He said the league position is the most important, but that can be deceiving too, as he, Jose and Ten Hag proved. He also said it when United were in the quarterfinals for the FA Cup and the EL. I don't think either are cheap cups, and it wasn't the right thing to say at that point of the season.
Matic: "I arrived at United with the anger to win trophies like I had at Chelsea, but step by step I started to feel that trophies were not the focus"
- Thread starter Licha-Vidic
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In regards to your first line, it probably is just about true. After his first season he was comfortably more bad than good in each season. I do think part of it was the managers over-playing him so it wasn't all his fault, but still if we're rating his performances we have to call it as it is.
Even his first season was really only 50/50, where it was the most perfect sliding scale of performances over a season that I think I've ever seen a player have. Started brilliantly, dropped to good after a couple of months, dropped to decent around the turn of the year, dropped further after a few more months and was struggling quite a lot by the end.
In 18/19 he started the season utterly dreadfully. The only reason he wasn't the worst player in the team was because Lukaku was showing near record levels of shit-ness. Matic was quite good again for a couple of months after Ole took over, but then declined again and was average at best for the last few months.
19/20 he struggled all season bar about a month on either side of the Covid lockdown where he was good.
20/21 and 21/22 he was mostly poor, with the odd good 60 minutes every couple of weeks but anything more than that and he just couldn't handle it as the opposition ran rings around him.
Like I said, I do think a significant amount of his struggles was that the managers were playing him too much when he couldn't handle it anymore (Mourinho in particular basically played him every single minute of every single game). So I do wish we could have his time over and play him more suitably. If we'd done that I think he'd have been a hell of a lot better than he actually was.
Yes, agree with this. I just started a thread earlier on it being time for a Netflix documentary. I think it's a perfect time to bounce back and start moving things on and off the pitch back in the right direction.
I often feel the same about Mata, despite the fact he was with us eight and a half seasons while being with Chelsea for only two and a half. Love the guy, but at the same time it feels a bit strange to think of him as a Utd player.
That's exactly what happened. Since he is acting like an ass he doesn't deserve any sugarcoating, he was shite beyond December 2017. He is in no place to point the finger at other players.
Matic was decent to good for about 6 months here. He was awful more often than not. If Jose had gotten all his old Chelsea and Inter players here we'd have been decent for a season or two and then probaly stuck with 3/4 Casemiro situations
It's a load of nonsense. Ole was sacked anyway because ultimately, he proved he couldn't handle the job.
Winning say the FA Cup in 2020 or the Europa League in 2021 would have done him no harm and proved he could handle the big occasions. Given the improvements in 2020/2021, finishing that season with a Europa League triumph would have given the club a further lift. Who knows, maybe the following season would have been different? But no, the failure to beat a very ordinary Villareal side was probably a sign of things to come.
It's completely different to Ten Hag's Cup win. That was our best day since Fergie but deep down, we all knew Ten Hag's time wasn't far off ending. And ultimately, beating city in a cup final is never a bad thing.
It's more that it played into the narrative of his perceived weakness, that he was not good enough to get teams over the line and win trophies. Come the crunch games, we always came up short.
The way he phrased it was quite unique as well, like he specifically said a trophy wouldn't mean 'we were back', well certain trophies surely would? The media are such dicks around United, I don't know why our coaches ever give them anything. Just say we want to win every game blah blah blah and avoid all the drama.
I find this line of reasoning fairly absurd. We lost that final after an 11-round penalty shootout. If that shootout had gone the other way, which is almost completely a matter of pure chance, what exactly would that have shown? I'll tell you what: Nothing that the fact we got to the final already shows.
We had a better squad than VR and shouldn’t have needed penalties.
Unfortunately our attack just didn't click that day. From memory our midfield was well on top and we were fairly comfortable for most of the match, but we didn't really threaten them either. Ended up being mainly a stalemate.
Not single handed. He was following the orders of the Glazers to prioritize commerce over football.
And if we'd won on penalties, you would still argue this showed it wasn't good enough?
Self-serving wanker.
Matic was average for us. Certainly nowhere near good enough to talk about the club lacking ambition.
Matic was average for us. Certainly nowhere near good enough to talk about the club lacking ambition.
It definitely wasn’t good enough. He isn’t a good manager and won’t ever get another job at a big club
We also didn't do any single sub till the last few minutes of the ET. Masterclass by Ole.
Yeah. Be that as it may, point here is that it's ludicruous to base that judgment on the outcome of a single tight game. And you know as well as I do that if we'd won that shooutout, you wouldn't be using that game to argue your point.
That game is just one game in many that supports the point.
Given how the club has been run into the ground financially, it sounds strange to hear them talk about how it was all commercial, when Ineos have basically said that we're in a terrible commercial/financial position.
There was a bigger emphasis on sponsors, though I suspect it was more about them riding off the SAF years. While there is a bigger focus on football the narrative with Ineos has been just as big on the finance side of things. Amorim spoke about the media engagements early on and I think in some part it's just about United being a huge club.
