We've always had huge investment available to all managers.
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
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Yeah but Fergie was playing a different game to the rest. I highly doubt we'd ever have seen us field the most expensive Prem team ever despite a big injury list, while he was our manager.
It's refreshing to see us finally press home the financial advantage we have over the rest.
We've always been big spenders continuously breaking transfer records with a solid spine of youth. For all our spending, we've had an unprecedented injury list (41 injuries if I'm right) and we've been fielding Blackett, Mcnair in defense. The 'most expensive Prem' team ever fielded is not helping us deal with our injury crisis, but astute management is.
Sorry to say, your post sounds like a subtle dig at our spending than being refreshed at how well we've been managing our squad despite of the other challenges.
I'd say plenty of prolific strikers never had pace to lose. Inzaghi being a personal favourite!
So really have to disagree. Reading of the game & making the right runs is what is really required to be a prolific striker.
Press conference today?
Yeah he's pissed off he won't be able to see his wife, kids and grandchildren this christmas, think he will get questions on it.
Not at all, I certainly don't feel any shame about spending big to build a squad so get over your own insecurity about it. It's just a pity it took the shock of last season for us to make it happen.
We'll need the big squad to help deal with Champions League football next season too, it's prob safe to say we're not done spending yet either.
I have no insecurity about spending or the lack of it. The point remains that our spending has little to do with our good run but good management, which is why this is being brought up in a thread for the manager.
Empire, The Clairvoyant
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Well it has certainly helped. Look at Fellaini, started the season as a back up player, got his chance when Herrera got injured and really took it. Despite what some of our fans say about him he once convinced us to spend £28m on him so he's obviously a far better player than most of our rivals have as back up. Same goes for Young, Valencia, Mata. I do agree that we should have signed a centre back in the Summer, it would have meant less chance we'd have to throw the 2 young lads in together in games, hopefully be taken care of in the Jan transfer window.
What does any of that have to do with good management? Let me put across a very simple question to you.
What do you think is the reason for our recent upturn in results? Astute management or our summer signings? The good people in this thread think that while the summer signings have helped, it's primarily due to astute management, as we're still playing pretty much an inexperienced defence and we're trying to balance a crippling set of injuries. I definitely agree with the stance of others, that we are here not because we managed to sign Herrera and Falcao, but mainly due to the fact that the new management team has put the wind back in our sails.
I don't think he needs a centre back, the injury crisis is freak in my opinion, yes we get injuries with defenders but not this bad, Evans has a good enough left foot so he is back up to Rojo and blackett is third choice, on the right hand side, Jones, Smalling, McNair, and then we have Carrick and Blind as emergency supplies, I think we are good to go.
I would like him to sign a second choice left back though unless he thinks James is up to the task next season.
Valencia looks like he could be trained to play as a right back although I am not convinced, when we dominate the ball he is fine but against better sides I'm not so sure, perhaps next season one of our youths might be promoted.
After Stoke City, Southampton away and Liverpool at home, I don't know about you but Ashely Young as left back and Valencia as right back does not give me confidence, nor does playing 3-5-2 against those sides but it might have to be done.
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Bit early to say something special, but they're not the right track.
Jumping on people for suggesting its not all our management now are we? He didn't even do that but i will.
It was good management to bring these players in for a start but without Di Maria and especially Blind we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are which by the way is on the same amount of points.
I don't see how anyone can argue its mainly LvG tactical nous that has won games and not the additions shoring us up. By far LvG's wisest move yet was to bring in Blind as we've all been screaming for backup to Carrick for years as we drop points without him.
His worst mistake is the ridiculous 352 which cost us points at the start.
We're pretty much playing the same formation. The only difference is the third centre back has become an anchor man in midfield. In fact, given that in our 3-5-2 the third centre half is expected to step out and in our 4-4-2 diamond the anchor man is expected to drop into the back four, in practice the two formations are identical at most times.
The formation was not the issue, the players' familiarity with it and with Van Gaal's demands and tactics (as well as their low confidence from the season before) was the issue.
Also, I think it would be wrong to say that Van Gaal has made no difference to our existing players. Valencia hit an accurate left footed cross field pass at the weekend. If that's not a sign of change and a growing belief, what is? Yes, the signings have helped but those signings have rarely been able to play together because of injuries. Who else would have been able to continue to bring the team on 41 injuries down? As we saw under Moyes the team does not simply manage itself.
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That may well be true. But it is inconvenient for this point that we just put in our best performance of the season by a distance and neither of those two really played a part in it - OK Di Maria was on for the start but he can hardly take credit for how well we played.
Yeah, in a weird way I was really pleased that Di Maria wasn't involved. In our early season flirtations with good form it looked as though he was single-handedly dragging us out of the mire. Which made me worried about being over-reliant on a single blockbuster signing. Really reassuring to see our best performance of the season with him more or less completely uninvolved.
Im not feeling this new enmity radiating off you Pogue. I think you want to be angry with me, but you cant, can you?
Don't disagree with any of that. Was just being lazy not expanding on my point, it was a serious of stupid decisions to adopt the formation at that time with that formation. It was rushed and causes issues.
He's improved or more importantly reinvigorated the confidence of several players for sure.
I do think the injuries is a bit of an excuse though. The CBs are all pretty equal so whilst they haven't been able to form a consistent pairing im not sure how much of a difference it would have made. Shaw and Rafael were huge blows but that's about it, as the poster above mentioned its shown the strength of our squad elsewhere that we've not really suffered from injuries outside of defence.
I'm just a big teddy bear at the end of the day.
You can't be that hairy.
Also most people referred to Blind as a utility player but he is not that, he is a fantastic number 2 to Carrick although he needs to improve his long pass, that has made a world of difference from Carrick.
Consistent centre back pairing is vital for success in my opinion, if Rojo is constantly playing with different players like he was then it is difficult for an understanding to develop and thus increases chances of conceding.
Rather than showing LvG up, the short experiment with 352 shows how good LvG really is.
His decision to use 352 at the start was of course mainly influenced by the success he had at WC, and he thought it would be a good fit for a team that needed to fit in RvP, Rooney and Mata into the same team in their best positions.
However, when it was clear that he didn't have the time to make it work, he quickly abandon it in favor of diamond, and various versions of 4-4-2 and trying out different players in different positions.
While the results didn't go our way initially, most of us here were able to see that the team's playing style and mentality has slowly shifted, and the only missing ingredient was the time for the team to gel and adapt to LvG's vision and style, or as he put it, the "#Philosophy".
The match against Hull is showing some semblance of his vision coming together (of course it also helped that Hull rolled over for us).
While it's true that having players of Di Maria's quality helps, one player doesn't make a team. Bear in mind that LvG also has to cope with one of the most disastrous season we had with regards to the no. of injuries to our first team. He is also presiding over a team low on confidence after the most disastrous season in recent memory.
Contrast this with Moyes - he managed a team fresh from walking the EPL, added a £27 million midfielder, and still managed to make the team play worse with every passing match. He stuck with the same style and tactics that brought him success at Everton. He stuck to it stubbornly rather than showing any tactical nouns by making adjustments or changes to the personnel he had at his disposal.
In keeping with the No Mega threads spirit we have decided to lock this monster.
In future all LvG related talk should be done in multiple threads preferably on a game by game or spell by spell basis.
In future all LvG related talk should be done in multiple threads preferably on a game by game or spell by spell basis.
Cina sucks.
Out after the lock.
Please create separate threads for post match LVG discussions, one for each match.
Discuss the Stoke match here please: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/lvg-2-1-vs-stoke-post-match-discussion.398906/
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