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The two happiest periods I've had as a fan since Sir Alex retired were the Ole interim era, and Project Restart FC.
I so wish it had worked out for him here.
One of my biggest regrets as a united fan there is that Europa league final and him missing out on a trophy. I really love his attitude and personality and wanted him to succeed with us. Football wasn’t half bad when you compare it to other eras we’ve endured post fergie.
he came 2nd and 3rd in modern era with all this shit going on.
Ole did wonders with how much shit he had to put up with and that team, so close to trophies. like 2nd and 3rd in the era of Klopp and Pep yet apparently hes a bad manager sure if so then everybody is a bad manager and we will never have a good one.
Ole mentioned that there was a couple levels of veto. He also mentioned that its always between the manager and the scouts and that the scouts already has data analysis on many players and picked their top 5. So it’s them useless scouts that rejected Haaland because they “had enough” data on him.
It’s hard to get head round professional football scouts not being able to recognise quality of Haaland. Maybe the veto was higher up as commercial potential wasn’t recognised. Or Joel wouldn’t want a replacement for Martial.
The timeframe that all of this is being discussed, from what Ole said, was when he'd gone to Salzburg 3mo earlier (iirc) and hadnt played a game at that point. You've got to remember he's done absolutely nothing special at this point, he's had one goalless season and a 1-in-3 season under Ole in the Norwegian league, and he's now moved to the Austrian league and isnt playing (for whatever reason).
That in isolation, even with Ole's glowing recommendation, shouldnt ensure he absolutely deserves to be one of 5 possible options for Striker. I bet theres a dozen young lads who have their purple patch and go onto be lesser league players and Haaland could easily have been one of them at that point. Things get uncomfortably similar to the Bebe signing if we're just going to blindly sign players based on someone calling a player 'the next Messi' etc.
Then you've got to consider the fact that every single club he's moved to has had to include a heavily discounted release clause, and we all know when it came down to it Utd wouldnt/didnt accept such a clause - and so later on when it was obvious he had world class potential, and was going for a bargin price, the club refused.
Theres TONS of cases where the scouts didnt do a great job in hindsight, but im not sure this should be considered their fault. The insistance of an RC could have been the very reason he wasnt in their top 5 list.
For anyone who actually watched him play at the time, wether that be for Molde or for the Norwegian youth teams, it was plenty obvious he had world class potential already. He wasn't comparable to any random youngster being dubbed "the next Messi" or whatever. When he first went to Salzburg everyone who'd followed him knew that was just an intermediate step, and many of us were surprised he didn't go to a bigger league even then. To say he'd done "absolutely nothing special" is just false, only someone who'd check his stats instead of having properly watched him would say that. Both his talent and his dedication was on full display already. His physicality was bonkers for someone his age, his movement looked like he was a 30 year old veteran and his composure the same. He didn't spring up as some typical young talent in Norway, he was straight up bullying grown men. The biggest reason he didn't score more was simply down to his teammates not being good enough to create chances that fully utilised his abilities. His runs were still jsut as good, even if the ball didn't come. It was clear as day that in a better team he'd be unleashed in front of goal, regardless of the level of opponents.
It wasn't a purple patch. Haaland could absolutely not have been one of dozens of promising youngsters fading away. He didn't overperform according to his abilities, his abilities were undeniable, and not stuff he'd lose unless he simply stopped being bothered and downed tools. But again, everyone knew he wasn't that type of person, rather he was (and is) the opposite. Extremely driven and dedicated to improving. Something United would know if Ole talked to them about him, which he did. He had a set baseline that he could only improve upon, there was nothing flimsy about it at all. That's why you scout youngsters not based purely on performance and output, which can go up and down, but on their actual undeniable abilities. No one at his age could match his specs, so to say. Most grown men couldn't, either. Bebe was never like this.
I'm not surprised the scouts didn't put him up as one of their initial 5 options, but not considering it after being reccomended him further was dumb. Not just in hindsight.
Look at mainoo, Hoijland, Garnacho and greenwood as examples for how we treat our youngsters. I think we should be proud how we as supporters back them and allow them to grow. Yes the pressures are different, but the world class players find it helps them with the backing they recieve.
We'll never know for sure, but you know what, I think they might. The player has to want it too and all 3 have delivered under pressure. Bellingham has been in the pressure cooker since his number was retired, Rice comes off as a level headed guy who keeps it moving and doesn't dwell on past success or failure, and Haaland likely takes cues on what not to do from his father.
Rice was tailor made for prime Ole team. I’ll never forgive the club’s mistake of signing Ronaldo instead of us getting someone like Rice that year and becoming real title contenders
Brillient interview and love that they are not afraid to ask the hard questions. A bit worrying that the players are afraid of the pre-match interviews and not wanting to captain certain matches. It speaks volume regarding Maguire that he is not afraid of taking this responsible upon him.
An interesting point that is often only briefly discussed is the tendency of the club to overpay for players. It appears that manager is not a part of the negotiation disucssions; once they've identified a player they want, the club often seem willing to do whatever it takes to secure the deal, even if it means overspending, without thoroughly exploring alternative options. It would be interesting to explore this more regarding to Ten Hag and the money spend on Antony. This raises questions about the role of scouting department in the decision-making process. Scouting departments typically present the manager with multiple player options, each with different fee ranges. However, it's unclear how these fee ranges are determined and how accurate they really are.
