Game Over For Ole

Sure it was only 3 points lost in the context of the league. But in its broader context for many fans including me, that match was more than 3 points. Not just because it was against the RS at OT. Essentially it was the absurdity and the surreal nature of the whole thing. It was more ourselves not playing or competing and sabotaging ourselves instead of the RS having a good performance. If you had to pick a match to identify players showing complete lack of interest or unity then this would be it. That would have been the easiest match the ****ing RS have and will play all season.

The score line wasn't the major factor for me either. When everyone was calling for his head after the 6-1 mauling from Spurs last season, I was still upbeat when everyone here wanted him gone. This time was different on so many levels.

For me even if we win at Spurs (really doubtful as they capitalise on our lack of morale and unity) and Atalanta (even more unlikely as they are a decent side despite people dismissing our victory here) I can't see Ole and the team psychologically recovering from that RS match. It revealed to the world the dysfunction at the heart of the team. Once that happens major surgery is needed.

 

I only just learned that Ole doesn’t take part in trainings. Only took part today with his job on the line. That to me just sounds stupid and unbelievable.

It really explains why Ole always seem stuck with the same lineup. He has no idea what the players are really doing in training. It’s so disjointed!

If we had world-class coaching staff, then maybe you can get away with that.

 

SAF was the same wasn't he? He was there on the odd occasion for photos but he left the training to the coaches

 

Problem with your logic there is that Ole is not SAF. SAF was an experienced manager that fully understood the psychology of the game, the players, and knew how to get them to respond to the moment.

So no! Ole ain’t in the league. We currently need a hands on coach that will transform this team. This is why I have developed reservations with someone like Zidane.

 

Romano proving he knows **** all again


Here we go

 

I have to say I do find it weird that Ole wouldn't attend training. Coupled with him always sat in his chair during the game kind of puts a distance between him and the players. This aint just aimed at Ole btw, I wouldn't want any manager to be like that. Or at the very least you kind of have to earn your stripes before you can be like that cos then you've earned the respect of the players.

 

It’s just Ole being Ole. Remember that he built a career being that chilled character on bench. Never the one to kick up a fuss. Those traits are wonderful, but they are incompatible with today’s game for a manager.

 

I preferred the old christian who was willing to give ole until the end of the season.

Anyway, you are 3 points off top 4 and as long as CL is attainable, the glaziers should stick by their man

 

Next games may well be crucial but, being a cynical ****, I can see that they know fine well that City will do us at Old Trafford and at this point they'll have to give him the chop.

Between now and then, they sound out his replacement and find out who they can reasonably go for and offer a job.

There seem to be a few candidates to speak to; Zidane, Conte, Rodgers have been mentioned, they could very well also approach Poch in this time.

When City beat us, they put this in motion and the new manager is in place for after the International break.

Doing it now leaves us without a manager, which would not be any more helpful than leaving Ole in charge really.

 

I’ve mentioned Brendon Rodgers before. I think he should be in there with a shout. Many fans will go on about his Liverpool link, but that is history these days. He would do very well with all the resources at the club. He could really be the guy in my opinion. Not flashy, but will be effective! He will manage the egos well, will be resourceful and use the team to its strength.

 

I suspected as much myself.

I said he wont be sacked off the back of our result but that was probably the final nail in his coffin. Behind the scenes im sure your now seeking your next manager, there was immediate talk of conte on the socials today but i think that was all clickbait.

He may well be on your list but you wernt seriously looking for a replacement until yesterday imho.

Thers just certain things you can't survive as a Liverpool or Manchester United player /manger and one of them is losing 5 nothing at home to us/you without so much as a whimper in return.

The fact you was 4 down coming out for the 2nd half and he changed nothing was unforgivable. A few mins into the 2nd & it was 5. Make that 2 on "the list"..


I had thoughts of spurs beating you 3 nil at half time all those years ago and the almost inevitable feeling that youd still win that game... And you did. Literally none of that fear existed yesterday.... So make that 3 on the list of unforgivable things.

Old Trafford half empty on 60mins. Make that 4.

Basically i agree, new man in after the international break.

 

Anyone read Luke Shaws interview after the pool game?

https://www.manutd.com/en/news/detail/luke-shaw-reacts-to-man-utd-0-liverpool-5-on-24-oct-2021

It's quite telling and i think this bit may be significant in some way

“I think football is obviously a team sport, we are in it together and we are all together. But I think, as individuals, we need to take responsibility for some of the actions tonight. Personally, that is of course why I am here, I am not hiding inside

 

Trebs, what we were talking about before (sorry to clog the place up, but it's behind a paywall so a link wouldn't do).

