Solskjaer's legacy and his future

[Chicharo]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

 

[Irwin99]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

Which is where we were heading under him anyway. And who spent close to 500 million on this squad?

It's over, he was a bad manager in a lot of ways that fluked his way to top 4 in his first season and did better his second, won no trophies, and then left us in a complete mess. Let's move on.

 

[Greck]

half a billion spent and we're starting matic, fred and mctominay. That's his legacy right there. You're damn right this isn't the time for the Ole defense. Maguire, awb, sancho, cavani dont even look like starters.

 

[TheMitz]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

And why not? He did manage us for the first half of the season.

 

[Stadjer]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

He was the one who compiled the team. Because of Ole we have a McFred and Matic midfield.

 

[pascell]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

Rightfully so, he never upgraded inconsistent and average players like Fred. Ole make a huge mistake not dropping Fred after the 19/20 season, in not doing so he set precedents which we're still paying for now in showing players we accept average performances on a consistent basis.

 

[Greck]

He was the one who compiled the team. Because of Ole we have a McFred and Matic midfield.

"deserved time and backing to build his own team". Still starting Jose's midfielders and wondering why we get pushed back every game. Jose who styled his game on giving control to the other team. At least Jose could say he did it by design.

 

[AndySmith1990]

To the misguided fools who come out with the defense of giving every manager time and money before assessing them, this is what happens when you apply that to a manager who clearly isn't worth backing. You end up with the most expensive shambles of a team in football.

 

[Ralph1386]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

Weren’t we miles behind 4th place when he got sacked?

 

[Roboc7]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

Of course who wouldn’t, he left behind this huge mess and a group of player with a poor culture, work ethic and attitude. This was never going to be a quick fix.

 

[kitress]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

He obscenely spent on two defenders to fix the defense and they turn out to be complete busts, like fundamentally unfit for the modern game. All the while letting the midfield situation to deteriorate this hopelessly. It takes on average half a billion pounds to dig us out of the hole he got us into.

 

[Ralph1386]

To the misguided fools who come out with the defense of giving every manager time and money before assessing them, this is what happens when you apply that to a manager who clearly isn't worth backing. You end up with the most expensive shambles of a team in football.

This

 

[Greck]

To the misguided fools who come out with the defense of giving every manager time and money before assessing them, this is what happens when you apply that to a manager who clearly isn't worth backing. You end up with the most expensive shambles of a team in football.

"Fool" sounds the adequate term for the logic displayed here. Workman buys 500m worth of supposedly defective tools but it's only the tools' faults. Some can't even make the bench of an underperforming team. Someone please hire Ole already so these lot can be on their way.

 

[arthurka]

Shocking state of this club. He spent 500m on this squad Jeebus Christos. Two strikers with the combined age of 80 years, renewed Matic and bought Donny who he never played and the defensive duo off Wan Bissaka and Maguire. Henderson third best paid goalkeeper in the land and so on. Bruno is the only player I can safely say made us better and he saved Ole again and again. Ralf has so much work to be done here it's not funny. Let's hope he gets us a midfielder this window and hope we can at least fight for the fourth.

 

[VidaRed]

Ole managerial legacy is akin to a heroin addict, there's no easy fix.

We're going through withdrawals in rehab right now, it won't get better this season but atleast problems have been identified.

 

[b82REZ]

When we finish the season miles behind the 4th place, some will still blame Ole...

Whose fault is it then?

 

[Red Star One]

To the misguided fools who come out with the defense of giving every manager time and money before assessing them, this is what happens when you apply that to a manager who clearly isn't worth backing. You end up with the most expensive shambles of a team in football.

I wish I could at least hope we’ll learn from that lesson

 

[Jericholyte2]

Whose fault is it then?

Certainly not the guy who had three years to get a new midfielder but felt for some fecking reason that McFred would do!

For fecks sake!

 

[tjb]

I actually think this vindicates him a bit. For a moment, I was in the camp that believed the coaching in training was the problem. What's become clear, and what I initially believed, we have one of the worst midfields in the league. It was the same with Ole. His decision to keep Pogba, he was absent for large portions of his reign, was probably part of why we didn't buy a proper midfielder under Ole. He had the opportunity to.

