Is Ole an attacking or defensive manager?

Bastian said:
Do you think this is what Ole is trying to do? I think it's more just a lack of tactical understanding and a good enough appreciation of the limitations we've got as a squad.

It's easy to say after each game that the tempo wasn't good enough, our passing wasn't quick or crisp, etc. But if it is a pattern rather than anomaly, you do wonder what goes on in training (and he's many times talked about how good we are in training).
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I think it's absolutely something Ole is trying to do. I think in his mind he wants to play front-foot, possession-based football, with high, wide full backs overlapping the inside forwards and Martial as the focal point, with Matic dropping in to make a 3rd CB when we break.

The trouble is, our 'midfield' is non-existent. This style of football works for Liverpool a) because their full backs are world-class attackers and b) because their midfield is full of functional workhorses (Fabinho, Henderson, Keita, Milner, Wijnaldum)

We're trying to do something we're not suited to. I would first set-up not to get beat. It might not be glamorous but with our pace on the break and the fact we do have good penalty box defenders, I think we would better last season's points tally fairly easily
 
Ballache said:
So you're telling me the likes of Leeds United and Everton have better players than us?
People need to stop making excuses for Ole.
Yeah our squad isn't great, but he isn't tactically great either.
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Sadly this is the truth.

What is mind boggling is we have a clear style we want to try and emulate - essentially an aggressive, front foot team who use width and press from the front - but we hired a manager who has never built a team that does that at the top level. It's actually embarrassing that people use the 'hasn't got the players' excuse when Southampton and Leeds have built fully functional teams that play differently but both employ the same exciting and fast paced pressing approach. If they can do it with vastly inferior infrastructure/players/smaller squads why can't we?
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Sadly this is the truth.

What is mind boggling is we have a clear style we want to try and emulate - essentially an aggressive, front foot team who use width and press from the front - but we hired a manager who has never built a team that does that at the top level. It's actually embarrassing that people use the 'hasn't got the players' excuse when Southampton and Leeds have built fully functional teams that play differently but both employ the same exciting and fast paced pressing approach. If they can do it with vastly inferior infrastructure/players/smaller squads why can't we?
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Where did Southampton finish in the league last year? We’re they better than us?

Leeds have finally made it into the top flight after decades of floundering.

Neither are a stick to beat Ole with but go on.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
What is mind boggling is we have a clear style we want to try and emulate - essentially an aggressive, front foot team who use width and press from the front
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Where is the evidence for that though? That's not the profile of some of the key players bought recently (as always in this context: Maguire and AWB).

I have a feeling Ole is rather a reactive manager, like Mourinho. If the opposition sits back and leaves space, it's an attacking approach; if it's a front-foot opponent, it's defensive and counter-attacking. The only problem with that (channeling @Theonas here), is that defenses are very well-organized these days, and the attacking approach hence requires a lot of refinement to yield results. That seems to be lacking right now. The more defensive/counter-attacking approach seems to be more successful though; see the matches against City and Liverpool especially.
 
Cheimoon said:
Where is the evidence for that though? That's not the profile of some of the key players bought recently (as always in this context: Maguire and AWB).

I have a feeling Ole is rather a reactive manager, like Mourinho. If the opposition sits back and leaves space, it's an attacking approach; if it's a front-foot opponent, it's defensive and counter-attacking. The only problem with that (channeling @Theonas here), is that defenses are very well-organized these days, and the attacking approach hence requires a lot of refinement to yield results. That seems to be lacking right now. The more defensive/counter-attacking approach seems to be more successful though; see the matches against City and Liverpool especially.
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Oh I agree, there's no evidence I'm just going off what Ole continuously says. I'm assuming he's been trying to coach the style he always talks about from day 1. We play in a very similar way to Spurs, they just have a much better attack when Kane and Son are fit.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Oh I agree, there's no evidence I'm just going off what Ole continuously says. I'm assuming he's been trying to coach the style he always talks about from day 1. We play in a very similar way to Spurs, they just have a much better attack when Kane and Son are fit.
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Yeah, that's a disconnect I don't really get. If you take away Ole's own descriptions about his style, would anyway suggest he's either using a high-pressing style, working on implementing it, or building a squad that will eventually allow him to implement it? (To be clear: I'm just trying to connect some dots here. Obviously, there is no absolute need for Ole to implement that style.)
 
