Why did Ole abandon his vision?

[Rajma]

Early into his reign Ole kept banging on us becoming this high intensity team that could run all day long and pressure the opponents in their own half, basically, making us the fittest bunch out there.

At some stage it actually did look as if we were trying to be this high pressing team he promised us we’ll be but instead gradually we have shifted away from this vision. At the moment we certainly don’t like the team that is running others ragged in any way and the pressing is subdued at best.

Can someone explain to me why Ole dropped his own plans? I think everyone would be more patient if he would just stuck with it and followed through.

 

[FatTails]

How would any of us know?

 

[James Peril]

Talk is extremely cheap. What would you say if you became the manager of Manchester United? Exactly those things. Who would you buy if you had the biggest budget in the world? Sancho for sure, Varane a no-brainer, Bruno most likely given the lack of attacking mids at the time, Ronaldo never a doubt.. it’s not like Solskjær is a visionary in any single way.

Solskjær can say whatever he wants with experience from a semi-amateur league in his old country, but intensity, fitness and so on is much easier to fork out in such a league. Every team in England have top physical regiments, Ole Solskjær has no way of knowing how to maker us better, smarter or fitter, this is not Norway. Rosenborg hired this academic fitness guy with research, diplomas and Excel-sheets in the bag before the season to become the fittest team, and maybe they got better at it, but English teams have ten of them.

 

[Blood Mage]

Because he can't handle the pressure and is scared of losing.

 

[RDCR07]

Cause he has no vision. Part of me makes me feel we shouldn’t have won that PSG so we could have actually got in someone with a vision of how to play football.

 

[VP89]

Talk is extremely cheap.

This. He talked a fine game but just hasn't yet followed it through.

 

[Shane88]

We don't have the players to run and press all day long.

Ronaldo isn't gonna press, Pogba isn't gonna press, Rashford isn't gonna press, Greenwood will, Bruno will press but does it ineffectively. I don't know enough about Sancho to know if he is that sort of player. Cavani will but he's a squad player now.

To be one of those elite pressing teams, you have to work extremely hard and work as a unit. We don't do that. There was plenty of occasions on Saturday where an attacker pressed but wasn't helped by a teammate. It achieves feck all.

 

[DoomSlayer]

I don't think Ole abandoned anything, he just can't do it. We have a saying in my country and I'll try to give a rough translation of it - "It is one thing to want to do something, another to be able to do it, and third and fourth to actually do it".

That's why I was so disappointed with his thoughts on how bad it is that teams are judged on outcomes and not on intentions. It's one of the basic rules in life, you judge something or someone on their actions, not their words. So I don't want to be nasty towards Solskjaer, but I think he is full of shit when I hear him saying those things.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Early into his reign Ole kept banging on us becoming this high intensity team that could run all day long and pressure the opponents in their own half, basically, making us the fittest bunch out there.

At some stage it actually did look as if we were trying to be this high pressing team he promised us we’ll be but instead gradually we have shifted away from this vision. At the moment we certainly don’t like the team that is running others ragged in any way and the pressing is subdued at best.

Can someone explain to me why Ole dropped his own plans? I think everyone would be more patient if he would just stuck with it and followed through.

He didn't abandon it. He couldn't achieve it. Because the team were never coached in that way. Because the coaches he hired could not understand what he wanted. Because all he had was words and good talk and no actual plans that could be practically used.

Now what I wrote maybe full of horses**t, but that's what you get when you ask such deep questions to a bunch of nobodies with no inside news of what the team does.

 

[Teja]

First some data: We're not alone here, every top team applied less pressure last year due to compressed fixture schedules etc. The other interesting thing is the passes allowed per defensive action metric (successful or otherwise) - we're fairly average here and worse than all the top teams. PPDA is not available as an open stat on FBRef.com yet but and I wasn't able to find a good link there but I'm pretty confident that I saw PPDA vs Average Possession charts being shared on Twitter.

I think tactically, you don't have to run yourself into the ground every game if you can retain the ball from build up, throw-ins etc. We don't because:

(a) we're fairly shit against the high press (inb4 someone says automatisms)
(b) Bruno --> Rashford / Greenwood through ball is a high risk / high reward ball every single time possession turns around.

