Jesus, just let it go.
Looking back at your post history that will be hard for you to do.
We are an awfully coached team
- Thread starter bond19821982
- Start date
-
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.
Looking back at your post history that will be hard for you to do.
Ah come on. There is of course a certain arbitrary nature to football and football results.
My point is Ole keeps on making bad decisions .
The club by the standards I've seen in previous periods and looking at the current well drilled teams of late (Flicks Bayern, Pep's Barcelona / City, Tuchels Chelsea etc) United play a very poor brand of football. There's no use sugarcoating it, no use finding statistics to state how much possession the team has. Ole's management doesn't pass the eye test and it never will. He doesn't have the credentials nor the philosophy to change this narrative.
Somehow however the team is effective enough to still drag wins over the line, score enough goals and genuinely offer mediocre entertainment aesthetically which is better but not good compared to what was witnessed under Mourinho.
The biggest issue with this is that United don't play from a sustainable foundation and this effects the consistency in the team to maintain good performances. Hence why one game things will click and the very next fixture the midfield are unable to string 3 passes together. The tactical approach seems very reactive as opposed to being methodical from offering the team's strengths. For example most teams will require an adjustment to play city, liverpool (in form) because of their movement, possession, phases of play. When we consider United however there's no cohesion in the team to signify having a real identity.
I feel like this is going to be the same question asked if Solskjaer is in charge in 12 months or the next 3 years. He needs to make strides with the tactical side of the team because the bigger expectation for the season ahead is to win.
The solution I feel is if Ole by some miracle gave the team an identity which influences the principles of play a trophy would likely follow because everything else is in place. The mentality of the players seems correct, the quality of the team (balance) is correct and the individual qualities of the players is there if needed to come over the line in the event of a stalemate. The coaching, tactical approach is the last piece of the jigsaw. Even the hierarchical structure has made positive strides with the apparent restructuring of Woodward's assumed responsibility. Ole is the only individual that determines the rest. No excuses the team / Ole should be playing better football.
Somehow however the team is effective enough to still drag wins over the line, score enough goals and genuinely offer mediocre entertainment aesthetically which is better but not good compared to what was witnessed under Mourinho.
The biggest issue with this is that United don't play from a sustainable foundation and this effects the consistency in the team to maintain good performances. Hence why one game things will click and the very next fixture the midfield are unable to string 3 passes together. The tactical approach seems very reactive as opposed to being methodical from offering the team's strengths. For example most teams will require an adjustment to play city, liverpool (in form) because of their movement, possession, phases of play. When we consider United however there's no cohesion in the team to signify having a real identity.
I feel like this is going to be the same question asked if Solskjaer is in charge in 12 months or the next 3 years. He needs to make strides with the tactical side of the team because the bigger expectation for the season ahead is to win.
The solution I feel is if Ole by some miracle gave the team an identity which influences the principles of play a trophy would likely follow because everything else is in place. The mentality of the players seems correct, the quality of the team (balance) is correct and the individual qualities of the players is there if needed to come over the line in the event of a stalemate. The coaching, tactical approach is the last piece of the jigsaw. Even the hierarchical structure has made positive strides with the apparent restructuring of Woodward's assumed responsibility. Ole is the only individual that determines the rest. No excuses the team / Ole should be playing better football.
Last edited:
That is the same assessment I have about the coaching staff. We put the bar low because Carrick and McKenna are as inexperienced as Ole is at the top level, and it's unacceptable. The fact that no one has ever properly replaced Rui Faria since he left at the very least is a very damning state of affairs.
Until something radically changes in our fortunes, I still stick by my opinion that Ole bears the hallmark of any weak manager when he doesn't surround himself with people who can provide solid second opinions and even challenge some of the tactical decisions put forward by him.
No. And many of you won't like the alternative. The modmin team have had an utter gutful of the emotive and irrational negativity on here. And no that doesn't you can't criticise something e.g. we really need a top class DM, but so many posters seem to be channelling this bloke at a time that Ole has made 3 top class signings and United are top of the Premier League.
Looking back Chris Crocker was 100 % right, though!
And the pathetically dramatic delivery so helped him get his point over.
Fergie didn't bring Rene into assist him externally, but rather he promoted him from with in the club. Rene was brought to the club in 2001 to work with kids (ages 6-11) in the academy and was later promoted to he first team as assistant after Queiroz departed.
Yeah, I’m curious how many teams end up getting a result after being reduced to 10 men and then switching to a back 5?
Taking off Donny was a mistake because it meant we totally surrendered the midfield and thereby possession of the ball. I just rewatched the first half and they really were doing very little against our 4. I have no idea why Ole switched to a back 5 except it seemed his attitude was hold what we have. A difficult task when you totally surrender the ball and have a whole half of football against 11 men and a fierce crowd.
