Why the criticism? Solskjaer’s Man Utd are actually overachieving…

Ian Watson
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer Jose Mourinho Man Utd

It’s a Man Utd-heavy Mailbox but we can only publish the mails we are sent, so you know what to do: theeditor@football365.com…

 

Happy with United
I’ve read a lot about people saying Ole should be sacked for no discernible style of play and despite large spending is not achieving results. Let’s address that shall we?

1) style of play = quick counter attack, his deficiency is when people sit off us. You can see he is experimenting with what he has to work on that. Hence mixed results appearing as no consistency.

2) spending big money = yes he did, but only bought 3 players and they are all very good. That is what the transfer market is like these days. James and Wan B are very young and still developing and Maguire is excellent, even if working with Phil Jones does make him look bad.

So to lose to city with a young side plagued by injury is no cause for knee jerk reactions. It’s clear Ole is building a side based around youth.

This is a new approach following Jose’s, “buy 30 Y/O marquee signings” policy which left us with a load of over paid deadwood with no love for the club to shift. it will obviously take time to see results. Remember the class of 92 is the exception, not the rule.
Simon Manchester (I’m happy watching and supporting ATM – give him time)

 

I got a lot back yesterday for wanting to give Ole time and a lot of it is fair. The performances against lower teams have been rubbish in certain games and there have been patches of the season where we have served up clueless football.

A lot of this is down to Ole, he has certainly made questionable decisions and chosen some poor tactics. I apportion most of it to the people running the place who have let 5 years worth of crap accumulate. I don’t think Ole can unpick that with one full transfer window and three signings under his belt.

Damien asks what I have seen over the last two years to suggest Ole has any ideas about coaching or strategy (correcting the fact that Ole has been in just over a year and not allowing that error to devalue a decent question), over the last year I have seen;

Young players who I have some hope in (Greenwood, McTominay, Williams, James)

Rashford having his best season yet, does Ole get the credit for that?

A cup run which involved beating Chelsea away this season, FA Cup beating Arsenal and Chelsea last season

The only team to take points off Liverpool this season! Depressing that this is an achievement.

Effort if not ability…most of the time.

Instead of bloated wages (and agents fees, Raiola is an absolute snake) paid to brilliant players who have average commitment, we have young players who aren’t as technically gifted but are committed. For me that credit goes to Ole.

Pretty sure that only Liverpool have done better in a mini-league with the top 6 and I would say that points to Ole doing something right.

Then we have seen the negative games, slow and turgid football or defensive errors and missed penalties leading to dropped points.

I am still pleasantly surprised with the season so far. It is annoying that we always drop points when we can close the gap to the top four. However a bit of maturity, some creativity and we could be in the top 4 spots. I also accept that some better decision making on team line ups would help too. Shaking the tree in a perpetual hunt for instant success seems like repeating what we have done for the last 6 years.

Ray R…2019 calendar year table has us at 5th, 5th in GD and 2 points behind Chelsea (4th) who last won the league three seasons ago, 4 points behind Leicester (3rd). Interpret the statistics however you want, I see cautious progress. Competing with City isn’t an impossible task, but losing to them isn’t really worth a call to get rid either.
Mik Give. Him. Some. Damn. Time. MUFC

 

 

 

Ole out
There have been a lot of emails coming in saying to nuke or retain Ole. The retain argument is based on the fact that no one else could get this group of players playing better.

Clearly we have seen managers come in and get more out of the current crop of players they inherit – and then over time, adding personnel that fit the profile to play the game their way.

When Klopp came in, Liverpool were certainly in some sort of Limbo, occasionally playing well but not consistently or with any kind of style or overall strategy. He didn’t bring in new players, he laid out his long term plan, started teaching (mid-season and with no long breaks to do a decent job) his current players how he wanted them to perform. They didn’t immediately jump forward in the first partial season but they did show signs of improvement and building on a way of playing and reached a Europa League Final.

With a summer to coach and a few new players, Klopp started to show his vision in the second season, with much greater consistency, getting in the CL. The following year, CL spot again and a CL Final. The following year, 2nd place and a CL Winner.

The point is that he has shown consistent improvement year over year, improved existing players, while gradually introducing better players – while giving them time to adopt his playing style to become successful once they joined the team.

When I look at Ole I see someone who had a momentary bump in team fortunes – a true new manager bounce following a period of squad disharmony under Jose. But nothing of note in terms of any consistency, style or player improvement since.

