Dismal December: 3 losses, 1 win | Anfield Preview - United Hour Podcast

[Rood]

Nik @Rood and Anders @Lyng give a post-mortem on United's disastrous Champions League campaign after a 1-0 loss to Bayern, and if that isn't cheery enough they also discuss our 3-0 home loss to Bournemouth.
Slight bit of positivity around the Chelsea win before crashing back to December disappointment with the loss at St James' Park and expecting the worse at Anfield.
The big question: will Erik Ten Hag still be in charge next month?

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[Livewire1974]

Great pod again guys, well done. @Rood almost convinces me to change my vote on that poll again.

 

[edgecutter]

Good pod, lads.

 

[Lyng]

Thanks for having me. Had a healing effect to talk through the misery :P

 

[Chumpsbechumps]

Good pod lads, feel like you were saying most of the things I’ve thought and said over the years.

Also nice to listen to what felt like a far more balanced discussion about the manager. Well done

 

[Rood]

Cheers all and apologies this one was delayed as I know the group therapy session was much needed!

 

[Chumpsbechumps]

Cheers all and apologies this one was delayed as I know the group therapy session was much needed!

Sounds cathartic alright

If ETH survives the Christmas period you should do a podcast on the manager v clubs longer term issues.

By that, I mean , if you can sort of put together what actually changed after SAF left. Like we all know he was a superb manager but he wasn’t identifying players. He was involved but I hardly think he was personally scouting the Russian league for Vidic etc.

What changed with scouting when he left?

Fellaini being Moyes first signing should have been the canary in the coalmine warning for us. You think about it, he wasn’t a priority on any level. People probably think “well Moyes probably liked him” etc, but I don’t think for a second he was in the top 5 players that Moyes would of wanted.

I mean, even signing Fellaini for what, 30% more then we needed to later on in summer. There’s a trend of United over paying for players that’s been the case since then. Why are our managers having to pay the price for uniteds poor negotiating capacity and the rumoured delays that come from Joel/avram signing off?

I don’t think it’s fair to quote Uniteds transfer spend against managers as I think we have seen a continued “Fellaini tax” 30-40% extra cost on players simply because of the way the club conducts itself.

There is plenty of examples since the fellaini signing that this has plagued us.

And then there’s “the manager wanted that player” argument. Do people think a manager is gonna to publicly say “I didn’t want that player?”.

Not just that, how often do United get their top priority’s? This is important , particularly when you look at certain signings. Mata, Di Maria, Pogba, Sanchez, Casemiro, Ronaldo come to mind. I’m not saying these weren’t players we wanted but they all share a commonality in that we bought them when they wanted to leave their clubs. So what I’ve wondered is how often United make signings (that look quality on paper and no manager would really refuse) but are more a sign of the clubs inability to attain its priority players.

I remember a friend saying “United seem to make all the obvious signings”. Under SAF this rarely happened.

I’ve wandered a bit. But I’d just be really interested to listen to a discussion on the clubs dysfunctional football infrastructure that could be hamstringing managers and squads.

 

[GazTheLegend]

Fellaini being Moyes first signing should have been the canary in the coalmine warning for us. You think about it, he wasn’t a priority on any level. People probably think “well Moyes probably liked him” etc, but I don’t think for a second he was in the top 5 players that Moyes would of wanted.

I mean, even signing Fellaini for what, 30% more then we needed to later on in summer. There’s a trend of United over paying for players that’s been the case since then.

Yeah this was the beginning of it all, but I have memories of Ferguson using whiteboards and getting scouts to identify the three top players Europe-wide in various positions we required, then going out to sign them. Moyes came in and realised we were actually behind the times and tried to catch us up. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/feb/26/david-moyes-glazer-rebuild-manchester-united . Unfortunately that modernisation seemed to consist of hiring all his old mates and doing exactly what they did at Everton.

Jim Lawlor was a relic from Ferguson's era and actually only left us last year I believe. Unfortunately for us, if you're standing still you're moving backwards in the football world, we didn't keep up with the modern methodologies that (for instance) Liverpool starting to go with, they hired a formed physicist and an astrophysicist to look after their modernisation https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/spo...rpool-michael-edwards-transfers-data-18775200

I have a strong, strong belief that the analysts and people behind the scenes of a football club, the brains of the operation, should never be nepo-hires or has-beens or former employees given a carrot for service because they are well and truly THE most important figures at the club. I don't doubt we have some excellent people working for us, but they seem to be passed over in favour of whoever the flavour of the month manager is - Moyes, van Gaal, Mourinho, now Ten Hag. As much as the manager should probably have -A- say in the players they get to manage, we've seemingly not listened to anyone behind the scenes. Your manager should be your motivator and tactician. Ten Hag seems to have an idea of how he wants us to play football but it's pretty obvious at this point that he's not signed players responsibly, and has without a doubt wasted 2 years of the clubs time and money on players that really aren't good enough for Manchester United football club.

