Yup, bloated squad year in year out and most of them shouldnt be at United anymore. Ole wants Lingard to stay, why? Mata will have a role at the club, fine, but whats the purpose of him being in the squad. We need a new, young version of Matić? Great go and buy one instead of keeping actual Matić. Wont even mention Jones, I'm said cause of his injuries and the way his career has paned out but he still at United which is really, really strange. But maybe Jones situation isn't for this thread.
Neville - ‘’no style of play’’
- Thread starter IrishRedDevil
- Start date
I love Ole, but this is becoming every game, we look lost in possession, especially against a low block which most teams have worked out we have absolutely no answer for..
goals always come out of nowhere.. I don’t know how many times I can watch those floaty balls in to the area where 4 defenders are sat waiting for it.. it seems mindless and desperate..
goals always come out of nowhere.. I don’t know how many times I can watch those floaty balls in to the area where 4 defenders are sat waiting for it.. it seems mindless and desperate..
Anyone who thinks that Ole will hold onto his Job if we don't win trophies this season is living in dreamland.
If he doesn't address the midfield in January and bring in a top holding midfielder we will not be challenging for any honours and he will be sacked.
If he doesn't address the midfield in January and bring in a top holding midfielder we will not be challenging for any honours and he will be sacked.
That's all well and good and I had faith in him but after 3 years its pretty strange we're still speaking about lack of cohesion, lack of style and slow starts to the game. Ok some see a style and what is he trying to do and yes I think he became better since he took the job but good enough overall? It's a nigh time to learn how to play against low block cause it has been a problem for years. I hope he'll get us over the line this year I just dont see it.
For a start I'm fearing a Villareal game. And even if we win that one I'll fear the next one cause you never know how we'll play and unfortunately we play crap now more often than not.
Good post
If his plan was to play counter attack then that further shows his ineptitude. In the Premier League at least half the sides we face will sit deep and compact so there is little opportunity for counter attack in those games, which in turn results in too many draws and smash and grab losses.
We counter attack when we play the better sides that are more adventurous which is why we have a good record against those sides, it suits us. The issue is that Ole seems incapable of devising a system that can break the low block with regularity. We had Pogba, Ronaldo, Greenwood, Bruno and Cavani against Aston Villa and we failed to create a single big chance!
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I think this is where most of us are, willing him to fix the issues and mistakes we know he and the players are routinely making.
Our squad is excellent so we'll win most games this season but if we keep seeing the same mistakes then criticism will rightly increase each time.
I can only see drastic changes coming from Ole deciding on a new formation or getting a new coach in though.
Football teams evolve though. A solid defensive right-back was exactly what the team needed when we signed AWB, and I'm sure they've spent a lot of time and energy working on making him more effective in the final third. Trippier might have been a better solution now than he was 2 seasons ago.
I'm sure the majority of our spending is going to go in the midfield area for the next window or two. I would always prefer that we wait for the right player rather than take punts on ones that we aren't sure about. Failed signings is mainly what got us into this mess in the first place.
The Europa League final suggested to me Ole has reached his limit. Putting Ronaldo into that team isn't going to make much difference when they couldn't manage more than 1 shot on target in 2 hours against a middle of the road side and then having absolutely no Plan B, not using any subs despite how bad it was. The stubborn refusal to strengthen the centre of midfield is on Ole and banging on about there being no value or options isn't good enough. I don't see Ole being sacked any time soon so I just hope we can cling on to the leaders in the league until Christmas and see what January brings.
Not sure signing a 50m right back with the idea he'd only have a two year shelf life is much of a viable strategy.
I think when Ole came in he was told that the squad would not be revamped wholesale, and he would be able to make a few signings at a time to change it. So, in the beginning, he basically looked at what he had, a Mourinho team, and patched it up around the edges. Wan-Bissaka and Maguire are never going to be the best for front foot football: The former isn't good enough as a footballer, the latter is too slow to play too high of a back line. But you can see the logic in buying them if you're thinking: 'My job is to get the best out of the squad as it stands.' The Mourinho team was built for counter attacks. Ole's task initially was just come in and do Mourinho stuff's but do it better.