There are two styles that teams can play that used to get them results, that require the lowest level of skill. Play a tight 4-4-2 system, a la Hodgson, get the players all lining up together with a rope so they all understand what two banks of four mean, so it keeps you defensively solid. Great when in a relegation battle. The other is the counter-attack. It recognizes a limitation on creativity, so leans on a solid defense with opportunistic attacking based on having a couple of decent and speedy forwards. This can work great against better opposition, especially in two-legged competitions. Play the counter attack away from home and hope to get an all important away goal. But neither will win you leagues.

In today’s EPL, neither of those styles is likely to be a winner. Yet Ole is still reliant on the counter-attack. You could say he has no option but he does. It doesn’t build the team to consistency as it depends on teams willing to let then counter that way. It doesn’t build overall playing skills required for the modern game.

You might say its a bit harsh to compare to Klopp – probably the number one or two manager in the world. But we are seeing teams like Sheff Utd, Chelsea, Leeds adopting a style of their own and trying to build on it.

But the biggest check just has to be how even Arsenal, in 3 games under the tutelage of Arteta are showing more overall savvy than Utd. Sure they are not winning all their games but they are showing clear signs of improvement and change and you could see players improving before your eyes. I would never have thought I would see such a transformation of players in a short time. Playing a completely different way – retaining the ball, playing out from the back well, quick transitions, clever inter-play. No question in my mind that, no matter how horrible Arsenal have been in the first half of the season they will overtake Utd in the league now.

I heard on a BCC show a couple of the pundits calling to keep Ole because there was no way Pochettino could improve the current team – they are so bad – so lets stay with Ole.

But really, if you had a choice of Arteta or Ole would you take it? I would. There is just so much to getting a team moving forward today. Utd have chosen 4 managers in a row that are incapable of winning in this new footballing world. At least winning enough to suit Utd’s tastes and desires.

Ole is not the answer.
Paul McDevitt

 

…Just a quick one. I’ve seen several people write in to defend Ole by saying “look what he’s got to work with” or “it’s not his team”. I imagine that during the interview process he must’ve put forward a pretty convincing case of what he’d be able to do with the current squad, and suggest areas that need strengthening. If not, he must’ve just got by on the obvious charm of his.

Ole has the look of a man that is constantly waiting on a text from the vet to tell him his dog made it through surgery.
Si, LFC

 

Mess of their own making
Maguire now seems to be set for an extended spell on the sidelines with an injury. We just got a preview of what our defense is like without him – completely hapless.
What more damning is how Maguire is the third player within a month to injure himself and then continue playing to aggravate the injury to much worse than it initially was. What is the medical staff playing at?! How do they let players who have clearly hurt themselves keep playing. Pogba initially was rushed back and then suffered a setback, and then suffered another setback! McTominay played for 40 mins after injuring himself and is now out for a couple of months with knee ligament damage. Maguire too decided to put on a brave face and play through his injury.

What is happening with this club when 1 – our physios seem incapable of identifying when a player needs to be taken off or given a break and 2 – where players feel the need to “play through it” to such an extent. I get how at the elite level several players play through the pain and it shows “character” how some might put it, but its just ridiculous that more than ability or skill that’s what it takes to impress this manager. Its getting more and more clear that the club needs a complete overhaul – right from scouting, board, upper management, medical staff, backroom staff, stadium. Its should be a shock to everyone at the club to see how far and how fast City have gotten ahead in EVERY department.

Lets face it, Ole’s appointment was never going to be a settled thing. He was always facing a battle to prove himself. Now without a capable defense to join a severely depleted midfield and almost no chance of any Jan signings coming he will be fired by the next month.
Yash, MUFC (KDB sent Jones to a different area code with his feint)

 

…United are very much in keeping with the times at the moment. A bit like Trump or Brexit, they seem to be obsessed with an idea that if we could just go back to the way things were before, then everything would be alright again. While this is obviously a stupid and, frankly, impossible goal to achieve, the laws of thermodynamics prevent any such restoration from ever occurring. Various entities around the world are pursuing this nebulous concept of “regaining” or “again” at the expense of all future prospects. United are no exception.

Liverpool used to be cursed by this affliction. Boot room ghosts haunting every season until peak nostalgia morally bankrupt them and they were able to rise again anew, forward-thinking and progressive. With football, as with most things, you’re either at the forefront, innovating and keeping your competitors guessing, or you’re resting on your laurels and waiting for someone else to pass you by.

