Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [22nd - 27th November 2019]

The reality is, Ole is a massive gamble. It’s the equivalent of putting a great manager from the conference in charge, but who failed in a better league, just because he played for you.

I have nothing against him personally and he did brilliantly initially, but I just don’t think he’s suitable long term.
 
mmj_uk said:
In fairness to Solskjaer at least he is trying to bring through youth, unlike Mourinho who was fielding/signing older players for short term success. You just have to trust in Solskjaer's long term plan and stick with him otherwise you might as well have just kept Mourinho.
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Thats like sticking with a CEO because your last one was a **** and the current one is quite nice and and removed the ****** culture and bad middle management. Profits are awful and he doesn't seem to know how to make it better but lets give him another 5 years to see how it turns out. Its a fallacy to believe that a manager will suddenly go from poor to excellent simply after being given time and some money.

Point me at a recent manager who has done this. Taken on a side that was performing poorly, had them play poorly for another few season and then suddenly turn them into a top side. It doesn't happen.

omnomnom said:
The fact he had to completely change it half time suggests he isnt good tactically at all. It was changed at HT and you then conceded again within 7 minutes. The only "kid" that started yesterday was Williams. Ole is completely out of his depth.
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Yep. Jones was a mess and he rectified that but anyone could see that was a good move. Jones shouldn't have been there to start with. Perhaps it wasn't Ole but the gap between our front 3 and the midfield was huge. I assume he expected us to bypass the midfield and hit the front three early and hope to do SU some damage that way but it clearly wasn't working and it took him until the 65th minute to make the changes required.

When he did get a massive boost from those changes he then took the foot off the gas when SU looked utterly despondent and thoroughly beaten and let them have 10 minutes when we invited them onto us again. SU were dead on their legs. We tore them to pieces with a bit of pace for 10 minutes and then said "thats that, lets sit back".

Ole has done some good stuff at United. He has cleared out some crap, brought back the feel good factor (at times) and invested in players I am happy with but he simply is not a top class coach or manager. Being good at half your job isn't enough in the PL and it isn't enough at United. We should be talking to Poch right now about taking over come the end of the season or even January.
 
fez said:
Point me at a recent manager who has done this. Taken on a side that was performing poorly, had them play poorly for another few season and then suddenly turn them into a top side. It doesn't happen.
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It did happen 33 years ago though. The point is people are expecting Manchester United to be challenging for a league when they have a mid table team at best in terms of player quality. Ignore the prices of players as they all have Man Utd tax on them but in fairness we have two top tier players in De Gea and Pogba with Martial and Rashford as emerging prospects. The rest are mid table with inexperienced youngsters.

Maybe I am clutching at straws and maybe I am just dreaming but in Ole Solskjaer if he can get it right you have potential for a long standing manager for the future who will be loyal to the club. You can get Allegri, Poch etc but in three years time you are going to be back to square one.
 
omnomnom said:
The fact he had to completely change it half time suggests he isnt good tactically at all. It was changed at HT and you then conceded again within 7 minutes. The only "kid" that started yesterday was Williams.


Ole is completely out of his depth.
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He tried to play a formation that we played well with Marcos Rojo at the back and Mctominay in the middle. The players he brought in to replace those injuries just failed miserably and let him down.
 
adam cool dude said:
It did happen 33 years ago though. The point is people are expecting Manchester United to be challenging for a league when they have a mid table team at best in terms of player quality. Ignore the prices of players as they all have Man Utd tax on them but in fairness we have two top tier players in De Gea and Pogba with Martial and Rashford as emerging prospects. The rest are mid table with inexperienced youngsters.

Maybe I am clutching at straws and maybe I am just dreaming but in Ole Solskjaer if he can get it right you have potential for a long standing manager for the future who will be loyal to the club. You can get Allegri, Poch etc but in three years time you are going to be back to square one.
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Thats a complete load of rubbish. Our players are not mid-table. SU are currently above United, Arsenal and Tottenham, does that mean their team is of a higher quality than those three. Have Tottenham suddenly lost most of their team that was in the CL final last season.

Literally no United fan has said that we have a team capable of winning the PL for years now and yet someone people still tell us that we think we should be competing for the title. We don't. We have a set of players who should be competing for top 4 every season easily.

Its painfully obvious that managers are a massive part of what makes a team work. Poch has coached Tottenham into one of the best sides in the league without spending 1/10th of what most other teams have. He had a good set of players but he improved all of them and coached them into a coherent unit. Look at Liverpools team. It has some top players but it also has half a team of average players. Why are they so good? Coaching, motivation and tactics.

