Well, that's nothing new then is it? We normally bring in 3/4 in the summer so, even without him saying it we would have got 10 new signings in 4 windows anyway.
Ralf Rangnick | Austria manager
- Thread starter Livewire1974
- Start date
Well, time will tell then. If we get a few signings and we play better under ETH, then this notion of available players and his ideas is a mismatches does not run.
Why would any club back an interim manager in January for a 30/40m signings? Do you think the signing he wanted would have been the one Ten Hag wanted? Imagine we got Haidara, then we come to the summer and can't afford De Jong.
Also, the board wanted Rangick, ETH is the one who decided he did not want him, the board backed the manager. yet the new structure gets criticised when they back the manager?
I suppose 2 things could be true at the same time: Ragnick was an absolute train wreck/shit interim of an appointment but he might also have had some good/valid opinions about the players/squad
I think the issue is that the "valid" opinions are only the ones that the Caf agrees with, the rest are just ignored and everyone pretends he never said them.
Desperation for deflection for their own agenda, thats all.
Also this whole he said 10 players in one window thing, not only is that a made up spin to be used against him but even if he said that, shitter would be so wrong that we need 10 in one window, at least 15 to 20 to replace those pricks.
Yeah, I'd say it's a human nature kind of thing and not just a Caf thing, in fairness
. It's never as completely black and/or white as people would like to think it is.Yeah you don't! However, why appoint a coach for 6 months only, who is still known to favor a playing style which isn't suited at all for the current crop of players at the club?
If ETH hit the train running and plays attractive football yeah. If he struggles the first half year and only improves in the second half of season, there won't be any proof RR with the right support wouldn't have been able to do this also.
Or in other words. Ifl doubt ETH will be successful playing attractive Ajax style football, if he has to go into the new season with the current crop of players. He will most likely struggle and be outside of the top 4 by Xmas.
You appoint an interim for 6 months, in order to get your primary target, Ten Hag. The primary target was not available in the middle of the season. A high pressing system? its called coaching, most players are coached a system.
I mean all there needs to be is an improvement in the style from last season and the proof is there. We actually played worse football under Rangnick than Ole. At least, with Ole we scored goals. A success is not top 4 by Christmas btw. Rangnick was appointed in November, he had more than half the games.
I do not expect Ajax type of football, anything that was better than what Rangnick produced will prove that RR was all excuses, all talk but 0 action.
It is a fair representation as it is exactly what he said. How much do you imagine the context of the interview mattered to the current squad when they heard it? My guess would be very little.
Sometimes a longer statement includes something so pointed that obviously that will be the only part that matters. I believe he also said it multiple times.
Not defending the players but I definitely got the gist that he was desperately trying to move the blame away from himself and downplaying some decent players due to his own failures.
Chelsea, United, PSG, Bayern all will go from Benzema in a heart beat. Benzema is better than both Halaand and Mbappe for starters as a striker.
Fair enough and I agree with you. But then you go for coach whose strength is to produce short term success. Not for coach who plays a style of football which doesn't suit your team and players.
To implement a high pressing game you need the right players but also time. Surely a lot of United's players will eventually being able to play a high pressing game but you can't teach it in the midst of a season. And there are also players who won't be able. These players you have to move on. Like Guardiola or Klopp did it.
When Bayern hired LvG we played terrible football and lost many matches. We were even close to get eliminated in the group stages of the CL and needed an away win at Juventus. That game was the turning point of the season. We won in Turin and suddenly the players were able to play LvG system. We won the double and reached the CL final in that season. Adapting to a new playing style takes time, sometimes more sometime less.
Bayern has only Lewandowski for the 9, are about to lose him and reportedly have no interest in signing him although Ronaldo would be happy to join them. Fans are far too focused on individual goal output, top coaches fortunately aren't. Pressing scores you goals, winning the ball high up the pitch scores you goals. Both is less likely to happen with Cristiano on the pitch. And he's neither the unstoppable force he used to be in his younger years nor the the best goal getter on the planet anymore to warrant such drawbacks. There are strikers these days who'll score a similar amount while contributing defensively and in the build up of attacks much more than Ronaldo does. Like Benzema who for this reason alone would have many interested clubs.
