Wonderful post. Could not have put it better myself.
Solskjaer's legacy and his future
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
Don't think so. After Jose left no one was rushing to credit his tactics behind anything good that happened. Also because it would be a leap to credit the organized passing and pressing we're seeing now as the effects of anything Ole did on the training ground. Did the passing and pressing training just start working after he left? Why weren't they apparent when he was in charge? Might have been useful in his final month.
Fully agreed, we really should and i myself also should let it go
But this is exactly the reason it is so hard to do. Anyway let's hope that - as someone aptly said here - Ole leaves a positive albeit unplanned legacy of the club being less nostalgic and giving more weight to actual ability and experience (and less weight to United connection) than before in staff recruitment.
Wasted time, 3 years with no real plan other than nostalgia and cliches. Sub standard and/or very basic training, time wasted for players collectively and individually.
Personally I could never understand what people were expecting Ole to do or why anyone ever expected him to be able to compete.
His whole career and everything he said and did made it pretty obvious he was a very limited manger with very basic ideas. Somehow we thought it was a good idea to entrust him with a reboot and rebuild and give then give him a three year deal for no reason.
Personally I could never understand what people were expecting Ole to do or why anyone ever expected him to be able to compete.
His whole career and everything he said and did made it pretty obvious he was a very limited manger with very basic ideas. Somehow we thought it was a good idea to entrust him with a reboot and rebuild and give then give him a three year deal for no reason.
Ole's training?
Do I think that?
So it's not an achievement nor is it proof of a manager competence?
Interesting, is it proof of a managers incompetence?
Cool, so how exactly did United's players benefit from no fans in the stadium more than the players of other teams again?
Exactly. We had it with VG for ages afterwards as well. At least he won a trophy and didnt spend as much. Ole player yes, reminisce. Manager no, forget it.
Today’s match proves his management (lack of) ‘’legacy’’ should have ended 2.5 years ago.
As a player an absolute legend. As a manager a disgrace. To know that you are tactically inept and to then surround yourself with inadequate staff this harming the club…however you look at it it just not good. RR has us looking better after 1 days training
Ole's legacy:
Manager: bad
Player: good
thread: done
Are chelsea fans still talking about lampards legacy? Just move on guys.
Manager: bad
Player: good
thread: done
Are chelsea fans still talking about lampards legacy? Just move on guys.
Quality control
I find the defend ole at all cost including pissing on Ralf actual management distasteful.
The amount of mind gymnastic ole butt hurt brigade is still up in force bigging up this clueless clown who pretend he's a manager for 3 years, serving us hot turd yet you lot call it donuts because it has a rainbow sprinkle on top of it.
He's not the worst manager ever imho, because he's not even a manager. He's just a mascot who does no training and plays candy crush on ipad
Ole had us better instantly when he took over the team mid season too. Let's see how RR works over the season before judging so quick. I like what I've seen so far, but we all knows it's about consistency.
but yeah, ole should have surrounded himself with better coaches (maybe he didn't realize they were bad due to lack of experience).
This is a pretty crass thread which should be locked now and left to die.
It’s time to move on.
It’s time to move on.
My word, grow up.
I do not remember his first game at all. No matter what if we were pedestrian today we were in control. Under Ole we never are in control. Rarely. Not even against Newcastle this year.
We were extremely good in the first 30 mins. We should have scored about three goals in that time. The same with Leipzig. We scored 5 but it was all counter attacking football. They messed it up completely but we were not in control of the game.
Yeah, I mean he's only been coaching for 11 years, how would he realize. The man is rubbish as a manager, should never have been offered the permanent job, we couldn't even wait till the end of that season to decide. Worst decision ever, 3 years wasted.
You don't know what you don't know. I was all anti-Ole for some time now as well. Just saying let's not be so quick to judge Ralf and his effectiveness on the team until a few games at least because Ole also had a great start.
i do think Ralf is and will prove to be the far superior manager and we will finally be getting our shit together and this is the start of a strong United team again
I wanted him gone but I do feel there is a lot of revisionism on his tenure. 2nd and 3rd place finishes. Regardless of the points tallys in both seasons that’s still matched only by Jose. Then we reached the Europa League final, losing on penalties. He had a very good record against Pep’s City. In the end the football was poor and he needed to go but to simply say he was a motivational speaker is probably unfair.