As you say, fundamentally, the team hasn't evolved that far from how Mourinho left it. We're still much more comfortable countering. But Ole has slowly tried to change things and its in the changes that he has problems. Because as he moves away from the counter attacking style that suits most of our defence and midfield, it exposes their limitations on the ball and acts a handbrake for evolving the team more dramatically.
That's why I think, ultimately, Ole go down the Mourinho route tactically. This idea of slowly developing into something different has been blown out of the water. Now he's got Ronaldo people expect more. Ronaldo himself will expect more. Ole won't survive playing halfway house. So now I expect us to try and be more what we were 12-18 months ago. Just with the added cutting edge Ronaldo and Rashford will bring to it. While maybe trying to snatch wins 1-0 with set pieces against the lesser sides.
As I’ve said on a few occasions, this is a make or break season for Ole, but whether he succeeds or not we will all owe him some gratitude if he goes this season, he has put the club in the best position it has been in for years.
Next manager would likely be more elite than we could have hoped to attract three years ago and be set up for success.
Surely you don't believe this. You think Ole spent 130 mil on a CB and a RB when he was told he could not make too many changes!
And then he decided, why not further hamstrung myself to never be comfortable on the ball by not pursuing any proper midfielders?
No matter how poor we may think Maguire and AWB may be in their ability on the ball, there's no way we are so poor only because of those 2 players.
He has the players to play a much different style. He just doesn't know how to implement that. That's the crux of the matter no matter how much we try to wrap it in a different context/reason.
We've already decided Mourinho isn't good enough and his style of football isn't the type we want at OT. So how is it acceptable that 3 years in, a King's ransom spent, we will revert back to the football that got his predecessor sacked?
This has been very clear for a long time already. It's like roller-coaster ride for the last 3 years.
We can have winning streaks usually coincide with one or two of these players on fire Bruno, Pogba, Greenwood or Rashford producing moments of individual brilliance. And we will revert back to disjointed football losing or drawing games against minor teams.
Don't let me started with our style of play, there are many games we were outplayed by teams like Wolves, Southampton, West Ham, Young Boys.
We can have winning streaks usually coincide with one or two of these players on fire Bruno, Pogba, Greenwood or Rashford producing moments of individual brilliance. And we will revert back to disjointed football losing or drawing games against minor teams.
Don't let me started with our style of play, there are many games we were outplayed by teams like Wolves, Southampton, West Ham, Young Boys.
This needs a like!
Very well said.
Honestly strange that people expect Neville to say more than this. I think he has said as much as anyone can reasonably be expected to say about a team managed by his ex team mates and probably still mates generally.
Its unrealistic to assume Neville will switch off from that perspective and for that reason Neville isn't the one to ask for an independent assessment.
In fact you could argue any ex footballer aside from the most outspoken will only say so much regarding sacking other ex players as there should be a respect between others in the profession and some like Neville and Keane have been there tried it and not done well themselves.
Being a football manager is undoubtedly a hard job. It's easy to talk in hindsight and from a Championship Manager point of view, but there must be a reason very few managers make decisions that fans would!
Damned if you do damned if you don't unless you win! Ole changed almost the whole team against West Ham and it didn't work out, but there were plenty of shots that could have changed the game and a pen that should have been given. Any slight tweak there and suddenly it looks a great decision.
Had he gone for a blend the question would be why wasn't Maguire/ Fernandes/ Ronaldo rested and even if that question didn't come this early in the season it would come later when these players are knackered and we ask on hindsight why weren't they rested.
Then there is the penalty example. Bruno with the best stats misses a pen and tons say why didn't Ronaldo take it. If Ronaldo took it and missed it would be why didn't Bruno with the best stats take it.
Some of the imbalance of comments from fans generally show a real lack of intellectual reasoning.
Pogba cannot play midfield general though.
I agree with everything else you say though, it's just not good enough. What you have described Ole is trying to do is paper thin in terms of bringing a style of play/football direction. It's the bare minimum that even relegation teams attempt better.
I'm not sure I agree with this. You can't implement a style of play that is your ideology if the players don't have the capability to follow that.
I don't think we can say with any degree of certainty that Ole wants a double pivot as his style of play. I think he does this because he knows the capabilities and its worked well for him as a whole. I think he hasn't prioritised changing it because he has probably taken the view a solid defence wins titles, I.e. you can't score if you can't beat the defence. On the flip of that if you score more you'll win, hence Sancho and Ronaldo.