We have a manager at the moment who doesn't know how to coach or set up a team to make the most of the players he has and he has shown over the past year that tactically he is inept and he is unable to improve our style of play. We don't have a title winning side but we don't have a mid-table side either. Ole is not adding value to the players which is what managers are expected to do.
 
fez said:
We have a manager at the moment who doesn't know how to coach or set up a team to make the most of the players he has and he has shown over the past year that tactically he is inept and he is unable to improve our style of play. We don't have a title winning side but we don't have a mid-table side either. Ole is not adding value to the players which is what managers are expected to do.
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Exactly, I'm not sure why people are saying we're expecting to win the league. We aren't.

We want to see a clear vision and a high quality rebuilding job. Ole's vision is suspect and so is his general management/tactical ability. All with pretty much no experience.
 
Robbo said:
Exactly, I'm not sure why people are saying we're expecting to win the league. We aren't.

We want to see a clear vision and a high quality rebuilding job. Ole's vision is suspect and so is his general management/tactical ability. All with pretty much no experience.
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This is what I don't get. We could put a potato in as manager and people would say "you need to give it time". When you start dating someone do you say "I really don't like them and we don't seem compatible but they live close by so I should probably give it a few years to see what happens". You can tell quite quickly when a manager is doing well. Lampard is doing well at Chelsea. He lost their best player, hasn't had a transfer window and yet you can see how he is trying to get them to play and how he is taking the team in a different direction to the previous manager. Yes they have some bad results that don't reflect the overall progress of the team but there is a clear trajectory for the team under him.

Ole has had nearly a year and has done nothing to suggest that he is the right man to get us playing good football. I like a lot of what he has done but most of that has been recruitment, getting rid of players and basically all of the stuff that doesn't rely on you being a good coach or manager.
 
fez said:
We have a set of players who should be competing for top 4 every season easily.
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I don't think you do.

Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea, Leicester, Tottenham don't think you do either. Then there's Arsenal and Wolves who think they're as least as good as you are.

That's some way off "competing for top 4". Never mind "every season" and certainly not "easily".
 
inogen said:
I don't think you do.

Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea, Leicester, Tottenham don't think you do either. Then there's Arsenal and Wolves who think they're as least as good as you are.

That's some way off "competing for top 4". Never mind "every season" and certainly not "easily".
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Leicester are having a good season but part of that is the issues that United, Tottenham, Arsenal and up to a point Chelsea are having. They blow hot and cold and aren't expecting to compete for top 4 most seasons.

Also, have a look where we are points wise. United, Tottenham and Arsenal are all within a point of each other. We all expect to be competing for top 4 each season.

Have a quick look at the definition of competing as well. There can be 10 teams that compete for top 4. United expect to be competing for top 4 every season and yes we do have the team for it.
 
fez said:
Leicester are having a good season but part of that is the issues that United, Tottenham, Arsenal and up to a point Chelsea are having. They blow hot and cold and aren't expecting to compete for top 4 most seasons.

Also, have a look where we are points wise. United, Tottenham and Arsenal are all within a point of each other. We all expect to be competing for top 4 each season.

Have a quick look at the definition of competing as well. There can be 10 teams that compete for top 4. United expect to be competing for top 4 every season and yes we do have the team for it.
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Ah, okay. So you are currently competing for top 4. Which is what you think your squad should be doing? I thought you had a problem with Solksjaer?

TBH, I think with the squad he's got, he's doing okay. The results aren't too far away from what I'd expect and I think think the xga and xg stats show he's not had the best of luck. Form is inconsistent due to the inexperience of the squad.
 
fez said:
Leicester are having a good season but part of that is the issues that United, Tottenham, Arsenal and up to a point Chelsea are having. They blow hot and cold and aren't expecting to compete for top 4 most seasons.

Also, have a look where we are points wise. United, Tottenham and Arsenal are all within a point of each other. We all expect to be competing for top 4 each season.

Have a quick look at the definition of competing as well. There can be 10 teams that compete for top 4. United expect to be competing for top 4 every season and yes we do have the team for it.
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We have the team for it but they are all injured all the time. Eric Bailly looked so solid when he came in but has knees made of glass. Luke Shaw has the potential to be England's first choice left back yet after his leg break just cannot get fit enough. We now rely on a 19 year old with a handful of games under his belt at left back. Paul Pogba is too busy playing basketball and looks like he can't be bothered to come back to training and he is our star player. We start to see a partnership building up with Fred and McTominay and McTominay does his ankle in. It seems we just can't get a break. Martial also has only just come into the squad but now that link with the midfield is lost it is back to square one.

On a blue moon when we have all our best players fit then yes we can compete for top 4 but that seems a rare occurrence at the moment.
 
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Even with your players fit, I don't think United currently have the squad for top4. The midfield is no where near good enough.
 
It doesnt matter if they do...if Ole plays a back 5 with AWB as an attacking fullback they'll get nowhere. Back 4 and put an attacking player in for Jones yesterday and imo they win the game.
 
I’d like to see Haller in a better team, I reckon he’s not as **** as West Ham make out.
 
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