I would be of the same mindset.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | 2021/22 Discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
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It's not knee jerk though. He's not learning. We battered Leeds first day out. Having Greenwood movement up top freed pogba to play the passes he can play.
So, we move to the statuesque movement of martial. Again. Matic and fred? God. I get it against teams who we expect to have more of the ball, but not soton. Fred must isn't good enough in general, he's first on the team sheet. Vdb can't get a look in, which is baffling, considering how bad the players playing ahead of him are.
Knee jerk. 3 years in.
yes, I see what you mean.
You say that but so far, that is the only point you've really made? Every positive about Ole are positives that are secondary requirements for a manager. Recruitment, mood around the club etc. Hell, in most progressive clubs - recruitment isn't even a requirement of the manager at all anymore.Yes, I think that alone is enough to say he’s a better manager
Stop arguing in bad faith.
I digress though - he'll do okay, we'll have an okay season, probably come close to a major trophy, win a secondary one, but I'm quite confident that's as far as we can go under him. I gave him time given the circumstances around the club, but it's passed that point for some time now. He needs to start delivering.
I can understand this. At the same time, what does it say that we need all our best players available? We're not tactically there. Such a huge drop off if the best talent is missing. There's on the manager. He has to be able to beat teams like soton with a couple of players out. He's making the same mistakes already, two years in. He's just not learning.
I always feel like he gives chances to players before officially dropping them if they dont succeed.
He will start James and if he doesnt do well, he will be dropped as a first 11 player in his mind.
I feel like this will happen to Anthony Martial.
It happened to Pogba when he was playing with Matic in a double pivot because Fred and a Mctominay were playing better in the same formation.
It happened with De Gea being dropped for Henderson, with the latter keeping his spot. Cavani was another who took and kept his spot.
Felt like yesterday was Martials chance and he didnt succeed.
He will start James and if he doesnt do well, he will be dropped as a first 11 player in his mind.
I feel like this will happen to Anthony Martial.
It happened to Pogba when he was playing with Matic in a double pivot because Fred and a Mctominay were playing better in the same formation.
It happened with De Gea being dropped for Henderson, with the latter keeping his spot. Cavani was another who took and kept his spot.
Felt like yesterday was Martials chance and he didnt succeed.
As far as I’m concerned Mourinho and LVG only have Ole beat as far as trophies go. We’re far more entertaining to watch, the squad cohesion is far better, we’ve gotten in the right players (say what you want, recruitment is important and Ole’s clearly of the SAF school that character is every bit as important as skill), we’ve given youngsters plenty of debuts and chances, and we’ve improved year on year.
You might be right about him having taken us as far as he can, but then people said that last year, and the year before that.
How about we wait for the trend line to flatten before we so eagerly discard him?
Too early into the season for making such claims, plenty of the top sides will draw some away games that they really should win, even with their best team available.
We’ll learn much more about where Ole is and if he’s made significant improvements over the next couple of months, not after one excellent home win and a frustrating away day.
Trace back up the thread Robbie boy.
The words were and I quote "clearly this guy is out of his depth". So, no, very much not a straw man argument. I was responding to over the top criticism and the other guy chipped in, to which I again
reiterated my objection to the out of his depth charge.
I'm quite happy with people having reservations on Ole but 'out of his depth' is way over the top considering where we were and where we are
Martial is toast once Cavani is back and it'll be even harder when Rashford is back too.
He rarely makes an early sub unless forced and if he does it tends to be either tactical or an opportunity to rest a player.
He hooked Martial off yesterday, moved Greenwood up front and Sancho took Greenwood’s wide position. It wasn’t tactical, it was pure disdain for Martial’s “efforts”.
Move him on and bring in a DM.
I get that it's early in the season. But it was clear all of last year that martial is not a good enough number 9. And he starts him when clearly unfit? Matic and fred, has it ever worked?
Early or not, it's the same mistakes, time after time. I've been a big ole fan, but it's clear to me he's taken us as far as he can.