Manchester United’s failings explained – and why Antonio Conte could be the man to fix them

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James Gheerbrant

Tuesday October 26 2021, 9.30am, The Times
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After the 5-0 defeat against Liverpool, the scrutiny of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s tactical shortcomings as a coach is more intense than ever. Solskjaer has never been an intensive training-ground choreographer in the style of Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp or Thomas Tuchel, preferring to allow his players more scope for improvisation. But his team’s basic structural failings are becoming unignorable. Let’s have a look at what’s going wrong, and then at the coaches who may replace him.

What’s going wrong?
To understand how United’s relative lack of coaching manifests itself in their performances, let’s start by taking a look at a 20-second passage just before Liverpool’s third goal at Old Trafford.

As Ibrahima Konaté steps out of defence with the ball, look how disorganised Manchester United are (picture 1). Fred, Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes are clustered together, defending the same space — preventing a relatively innocuous short pass rather than a much more dangerous vertical ball.

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As a result of how inefficiently United’s players are positioned, look how easy it is for Mohamed Salah, Naby Keïta and Curtis Jones to find space in between the lines. As it happens, Konaté plays a poor ball to Salah, which is cut out. But the positioning of United’s players is a horror show. They have no fewer than seven lined up in the same vertical channel (2).

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It’s a classic case of players following their individual instincts rather than moving as a collective, guided by an appreciation of space and structure: notice how every single United head is oriented towards the ball.

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This is a terrible shape for the transition phase, when possession has just been regained: it makes it incredibly difficult for United to play out, and if Liverpool win the ball back, there are vast open spaces for them to attack into.

Sure enough, Victor Lindelof lumps the ball forward, because there is nothing else he can do. And here we see an even more symptomatic problem with United: the 4-2-4 shape in the defensive phase (3)

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Mason Greenwood, Marcus Rashford, Ronaldo and Fernandes form a front band of four, but without putting any concerted pressure on the ball. This leaves Fred and Scott McTominay, in the double pivot, with oceans of space to defend: look how easy it is for Jones, Jordan Henderson and Roberto Firmino to find pockets of space. The pass is played to Firmino and eventually leads to Liverpool’s third goal.

This is a consistent problem with United off the ball: the two central midfielders have to defend the entire middle band of the pitch. This 4-2-4 shape in the defensive phase was something that Paul Scholes specifically pointed out after the 3-2 Champions League win against Atalanta last week. Here’s an example of it from that game: Atalanta easily work the ball around the front four of Greenwood, Fernandes, Ronaldo and Edinson Cavani, and suddenly the midfield two of Fred and Paul Pogba are stretched because the wide spaces in the middle of the pitch are undefended (4).

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A 4-2-4 shape in the defensive phase could be workable if allied with a co-ordinated high press. But United have never had this: another failure of coaching. We saw this most glaringly in the lead-up to Liverpool’s first goal: Fernandes flies up the pitch in an effort to pressure first Henderson, then Van Dijk, then Alisson (images five, six and seven). But no one else presses with him.

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When Liverpool press, it’s a rehearsed chain reaction, funnelling their opponents down a series of increasingly blind alleys to force a turnover. United’s press is more like a lone collie chasing a tennis ball.

Who could replace Solskjaer?
The outstanding out-of-work manager at the moment is Antonio Conte, the former Chelsea head coach. He has won league titles in five of his past seven seasons in club football. Conte is renowned for instilling structure and organisation quickly — his teams are exceptionally tactically astute, with every player forensically drilled in their role, and the whole team can switch fluidly between different shapes during the course of a game.

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Conte has been tipped for the United job and his tactical nous could get the best out of United’s all-star squad
LAURENCE GRIFFITHS/GETTY IMAGES
Conte’s preferred system is 3-5-2, which may not necessarily seem like the most natural fit for United’s squad, although they have had success with a split front two and Harry Maguire has plenty of experience of playing in a back three with England. In any case, Conte is renowned for adapting his tactics intelligently to the players at his disposal. He’s the kind of coach who rides players hard, yet commands their respect.

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A more left-field candidate in a similar mould — an intensely charismatic alpha type whose teams are highly organised and motivated — would be Luis Enrique, the Spain manager. Despite losing in the semi-finals of Euro 2020 and the recent Nations League final, Spain played some of the best, most cohesive football at both tournaments. Enrique’s success with Barcelona would provide a level of confidence in his ability to take the reins — and the pressure — of a big job, and his teams arguably play a more prepossessing, passing-based style than Conte’s. It’s unclear whether he could be tempted away from La Roja, but it might be worth a try.

Other names who merit consideration include Erik ten Hag, the Ajax manager whose team have been arguably the best attacking side in the Champions League this season. Zinédine Zidane has also been mentioned, but like Solskjaer he is more of a training-ground delegator who leaves most of the tactical instruction to his assistants.

