Good news for Spurs fans

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's been given a three year contract at Man U.

[Gerontophile]

Damn. I was hoping they'd choose Alex McLeish.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I'm so happy.

[elguapo4]

Hard work starts now, there's a lot of dead wood who can be sent on their way this summer, Darmian, Valencia, Mata (unfortunately) and there's a lot of positions need filling and strengthening, both full backs,centre back and centre and right midfield to start and he needs to tie down De Gea as well.

[Jah Womble]

To be honest, I was never that fearful of Poch going to United - it was an all-too predictable media-frenzy, mainly orchestrated by ex-players or those who still cannot see beyond some kind of Old Trafford-entitlement.

My greater concern is Real, but, y'know, what will be will be. A change - whene'er that might be - could even do us some good.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

To be honest, I was never that fearful of Poch going to United - it was an all-too predictable media-frenzy, mainly orchestrated by ex-players or those who still cannot see beyond some kind of Old Trafford-entitlement.

I just kind of assumed it was people who wanted to pick the next man utd manager, like they picked the last one. I don't understand why pochettino would leave spurs, If he was going to do so, he should have done so last summer when it was clear he wasn't going to have any money whatsoever to spend on players, and they were going to be cunting around in wembley for the foreseeable future, He's weathered all that shite, He would be crazy to go anywhere else. He's at a club where he's the best manager in living memory, and spurs have changed completely under his management, he's got them this far, he'd be mad to go anywhere else. there's very little wrong with spurs that couldn't be fixed by getting their hands on a decent midfield passer, someone like Modric, because not every team can be broken down by running, no matter how organized you are about it.

The thing is that it's reached a point where there are no coaches jobs outside of England that are better jobs than the one he has. The Manager at Bayern Munich, PSG, Real madrid are generally an afterthought, the Juventus Job is something that Italians aspire to, but I don't see what is in it for non-italians. It's like being the Duke of Parma or something. And I don't know if he's really the sort of manager for Barcelona, which again isn't really the sort of club culture that suits him. Clubs on a comparable financial level to spurs on the continent invariably are all about licking the arse of some awful gobshite like Perez or Karl heinz.

He'd be a fool to think about going anywhere else, and he's fortunate to be at a relatively stable club, where people don't automatically want to burn you out of your house as some sort of paedophile if you don't win the title every year, but instead are happy if you can demonstrate progress, within the limits of reality. That's rare these days.

[Sam]

Plus Madrid have got Zidane back, which probably scotched those rumours.

The main thing keeping him at Spurs for the moment now is the fact that he appears to be in possession of all of his own marbles, and therefore isn't going to touch his country's national team job with someone else's bargepole.

On Solskjĉr, I'm simultaneously delighted and a little uncertain. But whatever happens at least we've got someone I really like in charge for the foreseeable future. That will count for a lot when you put the clocks forward and the (UK) lunchtime kick offs have me getting out of bed at 8:30.

[scratchmonkey]

As I understand it, his time at Espanyol has meant that Barcelona is a non-starter.

Anyway, OGS for United just makes too much sense at this point, plus I suspect that he's the sort of personality that makes it easier for them to appoint a Director of Football, which I highly suspect will be happening over the summer. It will be interesting to see if LVG is correct and Ole has reaped the benefits of Mourinho's defensive drilling and whether that regresses in the future.

[Jah Womble]

He's at a club where he's the best manager in living memory...

Hold on there! I remember Bill Nick - and I'm living. (Well, at a stretch.)

Agree with your main points.

[Snake Plissken]

I heard OGS's appointment described as "an unavoidable mistake" and I agree with that. I don't think he's the right guy but there is no way that you can't give him the job.