However, there were always signs it was a midfield issue. When Pogba played, we were able to play better in games more consistently, at least offensively. The problem was always that Pogba never wanted to stay in midfield and didn't have the defensive discipline to hold or tackle. We were slow in moving the ball due to the midfield lacking the first touch to collect balls or passing ability to move them forward, something which even Pogba couldn't do due to his slow turn and lack of awareness on the ball. Most teams, in fact every team in the league, at least has one player that can collect the ball from the defence or tackle. United, the biggest team in England, have managed to go almost a decade with the same problem. It's not the attackers, its not Maguire, its not De Gea or Shaw, its not Bruno...it has always been the central midfield. It started with us easily losing games to members of the big 6 and has progressed to us losing midfield battles both home and away against relegation fodder. The signs are even there from midfielders that have left us, when Herrera plays, PSG don't control games, Schneiderlin is nowhere, Schweinstieger went to the MLS after being with us. It's really annoying. We've spent years blaming the manager when personnel in the most important position on the pitch matter more.

We're the same team that won with Ince and Keane, Scholes and Keane, Scholes and Carrick, for years. Even in the last few years under Fergie, and even with the rotation policy he had in midfield at the time , there could never be an argument that our midfielders at the time were worse than anyone outside the top 4 at the time.

 

[Greck]

I actually think this vindicates him a bit. For a moment, I was in the camp that believed the coaching in training was the problem. What's become clear, and what I initially believed, we have one of the worst midfields in the league. It was the same with Ole. His decision to keep Pogba, he was absent for large portions of his reign, was probably part of why we didn't buy a proper midfielder under Ole. He had the opportunity to.

However, there were always signs it was a midfield issue. When Pogba played, we were able to play better in games more consistently, at least offensively. The problem was always that Pogba never wanted to stay in midfield and didn't have the defensive discipline to hold or tackle. We were slow in moving the ball due to the midfield lacking the first touch to collect balls or passing ability to move them forward, something which even Pogba couldn't do due to his slow turn and lack of awareness on the ball. Most teams, in fact every team in the league, at least has one player that can collect the ball from the defence or tackle. United, the biggest team in England, have managed to go almost a decade with the same problem. It's not the attackers, its not Maguire, its not De Gea or Shaw, its not Bruno...it has always been the central midfield. It started with us easily losing games to members of the big 6 and has progressed to us losing midfield battles both home and away against relegation fodder. The signs are even there from midfielders that have left us, when Herrera plays, PSG don't control games, Schneiderlin is nowhere, Schweinstieger went to the MLS after being with us. It's really annoying. We've spent years blaming the manager when personnel in the most important position on the pitch matter more.

We're the same team that won with Ince and Keane, Scholes and Keane, Scholes and Carrick, for years. Even in the last few years under Fergie, and even with the rotation policy he had in midfield at the time , there could never be an argument that our midfielders at the time were worse than anyone outside the top 4 at the time.

Stop it. This is so obviously made up it wouldn't make a fictional script. So we didn't buy a midfielder because of Pogba but it was okay to buy Sancho and Ronaldo in an area of the field where we were even stronger .Pogba doesn't block reinforcements in the defensive midfield either. Matic and Mctominay aren't exactly competing with Pogba.

"We've spent years blaming the manager when personnel in the most important position on the pitch matter more.". Yeah so did Ole embezzle the 500m we gave him?

 

[Chicharo]

Whose fault is it then?

I knew I'd be crucified for the post, but doesn't matter
Don't get me wrong - Ole isn't good enough. But, the fact is that problem doesn't lie in just the manager, or the squad we have. The problem is much deeper. Whose fault was it when Ole wasn't our manager?
Just look at CAF. Some blame Ole, some blame Ronaldo, some blame the Glazers, Woodward, DDG...
As for Ole, how are we suppose to know whether he actually wanted to improve our midfield last summer, but just wasn't backed up? We are currently in much deeper shit than some people realize. We're trying to rebuild the team for the 5th time in the last 10 years, while Citeh are winning the trophies.
And we started the process by hiring Ralf Rangnick... Hope he will prove me wrong
The whole atmosphere surrounding the club is toxic.

 

[spiriticon]

The players might be happy under him but christ he has made everyone into a mental weakling.

Did he do all training as non contact or something?

