Our front 3 cost nothing so it's no surprise it struggled to break them down. Should have brought on Dan James to improve it by £19m.
Squad depth is king
- Thread starter jackal&hyde
- Start date
Which is why a United manager playing for penalties for 45 minutes against a mid table La Liga side is all the more pathetic.
I have to be. This man is clearly not good enough but we keep still having debates on why we should keep him. It should be unison now. I’m talking 90/10 this guy has t go. He showed us all his cards yesterday and once again we lost when it mattered because the opposition had a better manager than us. It’s that simple.
Our bench last night was rubbish, Ole put his faith in the starting 11 and they let him down,
The players on bench if any of them started they would of been uproar.
Mata has no legs and VDB hasn't been great.
I will say this Rashford looked miles of it last night and probably shouldn't of started but its a iffs and butts,
If we sign Sancho and Varane or similar it'll make it alot better.
The players on bench if any of them started they would of been uproar.
Mata has no legs and VDB hasn't been great.
I will say this Rashford looked miles of it last night and probably shouldn't of started but its a iffs and butts,
If we sign Sancho and Varane or similar it'll make it alot better.
Stick with the squad depth discussion in squad depth thread, do not stretch the discussion out of topic like you always do. Ole would have use his subs if he has quality players on the bench. He did it when he had Pogba, Cavani, Greenwood and Rashford on the bench before and it’s a fact you shouldn’t ignore.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. That depth helps? Of course it does. But is it King (i.e. one of the most, if not the most important thing) like the thread title suggests?
If a team without squad depth can win the CL and put in a 90+ point title challenge at the same time, then go on to win the title the next season... then the conclusive answer is that clearly no, it isn’t.
Most important thing is to have a well-drilled, well-coached team and a strong starting XI. Then you can build quality squad depth if you afford to do it. Most teams settle for sub par alternatives to their starting XI. Every team has 24 players anyway, but I only see City with a 2nd string XI that can rival their starters.
Our lack of quality depth is not an excuse for failing to beat Istanbul Basaksehir and Villarreal when it mattered. That’s a ridiculous excuse.
This is not applicable for yesterday. It was down to Ole stubbornly refusing to make any subs who were of higher quality than the Villarreal subs. Not to mention running the on field players to the ground. It was a massive feck up.
And no amount of sugar coating or throwing De Gea under the bus is going to make it go away.
It is if you read what the OP said instead of just purely reading the title. He mentioned both XI and squad depth are the two most important ones. XI doesn’t always work out and can be nullified, thus the squad depth is important to play as alternative plan to change the game. Shaqiri in 19/20 is definitely better than Daniel James & Mata.
How can you expect a manager to sub off someone like Rashford or Greenwood or Bruno with James or ageing Mata or inexperienced who needs time to be integrated to the squad like Diallo right?
Do you remember when Klopp subbed Salah? Can't remember who it was for. But when he brings on Jota or Origi in the past is it because he thinks Origi is better than him? No, it's because what he tried hasn't worked, so you have to try something else. I want Ole to succeed as much as most. He's done a good job getting the spirit back, getting rid of deadwood and righting the rudder. But I really don't think he's the man to take us forwards. This game was an encapsulation of why people think he's out of his depth. It's not just a lack of trust in his bench. He was scared. Plain and simple he didn't have the balls to do anything. We can all debate selections. And you can put what 99% think is your best team out there but if it's clear that it's not working then you change things, you try things. And Ole didn't have the balls or the nous to do it. He needs to learn from this or he will fail. And he needs better coaches. How many times are we gonna concede from crosses into our box?
He bloody bought those players! He bought James, Amad and VDB.
When he saw Rashford was rubbish and Villarreal weren’t contesting the midfield he could have played VDB for Rashford and moved Pogba left. Or played James there or Amad. None of these could have been worse than an injured looking player that loses the ball every time he gets it.
If these players are so bad they can’t come on for a starter whoever bad that guy is playing the blame is on Ole for signing them.
The reason though isn’t the bench. He never subs certain players, he’s too risk averse and too afraid to tinker with the team during a game however that is going. There’s a reason there’s a thread “make a fecking sub, Ole”. Hems just a very poor in-game manager who can’t get the most from his squad. That’s bottom line.