 

Good read that. Conte is probably their only credible choice other than Poch. Conte won’t take any prisoners, which will come as a shock to some of the Utd players, but he is an abrasive character …..and Utd gave a couple of the recently in Jose and LVG.

they’ve courted Poch before so I have a sneaky suspicion it’ll be him and it will be after City as some already suggest on here.

Poor old OGS - he was never ever good enough. Everyone outside of Manchester knew it and you can’t say he wasn’t given a chance, so fair play.

 

As much as I would love to see United crumble even more, picking Rodgers would be a bad choice. His player recruitment is dreadful and the only times it has been good is when he has the scouts picking them for him. He has a big ego which I think would grow even more if he got the United gig and I don't think he would be able to handle the big names in the team. Defensively, he is inept which is crucial and fundamental and is also a big part why he has a disgraceful record in Europe.

 

3 games to save his job, hope he gets the results he needs.
5 more years!
(though I think he'll only get sacked if you miss CL next year)

 

Donga that's a really good read.

But I don't want to just focus on the 4-2-4 because we;re talking about a couple of games, however the problems are long standing. And who the hell wants to play 4-2-4 even with a high press? And even if you don't/can't do the high press, you can manage the 2 pivot with a 5-2-3 with two wing backs (although I'm not keen on that either because without a forward tactical plan, which doesn't consist of lumping it forward, you end up being pinned back for 90 mins).

The problems, whatever the formation, are two or three fold. Firstly Fred simply isn't good enough. He can't tackle, he gives away foul after foul because he's a fcking idiot, he has no positional sense whatsoever, he literally cannot read an opposition pass or a passage of play which means he NEVER intercepts a pass and is usually well out of position when the opposition pose any threat in or around the box. To top it off he doesn't have the vision and cannot pick a pass (although he does manage it once in a blue moon tbf). For some none of this matters because "he runs around a lot" but that's just straw clutching and more excuses.

Secondly, and I'm absolutely convinced of this, the coaching staff, in particular Phelan and Carrick are turning to their limited experience of success when Carrick played at United and Phelan was the defensive coach around 2007-2009 - with a two man midfield block of Carrick as the CM and Fletcher as the box to box. They have this simplistic view that if they stick Fred and McTominay in there (with Fred in Carrick's role and McT in Fletcher's) it'll all work. The only problem is that Fred has nowhere near the ability or football intelligence of Carrick (see first point above) and McTominay who I think has huge potential to become a good box to box midfielder, is still developing, is receiving no coaching by the looks of it for him to play the role, and is just being thrown in there and told to get on with it. And to top it off Carrick and Fletcher still largely played in a 4-3-3

I said this last season, I don't blame our defence. I really don't. Lindelof is ****, but other than that I think the media are wrong to focus on the defence. Pretty much all our defensive problems are a consequence of the stupid approach in midfield mentioned above. It's non existent, so the back 4 are are always exposed and on the front line with every opposition attack. Tbf I don't blame Phelan and Carrick for trying it, that's all they know and they think "aha that worked before, it's the winning formula", but they've been trying it for over a year now and it's not worked and at some point you have to change it. And sadly they can't because they don't have anything else to offer so need to go.

Thirdly, we don't play through the lines. and that's because much of our midfield is too static so the opposition cramp us for space. Typically our games look like this - Maguire or Lindelof passing it to each other, then out to AWB who'll carry the ball all the way past the half way line, then stop, look around, pass it back to Fred who's in his own half so the territory AWB gained was pointless. Fred will then pass it back to Maguire, who'll then pass it to Shaw who'll carry it past the half way line. And here's the best bit... during ALL this passage of play we've not gone past one opposition player Not one. We're playing in front of them. Shaw tbf to him will then try and link up with Rashford or Martial on the left or Bruno or Pogba.

But even this doesn't normally happen, because it's all so predictable, and slow, so that by the time the ball has got to Shaw and he's made a run down the left, the opposition has all the time in the world to trickle back, regroup with a decent shape, and then we have a line of Shaw, Martial, Rashford, Pogba, Greenwood playing in front of them. Knocking it sideways. Bruno, Cavani, Ronaldo will be on the edge of the box easily shepherded by the opposition back 4, so that any balls that are then tried to be played to them are easily dealt with or they're squeezed for space and nothing comes of it.

This is how we've been playing for nigh on 16 months. We've sucked the life out of our best attacking and creative players - Bruno, Greenwood, Rashford (although he played through injury tbf) and I'd even include Martial and Pogba. Those players and that squad is good enough to challenge at least, and it's criminal what Ole and his coaching team are doing to them. It's unforgiveable, even as a football fan let alone a United fan.

 

This came up as a quote for me.

Weird

 

You feel it too. You're always in my thoughts Sucky that's all

 

Homosexuals! lol