It's not 50 games...its 50 league games. If you add in cup games it is... caribou Cup P3 W3 ... one on pens (Only 1 prem side) FA Cup games P8 W4 D2 L2...(one loss on pens) (Only beat 1 prem side) in those 11 cup games v prem sides it's: P5 W2 D1 L2 ... a win and a loss on pens. CL games P4 W1 D0 L3 EL games P10 W8 D1 L1 So total cup games record is... P25 W18 D3 L6 But ... EL opponents along with Marine, Brentford, Wycombe, and boro account for 12 of those wins. I think 50 league games and 9 new signings is plenty enough to judge whether we have started to show signs of improving...and we haven't. Not sure I agree that the majority on here think what you wrote at the end btw to be fair.
whether it’s 50 games or whether it’s more, there’s more to it than just those numbers. - The point regarding 9 new signings and signs of improvement, in particular. “The same players as Poch” argument just isn’t a valid one, IMO. Whether they were improvements to the first team, or additions to get the best out of the squad, we’re stronger in terms of playing staff than we were when Poch was sacked. I’d be really interested to know how many of United’s players that played under Mourinho are still there, and now featuring under Ole. Has it changed drastically? Or is it fair to say that Ole has repaired the damage and got the best out of pretty much the same squad, give or take a few signings over 3 years?
Not happy, but we were better than the opposition. One thing I'm getting confused about is that our defence is quite good at stopping opposition attacks except we make at least one bad error a game. I don't really know what to make of that.
Probably due to the way we set ourselves up which invites pressure, and, call me crazy, but I expect it’s social media, too. Imagine the abuse they’ve directly faced from so called fans. The players will definitely see or hear about these comments, as there’s no escaping them. They can pretend to ignore it, but psychologically it’ll be niggling away at the back of their minds. Make 1 mistake, you’ll remember it. Make another, and you’ll be reminded of it by others. Make multiple mistakes week in week out, and it’s a downward spiral to trolling and constant abuse. Which is why we’re seeing the same mistakes week in, week out. They’ve got no confidence and are likely paranoid about it. It’s no coincidence IMO.
From our excuse for a manager's post match excuses... “Before the game I was not looking to the table I was looking to the game and the objective was to win and when you win you look to the table to see where you are. It is very difficult to think about the top four, the top four, five six teams are getting points. It will be very, very hard, the Europa League is a great motivation to get a Champions League spot and a trophy at the same time. So, anyone hoping for our league form to improve in the weeks ahead....Good luck with that, unless we sack him. It's all-in on winning the EL....and we haven't got a ****ing chance.
with quotes like that the players won’t go into PL games with any drive or determination. More of the same mediocre stuff. - may as well wrap up our best 11 players in cotton wool ready for those Europa games. Send the squad players out for PL games and hope we get enough points to not get relegated
I don't think there should be a set number of games as to how to truly judge someone. Football can be very subjective in that. For instance the most extreme circumstance was Palace sacked de Boer after just 4 league games. Yet 4 league games, no wins and no goals, was it a rash decision? Possibly but it also proved to be the right decision. We're 50 league games into Jose and but for about 10 of those, we've by and large been very poor to watch and the majority of our results have gone a long with it. I wouldn't be comfortable right now giving Jose another 50 league games, if he was sacked tonight I'd be relatively happy, depending on who came in of course. I don't think he's showing any signs of progression and his management of the squad is one of the worst I've seen from a manager - this is coming from someone who thought Poch's squad management was also poor. Same applies to players though. Doherty hasn't had one full season, yet would people honestly want to persist with him next season? I highly doubt it, if he were young with potential different story but he's an experienced 28 year old who's playing like a raffle winner from the pub. We've seen what persisting too long with mediocrity has already done, Winks has played 164 games for Spurs, it was pretty evident after about 40 (to me anyway) he wasn't good enough. Lamela's played 244, yet for a good 60% of those he's been ineffective. Lucas 142 and it's hard to think of about 20 great games from him. Sissoko 191, incredible. Dier 268(!!!) and for the last few years whether it's been at DM or CB he hasn't cut it. We've either allowed so many poor players so much time that when they have an occasional good game we blow it up like it's something special or we've allowed good players to stay so long that they've become poor too. It's madness this has been allowed to happen, all at a time where us fans were under the impression this club was really going places. It feels like we've gone from aiming so high that failure has an echo of glory to aiming so low that mediocrity gets glorified. Some major decisions need to be made at this club, at all levels too, those at the top, the manager and a number of players either need sacking, selling or changing if we want to begin moving forward... Again.
tend to agree with all of this. When it comes to the players though, like our new signings for example (perhaps Doherty like you mention) they need more time and better management/coaching. To use the example of Doherty, he was good for Wolves last year and produced goals and assists. You don’t just lose ability. It’s lack of confidence which stems from Jose’s man management, IMO. as for the others that have been here for a while, yep, some need to be moved on, and the next crop of replacements need to be integrated. What’s criminal though is that we’ve signed multiple players over the last year to help the squad/improve the first team, but they are not being utilised correctly. That falls on Jose. whilst I am not levy’s biggest fan when it comes to “on the field antics”, he did well and signed multiple players last summer, in particular. So much so, most fans said they were delighted with how we’d improved the squad. We can criticise him for hiring Mourinho, but I actually feel that our current squad overall is the best we’ve had in ages. We’ve just got the wrong bloke looking after them.