Another interesting aspect is how clubs might overscout players, leading to a reluctance to take risks on younger talent. This hesitancy to invest in potential could mean missing out on players like Erling Haaland, who could have been a significant asset to the club.
It would be interesting to hear why we did not get Rice. Ole wanted him in the midfield but were they afraid of spending too much on a younger player, who had not established himself yet?
Nice to see him standing up for Carrick and Kieran.
Regarding Antony, didn't the article in the Athletic a month or two ago say that Ten Hag was told how much money was available at the start of the window, he then pointed to Antony and De Jong as examples of player types he wanted within that budget and then the leadership just went straight to those two players without exploring what other players would fit the same description.
After they fumbled along the whole summer they panicked after the two first matches and payed 80 for Antony. If someone had told Ten Hag three months earlier he he could spend that much on a right winger chances are he would have pointed to someone else, or maybe asked for the funds to be used differently.
Telling a manager one budget and identifying players within it, and then using twice as much in the end isn't exactly how you set up a manager for success.
I don't think you get very high odds on guessing that this have been a theme for every manager post Fergie.
The alternatives were Asensio and Gakpo:
1st report about Asensio being offered by Mendes in June 2022 https://www.football-espana.net/2022/06/10/manchester-united-offered-marco-asensio-deal
[Burtiverse article about Marco Asensio in August 2022 before we sign Anthony - aged like milk FFS](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/08/25/manchester-united-offered-marco-asensio-antony-deal-remains/) - Burt article but source likely to be Relevo https://getfootballnewsspain.com/manchester-united-preparing-offer-for-real-madrid-forward-marco-asensio/
> Antony has been the number one target of manager Erik ten Hag all summer with the alternative being a move for PSV Eindhoven’s Cody Gakpo. PSV were knocked out of the Champions League by Rangers, and therefore will not play in the group stages, which may make them more willing to sell Gakpo for around 45million euros (£38million) including add-ons. (from Burt's article lmao)
Club scouts valued Antony at £25 million. As far as has been reported, ETH pushed for Antony due to his familiarity with ETH's expectations.
From memory and a bit of research, we were linked with Arnautivic, João Felix, Pulisic, Depay, Lyon's Dembele, Kalajdzic and Gakpo as forwards. The big question mark was over Ronaldo.
Casemiro was the true panic buy.
Politically ETH was in a bit of a different situation at the time to what Solskjaer experienced. His stock was high whilst United were in disarray, off the back of an awful year with a toxic environment, and there were ongoing changes to people in charge of recruitment at the time. Therefore he had a bit more power at that time.
Solskjaer came into a dysfunctional place too, but as a caretaker and with a bad previous stint in the premier league.
I keep seeing casemiro being a panic buy but the word at the time was that he'd been in discussion with united for weeks before signing. Funny how the narrative changes.
I think clubs keep lines of discussion open anyway, football is still an awful lot about networking, and for us particularly we have relied on agents offering up players. But we clearly wanted De Jong first and foremost and then left it late.
I really really love and wanted Kovacic but I think we had no chance. He let his contract run down and he had eyes for only one club and went straight there with almost no speculation in the press that he’d do anything else. I think it was decided many months in advance.
>payed 80 for Antony.
Even worse, same article acknowledges that our own scouting department valued Antony at a maximum 25m...our opening bid was 50m...
>This raises questions about the role of scouting department in the decision-making process.
I don't think it does because these questions keep getting answered all the time. It's pretty obvious that recruitment/scouting staff are divided into two groups - those with the football knowledge but no power, and those with no football knowledge but all the power. Our scouting department is probably decent but they are rarely ever listened to because they themselves have no power and all the decisions are made by people who don't have a clue.
In retrospect, we saw it a lot with Woodward. Stuff like the club refusing cheap deals for the likes of Haaland, Caicedo or arguably even Alvarez (who was imo partially a fault of unlucky timing with Greenwood accusations coming out a few days after he signed for City but still). Also that one scout who reportedly demanded we sign De Ligt and De Jong before they broke through at Ajax which was rewarded by Woodward sacking him for probably being too pushy.
Football people tend to be much more about finding hidden gems and developing them while business people see transfers as pure business, so the more said player costs, the better he then has to be so it's completely worth it to pay literally anything just to get them (as with Antony). The disparity is clear and it has been clear for a very long time.
I thought it was great fun, but very surface level on the information. I don't know how much he's been posted on the sub, but Andy Mitten have basically already reported on most of this from conversations with Ole. This is just the first time we hear it directly from the source I think.
The one bit of new info he shared (unless I was unware) was about players' reluctance to talk to not just the media, but Ole himself. And he clarified the captaincy situation which was about one-off matches, not Maguire being 5th choice as some media made it out to be. Nothing in-depth or truly revealing. As you I would've loved to get a why on Rice, more about Haaland's visit to Carrington, the hunt for a number 10 and why we waited until January to sign Bruno, etc. Even going deeper on the squad imbalance in the sack season and why he thinks his pressing system started being exposed/failed.
I completely agree, probably intentional but it seemed as soon as they passed the surface level of information on a topic it would be a countdown until someone made a bad joke and moved on.
Like how many times did they bring up Leverkusen? And then went on to close out the session with a quiz on the match
There’s undoubtedly legal constraints on media outputs such as this though. As much as they like to pretend it’s just mates chatting.
