You get a top class coach and most players will be different then. Look at them when they play for their national teams. Different players. AWB didn't have a clue as to what was going on. Why? Because he was not told or coached as to what he should be doing when Leipzig started to exploit that space. I do not think the coaching staff have a clue as what goes on. Just because they played for Manchester United or have a coaching badge does not mean they have much intelligence about what is unfolding in front of them.
If you're Ole in, how much time will you give him?
- Thread starter horsechoker
- Start date
Nearly 8 years ago but many seem to think we're somehow a level above 'just finishing top 4'. It doesn't make sense. Even the financial advantage we had back then is gone.
Thought the title said :
If you're Ole, how much time will you give him?
Reads like a bizarre title for a Ballard science fiction novel.
If you're Ole, how much time will you give him?
Reads like a bizarre title for a Ballard science fiction novel.
Why do people keep saying we are 4th when clearly we are sixth??? Just 'cos of the game in hand?
Doesn't matter mate,
There are numerous threads basically asking the same question and have the same answers
Ole in till end of the season unless we absolutely drop off in the league.
Read Jackson's article it will be music to the ears of all those who also have this blind faith in him as the messiah
This. People present our spending as an argument as to why we should be higher up/mount a title challenge but its a very simple way of looking at it and it loses all nuance.
To put it in perspective: Bruno aside, two of our most important and promising players are both academy products, so it speaks volumes about our terrible transfer record (Or what a terrific job the academy is doing). Also, because we are who we are, i think fans, especially our own fans thinks our players are better than they really are. I hear all the time "x manager would get more out of y player". Like how can you be so sure? Unless you have hard proof of a player consistently doing better under a different coaching team then you are either taking a guess or just talking out of your arse
-----------------Henderson--------------
AWB----Maguire*---???--------???
-------------Fred---???------------------
----------------Bruno-------------------
-Greenwood--???---Rashford-
* He needs to get his shit together fast
These players imo are worth building around. We got the spine of a good team, but lack the finishing touches of a great one. Now, the squad we have is good enough for a top 4 challenge and Ole should get that to keep his job, but other than the line up above, i think there is a lot of "meh" quality in the squad still
DDG: Past it. Great shot stopper in the past, but lacking in pretty much everything else, should pass on the torch
Lindelof: Bang average in pretty much everything. Had a reputation as a good passer, but he makes a lot of dangerous errors
Shaw: Great on his day, terrible injury record and way to inconsistent
McTomminay: Lovely lad. Bang average
VdB: To early to tell, but has played very little. When he has played it has ranged from 7/10 to 5/10 so not bad, but not spectacular either. Hopefully he comes good
Martial: What is it with this guy? One day hes like prime Maradonna and the next one hes like some bloke we snatched from the street and forced to pull on a jersey at gunpoint. After a great last season i had high hopes for this one, but hes been fecking dreadful
Telles: Has a good cross on him, looks pretty mediocre otherwise
Pogba: On his way out. And hes a twat
Mata/Cavani/Matic: Can offer something now and then, but are too old to be played regularly
Fosu-Mensah/Tuanzebe/Williams: Promising, but not much else right now. EL-players
Baily/Jones/Rojo/Lindgard/James/Ighalo: Deadwood and/or sick notes. Need to get them off our books asap
I don’t think the Leipzig result without Fred Martial or Cavani is the best time to make a knee jerk reaction. I am disappointed by Maguire. I really thought he’d be better than this by now. I’d like to give Ole the rest of the season, but I think he has to make a call on De Gea because that defence needs a leader marshalling it behind him and he is a virtual mute. Giving Henderson a run of games will ultimately be to the side’s benefit, and no more picking Matic over VDB for goodness’ sakes.