United didn’t so much as rest on their laurels as they did take a handful of pills and nail themselves into a wooden box on their laurels. They had one chance, to plunge into the footballing muck after He Who Shall Not Be Named retired, slosh around while a new way of thinking took hold and could right about now be emerging, shiny and chrome. They could have made a faithful leap for a young manager, who was in step with the game, someone like Nagelsmann, Klopp or Pochettino (form an orderly line to ridicule these names idgaf) and taken some well-deserved stick for a couple of seasons while the club cut ties with the past and formed a new image on the shoulders of giants, massively benefitting from a name and reputation that others would have killed for but few knew how flimsy it was. Instead we’ve had a string of attempts to cheat fate and keep things on the same level while the club rots from within.

What has happened to United should be a study in how not to run a football club. Pretty much all key roles are either staffed by sentimentality or by greed. Woodward continues to play the big boy while actually being a bottleneck for transfers and the weakest negotiator in human history, all but ensuring we get rinsed on any deal. Everybody gets a bumper new contract, too. De Gea should have been gone long ago because of his contract shenanigans but the club was so obsessed with the notion of keeping their “best” players, these contract discussions must involve Woodward being made to bark like a dog at this stage. This very public process has made us look so weak it’s ridiculous.

Then we have the actual football. In ye olde days, teams would turn up to Old Trafford, already semi-defeated, and with a let’s-keep-the-score-down mind-set. As soon as HWSNBN retired, the mind-set changed to let’s-have-a-go-these-are-there-for-the-taking. Which lead to teams putting in a cup-final performance every time they set foot in Old Trafford. The team had already been allowed to stagnate and crumbled more often than not to just about anyone. The whole Moyes boo-boo gave rise to the first of the nostalgic appointments, Giggs. Giggs has earned a lot of respect as a player but hasn’t exactly been pulling up trees as a manager but United live by the notion that what once was shall be again so he was allowed to ride out the season, free from expectation and criticism. LVG, yesterday’s man he might have been, still laughed at the facilities in Carrington and started to unwind the idiosyncrasies until a perceived “better option” became available so they kicked his ass out after winning the FA cup. Nice. Then came Mourinho, a manager who had long ago succumbed to his own cult of personality and thought his tactical genius negated the need for man-management or anything of the sort. And now we have Solskjaer. I wish he was peak nostalgia. He surely seems like it. The eternally baby-faced assassin, ageing by the hour as the weight of his own failings drag at his ankles and the water level rapidly engulfs his head. In a perfect world, he would herald the obviously moronic idea that we can “recapture” our past glories as opposed to creating new ones but I fear that we’ll have to endure the whole class of ‘92 until United finally realises the way forward is forward, not back.
Brackets (Apologies for the rambling incoherent nature of this email, United have scrambled my brain)

 

Not ruthless enough
JP, MUFC raises an excellent point regarding ruthlessness at City vs the lack thereof at Utd.

Utd have failed too often to offload their underperforming players and the retention of this sort of player can often lead to a diminishment of quality. Standards drop because of the slow creep of mediocrity throughout the rest of the squad.

It also reveals a lack of a plan, as moving in a sure direction would surely require discarding what doesn’t work for that plan.

Sure, you need squad numbers to cover for injuries, but you also need to set an example to the rest of the team that a certain level is expected and nobody is above that expectation, no matter how key. Mamadou Sakho was one of the main players in the 15/16 Liverpool squad, and even so, Klopp, for all his outward joviality, showed that much required ruthlessness that saw Sakho off to Palace, no matter the outcries that Liverpool were begging for a quality defender.

That’s the ruthlessness required at this level
Justin,LFC, Cape Town.

 

Premier League nearly men
How about a top 10 of ‘couldawouldshoulda’ Premier league stars?

My nomination would be Casiraghi. I’ve never really liked Chelsea but he reminds me of a time when Matthew Le Tissier scored goals in front of Street Fighter 2 adorned advertising hoardings, Wright was winning his first Premier League winners’ medal and Chelsea had a host of exotic players boosting their roster.

One of those players was Casiraghi. I had seen him play on Football Italia and was really looking forward to seeing him play and then the game was robbed of his talent during that collision with Shaka.

I always wondered what would have happened had he avoided that challenge – I think he would have lit up the league.

Graham Simons, (Suker is another, who should have done way better), Gooner, Norf London

 

Arteta’s been moonlighting
Has anyone noticed the remarkable resemblance between Mikel Arteta and Dracula as portrayed by Claus Bang in the recent BBC adaptation?

No, ok I’ll get my coat.
Pardeep

 

Dear Ed…
If you want to retain one of your faithful readers, please have a separate mailbox for Ole in/out. Getting tired of it already!

Thanks,
Abhi(Gooner)