Because if Rashford is playing terribly - and on top of that is now totally knackered and can barely contribute anything, then a fresh legged James, Amad or Mata can't possibly be a worse option. For one just having someone fresh over tired mind/tired legs is a benefit... and it's trying something different, which is quite good when what you're currently trying is being completely ineffective.
These aren't pub players, these are professional footballers who have contributed at various points in the season. All 3 of them literally did 3 days ago!
Do you honestly think if SAF was in that dugout he would have managed his games and the subs in exactly the same way?
He bought those players for different purposes because the board couldn’t back him to sign the quality ones. Amad is prospect signing not a straight first team quality signing, James was just a backup quality signing not a straight first team quality thus why he was signed only for 15m, and everyone can see that VDB needs time develop his game from Ajax possession system to play more progressive and direct like us.
He did it when he had Pogba, Cavani, Greenwood and Rashford on the bench so it shows he subs players on if they are good enough, it’s so obvious the difference in quality.
Hmm what did sir Alex do? Needed a win against Liverpool what did he do? Chucked on John oshea at centre forward and we scored. What did he do when we needed to win against Aston villa? Brought on a nobody player called meceda who won the game for us.
Any decent manager makes a change and doesn't care if his top players are on the pitch or not.
And I keep re-iterating that the most important thing after the first XI is not the squad depth but is having the XI to be well coached and drilled. Our problem isn't depth, it's coaching. Come back to me when you catch up on that.
On the bolded, you're basically just talking rubbish for the sake of talking. There's feck all between Shaqiri and James, if anything the latter has been used more and is proving more reliable than Shaqiri did in 19/20 (who basically did nothing)
It is a squad depth discussion. We had this same argument at the end of last season. Fred and McTominay aren’t good enough to come off the bench and we need a striker and a left back.
This season Donny Van De Beek and Matic aren’t good enough to come off the bench and we need a striker better than the striker who we should have got last season to be better than the options we had coming of the bench who are now our first teamers who don’t perform better than the players they came into replace who are now our new squad depth options off the bench.
I mean just because he trusted them last season doesn’t mean he should trust them this season. He needs new players to decide on whether he takes Rashford off or sticks to hoping he can smash one in from 20 yards.
Rashford was terrible vs Southampton 3-2 for instance. And yet he was kept and delivered the winning assist. Replacing Rashford who is proven to be able to deliver with James, the current Amad, and Mata doesn’t make sense. Replacing Rashford with Sancho or Grealish or Mahrez or Martial makes more sense.
This is such an lazy argument.
Of course if you compare squads we look better than Villareal. Football would be incredibly boring if you decided the winner by comparing squads, but just because we have a better squad than Villareal on paper does not mean we have great squad depth.
VdB have had one passable game in a dead rubber game vs wolves, other than that hes been useless. Ole and the coaches see these guys in training every single day, and there is probably a good reason VdB has not started more. Hes not sticking him on the bench "just because". Also, we tried that shit with Martial the whole season and it did not work. Putting someone in the starting XI wont magically make them perform at a peak level
Considering Pogba has struggled with fitness and Covid, Cavani has been injured/suspended for a while and Martial has been useless all season, we dont really have that many options left. Every time James starts this place is all moans and groans and same with Mata/Matic which is understandable considering they lost their legs about two seasons ago.
After the season is done and dusted, its incredibly easy to sit in hindsight and say we should have rotated more, but if we did we might not have made top 4
In 2008 we had the likes of Park, Giggs, Nani, Fletcher and Scholes on the bench. Not only quality players, but players who could offer something completely different and give us loads of tactical flexibility. Right now its not like we can just make a sub and stick Mata/VdB on the wing and expect great results
Yes I bloody do. Villarreal started the final with an 18yo of little experience because their main man was injured. Amad is one of the most promising 19yos in football and played in well in the EPL a few days ago. He's not my uncle Gav off the park, he's a professional footballer.
We are reaching peak idiocy where we're defending a player never being subbed off however bad they are, because the player that would replace them might be more junior or not quite as good as the starter in form. That's pretty much why you have starting and sub players. A lesser player is still better than a player playing badly. Otherwise no one would make subs.