[EIM]

What a fuck up this is. My position before I went away was similar to what Snake said. There's no way he's the best man for the job, but they had to offer it to him. That's the danger of appointing a caretaker manager: if they do well, you have to give them the job. But Woodward managed to fuck up something that was essentially an easy win. All he had to do was wait until the end of the season as promised, give Solskjaer the job if deserved, which it probably would have been, and everyone would be onside for once. As it is he - in an act of tremendous stupidity - offered the job to a manager coming off two defeats and with a very difficult run coming up, and suddenly the new manager of Manchester United has lost 7 in 9 or whatever it is. Solskjaer is looking woefully out of his depth, and has resorted to carting the corpse of Ferguson around like Weekend At Fergie's or getting the players to train at The Cliff in a desperate attempt to arrest the slide, while the players have retreated back to Mourinho-era cunt mode. Pogba is playing up, Martial has done nothing for months, Matic is immobile and useless again and even De Gea is playing so poorly that Romero is now a realistic option. it's painful. The fans are turning on owners and Woodward again, Solskjaer won't see out next season, and absolutely nothing changes. It's only because Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs have decided they're done with winning, allied with our run from December to February, that has kept us in the hunt for fourth, but there's a strong case to be made that CL qualification is the last thing the club needs. If only we hadn't beaten PSG away...

The Pochettino-Solskajer binary is an interesting one, like those were the only two choices. There's a whole world out there, but the board, despite promising to undertake a thorough search for the new manager, came up with these two, and one was never really an option. It's typical, witless Glazer era decision making. As is appointing Mike Phelan as technical director should it happen, and getting Paul Scholes in as coach. David Moyes was roundly criticised for bringing in his own backroom staff when he joined despite it being the correct thing to do, and the thing that every new manager does. The issue was that the ones he brought in, that little old fella and Lou Carpenter from Neighbours, were shit. Solskjaer on the other hand is filling his coaching staff with morons with "United DNA". We need to cut this sentimental Bootroomesque bullshit and get in a proper manager, assemble a proper structure, and let the football side lead the commercial side rather than vice versa. But that's 100% not going to happen under the Glazers or Woodward. So instead we'll keep having these three year cycles of farcical under-performance before starting all over again.

Still, we'll look back at all this and laugh when we're the best team in the world under Saudi ownership and there are dead journalists and tortured season ticket holders scattered across the forecourt.

[ursus arctos]

It is good to have you back, man

[ursus arctos]

Would MBS still buy United?

Seems to me that he might hesitate after being burned for a cool 450 million by the dodgy "Leonardo"

[EIM]

Apparently there have been talks recently, but they've stalled. I don't really think the Glazers are arsed about selling, and I wouldn't be surprised if MBS ended up buying an easier option instead. We're saddled with these leeches for the foreseeable.

[ursus arctos]

They are horrific owners and Woodward has become the soullessly efficient factotum who feeds the despots' every whim.

[EIM]

I'm hoping we get bought by Ming the Merciless or Darth Vader or someone. If we're going to go evil, then let's go full evil.

Even the DoF thing, which a lot of fans seem to get excited about, is a waste of time. Woodward is inserting a DoF as a buffer to draw criticism, as opposed to giving them any sort of autonomy and control over the football side of the business (which given the calibre of candidate may be just as well, but that's beside the point). The issue is that Woodward sees himself in that role. He thinks that's what he should be doing, not just signing up official swingball partners. That's why we'll end up with Woodward telling Phelan what to tell Solskjaer, as Solskjaer sends Pogba to live in a Collyhurst semi detached so he knows what it's like to be Nobby Stiles or something fucking insane. There is no one at the club with the faintest clue about football. No one. And I compare this to City and Liverpool, and look at how fans are sweating over which of the two is going to win what this season, and it's kind of cute. Because this nightmare is just the slightest glimpse into how the next ten years will pan out.

Ah well. We had our fun I suppose.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Hmm, Man utd 2018 under Jose Mourinho
P 17 W7 D5 L5 F26 A 26 Pts 26
Man utd under solksjaer
P18 W12 D2 L4 F37 A 24 Pts 38

I must admit I don't really understand EIM's angst and fury. Man Utd have real problems, and it''s going to take quite a while to fix them, and they're never going to fucking get anywhere if people start throwing their toys out of the fucking pram every time those problems raise their head. Solksjaer's main problem seems to be that starting well meant that everyone went back to thinking that everything was fucking fine, and that man utd were going to win every single game until the end of the season. When it turns out that that was an unreasonable fantasy people are losing their shit.

