Yeah I can imagine mate.
Both those clubs have cores of 5-6 British players that regularly in their first team, same as United.
Solskjaer's legacy and his future
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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.
Yeah I can imagine mate.
Both those clubs have cores of 5-6 British players that regularly in their first team, same as United.
Meh, they're a bit rubbish too though, aren't they?
His signings let him down. The players we thought would be the backbone of the team for years to come are the ones that need replacing now. I didnt think AWB and Maguire will be this bad and we have spent more than a hundred on their transfer alone minus the salary.
I'm not saying the players are free of blame but it's clear that this group of players has been poorly managed this season. Things went bad under Solskjaer and he didn't have the experience or ability to turn things around.
Many thought Ranknick would turn things around yet on the pitch we are only very marginally better but off the pitch things seem to have got much worse.
Both managers deserve criticism for that, football management like any leadership role is as much about managing men as it is anything else. A ship is only as good as it's captain and we've had poor ones.
You seem to be giving Ralf an easy ride here mate, I reckon it's possible he's just shit at man management as he can't seem to get a tune out of this squad. 20 games in and we've only very marginally improved results wise. And the bad press and shit going on behind the scenes making the back pages every day on his watch also reflects badly on him.
It doesn't matter who the players are I'm asking someone do anyone really want to watch a Manchester United that isn't built upon a core of English/British players?
For the record I'm not English or even British, but I just can't imagine watching a United side made up of 11 foreigners.
I believe you, but what’s crazy about this mini-debate is that this morning I was reading an article in the FT or some other British media outlet and it used “understated” in exactly the same context as the previous poster, which makes no sense to me at all.
No nor me.
I follow Real Madrid. In 2019 our squad looked like they all needed to be put in a garbage bin, it was dire. Failed under three managers.
Today, at least half of that squad is still around and very solid and competitive. It was just a bad season and it dragged down everyone, not really a reflection of their actual quality. On the other hand, there was probably 1/3 of the squad who were truly finished at that level, and they never recovered. We mostly didn't get rid of them, they just don't get minutes anymore.
Probably similar to United. A good chunk of these players will be better after a hard reset.
Today, at least half of that squad is still around and very solid and competitive. It was just a bad season and it dragged down everyone, not really a reflection of their actual quality. On the other hand, there was probably 1/3 of the squad who were truly finished at that level, and they never recovered. We mostly didn't get rid of them, they just don't get minutes anymore.
Probably similar to United. A good chunk of these players will be better after a hard reset.
You mean the players he chose to buy? Ole has no excuses about the group of players because they are his chosen group. He had 6? transfer windows and spent hundreds of millions. A lot of our players are mentally weak and average footballers but that doesn't absolve Ole who was also an average manager at best.
Man, Ole had the most easy ride among all of our managers post SAF. His friends in the media were jerking off to his "cultural reboot" and "United DNA" shit, and even though we were playing like shit and were literally stealing wins and draws all those "respective" pundits like GNev, Scholes, Hargreaves, Rio, Keane were sure that we just needed that one player in this or that position. Absolutely noone (until the Liverpool game) suggested that he wasn't good enough for a club of our stature.
Now all of a sudden in a months time you have Scholes ripping RR and saying shit like "why United went for a manager with no previous top club experience... " like Ole came from Bayern for fecks sake.
I don't care to judge Rangnick on his managerial abilities or lack thereof, I am more concerned with players who started the season looking to challenge for the League but find it easy to down tools and ignore their responsibilities to their team mates, their manager, their club and their fans.
Just look at the comical goals conceded at City, for example, and other unforced errors the players keep committing then assess the fact that we are last or near last on almost every metric that measures work rate. All those things reflect badly on their attitudes and professionalism and there isn't much a manager can do when they collectively down tools like that. What's he supposed to do, beg them?
If we are ever going to build a championship winning team we need to cut out the rotten part of the squad no matter how much it costs.
The difference between Madrid and United is that a lot of players at Madrid had won the lot, they were of a high level before the inevitable decline and the club, especially the fans, do not accept mediocrity. Contrast that with United where fans were begging for autographs from Ole after Liverpool mauled us at home or on Tuesday night from players who had just stood there for ninety minutes not daring to fight for the last trophy they could win this season. Do you think Real Madrid fans would be out there in the cold begging for autographs from these failures after the timid way they surrendered our CL campaign?
