He had no control over the transfers at Spurs, it was all Daniel Levy
MNF with Pochettino
- Thread starter keithsingleton
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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.
Why is this still getting bumped? I wonder.
What will be the narrative if we were to sign Poch but there wasn't any improvement from this team?
Exactly. I can't wait to see what the narrative will be if we were to sign Poch but the signing doesn't come with the expected results/improvement.
Great post. Thank you for the data. This is probably why Poch has been out of job for a while and no big club wants him. If you want to win big silverware you'd need someone good against the big teams. I always wonder why. Since he seems to be hyped through the roof here.
Anyway, imo if Ole gets the sack he'll very likely become our new manager. He has a good record of regularly getting top 4 with a tight budget. Just perfect for Ed and the Glazers I think.
Regularly with Erikson, kane and Alli all bang in form. Once the form dipped he was gone.
Should have kept LVG then. His stats against big teams were good as if that's only thing that ever matters.
Ask me again when/ if he's stays as long as Poch did. Ole only needs around another 200 games.
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you could accuse Pep of some of that - everywhere he's been!
You honestly think Pep doesn’t get his teams playing attractive football when on form? Highly disagree personally
Please will people stop mentioning this
What has he done to convince anyone he would be a good DOF other than not be a good enough coach for united?
Its hard to know who is responsible for signings at utd but the signings under his tenure have been average to poor so far
Exactly the obvious criticism of ole is how poor we look when teams sit back e.g. outside of top 6
I agree that it makes no sense to appoint Ole as DOF, but disagree about his signings. I think the squad is vastly superior to what it was when he took over. Sanchez, Lukaku, Smalling, Darmian, Pereira, all gone. Bruno, VDB, Telles, Maguire, AWB all look like good signings although the team is performing badly. If we get a DOF, it needs to be someone who is a specialist at the job.
Pep's football isn't what made it boring, it was the 1 sided nature. I couldn't sit through Barcelona games at times as it was just pass x100 then get a shot away, rinse and repeat.
i'd still prefer that than park the bus football any day though.
Fair enough
Obviously there are some signings who havent been around long enough to judge. In terms of the previous ones i think dan james clearly isnt good enough but also query whether awb and maguire were good signings on the basis of them being overpriced and not necessarily the right type of player for the team (e.g. too slow, not good enough technically)
Interesting statistics.
The thing with Poch is that most here only have a blinkered view of him associated with his best Spurs team (circa 2016) and that he would be able to replicate it here without many of the necessary ingredients.
The genuine question I’d ask is, how much better were the top 6 during Poch’s peak?
The fact that Leicester were able to win the league answers that one
i was talking about often having no real competition: in his day only two sides in Spain; in Germany nothing at all to threaten bayern
Pochettino must be praying he gets a call in the next day or two.
That Leicester title winning team was a really good team with some world class players. I don't think they get the credit they deserve because at the end of the day they are just 'Leicester'.
Kante, Mahrez & Vardy were the three key players but drove on others around them like Drinkwater, Huth & Morgan to play above their level
Joel and Avram are apparently fans, which is why those two are actually involved in the running of the club while the others have nothing to do with it. The question is how involved? Enough that they are actually influencing football decisions (there were rumours that it was one of those that refused to sell Martial when Mourinho wanted to swap him with Peresic...not necessarily a bad decision), or just more on the business side of things?
I would assume Arsenal were not included in the top 6 for last seasons stats seeing as they finished 8th.Where the hell are those Ole vs the other big 6 stats coming from?
In the Prem vs Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, City and Spurs under Ole:
Played 18, won 6, drawn 6, lost 6. 24 points out of a possible 54. 33% win.
I would also assume those graphs aren't including this seasons defeats to Spurs and Arsenal (as they were probably made before the season started and this season obviously hasn't finished yet) but i imagine your numbers include both?
Going into this season Solskjaer's record against the top 6 * in all competitions was P21, W12, D4, L5 57.1% win ratio
League only stats vs the Top 6 * are P15, W8, D4, L3 53.3% win ratio,
* (the top 6 teams as they finished in the league table)
So the more pertinent question would have to be where you managed to get a 33% win ratio from?
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Solskjaer has played Spurs 4 times as United manager. Winning 2, drawing 1 and losing 1.
Is that really the worst record?
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I think people forget how shit Spurs were before Poch, they had 1 top 4 finish in the PL era before he joined and had just completely spunked all their Modric and Bale cash on crap. Dele was an unknown from MKdons and Kane had just come back from multiple mediocre loans.
