Fast football, forward movement, options in the box, high press, one touch, playing out from the back, not sitting back on our lead. Loved it.
The Oleball thread
- Thread starter meamth
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Seeing such a vast improvement (probably the best brand of football we've played since SAF retired) in two days worth of training really does reflect abysmally on Mourinho. Every week people on here were questioning what actually was happening on the training ground and rightly so!
Ole has realised we've got a set of very quick thinking, intelligent footballers that excel with one touch football and fluid movement! Let's hope it continues even against the bigger sides
Ole has realised we've got a set of very quick thinking, intelligent footballers that excel with one touch football and fluid movement! Let's hope it continues even against the bigger sides
Having the fullbacks so high and wide was very noticeable imo. Under Mou we constantly struggled to move up the pitch since we were outnumbered in attack and we just ended up rolling it sideways in our own half until someone had enough and hoffed it. I also think the way we defended was noticeably different, under Mou we would always fall back and try zone defending, where as yesterday we were more aggressive in our man marking.
Lastly, Pogba got freedom to roam and lo and behold, he had his best performance in years.
All of this might just be psychological factors of getting rid of Joses toxic presence and getting a positive man in charge, but despite Ole not being a big name in England (yet) he was the pupil of the greatest manager of all time and has done pretty well with Molde so hes not completely green either
His words about out-running the opposition make a huge amount of sense for me. I think his attitude to football mirrors Fergies in a lot of ways. Namely, football is a simple game and if you -
a) put in as much, or more, effort than your opponent (work-rate)
b) apply that effort intelligently (tactical superiority)
c) have more talented players (quality)
you have the strongest chance of winning a football game. Out of those 3, the first is the one factor that we should see every game United play regardless of quality of opposition.
a) put in as much, or more, effort than your opponent (work-rate)
b) apply that effort intelligently (tactical superiority)
c) have more talented players (quality)
you have the strongest chance of winning a football game. Out of those 3, the first is the one factor that we should see every game United play regardless of quality of opposition.
I’m not sure that Fergie even had no.2 particularly, which emphasises the importance of the other two even more.
But I would add another factor that is arguably the most important - and I saw this as a Welsh fan at the last Euros - teamwork / togetherness (this includes the fans by the way)
and not one single hoof ball up to the forwards.
The one blatantly obvious change was the starting position of the full backs.
Under Mourinho they ended up getting that far forward but they never started that high up the pitch, specially away from home. Today they were the ones providing the width, under Mourinho most of the time our wingers, specially Martial would just hug the touch line providing the width with, say Shaw providing an overlap.
Watch the Martial goal again and look how high Young and Shaw are and they’re not even involved in the attack.
Another small thing is if we were 2 up under Mourinho he’d have us sit back, let the opposition have the ball and soak up the pressure to counter.
Absolutely loving it so far, but soon managers will suss Ole out, and then we'll see if he can mix it up when teams start to counter our tactics.
If we remain undefeated after the spurs game, I think we've got an excellent chance to get a top 4 place.
If we remain undefeated after the spurs game, I think we've got an excellent chance to get a top 4 place.
I agree with you in that I don't think Fergie personally had a huge amount of tactical nous, but he certainly knew it was important, which is why he chose the assistant managers he did.
Agree with you about teamwork/team spirit, it probably overarches the other three.
I'm not sure there is anything to "suss out" so to speak. Ole simply uses an energetic press, one touch passing and winning balls high up the pitch. This is the generic template for the football played by most top teams, with minor differences. Exception being possession managers like Guardiola or defensive ones like Conte and Simeone.
If we get beaten, it will be due to defensive lapses or selection of the wrong XI, but not because the system fails. There is nothing that can make this system fail, the only difference a top manager can make is that they might build on this and make some tactical tweaks to give it more balance.
That's true.
I mean, maybe there was. But I'm possibly not eagled eyed enough to be able to pick these things up so instantly. Or maybe it wasn't that different. feck knows. But I did find us to be more attack minded in mentality and instinct if not in tactics.
Watching United yesterday reminded me just how Narrow Jose we sometimes became.
With Olé there was a wide rotation to play out and the ball side midfielder pushes forward with winger dropping to collect.
With Mourinho, ball side midfielder dropped in to allow fullback to push on. Winger was meant to be found behind the lines. The opposite side midfielder would tuck in to anticipate the turnover.
Lingard was also given a massive liscence to roam yesterday.
With Olé there was a wide rotation to play out and the ball side midfielder pushes forward with winger dropping to collect.
With Mourinho, ball side midfielder dropped in to allow fullback to push on. Winger was meant to be found behind the lines. The opposite side midfielder would tuck in to anticipate the turnover.
