I'd make a sane thread to cancel out all the nonsense.
1) The Young situation - There was no better choice than starting Ashley Young last night.
It's as simple as it says. Now that doesn't mean that Ashley Young played well or that Ashley Young didn't make a mistake, it just simply means that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made the logical choice. He couldn't play Eric Bailly at right back. We have seen how that turns out. Luke Shaw was gone. Valencia is on his way out. Darmian has played six times total this year and hasn't been seen for months. Rojo just got torn to shreds against West Ham. The only viable alternative is Dalot and realistically he has shown less defensively than Young. Ole could do nothing about this situation.
I agree that it was a fairly obvious choice to play him. But I also think we're looking at a player now who is finished. And Ole must recognise that.
2) Our recent contract extensions - Jones/Young will feature next year.
I see a lot of posts complaining about these two having their contracts extended. Well the simple fact is, while they are no longer good enough for United, they are better than their alternatives. Behind them in the pecking order are: Darmian, Rojo, Bailly and Valencia. At least three of them will leave next summer. Realistically our defensive options without these two contract extensions could be: Lindelof, Smalling, Shaw and Dalot. We NEED more squad players than that, especially with our injury problems. Due to our deficiencies else where it would be madness to sign 3/4 defenders. So Young/Jones getting a contract makes sense.
Just because there are worse players on the books, doesn't mean they should be given new contracts. The 1 year for Young was understandable at the time, for a squad player, but the new contract for Jones given our serious lack of quality at the back is just a stupid decision. We need a defensive overhaul.
3.) If we are going to play like this we should have kept Mourinho
I am seeing more and more of these types of posts. Mourinho was done. He had just got battered by Liverpool and had fallen out with the squad. The key here is though is that Pogba and Rashford weren't performing for Mourinho. They were our best players and Pogba had been dropped. It is evident that Mourinho had a toxic relationship with the players and we can't just get rid of the whole squad (some of you may wish this was possible)
A lot of posters are criticising the players for dropping their levels again, after Ole's honeymoon period. It's not necessarily that we're back to Jose-ball, but a realisation that our squad is average and our first XI is not good enough.
4.) Ed Woodwood hasn't backed us in the transfer market
When Mourinho took over at United, we had been spending just over 210 million on the wages of our players. We've just announced we have wages of 296 million without Sanchez being here for a full year) Mourinho spent over 400 million. He recouped around 100 million. So on average every year he was here had had a 100 million net spend while increasing the wage bill by about 30 million a year. For those figures we have Fred, Dalot, Sanchez, Lukaku, Lindelof, Bailly and Pogba to show for it. Are those players worth the money? No. Now we hear rumours (nothing confirmed) that Mourinho wanted Maguire, Perisic et al. Would these have improved us? Woodwood was in the unenviable position of making more signings that wouldn't have improved us or dismissing a manager who had just finished second. Either one might have put us in a worst position than we are now.
This is where your sane thread to "cancel out all the nonsense" becomes quite the opposite. Do you not see that Woodward is ultimately responsible for everything that's gone on since SAF retired? The man who has presided over 6 years of continued failure, of short-termism and rewarding mediocrity where we now have an average squad earning some of the highest wages in world football? Paying inflated fees, after shooting himself in the foot with how he uses the press to fluff his ego, changing directions every 2-3 years instead of hiring people to do the job he obviously cannot do. The man is a charlatan of the most expensive sort. In short, an absolute twat. If you think Jose was damaging to the club, sanity requires you to see the damaging impact Woodward continues to have on the club.
5.) We will spend a feckton this summer.
Not really a decision but important to say. Just as important as net spend is the wage bill. We are looking at reducing this massively. Players who aren't contributing enough are going, Mata, Herrera, Valencia are pretty certain to leave. Rojo, Darmian, Periera will likely follow them out the door. We've already recouped money for Fellaini. We are for the first time in ages have a proper clear out. You might think you hear this every year, but this time we know that contracts are expiring. This should clear out our wage bill massively. Furthermore with our relative lack of spend this past summer and the clear deficiencies in our squad it is obvious where we need to buy. I expect a 200+ million pound summer. The Glazers have been shown to back new managers when they need it.
We've offered contracts to both Mata and Herrera, so it's obviously not the intentional stance to get them out. Furthermore, we should have tied them up a while back in order to be able to sell some of the few players who could actually fetch a price, if we're trying to maintain a sound business. Every manager has cleared out players. If you are thinking there will be some serious clear-out, not just because contracts are running out for players who choose to go elsewhere even if they're offered contracts here, that's not because of some long-term plan by the club.
6.) Giving Ole the job.
This is a no brainer. When he was hired no-one expected us to be challenging for the top four or get past PSG. He accomplished both and the players and fans loved him. There was
no other option. Some people keep talking about waiting till summer.. what would this have accomplished? There will be no big name managers leaving their post this summer and Ole might rightly have told us to feck off if we waited. So what benefit would that have done? Since he took the job he has us pretty much top of the premier league. Our recent form isn't great but we've player Barcelona twice, Wolves twice and Arsenal away. They are all games that ANY manager would struggle with.
I back Ole, I wanted him, I bought into the romance of it, and I'm still hoping that it wasn't just romance but some logic to it as well. But to say there was no other option is just false. Firstly, we could have waited until the end of the season. And obviously, we'd been linked with Poch.
We have to be positive. We are in a much better position now than we have been for the last four/five years as far as I can see. We have a manager who has already done a great job. We have money available and we have space in our squad. Even though watching City/Liverpool push on is galling, this is
not Ole's fault and we just need to put everything into preparing for next year now.
We were in a pretty good position to strengthen after last season. We didn't. We had money then, we had deadwood then to clear-out. We still have the same people running the club in the same incompetent way. Our only hope is that Ole is such a genius waiting to blossom that he can mitigate the incompetency of the owners/board in the same way SAF did. No small task.
