The Man Utd thread (3)

Scottish

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Well after Busby and Ferguson they might be on to something. Oh… Moyes…

Manager isn’t the root problem, is it?

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I think they’ve tried everything else, haven’t they?

My mind must be playing tricks with me…

Wasn’t it only about 15 months ago that they sacked an underperforming manager just a short time after previously backing him in the transfer market?

History repeats itself…

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So satisfying - Satisfied

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Everything is an experiment of some sorts.

In football you often get reactions to what was most recent.

Back in the time when he wanted United to be powerful, pacy, strong in transitions and more counter-attacking, that was a reaction to them trying to play more controlled football.

Now when he wants United to take risks and play exciting football, even in that game of words it doesn’t sound much different, he probably doesn’t want United to be fielding 5 defenders and midfield pairings of Casemiro and Ugarte (understandably so).

Tottenham went for a few winning coaches post-Poch after they couldn’t make the final step, but then went a step or two back with them, so needed a new “Poch” in order to get closer, which they’re still trying to do with some idealist and some pragmatic options.

The more a club fails to get back to serious success, the more the fanbase becomes desperate (though it also depends how big the club is, some smaller ones just accept a new reality). And some shouts within can be really wild. But it’s not surprising. The club itself is in a process of trying to turn the page and it takes time.

We’ve all seen it with our own clubs, how many times the majority of the fanbase thought or felt “this is the one, this is the combination of people above, coach and players that will make it work”… and then it proved not to be the case, but even more time needed.

Squires strikes again…

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Here we go again. :joy:

Anything at least slightly different to that, it’s not their great DNA.

This is amazing.

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It was never about the formation not being suitable. It’s about them being attracted to a man who thought his atypical formation was a piece of magic and had nothing to fall back on when it was shown not to be the case and was content to blame all those failings on the players not doing the formation well enough

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The amount of fawning going on here after @sbym offers a prize is borderline disgusting.

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Pretty much my entire youth following the reds - Evans was in charge when I became a fan. 30 years of no league title.

United last won the PL in 2013 - that’s only 13 years - I want it to carry on for a good few yet.

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I don’t care that much about it all, but it would be fascinating to go back through archives and hear what Neville said about each of United’s new managerial singings, what he said just before the sacking, and after…

Basically, I suspect he just says all sorts based on the wind when it comes to United.

What?

It’s similar what he says, but changes a bit from time to time. Also the words someone uses, can be different.

Sky Sports News understands former Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is interested in returning to the club as they begin their search for Ruben Amorim’s replacement.

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prize for DNA plus the 2025 awards

I don’t blame him for that really. He did tell Utd he would join at the end of the season so they could work out a recruitment plan for his system, and they bullied him into joining there and then.

He is quite clearly a coach with a very defined and set system, and he has never really tried to hide that. This was a recruitment failure. Utd appointed a manager who everyone knew would need a squad overhaul to even stand a chance of working, and they did this from the position of having PSR/financial issues that prevented them making big moves in the market.

It was an appointment everyone except Jim Ratcliffe could see was going to be a clusterfuck.

I think he has managed to get out without too much of a stain on his CV, and he’ll go on to prove himself a good manager.

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I think he’s shown himself to be a guy who didn’t have the goods he thought he did, and who misidentified the roots of his past success (the formation and the right players to play the formation) and its transferability and universality. But he will likely will walk away from the situation relatively unscathed due to how poorly Utd are viewed as an operation with a lot of benefit of the doubt given to people who fail there.

I think it was always doomed to failure not because there was too big a gap between what the formation needed and the players Utd had (or were willing to bring in) but because a man who puts a formation so at the front of his thinking is too limited to succeed at this level and they should have identified that as the big red flag we did when we considered him. He treated his formation like a child views a pair of magic socks, identified as such because that was what he was wearing the day some good shit happened to him.

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