Man Utd's season under solskjaer can also be explained almost entirely through resources. Solksjaer inherited a squad primarily built around tall immobile players who defended deep and had no constructive plan for what to do with the ball. the average player covered 9.5 km per game. Solksjaer wants to play a high tempo, pressing game in midfield and based on possession and everyone averaging 10.5 km, like they used to. Things went very well for a surprisingly long time. This didn''t mean however that every problem was now fixed, asOnly a subset of players in the squad are able to play this way, and after three months of playing two games a week, those players eventually got exhausted and injured, and before you know it, you're facing barcelona having fished Fred out of the bin, and introduced him to young scott. It is not ole gunnar solksjaers fault that the replacement for Matic is Scott McTominay, or that the replacement for herrera is Fred. It is not his fault that the current squad can't manage 10.5 km in every game throughout the season. I would fucking love to know what any other manager on earth would have done against Barcelona with a midfield trio that had played together once before, made up of Pogba, fred and mcTominay. The end of the season can't come soon enough for man utd, they are shattered.

It takes years to fix this sort of problem, and the failure to realise this is the single biggest problem facing Man Utd. Even more than the cretinous Ed Woodward, who gets swept along by this bullshit. Any half decent manager who is going to do a proper job is a) going to have a clear system of play with and without the ball b) be taking over a club likely unsuited to his way of play. In the first season he is trying to get across his way of playing while assessing who to keep, and who to get rid of. In the second season he brings in more players better suited to his style of play, and things start to develop. In his third season he gets to the point where he has two players in each position that can play the way he wants, and then you're ready to compete consistently at the top level. This is basically what man utd did between 2003-4 and 2005-6. This is exactly what Jurgen Klopp did at Liverpool. The process was truncated for Guardiola because he started out with much better players. The process for spurs actually started two years before Pochettino arrived with Andre Villas boas.

Along the way you are going to lose games. If you are going to focus too much on the games you lose, you lose sight of the overall progress you are making, and you fire a manager, rip everything up, start over again, and everything becomes a mess, and you become 1990's LIverpool. Solksjaer started out 8 points behind arsenal, 11 points behind chelsea and 13 points behind spurs. Mourinho really fucked things up good and proper, like he was always going to. I'd put the blame where it primarily belongs, and be patient, and always try and remember, Are man utd playing badly because the manager is a child murderer out to steal my joy, or are man utd playing badly because they have a small squad with a lot of injuries, and the gap between their first choice player, and the player they have to field is meaningfully large, and what impact does that have on the teams ability to operate as a collective?

[Janik]

Solskjaer sends Pogba to live in a Collyhurst semi detached so he knows what it's like to be Nobby Stiles or something fucking insane.

LOL, as I believe ver kids say these days [said ten years ago].

[EIM]

I didn't expect that you would understand it, Berbs. I guess what it comes down to is that I have no confidence in Woodward signing the players Solskjaer needs, no confidence in the players we have performing consistently enough to have a season any better than this one, and no confidence in Solskjaer being good enough to manage all this. That's not to say I don't support him, I do, I desperately want it to work out, but it's a poor appointment, and absolutely emblematic of the post-Ferguson Glazer-era.

I guess I just want something more substantial than sending the players to train at the Cliff and inviting Alex Ferguson on the team coach. Solskjaer doesn't even use the manager's parking space ffs. Grow a pair, you little wimp. You're the manager of Manchester United, fucking act like it and stop being so fucking meek.

[Sporting]

stop being so fucking meek.

"I did my best while alive..."

[EIM]

We're fucking shite. The players aren't even pretending to give a fuck any more. So much for Mourinho being the cause of all the club's ills. But it's ok, we've got two wins in twelve since we beat PSG away, thanks to the former manager of Norway's second best club. And with Darren Fletcher set to be Technical Director, another glorious season awaits us.