The Race for 4th

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7th best finish in our top flight history:

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You can't compare seasons with 2 points a win and higher against 3 and lower. That said, 7th top 4 finish in 13 seasons is good going historically.
 
In theory Utd can always change very quickly because they have the finances to buy themselves out of a hole. All the talk is that Ten Haag will want to have his team set up as a high pressing team, so for this to happen he will look to focus on athletic players who are capable of performing this, so the cost to utd would be to ditch the players that can't perform this. T
Good luck with that Ten Haag.

They have a "team" with entitled superstars who really will not be keen on that.

Poch got 2 very good seasons of high pressing football. A lot of the players were young, athletic, hungry, bought into the tactics. Rose, Walker, Dier, Kane, Eriksen, Son. A lot of them bought on the cheap or from the Academy. Easier to mould.

And then these players get burnt out. Dier got injuries. Rose ditto. You can't keep it up.

It's not easy to convert to. It takes a big change in outlook, lots of discipline. If you get 3 players pressing the guy on the ball you can get stuffed. If they beat the press at that point, they will then overload you further up the pitch and suddenly the oppo have a 2 on one or just the keeper to beat.

As you said, money not the issue. They've got buckets, but they will need such a massive about turn. Loads of players out, loads of players in. All takes time.
 
It'll take years for an inexperienced coach like Ten Hag to turn Man United around.
I doubt any coach will be given long enough to make them a constant force in football again. They won't let a coach stick around if they finished 6th or 7th for 2 years. Even we wouldn't tbh.
 
I can't see ten Hag being given the time necessary to get United playing the way he wants - they'll start off with good intentions, but panic when there's no sign of improvement after 18 months.
 
Good luck with that Ten Haag.

They have a "team" with entitled superstars who really will not be keen on that.

Poch got 2 very good seasons of high pressing football. A lot of the players were young, athletic, hungry, bought into the tactics. Rose, Walker, Dier, Kane, Eriksen, Son. A lot of them bought on the cheap or from the Academy. Easier to mould.

And then these players get burnt out. Dier got injuries. Rose ditto. You can't keep it up.

It's not easy to convert to. It takes a big change in outlook, lots of discipline. If you get 3 players pressing the guy on the ball you can get stuffed. If they beat the press at that point, they will then overload you further up the pitch and suddenly the oppo have a 2 on one or just the keeper to beat.

As you said, money not the issue. They've got buckets, but they will need such a massive about turn. Loads of players out, loads of players in. All takes time.

It is possible if the coach is good, see City and if the squad is built with the right profile of players and is also constantly churned, also see City. Add LFC to that too although it does help when over half the team are all taking B2 agonists to "legally" boost their performance.

It even took Guardiola time to implement his ideas too and he had the easiest of transitions with an environment pre-set up 2yrs before his arrival (the Barca backroom team was literally scooped up as a whole and repositioned at City).

If Ten Haag is good then he can most certainly have the team playing better as a collective. For me the real challenge is what's he like at building a squad from a low base, he may have a pressing philosophy but he walked into a squad who have been training that way from the age of 6yrs old at Ajax, a philosophy that's the clubs DNA. In addition, what's he like at player identification. Overmars was credited at building that Ajax team, so Man U I presume will be leaning on Ten Haag a lot to get this aspect right, even though they have started to change a lot at Utd behind the scenes in the past 6 months.

Man U have never really recovered from the lack of fitness conditioning under Mourinho, there was a focus by Ole to address this, just as there was by Nuno but the reality was that in both cases the underlying numbers showed they had little effect on how the team ran/pressed/pressured with just a small uptick was achieved.
 
Not worried about United in the slightest. Proper graveyard football club since Fergie left. Will be 20 years before they are successful like that again. Football comes round in cycles and United are basically what Liverpool we’re in the 90s. The odd smaller trophy every 4/5 years and finishing in the top 7
 
For me the real challenge is what's he like at building a squad from a low base, he may have a pressing philosophy but he walked into a squad who have been training that way from the age of 6yrs old at Ajax, a philosophy that's the clubs DNA. In addition, what's he like at player identification. Overmars was credited at building that Ajax team, so Man U I presume will be leaning on Ten Haag a lot to get this aspect right, even though they have started to change a lot at Utd behind the scenes in the past 6 months.
It's a big job no question
 
But they are the same players that gave the faith to many that they were a top 4 team in the first place, why not, what's changed?