Lentwood said:
I think it's absolutely something Ole is trying to do. I think in his mind he wants to play front-foot, possession-based football, with high, wide full backs overlapping the inside forwards and Martial as the focal point, with Matic dropping in to make a 3rd CB when we break.

The trouble is, our 'midfield' is non-existent. This style of football works for Liverpool a) because their full backs are world-class attackers and b) because their midfield is full of functional workhorses (Fabinho, Henderson, Keita, Milner, Wijnaldum)

We're trying to do something we're not suited to. I would first set-up not to get beat. It might not be glamorous but with our pace on the break and the fact we do have good penalty box defenders, I think we would better last season's points tally fairly easily
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I too think this is what he wants. The trouble is, I think he has little idea of how to implement that. I've probably repeated this quote of his 10 times recently on the Caf, but for him to say he's a leader type manager, and not a coach type manager, says so much. And that he didn't bring in an experienced coaching staff. He's trying something that doesn't really work for the personnel he's got, and he also identified (at least he took the credit and was lauded for it at the time) AWB and Maguire as players he wanted, and neither really suit this.

I think AWB is a fantastic defender and athlete, while Maguire is a good centre back. But AWB, as you say, doesn't offer anything close to what an attacking full back does, and Maguire is not suited to a high line of defense. Add to that that Ole wanted to build the team around Pogba, signs Bruno, and now has nothing close to that energetic workhorse midfield required to play an intense pressing game.

While it's necessary to setup with a clear defensive structure to build on, that's not enough. If Ole were to do that he'd need different tactical options. Martial is not a typical #9 and offers very little physicality (though he's improved quite a bit there) and is rarely found in the box. We've not got bona fide wingers either. And we've all seen what happens when teams have been defensively sound against us, we've looked impotent and without ideas. If Ole were to set us up mainly as we played throughout the season up until Bruno's signing, I could imagine we'd get a lot of draws or 1-0s or 0-1s. I can't imagine it would greatly improve our points tally.

I don't pretend to know what formation is best suited to this disjointed selection of players, nothing really screams out. But as far as a style goes, playing like an underdog against teams who actually are underdogs just further diminishes what we were and gives teams a psychological boost when they play us.
 
AngeloHenriquez said:
I think we are a defensive counter attacking team, Ole is changing his style as I think he is realising he can't play like he wants to with these players, he wants to be far more attacking but can't. We counter attack and rely on set pieces
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Same. Started well and has had other spells. Shambles now, all over the place.
 
He’s a good attacking manager, short memories across this forum but he had us playing the best football I’ve seen from a Utd team post 2008 for a spell before lockdown and in the run in. That doesn’t mean consistent brilliance by any means but in spells we have been a very entertaining side. I’m not going to rewrite history just because we have played poorly at the start of this season.
 
He doesn't seem to have a philosophy and certainly isn't interested in possession football or positional play. He's a largely pragmatic manager, whose instinct when up against similar or superior strength sides is to sit deep and play on the break.

Our organisation with the ball hasn't improved at all in his two years here. We've generally looked OK without the ball during this spell (this is something Mourinho obviously spent a lot of time on), but even this seems to have deserted us recently.
 
After nearly 2 years in charge and we're still trying to work out which system he plays speaks volumes.
 