There have been enough rumours to suggest a midfielder is still on the list, but overlooked in Ole weighing up priorities. To some extent it makes sense, but Fred has dropped form and McTominay is not quite developing as well as required.
The fact Ole was so keen to keep VdB suggests Ole has ideas of what he wants to achieve, but can't currently do it.
As I say this im convincing myself Ole needs more time, but the bit that keeps me from wanting to give it is because you can't always have the best squad for every position and Ole could have swapped tools like Lingard out and a DM in.
What SAF did phenomenally well was to make it work regardless of what he had. He'd go out of the box if he had to. We had the Da Silva twins in midfield, P Neville, O'Shea, Giggs, Beckham and the list goes on.
SAF didn't just persist with a midfield not working, he'd try something different until he could get the resource he needed. Ironically it could be these other players that have meant Ole isn't prioritising midfield.
Ole saw SAF make it work by focusing on CBs, CFs and wingers. The problem is the game has moved on and the midfield is the engine of the team more than ever. The game doesn't live on the wings the way it used to.
This is obvious, but feels like the beginning of the end when those who have protected Ole in the media start to say it. First Rio calling out the crap and now Gary.
Looking at the fixture list, I don't think Ole can string enough results together to get out of this one.
Looking at the fixture list, I don't think Ole can string enough results together to get out of this one.
We had the best, most combative midfielders in the league for the majority of Ferguson's tenure. Roy Keane and Scholes have the renowned they do because of how they enabled us to get a foothold on the game and kill the opposition's lustre. The last great midfield partnership we had, with Scholes and Carrick was more about velvet glove, but was still the cornerstone of enabling the rest of the side to function.
Ole neglecting midfield is a critical error if he's trying emulate SAF, as our engine was always what made us the force we were.
I would say leaders from the perspective of the physical battle. We lost the physical battle a lot in that game and some of that was down to some of our players going down too easily.
Bruno is a big culprit of this, its evident from fouls given and not given that referee's are forming an opinion on Bruno going down too easily easily aren't giving those fouls. This results in refs putting the whistle away in general and our games becoming physical contests. Against Villa we simply did not stand up against.
In general, I think our approach to that game left a whole lot to be desired, our concentration and attention wasn't there at the start and we just couldn't wrestle it back when Villa got on top.
The football didn't get Mourinho sacked. The Board would not care if we played 5-4-1 as long as we won matches.
What got Mourinho sacked is his obvious desire to burn the whole place down to get a pay out. The Glazers dont even watch football. Ed Woodward grew up watching Rugby. I'm sure none of them would've had any issue with Mourinho continuing to have 30 per cent possession in games and eek out 2-1s, if his personality hadn't ground them down.
Sadly, I agree with you. Which is a big problem since United have been so reluctant to let him go.
When it became apparent that United would not build its midfield around Pogba we should've sold him.
Honestly, personally, I don't really like what Ole is trying to do.
For me your double pivot in a 4-2-3-1 should look like what Bayern have: Kimmich as the footballing defensive midfielder, Kimmich I think has played an obsence amount of forward passes already this season. I'm sure one of the stats caftards will back that up. With a Gortezka prowling around midfield alongside him and getting forward and back with energy. Its what Madrid had with Khedira and Xabi Alonso. For me that's what offers the most balance. Playing Pogba in a middle two is always going to be a bit off because of what he likes to do on a pitch, and, also, what he thrives at. Yes, Pogba has some of the best long passing in the game. However, I don't think he's ever going to be comfortable doing a Paul Scholes tribute act for United.
The problem with our squad is that its a bit like the result of cooking with a child and asking them to make the tastiest thing they can think of: They might throw together a bunch of stuff that individually might be very nice. However, all together in the same pot taste horrible because no thought is given to how the flavours need to come together into something cohesive.
But, for me, there's a big difference between not really liking what Ole is trying to do and saying he has absolutely zero plan to do something.
He clearly does have an idea of what he wants to move the team towards. However, for me, 4-2-3-1 should look like what Bayern does.
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At our peak powers you are undoubtedly correct. Our absolute best years had the midfield spot on as well, but there were transition years where SAF still found a way to be competitive and sometimes it was just to give players a rest or cover injuries.
