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Post by alwaysUnited on Aug 17, 2020 12:27:16 GMT
Also table doesnt lie , we are 3rd best in the league. Doesnt matter 66 points or not , how is it any different from scouse claiming the season before they won x point which is more than what United ever did under fergie , or some morons on twitter claiming this city team is better than treble winning united because they had won y points which was more than we won in 99. Each season dynamics are different , we are third best in the league no matter the points. Ah. So being 6th in a alright league is not good enough but being 3rd in a shit league is hunky dory. The fact we finished third this season actually more points behind the champions is apparently irrelevant. Am not saying everything is hunky dory , just that over a long season all lucks and wrong decision evens out and teams end up more or less in their deserved position. We are far behind the city and liverpool , but better than the rest. Not where United should be but it is what it is. |
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Post by Karma on Aug 17, 2020 12:46:32 GMT
Juve sack Sarri despite winning the league. As much as we may hold our nose up at it that is a big club mentality. Juve have an established squad, we don’t. That’s a really shite comparison. So we need to have their level of squad before we can hold our manager to account ? So why did the previous 3 managers not get this ? I remember being told lots of times that Jose needed to get more out of his squad and he’d already had loads of money. So why isn’t the same levelled at the current manager? They’ve all had to work under the same shitty owners. |
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Post by GeniusCantona on Aug 17, 2020 12:59:17 GMT
Juve have an established squad, we don’t. That’s a really shite comparison. So we need to have their level of squad before we can hold our manager to account ? So why did the previous 3 managers not get this ? I remember being told lots of times that Jose needed to get more out of his squad and he’d already had loads of money. So why isn’t the same levelled at the current manager? They’ve all had to work under the same shitty owners. Yes managing Juve with their current squad and objectives are different from ours. We went from finishing 6th to 3rd, no one was expecting a title challenge. Now if in the next 2 years we still remain in the wilderness and have failed to close the gap or challenge for the title with significant investment in transfers then it’s time to sack Ole. But for now he’s achieved top 4 with a thread bare squad lacking in any depth, which was the objective. |
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Post by alwaysUnited on Aug 17, 2020 13:05:58 GMT
Juve have an established squad, we don’t. That’s a really shite comparison. So we need to have their level of squad before we can hold our manager to account ? So why did the previous 3 managers not get this ? I remember being told lots of times that Jose needed to get more out of his squad and he’d already had loads of money. So why isn’t the same levelled at the current manager? They’ve all had to work under the same shitty owners. I cant speak for others karma , but for me issue with Jose and Van gaal was their team played really boring football. I am a Jose fan even now , but he has clearly lost his edge and struggles to work with these new generation of players. And for someone known for his ability to spot a good CB , lindelof have been a poor signing , especially for this league. |
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Post by Karma on Aug 17, 2020 13:14:19 GMT
So we need to have their level of squad before we can hold our manager to account ? So why did the previous 3 managers not get this ? I remember being told lots of times that Jose needed to get more out of his squad and he’d already had loads of money. So why isn’t the same levelled at the current manager? They’ve all had to work under the same shitty owners. Yes managing Juve with their current squad and objectives are different from ours. We went from finishing 6th to 3rd, no one was expecting a title challenge. Now if in the next 2 years we still remain in the wilderness and have failed to close the gap or challenge for the title with significant investment in transfers then it’s time to sack Ole. But for now he’s achieved top 4 with a thread bare squad lacking in any depth, which was the objective. Thread bare squad? Jose clearly didn’t rate Pereria. Solskjaer does or at least did. Lingard had turned to shit long before Solskjaer arrived. He still wants him to stay apparently . Smalling was turfed out because Solskjaer didn’t rate him either Lukaku was our only true CF. Benched and sold. Fellani was still useful . Sold. New contract for Jones under Solskjaer. Jose had clearly lost faith with him and practically froze him out. The Fa Cup fuck up was probably the final nail. Sometimes you have to help yourself. |
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Post by Bestie on Aug 17, 2020 13:38:36 GMT
I'll say this - We have literally scored the same number of points this year after dumping 214 million euros on the squad. Can you honesty tell there is no difference in our football compared to Van gaal and Jose days. And may be if ed had got bruno - who 'gave the ball away too much' in earlier, or if pogba was not 'injured' for almost the entire season waiting for Madrid to come and get him, we would have done much better. But lets blame Ole , next manager is going to magically fix everything. I get it , there are better managers out there than Ole ,but to me he has done well enough with what he has. There are clearly improvement in style of play, you can tell if we get a quality CB , a defensive midfielder and sancho there ill be massive improvements in this team. Its upto to ed to back him in market now. Really think we have higher priorities than firing Ole There is a massive difference between van Gaal and Mourinho to Ole. They actually won things. Football isn't about playing pretty patterns on the pitch. It's about winning. When you're winning you can demand great football as well. It doesn't work the other way around. |
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Post by JamBritRed on Aug 17, 2020 14:20:12 GMT
disappointing result, but not unexpected.