There was a bigger emphasis on sponsors, though I suspect it was more about them riding off the SAF years. While there is a bigger focus on football the narrative with Ineos has been just as big on the finance side of things. Amorim spoke about the media engagements early on and I think in some part it's just about United being a huge club.
It was more than that. Woodward would renew the contracts of over the hill players to boost their balance sheet value. He didn't care for the footballing side as long as we were a viable champions league team.
That is true - I had erased those sort of things from my memory !
And just to add to that, its probably what Matic eluded to when he said he learned the club wasn't really about winning things. The year after we finished 2nd and secured our CL football, Woodward felt comfortable and we just got Fred, a youth project in Dalot (?) and Lee Grant
I used to fall out with united fans a lot because of this. “Woodward doesnt pick the team” I’d get when our teams would start losing momentum cause top 4 was the target. “Lots of money is being spent” I’d hear when I tried to argue that it wasn’t about success, it was doing just enough and compensating for Woodward’s incompetency.
Been in and out of some forums. Even fell out with a lot of posters in this forum and closed my account many years ago.
I didn’t honestly think it would take over a decade for the majority of fans to catctup but here we are, better late then never I guess.
Wonder if he preferred the 70k a week at Chelsea or 120k a week at United but had to endorse a few products.
Regarding the statements in the initial post similar things have been said by many former players and managers of Man Utd. I personally think they should be applauded. I remember Lahm in his prime really sticking his neck out demanding reinforcements or he would feck off to Guardiolas Barcelona around 2008/2009. Would have replaced Abidal before Jordi Alba joined. I think he got a fine but ultimately the board did splash money on Robben, Mario Gomez, Olic, Tymoschuck and more.
Todays Bayern face big problems as well and the board still has demanded the Sporting Director to cut down costs, essentially downgrade the squad. Unfortunately someone like Musiala or Kane hasn't demanded reinforcements, those two are probably the only two indispensables that could get away with it (Neuer & Müller too old). I vaguely recall Kimmich doing something similar a while back but I think even he lacks the standing at the moment.
In United terms, who could do it at the moment? Perhaps Bruno Fernandes. Apart from him I suppose they are all replaceable.
Todays Bayern face big problems as well and the board still has demanded the Sporting Director to cut down costs, essentially downgrade the squad. Unfortunately someone like Musiala or Kane hasn't demanded reinforcements, those two are probably the only two indispensables that could get away with it (Neuer & Müller too old). I vaguely recall Kimmich doing something similar a while back but I think even he lacks the standing at the moment.
In United terms, who could do it at the moment? Perhaps Bruno Fernandes. Apart from him I suppose they are all replaceable.
We had Rooney do it in 2010 but we continued to spout the infamous “no value in the market rhetoric”.
I believe it is partiality the reason we still struggle now because rather than get reinforcements in when you are negotiating from a position of strength. we have been trying to buy when everybody knows we’re desperate.
Rooney in 2010 is exactly the type that could do it and get away with it. Absolute world class, ≈ 24 years old, English and you already lost Ronaldo. You did bring in Berbatov and RvP around that time as I recall it, also Kagawa and Carrick. Also already had Nani, Valencia was decent (no Ronaldo replacement but then that is an impossible task). In hindsight probably should have got Bale and Modric for Ronaldo and Scholes replacements. And yeah, Sneijder of course. Criminal that Inter got him for scraps and then Galatasaray.
TV coverage loved zooming over to him for each of Lyon goal last night but somehow didn't bother with him once United turned things around to win 5-4.
Bit like everyone who sided with him has decided to stay away from this thread after Matic played a grand total of 0 minutes and ended up on the losing side.
I like Matic but thought he acted like a right tit there.
There was no need to get so personal after such a nothing comment from Onana.
There was no need to get so personal after such a nothing comment from Onana.
Fergie didn't really play with traditional no. 10 so didn't really see Sneijders place in the starting line up with Rooney and Berba around. Yes we did sign Kagawa in 2012 but he was often shifted around both flanks.
Was a big mistake to play Pogba as pivot after him terrorizing Roma's defence in SF as LW also IIRC Marcus and Fred werent fit enough to start, Fred started from the bench as should Marcus, imagine him would be far more effective against tiring legs of Villareal defenders.
Worst part of that policy is that the players were getting complacent. They can always drop their level or spent years injured and keep the prestige as Man United player knowning it was the managers that take the brunt of failures. Remember when out of sudden the club announced the 3 years contract extension for Eric Baily in 2021? The managers didn't rate him, spent last 3 years injured and got rewarded with new contract. INSANE.
That’s more down to bad decisions in player recruitment and contract renewals.
The irony is the club is where they are at because they kept signing players like Matic. No resale value or very hard to sell, had won trophies so not vey hungry and on a huge salary. That strained the clubs financial and we basically became a retirement home for them.
I agree. For all the talk about the club being in a horrible financial position, it still makes huge sums of money. So much of it has been wasted on players that it could take years to get it off the books but I don't see why we couldn't still be one of the richest clubs in the world in a few years.
We are a billion in debt and are about to spend another 2 billion on a new stadium we cant really afford
The stadium will pay for itself. Most of the rest of the debt is on Red Football LTD.