OK. If you hired him ahead of 15-16 at United, allowed him to make his own buys to the same extent as he had a year later, he would have had a good chance to win the league. There wouldn't have been the toxicity he created at Chelsea in 15-16 or at United now because he does not do that in year 1, competition would have been weaker than in 16-17 and I would have expected him to get similar performances out of the team that he did in his first season at United (our points total would have been better though). That's all.
Had Van Gaal stayed... Would he have fared any worse than this?
- Thread starter Tomuś
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
These seasons are not comparable because as I said competition was much weaker. If you look at performances in 16-17 it was probably our best season under Mourinho, we lacked finishing but 69 points was very misleading because we dropped 12 in the last 6 games as we put all our eggs in Europa League basket. We would have definitely had a chance, with weaker competition and something to play for in the final 8-10 games.Hold on a second, our United team who ended up with 69 points in 16/17 and finished 6th or something would have beaten Liecester to the title? Come one now
Yeah, that was when Ramos used us as bait to get bigger renewal at Madrid. Well done LVG.
That summarised it perfectly.
It's not worth going over what could have been, otherwise, I'd be saying, "what if SAF had not retired and eeked out another 3 years".
LVG was terrible. Side way passing. Hogging the ball and doing nothing with it, then when the opponent gets the ball for 30 seconds, they score a goal and when we restart, we pass the ball side to side, unable to even get a shot on goal.
To even suggest that LVG's brand of football was any good, would mean that that person has amnesia and should maybe see a medical professional.
I can't believe we still have threads lingering on LVG's tenure. The guy was a fecking flop, bought so many useless players which we had such a hard time to get rid of, we used to have tons of possession and barely some shots on target. We won the F.A cup by chance against a small club like Crystal Palace, we fielded youth against Mjytland (sp?) because our squad was full of injuries, we bottled our CL qualification against fecking west ham. Wake the feck up.
I highly doubt it, he had to go.
Let's face it, the football we are watching wouldn't have been much worse.
Yeah, much better. We would probably have travelled around the earth's circumference twice or thrice by now with our sideways passing.
LvG had to go back then as much as Mourinho has to go now. December of 2016 was as excruciating as this one under Mourinho. There are no what ifs, we're not living in the '80s for feck's sake. Nowadays, we have more options in recruiting players due to the Bosman ruling and the PL is a magnet for any player because of the insane wages the English clubs can offer.
Does Guardiola need 3 years to make his plan work? Klopp? Conte? Sarri? Mourinho, the two times he managed Chelsea? Just because a manager teaches a certain brand of football doesn't mean that he'll eventually be a success no matter what. He needed players of the highest quality the OP claims... well, give credit to Jose too because that's what he's been saying week in and week out. The sad truth for all of us is that LvG didn't show anything concrete that would buy him more time and money. There's only a number of times you can play the philosophy/look at my CV card. Mourinho stands in the exact same place right now and he's waiting to get sacked.
LvG had to go back then as much as Mourinho has to go now. December of 2016 was as excruciating as this one under Mourinho. There are no what ifs, we're not living in the '80s for feck's sake. Nowadays, we have more options in recruiting players due to the Bosman ruling and the PL is a magnet for any player because of the insane wages the English clubs can offer.
Does Guardiola need 3 years to make his plan work? Klopp? Conte? Sarri? Mourinho, the two times he managed Chelsea? Just because a manager teaches a certain brand of football doesn't mean that he'll eventually be a success no matter what. He needed players of the highest quality the OP claims... well, give credit to Jose too because that's what he's been saying week in and week out. The sad truth for all of us is that LvG didn't show anything concrete that would buy him more time and money. There's only a number of times you can play the philosophy/look at my CV card. Mourinho stands in the exact same place right now and he's waiting to get sacked.
Pereira was the stand out in the underage teams and the feeling at the time was that he was one of the few young players at the club that could have a real future. But he got limited opportunity.
My issue with LVG's approach was exactly as you described. There was no identification of real genuine potential. Just have a lot of kids as back ups who will get a game if some injuries happen. No plan to integrate them into the team. Just let luck decide.
On Tuanzebe, how old was Regan Poole when he made his debut under LVG? As above, LVG had absolutely no plan to integrate the better prospects. Tuanzebe may have been injured when he needed a defender, or maybe Donald Love played better in the previous reserve game.
I disagree. On the latest pre season tour, the young players were Garner, Gomes, Chong, Greenwood, etc. They may be far from ready but they are real genuine top class talents, not average older kids who will never have the quality to play regularly for United. All of these guys appear to train regularly with the first team. The really talented kids are being integrated.
I prefer the approach of identifying the elite talent and giving them a pathway than throwing a whole lot of crap at a wall and hoping some sticks.