The players these guys are being sanctioned to sign are just not good enough. Even Ferguson was let down in that department by multiple disastrous signings, and we were carried to a large extent by the marquee signings we could make by virtue of being richer and more powerful than any other club in England. We aren't the richest boys on the block anymore and the Haalands aren't choosing us now.

 

[Rood]

Sounds cathartic alright

If ETH survives the Christmas period you should do a podcast on the manager v clubs longer term issues.

By that, I mean , if you can sort of put together what actually changed after SAF left. Like we all know he was a superb manager but he wasn’t identifying players. He was involved but I hardly think he was personally scouting the Russian league for Vidic etc.

What changed with scouting when he left?

Fellaini being Moyes first signing should have been the canary in the coalmine warning for us. You think about it, he wasn’t a priority on any level. People probably think “well Moyes probably liked him” etc, but I don’t think for a second he was in the top 5 players that Moyes would of wanted.

I mean, even signing Fellaini for what, 30% more then we needed to later on in summer. There’s a trend of United over paying for players that’s been the case since then. Why are our managers having to pay the price for uniteds poor negotiating capacity and the rumoured delays that come from Joel/avram signing off?

I don’t think it’s fair to quote Uniteds transfer spend against managers as I think we have seen a continued “Fellaini tax” 30-40% extra cost on players simply because of the way the club conducts itself.

There is plenty of examples since the fellaini signing that this has plagued us.

And then there’s “the manager wanted that player” argument. Do people think a manager is gonna to publicly say “I didn’t want that player?”.

Not just that, how often do United get their top priority’s? This is important , particularly when you look at certain signings. Mata, Di Maria, Pogba, Sanchez, Casemiro, Ronaldo come to mind. I’m not saying these weren’t players we wanted but they all share a commonality in that we bought them when they wanted to leave their clubs. So what I’ve wondered is how often United make signings (that look quality on paper and no manager would really refuse) but are more a sign of the clubs inability to attain its priority players.

I remember a friend saying “United seem to make all the obvious signings”. Under SAF this rarely happened.

I’ve wandered a bit. But I’d just be really interested to listen to a discussion on the clubs dysfunctional football infrastructure that could be hamstringing managers and squads.

Could talk for hours about the history of structural problems at the club and we have covered it a fair bit since Ole in particular and more recently with the farcical takeover saga.

Fergie did things old school and it worked for him, he trusted his scouting network to identify players but he was also integrally involved with David Gill in discussions about budgets, player valuations etc.

That's the big difference today, managers will identify positions they want to improve and even specific players but they have little to no involvement in negotiation or money matters. Although he was a player he wanted, I doubt it was Ten Hag's choice to pay £80m for Antony - like you say the issue was the club overpaying at the end of the window (after panicking following 2 losses) as has often been the case all the way back to Fellaini.

It was necessary to modernise postFergie but going from Gill to a Woodward/Joel Glazer combo (both with virtually no football experience whatsoever) was a suicidal move. Each time the Glazers go for internal hires (Woodward, Arnold, Murtough) rather than go out and hire the best in class from other clubs.

We really needed a clean break from the Glazers with the Sheikh Jassim full sale and an entire new board. Now we have to settle for the Sir Jim minority deal (if it ever even happens) but hopefully he can bring some kind of positive change at least.

 

[Chumpsbechumps]

Could talk for hours about the history of structural problems at the club and we have covered it a fair bit since Ole in particular and more recently with the farcical takeover saga.

Fergie did things old school and it worked for him, he trusted his scouting network to identify players but he was also integrally involved with David Gill in discussions about budgets, player valuations etc.

That's the big difference today, managers will identify positions they want to improve and even specific players but they have little to no involvement in negotiation or money matters. Although he was a player he wanted, I doubt it was Ten Hag's choice to pay £80m for Antony - like you say the issue was the club overpaying at the end of the window (after panicking following 2 losses) as has often been the case all the way back to Fellaini.

It was necessary to modernise postFergie but going from Gill to a Woodward/Joel Glazer combo (both with virtually no football experience whatsoever) was a suicidal move. Each time the Glazers go for internal hires (Woodward, Arnold, Murtough) rather than go out and hire the best in class from other clubs.

We really needed a clean break from the Glazers with the Sheikh Jassim full sale and an entire new board. Now we have to settle for the Sir Jim minority deal but hopefully he can bring some kind of positive change at least.

Totally agree, we really needed a clean break from the Glazers. I can’t understand at this stage (other than ego or apathy) why Joel/Arvam would still have any say in the football side. They own the club, so they can do what they want of course, but they clearly dont know what they are doing, why do the other siblings allow them to actually affect their asset negatively.

If they were my siblings I wouldn’t let them near the football end of things.

In terms of ETH or our managers, at a normally functioning club , people would have a fair point with regards to their unsuitability or their failings. I just feel that at United , everything is setup all wrong, to the point where we are really relying on massive spend (not planned, targeted) to compensate for a dysfunctional structure.


I can’t see how this SJR thing can work if any glazer has any say in anything on the football side. Fine, have a say in budgets , but other then that get out of the way and leave the adults to run things.