The first squad he put out on his Spurs debut was laughable, he built a decent squad on peanuts up against sides spending hundreds of millions on transfers. United and City spent 500m during Poch‘ time at Spurs and Chelsea spent similar they were or should have been in a much better position to challenge yet Poch consistently finished top 4.
Capou and Bentaleb was his midfield pairing with Adebayor up front and Lennon on the wing. Kaboul and Kyle Naughton at the back. They had a few good players in Lloris, Eriksen etc but they were young players new to the PL not the established players they are today.
The first squad he put out on his Spurs debut was laughable, he built a decent squad on peanuts up against sides spending hundreds of millions on transfers. United and City spent 500m during Poch‘ time at Spurs and Chelsea spent similar they were or should have been in a much better position to challenge yet Poch consistently finished top 4.
Capou and Bentaleb was his midfield pairing with Adebayor up front and Lennon on the wing. Kaboul and Kyle Naughton at the back. They had a few good players in Lloris, Eriksen etc but they were young players new to the PL not the established players they are today.
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I couldn't care less about top 6 results at this stage, that is a hurdle to cross when you become title challengers and we are years away from that. The other 28 games of the season is where we have struggled under Ole, stupid losses to Huddersfield, Newcastle, Palace, West Ham, Brighton ... the list can go on. I wonder what Poch's record against the other 14 is versus Ole? This was the issue with Liverpool when Klopp took over, stupid defeats. He fixed the foundations, built a fear factor and then started to beat the top 6 on a regular basis. Why run when we cannot even walk. I am worrying that we will get smashed by Everton, i know they have a new manager but our squad cost 500 million plus. We should be beating the lower teams (no disrespect to them) and consistently.
Yeah Ole needs to make a clean break away from the club rather than just get moved to a DOF
Well, there are many ways to see progress. Winnings titiles, scoring goals, not letting in goals, more points etc. Its the overall picture that is important.
I dont think my point is superficial or lazy at all, I think we've seen progress and I think we'll continue to see more in time.
As I've said countless times, we have some exciting players, many are young and talented, but we lack leaders and world class players. I don't think any managers would win anything with this current lot, and I dont think alot of managers would take much more points either. We need more signings who actually delivers.
I simply dont think we have the resources to compete at the highest levels with the current owners. 80/100M budget buys you 2/3 players and that aint enough in this team.
I'm not expecting league titles at the moment. I am expecting better football, something that will convince me that bringing in better players will really take us where we want to be. I'm not seeing that. We don't need new players to complete us. We need them to carry us.
My problem with the call for WC players is that if that's the way it worked, there would be no point in going on the pitch and playing. Just look who spent the most money and bought the best players on paper, and give them the wins and the trophies.
You don't just get those WC players only by signing them when they are on that level, especially when you don't have a blank cheque. You get them when they are not at the top and develop them. You can't make every signing an AWB, Maguire, Sancho and Fernandes type cost.
Bingo. The English culture is still very much seeped into this mentality of attributing far greater agency to 'the manager' than it's warranted. You'll see it with fans, but it's the same with journalists who pull out these 'transfers record' stats (because it requires the most perfunctory analysis), and they will say "let's look at his transfer record" when they are talking about someone working at Southampton or Brighton, where at best we have no clue who's making the decisions and at worst it's common knowledge that it's not the manager. All the while, the same people will constantly clamor for more directors of football.
In this case, we know a fair bit about who's making the decisions. Pochettino has lamented his lack of involvement in the whole process saying that it's the chairman who makes the signings. He can put forward a name , and that name will be considered and he's one of 3 people who do that. That was the setup at spurs. So he's got 33% (perhaps less) of input into what kind of names get on the list, but then which players from the list are signed is down to Levy and is hugely dependent on the financial factors of the deal.
Any analysis of his success, or lack of thereof, then at spurs, should not be based on his transfer record because that is just errant nonsense.
I like him, I think he did a great job at spurs (considering the resources available), but we have a very specific setup here. We have a Ferguson shaped hole, and Sir Alex fought desperately to win for the manager of Manchester United the sort of power and agency that is often wrongly assumed in every other case. Our guy, has to have transfer nous, the way things are being run currently. The manager cannot leave things to other people, hoping some months long conversation where a name was mentioned might bear fruit one of these days. He has to be hands on. We have no idea if Pochettino can do this.
Hahaha. Ya thats one way of looking at it.
Not every billlionaire spends a lot no. 40 million divided by 6 is less than 7 million. 7 million as a billionaire is chump change. If you'd had 100k in the bank it would mean you taking a dividend of 700 pounds. It's not a lot of money. They give comfortably more away to charity.