I still believe the appointment made sense. Hiring someone for short term success would mean reverting to old patterns. United obviously made the (right and quite honestly overdue) decision to appoint coaches with a clear style and playing philosophy who wants to work structurally than "old school managers" who play improvised and very individualistic football with a focus on mentality, man management, stardom and player power. That means a lot of differences in terms of how you train (more tactical drills and fitness), what responsibilities the players have (probably even stuff like "homework", playbooks, etc), how the club across all its administrative levels approaches certain challenges, and so forth. And when you make the decision to transform an organisation in such a wholistic manner, it is best to start it immediately and with the maximum consequence possible then wait until your favorite target is available. I mean, imagine they hired somebody as an interim who got them top 4 - do you believe the "perceived suffering" from their short mindedness and lack of a long term plan would have been as big as it is now? Or would they have thought "well, we didn't do everything wrong after all. We were a bit silly to be wanting to turn the whole club on its head". Rangnick hit a brickwall with his style of coaching. And that's a problem not only for him but for the club since better coaches with a similarly coaching style (like most modern coaches) will most likely encounter the same obstacles.
I mean, it's not just "change the coach and be done with it". There are so many factors that make a club successful and life easier for the one training the players.
He had pretty expensive and uncomfortable truths and ideas. No way would upper level clear out 80% of the squad. To make a massive change of style with limited time was a poor club decision. He should be thanked for laying the groundwork for the Mass exodus we have seen now.
I understand what you are saying and appreciate that a new coach takes time to get his principles across to players. I agree that the high intensity game is hard to adapt in season.
However; that does not mean you cannot get players that have played at a very high level to defend as a team? The structure of the team should be solid, if you cant get them playing the style, the manager should get them compact and hard to beat at the very least.
I have seen teams come to OT or we have gone to stadiums as underdogs and fight it out, play defensively and not give the opponent many chances. We went to Anfield, Emirates, Ethiad and were opened up at will.
Serious top clubs don't just buy players because they are 'better' than the ones they have. Benzema was at Real Madrid for a long while even though there were better strikers out there, they didn't go and sign Lewandowski.
Anyway this is not the Ronaldo thread, but it's the 6th of July. We should probably wait until he's definitely not signed for anyone to proclaim that 'no top club wants him.'
To be fair, his qualifications as a coach aside, his comment that riled people was 10 starters from last year would need to be replaced within 4 windows time. The shortest time frame he could have meant for that is 2 years and I wouldn’t be that surprised if he’s right come the start of season 24/25.
Your goals conceded went down considerably after he took over and so did your xPts. Still not good enough but it was much better than it was before. You nosedived again towards the end of the season but considering all the noises about players not buying into his ideas, Rangnick changing the system because he thought the players aren't fit to press, etc. it makes sense.
I mean, you're reliably linked with/have already signed Antony, de Jong, Lopez, Malacia, Eriksen and Timber. That's five players for four different positions in the first window of Ten Hag alone. So it looks like Ten Hag at the very least agrees with Rangnick that the squad needs a drastic transition in the short term.
We never really saw his style. I guess he figured he doesn't have the players to implement it - which is also why he talked about the need for a squad overhaul - and tried other things. Which failed miserably.
It made plenty of sense when it seemed we were going to use him in order the overhaul things for the long term, beyond those six months.
But as a quick-fixer, it was never going to work.
Yeah quite a good example, but some won't have a word said against Ralf.
We never saw anything tbh. Its very easy to say, he doesn't have the players. I will give you a very good example.
Newcastle. They were bottom 3, going down, playing crap, a new manager came in and changed that. He got on with the job and coached the players.
All Rangnick did was moan moan moan.
But that's Rangnick, for better or worse. He has a certain style. If you want to work around that, don't bring him in.
The reason you bring a manager in, you expect them to change things, examples have been given with Newcastle. Even Klopp got to a Europa final in his first 7 months and changing styles.
This was a manager that had high pressing style and gave it up in 20 minutes.
Both Howe and Conte got new players, what Rangnick got was half of his forward line gone and a lot of injuries to key players in other positions.
He didn't do well and the players didn't respond to him but there were other circumstances that made the last 3 months go as bad as they did.
That was Ralfs decision though, letting go players. He clearly said in the press conference, the squad is too big.
If the players respond to ETH, then it will show that Rangick was the problem too.
