Did the rot set in when Ronaldo left?

[Baby Groot]

The answer is no, but the annoying thing is that Ronaldo career didn't go south the moment he left.

 

[Oscie]

Rot? We won the league twice in the next 4 years. The team Fergie left won the league by 11 points. It was not his responsibility to plan for the next 10 years.

This.

But of course by people mean 'rot' they don't mean 'stopped being good/successful/winning trophies' they mean 'when we started to get outspent by other clubs'.

Said this many times on here but for a vocal portion of our fan base what matters is who we outspend, not what we win. Many look back on the string of titles we won and think only "City spent more, so that period was shit". Domestically it represented the most successful run in the league we've ever had. Summed up as 'the rot'. Says it all.

 

[Class of 63]

Rot? No, but stagnation? Yes. Stagnation and a lack of attention to the signs of steady decline. But then again, when you're winning it's much easier to sweep any problems under the rug. It's the course of human nature and, besides, everyone despises the perennial moaner during the good times. But, even then, it was quite easy to tell that Ferguson's last United side (the one that won our last two PL titles) was rather lacklustre compared with the treble-winning one, with the '06-'09 juggernaut or even with the one that ended our draught by delivering the first two PL titles in the early nineties.

In hindsight, of course, the 2011 & 2013 league titles look quite similar to the last two titles Liverpool won (1988-1990). It wasn't the overall quality that made the difference but the habit of winning which was embedded into the minds of the manager and certain players who, in their turn, transmitted it to the others. In its full force, it created the famous fear factor. The sad fact is that many of those players were past their prime and/or reaching the sunset of their careers (Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, van der Sar, Neville, Giggs, Scholes, Fletcher, Park etc.). Ronaldo's departure was the cherry on the top of the cake but, at the time it occurred, Fergie believed that we would miss his numbers more than we would miss his leadership. And, truth be told, the old gaffer always knew how to make the numbers add up.

This doesn't mean that there wasn't a plan. There was but it was one that, ultimately, failed miserably. We can now say with certainty that De Gea is probably the only one who provided us with an almost seamless transition in a position on the pitch from one world class player to another. At the centre-half position, too much faith was put on Smalling, Evans and Jones to replace Rio and Vida (Ferguson believed at one point that Jones had the potential to become one of the best English players). At the full-back position, too much faith was put on the twins to stay fit too. In the midfield, Cleverley was supposed to develop into something more than a midtable CM and Anderson was also supposed to mature a bit and eventually replace what he had inside his head with some brains. Unfortunately for us, none of these things happened. In the winger role, there were hopes for Nani (25, then) to pick up the baton from Ronaldo and take on a more leading role but his inconsistency plagues him until now and has hindered his career overall. On the other side, Kagawa never managed to replace what Park brought to the table for us and we also failed to get from Kagawa the qualities he had shown at Dortmund. Up front, Welbeck never looked like a natural goal scorer. At the top of all that, RvP failed to replicate his magnificent12/13 season. And the only player who was assessed 100% correctly by Ferguson who wanted to ship him off, Rooney, was given a hegemonical new contract.

But Ferguson always knew how to take the best out of his go-to men on the pitch while retaining a strict discipline at the same time. Rio and Vida's leadership skills were kept for the difficult matches mostly. Evra was playing, more or less, as a wing-back with the LCB or a midfielder keeping an eye on his spaces during the defensive transition. Giggs/Scholes were rotated smoothly in order for their experience at setting the tempo to not miss from our team. And I believe that both RvP and Carrick were allowed to follow personal training (meaning less intense) in order to stay fit. The big names were being taken good care of and the job was being done. And that's probably why Ferguson advised Moyes to keep the backroom staff intact but Moyes had other ideas.

Since then our biggest mistake has been the fact that we fail to realize just what we're missing so dearly. We sign players whose best footballing years are ahead of them/are in their prime (Fellaini, Mata, Rojo, Blind, Herrera, Darmian, Schneiderlin, Mkhitaryan, Lindelof, Pogba, Di Maria, Matic, Lukaku) and we also buy/promote youngsters (Januzaj, Depay, Martial, Lingard, Rashford, Shaw, Bailly) and we burden them we responsibilities that they never had before. We ask of them to come here and lead the pack to glory. And when they fail, we come on this forum and we wonder if there's more deadwood to ship off or if the young prospects are as good as we think. Out of this squad only DdG, Matic and Mata seem able to lead the team. Pogba is getting there but he's not quite there yet. With Matic/Mata Mourinho was spot on: to buy the former and to keep the second in the team. We need to see this and start addressing it. Otherwise, when we reach midpoint through every season, we'll keep finding ourselves resorting to the Valencias, the Youngs, the Smalling/Jones/Rojos to steer the ship. And we'll keep rendering these useful but not great players as useless every time we fall out of the title race.