I dont think anyone including Ole would believe we shouldn't get better in midfield, but we don't have the stars there now and have to wait to Jan at least to make any more changes so we are where we are and hence the need to find a way and try something different if cant rely on McFred.
How the feck can we be in our 4th season with Ole and still have no style of play. Hed be sacked twice by now with any other club.
Or 8 times at Real or Chelsea...
I'd bet my house Fergsuon would win the league with this current set of players, including Fred and McTominay. They're both good players being used in the wrong way. We won the league with significantly less talented players in there in the past.
I think we have a style of play....counter at speed. The problem is we need teams to commit for that to work and against a low block our style is keep passing and shooting and hoping for something good to happen.
What we are missing is a high tempo. When we go a goal behind everything happens faster and we have more interchange and quick passing which opens up avenues, but for some reason we need the kick in the arse for it to happen.
Last year this tempo change saved our arses, but this year we've not had that luck. Oles luck is running out and we need something different.
I think we are also missing Rashfords counter attacking energy for balance or Dan James. James was not a great player, but there were times he would give us speed in the counter. It was definitely right to get rid of him, but it does show we need to change play styles as we can't do what we did last year as well as we did and instead need to utilise the talent we have which is so much better in other ways.
We don't have a style. When teams sit deep there's no style. Even without that, Pogba is put left but goes middle, Greenwood is right and goes middle, Ronaldo finds space around them, Bruno freestyles.
Thats not a style, thats chaos.
Worth emphasising that it's the performances that are the problem, not the most recent result.
In other words we're still just one point off first place, we could have beaten Villa performing as we did, we should expect to beat Villareal, we could still go on to finish well in the league despite playing as we do and we could still have a run in the CL playing as we do. We did manage to finish second like this, after all. Even within full seasons there's enough room in terms of variance for teams to overperform/underperform on their performance levels.
It's just that over a long run the performances will sap results to an unacceptable degree. But that would have been the case if we'd beaten Villa and West Ham too. Just as improving performances would still exist even with some bad results.
People overreact to short term results (whether positive or negative) too much and underlying trends too little. That's partly why it's taken so long for this sort of criticism of the way we play from the likes of Neville. It's also why some people were claiming that we were on a better track than Liverpool at the end of 17/18 even though they were showing more improvement in how they actually played compared to us.
In other words we're still just one point off first place, we could have beaten Villa performing as we did, we should expect to beat Villareal, we could still go on to finish well in the league despite playing as we do and we could still have a run in the CL playing as we do. We did manage to finish second like this, after all. Even within full seasons there's enough room in terms of variance for teams to overperform/underperform on their performance levels.
It's just that over a long run the performances will sap results to an unacceptable degree. But that would have been the case if we'd beaten Villa and West Ham too. Just as improving performances would still exist even with some bad results.
People overreact to short term results (whether positive or negative) too much and underlying trends too little. That's partly why it's taken so long for this sort of criticism of the way we play from the likes of Neville. It's also why some people were claiming that we were on a better track than Liverpool at the end of 17/18 even though they were showing more improvement in how they actually played compared to us.
But the midfield is how it is because of the manager's decisions and needing more signings and more time because of that mismanagement, is costly to us as a team and could make our top players' minds up for them to move on (Ronaldo won't see out his career in a perpetual loop of rebuild, as one example). Further to that, Ferguson made working partnerships, no matter what. O'Shea-Giggs; Cleverly-Anderson and whatever other weirdness people can recall, which is the polar opposite of Ole, who is severely lacking in his midfield building and implementation.
I'm indifferent to Ole as a manager, but if he cannot address glaring issues without stacks of cash, or better use the money he is given to address an area that is a blindspot for him (Diallo, VdB in particular is money that could have been used for midfield), there has to be cause for concern, imo.
Our midfield is coming up short, as is, to inferior talent across a myriad of teams - midfields that as a whole cost less than Fred's fee; should that be happening with the frequency it does, and should we need millions upon millions of pounds to outdo these same teams in midfield?
I can't see how it isn't a managerial and coaching issue over a personnel one, in that regard, and it seems to be getting worse, not better.
