More like a month or two ago
Michael Carrick - Head Coach for the remainder of the season
- Thread starter Bastian
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In the latest edition of the United Hour Podcast, we interview Duncan Drasdo of MUST - covering ticket prices, new stadium, INEOS and what fans should be demanding from our club.
Also, due to technical issues we couldn't put a notice up for the previous episode which was about the game against Bournemouth and other stuff. If you'd like to listen to it, click here.
Making the decision makers job a lot easier with this run. Been brilliant since he got the job.
Early days, but going great for Carrick going by the results so far.
Lovely to look forward to our games again. Keep it coming.
If you want to get hung up on ball possession stats as the only barometer of our performances, then knock yourself out. But we were the better team in all four games and deserved winners.
Beat West Ham on Tuesday and that poor lad can finally cut his hair
Yep and we were told no one could do a better job with these players
Carrick himself will shave it.
And Fergie didn't start in 12/13. He built his legacy.
They're not the barometer of our performances. But they are part of a clear pattern in our performances.
As a top side, you are expected to have more of the ball. And we have tended to struggle in games where we have more of the ball. Prior to this season, but this season especially:
If how well we manage possession and turn it into advantage isn't something you judge a potential manager on, then that's exceptionally stupid.
Carrick hasn't yet had the chance to show us he can get us consistently keeping the ball and turning it into wins, so it's no criticism of him. But that's something we should see across the season. If we don't, it's a problem for him getting the job.
Keep this up and we have to give him the job
We were told even SAF couldn’t, so Carrick must be great!
We haven’t been a top side for a while, sorry to break that news to you. In any case, you’re missing the very obvious point of us being the better team in each of the four consecutive wins we’ve had. If that isn’t enough for you, well, that must be a pretty miserable existence in all honesty.
I'm delighted with the wins, and performances across the games.
But obviously that's not enough to make me think someone should be appointed manager, because I'm not braindead.
Fergie never cared for "have more of the ball" and often didn't. And yet no premier league team has ever come to the greatness of his teams.
This whole "ball posession" obsession is foreign to United and largely bullshit
We are absolutely menacing attacking side under Carrick, and we have won every single game. Keep it up and I cannot care less about posession or any other bullshit stats
Some of those one touch passing pattens today were delightful. You can tell the players are playing with confidence. Early days, but this is the most I've enjoyed watching United in years. I can't wait until our next game!
It depends where abouts on the pitch you do it. Done well, 09 Barca would have a lot of the ball just around your penalty area. It was oppressive, and often good to watch if you weren’t on the receiving end of it.
Done badly as we have tried to do, it’s 3 centre halves and a DM passing it amongst themselves, slowly, for 80+ minutes.
With all due respect, that's a load of shite.
We were consistently one of the top teams for average possession in league throughout SAF's time here. Because even when they're not super posssession-focused in terms of approach, the best teams inevitably tend to have more of the ball anyway. Because they're better at keeping it than weaker teams, and better at winning it back than weaker teams.
Or you can just take SAF's own word for it, as reported by Rene Meulensteen:
But if we hit 60% possession, that would be a completely different story
Obviously, yes.
The point is trying to project how good Carrick can make us going forward. And we know the best teams tend to dominate possession. So wins where we dominate opponents on the ball are obviously more promising than wins where our opponents have more of the ball. Especially when winning when we have a lot of the ball is something we've particularly struggled with. It's absolutely bizarre that you would argue otherwise.
I can, we were shit last year and decent this
Only Arsenal, City and Chelsea have a better goal difference than us too!
For what it’s worth, there isn’t another manager in the world that would be doing better so far than this since he came in.
People want to nit pick non stop and try to find reasons that he’s not good enough, and maybe we fall off in the run in, but so far it’s as good of an improvement as we could have possibly hoped for.
People want to nit pick non stop and try to find reasons that he’s not good enough, and maybe we fall off in the run in, but so far it’s as good of an improvement as we could have possibly hoped for.
The big plus about today was that United looked like they were playing against 10 men.
When that opportunity arises, then you just need to be professional and do a job...something the players/coaches struggled with earlier in the season.
When that opportunity arises, then you just need to be professional and do a job...something the players/coaches struggled with earlier in the season.
Night and day difference in approach and mindset from when Everton were down a man at Old Trafford a few weeks back
Yep. It was only really a matter of getting the second goal to kill the game, because they never really looked like turning it around. We were very comfortable.
Football is more complex than the basic concept of who has the ball more. If we’re winning games but getting battered by the opposition, then you would have a point. But that isn’t the case, far from it.
If you don’t think he has what it takes in the long term then fair enough, that’s your view. But he couldn’t really have done any better these last four games, and it comes across like that is a tough pill for you to swallow.
Has to pick up a few manager of the month awards at this rate
I didn't say that, at all.
Between pre-emptively accusing people who disagree with you of bias, saying I'm miserable for not being convinced by four results, and now constructing strawman arguments to suggest I'm unhappy with Carrick so far, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder for some weird reason. Or you're not actually reading the posts you're responding to. So again, I'm happy to end this repetitive conversation here.
Long way to go for Carrick, but it’s hard not to be romantic about the possibilities. Delighted for him and the squad, even if the jury’s out on the future.
Everything you’ve said is suggestive of not thinking the performances have been strong enough, hence the tangent of possession stats. So there’s no strawmen here I’m afraid.
This is the best we’ve looked since fergie left.
We had more possession against the large majority of teams under Fergie. Other than the teams who were competing with us for the title, we generally dominated games and forced most of the play ourselves.
Us under Fergie, Liverpool under Klopp, Real Madrid under most managers...none are focused on having possession for possessions sake. But all tend to have higher possession most of the time partly as a result of having better players, and partly as a strategy due to more possession generally giving you more control, the ability to set the tempo, and therefore better chances to win the game. The majority of people who want us to get more possession and control games want us to get back to that. Not the type of possession we had under LVG and to a lesser extent other managers since where it was a lot of pointless passing around the back, or even Pep-style football where it's just utterly suffocating possession.
Other than maybe Atletico I can't think of any other top team who has had consistent success without controlling the ball and being able to set the tempo most of the time. And people regularly bemoan Atletico's playstyle for how defensive and boring it is considering the quality of the players they've often had.
The development that we should be aiming for over the next couple of years is to improve the amount of control we have in games (and possession, while not the only aspect of that, is a big part), and improving our effectiveness with what we do with that possession. That is generally the recipe for consistent success.