I wasn't about to post that I expected us to lose that match, but it was what I was feeling up to when I saw the squad, then I pretty much would have bet on us losing.
Ole, for me, hasn't show enough loyalty to those that got him in positions to win.
Three times Romero has gotten the team to a Semi-final, and three times he has been dropped for no decipherable reason other than to pander to a faltering De Gea. Instead of using the squad (Romero, Igahlo, Mata, McTominay) Ole chose to again use the burnt out first team.
For lack of consistency alone, and quite frankly a good dose of karma, I expected and us to lose, and we duly did. That's the way it works sometimes.
What Ole did this season, to Romero especially, wasn't fair IMHO.
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Post by Bestie on Aug 17, 2020 14:28:21 GMT
Some of the contradictions in here are astounding. Apparently people accept we’re shit and are at the level we belong right now but despite this our manager should be doing better despite us finishing 3rd with what everybody agrees is a gash squad. With players that belong in the Championship. So we need to sign better players but all know the owners are cunts and don’t aspire to have us back at the top and won’t release the funds but we should still compare ourselves to the likes of Juve and Barca despite us being a shit 2nd tier team with no depth in our squad and owners who don’t give a fuck about winning. But it’s all Ole’s fault coz he didn’t use his shit subs like Lingard 5 minutes earlier last night. Hard to read, right? That’s what it’s like reading some of the incoherent drivel on here. "Contradictions" 1 & 2: We have crap players who play at a crap level so it isn't Ole's fault ...
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Our shit owners won't invest properly so the squad will always be shit ...
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The manager should be getting more from limited players
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The manager should make changes in game we aren't winningThis isn't a contradiction. We can both acknowledge the squad is nowhere close to good enough but still expect a good manager to find a way of coaching that makes the squad play above their ability. Again, Liverpool just won the league with a midfield containing Jordan Henderson and Giorginio Wijnaldum. Also Joel Matip in defence. As I and others have said, repeatedly, mid-game changes don't necessarily have to be personnel. Make a tactical change if something isn't working. Even if it is subs, sometimes just throwing on an average player can be enough to change the board. Better managers can tweak systems to accommodate lesser players. Have a plan B. "Contradiction" 2: The owners are terrible and won't spend money so everything is pointless.
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Big clubs do big things and it is annoying we don't.Not a contradiction. We can acknowledge the bare facts while also hoping things will change. Woodward does nothing but try to convince everyone we are still relevant do maybe at some stage the penny will drop for him. |
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Post by GeniusCantona on Aug 17, 2020 14:37:59 GMT
Can you honesty tell there is no difference in our football compared to Van gaal and Jose days. And may be if ed had got bruno - who 'gave the ball away too much' in earlier, or if pogba was not 'injured' for almost the entire season waiting for Madrid to come and get him, we would have done much better. But lets blame Ole , next manager is going to magically fix everything. I get it , there are better managers out there than Ole ,but to me he has done well enough with what he has. There are clearly improvement in style of play, you can tell if we get a quality CB , a defensive midfielder and sancho there ill be massive improvements in this team. Its upto to ed to back him in market now. Really think we have higher priorities than firing Ole There is a massive difference between van Gaal and Mourinho to Ole. They actually won things. Football isn't about playing pretty patterns on the pitch. It's about winning. When you're winning you can demand great football as well. It doesn't work the other way around. How many trophies did Klopp deliver for the scousers before winning the champions league? What Klopp did deliver in the early days was much more entertaining football and commitment to a playing style and philosophy. We mocked those early Klopp teams for their terrible defending and tendency to concede late goals. But what Klopp was building irrespective of the lack of trophies was a culture at the club. Jose and LVG delivered silverware but sucked the life out of the club. We were headed nowhere. Ole is laying a foundation here and the evidence is there in some elements of the squad already. Give me better football and good transfer business in the short term over trophies, if it lays the foundation for big things in the future. The scousers recent history is proof of that. |
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Post by GeniusCantona on Aug 17, 2020 14:41:31 GMT
Yes managing Juve with their current squad and objectives are different from ours. We went from finishing 6th to 3rd, no one was expecting a title challenge. Now if in the next 2 years we still remain in the wilderness and have failed to close the gap or challenge for the title with significant investment in transfers then it’s time to sack Ole. But for now he’s achieved top 4 with a thread bare squad lacking in any depth, which was the objective. Thread bare squad? Jose clearly didn’t rate Pereria. Solskjaer does or at least did. Lingard had turned to shit long before Solskjaer arrived. He still wants him to stay apparently . Smalling was turfed out because Solskjaer didn’t rate him either Lukaku was our only true CF. Benched and sold. Fellani was still useful . Sold. New contract for Jones under Solskjaer. Jose had clearly lost faith with him and practically froze him out. The Fa Cup fuck up was probably the final nail. Sometimes you have to help yourself. “Fellaini was still useful” - for fuck’s sake. Lukaku with the first touch of a rapist or Mason Greenwood? Easy choice. |