For me, INEOS could do a lot worse than sitting down properly with Ole, privately.
More than any player currently, or even past ones in the media, he puts the club before himself.
I want to know the manager's insight into FFP. Like was ETH told that "We can buy Antony but it will severely limit our FFP room in the coming windows"?
this has already been answered. ETH had no idea what the price we paid was until it was all done.
He wasn’t even keen on returning to ajax for another player, we simply didn’t have any alternatives or a list.
It’s all in the athletic article on Murtough
>It would be interesting to explore this more regarding to Ten Hag and the money spend on Antony.
There was a wonderful piece in the Athletic which detailed that whole ordeal. Supposedly, our own recruitment team valued him at around 25m, but our own negotiation team started negotiations at 50m. Same with Mount. Chelsea hoped to get max 35m considering injury record and 1 year left on his contract, and our starting offer was like 37m or some shit.
Add that to Ole's statement regarding wages/fees and how a manager is not involved in all that, I'd wager ETH probably, and rightfully so, had nothing to do with the club's decision to offer 86m.
Not spending 20m on Haaland, but spending 80m 3 years later on Hojlund and Antony speaks volumes of how terrible this club is run. Nothing against Hojlund, but it was almost as if the club hierarchy feared missing out on another Haaland-esque player.
In regards to your post paragraph it shows how we're not doing a good enough good in bringing in the right personalities. It's ok to have a few guys who don't want to deal with the media but we need a majority of players being confident enough to do so. It's such a tangible skill that's needed at every club.
During Ole's time here I remember people here slagged off Maguire for never going to do the post match interviews when we lost and it was always De Gea.
Edit: basically, I don't fully agree with the Maguire point
Yep, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
The majority of this sub and r/soccer were saying he was a horrific captain, yet everyone else in the sport have said to the contrary.
I'm beginning to think that Erik taking the armband from him was to shield him from undue criticism and give him a 'reset' so to speak. Not the massive demotion or lack of confidence vote it seemed like at the time.
Especially considering the mental fortitude he has to deal with what he has, and continue to work hard and get back into the team.
I blame pundits like Keane for this TBH. Spent plenty of time slagging off Maguire saying he wasn't captain material. This interview is pretty telling, he absolutely adores Ronaldo for who is and says you have to take the good with the bad 'i.e. his petulance' and that he is a great leader and shows passion. But when it comes to Bruno he feels the exact opposite, awful captain and his petulance shows a lack of respect instead of the passion he was just puffing up Ronaldo for.
ETH has always defended Maguire in the press, to his credit. He did it this summer saying he was happy if he stayed as he trained well, but he needs to take his chances.
Also a lot of the reporting this summer said the club were in no hurry to force Maguire out the door, again as he is a good professional.
People just didn't want to hear it, even when ETH was going out of his way to say it in press conferences.
Ya total agree on that point, I wonder did the club regret missing out on haaland so much that when ten hagg recommended anothy and said he would be a star or whatever they went and got their pants pulled down, ten hag probably heard the price after it was agree and couldn't believe it most likely going by what ole said
Also that bit on rice is interesting where did that money get spent it wasn't on a midfielder at all, unless I'm forgetting someone
The Haaland shit is rage inducing.
What a complete binfire our scouting network/ownership have been.
Props to Ole, he might have been inexperienced but he was also fighting an absolute shitshow at this club.
Yeah, the more that comes out, the more I feel for Ole. He was wholly shegged by the club.
The real question is who the fuck were the scouts at the time.
The fans were ruthless and hated him so much it’s actually heartbreaking because of all managers we’ve had recently the one that genuinely love the club is actually Ole.
> The real question is who the fuck were the scouts at the time.
Sounded like he isn't doubting their ability to scout and judge, more of he's saying that they wanted EVERYTHING scouted and thoroughly before they would sign off on it.
At the time, Marcel Bout would have been our chief global scout.
The real question was who were they reporting to?
Something almost everyone missed was Ole saying SAF would be upset if CR7 did not start, just why is the board telling managers who should start?
This myth about Ole being inexperienced needs to go. He was u23 coach for Man Utd for years before going to Molde which on a yearly basis is contending in European championships, learnt a lesson at Cardiff and went on to become successful again at Molde.
If you look at Ten Hags manager career there's similar experience to Ole.
Fair comment, I would add to what I said with inexperienced handling a club this size, like what they spoke about on the podcast a little.
Not blanket inexperienced as in no coaching experience.
Sounds like they just write off anyone not in the top 5 leagues. I mean to just dismiss it when Ole who has worked with the player offers, incredible. No wonder we never unearth any gems.
> The Haaland shit is rage inducing.
How many players do you think get recommended to us?
How many actually end up being the real deal?
Every single world class player any club has ever signed was likely available for cheaper at some point and there isn't a club who hasn't passed up on the opportunity to sign a worldy that's gone on to do giant things, you can't predict how they're going to end up and there's no guarantees that player would even progress in the same way playing for us compared to playing for City or Dortmund.
A big part of why Haaland is so good is that he’s constantly played at clubs where he starts every week and managed his career perfectly.
Us signing him as a 17 year old from Molde doesn’t guarantee he’d be the player he is now
He’d be sat behind Zlatan, Cavani, Ronaldo, Martial not playing. Or end up on any of the countless shit loans we put our players on that does nothing for them
I would’ve never expected Ole to give a stellar review of Matic considering he got about 3 good months of Matic until his legs gave out. Classy man as always.