Not playing regularly for us. Hand on heart I think this is arguably the worst level of midfield we've had consistently since before Fergie paired John O'Shea and Ryan Giggs together in 2005-06. The only thing that makes it arguable is that Schneiderlin and Schweinsteiger was hardly the stuff off legend. However, any midfield Carrick played in (even in his 30s) was elevated above what we currently have just cos it had Carrick.
The difference is Fergie knew what he could get away with and knew what he couldn't. Fergie rarely left the team totally naked. The O'Shea, Giggs midfield stands out because it was an exception. People say late stage Fergie's midfield wasn't good. However, 2012-13 was arguably Carrick's greatest season in a United shirt. Fergie always had one quality midfield player, even if they had questionable partners. The whole, turn Alan Smith into a midfielder experiment came about only cos of Keane getting booted out of the club. Fergie would've never let the situation drag on.
Roy Keane was right in what he said about McFred. Its not a title winning midfield. If Ole wins the league with McFred then that will be a humongous achievement.
I find it interesting he’s said this, because during his interview Keane there was a worrying segment where they both seemed to ridicule the idea of having a philosophy or defined styles of play, as if implying football was just about getting a good bunch of lads to try hard and going “from one week to the next”…. its always been a rather notable quirk that none of Fergie’s many many former players to go into management have ever been anywhere approaching as good as him, or had any kind of prominent style to speak of (he has no disciples like a lot of his contemporary greats do) and I was beginning to wonder whether they’d all just taken completely the wrong lessons from their time under him, or just completely ignored that he regularly changed his tactical set up to compete with new styles and managers….all of which didn’t bode particular well for Ole…
Either he’s genuinely realised his error, he was merely trying to placate Keane, or he’s just trying to find a way to climb down from his “Sancho, Varane & Kane will win you the league” prediction from a few months ago, now that Ronaldo basically betters that and hed have to actually put his money where his mouth was
it’s at about 8:10 in
Either he’s genuinely realised his error, he was merely trying to placate Keane, or he’s just trying to find a way to climb down from his “Sancho, Varane & Kane will win you the league” prediction from a few months ago, now that Ronaldo basically betters that and hed have to actually put his money where his mouth was
it’s at about 8:10 in
I agree; I think the post I was just writing and sending before seeing yours matches up with that line of thinking.
Ole has still got an opportunity to turn things around. If he can navigate the tricky period before christmas he will be ok. I think he will realise that his gameplan needs improving. He can maybe sign a midfielder in January. He might make it and I hope he does.
There is a chance that it all goes wrong. In this case the board will delay his sacking until the supporters go on strike. I really don't want to see all that crap again.
There is a chance that it all goes wrong. In this case the board will delay his sacking until the supporters go on strike. I really don't want to see all that crap again.
The ones saying it was just one missed penalty. If Ole had showed some courage we should have been winning that in ordinary time. He is far too conservative with his team selections and tactics. When he send out a side that looks great on paper he still somehow stifles them You have bought Sancho and are not letting him play freely. He moves about, he doesn't just sit on the left or right wing.
I think that there is a big problem here, in which the team literally can not have a style of play because McFred/Awb can't do any build up play to save their lives, Shaw has been out of form. That's 4 players on the base of the team where other teams excel in the most important bit of the pitch for controlling the game that are ruining our team. Is that Solskjaers fault for not selling them/buying new players? I don't know tbh
I'm not talking about the board. The rhetoric has shifted from Ole got us playing "attractive" football (a statement I very much disagree with), to you now saying he needs to start playing Jose ball.
According to many he has built a squad in his image so why would he now start playing defensive football despite people claiming for years now he's an attacking coach.
I think he will revert to Jose's style because its the only style this squad has shown it can play well.
You'd have to ask the many who think he's built a squad in his image about your second statement. I've said many times, in this thread and others, what I think about our squad composition.
Teams with worse players than that have better formed styles of play though.
Take Brighton, for example. Very well coached, have a clear style of play, performed well in terms of all the underlying stats you'd want last year. They still finished 16th though, to a large extent because their players are shite. But if the likes of Joel Veltman, Solomon March and Neal Maupay can manage to form part of a team with a clear structure and way of playing then there's not much excuse for AWB and Fred.
Taking AWB as an example, it's true that he's weak in this regard compared to our rivals' fullbacks. But by general PL standards he's not insurmountably woeful.
We may be too far behind then