Yeah. I mean alot of our fans were wondering why is Martial starting over Greenwood after his good CF performance vs Leeds?
It just felt like it was Ole giving Martial his take it or leave it chance.
The dropping of Martial (as our CF) probably leads to Sancho getting his chance to play in our forward line.
He can’t even move on Lingard to get a DM. I don’t know what makes you think the above will be in his mind.
Plus is Varane and Sancho got anything to do with it. That DM ain’t going to be starting until November anyway.
It's funny how it's the manager's fault for the players not being able to pass wind yesterday...
It was a bad performance, yes, but beyond that it really doesn't say much about some of our players that we didn't already know. Neither of our new signings have been fully bedded in and we're still working our way up to full speed. So why the need for this postmortem? Just wait and see for the reaction if it comes.
It was a bad performance, yes, but beyond that it really doesn't say much about some of our players that we didn't already know. Neither of our new signings have been fully bedded in and we're still working our way up to full speed. So why the need for this postmortem? Just wait and see for the reaction if it comes.
Are you really happy with people having deserved reservations? Anytime I see posts from you, you're vehemently defending him no matter what. That's a clear lack of objectiveity imo, and isn't conducive to good discussion.
The one thing I have noticed about this team is they get complacent way too quickly and that is down to Ole and the mentality of this squad.
I think the players are not mentally prepared for a fight.
Its been happening under Ole alot when we go on a good run and this team gets talked about being title challengers, the next game they become complacent.
After the 5-1 everyone got excited, so did the players and became complacent
Last season we hit top, got excited and lost to SU
Last season beat PSG and Leipzig and lost 1-0 to Arsenal at home
Its been a recurring theme under Ole
I think the players are not mentally prepared for a fight.
Its been happening under Ole alot when we go on a good run and this team gets talked about being title challengers, the next game they become complacent.
After the 5-1 everyone got excited, so did the players and became complacent
Last season we hit top, got excited and lost to SU
Last season beat PSG and Leipzig and lost 1-0 to Arsenal at home
Its been a recurring theme under Ole
It depends on the context in which his 'depth' is being judged. If winning big/any trophies and giving us top class management, then it's hard to argue against him being out of his depth, thus far. If it's making some progress and getting CL footy then he's not.
On the finished ahead of Klopp and Tuchel point which gets brought up a fair bit - let's place it in context - Klopp was coming of 2 years of 90 plus points in the league and a CL win, and complete free fall following that partly caused by injuries and partly just a terrible season. Tuchel, took over a side that was off the pace in the race for top 4 but managed to speak in, and more importantly won the CL. We progressed slightly and won feck all. So I think we should leave this silly comparisons to Klopp and Tuchel aside wrt last season. If Ole deserves to be in top manager company he needs to prove it now.
I feel I need to emphasize this again - if we want to win the PL and CL in the foreseeable future we need a top class manager. Decent/okay/fine usually doesn't cut it unless it's a really weak league, incredible set of players or some chemistry that's hard to find. If we're fine with those levels it'll be top 4 for this coming decade.
What he really needs to do is get Varane and Sancho in the side and make the tactical tweaks he hinted at. Integrating them slowly makes no sense to me. You lose that buzz. The player loses that buzz. You have to hope now Sancho has a big game pretty soon otherwise it’s a bit meh. Play fecking Varane he’s a World Cup winner and multiple CL winner. VDB and Amad suffered the same with this last year and never got going but these two are genuine world class talents.
Is there something where Ole believes these new players have to be familiar with his coaching teams genius? He hinted at it with Amad, that he needed a certain amount of sessions to get used to our patterns.p
Is there something where Ole believes these new players have to be familiar with his coaching teams genius? He hinted at it with Amad, that he needed a certain amount of sessions to get used to our patterns.p
We need to move on the deadwood before we can buy. We need players that will leave everything on the pitch. There isn't enough fight in the team as yet. I know it is only 2nd game but we seen last year and year before that we are losing out in midfield to teams. We need a Keano or Robbo type in there, and do away with double pivot.
