Nail. Head. I'm okay w/ keeping Mourinho in the short term, but absolutely only if we are setting up longer term plans. If we aren't, then we'd be better off just shitcanning him and playing out the season w/ Carrick. There isn't a huge fire except the one of his creation. We are a little old and a little under-invested in youth/talent and over-invested in old trash, but those can be fixed. We have enough talent to play well and win, but if we don't AND we ******** our relationship with Pogba/Martial no amount of stability of keeping one manager is worth needing to start over, talent/recruitment wise.
https://trainingground.guru/articles/what-man-utd-can-learn-from-barcelona-about-culture Great read on the role culture can play in success and why United would be best served returning to our attacking roots.
Yep - awesome Reminds me of many of the discussions that went on about All Black Rugby between our low points of 1999-2007
Di Maria’s comments about Man Utd come to mind pretty regularly. When he came here he quickly saw that everything was a business, not a family. It was commercially focussed not football-centric, they signed him for shirt sales more than anything else. That same website above has an article and a link to a podcast interview with Mike Phelan about how things were done under SAF. It’s a great listen. He describes the backroom staff as a team in and of itself, but specifically says that everyone in that team was ‘Sir Alex Ferguson’. I’ll always blame Moyes for dismantling this club more than anything, by ripping up that infrastructure as he did. So much knowledge gone in one fell swoop.
This can't be emphasized enough. Moyes was a disaster for the club both in the idea and, of course, in the execution. Ferguson left us a squad that needed retooling but he also left us a structure that had worked for years. Moyes ripped that up. Fukkin hell that Moyes -- who had never won a single trophy -- had any defenders at the time, one of whom lurks here to this day.
Stats dump with some interesting league-wide details, that also spells bad news for United. https://differentgame.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/stats-dump-the-state-after-eight/ Basically, based on xG, we are actually 2 pts ahead of where we "deserve" to be. It also highlights Pogba's elite figures. Our xG as a team is pretty bad so far. 12.51 total, of which Pogba a midfielder, is responsible for 3.78 or 30% of our total xG is coming from someone with responsibility in build up, defense and playmaking. Speaking of playmaking, he's also among the league's top players for xA at 1.32. If you consider xG+A he's responsible for 40% of our total xG. This from a player pundits and fans alike think is a) having a rough start to the season and b) not trying hard enough. Before you say it, no, penalties are not included in these figures. ********ing incredible. By comparison, Aguero, who we all would consider to have started the season like a house on fire, is responsible for 30% of Citeh's output. So the form attacker in the best attacking team in the league that only plays with one central striker has xG+A of 6.67 and Pogba, a midfielder who plays for a team with HALF as many total xG, has xG+A of 5.31. If we can get a proper manager in here, there's so much potential in this team to be unlocked.
This often happens in corporate restructuring. They basically sacked all the people who knew how the product and culture worked. Then they replaced them with no-elite performers from outside the culture who lacked the respect
The problem with high performance culture is that it is very difficult to achieve once you lost it. For instance in New Zealand we knew we wanted to attack as that was our DNA. But attacking is very harder - and even harder against champion teams who play conservative tactics. So only deciding to attack wasn't enough. We needed the players who could create a foundation for attacking, but also players who understood when to attack, or how to create an opportunity to attack. IMO this is one of the things peak Barca excelled at. So they worked a lot on how to create the right moment for attack - but this takes you all the way back to player culture. We needed a generation of young players who were committed to playing a certain attacking way, and a culture which encouraged them for grass roots. Especially one that rewarded attacking play. Although this becomes about the NZ player culture in general, and not about one club, a key lesson is that such a culture is a strategic advantage if you create it. For instance, other sides cannot easily attack because you cannot ask guys to pull relentless attacking football out of their arses under pressure if it is not instinctive to them. So of course how the culture often goes wrong is you get a run of bad results, and then you get expediency or cover your arse tactics, sacked manager, firefighting etc This is really all the crap Arsenal has been grappling with in terms of ending the tired/failed Wenger culture and trying to achieve genuine high performance. I think the main challenge as usual is what happens if there is a run of bad results Bayern may be an example of a team where the elite performance culture is dying due to failed renewal.
