I'm not sure though. Firstly it's hard to determine what a "great" manager is. Pep wasn't a great manager when he took over at Barcelona. Klopp wasn't a guarantee even when he came in at Liverpool, and outside of those two, there is no one else you can put in the "great" bracket. You're down to picking from the likes of Pochettino or Jose...managers who've failed at clubs with similar or less expectation than United, or who you know have a short shelf life and come with a guaranteed fallout/car crash ending. Basically, not great managers. Either that or you take a chance on an unknown as we have done.
Klopp and Pep are quite clearly both great managers. Pep may have a few question marks by virtue of his elite privileged varsity CV, but it’s undoubted that he’s managed to instil a very recognisable style of play at all of these clubs. Furthermore City finished level on points with us the year he was appointed, and despite his admittedly ridiculous outlay, it nevertheless took him just one season to get them playing his way to devastating effect.
Klopp joined Liverpool when they were even further below us, when we were regularly accused of being “in crisis”... and despite the best efforts of people on this forum to pretend it took him ages to make his mark, he actually reached the Europa final in his first season, and was on a pretty noticeable upward curve with every passing year... ironically only curtailed when we appointed Jose. Both were examples of good managers not taking particularly long to make their teams a success, with one ultimately only being brought low by their own personal deficiencies, rather than the legitimacy of their professional ones.
The Chelsea model of just getting whichever big name they can at the time and then sacking them 2 years later kind of works for them, but I don't really like it. Their fans (and I mean the match going ones who are actually meant to support them, not the moaning ones on the internet) seem to spend half their time actively against their own team. Doesn't seem much fun. Chelsea also have a very good system in place above and around their manager, which remains consistent whoever the manager is. We have Woodward and his scout mate, who three of our managers in a row have proclaimed as being a major hurdle to them doing their jobs effectively.
No one is saying we should do this. Again, it’s an example of this weird reactionary rationale, where the fear of one thing, requires us to pivot dramatically to the diametric opposite!
Also, in some small sense, we do nevertheless need to make our peace with a form of this. Ferguson’s lengthy mercurial tenure is never going to be repeated. Never! We have to accept this. The worst thing we can do is keep desperately trying to recreate it. It’s
exactly what ruined Liverpool’s boot room in the 90s.
Going forward, especially as a big club, we need to accept that there’s going to be a lot of regime changes over the years. A lot more than we’re used to. Hopefully not
too many, and ideally some longer than others, but it’s going to happen. It’s not evil. It’s simply what every other club has been doing for the last quarter of a century.
I just don't see a quick fix because I think a quick fix means getting rid of Woodward and getting an actual strategy and system around that in place...and that doesn't necesarily mean getting rid of Ole and replacing him with someone else. It means giving him a platform where you can actually judge what he's doing properly. Rather than judging him on the basis of expecting to compete at the top of the league, when he has a squad with 2 senior goalscorers in it (senior being a stretch...one of them is barely 22) and 1 fit midfielder, and the club just sits there twiddling its thumbs and sending out press releases moaning that the players it wants cost money. This basically it would seem requires Woodward to sack himself, which wont happen as he is clearly not the self aware type (see yearly press release where he bleats on about why we failed to do this and that as if it was some deliberate strategy on his part).
There’s a
chasmic difference between “a quick fix” and “it’ll take 3-4 years before we start to see progress. Just be patient. The lowest win percentage in a century is fine because Jesse Lingard, or something.”
Ole has two reliable midfielders, and the only reason he doesn't have 0 is because he got two players to perform a lot better than they did before he was here. He has 2 reliable forwards, and he only doesn't have 0 because he put faith in two players the previous manager wouldn't. The club have literally done NOTHING to help him. So for all his faults, I can't say he is failing. He is doing a job that is being made impossible for him.