You don't need anyone to tell you that what we lack is proven quality, the 'been there, done that' kind. Fergie had Robson and then he brought Ince to the side. When the latter became a mainstay in the midfield, we signed one of the biggest talents in Keane. And it was next to Keane that Scholes flourished as a footballer. Then Carrick was signed to do the job next to Scholesy. It doesn't matter whether you buy them or you promote them from the academy because true talent can be found everywhere. What matters is to have at least one player in each line to whom the rest will look up to (and of course able to perform at the highest level). And you can't always expect to create these players for your side out of promising youngsters/great players but with supporting roles in their previous clubs/past it greats out of which you hope squeeze a few good years. Sometimes you just have to keep knocking at the door until you get what you want.

Don't agree with all of it, but enjoyed reading that, thanks

 

[Zlatattack]

This.

But of course by people mean 'rot' they don't mean 'stopped being good/successful/winning trophies' they mean 'when we started to get outspent by other clubs'.

Said this many times on here but for a vocal portion of our fan base what matters is who we outspend, not what we win. Many look back on the string of titles we won and think only "City spent more, so that period was shit". Domestically it represented the most successful run in the league we've ever had. Summed up as 'the rot'. Says it all.

I do think we missed out on some talent. The likes of Kagawa not working out didn't help. I think we could have won more. But I think rot is a hard term to use.

 

[berbatrick]

2012. Pogba left in reserves, the Hazard fiasco, POTY+ in-form Nani benched often, 1-6 to City at OT, dysfunctional midfield needed Scholes to come out of retirement, "zombie passing". I felt our creativity really fell that season and hasn't recovered really. Our buildup became quite 1-dimensional.
RvP was the amazing short-term fix for next season, but there were huge issues in midfield and wings by the end. It could be fixed, since the senior players were still performing, and there were some nice replacements in defence (the team's core was still strong). Instead in came Moyes, exposing existing weaknesses and creating more.

 

[Theonas]

Agree that Bale was always going to be tough to sign....... would have stood more of a chance with Fergie as manager rather than Moyes. With his injury record he wouldn’t have been so great for us anyway.

Hazard I disagree although I take on board your point about Latin players but hazard was Young Europe a winger with world class potential. We ended up signing Ashley Young and Obertan around the same sort of time. He was the perfect replacement for giggs and as we speak still hasn’t ran off to Madrid/ Barca. Think he would of lit up OT and carried our attack like he does for Chelsea. At the time I thought Fergie was right not to pay the agents fee but look at what we supposedly paid the agent for Pogba!! Missing out on Hazard wasn’t the be all and end all but it has proved costly.

I have no disagreement whatsoever that Hazard would have been perfect. I think I rate him higher than most on here, I consider him the biggest game changer in the PL currently. Only Messi and Neymar can change games on their own better than him when he is at his best. My point was that some like to perpetuate the narrative that our transfer strategy changed post Ronaldo. The argument goes that we were lazy or stingy depending on the agenda and the evidence for this view is that we missed out on the likes of Hazard, Agüero and Silva. My argument was that this is simply not true and that we missed out on those players because we generally were always very conservative with non British based players under Sir Alex.

Our biggest transfers were always British based with Keane, Yorke, Ferdinand, Rooney and after Ronaldo, we still splashed good money on Berbatov and RvP. In all of his time with us, Sir Alex only really went for it with a non British based player with Veron and maybe RvN. When City and Chelsea started investing in those markets in the mid and late '00s, they went to markets that we traditionally stayed away from. So it's not like we changed our strategy, we just were suddenly compared to clubs that highlighted our conservatism in the market.

 

[Alex99]

I think our problems post-Fergie stem entirely from the fact that by all accounts his decision to retire was made rather quickly so there wasn't really much time for a proper succession plan to be put into place. He stated that he made his decision to retire in the December of the 2012/13 season, which gave us precisely 5 months until the man who steered the club for near 3 decades took his final bow.

Fergie placed a lot of faith in a lot of players that ended up not quite cutting it once he left. I firmly believe that had Fergie stayed on, not only would we have remained consistent title challengers while he was there, but a number of players that were seen as surplus to requirements under van Gaal would have remained major parts of the first team squad. Had there been more time between his decision to retire and the actual retirement, not only do I think we'd have avoided hiring the likes of Moyes and van Gaal, but the squad would have been in a state more befitting of the eventual successor (which may well have been Mourinho).