Lingard was also given a massive liscence to roam yesterday.
Saw this on Twitter too.
Exactly. And even when he didn’t keep it on the deck, the closest he came to a hoof was chipping it to a fullback.
It was really noticeable because working the ball back to the keeper for a massive punt upfield was such an infuriating feature of recent life under Mourinho.
Agree with this, though I'd add that the single biggest difference, surely was how high the full-backs were...?
Higher than in any other PL team I've watched all season!
It was insane (in a good way, against a weaker side), it completely overloaded the opposition half.
It'll be really interesting to see if Ole keeps that aggressive an approach in every game over the festive time, because now oppo managers have seen it, it will obviously be targeted. Even Huddersfield, who have a decent tactician at the helm, will be a fascinating match.
me too. The difference is that had rashford scored when he did, we would have played for the 1-0 win and defended like we usually did under mourinho.
I used keep saying it when we had mourinho. Away from home was just torture regardless of who we were playing. The tactics were the same for every away match, win one nil.
Will be interesting to see alright.
Glad people come out see the players playing well and realise although Jose fell out with a lot of the them that he was the major factor in our doing sh!te this season.
How many will come out and say it as there are including them lot on here who think the "Toxic One" did no wrong so everyone/thing else was to blame?
How many will come out and say it as there are including them lot on here who think the "Toxic One" did no wrong so everyone/thing else was to blame?
For me the only obvious, and the most important thing was that our player were opening themselves for a pass when we had the ball, we actually ran which was quite refreshing to see. How long will it last we'll see, but everyone being passive when we had the ball was one of the bigger problems we had in past few years. Our players were just lazy.
But at least now we look like we might be inclined to punish teams as well. It was neither here nor there with Mourinho (by the end): zero attacking impetus, yet a panic-ridden mess at the back.
Matic or Fellaini. Not Matic and Fellaini 
I see no one has mentioned workrate yet? Finally we managed to actually outwork our opponent. Players i thought were lazy are clearly not. This is actually a learning moment on the impact a manager can actually make.
Can anyone with a better tactical eye tell me whether we saw more actual Oleball in the Huddersfield match? Or was it simply players being allowed to attack with freedom?
I thought Ole's approach varied a little. He still had the fullbacks right up, especially in the first half. While the widemen dropoed in to create space for overlaps. However, the press was less aggresive and the team held the ball and worked less into the open spaces than in Cardiff. Accident or design only Ole knows. To some extent the change was enforced cos Mata lacks Martial's speed with and without the ball.
Huddersfield were a lot more organized than Cardiff, which stopped the type of balls to the wall attackfest we saw on Saturday. Dalot and Shaw both had shots inside the box, though. We're clearly committing way more men forward under Ole, especially out wide.
Is there somewhere I can find an in-depth breakdown of Solskjaers system? It's probably too early to find one of his system for us but maybe one for his Molde team would be interesting to read.
Cardiff played with a higher line which made it easier for us to play the ball in behind. Huddersfield were much more organised and stayed narrow and compact so our play consisted around switching the ball from left to right and right to left to pull defenders out of position and create space for runs in behind. Best example of this was our second goal. Also, our full backs were overlapping which pulled the opposition full backs out of position, giving the attacking players more time on the ball. You can see this in our third goal, Shaw overlaps and which forces the defender to follow him instead of closing down Lingard, who then has time to pick out Pogba who scores.
When your players play like that, you can go to the board and ask for more money and better players. It's not that complicated.
We lacked Martials pace today and Mata is too slow for this style of football. A RW needs to come in, or try Lukaku from the right. Chong could also be tried in a cameo role, last 10 mins or so at the beginning to see if he can hack it and then give him longer and longer. Lingard is hit and miss, mainly miss on the right as well.
Thanks. Still too early to tell I suppose, and I think factors such as Huddersfield's aggressive pressing and our players' fatigue also contributed towards a somewhat chaotic match.
I was scared watching them last night. Like any moment a hamstring or muscle can be pulled off from Rashford, Pogba and Martial. I can feel the strain.
Oleball didn't work too well due to profligacy in front of goal and the final third today, but I think it's safe to say that we can all see how Oleball works now.
Oleball didn't work too well due to profligacy in front of goal and the final third today, but I think it's safe to say that we can all see how Oleball works now.
Oleball didn't work too well today because Newcastle parked the bus for 70-80 minutes. I don't think I've ever seen a more defensive and compact team.
Usually we drop points to these teams. I'm just glad we scored and twice.
Newcastle was cautious today, and it worked so well for them. I think Ole's tactics will blow lesser teams at home, but they learned from our wins and employed that tactics you mentioned.
If it were Mourinho we would be caught by an early goal and they will defend whole game. Scary stuff.