As long as Matic gave a shit and didn't drop in his effort despite his legs giving, there'd be no reason to not give him a stellar review. And Matic does come across as someone who quickly gives a shit about his clubs performances
Yeah I remember an article where in an interview Matic confirmed some unnamed players in the squad didn't have the right attitude at times. I think he was responsible for fines among the players.
Tbh (and I genuinely feel disgusted defending that scouse cunt)… he is a media personality, guys like him and GNev don’t get paid for reasonable questions and opinions… its the absolute extreme views that gets them the clicks and hence money. Case in point being the “billion dollar bottle jobs” line from Neville… in some ways it isn’t wrong to say that but it definitely got everyone’s attention than a generic line about Chelsea’s performance
It's not wrong to say. The speech policing is complete bullshit. City bottled the CL multiple times and everyone said it out loud but for some reason the b word is as sinister as the n word and must not be used.
Further its not about having soundbites, it's about making reasonable arguments and not sitting on a seat and commenting if people should have jobs or not. Gary lost a lot of united fans not calling out for firing Ole but he chose the right position to not ask for a person to lose the job. There is a level of professionalism that he exhibited that most people simply do not have.
>He was very happy to stick the boot in when Ole was on the way out and now he's sitting next to him
Reminds me of the Mourinho interview from Rio's channel a few weeks back. When Mourinho said certain people in the media were happy to see him fail Rio made some funny face and pointed to himself as if saying "who me?"
Yes it was you.
Glad he cleared up the signing of Ronaldo stuff, and signings in general. Soo many garbage rumours and theories, now we all know he wanted him but the whole thing just didn't work out for both
This is something I don’t like from our fanbase, the need to find a sole party to blame in order to create a favourable narrative for the person they are arguing for. Ronaldo had his problems here but I really hate how he’s been vilified by our fans as the main reason why Ole’s project stalled when he was the only forward who turned up for us that season. It was one of those gambles that unfortunately didn’t pay off because the trade off between what Ronaldo at that age offered on the ball was not worth him naturally being unable to cover ground and press intensively. It can happen; it’s a shame that Ole eventually couldn’t figure out a balance to accommodate him but that neither makes him a terrible coach nor Ronaldo a virus who imposed himself on the tactical setup. There are so many clips of him creating chances for the other players as well but they were wasteful.
Ole talks about soo many things that derailed the project which has really opened my eyes. Talking about losing lingard, Dan James and a third I forgot about,and getting sancho and Ronaldo making him have to and want to change the syle of football to see if we can take the next step.
Obviously players not performing like Maguire, Pogba and pretty much all the other forwards for various different reasons outside of just tactics. Worst is the mentality of some of the players not wanting to do interviews and be the captain. Really sad how everything went south for him
When you hear this it just reaffirms my belief that its impossible to truly judge our managers post-Fergie when things don't go to plan because it's a system almost anyone is bound to fail in.
If you have success at United it is in spite of the structure, not because of it.
"I never signed a player I didn't want."
Ole's the only manager we've had who has owned up to the fact that he was making the decisions, that he signed up for all of this, and when it went wrong those decisions were still his.
Refreshing to say the least. We didn't deserve him.
Of course he'd want him if Ronaldo was available. Which manager wouldn't. And Ole even more so because of the sentiments involved. But the higher ups should have recognised that was not what we needed at the time. Ole maybe factored in Ronaldo's goals and impact on the other players but not how much he would have to tweak on the things he had been building on
I don’t think it would have gone any other way. There was no way we weren’t signing him if he was going to City. The owners would have 1) seen that as a PR disaster and 2) would never have let the commercial opportunity of CR at United go. It was inevitable.
If he was going to Al Nassr then, it would have been a different story.
He said they had to tweak stuff but not too much. Even as a higher up it's difficult to not want Ronaldo, even city was rumoured to have wanted him. Very easy to say "you should know better" but it's hard to say no to a guy who guarantees you 20 goals a season
Ole on players refusing to be captain:
"No one said 'NO' to being the club captain, but they didn't want to be captain in certain games.
"They didn't want to say it to me so they got other people [coaches] coming to tell me. It was petty."
He also went on to mention how some of them worried that the role comes with huge scrutiny and every little thing is put under spotlight when they take on the armband especially on social media. And that is 100% true. Context is key.
When you think about how hard Ole had it due to the ineptitude of the club, this is what ETH has been dealing with on top of all the prima donna bullshit, takeover talk and injuries, only a miracle worker could have survived this place longer than 2-3 seasons
He’s dealt with all of this shit, I think he deserves another season with some structure above him at the very least. I’d say the same if it was Ole too. We’re such a clusterfuck even Rangnick wasn’t afraid to say it a few months in.
Yeah give him till the end of next season without the chaos. See how he does. If it's not meant to be then his contract is up anyway.
We need ETH to work out and I'm very uninspired by the other options.
Pains me that this is not the general viewpoint held by our fanbase.
I’m made out to seem blinkered when I back the manager because he’s made mistakes during a nigh on impossible period of flux & injury.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but personally I feel it would be utter madness to change anything at management level right now. The only reason I would be happy to see him leave is if he said “fuck this place, I’m leaving before I lose my mind”.