I think Fergie was very aware that by the end of 2012/13 the team would have been entering another phase of serious transition, beginning most obviously with Scholes and Giggs retiring, with Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra, Carrick, Fletcher, Rooney and van Persie all likely to be phased out over the course of the following few seasons, being replaced by younger players or new signings. The plan would have likely involved the likes of Evans, Rafael, Cleverley, Welbeck and Nani stepping up as more senior players at the club, alongside Valencia, Young, Smalling, Jones and De Gea, as newer signings and promoted youth settled and became integral to the squad (e.g. Kagawa, Powell, Zaha, Buttner, Lingard, Januzaj, the Keane brothers, etc.).

I don't think it was ever the plan to leave the club with a teenage winger as the last signing made, but circumstances dictated that the retirement had to happen at the end of the season, so the big gaps we had were ultimately left unplugged. At the time this was seen as a potential blessing, with the new manager free to shape the squad as they wanted. Unfortunately for us we ended up with David Moyes, which after conflicting reports seems to have been the first choice of nobody involved in selecting the new manager.

With no apparent plan for his arrival, and his only real transfer targets apparently being a decent left-back to replace our already decent left-back and a rather uninspiring midfielder, both from his previous club, things got off to a bad start. Despite having won the league at a canter the year before, there were weaknesses in the squad that needed addressing that simply weren't addressed. We remained fairly reliant on all of Giggs, Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Carrick, Rooney and van Persie, with little added to the squad, and the entire backroom team changed.

After Moyes, LvG undertook a bit of an overhaul and a number of players that people thought were part of the first team squad were let go, while a number of incoming players were not trusted and ultimately dropped for good after a dip in form. Between the two managers we suffered a severe drop in expectations, and the team lacked any real footballing identity.

Mourinho has steadied the ship somewhat, and we seem to be developing something of an identity again. There's still a bit of a problem with over-reliance on certain players, but I think that's something we have a plan to address, and I believe we have an actual plan going forwards in regards to building a team that involves both new signings and promoting youth. I also feel like expectations are back on the right track and short of City being in insane form we'd have been challenging on all fronts this season. Hopefully we can avoid another slump when he goes, whenever that may be.

In short, I don't think there was a rot that set in when Ronaldo left. I don't think there's been a rot at all. I think there were areas of the squad that were weakening as time went on, that we got by not addressing because other areas were so strong. I believe there was a plan in place to manage the team through another transition period, with Fergie possibly retiring once that had passed (probably between 2014/15 and now), but his personal circumstances dictated that he had to retire earlier than he might have otherwise liked, and with his departure, we lost the plan too. Problems were there and ready to be addressed, but with Moyes they went ignored and became worse, with others being created. LvG served to halt the decline (because I think it could have got much worse), but created further problems, and while Mourinho has addressed some of the issues, there are still problems from the post-Fergie hangover he's yet to find a solution to.

 

[Denis79]

No way a rot because of our transfers. The problem was poor choices of managers after SAF retired. Not counting Mourinho.

 

[starman]

Don't really get this thread, the "rot" could have been replacing Beckham with a 18 year, in Ronaldo. Nothing is a sure thing.
SAF won leagues after it and the money spent since than has been huge. Any rot has been not replacing SAF with a suitable replacement

 

[AngliaRed]

What rot, we're feckin second in the league and still in the CL. What more do you want?

Exactly! Some people need to get out more and switch their phones off!

 

[Theonas]

Don't really get this thread, the "rot" could have been replacing Beckham with a 18 year, in Ronaldo. Nothing is a sure thing.
SAF won leagues after it and the money spent since than has been huge. Any rot has been not replacing SAF with a suitable replacement

Exactly. We did absolutely nothing different pre and post Ronaldo. Our approach to the transfer market has always been the same in its strengths and weaknesses. We always looked at the top talent in England and the occasional gamble from abroad. Sometimes it worked and other times, less so. The difference was that the PL became more competitive. We started seeing top continental talent in the league for pretty much the first time really because of Chelsea and City's European connections. Under Fergie, we were never going to approach the transfer market the way they did and it's hard to criticise him considering he still won more than they did in that period.

 

[OverratedOpinion]

Well we lost possibly our two best attacking players in one summer and brought a past it Michael Owen and Obertan so it certainly didn't help us at the time.

It hasn't got much to do with our current situation other than it would be nice to have Ronaldo who is still an incredibly effective player. The current situation is more to do with the failings of the managers since Sir Alex leaving, especially in recruitment and the weird mix of players we have all suited to different styles of play and systems.

City winning the lottery in 2009 and spending like they were on supermarket sweep has been key as well, the fact that they have spent well especially. I miss the days of them blowing cash on Elano and Bojinov personally.

 

[Frank Grimes]

What a great thread.

 

[Green_Red]

Some of us are at the games and the concern is not the distance that we are behind City but the often poor and negative standard of football on the pitch
Pointing out the obvious is not being a simpleton or ugly self entitlement just honest concerns regarding the direction this team are going.