IMO (a) needs to be rectified while (b) is fine even if we lose the ball a few times every game trying this.

The stats / models around pressing efficiency are not very mature and the eye test says that even when we try to apply pressure, the opposition just plays through it. Bruno runs around a bit without actually cutting off passing lanes, we don't commit enough men to the press .. it's usually something half hearted like 4 v 6 in the opposition half etc.

I don't think this is going to change under Ole because again he has had more than enough time to implement his ideas.

 

[Jim Beam]

Hard to press with Ronaldo and Pogba as a part of attacking 4.
Then you take into account that he doesn’t seem to know how to successfully make us a pressing unit independently of individual players and you get what you see today.

 

[SteveCoppellFan]

Everyone talks a good fight until they are punched in the face.

 

[Adnan]

I have thought about this aswell and the only plausible explanation I can think of is he hasn't been able to implement it which is not good enough after being in the job several years.

But what he did succeed with was playing a counter attacking setup with McFred in the midfield and Rashford as the player to threaten in behind which IMO has kept in the job for this long. It's a very basic way of playing the game but can be very effective. But having said that, with the players bought in during the summer, it seems like from my observation that the coaching staff have tried to make us a more proactive team going forward but it seems our defensive transitions are awful and positionally a number of players seem a bit lost off the ball. We also have a almost non existent coordinated pressing game, which like I said before is worrying after almost 3 years with the current manager.

 

[Oly Francis]

I hate to break it to you guys but 90% of coaches say they want to turn their team into a high pressure/high intensity machine when they arrive. Very few actually manage to do that.

 

[USREDEVIL]

Everyone talks a good fight until they are punched in the face.

Took quiet a beating against Villa

 

[Adnan]

I hate to break it to you guys but 90% of coaches say they want to turn their team into a high pressure/high intensity machine when they arrive. Very few actually manage to do that.

But would you say our direct rivals have succeeded? (Liverpool, City, Chelsea)

 

[Oly Francis]

But would you say our direct rivals have succeeded? (Liverpool, City, Chelsea)

Probably yeah. Maybe not every season but mostly they did.

 

[Hansi Fick]

Pirlo said the same when he took over Juve and they never looked anything close to it.

 

[Adnan]

Probably yeah. Maybe not every season but mostly they did.

And those are the teams we have to measure ourselves against. So out of United, Liverpool, Chelsea and City we're the only ones that have failed in that regard which tbh with you is very dissapointing for myself due to my team being the odd one out.

 

[DWelbz19]

We don't have the players to run and press all day long.

Ronaldo isn't gonna press, Pogba isn't gonna press, Rashford isn't gonna press, Greenwood will, Bruno will press but does it ineffectively. I don't know enough about Sancho to know if he is that sort of player. Cavani will but he's a squad player now.

To be one of those elite pressing teams, you have to work extremely hard and work as a unit. We don't do that. There was plenty of occasions on Saturday where an attacker pressed but wasn't helped by a teammate. It achieves feck all.

So he resolved this by signing two of the least pressing forwards in football (Sancho and Ronaldo)?

 

[Mickson]

We don't have the players to run and press all day long.

Ronaldo isn't gonna press, Pogba isn't gonna press, Rashford isn't gonna press, Greenwood will, Bruno will press but does it ineffectively. I don't know enough about Sancho to know if he is that sort of player. Cavani will but he's a squad player now.

To be one of those elite pressing teams, you have to work extremely hard and work as a unit. We don't do that. There was plenty of occasions on Saturday where an attacker pressed but wasn't helped by a teammate. It achieves feck all.

You and I can press, why wouldn't professional, athletic footballers do that if they were instructed to? Ridiculous. It's because he 1) doesn't know how to set up a team like that or 2) he doesn't care. Either way, it's a problem.

 

[mu4c_20le]

We don't have the players for it. Only Fred can come close and people want him benched.