You also bring in a manager that suits a situation. If you wanted a quick fix for half a season, anyone who knows Rangnick could have told you not to sign him. Some managers can do that. He can't. That's probably why he's not a top european coach.
The real issue was always he people who chose him for that role.
The main sympathy I had with Rangnick is that because the club moved so slow with the whole Solskjaer thing, the squad was mentally broken by the time they made the change. It was an up hill task - the entire atmosphere around the club and fanbase was a complete cesspit by the time Rangnick came in.
He initially actually did well, to rebuild some confidence. We automatically became more solid when he came in, but there was no way he was going to get the players playing a more expressive form of the game after 3 months of constantly getting humiliated. Solskjaer should've gone much, much earlier. Then Etihad happened and they mentally fell apart again, a lot of it because of the PTSD of the first half of the season.
He initially actually did well, to rebuild some confidence. We automatically became more solid when he came in, but there was no way he was going to get the players playing a more expressive form of the game after 3 months of constantly getting humiliated. Solskjaer should've gone much, much earlier. Then Etihad happened and they mentally fell apart again, a lot of it because of the PTSD of the first half of the season.
Conte would've been a permanent signing. If it was between Conte now or Rangnick immediately and Ten Hag half a season later, I'd choose the latter option 10 out of 10 times. Conte is no coach for an absolute top team the way he sets his teams up.
Permanent or Interim he still took over a team mid-season and improved them, as many other managers have done in the past.
He actually said 2-3 transfer windows.
Actually, I think he implied we could do with 10 signings in one window, minimum 6, but that’s open to interpretation.
I've seen no evidence anywhere that xPts has any predictive value.
It's hard to square "Rangnick is a football expert" with "Rangnick can only make teams play a certain way." All managers learn the basics.
Rangnick didn't have to accept the job. He already had a job, and he's not even a manager anymore, really. If the squad was so doomed to fail under him, he should have been able to assess that with his 'football expertise' (by watching a few games), and then simply not accepted the job. Yet he didn't do that.
Last edited:
Indeed which makes a nonsense of that defence.
So you're arguing there's no correlation between xPts and actual points total?
I see Rangnick as a terrible appointment, too. But I think especially in these days of extreme organization every coach has their own philosophy and they stick to it.
This is still crazy talk. I mean could you imagine talk in a board roam being: "let's hire the guy, who will fail, because someone who succeeds may make us second guess our will for reforms".
If your desire for reforms evaporates based on some mild interim success, then you never were a reformer to begin with. Ultimately the people in charge will implement what they believe in. If they believe in "modern" structures, then they will implement them regardless of who gets a 6 month interim role and if they are short term driven, then that will shine through regardless of Rangnick or EtH as well.
Last edited:
Imagine standing in a board room and arguing "this club needs to change immediately, it lived in the past for far too long. It is time we adapt to modern football and install a playing philosophy like all our competitors do. There's no alternative to be successful. We will move into this direction and we will do that - tommorow. Or the day after tomorrow. Or the day after that, we'll see."
If you make that decision, you don't appoint somebody who goes against it. And Conte for example would have gone against it. The willingness of the club to move players on and sign new ones for Ten Hag would have been far lower if it hadn't been Rangnick but Conte or even Carrick, especially if they managed to achieve top 4. This was - finally - a decision by United that said "feck the short term, we have to look beyond that".
Also, you completely ignore that Rangnick could have worked out. That would of course have been the most welcome outcome. But the way it went is definitely better for United than achieving their minimum goal by somebody who stands for their former approach.
Greenwood wasn't his decision, Martial was adamant to go and Cavani decided to stop being a footballer.
Rangnick was a problem and out of his depth but not someone who ruined the team in a few months as some like to portray.
By the way, the whole "this team needs 10 new signings" wasn't that crazy of a statement. His mistake here was going public with it.
This is basically the reason the board didn't go for Conte because he would've wanted a change quickly. Since he has been appointed by Spurs, he went on and signed 7 players so far and apparently is in for even more players.
This is basically the reason the board didn't go for Conte because he would've wanted a change quickly. Since he has been appointed by Spurs, he went on and signed 7 players so far and apparently is in for even more players.
Rangnick also didn’t mean in one transfer window. He said it could take 3 transfer windows to see a big change.
I dont think he ruined the team in a few months. He was definitely out his depth. The players realised this and they also knew he is not going to be the manager so they stopped trying.