Greenlizard0 Weekend Football Thread ** spoilers ** [31st August - 1st September 2019]

Absolutely depressing being a Manchester United fan, just can't believe the number of poor, short term decisions that have been made over and over again.

Whilst you could argue that it's not Ole's fault, we should be beating teams like Crystal Palace & Southampton, even with the squad we have.
 
Ole is a symptom rather than the cause of your problems. If you were operating like a club of your stature should, with real leadership and even half a plan he wouldn't have made the final 20 of any shortlist for the job.

It's years of no clear direction, which has made you scatterbuy players with no cohesive squad building plan and youre now paying the consequences.

No quick fix though, needs a good manager for a long haul with a real plan of recruitment and accepting it will 3-4 years minimum before you compete again... these days though half a dozen bad games and fans demand the manager gets sacked.
 
I think everyone knows who should be walking or pushed next though, but it won't happen and I'll surprised if any challenge is made by United to the top four within the next 5 years.
 
No1newts said:
Ole is a symptom rather than the cause of your problems. If you were operating like a club of your stature should, with real leadership and even half a plan he wouldn't have made the final 20 of any shortlist for the job.

It's years of no clear direction, which has made you scatterbuy players with no cohesive squad building plan and youre now paying the consequences.

No quick fix though, needs a good manager for a long haul with a real plan of recruitment and accepting it will 3-4 years minimum before you compete again... these days though half a dozen bad games and fans demand the manager gets sacked.
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I agree, it's not his doing but even with the right structure & players in place, Ole wouldn't be the right manager and I said that way before he was made permanent last season.

I just can't believe why changes that clearly need to be made, aren't being changed. It has been nearly 6 years since Sir Alex left and we've had 4 managers in that time, which according to reports, isn't the reason for the poor recruitment choices as most managers have spoken about having their preferred targets vetoed.

Therefore, why isn't this being changed? Fair enough Ed Woodward has made some commercial successes, but he's not a footballing man.

As it currently stands, all a team has to do to nullify us is to get men behind the ball when not in possession as we have zero creativity. Teams sitting back against Liverpool & City are just asking to be spanked 3+ goals at least.
 
Seems like rampant speculation tbh, we've not sold Darmian over the last few years because nobody would meet our price but I didn't see any rumours of offers rejected this summer (and he's now gone anyway) Also it was confirmed by multiple journalists close to the club that we weren't interested in Fernandes so that bit is false. Longstaff seemed like a player we were interested in, until Newcastle slapped a stupid fee on him, understandable we weren't willing to go that high for a player who'd only played 9 premier league games.
 
Shamikebab said:
Seems like rampant speculation tbh, we've not sold Darmian over the last few years because nobody would meet our price but I didn't see any rumours of offers rejected this summer (and he's now gone anyway) Also it was confirmed by multiple journalists close to the club that we weren't interested in Fernandes so that bit is false. Longstaff seemed like a player we were interested in, until Newcastle slapped a stupid fee on him, understandable we weren't willing to go that high for a player who'd only played 9 premier league games.
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I appreciate that not every source is completely reliable, they have to generate clicks after all but I wouldn't take journalists who are close to the club at face value either. I find it hard to believe that United can class the summer transfer window as a successful one and more targets would have been in the pipeline, therefore I would fully expect the board to drip feed false information to journalists to save face/hide issues to sponsors and investors.

Either way, we have multiple issues. Solskjær isn't the reason why we're not going to be challenging for top 4 this season (in my opinion), that requires drastic changes above him but again, we're losing to teams like Crystal Palace at Old Trafford.

There's probably little point in sacking him through because we're going to rinse through more managers that are at the behest of a non functioning board.
 
How the **** has that Villa goal been disallowed? It was a foul by Palace to start with, Grealish didn't dive, he lost momentum and got straight up not looking for anything, the ref's blown the whistle after Lansbury's hit the ball so it hasn't affected play, he then hasn't VAR reviewed it. That is absolutely ******* appalling.
 
Mekrel said:
I find it hard to believe that United can class the summer transfer window as a successful one....
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You have to put things into context of what's realistic. I know we've become immune to huge transfer fees and expect clubs to just keep spending and spending but clubs have limits, particularly clubs that are not run with the primary aim of winning trophies but instead to make money. Utd have just fallen out of the CL, which has put a £50m+ hole in their finances, yet have still spent £80m odd net.

Utd are in a very difficult position where they've spent big money in previous years but spent it poorly. The result of that is that Utd need to replace lots of players but they're either unable to shift players they don't want or can't bring in decent fees to supplement the money already available to them.

I always thought it anyway but given how the summer ended for Utd I'm pretty sure that they'd have sold Pogba had they received any sort of offer that could have justified them doing so. Getting a big fee for him would have gone a long way to providing you with the money to revamp your squad. I wouldn't be surprised if the Longstaff & Fernandes links were with Pogba's possible departure in mind. Without that big sale it was nigh on impossible for Utd to transform their squad this summer though and it's probably going to be much of the same for the next season or two. Utd having more money than most and the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal & Spurs looking a bit of a mess is the only saving grace because given the state of Utd's squad, things could look a lot worse.
 
BaZ87 said:
You have to put things into context of what's realistic. I know we've become immune to huge transfer fees and expect clubs to just keep spending and spending but clubs have limits, particularly clubs that are not run with the primary aim of winning trophies but instead to make money. Utd have just fallen out of the CL, which has put a £50m+ hole in their finances, yet have still spent £80m odd net.

Utd are in a very difficult position where they've spent big money in previous years but spent it poorly. The result of that is that Utd need to replace lots of players but they're either unable to shift players they don't want or can't bring in decent fees to supplement the money already available to them.

I always thought it anyway but given how the summer ended for Utd I'm pretty sure that they'd have sold Pogba had they received any sort of offer that could have justified them doing so. Getting a big fee for him would have gone a long way to providing you with the money to revamp your squad. I wouldn't be surprised if the Longstaff & Fernandes links were with Pogba's possible departure in mind. Without that big sale it was nigh on impossible for Utd to transform their squad this summer though and it's probably going to be much of the same for the next season or two. Utd having more money than most and the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal & Spurs looking a bit of a mess is the only saving grace because given the state of Utd's squad, things could look a lot worse.
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I'm struggling to understand how United break the vicious cycle, that's all. Youth players need time, but time isn't a luxury we have with wanting Champions League football.

I agree that we haven't spent wisely at all, which comes from having no identity or vision for what we want the team to be and to play like on the pitch.

If we haven't spent wisely in 6 years then I question why the recruitment process hasn't changed. At least Wan Bissaka has looked fantastic defensively and James, whilst certainly not the finished article is getting goals and looking hungry for it.

Ahh well, it's going to be a frustrating season but that's football I guess!
 
Mekrel said:
I'm struggling to understand how United break the vicious cycle, that's all.
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By stop looking for a quick fix, stop buying bad players and get the most out of the players you have. All things that Utd haven't done. Utd are proof that looking for quick fixes, buying names without any clear plan doesn't work and is exactly the reason why Utd are where they are.

Whether it turns out to be the right plan or not or whether Utd can execute it well enough, only time will tell but at least there was a clear idea with your transfers this summer, buying young british players. That's a start on previous years.
 
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