Rangnick and ‘one of football’s great misnomers’ revealed
Ralf Rangnick has been pressing for five decades so why can’t he teach Manchester United in six weeks?
The dead apprentice
You can still buy Guardian man Jamie Jackson’s book ‘The Red Apprentice: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer: The Making of Manchester United’s Great Hope’ so it would be understandable if Jackson felt a little aggrieved by the ‘great hope’ being replaced by Ralf Rangnick. But he is a professional so his coverage is nothing but balanced and fair…
- ‘Six matches into a stewardship may seem premature for an inquest unless the club is Manchester United and the manager was brought in to administer a quick fix before a permanent No 1 is hired in the close season.’
- ‘…causing some to venture that Rangnick’s “godfather of gegenpress“ tag may be one of football’s great misnomers.’
- ‘Rangnick’s admission (that his team did not press v Wolves) is particularly mystifying given it casts a coach five decades into the high press as being unable to drill it into a talented group.’
- ‘The 20-year-old (Greenwood) was substituted on the hour, a jarring moment that provoked further questions regarding the manager’s reputation for being a clear-eyed watcher of players.’
‘Five decades into the high press’ is simply phenomenal.
As for this ‘talented group’ at Manchester United; remember when they ‘resembled a rabble’ under dead apprentice Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and he was STILL on track to be the next Sir Alex Ferguson?
Taskmaster
“Whenever you watch games, even if it’s not the top teams, they play with intensity, they play with physicality, they play with energy and they sprint. This is what we have to do. We have to develop into this kind of team and it’s about implementing this into the team in a sustainable way.”
That all seems pretty standard fare from Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick, right? We can all agree that Manchester United have been poor this season, particularly against Wolves in last Monday’s 1-0 defeat.
So what’s the headline on the Mirror website?
‘Ralf Rangnick makes demand of Man Utd squad as he sets them a task to complete’
It’s not the f***ing Crystal Maze; he’s just asked them to run a bit more.
Flip-flops
Over at the Daily Star, Jeremy Cross is writing that ‘Ralf Rangnick fears his Manchester United flops are too lazy to become a top level team’.
Of course he said absolutely nothing of the sodding sort; he has simply laid out that Manchester United need to work harder to be a better side. Which we can surely all agree.
It’s amazing how quickly the narrative has changed on Rangnick, who presided over the first defeat of his reign a week ago.
‘The German coach was hired on the back of his reputation for producing high-pressing and disciplined sides.
‘But United have remained lacklustre since Rangnick’s arrival after winning just four of their last eight games in all competitions.’
Rangnick has only been in charge for six of those games and has only lost one, but let’s not let facts get in the way of a runaway narrative here.
Oh and before those clearly disastrous eight games, United were six points behind fourth place; they are now four points behind fourth place with a game in hand on Arsenal.
Indeed, they have picked up 14 points from seven Premier League games since the departure of Solskjaer, giving them a better PPG than every other club in the Premier League barring Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham. Nobody is arguing that Manchester United have been anywhere close to brilliant but one defeat constituting a crisis continues to be ludicrous.
Press gang
The Mail are obsessed with these new-fangled tactics, with the MailOnline treating us to this headline:
‘Ralf Rangnick tells Manchester United pressing is the ONLY way forward as he urges his players to accept they have to show more intensity and energy’
He didn’t ‘tell Manchester United’; he told the media. And he did so without ever mentioning the P word, which is bizarre if he believe it’s the ONLY way forward.
Of course, it’s much easier to peddle the notion that Rangnick has brought in his complex, modern ideas about pressing when all he actually wants is for the players to look like they give a s**t.
Steady Eddie
Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah was pretty rotten on Sunday night against Nottingham Forest; he had four attempts on goal and none of them were on target. And it’s hardly like he was brilliant in all but his finishing as Ian Wright – something of an expert in such areas – said on ITV: “I thought his movement was very poor. Ally [McCoist, on commentary duty] was talking about it, there were a couple of instances when you thought if it is not quite going for you, you just need to be sharper.”
The young Arsenal man also ‘nodded a header miles off target from a teasing Saka cross before slicing a left-footed shot from a tight angle wide of the mark’ so it really did not go swimmingly at all.
That description of his spurned chances comes from Dave Fraser on The Sun website, so we are buggered if we understand how ‘Nketiah could be the future for Gunners amid Arteta’s striker woes’, as claimed by the headline on Fraser’s piece.
He writes:
‘Perhaps Arteta gave Nketiah the nod over Lacazette to rest the Frenchman with games against Liverpool and Tottenham in the coming week.
‘But with the Carabao Cup semi-final against the Reds not until Thursday, it’s not unrealistic to think the Spaniard was proving a point to Nketiah: that he has a future.’
Oh yes it is unrealistic. Alexandre Lacazette is Arsenal’s only fit, senior striker and he has started the Gunners’ last seven Premier League games and is facing a Liverpool-Tottenham-Liverpool triple header in the next 11 days. Nketiah started against Nottingham Forest because aspirations of Premier League football mean that he should be able to look something other than a 5/10 (Fraser’s own mark) against Championship opposition.
Quite why Nketiah’s finishing ‘will improve given some more match practice’ is unclear as he literally scored a hat-trick three weeks ago on his first senior start in two months.
And quite why The Sun are so invested in Nketiah – we have been here before – is unclear.
‘Arteta must assure Nketiah that he will be a key figure in his Arsenal team or risk losing him for free.
‘And how Arsenal fans would hate to see another young star leave only to shine elsewhere.’
That is a massive overestimation of how much Arsenal fans give a shiny sh*te about keeping Nketiah, who is clearly nowhere near the same level as other ‘young stars’ Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli. It’s never ideal to lose a moderately valuable player on a free transfer but that’s just about the extent of the regret among most Arsenal fans.
Fan website Arseblog watched the same wretched 90 minutes and concluded that ‘he’s not any kind of answer to any of our striking questions’. Quite how The Sun saw a man who ‘could be the future for Gunners’ is a mystery.
Con air
Monday’s STAR Sport: “OmiCON” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/jWNxMP4LBZ
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) January 9, 2022
Is that a national newspaper just casually insinuating that Liverpool had their Carabao Cup tie with Arsenal called off through nefarious means? Yes. Yes, it is.
We’re not saying the Star have form for this but, well, the Star have form for this. Their website headline last week:
‘Rival fans notice something suspicious about Liverpool’s Covid outbreak at the club’
And Liverpool fans might notice something suspicious about their Liverpool coverage.