There were three changes to the title in about an hour yesterday morning, they were:
"Moanchester United are an awfully supported team"
"The modmins apologise for the title edit that implied the moaners were moaning and now fully accept that Ole is worse than Hitler"
"Sack Ole, sell Ronaldo, appoint Ted Lasso"
The second one was my favourite, this thread needed some light relief and @Wibble duly served it up!
I see no white text; care to explain?
I agree.
Perhaps it doesn't need much analysis. Regardless of wanting him to do well, nothing in his managerial career suggests any tactical acuity. He was afraid we'd lose, afraid we'd concede so he threw another defender on.
I'm sorry if this comes off as negative or pouty, but if you check my post history I wasn't keen when he was appointed and I'm still not.
So you'd have had Pogba and Donny as a midfield two then with ten men?
That would have been worse. For all Fred's faults and he does have a lot he can actually tackle and press the ball. Those two are clueless off the ball even if they are talented on it.
Face it....whatever Ole did we'd have been up against it because of a silly red card.
He's saying not to put on another CB, which was a stupid decision at the time as it surrendered the entire midfield and put your backline into a situation they're less familiar with. You can see this clearly on the equalizer - Shaw tucks in like a fullback instead of staying wide like a wingback because he's used to playing in a 4. If you are playing 4-4-1 like you should have been then tracking that fullback isn't Shaw's responsibility.
Look at United DM and look at the others, you can give Ole some excuses
McTominay/Kante
Fred/Jorginho
Matic/Kovacic
Van de beek/Saul
McTominay/Casemiro
Fred/Modric
Matic/Valverde
Van de beek/Kroos
McTominay/Busquets
Fred/Pedri
Matic/De Jong
Van de beek/Sergi Roberto
McTominay/Kante
Fred/Jorginho
Matic/Kovacic
Van de beek/Saul
McTominay/Casemiro
Fred/Modric
Matic/Valverde
Van de beek/Kroos
McTominay/Busquets
Fred/Pedri
Matic/De Jong
Van de beek/Sergi Roberto
Maybe don't invest so much in attacking players, midfielders you don't use, or future players you just loan out without giving chances, or hoard players that have no future at the club.
Mayne then we'd have a good midfield
It is true we are awfully coached....we have a coaching staff who have little or no experience of coaching at top level with top level players , Carrick new coach, mckenna never coached at first team level, fletcher new. The only exception is Fodder Phelan who i hardly see on training ground these days unless he modelling some new shorts or if there is a photo shoot.
The lack of experience in our manager and coaching staff is therefore obvious and this is becoming more evident when we come up against European teams ...that all said i dont see a ready made replacement out there at the moment, the names being banded about just wont work, dictators like Conte and Simeone, ....then Zidane who looks half arsed and totally demotivated and then Brendan Rogers who is the most plausible for me but has managed the scousers and im not sure if he was that good there.
The lack of experience in our manager and coaching staff is therefore obvious and this is becoming more evident when we come up against European teams ...that all said i dont see a ready made replacement out there at the moment, the names being banded about just wont work, dictators like Conte and Simeone, ....then Zidane who looks half arsed and totally demotivated and then Brendan Rogers who is the most plausible for me but has managed the scousers and im not sure if he was that good there.
Thanks! That is exactly what I was saying. Ole is so inexperienced. I feel like he remembered the flack he got for VR and overcompensated here by doing the wrong thing. Or maybe I'm reading a little too much into it. More likely he just reverted to his safety-first, risk-averse nature of holding what we had. Either way, I think it was a mistake to basically surrender the midfield when we were already bad enough with 11 men. never mind playing with 10. Shaw has been great as a third center back, not so sure about wingback. But here's another one. Why did Ole even play AWB? He's been absolute gash in the games we've played. Surely leaving Varane in to gain more experience with Maguire was a better option and this game was the perfect opportunity to bring Dalot in for game time and to plonk the ball on Ronnie's head? If he was going to bring anyone in from the cold, it would've made more sense for it to be him.
Yeah, Ole has done a great job bringing us back from the brink. He's a great man-manager and brought the joy back to the club. Now he needs to bring the joy back to the football. And the only way he's going to do that is by bringing in better coaches. He's just too limited in his skills and his mind. I feel like he knows how we should be playing, he just doesn't have what it takes to activate it. And we have too good a team now to make that acceptable.
True. However CL and PL are the big ones.
Do you remember when was the last time we knocked out a decent side in the CL? It was a couple of years ago against PSG.
Still some fans like yourself wish that even this outcome had never happened because then Ole might not have been given the job.