It is very important that we win our next 4 games because then our nightmare schedule starts.
Cavani and Sancho situation is very costly. I am sure that with both of them we would have won against Saints. As things stand now, we will have Cavani in gw6 which is huge hendicap
Cavani and Sancho situation is very costly. I am sure that with both of them we would have won against Saints. As things stand now, we will have Cavani in gw6 which is huge hendicap
Not really sure how it’s considered a knee jerk reaction to yesterdays result when we’ve had 3 years of not knowing which United are going to turn up on any given day, and before anyone points to the unbeaten away run, the majority were in empty stadiums where home advantage didn’t really mean anything.
It’s the lack of consistency and sometimes baffling team selections coupled with his stubborn refusal to make early subs when things clearly aren’t working that grates the most. Love him as a player but sadly he simply isn’t good enough to manage a club of this stature
It’s the lack of consistency and sometimes baffling team selections coupled with his stubborn refusal to make early subs when things clearly aren’t working that grates the most. Love him as a player but sadly he simply isn’t good enough to manage a club of this stature
It's his job to get them ready and select those that can do the job.
If 1 or 2 players were playing bad, that's on them. When it's nearly the whole squad, that's on the coaching staff.
His managerial stint with us is filled with the constant great games / total no shows and you're better off flipping a coin to guess which team will show up to play. The players have constantly been 'improved' and yet the same things keep happening. Time to face the facts and it's not the players fault everytime this happens.
Don't you think this is a bit of an overreaction? We beat a better Southampton side twice last season, with one of those being a 9-0. We don't need our best players to be there to perform, we just needed our players to perform and yesterday, far too many of them simply didn't.
Yesterday was bad, but most of the blame should go on the players, particularly in midfield and defence who had all seemingly forgotten how to pass the football. No tactical system or input from the manager can compensate for that. Ole wasn't without fault either, bringing Martial in when Mason performed so well was unnecessary, even if I could understand the reasons why at the time.
But at the end of the day, it's just one game and a blip. We saw it last week with City and we'll likely be seeing similar results across the league's big sides for the next couple of weeks as they wait for their best players to get back their sharpness after the Euros and Copa.
Because, phrases like "haters", "glory hunter", "instant gratification", "cry babies" and "kneejerk", are usually used by posters who have no real argument for their 100% support of Ole, so they attempt to shut down and demean any criticism with said phrsaes.
It's been going on for years and it's always the same posters who use them. It's ironic how ridiculously out of context the majority of those phrases are used.
That's the problem though isn't it?
After 3,5 years we don't know which Man utd we'll see, the Leeds one or the Soton one. The only certain with Ole's tenure so far is that we'll bottle the one that really matters
Keano and Robbo’s nolonger exist. We just need midfield balance. It’s not about mentality it’s about style of play and at the minute we want to slug fight through all of our games which means we never set a tempo.
As for removing deadwood. Maybe we stop renewing long serving contracts to players like Mata and we remove players on the fence like Lingard etc.
Good bit of balance here. Couple of naive decisions from Ole with Martial and Matic starting, exacerbated some very poor performances all over the park. On a small plus, Greenwood and Pogba look like real positives for this season, but he's got some big decisions to make about the RB and midfield - it could very well be the undoing of Ole if he doesn't sort that out.
These things can happen though. City's imperious team last week played with all the urgency of an asthmatic sloth. Would you put that down to Pep? Liverpool similarly looked poor for long stretches on Saturday. Let's wait and see what happens in the coming weeks before pressing the panic button, that's all I'm saying.
I also don't understand this pattern you're referring to. We also haven't even fully embedded our two first team signings yet either, so it's all a little moot IMO. Irrespective, ever since Bruno came in, we have been pretty consistent, and it's been reflected in our league positions. We had an awful start last year and recovered to the extent that we lost one game between October and May and it was only the unprecedented fixture congestion which caused us to lose a further two games in May. We can and have been very consistent at times under Ole. What we need to do now is push on. Will it happen? Who knows, but I'm more than happy to give him the benefit of the doubt and the time to figure it out. He's built this squad up from the ground up and improved so many players who looked destined to be on the scrapheap under the last manager. With the two big signings this summer, I back him to get the most of them too and raise the floor and ceiling of this team further.