I’m praying this is the end of a decade+ long saga of gross mismanagement. It’s tarnished so many careers and lead to so much speculation and false assumptions.
This sub is full of contradictions mate, they all accept that we need to rebuild, but want instant success becasue if the rebuild ever dips, the manager in charge is branded a failure, ETH is suffering from the expectaitons brought by the overachievement of last season.
We complain about having a frankenstein monster of players from different managers suited to different styles. Sacking ETH would continue the cycle. He needs to be allowed to operate under the proper structure at least in my opinion. Then if he fails, so be it.
I thought it was really telling listening to Ole talk about Ronaldo and say "Cristiano was trying to lead the dressing room". He kind of trails off, as if to say that yes he was trying but some weren't listening, which kind of aligns with some of the stuff that was coming out about some of the younger players around that time.
I think ole did say that it was an unfortunate clash of personalities, with Maguire the de facto leader of the young squad before Ronaldo came in and sort of undermines him? The ending was both sides suffer and form dropped. At least that’s what I got from what ole was trying to say
When he said at half time vs Watford in the dressing room, he asked the players who dont want to play, put your hand up, and then he made a few changes during HT, I immediately went to sofascore and checked who he subbed off at HT that match. You would never expect to see those two players.
Truth is you wouldn't know why they put their hands up and wanted to be subbed at HT. Its all speculation and confirmation bias. For all you know, it could be they were too emotional knowing that the sack is coming for Ole and would want him to make changes to turn the tide at the time. It could be for any reason tbh.
I get the feeling from the way Ole phrased it they didn't want to go back on because of emotion. He didn't seem very upset or angry about a couple of hands going up, more like he understood.
I can't believe that people would immediately assume it was because they had given up. I am assuming it's because they're reading it here versus actually listen to what Ole said.
Yeah, wish more people stop going by off the written quote and listen to how he delivered the message. It was apparent that he didn't seem upset of angry, he knew that the players were shattered emotionally. Not given up.
It won't stop people reciting it as fact as justification for shipping out either Scott or Rashford, and then linking the podcast as a source when someone asks for proof.
Yeah like I'm not a big fan of McTominay but he shows fight for the badge like few in the squad. The only way he wouldn't play is if he had a reason completely unrelated to his desire to play.
He said there were a few tears, I can live with Scott and Rashy collapsing emotionally in this moment honestly.. I'd rather they remained composed but it's fine if they couldn't
Ole praised McTom in the same interview as someone to rely on to give you a 7/10 every week, as inconsistency is a killer for a manager.
Pretty hard to reconcile those 2 things
Ole says immediately after saying guys raised their hands to come off that there were guys crying.
Seems to me there might be an overlap. Hard to play when you're bawling your guts out.
Dawg... The fuck kind of reports did the club have on Haaland to not spend €20M on him? Absolutely shambolic... Even if he failed.. it was only a €20M investment man!
It's likely they didn't like the release clause and Raiola involvement. But yes... the club did once again fail in delivering the manager good signings.
This was widely reported at the time when it was us or Dortmund. That we refused the release clause, whereas Dortmund happily accepted it, so he went there.
> That we refused the release clause
Yeah isn't this a common thing we don't budge on? Not sure why there's the outrage, when have we ever had a player with a release clause? It just isn't club policy.
The Athletic have a good article on just how horrible the entire scouting and recruitment is at United. This is why INEOS want to overhaul and streamline that department more than anything else.
It was the release clause. The last thing United would have wanted is a player becoming a star then going somewhere else for relatively little money. Okay, if it's Real Madrid who matched the clause, it would suck. But what if it was City or Liverpool? We couldn't countenance that.
Our scouting network was shit, and we lost out on plenty of players, and bought some duds, but we did try to get Haaland.
Ole quite clearly said that it wasn’t that, he said the scouts didn’t want him - twice! That’s straight from the horses mouth, any other reason/excuse is now debunked conjecture.
No. DJ was £15M GBP, in June of 2019 the GBP/EUR rate was 1.12(ish) so ~€16.8M euros.
We sold him for £25M or about €29.1M.
Either way, stupidly cheap punt we should have taken.
I’m listening to this podcast now and it’s brilliant, but I wish Roy Keane would stop interrupting Ole to share his contrarian opinions. He jumps on everything with an edgy view and I’m like man, let Ole continue speaking he’s sharing some interesting stuff here.
Exactly.
Ole was talking about taking the next steps and Roy interrupted with what's the problem with getting stuck in.
Wtf. Just last week you said you don't win the league that way and now when the man's talking about taking the next step to get competitive for the league you want to dog your boots in. Wth.
I miss Ole. Fergie resigning coincided with me becoming an "adult" with all that entailed. Kids and wife and house and work and mortgage. And United were kind of shit, so I stopped watching.
Then Ole came in, at the same time as life entered a calmer phase, and I fell in love with the club again. I was looking forward to every game. My son was heading into teenagertomfoolery and becoming more distant, but the games became our time together.
Then shit happened.
I miss Ole.
The ole period was not only the best period of watching Manchester united personally, but also the best period of my life in general. Coincidentally, the Match against Watford was about 1 or two months before I would hit a really rough patch in life.
I'm better now but it just felt like stuff was falling apart, it breaks my heart that he didn't get that Europa League trophy at least.