The importance of structure beyond the manager, beyond the players, beyond the first team is so important. There's not actually any common trait we could say youngsters at the club are being taught over the last decade beyond "Man United is a big club" which is ********ing pointless. We are utterly rudderless.
Mou is due to meet the with Ed and maybe the board supposedly ahead of a scheduled board meeting. Ideally they realise that the manager/player bond is permanently broken primarily due to Mou public comments on players and sack him. If they don't they should at least put him on notice that further public player criticism will get him the sack, hopefully on an behaviour based HR nature to try and limit the payout.
Yes exactly A big thing we focussed on NZ was going round the schools and defining an NZ way of playing, that the NZRFU wanted to see - so that the attacking culture was instilled at grass roots. Schoolboy rugby is what the entire pyramid is based on. A bit like what happened with the german football revolution. Of course its different for an english club - especially where you don't have like the spanish year groups you can call on But empowering the young guys to take risks is key One issue is that the EPL culturally does not really reward creative/attacking players - they are constantly attacked or pilloried.
Yup. There's also a penalty for people who are original. Do something different, stand out from the crowd? Get hammered. ********ing stupid.
I think it’s perfectly rational to hate someone that used us to escape Madrid and get a pay bump, gave little effort for the team while he collected paychecks, forced a move, and then shit talked the club and city.
That man sounds just awful. But we were talking about Di Maria. The man who clearly gave plenty of effort for half his time here but was horribly used, in a team with zero vitality or verve where the give and go passing and dynamism he tried to bring would be batted away with every 50 yard floaty Rooney ball out to Valencia. Clearly having a gang of burglars try to smash their way through your doors and windows with scaffolding poles while at home with your wife and young child isn’t for everyone. But it’s the closest to an organised attack he ever got at Utd. He stopped ‘caring’ as the club clearly wasn’t looking out for him, much as it didn’t look out for Wilf. Loyalty is not something you demand, it’s something you command. And the reasons he gave, that Wilf gave, that Mkhi gave, are absolutely valid even if you hate him for acting on them. Otherwise they’ll be added to by the reasons that Martial, Pogba and De Gea give.
on this topic i know people will say you overdefend him and all that but quite frankly most of Pogba's detractors don't even know what kind of player he is or what to expect from him or what they even expect from him. is he a DLP? a metronome? an AM? most people don't have a clue. he's a midfielder who came at a goalscorer's price tag. the fact that he can have a good goal output is actually working against him because his actual numbers aren't in the 15 - 20 range. the aforementioned versatility is working against him in the minds of the ignorant as they expect him to be everything at once. in some ways he is trying and being asked/forced to do that as well. meanwhile someone like Iniesta who never had high goal numbers never got criticised for that or at all for the most part. mostly due to media image and being "likeable" and Barça being "likeable" but it is what it is
https://www.skysports.com/football/...mourinho-regret-i-want-to-work-with-him-again sounds familiar...
My theory on Mou is that as a late baby boomer himself he was good at managing early millenials, for whom many personalities such as competitive footballers would have more gen x type traits which would clash less (eg Carrick, Zlatan, Drogba, Terry). Late millenials heading towards gen z, even competitive footballers, have far more classic millenial traits and the longer Mou has been managing the more he has had to deal with some of those (Pogba, Hazard, Shaw, Martial, Rashford etc.). Boomers having issues managing late millenials is something you see a lot elsewhere and in business. The millenials won't change. Sadly as Mou still shows with the recent example of him calling out Rashford/McT as being scared (which is akin to the serious crime to a millenial of disliking a post in front of their peer group) Mou won't it seems change either.
Hazard doesn't actually want to play for Mourinho. He just wants to get paid. He was trying to use Madrid and they said ******** no so now he's trying to use United.
His transfer was a more for commercial purposes to me. He came and saw it as that and decided he will bounce after one season. Maybe if we showed him what he came here thinking (that it's a family) he would be here to this day
https://www.skysports.com/football/...jose-mourinho-understands-man-utds-traditions seems like everyone is playing their small violin