Maybe im naive, but I cant see any particular style. I think our goals have mainly come from individual brilliance. It was no coincidence our best play was when Bruno came in and in a few weeks we looked good. Greenwood saved our asses in a lot of those games as well. Now unless its a penalty we seem to have mainly lost the knack of scoring. Bruno now looks a shadow of the player from last season. How long will it take the 'coaching' to digress DVB. As for style, do we look any different now than under Mourinho? We still have the so slow build up when we have the ball or the 50 yard hoof from defence. We have counter attacked at speed and it has resulted in a goal when the opposition have been all up around our box and this looks our one option to score regular. Free kicks, corners are a complete waste of time 95% of the time. Bsically every team we play we make them look like prime Barca from 10 years ago.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Sadly this is the truth.

What is mind boggling is we have a clear style we want to try and emulate - essentially an aggressive, front foot team who use width and press from the front - but we hired a manager who has never built a team that does that at the top level. It's actually embarrassing that people use the 'hasn't got the players' excuse when Southampton and Leeds have built fully functional teams that play differently but both employ the same exciting and fast paced pressing approach. If they can do it with vastly inferior infrastructure/players/smaller squads why can't we?
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Forgot about Southampton too.
Systems, clear tactics, patterns of play...
I love Ole, was desperate for him to succeed but he's just not the guy to take us back to the top.
 
I think he sees himself as an attacking manager. One of his biggest problems is we seem to get exposed regularly defensively which probably makes him more cautious in his approach.
 
Attacking ideas, but over cautiously minded so now have settled with unknowingly defensive system.

His 1st half-a-season is definitely attacking full throttle at first (when he's here just care taking with no worries so he's doing his best to impress), then later on becoming more balance with higher emphasis on defending (once he got the job permanently so he's more conscious now on keeping the job thus playing more safe).

2nd season onward to 3rd season is definitely more defensive, and counter attacking vs top teams.
 
He's free-form in terms of philosophy. He's flexible but has an attacking tendency like SAF, or at least that's what he wants to be, problem is he has so far been overly tempted by defensive counterattacking setups. You can almost trace it back to that first game against Spurs during in his interim stint (well unless of course he was already doing this at Molde and Cardiff).

I also don't buy that we don't have the players to attack, we can beat a dead horse over the wisdom of spending 130m on players not fit for purpose but in attack and midfield however, we have so many technical players we basically win a penalty every week because of defenders soiling themselves trying to keep up with all that close control. Imo if we wanted we basically have the personnel to be Liverpool pre-VVD where we're scoring freely and conceding 4 in our losses
 
He has brilliant individuals who had won games for us most of the time. There is no structure in our team. 11 players doing their own stuff. You simply cannot be this shambolic if you practice day in and day out on the training pitch.
I think he has no clue about setting a team up against clever opposition. Plus he is let down by stupidity of the players too. They need to take some responsibility on the pitch too. But if you do not have any structure then it all comes apart. When you look at the analysis of how we play and how we move there is no plan. Maguire, Bailly, Shaw and AWB do not play as a team. They play as 4 individual players. Pogba is useless. Ole cannot play with 3 forwards and it is absolutely stupid to play with them now as other teams have sussed us out. Last season is not now. They all know how we play.
I really wonder what do we do on the training pitch? Then we sell off the best defender we have in Smalling and keep Bailly, Jones and Rojo.
 
Some comments here are a shame. I wouldn’t call a manager who finished 3rd with such a thin squad “clueless”. United under him has been a better team than that under moyes, van gaal and mourinho (all three are more reputable managers).

His style is attacking, wants the most out of his players especially on counter attacks and looks for fast tempo. This is why mata for example doesn’t get lots of chances.
 
Skills said:
We look clueless in attack too. He's just not a very good coach in either aspect of play.

But our results against the top teams last season suggests he's more comfortable playing the underdog.
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Mourinho and Van Gaal looked clueless at United too. And also did better against bigger teams than the weaker teams.

The same problems are remaining, regardless of who's in charge
 
united for life said:
Some comments here are a shame. I wouldn’t call a manager who finished 3rd with such a thin squad “clueless”. United under him has been a better team than that under moyes, van gaal and mourinho (all three are more reputable managers).

