And that’s sometimes with the foot off the pedal (ie the league was wrapped up) and we were focusing on other competitions.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær | Managerial Watch | Reports: Being considered for Canada job
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You don't win trophies for coming 2nd, Or taking part in a final. I honestly think Ole just got lucky, we had no identity, it was counter or nothing.
But I do believe that EtH is the best we've had since fergie in what is his first season he's taken is to final, comfortably within top 4 and we do have ten haag ball. I've no doubt he will deliver us trophies and return us to being a powerhouse in Europe.
Well, lets see.
Its quite funny in the same post you credit EtH for being top 4 but say you dont win trophies for getting 2nd.
I really like Ten Hag but I also feel you should use the same metrics to judge both.
I’m just saying the standard to win then league isn’t any higher than it was early 2010. To beat United to the title you would literally have to hit the numbers you just mentioned.
That’s all
It had arrived long before Ronaldo. Pogba, Lingard, Henderson, Bailly vs Maguire etc
Coupled with the 'something for nothing' culture extended to the likes of Jones, Martial and Cavani.
So how did this toxic atmosphere manifest itself then?
There is absolutely no excuse for how Solskjær's last season went, but something definitely changed for the worse after that summer.
I'm not saying that it has to be Ronaldo. All I'm saying is that the football and the overall atmosphere was way better before the summer.
I'm not saying that it has to be Ronaldo. All I'm saying is that the football and the overall atmosphere was way better before the summer.
So were you not watching the last 18 months or so under Ole and Rangnick?
We had to weed out half a dozen bad apples and we're still suffering from the fallout even now. As Martial picks up another paycheck for nothing. And the club figures out how to shift Maguire and VDB out. Not to mention Bailly and Telles when they come back in the summer.
This, the amount of post match threads where we had won the game but the majority of the comments we among the likes of "we were shite again, but Ill take the 3 points."
So glad he is not our manager any more. Should never of been appointed.
Yes. The toxicity started shortly after Ronaldo arrived. Not sure what Martial has to do with any of it.
I'm still baffled as to why some fans still can't come to terms with the fact that he wasn't even close to being good enough. Maybe bringing in Ronaldo sped up his eventual sacking but it was coming a country mile away when you look at our performances and results even before that season. Shipping six goals to fecking Spurs of all teams at Old Trafford should have gotten him the sack alone.
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The zero effort performances, throwing two managers under the bus, leaks, briefs from players against the club and even their team mates, and injury skiving, that was all down to Ronaldo was it?
We removed most of the toxicity by getting rid of Lingard, Pogba, Henderson, Ronaldo, Cavani and benching/looking to offload Maguire. And there's still a fair bit to do.
All because Ole and the club made stupid decisions on players and squad management, and instilled a culture of no discipline and new contracts for no effort.
Yep. All started last season. After Ronaldo arrived.
Rooting for Ole to get that Elland Road call, take em down legend.
If Henderson and Lingard are to be believed, they were made promises by Ole which never materialized, causing, what i would assume all the leaks and contributing to the dressing room becoming toxic. That has very little to do with Ronaldo IMO, but i do agree with your overall point that signing Ronaldo accelerated his downfall. But that's another symptom of Ole not being up to the job, IMO. He either signed off on the signing or if he didn't, he was clearly not strong enough to push back.
Ole being up to the job or not isn’t really up for discussion. It’s the revisionism that there was this toxic atmosphere surrounding the club during his tenure here, which really isn’t true. All of that came last season.
Yeah, generally he brought a “feel good” factor back to the club after Jose left. But I reckon it’s a series of “mismanagement” decisions which, one compounded after the other, which finally brought about the toxicity. The Lingard/Henderson things, playing Rashford through injury, other players playing irrespective of form. Ronaldo was just the final nail in the coffin. So I guess there’s a middle ground between “Ronaldo brought the toxicity” to “it was coming, Ronaldo just contributed heavily towards it”. IMO anyway.
Yeah I think ultimately if a coach isn't good enough, the bad mood will just creep in as players start losing belief in the manager and eventually they just can't get going under them anymore. I mean sometimes it happens even with a top manager like Klopp, but especially for a team like United, we'd never be happy with just top 4. You need to make the step up to challenge and he wasn't able to do that so it imploded.
The Lingard/Henderson situations, managers having their preferred players, are completely normal for any football club. Either way, there was no sense of toxicity around the club prior to last season, it’s complete revisionism used to try and rationalise what happened last year.
There are plenty of things to criticise Ole about without making shit up, and we’ve wasted enough time talking about this.
Yep, ultimately if you're unable to take that final step and win something, players will also get tired. Let alone supposedly making false promises to players who are known (sort of) "troublemakers" etc. He had a decent stint at certain points but ultimately fell short and was responsible for his own demise. End of.
Sorry, I meant the departure of Ronaldo ending the toxic environment surrounding the club last season, not the departure of Ole.