 

[minoo-utd]

To the misguided fools who come out with the defense of giving every manager time and money before assessing them, this is what happens when you apply that to a manager who clearly isn't worth backing. You end up with the most expensive shambles of a team in football.

I don't know how but this needs to be written and seen by everyone at this club.

 

[pocco]

The funny thing is that people were saying 'at least he's leaving us in a better position' etc. Yet more and more of Jose's signings and players from our academy seem to be trusted over Ole signings as time goes on. Hell even Dalot looks more dependable than AWB these days and Matic is our best midfielder, if only for 50 minutes per game.

 

[VanDeBank]

As soon as Ronaldo signed I felt that any 'long term plan' had been thrown out the window (or never existed in the first place. The balance of the squad from then on was all wrong and ultimately cost him his job.

You felt that on the Ronaldo signing and not the far more expensive Sancho one?

Ronnie was an opportunity signing and perfectly fine given that we only had an injury prone Cavani and an unrproven Greenwood (Martial should have been written off) There's a reason everyone was clamouring for Haaland. The CF position actually had a vacancy.

Contrast that with Sancho when we have Rashford, Greenwood, Pogba, Lingard, Elanga, Amad, etc already for the wide positions.

Anyway, not having a long term plan is caused by the fact that the people in charge are morons and don't know footy, so they wouldn't recognize a long term plan if you laid it in front of them. They just measured progress through position on the table and failed to notice we were clueless on the pitch for 3 seasons.

 

[Leftback99]

You felt that on the Ronaldo signing and not the far more expensive Sancho one?

Ronnie was an opportunity signing and perfectly fine given that we only had an injury prone Cavani and an unrproven Greenwood (Martial should have been written off) There's a reason everyone was clamouring for Haaland. The CF position actually had a vacancy.

Contrast that with Sancho when we have Rashford, Greenwood, Pogba, Lingard, Elanga, Amad, etc already for the wide positions.

Anyway, not having a long term plan is caused by the fact that the people in charge are morons and don't know footy, so they wouldn't recognize a long term plan if you laid it in front of them. They just measured progress through position on the table and failed to notice we were clueless on the pitch for 3 seasons.

We signed Sancho first so yes, as he basically became a £73m sub as soon as Ronaldo was signed. Most here were happy with our CF options at that point (Cavani, Greenwood, Martial, Rashford) and screaming out for a midfielder.

Signing Ronaldo first and then a £70m midfielder (or even two for that price) instead of Sancho would have made a lot more sense.

Instead we've:
- wasted a season of developing Greenwood as a CF
- made Martial worthless and hard to shift
- have a declining £600k a week CF who still will demand playing every game next season. With the jury out on whether he even makes us a better team
- neglected the midfield for another season and thrown away any chance of challenging

 

[VanDeBank]

We signed Sancho first so yes, as he basically became a £73m sub as soon as Ronaldo was signed. Most here were happy with our CF options at that point (Cavani, Greenwood, Martial, Rashford) and screaming out for a midfielder.

Signing Ronaldo first and then a £70m midfielder (or even two for that price) instead of Sancho would have made a lot more sense.

Instead we've:
- wasted a season of developing Greenwood as a CF
- made Martial worthless and hard to shift
- have a declining £600k a week CF who still will demand playing every game next season. With the jury out on whether he even makes us a better team
- neglected the midfield for another season and thrown away any chance of challenging

How did a winger become a sub when we signed a CF? Sancho is a sub because other wingers (that aren't Ronnie obv) are getting the nod over him and we're absolutely stacked in those positions.

Martial made himself worthless by being shit and we made him hard to shift when we gave him that big contract.

Agree with the rest.

 

[Leftback99]

How did a winger become a sub when we signed a CF? Sancho is a sub because other wingers (that aren't Ronnie obv) are getting the nod over him and we're absolutely stacked in those positions.

Martial made himself worthless by being shit and we made him hard to shift when we gave him that big contract.

Agree with the rest.

In 2 of the first 3 games we started with Greenwood at CF. After that he moved to RW pushing Sancho further down the pecking order. Simple.

 

[UnofficialDevil]

The players might be happy under him but christ he has made everyone into a mental weakling.

Did he do all training as non contact or something?

I don’t think he did any training at all.

