I think what Ole acheived in year 2 was impressive, but there has to be context with empty stadiums attached to that, because there was a narrative of choking around his squad. Entering cups, reaching the semis or the finals and losing them. I think he generally was a terrible manager for instilling winning mentality and let standards slip massively in training. That very good year 2 was sandwiched between a poor debut season and a terrible final season, despite having half a season's head start before.
We came back from behind to salvage a lot of games in the standout year, and it was never sustainable. We also overperformed the XG metrics in a bunch of those games, but weirdly people don't want to revisit the underlying stats there near as much.
So these are the excuses Im talking about, how that this be a sensible view. Was it only us who played in closed stadiums? How do you even know what the standards was in training?
Now to xg, we were always in top 4-5 in underlyings, much better than what we achieved under EtH. Again, better league position, better possession, much better defensive performance, better underlying numbers, much better actual GD and expected GD. But league cup is all that matters, which is fair enough. For some it's binary.
No standalone metric is good enough - generally comparing across seasons is dicey because injuries, other team situations and other external factors can affect it. That's why I wasn't the one who started the point. But for me its clear Ole is worse than Ten Hag because of all the things I've mentioned.
Ten Hag last season was very good. Ten Hag this season is terrible. Ole's final season was terrible. But Ole's final season did not have the concentrated injuries that our manager has. I think we'd be much, much worse if he was dealt with the same defensive problems.
Ole's last season was hands on hips football and players outright not bothering, that for me was more damning and embarrassing to watch than seeing our players fail to execute an ambitious system but still giving 100% for the most part.
When we had injuries under Ole, he was blamed and was called as P.E teacher, now why is it different? Why is EtH not called outdated P.E teacher?
Talking about injuries, when he started his first full season, he lost Shaw, Pogba in second or third game, Martial was out. That's our 3 creative players and then relied on Lingard, AP till we signed Bruno. would EtH do better if he had AP, Lingard, Fred, McT, James as 5 of the 6 players in the attack?
Ole's last season was downright shit, same as EtH. Ole had to go, EtH should be sacked irrespective of cup finals.
Why is tactically sound and much better manager with much better squad not doing much better than "failed cardiff" manager? We at least reached Europa finals, we were embarrassed by Sevilla even before that. We were a goal away from qualifying from very good group, we were embarrassed by every CL opponent and didn't even qualify for Europa.
Why is all those failures overlooked just because he won league cup? How is that a sensible view, ignoring the Europa disaster, CL disaster, 7-0, 6-1, then conceding most shots in PL with worse record than Luton, Competing with Luton, Fulham for goals scored. Why is the tactically sound manager and progressive manager is averaging less possession than Vibes manager?