Is it because they were players bought were just ad-hoc profiles, meaning the team wouldn't function or be a coherent fit as a consequence? This is what has been their issue IMO for a very long time and why when you watch them play they don't look a good side.

I still think that way to many people still look at the name and the money paid for the name rather than the fit and the profile of the player for the team (Bentancur & Kulu are perfect examples of what the opposite is).

Whilst Nuno wasn't an appointment any of us were raving about my comfort blanket about his appointment was that we were no longer managed by the dinosaur. That in itself gave me a more positive vibe for the season than had we still had JM. (It wasn't lost on me however that his appointment was very late in the day, combined with Paratici barely in his position a matter of days and the farce that preceded the recruitment process made it difficult to be genuinely positive).

In theory Utd can always change very quickly because they have the finances to buy themselves out of a hole. All the talk is that Ten Haag will want to have his team set up as a high pressing team, so for this to happen he will look to focus on athletic players who are capable of performing this, so the cost to utd would be to ditch the players that can't perform this. That's likely to include the sale of many players, which will all be low value or loans them out. But they can afford this. As too can they afford to bring new players in.

The difference here is most "normal" clubs to do this takes about 2, 3 or 4 seasons.

Yeah look I get all this, I personally didn't think they'd challenge for the league (actually had them a distant 4th) because they weren't a coherent team which was clear from the previous season and I thought that having Ronaldo would actually cause them issues because of the fact that you need to always play through him to get him involved in the game.

However last season they got by a lot of the time via individual brilliance, barely any structure but they'd just overpower teams with individual quality from the likes of Cavani, Bruno, Pogba, Greenwood etc...so it wasn't against the realms of possibilities that since they added Ronaldo and Sancho and adding a World Class CB they'd be there or thereabouts.

Coupled with the fact that Spurs and Woolwich were probably their nearest challengers, obviously we had our problems with the manager search and eventually getting Nuno, Kane wanting to leave and our squad was a bit shit and Woolwich having brought all those youngsters they were predicted about 6th, basically I didn't expect either of us to be anywhere near Utd come the end of the season - I'm glad you were feeling positive about our chances under Nuno because I wasn't, I was more hopeful.

Absolutely no-one could have envisaged that absolute disaster that went on this season with them, the infighting, the lack of direction, the culture, players not caring or turning up, players getting arrested etc...it's been a nightmare season for them but that doesn't mean people were wrong to predict them to come 4th because naturally they were the most logical choice.
 
I can't see ten Hag being given the time necessary to get United playing the way he wants - they'll start off with good intentions, but panic when there's no sign of improvement after 18 months.
I think Utd have been patient with their managers, the problem has been their decision making on why were they.

Jose played the shittest football they have seen in years, their fans hated it and complained about it but they stuck with him, let him spend a fortune and let him pursue down a road that only teams like Stoke and Burnley were happy to be playing. With every passing week, they were moving further and further away from where they wanted to be but the Club were blind to the path they were on.

They repeated this with OGS. I think he was the right man as a placeholder/interim coach. He heeled the fanbase to a degree and the results picked up even if the performances didn't. But they gave him a contract!!! When instead they should have been looking for an elite manager (and looking to rebuild the club behind the scenes like their recruitment dept, academy and plan more strategically behind a vision of how they wanted to be in the future).

We could go further back too but they did chop and change with Moyes then Van Gaal.

They haven't had the football knowledge to know that they have been heading in the wrong direction for ages, they repeat the same mistakes over and over again. They have enough individual talent in the squad to pull out improbable results, the classic example was when we played them. We outplayed them the entire match but on that day Ronaldo did what he's capable of doing (but not sustaining, which is why he doesn't do that every week, if ever in the past 5yrs or so in his career). That game was a microcosm for what they are built on, which is sand, and why we finished 13pts higher than them with a GD 29 better too.