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Post by Karma on Aug 17, 2020 15:16:16 GMT
Thread bare squad? Jose clearly didn’t rate Pereria. Solskjaer does or at least did. Lingard had turned to shit long before Solskjaer arrived. He still wants him to stay apparently . Smalling was turfed out because Solskjaer didn’t rate him either Lukaku was our only true CF. Benched and sold. Fellani was still useful . Sold. New contract for Jones under Solskjaer. Jose had clearly lost faith with him and practically froze him out. The Fa Cup fuck up was probably the final nail. Sometimes you have to help yourself. “Fellaini was still useful” - for fuck’s sake. Lukaku with the first touch of a rapist or Mason Greenwood? Easy choice. Greenwood is still a kid. It wasn’t an either or. Solskjaer didn’t get his Lukaku replacement. He even said at the time he was happy to take a chance with him. He had no other option. It’s quite obvious to anyone who has watched him that he’s a future prospect but he’s still a bit raw. Unfortunately Solskjaer now has no clinical striker which is something we missed last night. As for the touch of a rapist bit. I actually find that unnecessary and crass. |
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Post by Stew on Aug 17, 2020 15:52:49 GMT
The Guardian. This is spot on and not a hit piece.
Wily Sevilla show Manchester United that momentum is not a tactic
United have a loose philosophy and style of play, based largely on their electric front five. But they entrust too much to good feelings and blind faith
Jonathan Liew
This, as José Mourinho might drily observe, is football heritage.
To lose one semi-final might be considered unfortunate. To lose two a coincidence. But in United’s third unsuccessful attempt to grease their season with silverware could be identified a clear pattern running through the club. It is not a problem that can be solved by signing Jadon Sancho and Jack Grealish. Rather, it is something more systemic and deep-rooted, a malaise that took years to set in and may well take years to cure.
It is the lack of anything remotely resembling a process, a plan, a blueprint: something that sustains you through the tough parts, that gets you over setbacks. Here, against the wily Sevilla, it manifested itself most clearly in the lack of composure, an inability to concentrate for the full 90 minutes, on the inability to find solutions on the pitch, on Solskjær’s unshakeable faith in his starting XI, to the point that he resisted a substitution until the 87th minute, despite his side’s increasing fatigue.
Marcus Rashford had a poor game after winning an early penalty. Bruno Fernandes faded from view after converting it. The full-backs Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Brandon Williams looked increasingly adrift as the game went on. And perhaps tellingly, it was a loss of possession high up the pitch by an exhausted Mason Greenwood that led to the move from which Sevilla scored their winning goal: the final act of a team that, in more ways than one, had run itself into the ground.
Of course, United have a loose philosophy and style of play, based largely on their electric front five with its multiple options for cutting you to pieces. But insofar as they possess a strategy, it seems to consist largely of letting their gifted individuals do their thing, and entrusting the rest to timing and self-expression, good feelings and blind faith. Here again, as in their other losing semi-finals, against Chelsea in the FA Cup and Manchester City in the League Cup, Solskjær and United discovered that momentum is not a tactic.
The temptation will naturally be to curse their luck, to lament the string of missed chances that might have put them out of sight at the start of the second half, to praise the Sevilla keeper Yassine Bounou and file this away as a simple failure of shooting. Yet for United the alarming part of this game was not the failure to take advantage of their dominance but the ease with which they surrendered it after about the 55th minute: running out of legs and running out of ideas.
The early auguries, it had to be said, were very good. As they would later do at the start of the second half, United began at a fair lick, moving the ball briskly and following it in with numbers. It brought their deserved early goal: Rashford skilfully drawing the foul from Diego Carlos, Fernandes even having time to execute a ballet sauté while running to take his exemplary penalty. On the touchline Solskjær applauded regally, as if from a box at the Bolshoi.
The big question, as ever, is what would happen when Sevilla breached United’s crude first press. We would not have long to wait. Orchestrated by the imperious if increasingly immobile Éver Banega, and with the full-backs Sergio Reguilón and Jesús Navas pushing heroically high up the pitch, Sevilla were able to work the ball into the United final third with relative ease. And above all, you got the sense that Sevilla – five-times winners of this competition – simply expected to equalise, that United’s early goal had simply been a kink in the space-time fabric that would shake itself out soon enough.
