I don't think we need any "upgrades", per se. Sterling, De Bruyne, Silva, Sané and Aguero/Jesus is a wonderful front five that I wouldn't change for the world, and if Bernardo Silva, Gundogan and Mahrez are in the squad too then we're alright. But we do need a defensive midfielder who's more comfortable on the ball than Fernandinho - I love his defensive work, and he's good on the ball when he has time, but one of the reasons we struggle under a high press is because he's not comfortable in tight spaces. I can't wait for Bravo to leave either - he's been better this season than he was during 16/17 but a shot on target of any kind has a 60% chance of going in whenever he's around. I'd rather bring Angus Gunn back and give him the League Cup and FA Cup games - he can't be any worse than Bravo has been.
Manchester City under Pep Guardiola | Pep on City v Liverpool ref: "He likes to be special"
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Can anyone point me to the picture of Pep in the stands with the 3 people that look like him sat nearby?
Julian Weigl
Jorginho
Fred
Jean-michel Seri
Thome Lemar
Riyad Mahrez
Eden Hazard
Toby Alderweireld
so you don't have to click..
Jorginho
Fred
Jean-michel Seri
Thome Lemar
Riyad Mahrez
Eden Hazard
Toby Alderweireld
so you don't have to click..
Damn, fcbforever got owned there.
He says that other people have forgotten, yet it would appear that it is he who forgotten that Bayern were not irrelevant during the years specified.
Damn, fcbforever got owned there.
He says that other people have forgotten, yet it would appear that it is he who forgotten that Bayern were not irrelevant during the years specified.
Yet it appears that both of you have no idea what we did internationally between 2002 and 2009, because it certainly wasn't three Champions League finals. So much for the specified time period. And that, at the time of Peps "arrival", we hadn't won the Champions League since 2001 and only reached 2 finals recently, which we both lost.
"Owned" my ass, you clowns.
You are having an absolute mare here.
Bayern Munich won the treble the season before Guardiola's first.
You won the treble days before Pep arrived?
How can you forget? Literally how?
We signed him in December 2012. That was the statement, when he actually took over is irrelevant. Nobody knew yet how the season would end.
Pep Guardiola reached an agreement with Bayern board in the winter of 2012. At that time Bayern didnt have the treble so fcbforever is correct.
‘Peps arrival’ gives the impression that you meant when he took over tbh mate
So Pep Guardiola's agreement pushed Bayern Munich to win the Treble?
Wasn't that the whole point anyway, that Guardiola made them a force in Europe? So he is now getting credit while not even being there?
Wasn't that the whole point anyway, that Guardiola made them a force in Europe? So he is now getting credit while not even being there?
When you haven't followed the discussion and don't even know what it's about, why don't you just refrain from commenting?
Wat. No.
You said that getting Pep Guardiola was a signal that you are back up there with the best teams in the world. Surely winning the Treble did far more than getting Pep Guardiola?
At that point in time? No. Even then, some fans (ones from United especially guilty of this) were still dismissing Bayern and were convinced we wouldn't be able to hold that standard, because nobody would be interested to sign for us and this was just a fluke generation. Also, it was just a team of bottlers. Even if nobody else remembers those times here, I do. Then 12/13 came and we signed Guardiola. This and other forums went full meltdown. International press went full meltdown. How hasn't he signed for the almighty Premier League! That helped the stature of the club enormously. As for establishing us as what everyone is retroactively applying us to be for the whole decade, a top three club, probably just as much as the treble did. Images are important, this was a big one.
And that's all I said initially. Which is why it's funny when someone who apparently has no clue how this all went down comes around the corner talking "how we had won the treble before Pep arrived". We signed him in 2012, when he first set foot on our pitch is irrelevent for the matter at hand. That, by the way @Posh Red , is the reason "arrival" was written in "". Not my words, his.
I took Bayern seriously when they won the treble. They absolutely hammered Barcelona on their way. But if you feel that getting him in improved your public image a lot then fair enough.
Okay mate. Read the last few posts and obviously misread. My bad.
I will say that, like the poster above, I rated that Bayern side very highly, purely due to the quality of the squad. It didn’t feel like a flash in the pan tbh.
They don't look like they have run out of Gas at all its just that coaches have seen some areas to exploit/attack and others have followed suit. Also, teams have started to play against them like last season, put their CM on the back foot and close down their CB's and don't allow the GK----CB---KDB or GK---CB---DS makes them less effective.
What is this guy on Bayern was a feckin' machine even before Pep and were considered like that. People were gushing over them in England and nobody was foreboding a demise or putting it down to luck.
Bayern was a feckin' machine even before Pep and were considered like that. People were gushing over them in England and nobody was foreboding a demise or putting it down to luck.Genius at work. He needs to offload the dead-wood he bought for a billion quid 5 minutes ago.
I wouldn't really call Castles a journalist. I agree standards have fallen in the profession of late but still. I think of him more as a comedian, he's pretty good at that. Ballague can actually be a good journalist when he tries (not very often).
Most did. But that was after we signed Pep. It was a big deal. Barcelona also happened after we signed him.
What is this guy on
You don't get it either then. December 2012 is the relevant point here. And if you are one of the few who thought that way about that team after the group stages, fair play you do. I doubt you did though.
Whyever anyone would want that, but why not.
I never knew of Guardiola coming to Bayern Munich until I saw him actually manage Bayern. I think the first time I found out was when he did his first interview in German as Bayern manager.