 

[mctrials23]

Instead we've:
- wasted a season of developing Greenwood as a CF
- made Martial worthless and hard to shift
- have a declining £600k a week CF who still will demand playing every game next season. With the jury out on whether he even makes us a better team
- neglected the midfield for another season and thrown away any chance of challenging

I have to believe that the Ronaldo signing wasn't Oles choice as it smacks massively of the high ups desire to boost their profile off the pitch with little concern for on pitch success.

I'm just losing hope with this club completely.

The inevitable rumours are starting to surface that Rangnick is getting frustrated with the structure of the club and their unwillingness to give him any funds for this month and his fear that he will be able to do little to redirect the club when he goes upstairs. Ole was a disastrous appointment and I just watched the last 3 years waiting for it to finally implode. The signs were there from about a month in.

We are just an utter mess of a club with an expensively assembled bunch of entitled babies. How have our fans standards fallen so low that we accepted the dross of the last 3 years I will never know. Who give a flying **** that Ole gave us one of our best moments ever as a player. As our manager that is less than worthless.

I watched week after week as we were outplayed and outworked by the teams fighting to stay in the league and scraping wins because our CB cost more than their whole team and then came on here to listen to people giving anyone grief who wasn't jubilant that we snuck past Newcastle.

Every time I watch the likes of Chelsea, City, Liverpool and even Arsenal at times its just a horrible juxtaposition to our own performances. Players working as a team, moving in clear lines, sprinting to be where they need to be, compact blocks of players, no 20m gaps in their midfield, strikers doing something other than attacking, rehearsed patterns of play, everyone contributing to both attack and defence.

I don't know if I am going mad sometimes when people can't see how far behind these teams we are. There isn't a single area of the game that we stack up to these clubs other than in the transfer window where we outspend most of them.

 

[Max_United]

I knew I'd be crucified for the post, but doesn't matter
Don't get me wrong - Ole isn't good enough. But, the fact is that problem doesn't lie in just the manager, or the squad we have. The problem is much deeper. Whose fault was it when Ole wasn't our manager?
Just look at CAF. Some blame Ole, some blame Ronaldo, some blame the Glazers, Woodward, DDG...
As for Ole, how are we suppose to know whether he actually wanted to improve our midfield last summer, but just wasn't backed up? We are currently in much deeper shit than some people realize. We're trying to rebuild the team for the 5th time in the last 10 years, while Citeh are winning the trophies.
And we started the process by hiring Ralf Rangnick... Hope he will prove me wrong
The whole atmosphere surrounding the club is toxic.

Absolutely. Ole was never a tsar of transfer policy (other managers weren't either). He was never the biggest problem with the club - we all know who was. And all other post-Fergie mangers did not really do much better whilst having better CVs.

However, my problem has always been with "left us in better state" arguments brought up in his defense and translated as "better squad" and "better atmosphere". We all start seeing more and more clearly that both of these arguments do not have any merit. You can argue about exact details but in the big picture he left us in at least as much of a mess as other managers and has been as much a comprehensive failure as they were and we lost another 3 years under him and are in need of a comprehensive rebuild from top to bottom AGAIN. And I repeat - having said that, without doubt most of the blame lies above him. Ultimately he was just a high (not even the highest) ranking employee.

 

[VanDeBank]

In 2 of the first 3 games we started with Greenwood at CF. After that he moved to RW pushing Sancho further down the pecking order. Simple.

Got ya.

Well, I have to say if an 80m signing can't displace Greenwood on the wing, he's massively underperforming. If he's not able to displace Elanga or Rashford either, that means he's not playing because he's shit right now, not because we signed Ronaldo.

 

[ManchesterManchester]

I have to believe that the Ronaldo signing wasn't Oles choice as it smacks massively of the high ups desire to boost their profile off the pitch with little concern for on pitch success.

I'm just losing hope with this club completely.

The inevitable rumours are starting to surface that Rangnick is getting frustrated with the structure of the club and their unwillingness to give him any funds for this month and his fear that he will be able to do little to redirect the club when he goes upstairs. Ole was a disastrous appointment and I just watched the last 3 years waiting for it to finally implode. The signs were there from about a month in.

We are just an utter mess of a club with an expensively assembled bunch of entitled babies. How have our fans standards fallen so low that we accepted the dross of the last 3 years I will never know. Who give a flying **** that Ole gave us one of our best moments ever as a player. As our manager that is less than worthless.