His style is attacking, wants the most out of his players especially on counter attacks and looks for fast tempo. This is why mata for example doesn’t get lots of chances.
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You have no idea if you think he knows how to set up a team. Leicester won the PL under Ranieri and are you saying that he is a better coach than all these guys too? Getting to the 3rd place with all these brilliant individuals is not much. You cannot play fast counter attacks when your opposition deny you the space. This is basic. They have sussed out how we play and that is why we are not winning so many games like we did before. Brilliant players won the game mostly. Anyone can see that we do not play as a team because if so we would not leave so much space. Miss controlling and miss passing maybe down to individual players but a hopeless structure is entirely due to the coaching.
 
I know we've started the season as badly as we could have but let's not forget last season our defence was one of the best in Europe top 5 for goals conceded and our front three were in the top 5 or 6 for goals and also the youngest. We've started very badly, thats all. It will improve.

Ole is an attacking manager. Straight out of the you score 2, we'll score 3 school of Alex Ferguson. Unfortunately for him the last game was you score 6, we'll score one. But we'll get better as the season progresses, or it won't matter what type of coach he is, he'll be an ex United coach, and he'll be well aware of that.
 
Green_Red said:
I know we've started the season as badly as we could have but let's not forget last season our defence was one of the best in Europe top 5 for goals conceded and our front three were in the top 5 or 6 for goals and also the youngest. We've started very badly, thats all. It will improve.

Ole is an attacking manager. Straight out of the you score 2, we'll score 3 school of Alex Ferguson. Unfortunately for him the last game was you score 6, we'll score one. But we'll get better as the season progresses, or it won't matter what type of coach he is, he'll be an ex United coach, and he'll be well aware of that.
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I am not blaming him personally but the buck stops with him. Even now if he changes his coaching staff and get better and more experienced coaches and get a better team structure it will improve massively. Drop Pogba and get Fred instead of him and play 4 midfield players and two forwards but closer and then we will not be leaving those spaces. Practice the 4 defenders playing as a team. If they practice and use their intelligence then we will not be leaving those spaces.
 
Neither

There is no a plan or an idea

The lack of balance in the mid, would suggest that he is NOT a defensive one
 
#07 said:
The squad is more suited to it.

Ole is instinctively an attacking coach and you can see a clear idea behind what he wants to do. When we're building up the defensive midfielder drops between the centre backs, the full backs push up to the midfield line shifting us to a 3-3-1-3. Its the same shape that Ajax use. However, our players lack the composure and technique to play out from the back. Its bordering on obstinacy for Ole to continue to try to play this way without the players to do it. I think the post-lockdown games gave Ole a false impression about the capacity of our first XI.

The squad is much more geared to defend deep, leave no space in behind and rely on transitions to get in behind opponents once they've committed. We do not have brilliant, pacey 1v1 defenders who look secure playing a high line and compressing the game into the opponent's half. However, we do have a lot of players that do well when the whole game is in front of them - which is what happens when we just camp on the edge of our box. Hence why we do tend to get good results in big games.

So, in short, Ole is an attacking coach with a defensive, transition based squad. He'd be better off giving up playing on the front foot, cos if he keeps doing so we'll keep getting beaten. Be pragmatic, do what the squad as a whole is best tooled to do: Defend deep and play on the break.
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Good post.
 
Cheimoon said:
Where is the evidence for that though? That's not the profile of some of the key players bought recently (as always in this context: Maguire and AWB).