Much as we like to blame the Glazer it is us the fans that enable their incompetence and running down of our club. The way we are easily distracted from key issues by a big signing or two is laughable.
Aren’t the things you’re talking about the jobs or the negotiating team and scouts? It honestly feels like people think Ole has watched match of the day, and phoned Palace to offer £50 million for AWB (same for Maguire).
I don’t think any of us know what happened with those transfers. It could be that Ole was desperate for Maguire and would only accept him at all costs. It could be that the scouting team didn’t present any other realistic alternatives, or Woodward was desperate to sign an English centre half who’d done well in a tournament regardless of price.
I also don’t remember many people moaning when Harry was made captain.
That was true for part of the media, particularly our ex players.
But it definitely wasn't the case across the entire media. Big sections were on his xase right from the start.
How many other managers get called a PE teacher?
In anycase I don't get this blood lust some fans have. Would it make you feel better if Ole was criticised even more?
Not sure why there are still people defending him in here. So because Ragnick is getting bad results, this proves the team is bad and that it wasnt OGS fault? Last I checked, it was his decision to make midtable level players (such as Mctominay, Rashford, AWB, Mcguire) his key players starting players.
It's because a lot of our fans including me didn’t want him here from the start. Everyone and his cat could see his ineptitude and his no-style play. But there was this lazy argument about how we had experienced coaches in the past and didn't work out so we have to try with Ole (who didn't have any top club experience, of course a lot of those pundits didn't care).
So Ole came and gone and left a huge mess of a squad which haven't been properly coached for 3 years and never really took away their player-power. Became a meme coach where in irrelevant games the fans were singing his name, but he was still talking about the cultural reboot and shit like that.
Basically the worst period post SAF in the context that it lasted 3 freaking years with nothing to show for
Besides Maguire, who has been complete shit since the Euros, which of Oles transfers would you single out as particularly bad this season? People pointed out (lack of) coaching as the obvious culprit, and a lot of people believed that once we got in a tactically astute manager with some coaching ability, we would be challenging for the league
Now we have one, and we dont look much better. I wont presume to know the answer, because i have no idea, but if we just keep pointing the finger at the the coaching staff we wont get anywhere because this group of players are capable of doing much better than we currently are
That's because we had a manager who enabled them. They're not unprofessional to the core, they would never have made it otherwise, but we let them become unprofessional through poor management. Ole let standards drop and them think they were bigger and better than they are. They're this generation's Spice Boys; good players with a poor mentality, but if SAF had managed Liverpool in the 90s it would have been them winning everything, not us. All it takes is the right managerial appointment. One or two might be lost causes but a top manager can still turn it around.
Things Ole did well:
- Pick up the mood after Mou
- Finished in the top 4 twice
- Signed Fernandes, Varane
- Made Fred a half decent player
- Promoted Greenwood
- Get rid of Sánchez and Lukaku
- Signing AWB, Maguire, Ronaldo, VDB
- Wasting money on Amad and Pellestri
- Renewing Jones, Mata, Matic and Cavani's contracts
- Making Maguire captain
- Not selling Lingard or Pogba
- Having only basic tactical knowledge
- Overplaying certain players
- Shawn's loss of form
- Varane's injuries
- Rashford's loss of form
- Greenwood's allegations
To use an analogy, it’s a bit like getting your roof done, whereby we’ve called RR to come in and have a look at what’s causing the leaks and subsequent rot only to discover it’s been badly patched up for years by various cowboy builders.
Ole is a symptom of this mismanagement that allowed the situation to fester, but in all fairness, was only doing what subsequent managers after Sir Alex had done before- splurging out on overpriced average ability players, sanctioned by a board of executives who seemed completely oblivious to the consequences at the time.
Ole is a symptom of this mismanagement that allowed the situation to fester, but in all fairness, was only doing what subsequent managers after Sir Alex had done before- splurging out on overpriced average ability players, sanctioned by a board of executives who seemed completely oblivious to the consequences at the time.
I never really understood this worshipping of OGS as a "legend".
He scored THAT goal and was a superb goalscorer for us but the club have had many players of equal or greater contribution.....Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson, Van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane etc
The inconvenient truth is that we, the fanbase, facilitated the club in making the calamitous mistake of giving OGS the job on a permanent basis when all the club had to do was wait until the summer (as previously agreed) and then assess the situation again.
