Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [17th - 23rd January 2020]
- Thread starter Cosimo
- Start date
Soldato
One example I'll give is jose wanted Maguire he wouldn't buy him then pays more for him this season than he would have had to pay the year jose wanted him I believe jose made a issue of it at the time lvg came out and said things aswell and I think a few years back klopp made some comments about him when we were looking for a manager
I think he's being real tbh. You can see that he's seething underneath it all - but it's hard to pinpoint what has seething about, the results, the players, the effort, the tactics not working, the lack of ideas and application, the lack of movement in the transfer market? He's saying there is a clear out in progress, but who is going to be in charge of bringing the new players in? The players brought in could be awful, what system are they aiming to play them in (UTD's attacks are formulaic and predicable, much to well drilled teams like Burnley's delight).
I don't think signing players will fix the problem.
I don't think sacking Ole will fix the problem.
I don't think appointing Poch will fix the problem.
What might help is fit players. A dynamic system that stretches sides at home and has resilience against tougher opponents. A transfer policy that avoids mercenary players and vulture like agents, that focuses on players that fit a system and not marketing...
Caporegime
Just seen the Rodriguez goal.
You can’t hit em much sweeter than that!
You can’t hit em much sweeter than that!
Soldato
Ole sanctioned the sales of lukaku the loan of smalling and others he was in charge when herrera went and fellaini not saying they shouldn't of gone but should have been replaced.I couldn't see fergie allowing this to happen on his watch or any top manager
For me it's not so much about that, but he has achieved some good things with Spurs and he certainly seems like the sort of guy who would thrive with a larger budget. There are never any guarantees though.
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As for Ole, Woodward and Glazers. We can keep going over this but my thoughts are as follows - they are all pretty useless, but the reality is Ole is the easiest person to change out of them all, and I simply don't rate him as a manager. Aside from the good initial run he went on, it's been mostly fairly poor with the odd decent result mixed in. His management credentials for this sort of job are borderline non-existent. I don't care if he played for us or not.
I'm not in the business of dishing out sympathy for all of these people who are earning comical amounts of money as it is. Do a good job or be replaced.
Unless I'm mistaken LVG's issues were related to there being too much focus on the commercial side of the club and similarly the stuff in the Klopp biography were about the way Woodward tried to sell Utd to him (about Utd being like Disneyland or something like that), not because he was playing god. As for Maguire or transfers as a whole, he's the man that runs the business and how much money can and will be spent is ultimately decided by him. That's no different at Liverpool - we have a Sporting Director and a whole team working on recruitment but the final decision still rests with Mike Gordon (FSG's man in Liverpool). The Maguire transfer stuff doesn't show Woodward playing god, it highlights the lack of an overall plan and strategy at the club and more importantly, the board, recruitment team and manager weren't singing from the same hymn sheet.
There appears to be some sort of plan in place now and it also looks like everybody is on the same page, the questions now are, is the plan the right one and is the manager any good? Woodward's fault was going into all this blind and not having a plan and or the balls to stick to it to begin with but Utd are now in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. They've been criticised so much for making short term decisions that they almost backed themselves into a corner where they have had to give Ole and this 'plan' time.
There's no easy or quick fix for Utd and people are in dreamland if they think just appointing a Dof will magically solve all Utd's problems. Look at the state of Everton over the last few years and how things worked for them with Steve Walsh, the guy credited with bringing in the likes of Kante and Mahrez at Leicester. Look at the set-up at Liverpool and how successful that's been at various stages of the last 10 years. You can appoint the most successful dof in the world, have the best coach in the world and have the biggest budget in the world and still fail if you've not got a clear plan and everybody working together.
Why have things worked so well for City? Because they knew what they wanted and that was basically Barca so they went out and got Soriano, Bergstein and started recruiting a team ready for Pep. They had a crystal clear plan (and loads of money of course) and they go the best directors, coach and players for exactly what they wanted. It took Liverpool a bit more time and there were a few more bumps in the road but it's the same story. We wanted to go down the analytics route so we went out and put together a team of the best eggheads around and appointed a world class manager that is 100% on board with this approach.
As I said, it won't be easy and I'm sure they'll come under huge pressure at times to make kneejerk decisions but Utd need to decide what sort of side they want to be before they start making decisions on coaches and dof, and that decision needs to come from the very top because ultimately it's the ownership that writes the cheques and if they're not onboard then it's only a matter of time before things go wrong.
I've got to the point where I have as good as given up taking the **** these days, it's on a par with clubbing baby seals in terms of cruelty and easy targets
Caporegime
Does that include his caretaker manager time because he only lost 3 games out of 19 apparently then. That should tell you how well he has done since he was appointed full time. Appointing Ole is akin to putting me as head chef of a michelin star restaurant. I would improve over time but giving me time wouldn't make me a michelin quality chef and while I learn I would run that restaurant into the ground. In every industry the guys at the top are good. You don't appoint people and hope they will be good, you appoint people who either have a proven track record at that level or you appoint people who have shown aptitude and ability far greater than their experience would suggest. Ole fits neither of these.
If Ole was available tomorrow, or at the end of the season, would any other Premier League club be vaguely interested in hiring him as their manager? Clearly the answer would be "no". So everyone can say "it's not his fault", and maybe it isn't, but the simple fact is he's not good enough to be managing a team like Man Utd.
Soldato
Maguire was fully worth the £80 million united paid. 
Caporegime
Its funny how people say "manager X is doing a fantastic job with Y" and "manager X has Y playing really nice football" and quite often these are managers with teams that have either come up from the championship or have been built for basically nothing. They rarely have a bunch of players the top teams want but their manager has made them into a tactically solid unit that plays to their strengths and gets the most from each of them. Then we have people saying that Ole just needs time with a bunch of players that are clearly better than most of the players in the league.
I don't expect miracles with this bunch of players and the injuries we have but I expect far more than Ole has got from them. In a normal season, we would be somewhere near the bottom with this points tally. Genuinely amazed anyone can think Ole is a top class manager in any area.
People keep coming out with these comment, usually in relation to why Liverpool are so far ahead, so I done a bit of digging. Because it was mostly in relation to Liverpool, I picked out Utd's treble winning season, Arsenal's invincibles season, Chelsea best season ('05) and City's 100 point season and looked at how the top 6's points totals compared.
On average 2nd place picked up 80.25 points, 3rd place picked up 76 points, 4th place 65.75 points, 5th place 60.25 points and 6th 58 points. City are currently on course to pick up 80.75 points, Leicester 76 points, Chelsea 63.3 points, Wolves 56.17 points and Utd/Spurs 53.83 points. There's practically no difference between this season and 'a normal season'. At worst Utd would finish 8th in those seasons assuming they go on to pick up 54 points and they're effectively tied between 5th and 8th now. They wouldn't be near the bottom of the League.
There's 3 reasons why people think this season has been 'worse' than normal. Firstly because sides like Arsenal and Utd have been poorer than they have been previously - people expect them to be doing better but they've been replaced with other sides that are performing exactly in line with your typical side competing for 2nd-6th. Secondly there's the big drop off from City but ultimately it was last season, with 2 sides picking up 97 and 98 points, that was the abnormal season, not this season. And thirdly, and this may not apply to you but it definitely applies to some people, the desperation of some people looking to down play how good Liverpool have been.
Soldato
Maguire was fully worth the £80 million united paid.
Much like with paying Sanchez half a million a week, someone at Utd (Woodward?) is making really bad football decisions.
Still, looks like they can afford it, still one of the richest clubs in the world, so no sympathy from me.
, I actually expected klopp to shuffle the team slightly.