That’s what it looks like to me.
If results were going well, the unusual arrangement would attract less scrutiny. Since they have spent a fortune to be mid table, if things don’t improve he will get the boot. Since the fans are already restless, after a decade of underachievement and waste, the suits at Man Utd will hang ETH out to dry, in such a way that there won’t be too much blowback on them for this one.
Apart from the wider demand that the Glazers sell up. That will gain traction.
All his transfers (which he’s signed) with the exception of Casemiro (seemingly a transfer after one of his ex players De Jong didn’t want to come) and Mount have been either people who’ve played with him before (Eriksen , Martinez , Onana , Antony ) or have been players from his agent’s company (Hojlund , Amrabat)
Considering the wealth of football talent around and how much United can spend. It’s irregular for sure.
Fair play to him. Everyone knows that club is toxic and the manager job is a poisoned chalice. He’s found a way to make sure he rinses the club for a few extra mil before inevitably getting the sack.
Meh. This isnt the 80s when Fergie storms into Edwards’ office and demands they sign him Neil Webb. They have an entire team in place to identify who to buy with the head of that team also the man who ostensibly is EtH’s boss. Regardless of what influence Vos has it still ultimately falls on Murtaugh if that is negatively affecting who they buy/pursue.
I don’t follow the media as much as I used to, but I rarely hear of Murtaugh - certainly less than I remember Woodward being talked about. Given all the talk before ETH was appointed about the rebuild of Utd’s recruitment set up, it still seems a mess.
Murtagh has the job but it does seem that it’s ETH list he’s working with. TH will get the sack where the boys hang on
Woodward’s role has been split between Murtaugh (football) and Arnold (business). Arnold is the former’s boss and the more public facing one. The idea is, like with Edwards, let the football guys concentrate on Ops not on PR.
Shitty daily mail article but still
Problem all this is done public.
The gift that keeps on giving
Some body just made his Christmas list.
Biggest club in the world tho, innit?
That’s the great irony with United and their fans - they like to boast about being one of the biggest clubs in the world, then they whine about all of the added scrutiny they’re under. I watched Goldbridge for about 10 mins yesterday afternoon, and it was nothing but whining about all of the pundits and newspapers piling on them when things aren’t going well. He complained that “This is exactly what they did to Mourinho and Ole”, yet neglects to mention that he and other fan channels like him were the ones leading the calls for Mou and ole to get the sack.
They used to love to mock Liverpool’s “boom-bust cycle”, but it appears they’re now locked into one of their own, only it’s worse. With us, generally managers would be given a lot of time because we could temper expectations and be happy with moderate success while hoping to make the leap into genuine title contenders/winners. For United, their idiot fanbase and owners demand that they be challenging for top honors all the time, so the cycle is much smaller. Imagine if they’d had Houllier and Rafa like we had - they wouldn’t have made it past their second seasons. Maybe Rafa since he won the CL his first year, but even then. They’re locked into this endless cycle of new manager → false dawn → second season slump → sack the manager → repeat
I fucking love it.
The false dawn isn’t even because of their own improvements - other teams have an off season and they fail to build on that, choosing to bask in the glory instead!.
Correct. Further to that, a quick examination of their best league seasons of late shows that they were weird for one reason or other - last season we had the WC in the middle and a truncated preseason, with most teams having matches every few days and little time to prepare. When Ole finished second it was the covid-shortened season with a lot of games postponed and again, a shortened preseason and teams with little time to prepare for them. When Mou finished second, almost every team but City were in transition and having a down season.
Yet those muppets on’t Caf think it means they were “close to challenging” or “obviously better than 18 other teams in the league”
My brother in law and nephew are both massive United fans, but both abject morons. Whenever they have a half-decent season, they start crowing about how they’re back to the top and gonna win the league again, and I always point out that the more likely outcome is they’ll regress to the mean and have an average season. And it always happens.
It was no different when I was a kid in the 80s though. It had been 20 years since they were reliably any good and we were in the midst of an all time run of dominance. Yet I’d show up to pre-season training and the kids there who supported Utd were just utterly convinced that whomever it was they had signed that summer mean they were favourites to win the league. Jesper Olson. Peter Davenport. Mark Hatley. It didnt matter. To them they were not only faovurites, but everyone else was mad to not think so to.
Part of me thinks that is the escapism that makes Sports fun. But there is a line between escapism and being a delusional twat
Jesper Olson! Nice pull.
Still, I feel a little for them. I used to love being in primary school and being supremely confident that Liverpool would win the league. Right up until like p5 or so, when it stopped, and as a stupid kid, I didn’t really comprehend what was going on. I couldn’t fathom that Liverpool were anything but the best team in England at the time, so it really baffled me that we weren’t winning and that United were.
Then came high school through the mid to late 90s and it was basically a bloodbath. Non-stop bantering from all the dickhead United fans at school and we had basically no comebacks. After 99 it was horrible. I finished school in the summer of 2000, and Houllier started to work his magic, but it was a false dawn. Wenger’s Arsenal became the new power and Fergie rebuilt, we lost Houllier and Rafa came in with a good pedigree. Winning the CL then going back to the final 2 years later was sweet, by this time Mourinho had come in and Chelsea were the team to beat, and I’d moved to the states so was fairly insulated from any banter or football talk for the most part.
Our lowest point was definitely sacking Rafa and bringing in Woy, then the two years with Kenny were a bit banteriffic in places - but United are now on a solid 10-year run of nothing but absolute comic banter shenanigans, and at least we never had that.
The level of similitude between these two clubs is striking. But they are like the + and the - in a magnet. Whenever we are good, they are a bit shite, and then the opposite happens as well. When we win, they lose. When we lose, they win. When they have a settled board and a great manager, we haven’t, and then it’s us who become stable and performant, and they go through a row of boom-bust cycles.
It’s weird.
The meaning of context is entirely lost on United fans.
For example , they say that Klopp finished 8th in his first season , 6th … Hence they point it out as proof that any incoming manager should be given time. They failed to realise that Liverpool had a crumbling squad under Brendan. Klopp carried a lot of Brendan era players for his initial seasons as well before getting money to spend. Klopp earned the right to demand money for transfers.
It’s totally opposite to United throwing a bunch of money to managers and then relying on an off season for other teams to say “man utd are back”
Oh they’re back all right…wayyy back
He finished 8th and took a very flawed team to two finals that year - including beating United in the QF a good Dortmund team in the Semis of the EL. It was plain to see from the start the style he was implementing, and several of the players who were improving under him.
The following year, he took us to 4th, and the year after that to the CL final, winning the CL the year after that. Clear progression and improvement year over year - literally the opposite to all of their managers since Fergie. Moyes didn’t last a full season as they were abysmal. Van Gaal comes inn and tightens things up year 1, brings in a fuckload of high priced players and they look like dogshit year 2, finish outside the CL places but win the FA cup. Mourinho comes in and the win two cups his first season, second season they finish second in the league (miles behind City), and third season they implode. Ole comes in, they look better for a bit, his first full season they finish 3rd, miles behind us, largely due to everyone else having a shit season. The following season was the covid-shortened season, where the stadiums were empty and they could just play counter attack football all the time. They finished second again (miles behind city) and got to the EL final only to be beaten on pens. The next season they implode.
Now here we are with ETH, his first season they looked better than under Ole/Ragnick, he wins the league cup and they finish 3rd (miles behind city), again largely due to the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs having down seasons. Now he’s finding it hard at the beginning of his second season, and if history is anything to go by, he won’t be here much longer.
The comparisons to Klopp are moronic.