This season is only 5 minutes old.
So if we finish at the top of the league this season, with less than 15% of the games being "top performances", has he failed? Should he be sacked?
After taking the lead last season 26 times, we dropped a total of 12 points.
The league should always be the primary objective.
I, for one, have always considered the league as the bread and butter. It might be controversial to say this but for me winning the CL is worth less if you can't win your domestic league. Can hardly claim to be the best in Europe when you're not even the best in your own country. Maybe its colored by the SAF times where we only won the CL as an add on to the league, but to me finishing 4th and winning the CL is just a consolation prize that "good you can beat any team on a given day, but you're not consistently the best team".
Nice stats. But what does it have to do with seeing out games with possession?? With possession, players conserve energy and in control. Most top teams are able to do that.
Yeah and it's the sample size that we have to go on.
The same size is bigger than that. People don't base their views off 5 games.
I don't expect dominance in the Prem for a while, by any team. I think City had a period of dominance, partly through their excellence but also through their rivals all having bad spells. Liverpool were still building until a couple of years back, we've been wandering around the backwaters for yonks and Chelsea are always a bit up and down. But over the next 2 to 3 seasons I think there will always be at least 2 teams in a good place, maybe 3 or 4 teams. So I think dominating will be extremely hard.
The fact that we don't lose points as often as other teams when leading points to the fact that we are fine in seeing out games as well. It doesn't have to be possession based. Our team has better carriers than passers and hence "seeing out game via possession" is way too specific a stat to use here
You don't let the head of your entire football organisation go into the last year of his contract. Its just bad business. You are talking as though its a computer game and nothing else in the organisation is affected by it, but it would have a ripple effect throughout the club and only negative consequences
For me the expectations for our team have been a solid title challenge - you know where we are in the hunt at the end of the season (instead of being out of it after 20 games), and at least QF in the Champions League, while playing mostly enjoyable football.
I agree that we could keep it better and move it faster but I still think on the whole we play much better than we did say 2 years ago. Don't you agree?
The manager having 6 months left on his contract would have had a negative effect on performances. Remember when Fergie said he was going in 2002.
Even as someone sceptical of where Ole will be able to take us, having the distracting mini-drama of will he/won't he sign a new contract all season, and being linked with other managers all the time, is just a negative factor we don't need. If he has a bad season he'll be gone, if he has a good season he'll be here, whatever the contract situation.
You could be right, man.
We don't set up to play well for 90 minutes, so I'm not going to use that benchmark. There's no denying we ground out a lot of wins last season for a number of reasons, but since that's got nothing to do with the stats for this season which I was referring to I'm not sure what relevance they have.
Also worth noting possession % really means nothing without seeing where the possession is. There were times under LVG where the ball just went back and forth across the back four, the ball might as well have been dead but we were known as a possession team.
I think you're downplaying how hard it is to win the CL over the course of a season. It's not like a three week tournament where decent teams can fancy themselves against one of the big boys based on current form or a well planned strategy in a short period. The CL is harder to win the world cup IMO. Winning it is just as good as winning the PL
Probably heard it on TV once after a loss and ran with it ever since.
Yes apparently we have no patterns of play, which is entirely paradoxical to the fact we create a lot of chances, score a lot of goals and those goals are spread throughout our attack.
)Most of the people who say it have no idea what Pattern of play means.Yes apparently we have no patterns of play, which is entirely paradoxical to the fact we create a lot of chances, score a lot of goals and those goals are spread throughout our attack.
Without patterns of play we wouldn't achieve that. They will have you believe we rely on Bruno to score a penalty or for Pogba to put it top bins in order for us to ever win a game (individual brilliance they say
Exactly. Just one of many trendy things to say when it doesn’t at all match the reality.
I remember when Jose once used the phrase 'first station passing' to describe a part of his strategy against high pressing opponents. Suddenly all the wannabe tacticians started using it as often as possible..
Absobloodyexactly
It would be stupid to sack him now. He needs to given to the end of this season to see what he can do.
Well whoever wins the title, that will mean two of Tuchel, Pep or Klopp should be sacked ( hopefully all 3), for not winning the league.
Hmmm, fair comparison comparing Ole to Klopp who won the Premier League 15 months ago and the Champions League the season before and Tuchel and Pep who won the Champions League and Premier League respectively just a few months ago.
Where have I compared him to any of them?
That’s my point. Ole isn’t going to win the CL so if that’s the expectation then we might as well sack him now. However it clearly isn’t, it seems we’re focusing on the league and building something formidable instead, in which case we should continue to back him but be aware the CL is seen as a bonus
You can’t live of past achievements. Someone’s getting sacked this summer
What constitutes a good or bad season though? We’ve all got differing opinions on that, and I imagine the board do as well.
