Lack of options is not an excuse to spend so much money on a player if he's not good enough. You just find a way to get by with what you have - or look for a far cheaper short-term solution - while working on finding a long term one.
For the money, spent, it would have been criminal had it not been improved somewhat. But it doesn't matter as some of the deals he made are hampering us and will continue to do so for the next couple of years at least.
Maguire and AWB were positive additions. They did really help us. They should still be really helping us.
Maguire and AWB were short term gains as they did improve our defence. But they were never players who we can get to the highest level with - which should be our target. They have limited that won't be solved. So spending that sort of money for short term gains was scandalous.
I mean people are crying about Maguire but what about Varane? That's someone Ole signed.
Maguire was a target long before Ole arrived. Managers have the overall responsibility, but I suppose it’s the “United system” who target players (presents alternatives, recommendations and make decisions). I think it’s wrong to personalise this issue, saying one transfer was decided by the manager and another transfer was decided by someone else.
Why did he almost instantly make him captain then.
Yes, that was one of the reasons why he was targeted to be bought, seen as a future leader in the dressing room.
De Gea should have gotten the captaincy without a doubt at the time. The only player aside from Phil Jones that was playing under SAF and won a title. No brainer to me. Matic also played a lot more also then compared to now and is a title winner with Chelsea. Choosing Harry Maguire isn't as clear cut a decision as it's being made out.
de Ligt
Yeah agree with you.
Clearly alot of our fans love hindsight. I am not sure you re-call but at that time, DDG was looking ify in goal. There were question marks over him and Ole had bringing Henderson into the fold once his loan was complete.
Players are usually made captain for reasons that we do not see. Its not always around on-pitch performance, although often their 'captain' like personality is reflected on this field. With Maguire that doesn't seem to be the case too often, but its logical to imagine that he has a leaders presence behind the scenes.
i think it would be his lack of squad rotation when needed. He stuck to the same players regardless of form, that was a main issue. It was as if he didn’t trust players outside the starting 11. Even substitutions were late, or even none. I know squad depth was an issue, but not to the extent he took it to. I wish he had handled this better. We probably lost the europa league final because players were out of gas. I wonder what would have been had we won that cup. I supported him when he was the manager as i saw good football at times; but unfortunately it all crashed this season
Maguire and AWB looked like great additions up till the point where we stopped playing counter attacking football. Which is around the same time that their weaknesses started to show and also around the same time Ole's job became increasingly threatened.
I think it's clear as day his only real mistake was getting Ronaldo instead of pushing for a centre mid. This meant we were worse instead of better going into year 3. He wouldn't think that though. It would be interesting to hear because it would provide real insight into the club I think. He might think he made no real major mistakes but ultimately wasn't a good enough coach to get to the right level, and I don't think that's a billion miles from the truth
Again slow and inexperienced and Juve offered him over 200k pw and he's not set the world alight and been criticised and benched.
Look mate I like to tackle little Ole like most of the other guys in here. However let's get real here. Sure he was lazy as he never coached the team and went for a holiday in the middle of a crisis. Meritocracy went out of the window during his time as well as he hired half of his people from his doomed Cardiff time or/and his mates. However its unfair to put the blame of our disastrous transfer campaign solely to him. Let's not forget that we've been shit on transfers long before he came and he was only part of a transfer committee which also had Jon Murtough in it.
We've been shit due to shit managers.
I hate this take.
It looks Bayern want him now so he must be better than Maguire.
It’s this kind of thinking that is why we are in such a huge mess, and it’s probably close to what all the incompetent people at the club thought at the time. What else could they do but massively overspend on two players who weren’t good enough. The lack of accountability and forward planning has been apparent for years and we’ll continue to pay the price for it.
United got 8 more points last season than the one before. That would qualify as progress regardless of whether Liverpool should have been 2nd or 3rd.
What? No he's not. He had a slow start but he plays every game now and is one of the first names on the teamsheet.
Just because someone is young doesn’t mean he is inexperienced. He has played at Ajax and Juventus, at a Euros and in the Champions League. Most players reach the end of their careers with less experience.
We got more points because we had Bruno for a full season in 2020/21 rather than half a season like in 2019/20. That was about it.
We got more points because we were playing in empty stadiums. Our team is full of bottlers who crumble under pressure. Having no fans watching was a big advantage
Nope. Way too expensive
We had no fit CB at one point, many of us have forgotten about that. One of the main reasons why we went for Maguire was his fitness record was ace and hardly ever injured.
He is experienced. Over 200 club games. He has played a EL final and a CL semifinal for Ajax.