Like I said, let's just wait and see what impact our signings this summer make. Surely he's done enough in the job to be given that consideration at least?
Yeah, he really does. Unless they're Hannibal or Elanga, then he would bin them after one poor half.
The frustrating thing is that, probably naively (under Ole) you hope to see new ideas and tactical improvements coming into a new season. But it's been obvious from the first two games that nothing has changed.
It's like Ole and the club think the only way we can improve is to keep signing players until something sticks, and that's not acceptable to me because it is clear that there is a lot of work to do tactically that would make us a better team. We've not learnt any lessons, and adding Sancho and Varane won't bring much improvement in our overall play as a team. They'll have their moment where their individual qualities make a difference, but we'll still come unstuck enough times to prevent us mounting any serious challenges.
It's like Ole and the club think the only way we can improve is to keep signing players until something sticks, and that's not acceptable to me because it is clear that there is a lot of work to do tactically that would make us a better team. We've not learnt any lessons, and adding Sancho and Varane won't bring much improvement in our overall play as a team. They'll have their moment where their individual qualities make a difference, but we'll still come unstuck enough times to prevent us mounting any serious challenges.
Hope he finds a way to make us win these games like on Sunday comfortably one day. I'll not judge him after two games in with the newcomers not fully integrated and Sancho not up to speed yet (hopefully it's only that). But it's been a pattern of his time here. He doesn't seem to have a plan of how to break down the deep sitting sides.
We can't afford to drop too many points against the bottom half of the table.
I'm very curious to see how we bounce back vs Wolves. We need a good win + good performance.
I'm very curious to see how we bounce back vs Wolves. We need a good win + good performance.
Will be another tough game.
The reality is our team has improved to the point where our manager will quickly be recognised as the glaring weak-point in our side any time we struggle this season, if he isn't already.
In much the same way that we might say McFred wouldn't start for X many of our title rivals, the reality is Solskjaer wouldn't be manager for the majority of PL clubs. And there's only so long you can last as Manchester United manager with that fact hanging in the air unchallenged by actual achievements on your part. The improvements the club has undergone while he's here are great but the fact remains that he isn't particularly rated as a manager and he's expected to compete against three managers who are very much so.
So while it's fine to say we shouldn't overreact to one draw (because we shouldn't) and it's fine to focus on the need to improve midfield (because we should) we can't get away from the fact Solskjaer will have to actually prove he's a good enough manager to be in charge of a title-pursuing team this season, through direct and evident improvements in performance that go beyond simply buying better players. Because midfield aside, I don't see any other area of the team where more obvious improvements are possible if/when we're still faced with a gap to bridge between where we are and the eventual title winners.
Unfortunately for Solskjaer it's in that context that hiccups like yesterday are judged. Under heavy expectation and with him being the single most doubted person involved. The only way there won't be heavy snap criticism of him every time we get outcomes like that is if such outcomes are kept to a minimum.
In much the same way that we might say McFred wouldn't start for X many of our title rivals, the reality is Solskjaer wouldn't be manager for the majority of PL clubs. And there's only so long you can last as Manchester United manager with that fact hanging in the air unchallenged by actual achievements on your part. The improvements the club has undergone while he's here are great but the fact remains that he isn't particularly rated as a manager and he's expected to compete against three managers who are very much so.
So while it's fine to say we shouldn't overreact to one draw (because we shouldn't) and it's fine to focus on the need to improve midfield (because we should) we can't get away from the fact Solskjaer will have to actually prove he's a good enough manager to be in charge of a title-pursuing team this season, through direct and evident improvements in performance that go beyond simply buying better players. Because midfield aside, I don't see any other area of the team where more obvious improvements are possible if/when we're still faced with a gap to bridge between where we are and the eventual title winners.