If they had any football knowledge in the decision-making seats then they wouldn't have hired any of these managers in the first place, let alone hung onto them and let them build a team buying whatever big name footballer happened to be on the market.

Time should be afforded to managers who are clearly making the team play well, better than the sum of their parts, playing to the managers' instructions by demonstrating repeatable patterns to their game. Even if they aren't getting results (see Poch's first season, see Klopp's first 2 seasons, see Pep's first season).

Most fans can buy into a journey, and as Woolwich have proved even buy into a manufactured journey. At no point since Fergie leaving have Utd been on a journey, it's all been about individual moments delivered by a world-class player doing something every 4 games whilst adding nothing to the team in the other three.
 
Yeah look I get all this, I personally didn't think they'd challenge for the league (actually had them a distant 4th) because they weren't a coherent team which was clear from the previous season and I thought that having Ronaldo would actually cause them issues because of the fact that you need to always play through him to get him involved in the game.

However last season they got by a lot of the time via individual brilliance, barely any structure but they'd just overpower teams with individual quality from the likes of Cavani, Bruno, Pogba, Greenwood etc...so it wasn't against the realms of possibilities that since they added Ronaldo and Sancho and adding a World Class CB they'd be there or thereabouts.

Coupled with the fact that Spurs and Woolwich were probably their nearest challengers, obviously we had our problems with the manager search and eventually getting Nuno, Kane wanting to leave and our squad was a bit shit and Woolwich having brought all those youngsters they were predicted about 6th, basically I didn't expect either of us to be anywhere near Utd come the end of the season - I'm glad you were feeling positive about our chances under Nuno because I wasn't, I was more hopeful.

Absolutely no-one could have envisaged that absolute disaster that went on this season with them, the infighting, the lack of direction, the culture, players not caring or turning up, players getting arrested etc...it's been a nightmare season for them but that doesn't mean people were wrong to predict them to come 4th because naturally they were the most logical choice.
I honestly think they've been shit since Fergie left, there is nothing about them.

I do acknowledge individual quality and what that can bring to individual games but I always put team quality (ethos, ethics, structure, belief and style of play etc) ahead of this. They may also get one random "successful" out of this approach but a club like Utd should be challenging every year (I'm obviously delighted they aren't!!) and to do this requires them to have an elite manager at the helm (and team behind him too), playing football that's sustainable, that has the oppo looking towards their next fixture because they know they can't beat them before a ball is even kicked (just as they used to be, just as LFC and City are now).

I wasn't overconfident, just totally enjoying not having a dinosaur in charge destroying the club from the inside.
 
It is possible if the coach is good, see City and if the squad is built with the right profile of players and is also constantly churned, also see City. Add LFC to that too although it does help when over half the team are all taking B2 agonists to "legally" boost their performance.

It even took Guardiola time to implement his ideas too and he had the easiest of transitions with an environment pre-set up 2yrs before his arrival (the Barca backroom team was literally scooped up as a whole and repositioned at City).

If Ten Haag is good then he can most certainly have the team playing better as a collective. For me the real challenge is what's he like at building a squad from a low base, he may have a pressing philosophy but he walked into a squad who have been training that way from the age of 6yrs old at Ajax, a philosophy that's the clubs DNA. In addition, what's he like at player identification. Overmars was credited at building that Ajax team, so Man U I presume will be leaning on Ten Haag a lot to get this aspect right, even though they have started to change a lot at Utd behind the scenes in the past 6 months.

Man U have never really recovered from the lack of fitness conditioning under Mourinho, there was a focus by Ole to address this, just as there was by Nuno but the reality was that in both cases the underlying numbers showed they had little effect on how the team ran/pressed/pressured with just a small uptick was achieved.

Whilst ManU have cash to burn I think its a huge change to their squad needed - not helped by the fact that they are very close to HAVING to do something major to their stadium which is now probably the worst in top half of PL (and maybe all the PL) as no money has been spent to maintain it or improve it since Glazers bought, It has no corporate facilities and even Everton with all their trouble have a bigger match day revenue I think. Stadium could be a huge diversion for them.