Im not trying to be sarcastic when I say this... People in the stands should have expected this brand of football when Joses name was being talked about for the job. You & They shouldnt be surprised that some games arent that good. Its about points, not entertainment with Jose. We'll blast the lower teams and park the bus against the good ones. Thats what he does.

 

[Grande]

You’re focused primarily on the players we bought, I’m talking more about the infastructure of the club, which of course leads into how we scout, profile and sign players.

Ultimately what I’m trying to say is that we were more reactionary, rather than strategic (imo) and I think came primarily from the threat of Chelsea, but also things like Glazer takeover that caused disruption within our hierarchy.
I also think that we depended on Fergie & Gill to do everything, rather than building the infrastructure around the manager, that way he can focus on football.

An improved academy, and a more sophisticated scouting network should have been improvements we made 15+ years ago, it looks like we're making improvements to both now, but that's partly why I say the seeds were sown before Ronaldo came.

In comparison in 2000-2006ish - Bayern Munich promoted approximately 3/4 youth products each year including Hargreaves, Lahm, Schweinsteiger.
And in 2003 their youth academy partnered with I think about 8 other German clubs in partnerships that are beneficial for both parties
Barca's policy was slightly different, but in the same time period they were signing established stars (ronaldinho, davids, eto'o etc), as well as promoting from within (xavi, iniesta, messi) and they had a policy of loaning out some of their players with the intention of getting them back (saviola, pique, fabregas)
Both of these teams still largely follow this blueprint because it's tried and tested, plus over the course of time they've developed their network and built relationships with various clubs also.

These are example of strategic planning, with a sustainable long term vision in mind.
Madrid obviously followed the Galatico route and found instant success but went through a barren period in Europe as well - so i'm not suggesting we're the only ones who haven't realised our potential - but at least for me I think these are when Barca & Bayern began to pull away from us, and they continue to reap the rewards to this day, in the transfer market and at youth level.
Now with the market the way it is, it's going to be much harder for us to establish our own route, I still don't think we have a player profile, or transfer strategy - but rather we react to the market, and react to the players who are available.

Maybe "rot" is too strong a word for what i'm suggesting.

Ah, referring to infrastructure, academy organisation and scouting networks you’re probably right.

Regarding infrastructure, the Glazers getting something different in place while Fergie was still manager seems unrealistic. I think the Glazer takeover cost a lot in regards to short term financial power and competence loss. And Fergie was not going to change the structure he had success with, even though it was probably an impossible structure for anyone else to step into.

I don’t know or remeber what happened with the scouting system before 2008. The academy has produced/developed further talent like Rafael, Evans, Morrison, Pogba, Lingard, Rashford, which in England is not shabby. What’s declined mostly seems to be the ability to dominated youth leagues and produce players for other clubs. Bayern, Real and Barca is not really comparable as they could cherry pick the best talent of the nation at any point of a player’s development, unlike how it is in England.

The academy is nonetheless essential for the club’s identity, which Busby and Ferguson understood better than most.

 

[Nytram Shakes]

Im not sure rots the right word, but Ronaldo and Tevez leaving and Valencia and Owen coming in always seemed like a massive step backwards.

 

[edgar allan]

Im not trying to be sarcastic when I say this... People in the stands should have expected this brand of football when Joses name was being talked about for the job. You & They shouldnt be surprised that some games arent that good. Its about points, not entertainment with Jose. We'll blast the lower teams and park the bus against the good ones. Thats what he does.

There is no surprise at all, we have got largely what we expected and with a few exceptions what Jose has served up before.

If the results are good then it is hard to argue against his pragmatism. However if the results do slip then the dissatisfaction in our style and approach will surface.

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

I mean in terms of how shambolic our recruitment has been ever since. We sold the best player in the world and invested the money that season in Antonio Valencia, Michael Owen and Gabriel Obertan. Look at a comparable moment now for Barcelona who sold Neymar but have invested the money in Ousmane Dembele and Coutinho...

Hell no

 

[Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber]

United started a sharp decline when we took the dumb gamble on Moyes. We still havent fully recovered

 

[B20]

I used to think even when we were dominating United fans never took winning it for granted and never assumed we would. How times have changed with the twits (twitter generation)...

You've got entire generations who have only known the Ferguson years. Was bound to happen.

I reckon celebrating the brand value of new signings is the worst from the twits. Wtf.

 

[KingMinger22]

Between 2009-13 finances were clearly restricted.

That is why we have been so poor since then, and have had maybe two world class players on the books since RVP’s decline.

 

[IronCroos37]

Martial, Lingard, Pobga, Sanchez upfront could clean up the rot, however Jose will play it safe and put Pogba deep while playing Lukaku upfront.