 

[GlasgowCeltic]

I just think he quickly realised some of the key players at the club aren't capable of playing that way but are/were too good to discard; Pogba Martial Matic etc. Think you'd have finally seen a Utd a lot closer to his ideal this year if Ronaldo hadn't signed and Pog had left

 

[clarkydaz]

if memory serves, it ended the week we played liverpool and lost 3 players in the first half, herrera etc. after that we had the big PSG game and he never went back to that 4 3 3. i assumed he was just crawling to the end of the season and would rectify it in his first preseason, but alas never went through with it.

Bit of a pisstake really as he was given the job on the strength of that early run, then abandoned it getting the fulltime job

 

[Bondi77]

Because he fell in love with Wanda.

 

[DoomSlayer]

We don't have the players for it. Only Fred can come close and people want him benched.

Ridiculous excuse.

 

[DWelbz19]

Anyone saying we don’t have the players for it are missing the point. Ole has had 3 summers to bring the players in for it if he wanted to.

It’s a mixture of tactical inability, and even more likely, Ole actually preferring risk averse 4231’s.

 

[fergieisold]

Cause he has no vision. Part of me makes me feel we shouldn’t have won that PSG so we could have actually got in someone with a vision of how to play football.

who?

 

[Mickson]

Ridiculous excuse.

The manager has bought what, 10 players, and people think the reason for not playing like that is because...we don't have the players for it! Ridiculous! Every team can press if they practice it and think it's important.

 

[the chameleon]

Talk is extremely cheap. What would you say if you became the manager of Manchester United? Exactly those things. Who would you buy if you had the biggest budget in the world? Sancho for sure, Varane a no-brainer, Bruno most likely given the lack of attacking mids at the time, Ronaldo never a doubt.. it’s not like Solskjær is a visionary in any single way.

Solskjær can say whatever he wants with experience from a semi-amateur league in his old country, but intensity, fitness and so on is much easier to fork out in such a league. Every team in England have top physical regiments, Ole Solskjær has no way of knowing how to maker us better, smarter or fitter, this is not Norway. Rosenborg hired this academic fitness guy with research, diplomas and Excel-sheets in the bag before the season to become the fittest team, and maybe they got better at it, but English teams have ten of them.

To add to your point, I think for all the talk, he's become lazy and extremely reliant on moments of individual brilliance to carry him. It got him out of sticky situations on many occasions. Sometimes, you can just get the players to get out there and express themselves and things happen. I have no doubt we'll finish in the top 4 this year. But is that enough with the group of players we have?

Ole thinks we have a bottomless budget and is getting too reliant on putting names together.

On Ole's logic, we need to assemble the footballing equivalent of the Avengers to win anything. Even then, they need work as a team win a title, something I doubt Ole can take us to.

The problem with individual brilliance is that it can win games, you go through phases as a fan where you are on a high only be bought back down by a loss to Southampton and getting knocked out by a team of taxi-drivers and bankers in the Champions League.

By having a manager who gets a team playing as cohesive unit, you suddenly start getting more consistency. When you have get a team great individuals and get them playing like a team we suddenly start destroying teams and winning titles. This is the part Ole can't implement. And this is why we need someone who can come on board and implement what Ole was talking about when he first joined.

 

[Tom Cato]

Because he can't handle the pressure and is scared of losing.

If he reads the Caf I'm not sure you can blame him.

But this notion that we're playing it safe all the time is weird and plain untrue.

 

[mu4c_20le]

The manager has bought what, 10 players, and people think the reason for not playing like that is because...we don't have the players for it! Ridiculous! Every team can press if they practice it and think it's important.

Ok Coach Mickson.

 

[Crashoutcassius]

He adapted to a mid press which was far more successful, loads of vids on it. We are one of the best counter attacking teams of the last ten years

 

[Rajma]

if memory serves, it ended the week we played liverpool and lost 3 players in the first half, herrera etc. after that we had the big PSG game and he never went back to that 4 3 3. i assumed he was just crawling to the end of the season and would rectify it in his first preseason, but alas never went through with it.

