Why has every United manager made a comment which has "destroyed" them?

horsechoker

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Ole saying Palace make teams play the way they want

José after Sevilla

LVG had a few

Moyes' "we aspire to be City"

Do people make too much of these comments because they don't like the manager or is there a serious problem?
 

Bubz27

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What "destroys" our managers is shite on a stick football, poor results and underachieving relative to the squad and what they've spent.
 

Siorac

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Moyes was completely out of his depth but that City comment has been blown out of all sorts of proportion. This is what he actually said:
"We have played a very good side, playing at the sort of level we are aspiring to," said Moyes. "We need to come up a couple of levels ourselves because at the moment we are not there."
City were playing brilliantly at the time and they bitch-slapped us at Old Trafford with contemptuous ease. Nothing wrong with saying that we want to be that good, too. The problem was that he was one of the main reasons why we weren't anywhere near that level.

His Newcastle comment was much more stupid.
 

McTerminator

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Ole saying Palace make teams play the way they want

José after Sevilla

LVG had a few

Moyes' "we aspire to be City"

Do people make too much of these comments because they don't like the manager or is there a serious problem?
It's because this forum over analyse every little thing to do with Manchester United out of a desperation to return to the glory days and a fear of spending thirty years in the wilderness like Liverpool before us... It isn't working.
 

diarm

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Ole saying Palace make teams play the way they want

José after Sevilla

LVG had a few

Moyes' "we aspire to be City"

Do people make too much of these comments because they don't like the manager or is there a serious problem?
Managers come out in the aftermath of poor performances and have to face a room full of journalists who are actively trying to trip then up.

They need to address what happened, side step the traps set for them, keep from abusing the latest comedy of refereeing errors and try to keep the fans happy while avoiding destroying the morale of their squad, particularly during spells of poor form.

All this under the spotlight of unprecedented media coverage and 24 hours a day of idiots on internet forums and podcasts dissecting their every breath.

I guarantee Fergie made similar comments. The idea that he never came out and said something along the lines of: "when you don't play well enough, teams like Palace will drag you down to their level" is a nonsense. Of course he did and so did every other manager who ever coached.

The difference is that Fergie came up and honed his trade at a time where there wasn't such wall to wall coverage. And the voices of the idiots educated on tabloid headlines didn't stretch further than the end of the bar.

Nowadays they have twitter and a caf account so their audience is much bigger.
 

SER19

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They haven't. The ole one is the biggest conflation I've seen and only exists in the world of angsty online fan chat
 

Zlatattack

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Why has this happened 4 times in a row?
The Fergie Factor - SAF left us with a title winning team, but it was over performing because of the Fergie factor. He really was that good and there is nobody in world football who has that same X-factor that he had. These sorts of managers come by every now and then, I don't there has ever been one who had that sustained success in the way he did. Even during his reign we saw a lot of very successful managers, Mourinho, Pep, Wenger, Ancelloti,, Capello etc, but nobody has been as sustained and flawless as Fergie. We cannot replace that so we need to re-build around that, and we've failed to do so.

We need proper reform in the way our club is run. Take Chelsea and Manchester City. In recent times why have they been able to throw away managers and still get pretty regular success?

1. Mismanagement of Money - we don't lack in that department. We didn't spend enough in the latter years of the SAF era and although he left us with a title winning team, it was over performing and needed re-building. Since then we've not out-spent our rivals by enough to make up the difference, when we have spent it's been haphazard.

2. Continuity. Our rebuild suffered because we don't have a DoF. Each manager who came in had a different style, spunked a load of money on players to fit into those styles, every 2-3 years we're re-building and our squad was full of bloat (now a Shaw joke). Woodward is the problem here, he's not appointing a DoF and he's not doing the job properly himself. We need a footballing brain to oversea our transitions and re-builds, the manager should be key component of that, not the sole architect.

3. Lowering standards. Roman gets rid if you miss the targets he sets, he's ruthless. Managers who come to our club get all the spiel about a re-build. Instantly they get the idea that success is not something they need to deliver today, it's for the future. How many times have Chelsea re-built the squad since he took over - yet they're winning the league every 3-4 years. We have the resources to be much more consistent than them, people say City have set the standard, yet if you think about it - they've not really reached our standard under SAF. Under Fergie regardless of who we played I expected us to win. It was not often we were outclassed. winning and losing is part of the game, but we set the standard. Today we've lowered our own understanding of what the standards are by trying to achieve what City have, rather than our own former elite level.
 

T00lsh3d

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The Jose one was intentionally to put the club down. The others can be taken contextually or interpreted as a bit naive
 

Raven

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Am I the only one who thinks Ole's comment isn't a big deal whatsoever?
 