I have a feeling Ole is rather a reactive manager, like Mourinho. If the opposition sits back and leaves space, it's an attacking approach; if it's a front-foot opponent, it's defensive and counter-attacking. The only problem with that (channeling @Theonas here), is that defenses are very well-organized these days, and the attacking approach hence requires a lot of refinement to yield results. That seems to be lacking right now. The more defensive/counter-attacking approach seems to be more successful though; see the matches against City and Liverpool especially.
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I find him more in the Sir Alex mold to be honest, except for the aura, charisma, strategical planning and man management skills among other qualities. He is to Sir Alex what Pulis is to Mourinho. He wants to be pro active but thinks he can do it '90s style where you just find 11 players that can win their duels, motivate them to tackle and close down and get your pacey dribblers to unlock defenses. I hadn't actually heard what @Bastian wrote about OGS saying he sees himself more of a leader but it does make perfect sense. He wants to play the Sir Alex forgetting two key things; 1) he does not have Sir Alex's personality and unparalleled ability to build and eye for talent and 2) he is competing in the age of micro coaches with significantly more refined structure and systems.

I see a lot of comments addressing the quality of players and OGS stylistic preferences. This makes it sound like implementing a way of playing is a simple of matter of wanting and deciding and getting the right players to do it. It neglects the very obvious element of actual technical competence of the individual in charge. If said technical competence was so irrelevant, there would be absolutely no reason to pay high wages to the likes of Klopp or Guardiola. OGS's problem is not that he doesn't have the right players or that he is inherently defensive or cautious or whatever, it is, from how it looks now at least, that he is not good enough in the areas that are very relevant in modern coaching.
 
Why does it matter what type of manager someone is if they're trying to improve the players and still get results. I understand this is another Ole bashing thread pretty much saying he's clueless, but it's clear that he's not. We might never see what Ole can do with a more consistent type of individual player (they were the youngest side last year in the PL or one of the youngest sides) and just a better quality of player. He's not the best manager, but he's also not a complete braindead.

Most teams are able to play well on the break because you're more direct and playing into space while the defending players are completely turned and have too much space too cover while trying to track a runner or choose to stop the ball.
 
He has a general idea on how he wants to play, but he doesn't have the tactical ability to see beyond his opening moves.

Proper manager will do the following:
1. Analyze his own squad
2. Determine which formation is best suited for the squad he has at his disposal, including backup, bench, plan B, etc. Retrain players' position for emergency backup, developing drills to suits his game plan. A simple well executed plan sometimes works wonder (Leicester counter 442). Teams like Everton / Leicester have 1-2 star player, and develop their tactics towards making the best use of what they have.
(e.g. SAF retrains valencia as right winger)
(e.g. SAF probably tweaked gary to bomb forward often during Beckham and drills him accordingly)
3. Go into the match against real live opponent (NOT AI), the one that can outsmart you, out think you, surprise you with their sudden blitzkrieg
4. You see the lineup, you analyze the first 20 minutes, a good manager would quickly understand what his opponent are trying to do, and changes instruction to his game-plan to counter/nulify such threat.
(e.g. SAF using Park to man mark Pirlo falls under surprises blitz as it's not normal to tell your attacking winger to stick to a playmaker, it's up to Milan to quicky within 45 minutes to counter a plan)
(e.g. Jose targeting Shaw all day falls probably under expected moves, it's up to Ole how to counter that. Could be by instructing Maguire to stick to his line, tells his LW to help up, Matic to double up, etc)
5. Off course along the way, there are X factors such as (Player individual brilliance that scores a goal, blunder, red card, error, miscommunications, referee, injury, luck etc) but over 38 games tactical awareness shows.

I don't see 2 and 4 from Ole. He often just sat in his dugout looking lost. You don't need to be Klopp, but if you're sitting there doing nothing it means that you're either:
1. Have no clue what's going on
2. Have a clue on what's going on but have no solution to it
3. Thinks there's no problem with your tactics

All of them aren't a good indicator of a good manager. Jose found out our number, and Ole did nothing to rectify it. Even telling everyone to focus on Defence and regroup until half time mark is a good tactics, at least it buys time until you can figure out what's what. Come 2nd half, nothing changes, playing with 10 men means you need to rely on counter attack more than ever, you need to hit and pray it kills, whatever it is you can be sure your initial formation won't work.