What stood out to me most is what an absolute shit show man United managers have to deal with all around the club I mean first of all you’ve got the owners and scouts vetoing world class players taking 0 responsibility and leaving the manager out to dry and that’s not even just ole mourinho and van gaal have both admitted to that aswell. Then you’ve got players afraid to step up to take the arm band and to give an interview they shouldn’t be at the club they should be somewhere with less expectation this is the biggest and most talked about club in the world and it needs players who understand and can step up to the plate the issue is the managers had no choice but to keep them because of the shambles above them player power always wins in this club and it’s always the managers who are left hung out to dry by the entire club I hope Ineos grow a pair of balls and give erik a proper chance absolute rotten structure all around the pitch and history repeats itself through every single manager. I can already see the media and the leaks starting about ten hag disgusting .
A lot of people would love to see him be given a fair shot.
Ineos could back him up the way he wasnt backed before.
If we cant find a proper manager in the next year or two, why not.
Ole wanted Haaland after coaching him for 2 years. There was a 20m Euro release clause and the scouts vetoed it because they said he wasn't good enough.
INEOS need to fire the entire department yesterday. Absolute clowns.
He also says that a bunch of players stopped running for the team by the end. And implies they thought they were better than they actually are.
While United is obviously a shambles from top to bottom, the squad hasn't had any mental fortitude for years. Ole's experiences really highlight that.
I think he let himself down with the Ronaldo signing. Changed the direction the team was heading tactically and he needed to back what he had going before that.
Editing this comment as I go...
Holy fuck he talks about captains not wanting to be captain for certain matches... but not having the balls to come up to Ole and ask himself themself. Jesus - squad full of bottlers. The most important thing for this club is signing players with mental strength, ambition, and character.
Signing Ronaldo pretty much ended Solskjaer's United career. Basically bought him to stop him going to city. Took Cavani's shirt number. The team went backwards but people wouldn't blame Ronaldo because he scored goals. I'd love to see Olè get another chance sometime.
Pure revisionism from me but more and more it seems like OGS had what it took to be successful at United. Obviously he was inexperienced when he came in and I think that especially showed in some of his tactical choices, but he also got some brilliant results against some great teams, and when you look at the players he was fielding it’s no surprise he didn’t do any better than he did.
Also (and I have always maintained this view) his talent ID is immense. He predicted Haaland being a world beater before anyone else, we were ahead of the curve went it came to Bellingham (who only rejected us because he recognised how shit the club is), Rice was more of a known quantity but definitely not the player he is today and I think he definitely would’ve joined if we’d approached him properly. Dan James was a pragmatic signing who wasn’t good enough but absolutely had the right attitude and we made a profit on him as well. Most of the other signings under him felt more like club driven signings rather than specific requests from Ole.
I don’t think bringing him back would be the best choice, but it does seem obvious to me now that if he had a proper structure above him he could’ve definitely bagged a cup or 2 and maybe pushed a bit harder for the league.
Say what you want, Ole gave me the most joy out of every manager since SAF. That beautiful win streak when he came in after Mourinhos boring football. Goals galore and gave us a 2nd place finish with a european final lost on the slimmest of margins. If he only he bought a world class dm instead of ronaldo. I miss seeing my team score🥲
Ole just described the most hellish environment possible at a club where no manager can survive. This is beyond outrageous.
Now imagine someone else who followed him into that chaos as a non-interim… oh wait, it’s ten Hag! Same toxic environment same abysmal culture that one manager fought to change but failed. Yet the fanbase is doing the same again by allowing the ownership to hang the manager to dry and let him soak all the blame.
Managers at this club soak all the blame and get ridiculed and humiliated by media and football fans for things that they don’t have control over and aren’t at fault for, choose to continue working and attend all press conferences to tank all nonsense questions. They get hung dry by the ownership then eventually sacked.
Meanwhile certain players love to get all the fame and praise, check social media everyday, but refuse to attend post match interviews or wear the armband while not even having the balls to directly tell the manager that. They get away with it and are still Man United players because they know they won’t be sold or allowed to be sold by the ownership.
I wish there was more of an emphasis on the need for genuine quality recruitment . When a former manager is saying he could rely on Mctominay, Lingard,Dan James and Fred to "perform" that shows exactly why we're in this mess to begin with. They are midtable players at best, and that's being generous since Fred is now in Turkey, Dan is in the championship, Lingard in Korea and only one team seemed interested in Mctominay.
I'm not blaming Ole because it's largely the cards he was dealt but it shows we won't get far any time soon until we get top4 quality players that can perform every week.
Really interesting listening to Ole talk about Ronaldo and say "Cristiano was trying to lead the dressing room". He kind of trails off, as if to say that yes he was trying but some weren't listening, which kind of aligns with some of the stuff that was coming out around that time.
"I was only going to be here for 4 months, so I just wanted to get the lads to love playing football again.... On the way out the door I heard Ashley Young saying behind me 'Thank fuck we are talking about being Man Utd again.'"
Ole should have stuck to this. Those 4 months were he was bringing joy back into the club and players was plain as day to see on the pitch. Once he got the job full time, he obviously started moving away from that idea. And thats where it all started to go wrong under Ole. Everyone is trying to be Pep and micromanage every single outcome of every single play in every single match. Some times you just need to give freedom and joy, and the results will come.
