving himself by blaming all and sundry when does that ever happens right .
Best period surely was Jose's first season? When we won 2 trophies?
Yeah, you're right
May I add as Ajax supporter the love hate relationship most of us have with the man. Eternally grateful for the CL win and runners up (which really chould have been our fifth CL cup) plus semi final but also that he made changes to our academy during his rule which had lead to very well drilled players but lacked any form of creativity. The Nordin Wooters and Kiki Musampas. The accusation by United supporters of boring them to death was well recognized by Ajax supporters when the LvG academy youth came rolling from the conveyor belt.
Plus while most believe he always wanted best for Ajax, many supporters never really forgave him for siding with the people within the club that opposed Johan Cruijff's revolution in 2010/2011.
Nah, some fun runs under Ole, but it was last season. I know we won one more minor trophy under Mourinho, but we played shamefully.
The Ajax to Barcelona stint years extend from 1991-2000. 9 years. He won 15 trophies here.
The rest of his career which has been very underwhelming bar the 3 years we mentioned extend from 2000-2016. 16 years. Almost double the above period. Won only 5 trophies during this period and got sacked from 3 jobs.
So yeah the "majority" of his career has been underwhelming going by the time length. There's no denying that.
Second, the fact that the peak of his career was at the very first job he took and in his first 8 years only followed by a massive decline for 16 whole years is a very poor sign for any manager. In comparison to other top managers of his generations or after who had either longer peak time or their peak times extending at different clubs.
The whole nonsense of his ideas and philosophy and how influencial they are, aren't really that important when he himself can't even apply them on the pitch properly to lead his teams to win. That's just the propaganda he created for himself and his fans swallow up. Reminds me of people talking about how Ralf Rangnick philosophy is even he sucks hard coaching a team.
So yeah his career since 2000 (not 2005 as you mentioned it) has been very mediocre with very few and far good seasons as we mentioned (basically one good season at Bayern and two at Eredivisie which, by the way the fact he had to drop back to it after Barcelona 2nd stint proves how his career had went downhill back then), the rest were disappointment after disappointment. Even his overly celebrated success at Bayern was short lived as they ended up sacking him in 2nd season when he was going to lead them to outside CL spots.
It's the career of a tier 2 manager at most. He just overrated himself to no ends and some fans got into the hype he built around himself and his nonsensical philosophy. Compare his career to the other top coaches of his generation, their peak time and how much they achieved. It's no contest.
I discredit your ability to assess information.
Only if you like sleeping
Ye trophies wise I’d say Jose, football wise probably Ole. He brought smiles back and went on an incredible run… didn’t he even have an amazing away record which is where we’re struggling now.
At press conferences maybe.
I feel like you are mixing up Mou seasons? I hated Mou but first season he actually tried to play attacking football and we were great to watch, only season post SAF our xG has averaged out as more than 2 a game. We were just solely reliant on old Ibra and really had not other goals in the team, in the PL our next highest scorer was Mata on 6 goals...we created a load of chances and played quite good stuff compared to what then came for the next 5+ years.
All blurring into one, but remember that Celta Vigo game, which we did win on aggregate, felt like a massive low. Hanging on for dear life, from the first minute, at home, with an away advantage, against a team whose star player was Iago Aspas. Ended up scraping through, but it made our first half against Arsenal at the weekend look like Brazil in comparison.
Yeah the footy was boring but at least he had a clear plan and a playing style, and tried to implement it. It lacked an oomph factor to make it effective and dangerous, but you could see what he was doing - and he was uncomprimising in his approach, which is laudable to an extent.
I'd say Ten Hag is cut from the same cloth in terms of desire to implement what he wants, but it's more adapted to the current era and has more of a cutting edge.
There was some truly dire football, it came very very close to turning me off football for good.
seeing players repeatedly run to the half way line then turn back again was.. eugh. His first thought was don’t concede. If we win 1-0 then happy days, 0-0 was fine in his eyes. But come on, this is Manchester United! This should be the home of ATTACKING football. This guy was the wrong fit for us
There's literally zero argument for this.
I don't think you understand the term "literally".
I remember those games well sadly, we were generally terrible in Europe against Spanish teams but that was Jose’s MO in knock outs and it generally works.
We had that first season with a lot of hope, then we reverted to much more classic counter attack which worked well and we were 4-0 FC for a while and we were generally very good that year at getting games over the line despite a lack of goals in the team. We dropped some silly points here and there, it wasn’t amazing to watch but the league was weak and City were untouchable that season after a 300m+ EUR window (that was the year they bought Pep an entire new back line and B Silva). The rest as they say is history.