One match, two match, three match. How often does this happened? For me that's a very good indicator of one's ability as a manager. Freak loses does happen, just like freak wins happens, but over the years one with tactical awareness would more often win, even if he lost we all can see what he's trying to do. For me there's no excuse after 2 years you still don't know how to employ Paul Pogba, or Daniel James, or Martial, these are your player, the one you train every day for 2 years. By 2 years (which is a long time in modern era) you should already know by heart what they does best, and what they don't. In 2 years time it's enough for you to mould them (at least tactical wise) on how you want them to play.

Pogba might never become a DM, or an RW, buf with 2 years you should at least make him a CM that plays according to your needs. Failing that it's either Pogba should be fired, or the manager should.

And all the above has got nothing to do on whether you have Sancho or not.
 
Cheimoon said:
Where is the evidence for that though? That's not the profile of some of the key players bought recently (as always in this context: Maguire and AWB).

I have a feeling Ole is rather a reactive manager, like Mourinho. If the opposition sits back and leaves space, it's an attacking approach; if it's a front-foot opponent, it's defensive and counter-attacking. The only problem with that (channeling @Theonas here), is that defenses are very well-organized these days, and the attacking approach hence requires a lot of refinement to yield results. That seems to be lacking right now. The more defensive/counter-attacking approach seems to be more successful though; see the matches against City and Liverpool especially.
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Being a reactive manager isn’t bad. By all accounts, like Neville’s for example, Fergie was a reactive manager. We adapted to every opponent. The one time we didn’t, when he wanted a proactive, attacking approach against Barca in 09’, we lost and Rooney recently complained about it! Yet, we still won a million trophies in his 27 brilliant years here.

What is bad is being a bad reactive manager, where you know how the opponent is going to play, but can’t find the right tactic to beat them. That is Ole imo, and I don’t like saying that as he’s our manager and a club legend.

So, to answer the thread title, Ole is neither an attacking or defensive manager, but an adaptive one. So was Fergie, but he was miles better at it than Ole, or anyone else, hence why he’s widely renowned as the best manager of all time.
 
Theonas said:
I find him more in the Sir Alex mold to be honest, except for the aura, charisma, strategical planning and man management skills among other qualities. He is to Sir Alex what Pulis is to Mourinho. He wants to be pro active but thinks he can do it '90s style where you just find 11 players that can win their duels, motivate them to tackle and close down and get your pacey dribblers to unlock defenses. I hadn't actually heard what @Bastian wrote about OGS saying he sees himself more of a leader but it does make perfect sense. He wants to play the Sir Alex forgetting two key things; 1) he does not have Sir Alex's personality and unparalleled ability to build and eye for talent and 2) he is competing in the age of micro coaches with significantly more refined structure and systems.

I see a lot of comments addressing the quality of players and OGS stylistic preferences. This makes it sound like implementing a way of playing is a simple of matter of wanting and deciding and getting the right players to do it. It neglects the very obvious element of actual technical competence of the individual in charge. If said technical competence was so irrelevant, there would be absolutely no reason to pay high wages to the likes of Klopp or Guardiola. OGS's problem is not that he doesn't have the right players or that he is inherently defensive or cautious or whatever, it is, from how it looks now at least, that he is not good enough in the areas that are very relevant in modern coaching.
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I'm happy I got you go post tactics again! I always enjoyed your posts when I was lurking. Hence me tagging you sometimes. ;)

Yeah, I can see the SAF link. Ole also talks about him fairly often in that sort of way, from quotes I've seen. Still, I'm not sure he's really decided on that. I mean, SAF never really played a pressing game (right?), and I did see quotes where Ole talks about wanting to do that. But then again, I'm just not sure how that fits in, one way or another. Maybe he means something else by it than we think?
 
AltiUn said:
He wants to be an attacking coach, that much is clear. We saw the blueprints of his possession-based, high-pressing team after lockdown. His system after lockdown relied on individuals to carry it. All it took was one player to be out the team for the system to fail. We now have everyone we need for the system to work but our two CMs are in shambolic form. That team relied on Pogba and Matic to control the tempo which allowed us to box teams in but the way they're playing means we can't control games and teams can walk right through us. Matic is immobile and Pogba can barely string two passes together.