Funny how a Bayern fan could use entirely pointless pedantic argument to put his own club down in order to positively reflect on Pep.
Indeed. The players I bought aren't good enough....
I doubt this storey is true but if so that would be jaw-dropping. Imagine if a storey like this came out about Jose you could imagine the usual melts on here having a melt down.
Funny how a Bayern fan could use entirely pointless pedantic argument to put his own club down in order to positively reflect on Pep.
I don't need to put down the club, I have lived through the absolute clown period that came after our win in 2001. People are retroactively reflecting things of us which certainly weren't a thing at the time. It's only natural since it's not the club you follow, but I have obviously have a different perspective here. Look at this lineup, remember Schweinsteiger was still a mediocre right winger at the time, and think again: http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/...lanalyse_fc-barcelona_bayern-muenchen-14.html
That is, for your: Benfica's second goalia, a shitty old Oddo which we loaned from Milan because we couldn't get a proper right back, the waste of space that was Demichelis for most of the time, the biggest Brazilian disappointment of the first decade of this century, a player I prefer forgetting, a Barcelona reject who was our captain, a Schweinsteiger thinking he was the greatest while really not being all that good on the wings, a late 30 Ze Roberto , Hami fecking Altintop, our only actually world class player and Luca Toni who we bought a few years too late.
Also, I'm certainly a Guardiola critic, especially when it comes to our times with us and I certainly wasn't all that sad when he left. But the PR he got us when we signed the most desired coach in the world who just had transformed world football in the eyes of many was, by any standard, massive.
Yeah okay, but that's certainly not the norm. Especially not for people who were on any kind of football messageboard at the time.
Targeting Hazard, Mahrez and Lemar ? So he want to bench Sane and Sterling who everyone were talking about how he developed both ?
Brilliant.
Sterling will need to leave.
Funny how a Bayern fan could use entirely pointless pedantic argument to put his own club down in order to positively reflect on Pep.
It's really mad.
Loads of Bayern fans don't even care that much about him. Despite having an even better squad than the very good squad Heynckes had, he didn't take the team to dominate Europe as he was brought into do, Heynckes is the legend in Munich, not Guardiola. There's a reason he isn't regarded with legendary status at the club.
They where already heading back to the top before Guardiola agreed to go there, hell, maybe it had more to do with Sammer than Pep
It's really mad.
Loads of Bayern fans don't even care that much about him. Despite having an even better squad than the very good squad Heynckes had, he didn't take the team to dominate Europe as he was brought into do, Heynckes is the legend in Munich, not Guardiola. There's a reason he isn't regarded with legendary status at the club.
They where already heading back to the top before Guardiola agreed to go there, hell, maybe it had more to do with Sammer than Pep
As someone whose formative football memories come from the 90s, its always weird for me to see Sammer at Bayern rather than Dortmund.
That mid 90s Dortmund team was something. Andreas Moller, Karl-Heinz Rielde...what a team. They even made Lars Ricken look world class.
Sammer's injury problems were a tragedy for German football and football as a whole. I really thought he was the heir to Lothar Mattheus.You can't imagine the pain you caused me in 1997.
As for Bayern, there's elements of truth to what @fcbforever says. Bayern was drifting until the early 2010s. However, the upturn definitely predated Pep. Its true that Klopp's Dortmund upset Bayern a bit and Van Gaal's end was, as you'd expect, disastrous.
That being said Bayern was firm favourite in the 2012 Champions League final, and the idea of bottling was probably a lot stronger in Germany than outside. Everyone else knew Chelsea had fluked it. Then came the Treble with Bayern playing a brand of football that was discernibly German, which crushed the Barca style over two legs.
Pep changed Bayern's football and nobody can say a Pep team at its best isn't beautiful to watch.Say for example Heynckes wins the Champions League again this year, playing his way not the Spanish way though. Many will say Pep's innovations were just a needless move away from what Jupp did. They will also likely say that Hispanising the team, sometimes at the expense of stalwarts like Thomas Muller, went against Bayern traditions pointlessly.
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And yet this was your squad from the finals of CL 2013 game: Manuel Neuer; David Alaba, Dante, Jerome Boateng, Philipp Lahm; Javi Martinez, Bastian Schweinsteiger; Franck Ribery, Thomas Müller, Arjen Robben; Mario Mandžukić
That team is littered with world class players at the time. Ribery and Robben were mentioned by some neutrals as 'better than Messi and Ronaldo' and Muller was one of the biggest up-and-coming names. Neuer, Lahm, Alaba, Schweinsteiger were all considered the best players in the world in their respective positions. That was nothing to do with Pep. I'd give absolutely anything to have that sort of lineup at United right now.
Every team goes through building phases and sure maybe Bayern did that too around 2001. But the structure in place at Bayern with their transfer policy has always been well respected around the world.
Do we really have a Bayern fan on here trying to credit Pep with them winning the CL in 2013?
fecking hell
fecking hell
That headline though.
I find it difficult to believe that Bayern, who reached the CL finals in 2010,2012 and 2013 was put on the European map by Guardiola by reaching CL semis with them in 2014,2015 and 2016. That sounds dumb.
Do we really have a Bayern fan on here trying to credit Pep with them winning the CL in 2013?
fecking hell
That’s not even remotely what I said. I just said that for our stature as a club, signing him in 2012 was likely just as important as winning the actual CL. And that it was a pretty huge deal back in the day. But some people apparently don’t want to read and instead just throw a few smilies and lols around.