Now we're blaming his failure on the timing of his hiring. Well done. I was wondering what was left after the players, the board, bad luck etc. but we've got another one.
And he wouldn't have won the league. We were bang average in the league in his first year.
You prefer the approach of a manager who has never been good at it. Alright then.
I'd rather have a manage who genuinely excels at developing young talent rather than one who doesn't.
Agree, because what they're doing now is similar to the approach under Fergie (who genuinely excelled at it).
Him getting us Ramos would have been a disaster.
Whats the problem with that though? Adds further competition for places don't think that's a problem. If a players in form then why not reward them, it gives all our young players hope. If Tuanzebe was injured then that's just plain bad luck on his part. Regan Poole got 1 minute under LvG against Midtjylland in 15/16 having played for Newport on loan the season before (1013mins). He was 17 years old I think.
I'm sure there was a plan in place for our kids but injuries wrecked our senior team and they were called up to fill places. I commend LVG for his youth policy, he didn't move senior players from other positions to fill in as emergency stop gaps, he trusted the youth would do a job. Ultimately he didn't have the quality at the time to be able to rely on that though.
Shaw missed 51 games due to his leg break
Jones missed 32 games due to being Jones (injured)
Valencia missed 29 games due to injury
Rojo missed 27 games due to injury
Young missed 13 games due to injury (he was later used as an emergency fullback this season)
Darmian missed 7 games due to injury
Smalling missed 3 games due to injury
Blind missed 0 games due to injury
We basically had 2 CBs, 1 LB and 1 RB out for over half the season.
Jose has 'solved' this issue by bringing in another senior CB and a promising youth player RB. He also uses Matic and McTominay as emergency CBs. I seem to recall we may have used Carrick in a few games at CB in 15/16.
That’s not what I’m doing at all. You are over sensitive when it comes to this.
I’m actually pointing out how weak the league was in 15-16 more than I am defending Mourinho here. And we still finished 5th with LVG. We won’t have an easier path to the title than that season for a good while.
Not really. You're just a big Mourinho fan. It's your kryptonite.
I’m not really. It’s not even about him, it’s about how weak the league was in 15-16 and how much of a failure that season was for Man Utd.
I want us to sack Mourinho.
Van Gaal with the current squad would be doing better - no doubt IMO but he was insanely useless at purchasing players.
@POF a reason his opportunities were limited was due to a game where he had Januzaj supposedly had a bet to see who could score from a corner and used every opportunity to try and score direct from them. This went against LVG’s team ethic and they were both disciplined and opportunities limited.
To be fair he didn't have a choice. Kroos ironically only wanted to play for Moyes
A failure. Like this season then.
And it wasn't all that weak relative to our level. They weren't the strongest champions but we're champions nonetheless. Mourinho wouldn't have won the league that year either. We'd have needed a proper United manager to make it happen. Something we hopefully find soon.
But how much 'elite talent' did LVG overlook to give youth debuts?
I honestly believe if LVG had the Gomes, Chong generation at his disposal. Plus a fit Tuanzebe they'd all have been getting regular minutes. The Dude was that bold with youngsters.
I always felt that LVG would have retired after the 3rd season. He wanted this to be his last hurrah and he probably was building a side for Giggs to take over in the eventuality. It could have been a very young team with full of promise. But hey hindsight 20-20 huh!
Agree with all of this, though he had previous form for being a stubborn and illogical git who went out of his way to fall out with DoFs. Certainly happened at Bayern.
Indeed. It’s an indication of how much the Academy seems to have improved since the late-Fergie years of underinvestment. One thing at least to be optimistic about, and maybe even (reaches for tin hat) credit Ed for.
This season is even more of a failure.
As this season goes worse LVG time gets more and more romanticized.
The thing is, LVG's early United games were brilliant - so much of attacking intent, beautiful quick football. Then for some reason he decided to go into an extreme possession style - I believe he identified huge weaknesses in our defence that needed covering up hence the possession style. He might have fixed it in the transfer windows but to be honest I doubt transfers are his thing. He seems to prefer working with what he had. If we had a DOF who could have made the defensive purchases for LVG, then who knows we might have seen him revert back to the attacking intent of his early few games.
Regardless of maybe few things i liked under him, he wouldnt last more then he did. Saying how it wouldnt be worse would be unfair to JM, it was just different kind of bad i guess.
Leicester game broke him.
And after we had that nice run against Spurs, Liverpool and City in the 2nd half of the season he decided to scrap everything in the next.
The loss at Leicester where we started brilliantly and then coughed up a lead changed everything for him, he became paranoid after that playing with 2 DMs. He was still dealing with a severely mismatched roster at that time though, we had like 4 strikers and not a lot of depth in midfield or wing for him to play his preferred 4-3-3.
