Yeah we only take action on managers when they fail to deliver top 4 and generally it seems that the quality of people on the market at the time is to generally pretty shite whereas at the moment there is a couple of good options, however we won't act because the board will keep rolling out we are keeping faith until he gets the players he needs BS
Our Progress
- Thread starter acnumber9
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Go back and look at the team we had. It needed properly dismantling and rebuilding. We were so badly managed through Moyes, LVG & Mourinho it was always going to take time to fix unless the owners went full sugar daddy.
You may not know this but that squad won a EL under Mourinho 18 months before.
Progress is defined through silverware.
Maybe judging the last 2 and half years on David De Gea ability to score penalties isn't a great way to view progress of a football team.
Were the preceding 120 minutes any more useful?
What does this have to do with the fact we lost a competition in which our opposition was 7th in their league and never won any actual trophy before?
And that we entered such competition because of a huge bottle job in our CL group against a shit Turkish side that were participating in the competition for their first ever time in history and scored their first ever CL goals and their first ever win in CL against us?
God that turkish game would have be up there as once of our most embarrassing performances ever
I’m not sure I can remember a worse second place than us and I think that includes under Mourinho.
Christ we've been thoroughly embarrassed in Europe this season.
And I thought Jose's Sevilla moment was bad... just how low can we sink?
He’s a far more cautious and conservative manager than I think his involvement in past glories trick is into believing sometimes. Tying in a major final against an inferior opposition and when you do eventually make a change you pull off an attacking player for a holding midfielder.
The football is often slow and laboured. It’s like Jose is still here but decided to become less of a prick
The football is often slow and laboured. It’s like Jose is still here but decided to become less of a prick
Did we play one cohesive attacking piece of football in the final, maybe one that could have been offside. The way we played in ET is unforgiveable, lack of intent and lack of fresh legs and ideas.
It is really not
The following seven players were in our team on Wednesday. Where were these players in 2017?
Degea
Baily
Lindelof
Shaw
Mctominay
Fred
Pogba
Rashford
Essentially you can switch Bruno for Herrera and Cavani for Lukaku. Pretending our squad was a shambles then under Mourinho was as bad as pretending it was a shambles now. Of course it needed improving but this whole “dismantling” angle is unfounded hyperbole especially when you consider four years on most of those players still make up the crux of the team.
As @SAFMUTD pointed out too the squad actually won the Europa league and also finished 2nd under Mourinho who on here many deem to have been a failure at United. The hilarity is by taking the stance you’ve taken you’re essentially backing the guy who performed worse despite having a supposedly better squad. Just can’t have it both ways really.
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It's a bit weird, but I feel like jury's still out on how we did this season because it'll be largely dependent on how we do next season:
Will we make key signings and put up a more serious fight for the title and achieve better consistency (our #1 issue) or continue playing as we did last season and settle for yet another safely decent top 4 season? (or worse yet, regress from where we are)
Next season is make or break for me, but objectively speaking I'm probably giving Ole more patience than he deserves; just ask Chelsea how they'd be doing right now if they kept Lampard until end of the season.
Will we make key signings and put up a more serious fight for the title and achieve better consistency (our #1 issue) or continue playing as we did last season and settle for yet another safely decent top 4 season? (or worse yet, regress from where we are)
Next season is make or break for me, but objectively speaking I'm probably giving Ole more patience than he deserves; just ask Chelsea how they'd be doing right now if they kept Lampard until end of the season.
There is not really any room to spend more. The only place we can save money is if the Glazer's stop taking dividends, which amounts to $20m per year. That comes to 2% of our total outgoings. The rest is unavoidable.
To add to the list of the other poster, we are actually first in terms of net spend since Solskjaer took charge.
Look that’s a fair point. Mourinho was working with an older squad who did win a couple trophies and get us over the line. Strangely the final against Ajax was one of the more comfortable games in that Europa League run. Celta Vigo gave us a good run for our money if I remember rightly.
All that said though I reckon our team now is much better than the 2017 team. Maybe that isn’t borne out yet with trophies but that’s how I feel about it.
I was responding to the point about our rebuild taking 3-4 years. If you make 5-6 years of bad transfers it takes time to fix those. Unless the board sanctioned back to back 250m summers or you find some hidden gems it will take longer to be competitive at the top end.
And how convincing was it? The way I remember it we were quite lucky to make the final and then stifled Ajax in the final. It certainly didn’t make me think that team was on the cusp of greatness.