Can't wait to have my photo taken with that trophy.
Ralf has years of managerial work to judge upon. He might or might not be a success here but he's still 10x the manager ole is.
How he gets credit for this as an achievement I've no idea. We were only in that competition because he couldn't get out the CL group stage.
No one here is saying Ralf is not good or that Ole is good. If you read the full thread I was responding to, you'd see I was simply saying let's not be so quick to judge the teams play from one game when Ole also had an amazing start to his management career at United. I also stated I firmly believe he is a good choice to start our rise to the top again.
I guess in other words, we both agree with eachother about Ralf being better than Ole.
It wasnt aimed at you to be fair..but there are few in this thread that are snidey and seems to think Ole's still hard done.
What seems to be a rational debate for you is 3 years of being told to shut up, progress, dna etc. So yeah, like kopral jono said damn right we feel vindicated.
And trust me. It's 20le. If anyone we would want to succeed it's him the united son. But it's just not meant to be
Yesterday's game - after a 45 minute training session with Ralf - has absolutely shown up Ole and his coaches. With McFred in midfield too! It's about tactics and a system and far less about personnel. If the Ole cult had their way, they would have let him blow a billion more pounds on players and we would have still looked shit.
Ole is probably the worst tactical coach we ever had at this club. But we still have periods of winning form under his management, thanks mostly to the individual brilliance we have at this club.
And he is also a likeable person, love the club, and was a good player. His legacy would solely be on his final minutes winning goal during 99 CL final.
And he is also a likeable person, love the club, and was a good player. His legacy would solely be on his final minutes winning goal during 99 CL final.
Ole’s legacy is looking worse by the day. Had he walked out after the debacle v Villarreal he would have been carried out on his shield.
His legacy will be stabilizing the club and assembling a really good squad, but ultimately lacking the tactical and technical ability to compete with the best. And lets be honest here, with Klopp, Pep and Tuchel leading extremely talented sides, i cant remember the PL being more competitive than it is today
His biggest mistake imo was not surrounding himself with better coaches. Ole by his own admission did very little of the actual coaching, and going into this season we looked like we had no idea what we were tying to do
Very excited by RR, and i hope he stays at the club after his interim spell, but please dont rewrite history to fit your narrative. If you look at the bigger picture, he did no worse than his predecessors
His biggest mistake imo was not surrounding himself with better coaches. Ole by his own admission did very little of the actual coaching, and going into this season we looked like we had no idea what we were tying to do
Very excited by RR, and i hope he stays at the club after his interim spell, but please dont rewrite history to fit your narrative. If you look at the bigger picture, he did no worse than his predecessors
I'm not interested in defending Ole because the fact is, he had his chance and proved himself massively out of his depth. However, with all of the analysis above, you have to ask yourself the following.
1) How does measuring average points totals take into account the strength of the league and other factors, such as total games played by a team overall in all competitions? The answer is, it doesn't, so it's too binary. Why not just use the ACTUAL league position to measure who deserved what...since that's kind of the point?
2) You also have to ask, what would the expected outcome be for the two squads Ole managed into 3rd and 2nd? I would say the year we finished 3rd, that squad could easily have finished 6th/7th/8th. The par was probably about 5th/6th.
Last year, Ole finished above Liverpool and Chelsea, with a squad that was certainly not better than either of those two teams. So again, you have to look at it and say "what more could he realistically have been expected to achieve?"
Utterly bizarre.
Didn't look good for after a mere 45 mins did it?
He did his best, unfortunately he just wasn't good enough, not many are. A lot of people have gone in depth about how even though the squad looks better than what it was under Jose, improving on that with 400m is something any competent manager would've been able to do, and probably better.
Our league finishes under him also have to be taken in a lot of context with the other teams also struggling.
For me it was the football we played, I thought giving him the permanent contract after 10-12 games was a mistake to begin with.
He did his best, unfortunately he just wasn't good enough, not many are. A lot of people have gone in depth about how even though the squad looks better than what it was under Jose, improving on that with 400m is something any competent manager would've been able to do, and probably better.
Our league finishes under him also have to be taken in a lot of context with the other teams also struggling.
For me it was the football we played, I thought giving him the permanent contract after 10-12 games was a mistake to begin with.