Did Mourinho mention that there was a toxic atmosphere in the club in his time as manager, I think hinting at Pogba being a virus, In my opinion it has being there since Moyes, under achievers on big wages and contracts. Remember the leaked story about Rio to study videos of Phil Jagielka,
In terms of a performing team, a “toxic” atmosphere can mean many things. I would argue that allowing a culture of players taking the piss and generally half-arsing their way through league campaigns is a pretty bad atmosphere. Pogba keeps getting mentioned as someone who was an issue for his managers. I don’t think was because he was a mean or unpopular person. More that he wasn’t as committed or as driven as you need. And that rubbed off on everyone around him. Mourinho specifically mentioned that he’s a different player when he’s forced to travel away from friends/family and spend a few weeks on a training/tournament camp with the national team. If Ole contributed to any “toxicity” it was his inability to challenge players who didn’t have the right mentality and allow too many members of the squad to coast through the season, on easy street.
I mean, Leeds could do worse?
Would you say Klopp has allowed/encouraged a toxic atmosphere to develop at Liverpool, since many of their players are putting in half arsed performances for the best part of a year now?
But there is no stories coming out of there, no team leaks so id say publicly they look out of form, obviously there has to be discontent but it's kept indoors.
What major leaks and discontent was there at United prior to last season?
I didnt say major leaks but there was stories, even the video with Mourinho and Pogba with him not tolerating the handshake, i'd say they are loads of these happening every day in training but none publicized, in my opinion it was staged as I think someone knew the reaction would be, team leaks were always common last few seasons.
On the subject of Ole, I called for his sacking after his disastrous performance in the EL cup final, but it was not completely insane to let him continue on into the new season. We all know what happened in the new season and his sacking was imperative.
But as for a reappraisal of his performance before his steered the ship into the iceberg, there's no doubt that he poured everything he had into the job. But the summer between the EL cup final debacle and the new season it all fell apart and what happened, happened.
But as for a reappraisal of his performance before his steered the ship into the iceberg, there's no doubt that he poured everything he had into the job. But the summer between the EL cup final debacle and the new season it all fell apart and what happened, happened.
Solskjaer was/is very good manager. I've always said that Solskjaer was thrown under the bus by some players. They stopped playing. Like they did with Mourinho and Rangnick. Lot of them are thankfully gone and tenHag can and is building a team. Hopefully without buying players that care about themselfs more than the club.
Would be interesting to see that experiment. Don't think there's a chance, but they did get Jesse Marsch a go after having had Bielsa, so who knows.
These are the ones when I check the betting market:
Carlos Corberan
Mauricio Pochettino
Marcelo Bielsa
Kjetil Knudsen
Marcello Gallardo
Brendan Rodgers
Ange Postecoglou
Michael Carrick
Corberan should be attainable, I doubt Poch would take such a downward step, Bielsa likewise (not least at this stage of the season), Knudsen should also be attainable and Rodgers maybe. Would think Gallardo having held off going to Europe for so long wouldn't use this as his entrance.
They wont hire him, they are not that stupid, irrespective of the fact that their fans would never accept him. They would go down.
Big Sam at Leeds
Yeah, absolutely Pogue. That poster mentioned something along the lines of "the toxicity only came with Ronaldo" which others disagreed with and then he ranted about people being revisionism and making shit up. But toxicity takes many forms, as you mentioned. The poster says "players like Lingard and Henderson" (2 players i brought up) are in every squad and managers have their favorites and i don't disagree with that but my point was that, if what those 2 have said are to be believed, and they were promised minutes which never materialised - then that's also a form of management which would create/lead to toxicity - i.e. if a manager loses credibility in his words/promises it leads to the same outcome, whether in corporate or in sports IMO. So whilst i agree that Ronaldo seemed the final straw, there were already signs of toxicity all around the place: off to the top of my head, including Lingard and Henderson, there was Pogba who didn't seem fully committed, Bailly speaking about the English contingent being favored (because players in terrible form were still being picked even though he couldn't stay fit which is another matter), Rashford supposedly playing through injury which clearly impacted him (mentally, physically) the last 12-18 months before EtH arrived etc.
You’re right, but the fact remains Ole was just too inexperienced to step up as a coach for a club this big. I’m sure he gave everything he had and worked to the best of his ability, but the odd mix of players led to a woefully unstable team and one that pretty much became unresponsive and toxic. He looked drained towards the end, but the real culprits for our demise were Woodward, Mourinho and Matt Judge imho.
Van Gaal, Mourinho and Ronaldo were the toxic individuals at United. Ole was simply too soft.
Van Gaal ?
The problem with ole is more that he shouldn't have been given the job in the first place, there was zero competition for his signature, and we could have easily given him til the end of the season, by which point the new manager bounce had worn off and no one would have wanted him appointed full time, it would have gone down as a decent job of steadying the ship, then appointed someone else. There wasn't really a point in his time where things were so bad it justified sacking him, until he did get sacked, but he really shouldn't have been appointed in the first place