No doubt in my mind that at best we took a sideways step after Mourinho and arguably, took a step back because he did at least win us some silverware (and was hobbled by Ed in the transfer market).
I have no problem with OGS being tactically naive, if he could galvanise the team, a la Kevin Keegan, and then surround himself with top coaches but he chose not to and defended his coaching team right to the death. Ironically, OGS defended his staff to the detriment of the club, something that OGS may in hindsight admit was a grave error.
Another problem we had was everyone buying into the "reboot" philosophy. Straight away, by using that term you are effectively allowing the manager to NOT win anything for 2-3 seasons as long as he can "demonstrate" that the "rebuild" is underway i.e. buy a few new players, sell a few players, maybe introduce someone from the youth set up.
After Mourinho and OGS I am beginning to wonder if the players who played under both are now just damaged goods.
He scored THAT goal and was a superb goalscorer for us but the club have had many players of equal or greater contribution.....Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson, Van Nistelrooy, Roy Keane etc
The inconvenient truth is that we, the fanbase, facilitated the club in making the calamitous mistake of giving OGS the job on a permanent basis when all the club had to do was wait until the summer (as previously agreed) and then assess the situation again.
No doubt in my mind that at best we took a sideways step after Mourinho and arguably, took a step back because he did at least win us some silverware (and was hobbled by Ed in the transfer market).
I have no problem with OGS being tactically naive, if he could galvanise the team, a la Kevin Keegan, and then surround himself with top coaches but he chose not to and defended his coaching team right to the death. Ironically, OGS defended his staff to the detriment of the club, something that OGS may in hindsight admit was a grave error.
Another problem we had was everyone buying into the "reboot" philosophy. Straight away, by using that term you are effectively allowing the manager to NOT win anything for 2-3 seasons as long as he can "demonstrate" that the "rebuild" is underway i.e. buy a few new players, sell a few players, maybe introduce someone from the youth set up.
After Mourinho and OGS I am beginning to wonder if the players who played under both are now just damaged goods.
We do look better. Maybe not much better but I think being an interim and coming into this club after the disaster Ole left and the dressing room we have are understandable mitigating circumstances.
As to Ole's signings. Maguire and Awb are huge failures for the prices we paid for them. James has been sold and Amad/Pellestri have done almost nothing. Sancho hasn't been worth his price tag either though he might eventually be. Varane is decent but injury prone and Ronaldo has his own issues. Three years of Ole and we still have mcfred in midfield and the likes of Perriera, Lingard, Mata, Jones, Grant at the club.
Your last point I do agree with though. The players have to be held responsible and the likes of Pogba, Rashford, Bruno, de gea are all potential departures in my book. We need a cultural reset and a cull of the playing staff especially those that are losers and toxic.
The other manager was bad but they goy rightly called and sacked. No heartfeelings. And they actually wasnt half bad. In retrospect jose did the best with all things considered.
Ole is just much worse, and the most damning thing is that he never got rightly called out of nepotism, for fraud and for parroting empty promises of DNA, United culture and many other shenanigans which never materialized.
I'm not even talking about trophies but boy ole got everything about united wrong, no ethics, no discipline, no excellence, not even a tactical plan, just throw money at british core and hope it buys him some time and probably good salary.
And so many of his fans lapped it up and stick it up to everyone else who dares to say the emperor has no clothes.
I expect so much more from united legend. He might not have the abilites and out of his depth. But he should care alot more if he really loves united.
Ole is just much worse, and the most damning thing is that he never got rightly called out of nepotism, for fraud and for parroting empty promises of DNA, United culture and many other shenanigans which never materialized.
I'm not even talking about trophies but boy ole got everything about united wrong, no ethics, no discipline, no excellence, not even a tactical plan, just throw money at british core and hope it buys him some time and probably good salary.
And so many of his fans lapped it up and stick it up to everyone else who dares to say the emperor has no clothes.
I expect so much more from united legend. He might not have the abilites and out of his depth. But he should care alot more if he really loves united.
Disaster? We came 2nd in 20/21 and pretty much everyone agreed we had a very good summer window. Ole 100% deserved to be sacked, but the squad on paper should be doing much better. Both pre and post Ralf. Even if Ole was the worst coach in the history of the league it does not explain the dramatic drop in levels we saw this season.