Bit of a pisstake really as he was given the job on the strength of that early run, then abandoned it getting the fulltime job

Thanks for reminding me of that game, that’s what I was expecting to happen over the preseason that summer as well but instead we never kicked on from that initial run we had under him. I thought to myself those losses late in the season were simply a result of us attempting to switch so quickly from Jose to high intensity running in a matter of days as players were very leggy towards the end.

 

[anant]

First some data: We're not alone here, every top team applied less pressure last year due to compressed fixture schedules etc. The other interesting thing is the passes allowed per defensive action metric (successful or otherwise) - we're fairly average here and worse than all the top teams. PPDA is not available as an open stat on FBRef.com yet but and I wasn't able to find a good link there but I'm pretty confident that I saw PPDA vs Average Possession charts being shared on Twitter.

I think tactically, you don't have to run yourself into the ground every game if you can retain the ball from build up, throw-ins etc. We don't because:

(a) we're fairly shit against the high press (inb4 someone says automatisms)
(b) Bruno --> Rashford / Greenwood through ball is a high risk / high reward ball every single time possession turns around.

IMO (a) needs to be rectified while (b) is fine even if we lose the ball a few times every game trying this.

The stats / models around pressing efficiency are not very mature and the eye test says that even when we try to apply pressure, the opposition just plays through it. Bruno runs around a bit without actually cutting off passing lanes, we don't commit enough men to the press .. it's usually something half hearted like 4 v 6 in the opposition half etc.

I don't think this is going to change under Ole because again he has had more than enough time to implement his ideas.

Agree somewhat, not entirely. Our high turnover numbers from last season were pretty decent. However, if we don't win it high, it's more than likely to result in a proper attack for the opposition, highlighted by not so great PPDA numbers. You can imagine this happening due to Fred's headless chicken way of running and trying to win the ball - which is generally what happens - either he wins it or we need to somehow slow the game down and let them make passes in order for our players to get back in position
https://dataviz.theanalyst.com/season-reviews/2020/

This season, small sample size, but our numbers are slightly better and among top 4, currently rank higher than Chelsea - who tbf played a game with 10 men and have played City as well

 

[DoomSlayer]

Ok Coach Mickson.

Another non-existant argument. Why not try to articulate your point? What exactly is a player that can or cannot press and why do we lack those, in your opinion?

 

[clarkydaz]

Thanks for reminding me of that game, that’s what I was expecting to happen over the preseason that summer as well but instead we never kicked on from that initial run we had under him. I thought to myself those losses late in the season were simply a result of us attempting to switch so quickly from Jose to high intensity running in a matter of days as players were very leggy towards the end.

yeah we lost Herrera so there was the tenancity gone in midfield. He was out injured for a while, then PSG came in for him and not sure if he played again

 

[noodlehair]

I don't think he's dropped them I just don't think he understands how to do it. He still goes on about it occasionally.

I don't think he wants us to press and suffocate teams ala City a few years ago. More win the ball back aggressively and then be very direct with it...which in fairness is what we do on the rare occasion that we play well.

 

[In Rainbows]

It's not something an individual chooses to do or not, and are therefore reliant on having many of those players all at one time. It's all to do with coordination, and knowing which areas to press as a team to force turnovers. Ole doesn't know how to do it. Players will much more easily buy into doing it for a long time knowing that the reward (easier chances to score/assist) justifies the extra energy spent.

 

[dal]

He doesn’t do it because he’s nervous of losing, that is fine and there will be some games that this happens. There were games last season when we were going toe to toe with teams but that’s usually the top teams.

We are a counter attacking team I feel, that’s what we were good at last season, when he hit teams on the break they were very very worried, it’s why we battered Leeds on the first game of the season. VDB is looking very good now, I’d love to see him start in a midfield two as he’s looking better and better now, I’d love to see the below consistently as I feel it would really knit our game together.

—————-Ronaldo—————-
Rashford—-Bruno——-Sancho
———-VDB———————————
————————-Mctominay——

Greenwood, Pogba, Cavani.

VDB should keep possession and recycle the ball a lot better than Fred with Mctominay providing the power from deep. Sancho, VDB are both very good in possession with Bruno, Rashford and Ronaldo being the precise difference makers.