I don't think anybody is expecting a title win. People are complaining because we are underperforming. Ole has been underperforming since he got here except during the second half of last season
You say we don't have a better side than Liverpool City and even Chelsea. Let me ask you..when do you think that is going to happen? These three teams are already better than us right now add to the fact that Liverpool have arguably the best coach and scouting network as well as the ambition to keep being ahead of us, City and Chelsea have the ambition and willingness to spend whatever amount to keep being better than us. While we who are already worse than these teams have owners who are satisfied with top 4, spend money foolishly and also have missed out on various managerial transfer targets as l
So when do you think we will actually have a better team than those three under our current ownership and their abilities? My answer is not any time soon. We can keep waiting for Ole to be backed to have the best team in the league before we can say we should challenge for the title but that won't happen. If we were to challenge for the title or win it it will be because we have a manager that can get the team to perform more than the sum of its parts and a manager with a winning mentality. Ole is neither
Last edited:
Under performing finishing 3rd? The exact place I said we probably should be on ability.
We are 2pts off top 4 right now with a game in hand. So again we are around the 3rd and 4th spot. Where we should be on ability.
How are we underperforming? If anything we are where we should be.
In the past 5 years Napoli have spent (per season) 98.5m, Roma 103.1m, Milan 112.6m, Inter 135.4m, Juve 195.17m.
Considering where Milan were 5 years ago (10th), that’s not the kind of money to get you back anywhere compared to your competitors.
United on the other hand:
City 191.6m, United 150.5m, Chelsea 149.4m, Liverpool 105.4m.
Milan have been performing exactly how you’d expect them to be according to their spending.
Spending at a similar rate to Roma who finished 2nd 5 years back & Napoli who finished 5th, whilst they had finished 10th.
Inter, like United have been spending to catch up and have gone through 5 managers in 5 years. They are currently second after finishing runners up last season just one point behind Juventus on 82 points.
United have been spending to catch up though. 2nd highest in the league and significantly higher than the 4th team.
Arsenal are a better comparison to Milan.
Last edited:
We have massively underperformed in far too many first halves these last few games and you can't tell me that none of this is down to Ole's lack of motivation at all which is clearly leading to not being switched on straight away
No. It is not clearly leading to. Pure speculation.
Nah, thats just because it's what it looked like last time I checked the table
Its not that hard is it? The thread is asking certain people a question. As you say, there are posters here that insist on infecting every thread with their 'said a thousand times before' views, even though there are dozens of other threads to do so
This./
Ask for any substantiation & you’re a “moaner”.
We finished 3rd & people are trying to pass off the likelihood of tangible regression as progress.
What’s their manifesto!?
Ok so what's the reason for the repeated slow starts and please don't give me the lack of pre-season due to COVID
Fred can f*ck off too; he’s the exact type of player we used to take the p*ss out of Arsenal fans for overrating.
3rd was a good position and I celebrated it. I don't really care about the points tally because it led us to champion's league qualification but you can argue 66 points and our lowest point tally is not up to par. Like I said again we've been underperforming except the second half of last season which is when we came third so I don't see the need for an argument there. And for this season I'd actually like to see us in top 4 for a good period not spend a large part of it chasing it like we've been doing since Ole came I think that would be good progress. You seemed to have skipped the rest of my post so that was a waste of effort
Last edited:
I agree, it’s not hard but these people think spouting the same old crap across all threads will somehow make everyone agree with them. It just pisses people off further and creates the toxicity across the forum.
All I am saying is that it is speculation. You only need 1 or 2 players to not switch on to be a goal down.
Again, if we assume that Ole's speeches are making the team start slowly, then whenever we comeback, it has to be because they got inspired by what Ole said to them later.
I feel neither is in anyway clear.
My gut feeling is that Cavani drove the comeback against Southampton and Bruno did the same against West Ham, they just seem like winners who have that leadership and aggression which are traits I don't see in Ole I am afraid
It seems like an awful lot of bias when you pin the good work we do on individual players and bad work on the manager.
That is because players like these two are capable of individual brilliance but you can't keep relying on that to dig us out whereas Ole's tactics leave an awful lot to be desired. Believe me there are games where these two haven't performed and I will certainly stick the boot into them if they aren't doing enough too.
If I was to take your team template and add the caf favorites in it..
-------------------Henderson--------------
AWB----Maguire*---Upamecano----Telles
-------------------Fred---Zakaria------------------
-----------------------Bruno-------------
Greenwood--Haaland---Rashford
Do you expect us to win the league and be the best of the other 19 teams with Ole and this team?