Our world class managers before him did achieve exactly what in CL?
Again when was the last time before PSG that we knocked out a decent side?
I will help you. It was Chelsea in 2010/11.
Fergie, LvG and Mourinho all have been really bad in Europe since.
Two decent knock out wins in 10 years CL is shocking. But somehow it is all Ole’s fault.
People can love Mourinho or whoever as much as they want, but really weird that they act as if they were winning the important trophies.
Minor trophies are never worth a mess a manager leaves behind. A major trophy may be worth it.
There are doubts about Ole, but that doesn’t change the fact that much more proven and experienced managers failed here and left a mess behind. A Mickey Mouse cup doesn’t change anything.
True, but I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive. Just because experienced managers failed, doesn't mean we shouldn't try again. It just means that those experienced managers failed. But they also didn't have the squad we have now. Also, they they had two opposing styles (more lunacy by Utd). Which meant they spent half their time trying to rewrite the work the other one had done. I think you can question whether Mourinho would get more out of this current squad than Ole. And the answer is probably now yes. But just because they failed, doesn't mean another experienced manager would too. I don't think that's a reason why we shouldn't change things. But personally, I don't want Ole out. He's done a good job. I question whether he has what it takes now given the squad at his disposal. But rather than get rid of him, I'd like to see him bring in new coaches. We can't have 3 people learning on the job. I can't believe we let this happen. And I can't believe Ole decided it was the right way to go. That above all else I question.
Not many love Mourinho. What you’re pointing out there is our long decline to mediocrity. Ole’s huge limitations as a manager aren’t going to help reverse that decline. Yes we’re doing better so far this season in the PL but given how much we’ve spent isn’t that an absolute minimum we should expect?
I don't think so, honestly. Not if we're basing it on anything Mourinho's done since he joined United - so the last five years of his career, which is a reasonable enough sample for his current level as a manager.
A lot of people (including Mourinho himself) point to that 81-point season as some sort of massive overachievement, but let's not forget that:
A) it wasn't actually an overachievement when you consider United were second or joint-second (with Chelsea) favorites for the title going into that season
B) having gone into the season with a squad (rightly) considered among the favorites, Mourinho squeaked his way to second playing utter shite football and relying on his goalkeeper being (literally) unsustainably great. I'm not anywhere near convinced Solskjaer is an elite manager but the people harping on about his lack of tactics and reliance on individual brilliance to get to 2nd place need to be aware that this was exactly how we played in 17/18 too
Last season, most people would have said back in September that there wasn't much between United's squad and Spurs, and a few weeks into the season after that 6-1 the Mourinho cult on here was the loudest it's ever been since he was sacked, saying the same thing we're questioning now. We all know how it ended.
Last edited:
Absolutely, we should expect more now.
However our mediocre showing in the last decade also points to a structural problem.
Let’s see if the club can identify the right manager if Ole leaves and then the right guy after as well, etc.
I don’t believe we will. I can rather imagine us going the Liverpool way: Getting a good manager by luck who takes a few years to win, but then wins big. Indeed, Liverpool basically just win 1, max 2 major trophies per decade, but that’s still much better than no major trophies at all.
Glad to know I wasn't putting words in your mouth mate!
I guess I just don't understand why Ole would willingly choose to play like a relegation-threated side, but without any of the graft off the ball. The teams that finish 18th-20th are the ones who sit incredibly deep to try to soak up pressure whilst surrendering control of the midfield - the best thing you can do whilst down to 10 is to try to retain some semblance of control of the match via the midfield. It seems ridiculous to try to do so with one central midfielder willing to work defensively in Fred - Bruno is a great forward presser but this is of limited value when defending deep, and Pogba's defensive workrate is limited to say the least.
I also think the bolded is an important point - when United have played 3ATB, Shaw has almost always been the LCB with Telles at wingback. I know Shaw has played as a wingback for England, but the lack of clarity over his role is a big part of the problem. I've seen posters on here trying to argue that YB's first goal was well-defended - some of your individual players tried to defend well but schematically if 30% of your final third has no defenders that is poor overall.