Just to be clear. Not blaming Ralf at all here, but pointing fingers at Ole months after hes gone while letting the players off the hook yet again is incredibly dangerous
You might well be right, but look at any discussion of Ole in 2019-2021 here. The first (or at least second) thing that almost everyone would bring in his favor was "HIS signings are good", "HE build a great squad for next managers" and the like - hardly anyone was qualifying the statements with mentioning that Ole is not the one solely responsible for transfers. Now when it became had to deny that our transfers/squad building under him weren't that good - suddenly "those weren't his signings" arguments start flowing in
Disaster of losing 5-0 at home to the dippers. Of losing 4-1 to Watford and looking like trash. And I agree the players share a huge amount of the blame. Ole is in the past now and the best thing for our club is to move on and correct all his mistakes. However it will still grate some fans when others try to absolve Ole of the blame for the situation we are in.
Well whenever there was comical defending or piss poor attacking on display under Solskjaer people quite rightly pointed out that that was down to coaching or lack therof. That is still the case, this squad is clearly being mismanaged and performing way below it's potential based on ability.
A fair amount need to leave and be replaced with better but it can't be done over night in one window, you can't get rid of 15-20 players in a year and replace them all. We tried that under LVG and is was an absolute disaster that that had a detrimental affect on the clubs ability in the transfer market for years. What we need in the short term is a top manager who can do something with the majority of these players and this squad.
Unfortunately I have no doubt that the likes of Rashford, Martial and Pogba would have developed better had they not spent so many year under those two.
This. His defenders also said that he was building a great base for the next manager. My arse. Now they said those flops are club singning like Ole has no input over the transfers. Mou wanted to buy Maguire for 60m the year before and the club rightly denied him. Next year we bought him for 80m. Whose input do they think influence the transfer ? Fred the Red ? Paddy Crerand ?You might well be right, but look at any discussion of Ole in 2019-2021 here. The first (or at least second) thing that almost everyone would bring in his favor was "HIS signings are good", "HE build a great squad for next managers" and the like - hardly anyone was qualifying the statements with mentioning that Ole is not the one solely responsible for transfers. Now when it became had to deny that our transfers/squad building under him weren't that good - suddenly "those weren't his signings" arguments start flowing in
That narrative hasn't changed. The club (and Ole) have systematically changed the mentality of the squad to one of absolute no accountability for their performances over the years. The rot runs deep and no manager, not even Klopp or Pep could sort out this weakness until half the players Ole left behind are gone. You don't go from deep rot to winning a CL in such a short space of time.
It's been pretty obvious from an outsider point of view just how weak this squad really is but the club have tried their best to hide things from the fans which is why Rangnick is a breath of fresh air because he does not give a first feck on trying to hide the players feelings. There's no place for them to hide anymore which is the first step on getting us back on the road again. Rangnick will turn out to be the best signing this club has made since RVP if, and I know it's a big if, the club give him free reign on what needs to happen.
Too early to say if we wasted money on amad and pellestri, that’s such a knee jerk
why wouldn’t Jones be renewed at the time? He wasn’t injured and in the England squad. His bad injury would come later. I dislike the narrative that goes around that he shouldn’t have been given a new contract. Can you all see into the future? Off course he should have got another contract at that time, there was no reason to say he shouldn’t
why shouldn’t matic have been given another?
likewise Cavani based on last season absolutely should have got another year
As i said, no doubt he deserved to be sacked and no doubt this season was a disaster under him, but it still does not explain why we looked so pathetic at times. The idea that he somehow "ruined" the players by his coaching is nonsense and Tuchel proves that after instantly improving Chelsea when he succeded Lampard
Imo its not coaching and its not tactics. We have a severe cultural problem at our club and it far preceeds Ole. Both under LvG and under Jose we saw player downing tools and "leaking" to the press in the last few months of their tenures. Already you can see quite a few postere here starting to turn on RR, but unless we get rid of the rot within the dressing room and the club it wont matter whos in the dugout because they are completely hamstrung
Off course you can point the finger at ole for highlighting the players he wanted but also you need to highlight those who made that deal and signed off on it. They could end should have said 80m is too much and walked away. Ole didn’t control the money any more than other managers don’t. With hindsight it was a bad job all round
Agree. All and all it was a total mess from the Club and Ole. However saying he is not Ole signing is just flat out bullshit.