What we currently are is a disorganised mess. The full backs push up too far, which wouldn't be an issue because we've started playing with a high line so it's to be expected, but that fails because neither of our CBs have any pace to cover for the full backs. Like previously mentioned the midfield is a mess, which means we have no defensive shape because players are constantly being dragged out of position and others easily bypassed, it also gives attackers a chance to run at Maguire, Lindelof, Bailly or whoever head on, over and over again which obviously will expose their weaknesses massively.

He's obviously not against being defensive when it suits him, we've played counter attack plenty. We currently don't have the right players in form to even do that at the moment.
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This. But it not so much individuals to carry it. I think we honestly could have taken Rashford, Shaw, Greenwood etc out of the team and it could still have worked, but we are highly dependent on the midfield producing the goods.

In pretty much all of our league games this season, the other team have been allowed to stroll right past our midfield or have loads of time to pick out a good pass, which have lead to Lindelof/Maguire ending up in a footrace or having to defend 1on1, or they have passed it out to the wing who now have loads of space because our fullbacks are out of position. Also, since Ole is apparently adamant about playing out from the back the midfield MUST be involved a lot more than they are right now. None of our CB's are the marauding type who goes forward to much, so we are very reliant on our two deepest midfielders to drop down a bit and help transition us from defense to attack, but that has not worked and it has broken down in 2-3 moves most of the time

I think a lot of people were excited about the thought of a midfield of Pogba, Bruno and Matic, but so far its been a dumpster fire of epic proportions. I think the big question here is how do we sort out our midfield? Should we just relegate Pogba to the bench and play Fred, VdB and Bruno? If we are going to stick with Pogba and Matic we need some extra pair of legs in there, so feck the 4231 and lets play a 442 diamond instead with Matic as DM, Fred, Pogba in CM and Bruno at the top

Also, all the people claiming you need fast CB's to play high press. I dont agree at all. Of course its nothing wrong with having pacy defenders, but if they constantly are ending up in footraces starting at 40 yards from their own goal, you are doing it completely wrong and you are going to end up in trouble regardless of how fast they are

If you want to defend high, the most important attributes are positioning, aerial ability and 1on1 defending. Baily and Lindelof is not good here, but i dont see how Maguire could not work here if he had a partner with a bit more ability than Lindelof or a better footballing brain than Baily. Also, the whole point of a high press is winning the ball before your CB's have to deal with it, so having the right type of attackers and midfielders is just as important. Matic/Pogba cant play high press so even suggesting it would be madness

Ole wants to be an attacking coach, but hes pragmatic when he needs to be as there is ample evidence for last season when we played the better teams.
 
AshRK said:
If he was a defensive coach we wouldn't be looking so clueless defensively. Have you seen our shape when we defend. Awb cannot even man mark , that is not a sign of defensive coach. We try to attack but look clueless.
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Who exactly should AWB be man marking? The winger or the full back? He can't be two places at once, and so he's finding himself caught in the middle.
Our full backs are not getting a lot of protection at the moment, and the wide forwards should be tracking back more. It's one of the basics that we seem to have discarded recently.

To the OP - neither. It depends on the day really - much like SAF
 
Firstly, I don’t know why people keeping harping on about Ole’s coaching ability. It’s been stated so many times that he doesn’t do the coaching and that is left to Carrick, McKenna and Phelan.

Of course the coaches are following his instructions/requests and he choose these guys, so he’s culpable but why people keep banging on about his coaching I have no idea.

Secondly, he’s quite clearly not a defensive manager. He’s never happy when we don’t control the game or create lots of chances, and he’s always asking the team to be on the front foot and play with attacking intent. He may not be gung ho with it but he’s certainly not defensive.
 
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