I watched week after week as we were outplayed and outworked by the teams fighting to stay in the league and scraping wins because our CB cost more than their whole team and then came on here to listen to people giving anyone grief who wasn't jubilant that we snuck past Newcastle.

Every time I watch the likes of Chelsea, City, Liverpool and even Arsenal at times its just a horrible juxtaposition to our own performances. Players working as a team, moving in clear lines, sprinting to be where they need to be, compact blocks of players, no 20m gaps in their midfield, strikers doing something other than attacking, rehearsed patterns of play, everyone contributing to both attack and defence.

I don't know if I am going mad sometimes when people can't see how far behind these teams we are. There isn't a single area of the game that we stack up to these clubs other than in the transfer window where we outspend most of them.

Excellent post. To answer your question of why fans accept our current status. I think that is due to the Glazers turning Man Utd from a football club into a brand and there non-stop shameless PR. They can’t talk about winning anymore so they make it all about our culture and icons.

We have fans now who now prefer our manager to be a Man Utd legend than an actual decent manager. It’s the same with the players, a lot of fans prefer watching legends/social
Media stars such as Ronaldo, Pogba and Lingard more than actual decent signings. It’s not sustainable though.

 

[Acole9]

One thing he was praised for was the recruitment. I think it's safe to say that was nothing more than a myth.

£75 million on Sancho who has yet to find his feet.

£30 odd million on van de Beek who's never been giving a run of games.

£50 million on Wan Bissaka and we're allegedly now looking for an upgrade in that position.

£80 million on Maguire, paid well over the odds for him and completely out of form.

 

[led_scholes]

Did he say in his last interview that he left the squad better than when he came? After spending 300 million we look even worse than then and we have to offload 10-15 players. Amazing that people were in denial for so long with this fraud.

 

[Andrew7582]

I have to believe that the Ronaldo signing wasn't Oles choice as it smacks massively of the high ups desire to boost their profile off the pitch with little concern for on pitch success.

I'm just losing hope with this club completely.

The inevitable rumours are starting to surface that Rangnick is getting frustrated with the structure of the club and their unwillingness to give him any funds for this month and his fear that he will be able to do little to redirect the club when he goes upstairs. Ole was a disastrous appointment and I just watched the last 3 years waiting for it to finally implode. The signs were there from about a month in.

We are just an utter mess of a club with an expensively assembled bunch of entitled babies. How have our fans standards fallen so low that we accepted the dross of the last 3 years I will never know. Who give a flying **** that Ole gave us one of our best moments ever as a player. As our manager that is less than worthless.

I watched week after week as we were outplayed and outworked by the teams fighting to stay in the league and scraping wins because our CB cost more than their whole team and then came on here to listen to people giving anyone grief who wasn't jubilant that we snuck past Newcastle.

Every time I watch the likes of Chelsea, City, Liverpool and even Arsenal at times its just a horrible juxtaposition to our own performances. Players working as a team, moving in clear lines, sprinting to be where they need to be, compact blocks of players, no 20m gaps in their midfield, strikers doing something other than attacking, rehearsed patterns of play, everyone contributing to both attack and defence.

I don't know if I am going mad sometimes when people can't see how far behind these teams we are. There isn't a single area of the game that we stack up to these clubs other than in the transfer window where we outspend most of them.

Ole spoke in a press conference about wanting Ronaldo and trying to persuade him to come before he signed, so either he wanted the player or he was a glazer puppet without any backbone, take your pick.

 

[studs]

The only legacy Solskjaers has is this thread, which should be left to fade away and forgotten about. Like he himself has done. Fecker is probably sitting at home counting his stacks breaking his bollicks laughing watching the Liverpool match.

 

[Water Melon]

His legacy is shite. Spent tons, won fook all. Three years and hundreds of millions wasted.

 

[Andycoleno9]

His pre-season work was awful. Our fitness level is the worst in PL.
I swear; i can't remember when some manager did damage to some club in a level that Solskjaer did in United.

 

[Idxomer]

Did he say in his last interview that he left the squad better than when he came? After spending 300 million we look even worse than then and we have to offload 10-15 players. Amazing that people were in denial for so long with this fraud.

He also alluded that the team will win the league soon after his sacking because he always leaves his teams with strong foundations.