I don’t see the foundations being laid on the field. I think I’d be more on board if I could see what he was trying to do even if he was failing to do it or even if I didn’t like it. I hated LVG approach but I backed him because even though I didn’t like it it was at least a direction. Two and a half years is enough time to build some kind of tactical identity. We’re completely undefinable as a unit. That’s what worries me.
I can’t look at this team and how we play and think we’re signing or two away from kicking on because I honestly do not think we’ve got past the starting blocks.
We should have an identity that we build towards mastering but were among the most tactically nondescript teams around.
I can’t look at this team and how we play and think we’re signing or two away from kicking on because I honestly do not think we’ve got past the starting blocks.
We should have an identity that we build towards mastering but were among the most tactically nondescript teams around.
You've got to be joking.
United absolutely coasted to 2nd (ahead of some really good teams) and would have been competitive for the title if it wasn't for an incredible run that City went on. City found a really solid centre back pairing and adding that to their quality attack made them a formidable outfit.
In a season of a crazily congested fixture list, that was a run nobody could match.
People don't want to admit it but the protests completely derailed the season. It led to a ridiculous fixture list for the run in and broke the momentum of an excellent run that the team was on.
Momentum is huge in football, especially when you had a knackered squad at the end of last season, had 2 weeks off, added a 34 year old free agent and a couple of squad players and then played weekend/midweek every week for the entire season with the exact same squad.
Prior to the protests, United were odds on to beat Liverpool and end their top 4 hopes. Instead they had a crazy schedule, lost to Leicester and Liverpool, lost all positive momentum and were so knackered they could hardly move in extra time of the Europa League final.
Of course, it's all for the greater good. Glazers will leave any day now.
Tottenham collapsed, Liverpool collapsed, Chelsea had an appalling start and who even are Arsenal any more?
Go back and look at all the runners up over the last 20 years whether they missed out on goal difference or 20 points behind. I struggle to see any side I think this team is better than or even as good as and in the majority of cases it’s nowhere near being a close call
Go back and look at all the runners up over the last 20 years whether they missed out on goal difference or 20 points behind. I struggle to see any side I think this team is better than or even as good as and in the majority of cases it’s nowhere near being a close call
What did it for for Mourinho the very next season?
No matter how lucky it was the fact that that squad was able to achieve something that the current squad hasn't means that we weren't as bad as people like to say.
We weren't a team in shambles we were just a team with a toxic atmosphere, but we had a decent squad.
So what? You could argue the same when Liverpool won the league, replace Liverpool with United. Football happens in cycles. United aren’t as far away as you think
It was clearly Mourinho's fault for getting a toxic environment rather than lack of quality, everyone knows we were better than what we were performing.
That whole "rebuild" fact that has been going on for almost 3 years now is based on a 6 month performance, isn't it funny? People thinking that squad was only as good as it lower point and not at their highest.
You say we had a decent squad but the knuckle draggers still wanted smalling gone, blind gone, Shaw was crap, young wasn’t good enough etc
See my next post
Having a few bad players doesnt mean the squad needs a whole rebuild, it's literally the same situation we are in right now.
But Liverpool were a good side. They would have won the league or at least been challenging for it regardless. I don’t think we’d have a shout of second on our own merits this season without benefiting from misfortune of others
We can agree to disagree but look at our league record. We’d have been there or thereabouts
A few bad players. This forum wanted half the squad gone. Different players from now. It wants another half a squad gone now. At what point do we let a manager get on with his job and we stop pretending that we know better?
This is all plausible but if you look back and assess our final performance alongside various semi final performances it does suggest a manager at the helm who isn’t a great motivator. He also bought James and VDB I believe who he didn’t rate to use on the night and many nights. Now his transfer record for me holds up, just unfortunate with our budget and chasing down better squads, we couldn’t really afford another 50m wasted...he needed instead a great bench option. The summer will decide his fate now and strangely he’s not really the decider on how that pans out. Zero credit in the bank now amongst the majority it feels.
Yep, it is better. Which is why I don’t think the whole “huge rebuild ongoing” angle is suitable at the moment.
Regarding set pieces the problem is complicated.
