Players play and Managers manage, or so we are led to believe. The problem for United's last three managers, in fact the last few seasons with SAF as well, is that Players don't play, or at least to any level of consistency and that's what makes it difficult for managers. The 'best players' have always been those who the manager can rely on to deliver regular, fairly consistence performances, whether they are the most skilled players, or just the journeyman. Without such regularity their tactics are useless. When managers have no confidence that anything more than one or two of their team will perform regularly, their own tactics become negative, the equivalent of curling up in a ball to protect yourself, adopting a default position.
In our pomp under both SAF and even further back to Sir Matt, our managers were able to plan and execute ideas/tactics because they knew in any given circumstance 7 or 8 out of their first XI would perform to their regular standards every time they took the field and even if the team overall is not playing its best football it could win matches, playing ugly as the phrase now used indicates.
Its painful to say it but Klopp's Liverpool is now in this position, he knows in any given match 7 or 8 of his players will turn up, maybe not always the same 7 or 8, but that ratio is maintained.
In the last season there was probably only David De Gea, who we could count on to turn up and do his stuff to a high level. Now we seem to have De Gea, McTomany (when fit) AWB and possibly Maguire, still a long way short and certainly miles away from where we need to be in this respect. Sometimes when 7 or 8 do turn up we look very good, but Ole knows next match it can be very different once again