Lvgs brand of football was way worse than Mourinhos
The biggest problem I had with LVG was his 3-5-2 formation. It's way too defensive. The second problem I had with him was that he had absolutely no rotation. He would play the same team every week and if you had a bad game you were out of the starting XI with little to no hope of getting back in (DiMaria hardly came back after his red card vs Arsenal). But he lost me when he complained that we didn't have a 20 goal scorer, meanwhile he was playing our best goal scorer (Rooney) as a midfielder, and our best assist man (Di Maria) as a striker. Not to mention his transfers"
In:
Herrara
Shaw
Rojo
DiMaria
BLind
Depay
Darmian
Schneiderlin
Bastian
Martial
Out:
Zaha
Welback
Kagawa
Chicharito
RVP
DiMaria
Nani
So he complained about not having a 20 goal scorer yet he sold 7 attacking players and only bought 3 (you could say sold 6 and bought 2 with DiMaria cancelling himself out)
In:
Herrara
Shaw
Rojo
DiMaria
BLind
Depay
Darmian
Schneiderlin
Bastian
Martial
Out:
Zaha
Welback
Kagawa
Chicharito
RVP
DiMaria
Nani
So he complained about not having a 20 goal scorer yet he sold 7 attacking players and only bought 3 (you could say sold 6 and bought 2 with DiMaria cancelling himself out)
The fact some us are looking at LVG’s reign with rose-tinted spectacles just reinforces how bad things are at the moment with Mourinho - yikes!
The “total vootball” I was anticipating never materialised and instead we got some of the most boring possession football I have ever witnessed. However against the big teams he always seemed to pull off amazing results which almost compensated for the preceding dross. He was always respectful of the club though and never moaned about injuries and was professional at all times - old school.
I sometimes wonder how we would have done if he’d stayed on for the final year of his contract but his signings were awful and we wasted nearly as many millions as Mourinho has done.
I liked him as a person though and some of the quotes he came out with were hilarious especially the “sex masochism and horny” ones. Also the brilliant memes and photoshopped pics and vids on here were a welcome relief from what was happening on the pitch.
The “total vootball” I was anticipating never materialised and instead we got some of the most boring possession football I have ever witnessed. However against the big teams he always seemed to pull off amazing results which almost compensated for the preceding dross. He was always respectful of the club though and never moaned about injuries and was professional at all times - old school.
I sometimes wonder how we would have done if he’d stayed on for the final year of his contract but his signings were awful and we wasted nearly as many millions as Mourinho has done.
I liked him as a person though and some of the quotes he came out with were hilarious especially the “sex masochism and horny” ones. Also the brilliant memes and photoshopped pics and vids on here were a welcome relief from what was happening on the pitch.
LVG was the opposite of Jose. LVG thinks he can always get the players he had to play better when they accept his "Philosophy". He does not like to change players. It was his mistake in not admitting it. He should not have sold Zaha and Hernandez for sure. Some of the game United has played has been outstanding. Some have been a real dross. I think his biggest mistake was to reply on Rooney too much. Players like Depay, Martial can pull things out of the hat.
Yeah we would be.
We wouldn't of won the Europa League or come 2nd last season whilst having all the same problems.
We wouldn't of won the Europa League or come 2nd last season whilst having all the same problems.
Why not? And why should we be having all the same problems? Van Gaal has won the CL too.
Moyes, LVG, Mourinho all don't belong to United but Mourinho must go down as the worst manager in our history, LVG was both better manager and better coach. The guy who decided to hire Mourinho should be forced to watch footage of all United games since the Busby days to grasp the United way and what attacking football means to this club.
I don’t disagree with what you said about developing players but you are still missing my point. This is not about LVG inability to find talent, that’s why I said Memphis & Januzaj are poor example. It’s about how the manager treat their young players.
I might be poor putting my sentence so try your best to understand it.
Why are clubs loaning out their young players? To give them more playing time, if they don’t play then they can’t be developed as a footballer.
My point is that LVG could do so much better job than Mourinho for the best of Martial & Rashford. Some Young players are different, and those two need trust from the manager and playing time. If LVG was still our manager in 2016/2017, we would had Martial & Rashford as our regular XI in that season.
Mourinho on the other hand didn’t trust them and instead wasted his money to sign Lukaku, Sanchez and about to sign Perisic. And now we are looking for to sell them. What a waste of money and time.
Some players just don’t suit play in the league or in the club. The same thing what happened to Forlan and Rossi.
Not saying LVG is great for youth but he was a better manager than Mourinho in term of treating young players.