We buy and .. well I was about to say sell but we rarely sell players, but we at least buy a lot of players and spend a lot of money. But no matter how much we spend, who is the manager the problems are the same, yeah we can hit a half decent counter attack, but ask us to retain the ball, break down a defense as a cohesive team, move the ball quickly around midfield, or even position ourselves correctly in defense then we just can't do it. We just always look like a disjointed team no matter who the manager is and who the players are.
Plus no matter who we buy, no matter who the manager is players just seem to come in and regress. This goes back a decade. You can't have the same issues no matter who the manager is and who the players are and it not be something that runs much deeper.
So this isn't just a current players issue or a current manager and his first team coaching staff issue, or even just issues with people like Murtough and Fletcher. The surgery we need isn't just players (though we obviously need address the squad attitude), the surgery we need is in the deeplying issues at the club. Everything from the coaching and training philosophy, to recruitments, youth training, Physio, catering, facilities needs a proper gutting out and investigation.
I believe that as a club, we have been accustomed to success and believe that it is as simple as employing anyone semi-competent. The combination of the quality of the manager, the quality of the players, the quality of the squad, and the quality of the coaching staff affect how well we play on the pitch. There's nothing more. Our problem upstairs has been that the Glazers and their team have not been fully vested in footballing affairs, allowing managers far more latitude than they should have. None of these managers have been exceptional, and none have demonstrated an inkling of success since their departure. We've only had five permanent managers. One was Moyes, another was Ole, both of whom were manifestly unqualified previous to their arrival. It's no surprise that they weren't up to the challenge. So, of the three managers we chose aside from those two, Jose and LVG were obviously past it. Jose had a horrible 2015/2016 season where he displayed all of the issues he would have with us during his tenure, heavily suggesting that the game had passed him by and we hired him at the starting point of his downward spiral. As a manager, his downfall is similar to Torres, where he had already started to perform poorly, but as a club, we were hoping it was a one-off period, not expecting that mediocrity would be his new normal. Since leave, Jose has shown that his failure at United was of his own doing. Similarly, Van Gaal had already shown all of his flaws in previous appointment prior to his arrival. His peak was in the 90's. He had negative eccentricities, stubborness, recklessnes favoritism and lack of urgency not suitable for a club looking for a turnaround. I'd argue that out of all our managers, he did the most damage. The idea was that we'd hire a big character to steer us in the right direction as a leader ( similar to why we hired Jose). However, in both LVG and Jose, we got negative big characters that led the club astray rather than forward with their antics and egos. Ten Haag was the only modern manager we hired that we should have hired. However, simply hiring managers like that does not guarantee that they will produce. Chelsea had a similar situation with Andre Villas-Boas. These are managers taking the next step in their careers, needing to prove that they are good enough to hang at the very top level. With these type of hires, due to the weakness of their leagues and profile of their clubs, there's a 50/50 chance in fails or succeeds. Monitoring their performance is key to finding out if they are actually the right fit or if they simply can't step up to the plate. Especially when you consider how tough the Premier League is and how strong the managers they are competing against are. This is where United failed. The club treated Ten Haag like the solution, rather than someone under evaluation to assess if they are actually the solution. From the club interviews to the stories about him leading us to success despite us struggling to start last season. Where the club should simply have been introducing him to the fans, we manufactured fanfare around him like he was a proven entity like Pep, Klopp or Jose.
The issue, in my opinion, is that we view these managers' failures as a club failure rather than investigating why each manager has failed. It's always left at the feet of the players. There's always a blank slate with everyone taking responsibility for failures on the pitch, when in actuality, like at any other top club, the buck should always fall with the manager unless the manager shows that his system is actually working. Something which none of our manaagers showed in their time here. An example of this would be Wenger in the 2010's, playing good football, with chances created, winning handlily against most teams, but having issues in big games and more difficult away games where quality of players were put to the test. Bendtnar could score hat-tricks against PSV, but couldn't do anything against Chelsea, City, or Liverpool. That's evidence of lacking quality. Beating who you're supposed to beat, playing good football, but not having enough to sustain the success to challenge for the league. At United, Ten Haag, Moyes, LVG and Mourinho have rarely shown that quality. Whilst we already knew that Ole didn't have that in him. It is a failure on the club's part to hire the wrong manager, but not for anything else besides the expense of transfers and sales in regard to on pitch failures. Their fault off the pitch lies in their inability to accept mistakes quickly enough to move forward regarding player sales and managerial sackings. Everything we've done in the previous 10 years has been predicated on optics and short-term media opinions, which have usually backfired. This has taken shape in the form of optic-driven leaks, briefings, transfer announcements, managerial hirings, sales, and managerial dismissals. Why? We had people in charge of the country's largest non-state sports institution who were unfamiliar with football and uninterested in Britain in general. A club where everything is a narrative, where transfers lead to massive shirt sales, where success is elevated and failures are extremely scrutinized. So, when recruiting a big manager and the club is perceived adversely, senior management has consistently given full control to the newly popular managers, almost as if we're begging them to take the job, who are then charged with bringing the club back to its former glory without much interference or evaluation. LVG was allowed to tear up the squad, impose an unstable 352 and make philosophy-driven excuses. Transfers for players such as Pogba were being completed without grasping how to utilize him, as he was popular. Players like Martial were preserved long past their sell-by dates because they had support from certain segments of the fan base. Briefs about the grounds for firing a manager were provided months in advance to save face. For Moyes, LVG and ETH we have waited until seasons are completely destroyed to fire these managers. For me, the British media will always be pro-manager and will always take a more conservative approach. However, as a club, the performance, results, progress, and business of football should always far outweigh the drivels of the press, yet those drivels have resulted in stays of execution and the hiring of Ole on a permanent basis.
The most serious fault, in my opinion, has been the lack of knowledge on how to evaluate our managers. What constitutes managerial failure? For us, it has all been about media and results. Essentially, we will hand a manager the keys and will not intervene unless we have completely collapsed. That's the British media's dream for how clubs should treat managers, but it's also a definite way to lower standards, especially when the managers aren't the best in class. We've seen directors collaborate with managers on transfers, but no one has genuinely overseen the manager's day-to-day responsibilities. Woodward wasn't embedded in the football, Arnold admitted to taking a passive approach on the footballing side, and Murtough was a support in regard to transfers, so he did not oversee Ole or ETH. For ten years, we've had no one to analyze tactical mistakes, no one to criticize squad management, no one to question the consistency of in-game decisions, and no one to apply pressure when required. That's why the managers always seem shocked when they're sacked; that's why the players don't feel supported; and that's why it feels like it takes forever for us to make decisions as a club. Hopefully, INEOS will bring about change in this area; however, I do not believe Ten Haag is the right manager to lead their initiative. In fact, I'd argue that dismissing him would demonstrate that we have a senior management staff that is actively monitoring how far we are from becoming what we need to be as a club under the current manager.