De Gea has never been good at coming of his line and dealing with set pieces (i dont really know about Hendo) and outside of Maguire whos fantastic in the air, none of our other players are really that great at it. Pogba, Cavani and McTomminay are decent, but other than that i cant think of many players that are particularly dominant in the air. Another problem is that we play zonal marking and way to often we see players losing focus and leave their zone completely open. This is 100% a coaching issue imo
Playing from the back is also mostly a player issue imo. Fred and McTomminay are good/decent at breaking up play and screening the defense, but none of them are great passers. Considering Bruno is man marked by everyone these days it cuts of the supply completely when we try to build through the middle and we end up going wide instead. Pogba does solve that in some way, but as we know playing him as CM brings a lot of other problems. If Matic was 5 years younger we would have been golden, but sadly he isnt. A press resistant CM with some ability on the ball and some passing skills would make a world of difference imo
I said it before in this thread, but if all it took to defeat a parked bus was a good system, then no one would bother with it. We have gotten better at it though. This season in the league we won 21 games and scored the 2nd amount of goals behind City so its not like we are completely hapless. Room for improvement? Definitely, but imo we are not as clueless as many on here think we are
Another bit of progress that often gets overlooked is how nicely the squad is shaping up. We have a very decent core of starters now, and loads of players in the squad we can sell/release without it weakening us significantly
Romero, DDG, Baily, Dalot, Jones, Mata, Pereira, Lindgard, Matic, Martial and Chong are all surplus to requirements and players we realistically can sell/release this summer without it affecting us too much. Not saying its realistic, but if all of those left it would lighten the wage bill considerably, and probably bring in around 100 million £
In the completely unrealistic scenario that all of those leave this summer we are left with
----------------------------Hendo(24)--------------------------------
AWB(23)---Maguire(28)--Lindelof--(26)---Shaw(25)
---------------------Fred(28)---McTomminay(24)-----------
-----------------------------Bruno(26)--------------------------------
Greenwood(19)------Cavani(34)-------Rashford(23)
Subs: Telles, Williams, Tuanzebe, Mengi, James, Diallo, Pellestri, VdB, Garner, Mejbri, Pogba, Elanga, Shoretire
If we add Sancho, Pau Torres and Rice (personally not that convinced about the latter) and sell someone of the ones i listed above, we are looking at a net spend of around 100-150 million maximum which should not be impossible
The average age of that lineup is just 25,4 years, swap out Cavani with someone like Sancho and it goes down to 24,2. Considering most teams peak when their average age is around 26-28 is tells you this is a line up with plenty of potential and room to grow. Oles transfer strategy might not have brought instant success, but it puts down some solid foundations and it means we are going to reap the benefits for years to come
Just to be clear, Ole and his staff needs to show improvement next season as well for them to keep their jobs. A decent league challenge, 80+ points at least in the league and some sort of trophy is the bare minimum imo
Losing the final in that manner was gutting, but honestly i think the future looks bright. Even if Ole fails to deliver next season and gets the sack, i think hes done well in rebuilding the squad and whoever comes in next is going to have a exciting young team to work with
Still this forum wants at least a new keeper, a CB, a CDM a CM a RW and a ST. That's about half a team if you ask me.
All your are asking is to have blind faith. How much time do you think a manager needs/deserves?
Now we are talking about upgrading the team which is completely normal for every manager. Even Fergie had people complaining about his midfield and wingers at one stage!
I think Ole deserves to have in place what he has asked for and given another year to see if we move forward. Btw I don’t consider it blind faith, I have seen enough to suggest he’s slowly turning this thing around. Our fans need to have patience. Good job social media wasn’t around when fergie was starting, we’d never have known 20 years of success!
They say the darkest hour is before the dawn. Feck the EL.Yes we were absolute garbage. Yes the manager was totally found out like a rabbit in the headlights but everything’s been called out. Rashfords injuries and form. Overplaying players. Not using his signings. It’s all on the table. Ole is still learning and growing as a manager. He needs to make the tougher calls and if he doesn’t he’s gone soon. I’m sure he realises that. If we’d won the EL it would only be papering over the cracks of how much work still needs to be done and how flat we've looked for too long this season. I hope this is also another reality check for the owners. It’s going to be a bloodbath this summer with Sancho on the market, Pogba probably wanting to leave etc
Precisely how I feel. Ole has been turning this correctly around, slowly. Even if we don’t have patience we should acknowledge he’s done a good job relating the foundation and digging out the dirt. He deserves to be backed this summer and see how they progress this new season
Christ. There’s that word “embarrassing” again. You must have a perfect life if you think the result of one final is embarrassing. Give your head a wobble