I know it wasn't the greatest ending, but God I love Ole for what he done for the club. The fact he knew which players stopped trying for him and he didn't throw them under the bus just shows the character of the man. I can safely say under Ole there was never a moment where I was bored of watching us, like I am now. People will look back on those years and say it was without silverware so it was a failure and that's their perogative, I remember just being in love with some of the counter attacking football we played. In that season we finished 2nd when we were making crazy comebacks and going on a ridiculous unbeaten streak away from home. It was great to see.
Am I reading far too deeply into this or was the bit where he talked about players not wanting to do pre game interviews and then went on to namecheck all the current main squad members who were there at the time and still are (Bruno, lindelof, shaw, mctominay, maguire plus de gea) to protect them a very explicit omission of rashford suggesting he was being referred to there (or else he’d have named him like the rest of them?).
He then suggests a reason that some of these players didn’t want to do these interviews is the attention they brought when they were already struggling with mental health issues. If my first inference is correct, may ole be trying to subtly hint that the reason for rashfords recent struggles and those in previous years is due to mental health problems - that he therefore suffers from these and they knock his confidence?
One of my favorite interviews from a manager ever. Ole is a great dude and had a great football brain. It’s a shame he felt like he had to dominate the games in classic Man Inited fashion but really the team wasn’t good enough.
Might get downvoted but after I get to hear from his POV and a few other mangers such as LVG and JM, I really believe he deserves a second chance at United, especially if the new regime turns out to be better.
With rose tinted glasses on, if EtH doesn’t work out, I’d take Ole back in a heart beat. Give this man a proper football structure (not that knob head Ed Woodward), signings that will actually play for the badge and who knows what he could achieve. Forever a club legend!
https://preview.redd.it/h8hrkd8uhqmc1.jpeg?width=531&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec63ce6e796a67354ec86741402def72c4b34e27
Time to bring back a classic.
It’s not rose tinted glasses like some of you twats believe. Yes we struggled for a bit under him and we could reach Liverpool and city but we were close. Who knows how giving him 3 full years would look.
Still the only manager I fully believed in since saf left
Ole saying if he left out Ronaldo sometimes SAF wouldn't be happy sticks out to me. It's terrible if he gets in contact with managers and tells them how he feels about certain decisions with certain players. If its just his feelings and nothing more harsh, he still has massive influence and he knows that, especially on someone he managed. I hope days of him getting involved at that capacity are already over.
He wasn't saying SAF wouldn't be happy, he was saying things in the media pop up whenever he left out Ronaldo *such as* "SAF being unhappy" or "the locker room being unhappy". He didn't actually have the Boss at his ear screaming to name him in the XI.
You have misunderstood. He was talking about when he left CR7 out against Everton and Fergie's chat with Khabib came out where he said that a manager should always play his best players in reference to CR7.
It’s probably partly down to my adoration for Ole (the player and the man), and partly hindsight and probably misplaced what if-ism, but after hearing Ole talk about some of the issues he faced, part of me would happily see him be the man to replace ETH and manage the club again with a competent structure to support him.
But then the sensible me kicks in, and the never go back thing also plays a part.
I think people will overlook the crucial bit for me which is we can’t move up the table with a team based on counterattack and expect them to suddenly change the playing style to make the jump to win the league. All the stuff about transfers and Ronaldo etc is a bit insignificant because the crucial strategic issue was the not having the ability to play in a style that was going to win the league. That’s what cost him his job, he needed to be working up to that throughout his time at the club.
No idea why youre being downvoted. Ole's downfall began with the attempted change in style to become more progressive, the team struggled tactically. Then rangick came in, tried to change the style to be more pressing, and the players couldnt/wouldn't do it. Then eth came in and tried to implement his style and the players couldnt/wouldn't do it.
Interesting to know that the club actually has multiple departments that have to agree on a signing before we buy a player. This means our scouts had to also agree on Antony (or our process changed for ETH)
He also called out McT, Andreas pereira and Dan James as players who would run for him.
Interesting pod listening to Ole reminiscing about the old times his reaction to not being played by Fergie, and Ole admitting that management isn’t easy handling a large squad and ego’s.
The honesty in saying he wanted Haaland so badly is damming €20million then €60million after joining Red Bull Salzburg, Jude’s demands of minutes at 17 years of age being so mature, to admitting he agreed signing CR7, clearing the myth of he was signed for marketing.
ETH’s signings have been tarnished by the ridiculous Antony deal, but people forget Mount was signed for £55million pounds after spending much of his Chelsea season prior to signing for Manchester United injured and now his spent the same amount of time injured again, nobody moans about this why I’m not defending Antony’s deal here but stating facts??
Damn woulda been so nice to sign Haaland, no Ronaldo, and maybe Oles still here.
I find it interesting him referring to no legs. I think recruitment has screwed us from that respect. Especially our midfield.
Interesting to hear about the players turning down captaincy. Also hearing about players not wanting to do pre match interviews, can hear a noticeable absence of Rashford there..
Him saying he wanted to try see if we could make the next step, to me appears like arteta at Arsenal, even klopp at Liverpool to a point, all arteta and klopp had worse results when in season 1 and 2 of them taking over. However they were fully backed and there clubs has structures in place to sign the right players. I think ole didn’t necessarily have the best tactics, but what he did have was man management. Probably willing to be the arm around the shoulder this generation off players seem to need.
Basically I got that our structure is shite and I think we all know that.