“Not failing” is an incredibly low bar for a Manchester United manager, and a grace that would never be afforded to a non-former playing legend. Regardless of whether a record low win percentage with a side who finished 2nd within a mere two iPhone cycles, and deliberately sanctioned the sale of several squad players without replacing them, can be reasonably considered “not failing”, tbf...
Mourinho did fall out with people and become toxic, but he also told the club he needed better defenders, and the club signed Fred and then released a statement basically saying they disagreed with him, but then didn't replace him. That is incompetent. When there is incompetence at the top it will wear down whoever is working beneath it. It will wear down the manager and then that will eventually filter to the players, as happened with Mourinho, LVG, and as will happen, I suspect with Ole...unless the club get their finger out of their arse and put a strategy in place beyond Woodward playing football manager politics and pretending he isn't an idiot.
I agree absolutely. Woodward fecked Mourinho. But at the same time, he was weirdly also right? Because if we’d sold Pogba and Martial and bought Willian and Peresic, I doubt we’d be in a much better position!... Plus, the fact Jose’s early pre-meltdown tenure was a relative success, kinda proves the possibility of success under the right, suitable kind of good manager. Does it not? We finished 2nd and reached the final of every cup we entered bar one under the wrong manager... how is falling to “were a decade away from competing, accept it” in under 2 years anything but a fecking huge failure!?
Going back to Klopp...probably the closest you get to a great manager. Well we tried to get him. He met Woodward and was put off by the fact Woodward is an idiot ("disneyland for football"). He was smart enough to understand he wouldn't succeed here because the guy above him didn't know what they were doing. That tells you a lot about where the route of the problem is, and unfortunately it is not going to go away as Woodward can keep hiding behind whichever manager he puts in the firing line. Ole goes to Anfield and loses with a team of players that even Sir Alex would struggle to get a fighting performance out of...and it will be Ole who gets the bulk of the criticism and who there are calls to sack, even though he has only signed 3 players and actually gotten a lot of the ones he's been left with to perform a lot better than they were previously.
But it’s been a year now? We’re still losing 2 games a month with no discernible style of play!
It’s absolutely Woodward’s fault for being unable to recognise any of the many talented up and coming modern managers out there, by virtue of being an accounting gnome rather than a football man... but that doesn’t mean we should accept Ole as the best we can do. Surely, if anything, that’s the most exonerating pro-Woodward stance you could possible take? He’s relying on that take, in fact. He gains nothing by having to walk back his impulsive permanent appointment of a likeable novice. He’s more than happy to wait this out in the desperate deluded hope that the gambit will work out, and he can ultimately take the credit. And it’s bizzare just how many fans are champing at the bit to go along with this!
Replace him with say, the equivalent of Klopp. In a year's time Klopp II goes to Anfield with the same set of players, plus whichever other two or three Woodward fumbled his way to signing, minus the two or three who left due to getting fed up in the meantime, and the same thing happens.
Surely the equivalent of Klopp would manage to make us a great and competitive team again? Considering how the actual Klopp managed to do that with a club who hadnt won the league for 3 decades, were a perpetual punchline, finished below us when he was appointed, and below us again less than 2 years ago, how are we even entertaining the notion that the idea of even somewhat competiting with them again is some comically absurd fantasy!? We‘re the only side to take points off them this season! I’m even pretty sure we’ve beaten Klopp more than he’s beaten us in his tenure. Under three different managers! (citation needed) by all rights “the equivalent of Klopp” can only be an upgrade on these stats!
how have we normalised this absurd idea that the teams who’ve leap frogged us in a flash, are now so far ahead that we need to accept a couple of Ls a month and no discernibly obvious coaching as just simply where we are now... and will be for 3-4 years... because we also shouldn’t be overspending anymore either... so buying 3 British players a year on the slow road to ideologically pure progress, and keeping our fingers crossed for an unexpected away win at Spurs, is just who we are now. And you’re a bad bad fan to be so negative about it!
feck that! The right, progressive modern manager, backed in the same way we backed Jose and LVG, would get us competitive again by the back end of next season...
