Fair play to Ole, he has put together a very good squad and one I feel is more than capable of challenging for the title this season, especially if Kane stays at Spurs. The atmosphere at United is one of optimism and smiles etc so he’s doing a decent enough job 👏👍 I’m man enough to admit that.
Where does this current squad compare to the later ones in SAFs time which were good but carried over the line by his genius rather than 25 world class players. I think what we have now is as good as what we had in 12/13 in terms of talent if not quite winning mentality. Though saying that we do have a few World Cup winners in there and ones who have picked up other trophies in recent years so we’re not quite going in raw.
Let’s take the starting line ups (keep in mind this is the 2013 version of some of these players, so very close the end of their playing careers)
DDG
Rafael
Rio
Vidic
Evra
Carrick
Cleverley
Nani
Giggs
Rooney
RVP
Vs
DDG
AWB
Varane
Maguire
Shaw
McT
Pogba
Bruno
Sancho
Rashford
Cavani
So looking at those line ups I don’t think there’s much in it.
Add the likes of Martial, Greenwood, Fred, Lindelof, Henderson, Matic etc and I think the squad is stronger than the 2012/2013 one which had the likes of Lindegaard, Buttner, Old man Scholes, Anderson, Welbeck, Jones and Smalling in it.
Agree? Or…. Disagree?
Our squad strength
posted on 20/8/21
comment by Elvis: King of Cult (U7425)
posted 50 minutes ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 10 minutes ago
I think there is a hell of a lot in it. As you say most of that team under SAF were at the end of their careers.
Ole looks to have nearly done what he was essentially hired to do which was get a team built for the future.
Can he make the next step up as a manager. Personally I don’t think he has the savvy. But we will see.
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Yep, he has done a very solid job of sorting the squad out and the direction of the club moving forwards. We look to have some promising young players looking to come through Now we will find out if he has what it takes to win the big trophies. I'd say he was got at most 2 seasons to achieve that and if not we thank him for the job he's done and look for someone who can take us on to the next level.
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I also saw a bit on MUTV the other day where it was saying that all the academy teams are now in sync in how we plan to play, so that anyone coming into the team will know exactly what his role is.
That is long overdue.
posted on 20/8/21
Eight years later and we still haven’t sorted central midfield.
posted on 20/8/21
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 25 minutes ago
comment by Elvis: King of Cult (U7425)
posted 50 minutes ago
comment by Vidicschin (U3584)
posted 10 minutes ago
I think there is a hell of a lot in it. As you say most of that team under SAF were at the end of their careers.
Ole looks to have nearly done what he was essentially hired to do which was get a team built for the future.
Can he make the next step up as a manager. Personally I don’t think he has the savvy. But we will see.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep, he has done a very solid job of sorting the squad out and the direction of the club moving forwards. We look to have some promising young players looking to come through Now we will find out if he has what it takes to win the big trophies. I'd say he was got at most 2 seasons to achieve that and if not we thank him for the job he's done and look for someone who can take us on to the next level.
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I also saw a bit on MUTV the other day where it was saying that all the academy teams are now in sync in how we plan to play, so that anyone coming into the team will know exactly what his role is.
That is long overdue.
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Yes, it is something that the likes of Ajax and Barca have been doing for a long time. It is such an obvious approach that you can't really understand why we haven't done it before.
posted on 20/8/21
comment by Jadon The King Sancho (U10026)
posted 22 minutes ago
Eight years later and we still haven’t sorted central midfield.
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YDespite spunking more than half a billion on midfielders like Angel di Maria, Mata, Hererra, Matic, Pogba,Mkhi, VDB etc.
United strategy is just spend spend spend until it works. Otherwise, spend again.
posted on 20/8/21
Intersesting fact floating about atm:
In the 302 games that the first, three, post-Ferguson managers spent in charge, United scored five goals in a single game on just two occasions.
Under Solskjaer United have scored five goals in a match in ten different fixtures during his 152 games in charge, five of which have happened in the last nine-and-a-half months of football.
Somebody is getting it right somewhere. I blame the manager.
posted on 20/8/21
comment by RB&W - Always a Legacy (U21434)
posted 2 minutes ago
Intersesting fact floating about atm:
In the 302 games that the first, three, post-Ferguson managers spent in charge, United scored five goals in a single game on just two occasions.
Under Solskjaer United have scored five goals in a match in ten different fixtures during his 152 games in charge, five of which have happened in the last nine-and-a-half months of football.
Somebody is getting it right somewhere. I blame the manager.
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Our problem under Ole has never been scoring goals - especially against sides who are stupid enough to open up against us. The problem has been winning the games that matter.
posted on 20/8/21
Scoring goals has been a problem, though. When we are on it we can absolutely batter teams. And added to those stats posted, I think we are the team that has scored 3+ in the most games over the last couple of years.
But we have a lot of games where we’ve struggled to score one or more. Hence all the dropped points. We had more 0-0 draws last season than we did under Van Gaal (5 or 6 was it?).
Scoring 15 across to games is fantastic, but we still need to score more consistently than we have.
Tbf, playing without a right hand side hasn’t helped. Should hopefully see us score more consistently now if Sancho hits the ground running.
posted on 20/8/21
*two
posted on 21/8/21
Almost 3 years and £450m spent and it would be hard not to have improved the squad.
We also still have issues with midfield and potentially CF.
posted on 22/8/21
He's only had two seasons windows so far.