I can't but dissent again with the general feeling on here, after scoring 1 goal yesterday with 31 shots against the mighty Rochdale and conceding a goal with 5 attempts.
Against Astana we won 1-0 with 20 shots against 3 and missing chances left, right and center again. After playing Wolves (D), Palace (L) and Soton (D) I checked the stats and we had 52 shots in those games while conceded 21, but we scored just 3 goals while conceded 4, with less than half of our attempts.
From that point, I don't know how anyone can say that our biggest problem is "lack of coaching" when these guys can't finish an ice cream. I'm not saying the rest is excellent, but just compare this with West Ham and Watford battering us at OT around March last season and having more shots than us (Watford x3). It's a different story now. Then we can discuss if it's lack of quality, a simple bad patch or some players melting under pressure, but it's obvious that we should be scoring and winning more based on our attacking volume.
The truth is I don't like the way we manage the ball at times as it's slow and predictable, but that's been a constant for years and we need both coaching and better materials to see solid improvements. Most of us were waiting for the transfer window to see those additions, just to end up getting weakened in midfield and attack, relying on kids and some experienced turds. We can blame Solskjaer for the lack of transfers and the climate change too, but he said that every player sold should be replaced and we're all still waiting for them.
In the end it's difficult to dominate midfield with the current bunch and play quick, incisive combinations when they can barely do the basics right, let alone killing off games when we need 30 shots to score a goal.
It's a poisoned job at the moment, and even if we wanted to hire a new coach we can't present the club and the squad in this state to anyone with some credit and expect him to sign. If that guy is intelligent and has some reputation there's no way he comes here to lose his credit. So if we replace Ole at some point this season after reaching some catastrophic situation, I'm sure it will be another transitional figure until the club is ready to present an ambitious plan and willing to invest hard again.
Until then I think Ole will be given time and it's the right thing to do, because wasting time and money on sacking a manager, commiting with a new one just to find himself in the same difficult situation would be a silly use of resources. If they are going to spend money, do it once on whatever Ole says we need, because there's no better diagnose of this team than one coming from that man right now, not just from a technical point of view but also from a dressing room perspective.
By the moment the energies have been refreshed this summer, the attitude has improved after everything got rotten in the last months of last season, and the team is not broken in two sides like it happened many times. I think the team defends well around the field as a unit, there's commitment from the players, and hopefully they improve the mechanics off the ball in attack too.
Their 3 signings seem to be accurate and surely they have the next ones in mind, so probably the quickest route for improvement is to let the current staff to find solutions, polish the team as much as they can and try to develop a good basis. To me it sounds better than restarting everything again because we don't like what we see, while the rest of problems above and under the manager remain exactly the same and would limit the next one too.