Excellent post and agree with most of it, only in your assessment of 20/21 season, I would add that few players had strong performances in some parts of the season, like Pogba before his injury in March this year, Shaw & Maguire were solid in the 2nd half of 20/21 season Cavani played well too, and so on, that also helped the team get results which improved the points tally.
If you can't remember his first game at all I'm not sure you're best placed to say anything definitive, such as us never having any control.
His first game we beat Cardiff 5-1 and looked amazing. Much better than we did against Palace at the weekend.
Now I'm not saying that opening game meant anything, rather the opposite, it's one game. I wouldn't use Ole's first game to say "wow look what a proper manager can do, this proves the last guy was rubbish." So nor should it be used now after squeaking out a one nil win against a rubbish Palace team.
That said there's a confidence about Rangnick that does convince he'll do well.
He's not getting any credit in particular but in discussing his tenure what do you want people to do? Not mention gettting to the final? I don't think anybody is saying getting to the final deserves plaudits, Ole himself certainly didn't. Also unlike Mourinho he didn't try to convince everyone 2nd place was anything amazing.
And again, expectations. When we got the draw for that Champions League group I don't think anybody was confident we'd qualify.
Yes cos that’s what the poster you quoted was saying.
1. Comparison of the actual points to long-term average for the same league positions given us a rough understanding of how strong were top teams in a given season relative to history. Overall there is no clear downward trend (if you are implying that midtable and bottom half teams became stronger - if there were such a trend then yes, this would be a distorted measure). But if you look at the points total of big 4 over the last 10 years average is 315 with Moyes (331) and Jose (333, 333) managing in seasons with stronger-than-average top-4 whilst LvG (311, 288) and Ole (312, 296) managing in sessons with weaker-than-avearge top-4 suggesting that probably we have to be a bit stricter in assessing LvG and Ole's results just a league and a bit more lenient when assessing Jose's and Moyes' results (all other thing equal of course).
2. Expected points/expected league position gives us a rough indicaton of whether we were "lucky" or "unlucky" to finish where we did. It is rare that teams outperform expected goals/points consistently. On expected goals and points we were behind Chelsea and Liverpool in 20/21, so we were likely lucky to finish above them.
3. I never claimed that the measures I use are perfect and take into account everything. But it does not mean that as you suggest we should rely only on league places and strength of squads on paper in evaluating Ole and ignore other (however imperfect) measures. In 19/20 Liverpool had injury issues, and Chelsea was in managerial transition. And we still should have finished below them with a points total which is not usually enough for top4 and lower than in previous season. Our 2nd finish was a confluence of a number of positive and lucky factors and was not sustainable.
4. Squad strength on paper is anyway a very subjective measure since it's perception (and actual quality of players to some degree) depends on coaching a lot. Under a competent coach players look on average better than they are under a subpar coach, plus they realize their full potential. Salah, Mane, Firmino, Robertson were no world class players when they were signed and would be nowhere near where they are now under Ole. If Henderson was signed and played under Ole we would all clamor for him to be replaced, and so on. So I I a bit confused why you insist on relying on comparable squad quality to assess Ole, whilst dismissing other measures which at least are somewhat objective if imperfect.
5. The biggest problem with your argument is that from it (as you claim that Ole had 6-8th squad in 19/20) it follows that Jose's squad was in fact midtable (since it is not really disputable that squad under Ole became stronger) and Jose is a magician by achieving 2nd and 81 points (and EL win) with it. So if we accept your argument that Ole overachieved with the squad, it follows that Jose did a lot better than him and he had a midtable squad - do not think that anyone would agree with it.
Us lot? I'm bigging him up by saying I don't get the hate?
He's gone and I don't see the need to spit on his back. Did you also regard Ole a clown when he was playing? He earned no respect from you when he was doing it back in the day? He brought no joy to your misery? Tell me, do you also go around and spray your shit mist on other former players who shown support to him and the team? Would you do that to their face? you come across as a rather hateful guy, poor you.
The race was run with Ole but all in all I think he did a good job. He took over a club that was a shambles under Mourinho and put in on the right path again. This season was a disaster but his legacy has been enhanced by his stint here as manager. A good man with good intentions for the club who left it better than he received it, for that he has my gratitude.
1st. Ole the player is not ole the manager
2nd. Go ahead describe his tenure at United.
How is anyone pissing on Rangnick? Don't see how that's possible after one game.