Yeah, exactly as you said, when you go down to 10 you have to keep the ball. The problem with Ole is we're not coached to keep the ball. We're coached to move it like a hot potato and get it to the forwards as fast as possible. Time and time again we just hoofed the ball forwards. We had ample opportunity and space to pass it to someone but keep just smashing it forwards. So, naturally, it kept coming back. Zero composure. I think that's the thing we lack most as a team. So many times I've watched us with 5 minutes to go. With any normal team that would be job done. Keep the ball, waste 3 or 4 minutes. But not us. We will give at least 3 guilt-edged opportunities in that time because we just don't look after the ball. And that's bad enough with 11 men. But with 10 it's simply dumb and unforgivable. But we're not coached to keep it. Sad. But we can do it. I remember once (yeah, once!) us keeping the ball for like 10 minutes at the end of a game, passing it really well. And I'm furious about the Lingard substitution. We'd a been better off bringing Martial or Greenwood on. Certainly not Lingard. But the biggest mistake was going to 5 at the back. And that's all on Ole. Fred actually did pretty well. But Donny would've been great at keeping the ball and making intelligent runs to make space. Sancho also would've kept the ball better. But Ole's thinking is to go defensive and keep on all the players who can pull a goal out of nothing. Frustrating.
I'm struggling to accept that notion. Sure, he hasn't been a manager for very long at the top level, but he's been working for many years as coach - mostly in Norway, but also in European competitions and the Premier League, which gave him plenty of time to learn things. Plus, he's now been with United for almost three years. How much more experience do we need him to have?
Looking at some of the top coaches in europe, I don't think they needed years and years of experience to show they had that something special. And those who started in lower levels and moved up to the biggest clubs weren't afforded the luxury and excuse of being 'inexperienced'. They either sank or swam. The good ones swam.
what i am not getting is that people dont see the development united as a whole and the squad made since ole took over. since saf there was no time where i thought that the club is going in the right direction until ole. for me its not important that he has no name as a coach or manager, for me he showed he is a top manager allready. if he is a big coach i dont know but even saf was no big coach, he knew how to get the best staff to work with the players, ole will succeed, but it will take time. we are fighting against a city with unlimited funds, a chelsea with unlimited oil money and a liverpool that did quite well for a change. we are united, we have earned the possibility to spend big and ole managed to buy soundly - we will get there again, if people give him the chance.
He's been given the chance and has been backed more than any other manager post-SAF.
We can't afford to give him time after this season if he doesn't show he's capable of leading us to success.
The bolded is also nonsense. This myth that SAF did zero coaching and let his assistants do everything needs to die on here.
I would take Ole over Jose or LVG or Moyes to be honest. Arguably all better coaches but awful to watch. Yeah we messed up not hiring Potch or Klopp when we could have but that's done now.
Thing about Ole is that he's not that bad. And the Top Reds will never turn on him. And he will never turn on the Glazers. So there's a degree of corporate insulation there that other managers can't offer. OK he will never win the UCL or the EPL but then again he's not supposed to. The Glazers have no interest in competing with oil money - they're running a business.
Thing about Ole is that he's not that bad. And the Top Reds will never turn on him. And he will never turn on the Glazers. So there's a degree of corporate insulation there that other managers can't offer. OK he will never win the UCL or the EPL but then again he's not supposed to. The Glazers have no interest in competing with oil money - they're running a business.
What you guys think of what formation and line up would Pep use with our current players?
4-3-3?
4-3-3?
Yeah but even then Fergie hired the best coaches. Something Ole has failed to do.
What best coaches name few of them please, with out undermining their credentials it's more likely the case of those coaches shining in reflected glory of Sir Alex's genius not the other way round.
4-6-0
All these coaches have amounted to nothing without Fergie.
It starts and ends with the manager.
Our success as a team starts and ends with Ole.
We're the only fanbase that criticizes the coaching staff 1st instead of Ole.
I
Mentioned this few times, for me Fergie is the greatest ever manager because he knew exactly what he’s good at and who he needs to hire to plug the gaps. To me that separates him from everyone, even Baldie and Klopp.
We have 3 DMs ie Fred, McT and Matic. Matic was given a contract extension despite showing clear signs of wear and tear.
Ole had the money and yet he kept prioritizing on other areas. Under his watch United spent 170m in defense, including 50m on a RB whose not even good in the one thing he is said to be good at (tackles), we spent 36m on a CM we never play and 100m on 3 RWs (2 of which we barely ever seen playing). Meanwhile we refused to sell Jesse Lingard and to let Mata and Grant go. If media is to be believed then if United had the money then they would have probably prioritized RB (30 year old Trippier) on CM again. That would have increased the expenditure on RB to a massive 80m spending.
For 70m we could have signed Rice or Neves and Bissouma. United could afford that by selling Jesse and not signing VDB, Diallo and Pellistri
Last edited:
What the hell?
I've been saying it all along, if Ole wasn't a former fan favourite as a player, he would have been fired long ago.
The football is boring most of the time and calling it an improvement over Jose's time is barely an achievement. We're still stuck with inconsistent performance and us getting bailed by Bruno/Rashford/Pogba.
But clearly Ole is the right choice and nobody is allowed to criticize him and anyone who does that isn't a real fan.