RashyForPM

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No other club’s manager is under as much scrunity as ours bar Madrid. Therefore, it’s down to two things, excuses to absolve themselves from deserved criticism and the fact that these excuses itself are analysed to the finest detail.
 

2 man midfield

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I don’t think there’s a lot wrong with what Ole said, we all know what he meant. It’s just a nicer way of saying it than “they park the bus”.
 

acnumber9

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Moyes was completely out of his depth but that City comment has been blown out of all sorts of proportion. This is what he actually said:

City were playing brilliantly at the time and they bitch-slapped us at Old Trafford with contemptuous ease. Nothing wrong with saying that we want to be that good, too. The problem was that he was one of the main reasons why we weren't anywhere near that level.

His Newcastle comment was much more stupid.
I think it was because he took over a team that had just finished 11 points ahead of them. Saying it now would be more palatable.
 

Stacks

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Why has this happened 4 times in a row?
Moyes was out of his depth, LVG and Jose both past it (Spurs are feeling this) and Ole got the job off of his purple patch but was never considered a top potential target. Does anyone believe that if LVG or Jose had stayed longer and got more targets that we would be doing great? I don't.
 

ivaldo

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Am I the only one who thinks Ole's comment isn't a big deal whatsoever?
Nope. But invariably, this is what happens when a player or the team go through a rough patch. Everything becomes terrible and embarrassing.
 

Infra-red

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Re Solskjaer, surely this one was worse (after City had just beaten us 3-1):

 

horsechoker

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Moyes was out of his depth, LVG and Jose both past it (Spurs are feeling this) and Ole got the job off of his purple patch but was never considered a top potential target. Does anyone believe that if LVG or Jose had stayed longer and got more targets that we would be doing great? I don't.
If we've got it wrong 4 times then you need to look beyond the manager at what is wrong. In our current state we won't be fixed until we find Fergie 2.0. Other teams don't need the greatest manager of their generation to be even somewhat successful.

Re Solskjaer, surely this one was worse:

What does that even mean?
 

Maticmaker

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United managers need to do what politicians do... don't answer the question asked, answer with something you want to say. SAF could give masterclasses in this sort of thing, an exercise in disinformation expert! Only Mourinho came close, but he tended to make the ' look at me...its about me' far too obvious.

Post match interviews are 'dangerous waters', though for all managers, but for United Managers its almost a 'kamikaze' mission, especially after performances like the one against Palace.
I think Ole was trying to say something about how we should play, but it came out sounding like , 'we go where we are pushed', or almost paraphrasing Moyes, the "we aspire to be like Palace" comment, either way it went down like a lead balloon.

Perhaps he ought to be like Marcelo Bielsa and have an interpreter translate ....from the Norwegian!
 

NoneBmStore

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Jesus you’re a miserable bunch. I’m predicting that even when we eventually win the PL there’ll be 15 new threads after each game we don’t win and play absolutely perfect in.
 

LovelyLittlePanda

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Managers in general are full of it when giving interviews and pressers. There's a lot of stuff they'd rather not say, so they have to make stuff up. If you're not a psychopath (or is it sociopath?) you'll come across as stupid from time to time if you have to lie so much.

The old "he's important for the dressing room" type of comment.

Ole doesn't want to say Fred, Bruno and Rashford were trash, so he decided to praise Palace instead. Don't read too much into it.
 

FrankDrebin

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What did van Gaal say? I don’t remember him saying anything silly or insulting to the club?
I think it was LVG comment that it'll take United 6 years to be competitive again. He was wrong. It will take longer.
 

RashyForPM

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Re Solskjaer, surely this one was worse (after City had just beaten us 3-1):

Imo, this one is not just worse, but much worse than Moyes. It’s possible that he meant we aspire to be simply be first place, and it’s a coincidence City were there at the time.

Ole’s one is plain stupid and expressive of a massive inferiority complex.
 

The Boy

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Managers come out in the aftermath of poor performances and have to face a room full of journalists who are actively trying to trip then up.

They need to address what happened, side step the traps set for them, keep from abusing the latest comedy of refereeing errors and try to keep the fans happy while avoiding destroying the morale of their squad, particularly during spells of poor form.

All this under the spotlight of unprecedented media coverage and 24 hours a day of idiots on internet forums and podcasts dissecting their every breath.

I guarantee Fergie made similar comments. The idea that he never came out and said something along the lines of: "when you don't play well enough, teams like Palace will drag you down to their level" is a nonsense. Of course he did and so did every other manager who ever coached.