But coming back to the squad rebuild, just look at their forwards :

1 Ronaldo (age 37) - still a top goalscorer but unable to press or make much contribution to general play

2 Marcus Rashford (age 24) - massive decline in form over last couple of years

3 Mason Greenwood (age 21) - Suspended pending court case. Will ManU want to keep him ?

4 Jesse Lingard (age 29) - Out of contract I believe and wants to leave

5 Edinson Cavani (age 35) - Maybe out of contract. Probably good as off the bench now

6 Jadon Sancho (age 22) - Yet to show he can adapt to PL after Bundesliga.

7 Shola Shortire (age 18) - He and Dane Scarlett are rivals at E youth. He's made 3 appearances for ManU.


So how many forwards can they convince to join them in one transfer window ? Will they need to keep Ronaldo ? Etc.
 
Whilst ManU have cash to burn I think its a huge change to their squad needed - not helped by the fact that they are very close to HAVING to do something major to their stadium which is now probably the worst in top half of PL (and maybe all the PL) as no money has been spent to maintain it or improve it since Glazers bought, It has no corporate facilities and even Everton with all their trouble have a bigger match day revenue I think. Stadium could be a huge diversion for them.

But coming back to the squad rebuild, just look at their forwards :

1 Ronaldo (age 37) - still a top goalscorer but unable to press or make much contribution to general play

2 Marcus Rashford (age 24) - massive decline in form over last couple of years

3 Mason Greenwood (age 21) - Suspended pending court case. Will ManU want to keep him ?

4 Jesse Lingard (age 29) - Out of contract I believe and wants to leave

5 Edinson Cavani (age 35) - Maybe out of contract. Probably good as off the bench now

6 Jadon Sancho (age 22) - Yet to show he can adapt to PL after Bundesliga.

7 Shola Shortire (age 18) - He and Dane Scarlett are rivals at E youth. He's made 3 appearances for ManU.


So how many forwards can they convince to join them in one transfer window ? Will they need to keep Ronaldo ? Etc.
Their matchday revenue is 2nd largest in the league (behind us) so still very significant. However, I don't disagree with the sentiment. Old Trafford is a dump and more importantly isn't performing to its potential with corp money. Whilst they still have the biggest Club ground in the country, they could easily fill a 90-100k venue, so without improved facilities, they are leaving a lot of money on the table. And they will not be able to address this for at least 5yrs even if they went down the easier solution of refurb the stands one by one like Liverpool (think this is the most likely thing they will do), or +10yrs if they went the whole hogg and redeveloped an entirely new stadium. (They are on a very large plot of land so wouldn't run into anything like the difficulties we did, although they do have to navigate a railway line).

The big question mark here is whether under the current economic outlook whether they have missed the boat to do anything, the cost of money, and materials are only set to continue to increase.

Of that list I rate Greenwood as the better player, I've always rated Sancho, who was a fabulous prospect at City but for whatever reason, he's been shite at Utd (who've got the excuse of having a shite manager) but more worryingly he's been shit whenever he's played for England! Maybe this is an adjustment thing, he's gone for big money to a big club at a young age, so that's a lot to recalibrate for a young lad???

But everything still has to do with how Ten Haag wants them to play and whether the players at his disposal can play his way. I think the only positive to come out of Ragnick's appointment might be his ability to have pre-marked those players out, after all this has been his blueprint in Germany. What will be interesting is to see if he's left having to compromise whilst they address the squad with the right profile of players if they can't execute in one window!
 
The best thing about Woolwich's capitulation is that it was all recorded by Amazon, and we'll get to see it up close with back stage passes.
:king:
It's wonderful.

They were playing up to the Amazon cameras all season.

Was all a massive hype train (crash).

No way they have that sort of energy/adrenaline about them next season.

Only thing that got them so far.
 
You can't compare seasons with 2 points a win and higher against 3 and lower. That said, 7th top 4 finish in 13 seasons is good going historically.

I suspect those figures have been adjusted accordingly.... 2.31ppg wouldn't be possible in 1961 otherwise.


Not sure what the final column is meant to mean though.
 
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