It has though, it went from Solskjaer is holding this squad back from challenging to we need to gut this squad and rebuild from scratch very quickly.
I suspect happened because so much faith was placed by so many in the idea that Ralf would come in and turn things around. Well he hasn't but that's as much down to Rangnick being an average manager as it is problems with the squad.
Jesus if we're putting all our eggs in the Rangnick will turn this club around basket we may be in more trouble that anyone imagined. I would hope we could muster up more of a plan that let's just let a mid-table manager from Germany run the club from top to bottom.
Personally I still don't see him having that much of an influence on the club after this season, the official statement said he will have an advisory role after this season. It's possible that won't be as involved as some seem to think. Some seem to believe he'll be stepping into some sort of DOF role.
There are 2 aspects to a signing - 1. Is the player good enough for the side; 2. Is the player worth the money that is being asked?
Maguire and AWB are good players - and like any player they have their weaknesses. Hell, Maguire was arguably among the top 3 CBs in the league last season, and in the 2nd half of last season, we did feel that AWB is getting better going forward. Most of us were disappointed when HM got injured and would miss EL final. So, let's be clear here that the 2 players did well last season, and while they made mistakes and had certain weaknesses, it wasn't like they were costing us game after game.
The 2nd aspect is around the money paid - and that is more on the board. But before we go ahead and blame the board, I think it's been well established by now that we end up paying a Utd premium of 10-20m on every player ever since that interview Woodward gave in summer 2013. We overpaid 20m for both of these, just like we overpaid by 20m on Pogba and Lukaku as well, just like we overpaid for Lindelof (by 5-10m) and Fred (15-20m) and Amad (by 5-10m) and VDB and the list goes on.
The side that was left behind has its weaknesses, just like every side in the world has. But what's made it worse is the poor form of some of our best players in the last 2 seasons
Jesus touchy haha
Where would Ole actually have been if he didn't have Bruno Fernandes on his debut season???
Ole is actually Man Utd worst manager since Fergie!, What kind of support did he not get?, Time, Money. Fan Backing. Forget sentiment and 99 nostalgia. A manager that relied on player's individual brilliance? , A manager with no pro active in game management. We had some of the worst drubbings under Ole. Some posters on here actually forget that he was so bad in the end that even our docile board gave up!
Ole is actually Man Utd worst manager since Fergie!, What kind of support did he not get?, Time, Money. Fan Backing. Forget sentiment and 99 nostalgia. A manager that relied on player's individual brilliance? , A manager with no pro active in game management. We had some of the worst drubbings under Ole. Some posters on here actually forget that he was so bad in the end that even our docile board gave up!
You might well be right, but look at any discussion of Ole in 2019-2021 here. The first (or at least second) thing that almost everyone would bring in his favor was "HIS signings are good", "HE build a great squad for next managers" and the like - hardly anyone was qualifying the statements with mentioning that Ole is not the one solely responsible for transfers. Now when it became had to deny that our transfers/squad building under him weren't that good - suddenly "those weren't his signings" arguments start flowing in
Maybe for a lot of people that want to present their opinion as fact, or as completely his fault or not; the answer is usually somewhere in the middle.
It’s more than likely that we will never know who signed off on Maguire or AWB, but either way the club is to blame. Ole is not a scout, neither is he an accountant. If he has demanded the Maguire signing and the scouts, negotiating team etc all signed off on it, then they are all as bad as each other. They are supposed to work together to get results, and that clearly failed multiple times.
With Jones the new contract itself was not a problem, he was still useful squad player, filled homegrown quota and did not earn much. However, there was no justification for offering 4+1 contact. None whatsoever. He had persistent injury issues already, he would not have been poached by rivals. If we offered him 2+1 we would not be having this conversation today.
Last season Matic started 12 games in the league, Mata 6. Combined they are on close to 300k/week. Add to this the likes of Grant (why on earth we need 4th senior gk?), Baily, Jones, Pereira and other fringe players who were extended and whose extremely limited minutes could have been taken by youngsters on 10x less (for all the talk about promoting youth, it mostly remained just talk under Ole) - it adds up and Ole had no right to complain about not been able to sign a CDM given he okayed the extensions. Squad depth is well and good but we just overdid it to an unhealthy extent.