This was perhaps the biggest difference between the two sides. United were a better team, but a softer team, too. The equaliser was almost inexcusably slack: Sevilla working the ball up the pitch while most of the United team were still protesting against the award of a throw-in. And as United flung themselves forward early in the second half, Sevilla deftly managed to regain control of the game with tactical fouls and gamesmanship. As Luuk de Jong stole in to win the game late on, Victor Lindelöf and Fernandes angrily squared up to each other in the United defence: each trying to shirk the blame for a collapse that had been collectively mismanaged.
And so United’s season draws to a close: one that has seen clear progress, a third-place finish in the Premier League, a stirring end to the season, the return of the swagger and bluster that characterised this club’s greatest eras. But what we still don’t know is whether this side is capable of learning. Whether Solskjær as a coach is capable of growth.
What will he take from these semi-final defeats? Will he reflect on the brittle mentality and tactical shortcomings that have left them empty-handed this season, and emerge a better coach as a result?
Or will he simply plough on regardless, making vaguely positive noises about youth and attacking football? Twenty months into his eclectic reign, we still don’t really know the answer.
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Post by Bestie on Aug 17, 2020 16:08:28 GMT
There is a massive difference between van Gaal and Mourinho go Ole. They actually won things. Football isn't about playing pretty patterns on the pitch. It's about winning. When you're winning you can demand great football as well. It doesn't work the other way around. How many trophies did Klopp deliver for the scousers before winning the champions league? What Klopp did deliver in the early days was much more entertaining football and commitment to a playing style and philosophy. We mocked those early Klopp teams for their terrible defending and tendency to concede late goals. But what Klopp was building irrespective of the lack of trophies was a culture at the club. Jose and LVG delivered silverware but sucked the life out of the club. We were headed nowhere. Ole is laying a foundation here and the evidence is there in some elements of the squad already. Give me better football, good transfer business in the short term over trophies, if it lays the foundation for big things in the future. The scousers recent history is proof of that. Right then, explain Ole's philosophy to me. What exactly does he want us to do, except for give the ball to Bruno/one of the attackers and hope something happens. Which players are playing which roles. Are we a counter-attack team or are we possession based. What is the plan. |
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Post by Karma on Aug 17, 2020 16:31:14 GMT
I think we still rely on individuals to make something happen.
If they don’t then we’re screwed.
So no different to under the 3 previous managers then.
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Post by Kojak on Aug 17, 2020 17:24:40 GMT
Yes managing Juve with their current squad and objectives are different from ours. We went from finishing 6th to 3rd, no one was expecting a title challenge. Now if in the next 2 years we still remain in the wilderness and have failed to close the gap or challenge for the title with significant investment in transfers then it’s time to sack Ole. But for now he’s achieved top 4 with a thread bare squad lacking in any depth, which was the objective. Thread bare squad? Jose clearly didn’t rate Pereria. Solskjaer does or at least did. Lingard had turned to shit long before Solskjaer arrived. He still wants him to stay apparently . Smalling was turfed out because Solskjaer didn’t rate him either Lukaku was our only true CF. Benched and sold. Fellani was still useful . Sold. New contract for Jones under Solskjaer. Jose had clearly lost faith with him and practically froze him out. The Fa Cup fuck up was probably the final nail. Sometimes you have to help yourself. Some pure nonsense in this. A lot of people on here thought Pereira was a good prospect who should be given a chance and in fact criticised José for not playing him. Smalling had more than enough chances. The issue isn’t “turfing” Smalling out (which suggests he was hard done by), the issue is the replacement not being up to the job. Criticise Ole for that. But if you want Manchester United to compete with the top teams in this league and in Europe, then Chris Smalling factually is not good enough. Rose tinted spectacles. Ole was right to shift him. Lukaku was fucking dreadful last season and I lost count of the amount of games (during both seasons here) that he missed big chances in big games. That result would be no different with him in the team. Regardless of whether you think he’s a top striker or not (I don’t), it wasn’t working for him here. He was the wrong man for this team. We were right to shift him. Fellaini encapsulated everything that was wrong with the previous regimes. Don’t bother finding another way, just chuck Fellaini on. I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life by a player being at United than I was by Fellaini and that’s in terms of both the way we ended up signing him, and his presence on the pitch. If you wanted a culture change, he absolutely had to be moved on. “José clearly lost faith in Jones and froze him out”. José would freeze his own fucking mother out. One of the sourest blokes on planet Earth. I quite enjoyed his shithousery, but let’s not pretend he had some fucking mystic quality for seeing a player wasn’t up to it and freezing him out. He froze Martial out. José usually is successful in the short term then creates a monumental black cloud over a club until he himself is frozen out. We couldn’t have kept José. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Ole, that horrible black cloud that José created is gone. The amount of revisionism is wild. If you don’t think Ole is the man for the job, fine. But don’t outright lie and talk utter shit. |
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