Unfortunately for Solskjaer it's in that context that hiccups like yesterday are judged. Under heavy expectation and with him being the single most doubted person involved. The only way there won't be heavy snap criticism of him every time we get outcomes like that is if such outcomes are kept to a minimum.
I think we have to find the right balance in the criticism personally.
I don't think there was an inherent issue is his team selection. He clearly didn't fancy James in this sort of game which I think makes sense and Martial needs gametime if he is going to find some form/sharpness given lack of football he's had. Yes he could have put Sancho in from the start instead of Martial but I can also imagine he wanted to get Sancho as sharp as he could so he can make the biggest impact he could as there's always pressure with a large price tag, plus Greenwood is probably going to get a large chunk of his time from the right in any case. For me the team we put out was good enough to win and had chances in first half that another day go in which completely changes the game. Similarly we had a good spell in the 2nd half where the players should have been able to get the 2nd goal.
Where I do think it is probably fair to say he must take some blame is 1. Attitude- am sure there is some confirmation bias in this but for me it's not the first time where we've had a good result that it feels like the players believe their own hype and become prone to errors they shouldn't make or a lack of urgency and 2. The substitutes did not impact the game positively at all for us and he was not able to inspire/turn the tide in the last 20 mins or so.
That said the players need to look at themselves as well as there were so many basic errors from poor touches, underhit/inaccurate passes and just general lethargy in the play.
Hopefully it's a good wake up call for everyone although we've also said that a few times and having to say that after one game doesn't feel great. Personally I'm not convinced that Ole is the person to take us to the next level yet myself but also clearly too early to right him off this season particularly with Varnane, Sancho and Cavani to come into the team so let's see how he gets on.
I don't think there was an inherent issue is his team selection. He clearly didn't fancy James in this sort of game which I think makes sense and Martial needs gametime if he is going to find some form/sharpness given lack of football he's had. Yes he could have put Sancho in from the start instead of Martial but I can also imagine he wanted to get Sancho as sharp as he could so he can make the biggest impact he could as there's always pressure with a large price tag, plus Greenwood is probably going to get a large chunk of his time from the right in any case. For me the team we put out was good enough to win and had chances in first half that another day go in which completely changes the game. Similarly we had a good spell in the 2nd half where the players should have been able to get the 2nd goal.
Where I do think it is probably fair to say he must take some blame is 1. Attitude- am sure there is some confirmation bias in this but for me it's not the first time where we've had a good result that it feels like the players believe their own hype and become prone to errors they shouldn't make or a lack of urgency and 2. The substitutes did not impact the game positively at all for us and he was not able to inspire/turn the tide in the last 20 mins or so.
That said the players need to look at themselves as well as there were so many basic errors from poor touches, underhit/inaccurate passes and just general lethargy in the play.
Hopefully it's a good wake up call for everyone although we've also said that a few times and having to say that after one game doesn't feel great. Personally I'm not convinced that Ole is the person to take us to the next level yet myself but also clearly too early to right him off this season particularly with Varnane, Sancho and Cavani to come into the team so let's see how he gets on.
The most disappointing thing for me was moving Greenwood out to the right. The only time he should ever be on the right is if Cavani is playing. Frankly I found it an inexplicable decision and not a good sign for the plans for the season. Hopefully that will be the one and only time it happens.
We'll have to see where we are after about ten league games with Sancho and Varane as starters.
Edit - also, on Martial, we spent a large part of last season trying to play him into form without success. He was only finally dropped when he got injured. Let's see what happens this year.
We'll have to see where we are after about ten league games with Sancho and Varane as starters.
Edit - also, on Martial, we spent a large part of last season trying to play him into form without success. He was only finally dropped when he got injured. Let's see what happens this year.
When have they been binned?
To me Ole is a bum.
I’d hoped the squad quality would be enough to carry him and make up for his shortcomings. Kinda still hope, but him being our manager is a hindrance, not a plus.
I’d hoped the squad quality would be enough to carry him and make up for his shortcomings. Kinda still hope, but him being our manager is a hindrance, not a plus.
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