With that starting XI?
Yes. Personally i am not as convinced by Upamecano as some others might be, but with Zakaria and Haaland in there, that looks like a league winning team
Swap Haaland for similar kind of player because wouldn't want any more dealings with that Italian
Agreed. Surprised you didn't leave an empty space for RW though.
I'll take the Poch that took a nothing Tottenham side to consistent four top 4 finishes in 5 seasons and a champions league final despite a limited transfer budget for most of those years. The Poch who built the club you see today, developed great players, made Tottenham a fast, modern, hard working side to be feared - their best manager in years. He's a manager I think is made for us.
Because in spite of these issues that he and the team have, as well as the other issues they are facing he's still progressed the team and the club on from where they were before he came in. As long as that progression continues, he doesn't deserve the sack. No matter how much people whine and cry about it.
Ole at Utd reminds me of Valverde at Barca, who had his own issues with the, and I'll be polite here, the "romanticists" of that particular fanbase (who were all almost exclusively online, strangely enough). He was getting decent results with an albeit functional style, but it wasn't enough for them. That then led to his sacking and the arch romanticist Setien came in who promptly fecked it all up and they now have Koeman who will almost certainly be lucky to survive the season.
Ole isn't necessarily Valverde in that the results aren't quite as good (with a worse team in a stronger league, shock horror). But he is facing similar issues with an increasingly rabid section of the online fanbase (you'll be lucky to find 1 person who wouldn't back Ole out of every 100 matchgoing Utd fans) who think that they know better.
We're at a crucial juncture in the development of this young team and because of a subpar transfer window, that continued rate of progression is at risk of stalling this season. If we had got the players he wanted and needed, we'd have been much better prepared. Look at Lampard to see what could have happened if the players we had targeted had come in.
I think that the least he deserves this year is to see out the season. If he doesn't make Top 4, then he will be gone, even if out of all the post SAF managers, he deserves it the least.
@RedDevil@84 thought experiment here....
Did Di Matteos management win Chelsea the Champions League or was it simply the quality of the individual players?
I am still unsure if he got shafted by the board due to them being more worried about those yankee leeches still getting their dividends in a COVID market or because behind the scenes despite reports suggesting to the contrary they still have some doubts about giving him more money
Achieved less than a Utd team in a mess and at war with itself. We won 3 trophies. They won nada.
Why is finishing top 4 seen as such the fantastic achievement by him? It's not success. Success is silverware. He's never got hold of any.
What has Ole won ? See what happened to LVG and Jose despite their trophy records.
Quite laughable when ole-ins come up with trophy arguments when their favorite itself is petty shit in that aspect
It's not the same thing, is it? Ole has been in-charge for a lot longer and beaten different teams at different times under different circumstances with a comparatively inexperienced squad to attribute everything good about United to "individual brilliance" and everything bad about United to the manager.
Also, no one can say for sure if Di Matteo had zero contribution in Chelsea's win. Similarly, has anyone provided an iota of proof of Ole telling Bruno to do one thing but Bruno ignoring him and doing something else because of which he pulls stuff out of the top drawer?
I think the point is people on here are armed with brushes so broad that their brushstrokes have no space for any nuance.
Like most, love Ole. But it does seem like the grim reaper is waiting. He always seems to be one or two results away from the sack and that's because of the inconsistency. Would love him to do well. We can't lose touch with the top 4. If that happens he has to go, otherwise what are we playing for for the rest of the season? He does tend to go on these extended runs of success, so he might yet do well this year, but he could also be gone by Christmas. Right now, it feels like gone by Christmas is the more likely, but that could just be because I'm still fecked off by the RBL game. I think city will smash us on Saturday, then the heat will really be on.
I think it’s the wrong question.
Should be “How much longer can we endure the Glazers?”
Should be “How much longer can we endure the Glazers?”
I think we're also possibly at the point where the players might stop playing for Ole. They've got to be questioning some of the team selections and tactics, just like us.