The difference is that Fergie came up and honed his trade at a time where there wasn't such wall to wall coverage. And the voices of the idiots educated on tabloid headlines didn't stretch further than the end of the bar.

Nowadays they have twitter and a caf account so their audience is much bigger.
This is pretty much spot on, the only manager you've had that made really silly comments was Jose after Seville, everything else is blown out of all proportion.
 

Raven

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Nope. But invariably, this is what happens when a player or the team go through a rough patch. Everything becomes terrible and embarrassing.
I don't either but looking at the thread, it seems to be.
No. There are a handful of people who can still read and comprehend. Not many though.
For anyone who actually watched the interview, they'll see how livid he was and I actually thought he was very close to slating some of the players but held back. As I said in the Ole thread a couple of days back, I think Ole prefers the heat to be on himself but I think he found it hard after the last match.
 

Infra-red

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What does that even mean?
I think he was trying to say that, even though we just lost 3-1 to our local rivals, we should consider it a compliment (and a sign of how brilliant we actually are) that they didn't play their U18s against us in the derby. Essentially, Moyeseque, inferiority complex, drivel.
 

horsechoker

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I think he was trying to say that, even though we just lost 3-1 to our local rivals, we should consider it a compliment (and a sign of how brilliant we are) that they didn't play their U18s against us. Essentially, Moyeseque, inferiority complex, drivel.
That is quite bad, I wonder why that comment wasn't blown out of proportion like the Palace one was.

Even taken out of context the Palace comment is that bad.
 

AgentSmith

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I think Ole’s mentality in a press conference is to avoid public criticisms of players as much as he possibly can. In the rare instances where he has been critical it’s been reserved for ‘we weren’t good enough’ style comments. Never a dressing down of an individual.

The implication would then be that these harsher (but necessary) words are reserved exclusively for the dressing room. This mentality should ostensibly create a stronger bond with the players as they know he has their back in public but will say what needs to be said to their faces. Basically the opposite to the Mourinho approach

The concern I think people have is that they think this second part isn’t happening. Examples like Martial’s relentless apathy whenever he’s on the pitch further fuels this - how could Martial be contributing that level of commitment if Ole has (rightly) blasted him in the dressing room for it?

But without being in the dressing room we have no genuine idea about this second part. So we, as fans, are left with only the first part - overly optimistic, borderline naive, responses to journalists - which are only designed to deflect negativity away from his players, not give genuine insights into Ole’s analysis of a game.

People, therefore, shouldn’t read too much into them. There’s not a chance Ole was saying in the dressing room immediately after the game on Wednesday ‘Well don’t worry lads, Palace made us play that way, nothing you could do’.

There’s long list of valid question marks and issues relating to Ole as a manager of the team. The way he handles himself in press conferences, after 2 1/2 years of Mourinho, is thankfully not one of them.
 

Counterfactual

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Ole said Palace forced us to play the way they wanted. He wasn't wrong. Palace put men behind the ball like everyone does to thwart our counter-attack. So that plan failed.

If we had Pogba or VDB available it would prevent Palace focusing on nullifying Bruno, but we didn't, so that plan failed too.

I think Ole is getting frustrated now, as are the fans, which is where the angst comes from.
 

Smores

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Re Solskjaer, surely this one was worse (after City had just beaten us 3-1):

That's much worse and I'd love someone to try defend that :lol:

I think quotes just become a meme to capture current sentiment really. Managers don't tend to lose well so when they're failing it's no surprise they get snipey and make defensive comments.

Ole gets very defensive on a lot of matters but it's expected really he's a managerial nobody who has been thrusted into a top job. Who wouldn't have imposter syndrome in his situation.

The we're back style comments annoy me more than any of these. I said at the time it was poor management because we'll immediately revert in attitude and well we did. Ole couldn't help but dish out the self praise though.
 

Nou_Camp99

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Some of ours fans live in cloud cuckoo land and believe the main issue at this club is Ole. Before it was Moyes, LVG and Jose. When will you all learn? The club isn't set up for success. It's a shambles from top to bottom. We carried on winning stuff after the takeover in 05 due to Fergie not because of the owners. Since Fergie n Gill have left it's been an absolute shambles and now people are trying to put the blame on Ole. He's only been manager for 2 and half years. The damage had already been done I'm afraid.

If you want us back at the top then we need to put pressure on the club to get rid of Woodward at the very least. However I'd like it to go further and have a full boycott and force these yank parasites to sell up and move on. We won't win another league title under this regime. No chance at all. Allegri will be next most likely or maybe Ancelotti. Same thing will happen to them.