Rashford's done it a few times, but he also a) hasn't for a while b) never been as bad as he was yesterday and c) didn't do it in Extra Time after a long season carrying an injury.
Also in what world do Sancho or Grealish sit on benches? I think there's only two or three teams in the world that could boast such quality. To expect that on your bench is absolute madness, and it is not the sign of a good manager at all.
Mata came on against West Ham (who you could argue are a better team then Villareal this season) and delivered. James literally delivered one of the best crosses any of our players have put in all season a few days ago.
Fact is we didn't look even close to doing ANYTHING in extra time (our XG was 0.01 or something like that) - we were tired, thoughtless and had zero about us. It is ridiculous to suggest that anyone on our bench could have been any worse then anyone on the pitch - I even include Brandon Williams in that.
Again, if SAF was in charge, would he have managed the game in the same way? You know the answer to that question.
Totally agree.
There's been so much negativity directed towards the manager in the few hours since the loss. That's understandable, he's young and inexperienced at this level and emotions are running high following a very frustrating cup final loss.
However when you take his individual decisions during the game aside, which people are fully entitled to criticise, I think you're left closer to the objective truth of the situation.
Leagues and cups tend to be won by the team with the best starting eleven and squad. Managers' motivation and coaches' tactical nous can make a few percentage points of difference, but aside from the anomalous Leicester title, the team with the best players and deepest squad overwhelmingly wins.
In terms of impact on results, the difference between Ole and Pep is far smaller than the difference between the below, a list of ours and city's bench in each side's most recent cup final.
Ederson
Ake
Zinchenko
Mendy
Rodri
B Silva
Jesus
Aguero
Torres
Grant
Henderson
Maguire
Telles
Williams
Tuanzebe
Mata
Fred
Amad
James
Matic
DVB
We had as good of a season fitness wise as we can hope for. Minimal injuries over a grueling season like that, and its unlikely to be repeated to that level. It's not about one player not doing great in limited game time, it's getting more out of squad players or trusting them to at least do something. We all complained about a lack of depth last summer after Ole couldn't rotate his starting 11. We signed Van de Beek, Cavani, Telles, spent 40m on an 18 year old Amad, bought Pellistri... and yet we are right back here and saying the squad depth isn't good enough, even though 3 of those players were on the bench all for the full 120 and another was loaned out? We played for 120 minutes. It's mind bogglingly stupid to not use subs normally. We saw at the start of the season how big of a difference a fit and fresh team makes even if they are lower quality. Van de Beek had a poor season, sure. Put him in the final and I'm sure he'll play with a point to prove.
My point in 2008 was during an injury crisis, Sir Alex didn't just sit with the proven first team professionals on the pitch. He threw the kids in during a must win game for the likes of Tevez and Nani who were having poor games, and it came off. You need to have that bravery to still use your bench even if its sparse, at least you are trying to change something, you tell your bench players you believe in them, you roll the dice, and you get fresh legs on there which is invaluable. We wasted the last 20 minutes of the regular 90 and pretty much the entirely of extra time by not making subs until really late. That was our problem. Ole just froze like a deer in headlights last night.
Peak insanity mate. People really suggesting that you'd need world class players on your bench before subbing a terribly performing starting player against Villarreal. Never thought I'd see such detachment from reality.
The mental gymnastics people make up to defend Ole is ridiculous.
Half of our bench would start for Villarreal last night but somehow they're not good enough for Ole to bring on. We've a bunch of professional players who're good enough to represent their country and good enough to warrent us paying good money for them.its a fecking insult to them that Ole continuously fecks up and idiots blaming the lack of quality on the bench.
Half of our bench would start for Villarreal last night but somehow they're not good enough for Ole to bring on. We've a bunch of professional players who're good enough to represent their country and good enough to warrent us paying good money for them.its a fecking insult to them that Ole continuously fecks up and idiots blaming the lack of quality on the bench.
??? He obviously trusts the 11 he picked and the caf would have picked the same 11. It was a divergence from McFred. What sub would have improved that 11 or kept the quality the same level?
It's easy when you stick players on with the instructions to kill the game and sit back to be fair.
We didn't have Thierry Henry. We had Dan James.