The shame is we had a glimpse in the second half of todays match of how we could play if you trust in the players with vision and not bench them after a couple of below par performances. To have a player of Bales class and produce a series of excuses as to why he should only be used for 20 minutes at most is not credible in my eyes. It does seem that the ego pf Jose makes far too many decisions that a cold hard look would question. I cannot seem him recovering from here unless we win the Uefa and really if that is enough for another season of this kind of football then I hope we don't.
I've seen enough too. Let's start looking for a replacement now, so that as soon as we hit the end of the season, we make an appointment and he knows who stays and who goes.
I think it's completely unfair to judge Doherty on the limited opportunities he has had and as I have said before it could well be Covid related as some people take months to fully recover. Writing off players right now is foolhardy the one to do that is the next manager.
I agree. Winning the Europa will get the “no trophies” brigade off of our back somewhat, however, we’re the losers in all this because watching this football is torture. In some ways, winning the Europa just papers over the cracks.
Players sometimes just don't work at particular clubs though. Aurier was a multiple Ligue 1 winning RB and also made the Ligue 1 TOTY once or twice yet Ricardo Pereira who played in the same league as him for a couple years looks twice the player he is in the Premier League. Aurier's worked under two top managers here with different philosophies too. Torres scored goals for fun at Pool and couldn't hit a barn door for Chelsea and there's many other examples of that throughout the years. Whilst manager's can definitely take some blame for a player not fitting in well enough (IE Jose with Bale's poor management up to the last week or two), some players just fit certain clubs/ systems/ tactics better. I don't think Doherty has been the player we thought he'd be, he's timid on the ball and his crossing is terrible, he doesn't have great pace either to paper over any mistakes and so for as much as we can blame Jose for tactics, that's purely on Doherty's ability and mentality. I think in terms of our squad, we have a big squad but it's one lacking in quality. For instance we're weaker now with this large squad than we were in 2017 with a smaller squad, if we had some of this squad back then though we possibly may have won the league or a cup. The problem with now though is that too many of our players are squad calibre players and a number of them are first team regulars and that's why we're not looking anything like a top four/ six team at the moment.
Football isn't about being fair though. If anything, if your theory about Covid is correct then there's all the more reason to sell him. We don't know if he'll ever recover properly (if indeed Covid's the reason). 22 games into his Spurs career and I don't think he's genuinely had a truly good 90 minutes of football. There hasn't even been a glimpse of the Wolves Doherty we thought we were getting.
If we ain't got a replacement lined up then it is negligent. A new manager coming in May will have no time with the players cos of the Euros. Players like will jump as soon as any concrete offer comes in. A new manager will need time to convince players to give a chance. Winning the Caribou Cup will not keep players ... winning the EL might. But that ain't happening with JM. I agree that he's here til at least the end of the season but that is criminal imho. He (and Levy's pride) will have set us back to where we were when we had Tim Sherwood. We will have an unbalanced squad devoid of confidence and a group of disillusioned young players with older players unable or unwilling to change their ways through arrogance or lack of ability. This was so predictable. I got behind JM even though I was vehemently against him being made our manager but honestly...is any seriously shocked or even mildly surprised that we are in this state. His United stint was there for all to see. This is turning as poisonous as that did. I think Levy either needs to remove himself from all the team involvement (choosing the manager etc) or resign cos this is a farce. We are losing money hand over fist due to covid and the huge loss in revenue that has caused...it could take us years to be in the position to challenge for a top 4 place (let alone mount a title challenge) unless this is sort very very quickly.
Winning the EL satisfies the bean counters looking at the new WHL balance sheet. I would right now take any performance that wins it, go meh on the silverware, if it means : 1. Jose is gone 2. the replacement the day after knowing he has CL football the next season, and the kind of mandate to purge the squad that Pochettino had in 2014-15.
Realistically a new manager would be needed right now if we are indeed planning a summer rebuild. Appointing someone in the summer they'd need the whole summer pre-season and first half of the season to see what players they'll need and want and those they need to bin. Getting in someone now, they'll have about 14 league games plus some in the cups to get a view so that come the start of the window, there will already be a plan in place to make moves. I say all this theoretically though because we're not sacking him today, lol.
Modern elite football is very tactical and very controlled by the manager. Players end up the product of what their manager thinks they are rather than being allowed to develop by expressing themselves. So in the end the managers opinion rules the roost. The truly great managers from the past often just said to their teams 'You know what to do you are professionals" Shankly to Ian St John 'Just put the ball in the net we'll discuss the tactics later' To Ron Yeats ' You're so big you scare me just go out there and scare them' I often think this is the way football should be played there is far too much inhibiting stuff from managers.