His football was utterly dreadful, but he’s the only manager we’ve had in my living memory who had us playing something other than quick, counterattacking football down the wings.
I don't think we played notably differently last season, especially for large chunks of it.
We not changed football style since LVG left really, bar the odd bit of poorly implemented pressing by ETH.
You must have just forgotten the pass the opponent to death and put the fans to sleep playstyle under LVG if you really think that. Ole, Jose were nothing like LVG.
No I meant that LVG to Jose was the last change and since then we've basically played the same way.
I miss his craziness. Never change, Louis!
But I do not miss his football.
But I do not miss his football.
The football was dull and results were not up to expectations. But he won us a FA cup, had a perfect record against Liverpool in the league and had the occasional memorable interview.
For these, i look upon his time here as a slightly positive one
For these, i look upon his time here as a slightly positive one
Instead we played snail football around the middle of the park. Speed was a dirty word!
He’s probably the best reference point despite the issue we had under him as proof of a coach not needing so much time (as people often say). If you want to coach a specific style you can put that into place if you are a good coach very quickly. Regardless of what you think of him he got an average team that was limited technically to play that style of football.
This is my main question about ETH, I think he’s a bit more realistic in keeping us playing in a pragmatic way whilst slowly bringing in some more possession based methods but are we that different than under Mou and Ole? Sometimes last season it looked like it but then this season has dampened that hope a little.
I'd argue that it's probably far easier to "coach" a team in to playing a very rigid, low-tempo style than the style (we assume) ETH wants us playing.
I'd also argue that LVG's style was also very ineffective. People moan about chance creation now, but there were so many matches under LVG where we barely mustered a shot on goal.
He finished 4th and 5th, missing out on top 4 on the last day while winning the FA cup. That's as good as any other manager accomplished here since Fergie.
I agree that football was extremely boring in 2nd season. But during LVG, our plan was to play. We tried to have possession against every team. With better attackers LVG would be huge success.
if he was not right fit then i can only imagine what do you think about Solskjaer who played on counter attacks even at OT. Or about Mourinho who parked the bus in big away games.
Everything I've read about LVG and his coaching/tactics leads me to believe that we could have had the best attacking players in the world and the football we played wouldn't have been much different.
Don’t get me started on any of their 2nd seasons!
re Lvg I don’t think it was down to attackers at his disposal but more fear of doing something wrong. Our wide players would barely get a cross in turning back instead. I think he took it too far, he needed to adapt to English football where generally the teams that score the most are successful
I think that would be a difficult argument to make.
You don't think it'd be easier to coach your players to sit deeper, in defined ranks, playing the ball slowly between themselves, with little concern for play in the attacking third, than it would be to coach a team to play with much more flexibility, a high line and press, with a focus on quick transitions and creating goal-scoring opportunities?
You could coach kids to do what LVG had us doing.
Not really? His whole approach boiled down to “don’t make any risky passes, ever” So we had loads of possession but hardly any shots on goal. As philosophies go it’s fairly simple. Much more difficult to coach a team to get the right balance between defence and attack.
. I think that you are talking about Solskjaer, not Louis Van Gaal.
Nope, LVG. A few players have commented on him basically stifling all flair and creativity, to the point that he was bollocking players that scored or assisted for doing so without first taking a touch.
Meanwhile Rooney said this;
Van Gaal is by far the best coach I have worked with - one hundred per cent,".
"His tactical skills, his way of preparing and his attention to the finest of details, I found amazing. I admired that in him. I had never looked at stuff like that before.
lvg's career shows that he was world class manager whos teams played attacking football (Ajax especially). Tbh, why and how he failed in United is a mistery to me.
He failed because he had us playing slow, tumescent football with little concern for actually scoring goals. It's really that simple.
Recruitment, coaching and style couldn’t be executed when you have Schneiderlin, Rojo, Darmian, Schweinsteiger, Memphis, Fellaini trying to play in his philosophy.
Rooney will of course say great stuff about the one who said ‘My captain shall always play”. Rooney under LvG was as much past it as LvG himself.
Regarding your other post above on LvG/Ole:
Ole for all his faults was a much more attacking and creative manager than LvG (for United).
Ole at United managed 73 goals in the league in one season, only City scored 10 more goals in the same season.
LvG at United managed 49 goals in one season, 9(!!) teams in the league scored more goals than that in the same season.