He was clearly thinking about his penalty takers. It worked - the penalty takers all scored. It came down to the goalkeeper and people are saying he should have changed him too. But would you have done that to De Gea?
The hatred of our club, our players and our manager from you so called fans in here absolutely disgusts me more than any stretched attempt to defend our players or manager of Manchester United ever will. Let the media deal in obsessive hate. I'm going to quote Marcus Rashford here :
"All I can say is the team will not give up. There’s no chance that the team gives up. The manager will not give up. He will not allow us to give up. We will come next season with a bigger desire. The club, Manchester United – people say a lot about Manchester United, they’re going downhill, blah blah blah blah blah – but for me, the club, the desire, the hunger, the talent, the ability, the squad… we have everything to compete at the highest level. We just have to show – show it to the world and show it to ourselves"
I agree with that.
For as good of a manager Klopp is, let us not forget he has a grand total of one league in 6 (six) years.
For the life of me I don't understand when the basics of football like first 11 quality and squad depth have been forgotten and their place taken by patterns of play and pressing. It's like the modern football journalist is some FM obsessed kid that hasn't fallowed a club or football in general in his life. Calling managers that are yet to win a league WC calling others super promising before they even managed an under 18. It's just bizarro World for the last 3 or 4 years
The same way you can sub off an Andy Cole or Dwight Yorke for an Ole Gunner Solskjaer.
Blah blah blah blah, show it on the fecking pitch instead of interviews.
It's easy to talk a good game like they always do, they need to start proving it on the pitch where it actually matters.
I wonder when we are going to get a coach that can actually coach players and knows how to set a team up to play. All these suggestions are like throwing things under the rug. Maybe it's time to look at who or what is causing things to be thrown under the rug. The root cause of the performances is the manager.
Conte and Zidane are available now. Get a coach that is on top of their game in this day an age. Not has beens. Coach's like players have a use by date. We have gone for coach's that were once great but past their use by and then wondered why it's going wrong. The decisions of the board are stupid
Conte and Zidane are available now. Get a coach that is on top of their game in this day an age. Not has beens. Coach's like players have a use by date. We have gone for coach's that were once great but past their use by and then wondered why it's going wrong. The decisions of the board are stupid
Poor us. Did Villarreal have a Thierry Henry?
Calling someone out for mistakes and for being bad at their job because that is hurting the club is not hatred. It's grounded realism, something that people seem detached from in here.
You literally sound like religious zelots who will defend anything and everything the players or the manager does, against any logic too, because you think that is somehow the right thing to do or that it's helping the club. It isn't. Ole doesn't seem to learn to use his squad and his subs well. He doesn't seem to be able to coach us to stop conceding from set pieces. Those are persisting obvious problems. The only hatred I see, is from those who hate seeing these pointed out because they disturb this idyllic vision of reality they have constructed in their own heads.
That kids put his body on the line for us in the -57- games of football he's played this season. All you can do as a footballer is try to get better every day, and he will.
A skillful player who is tired is almost worse than a less skilled player who is fresh. Don't believe me? Go run 10 laps of a track, then try and dribble the ball like you would normally do. Your legs are heavy, your mind doesn't want you to chase back when you lose the ball, it doesn't want you to run forwards because then you might have to run back. Yeh you as an average Joe don't have the skill that these pro footballers have. But you will experience the exact same thing they experience when fatigued.
That is why substitutions exist.
That's great for him and I've no issues with that. He was basically put up to fail with Ole overworking him despite his well know list of injuries and willingness to play through it.
My problem is with Ole messing up squad management throughout his time with us and yet his fanboys blaming our players and their lack of quality for it.
Ole is one of the biggest problem with us right now. He can't do squad management and we looked utterly unprepared for the match.
Amended.
Our XI is being well coached thus why we see huge improvement in them and eventually they will run out of gassed or be nullified as they are still young, thus the next step is to have a better squad depth that we can rely on to change the game when needed.And I keep re-iterating that the most important thing after the first XI is not the squad depth but is having the XI to be well coached and drilled. Our problem isn't depth, it's coaching. Come back to me when you catch up on that.
On the bolded, you're basically just talking rubbish for the sake of talking. There's feck all between Shaqiri and James, if anything the latter has been used more and is proving more reliable than Shaqiri did in 19/20 (who basically did nothing)
If you can‘t understand that then you shouldn’t be using Liverpool’s starting XI. Using your logic, their XI is better than ours because their players are not young players anymore but in matured age means they are more consistent and Ole would achieve better with their starting XI.
I’m not referring to what they did. I’m referring the fact that Shaqiri was a better player because he is more proven in PL and had done more than James in PL and yet Klopp doesn’t use him so how is people expecting Ole to use 23 years old James? 2019/2020 is when Shaqiri at 27 years old, that was supposed to be a prime age of an attacker.
Imagine comparing a team that has 19 years old with a team that has 28 years old and expecting both will have the same development.
That’s an argument if the player is tired not if the player is not performing because they had a day off. They were only tired after the 90 minutes full time, thus why Ole only made his subs after 90 minutes.
Solskjaer needs to take some blame for depth issues.
I feel De Beek not really acclimatising to the squad is actually on Solskjaer. It took far too long to give him his first Premier League game. He didn't get any real time until the 9th game of the season, despite us actually being very poor during that period. He proceeded to only see 137 minutes in the Premier League in the next 15 games before he was injured on the 21st February 2021. He also only saw 199 minutes in the remaining 9 games after he came back from injury.
Out of 3,420 minutes over the season, he saw a total of 513 minutes, most of which were sub appearances spread out in small numbers. And 183 of those minutes were only seen after we secured top two. Are you really thinking that De Beek wasn't good enough to start against Burnley, West Brom, Sheffield Utd etc? He could have given players a rest, but Solskjaer refused to use the depth available, so they neither acclimatised nor reached match-fit levels.
Even Brandon Williams was frozen out of the squad this season. He may not be the best player, but it seemed very sudden from giving him games last season to giving him barely any in this one. He saw 187 minutes over the entire season. I'm sure there must have been one time before securing second place that he could have had some game time to get him ready for some games. In the end, he would have had no match fitness.
There are also times where he insisted on not using the youth players etc. even when the first team wasn't needed. Remember the second leg against Real Sociedad? Why was our first team needed when we trounced them 4v0 in the first leg? It was a perfect time to rest players, but he didn't take it. There is no point of depth if you are not going to use it.
Also, you have to ask: has Solskjaer made some players worse? I remember he got a lot of credit for Martial's improvement last season, but, if that was the case, what does that mean this season when Martial was rubbish. Does Solskjaer also take flack for him dropping off so far from last season? If you give one, you probably should give the other.
I feel De Beek not really acclimatising to the squad is actually on Solskjaer. It took far too long to give him his first Premier League game. He didn't get any real time until the 9th game of the season, despite us actually being very poor during that period. He proceeded to only see 137 minutes in the Premier League in the next 15 games before he was injured on the 21st February 2021. He also only saw 199 minutes in the remaining 9 games after he came back from injury.
Out of 3,420 minutes over the season, he saw a total of 513 minutes, most of which were sub appearances spread out in small numbers. And 183 of those minutes were only seen after we secured top two. Are you really thinking that De Beek wasn't good enough to start against Burnley, West Brom, Sheffield Utd etc? He could have given players a rest, but Solskjaer refused to use the depth available, so they neither acclimatised nor reached match-fit levels.
Even Brandon Williams was frozen out of the squad this season. He may not be the best player, but it seemed very sudden from giving him games last season to giving him barely any in this one. He saw 187 minutes over the entire season. I'm sure there must have been one time before securing second place that he could have had some game time to get him ready for some games. In the end, he would have had no match fitness.
There are also times where he insisted on not using the youth players etc. even when the first team wasn't needed. Remember the second leg against Real Sociedad? Why was our first team needed when we trounced them 4v0 in the first leg? It was a perfect time to rest players, but he didn't take it. There is no point of depth if you are not going to use it.
Also, you have to ask: has Solskjaer made some players worse? I remember he got a lot of credit for Martial's improvement last season, but, if that was the case, what does that mean this season when Martial was rubbish. Does Solskjaer also take flack for him dropping off so far from last season? If you give one, you probably should give the other.
We were playing villarreal not real Madrid for gods sake. Daniel James would be a starter for them. They brought on Alberto moreno and he looked the best player on the park.