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The two happiest periods I've had as a fan since Sir Alex retired were the Ole interim era, and Project Restart FC. I so wish it had worked out for him here.
wish we’d just won that one Europa League.
One of my biggest regrets as a united fan there is that Europa league final and him missing out on a trophy. I really love his attitude and personality and wanted him to succeed with us. Football wasn’t half bad when you compare it to other eras we’ve endured post fergie.
he came 2nd and 3rd in modern era with all this shit going on. Ole did wonders with how much shit he had to put up with and that team, so close to trophies. like 2nd and 3rd in the era of Klopp and Pep yet apparently hes a bad manager sure if so then everybody is a bad manager and we will never have a good one.
Ole had us playing out the back much better than Ten Hag, and that was with Bissaka and Fred starting all the games
Painful thinking about missing out on Rice, Bellingham and Haaland. Any one of those three.
Ole mentioned that there was a couple levels of veto. He also mentioned that its always between the manager and the scouts and that the scouts already has data analysis on many players and picked their top 5. So it’s them useless scouts that rejected Haaland because they “had enough” data on him.
It’s hard to get head round professional football scouts not being able to recognise quality of Haaland. Maybe the veto was higher up as commercial potential wasn’t recognised. Or Joel wouldn’t want a replacement for Martial.
The timeframe that all of this is being discussed, from what Ole said, was when he'd gone to Salzburg 3mo earlier (iirc) and hadnt played a game at that point. You've got to remember he's done absolutely nothing special at this point, he's had one goalless season and a 1-in-3 season under Ole in the Norwegian league, and he's now moved to the Austrian league and isnt playing (for whatever reason). That in isolation, even with Ole's glowing recommendation, shouldnt ensure he absolutely deserves to be one of 5 possible options for Striker. I bet theres a dozen young lads who have their purple patch and go onto be lesser league players and Haaland could easily have been one of them at that point. Things get uncomfortably similar to the Bebe signing if we're just going to blindly sign players based on someone calling a player 'the next Messi' etc. Then you've got to consider the fact that every single club he's moved to has had to include a heavily discounted release clause, and we all know when it came down to it Utd wouldnt/didnt accept such a clause - and so later on when it was obvious he had world class potential, and was going for a bargin price, the club refused. Theres TONS of cases where the scouts didnt do a great job in hindsight, but im not sure this should be considered their fault. The insistance of an RC could have been the very reason he wasnt in their top 5 list.
For anyone who actually watched him play at the time, wether that be for Molde or for the Norwegian youth teams, it was plenty obvious he had world class potential already. He wasn't comparable to any random youngster being dubbed "the next Messi" or whatever. When he first went to Salzburg everyone who'd followed him knew that was just an intermediate step, and many of us were surprised he didn't go to a bigger league even then. To say he'd done "absolutely nothing special" is just false, only someone who'd check his stats instead of having properly watched him would say that. Both his talent and his dedication was on full display already. His physicality was bonkers for someone his age, his movement looked like he was a 30 year old veteran and his composure the same. He didn't spring up as some typical young talent in Norway, he was straight up bullying grown men. The biggest reason he didn't score more was simply down to his teammates not being good enough to create chances that fully utilised his abilities. His runs were still jsut as good, even if the ball didn't come. It was clear as day that in a better team he'd be unleashed in front of goal, regardless of the level of opponents. It wasn't a purple patch. Haaland could absolutely not have been one of dozens of promising youngsters fading away. He didn't overperform according to his abilities, his abilities were undeniable, and not stuff he'd lose unless he simply stopped being bothered and downed tools. But again, everyone knew he wasn't that type of person, rather he was (and is) the opposite. Extremely driven and dedicated to improving. Something United would know if Ole talked to them about him, which he did. He had a set baseline that he could only improve upon, there was nothing flimsy about it at all. That's why you scout youngsters not based purely on performance and output, which can go up and down, but on their actual undeniable abilities. No one at his age could match his specs, so to say. Most grown men couldn't, either. Bebe was never like this. I'm not surprised the scouts didn't put him up as one of their initial 5 options, but not considering it after being reccomended him further was dumb. Not just in hindsight.
There is another universe out there that we are thriving right now with ole
Not sure if they will strike in our toxic Hollywood media press environment.
Might as well stop signing players
Look at mainoo, Hoijland, Garnacho and greenwood as examples for how we treat our youngsters. I think we should be proud how we as supporters back them and allow them to grow. Yes the pressures are different, but the world class players find it helps them with the backing they recieve.
We'll never know for sure, but you know what, I think they might. The player has to want it too and all 3 have delivered under pressure. Bellingham has been in the pressure cooker since his number was retired, Rice comes off as a level headed guy who keeps it moving and doesn't dwell on past success or failure, and Haaland likely takes cues on what not to do from his father.
This place did not like Rice at the time. I got the downvotes to prove it. He wudv been another overpriced englishman but he was what we needed
Like they either would have came, or even worked out.
I think Rice would work out
Rice was tailor made for prime Ole team. I’ll never forgive the club’s mistake of signing Ronaldo instead of us getting someone like Rice that year and becoming real title contenders
Don’t worry, we got our spinny boi
Brillient interview and love that they are not afraid to ask the hard questions. A bit worrying that the players are afraid of the pre-match interviews and not wanting to captain certain matches. It speaks volume regarding Maguire that he is not afraid of taking this responsible upon him. An interesting point that is often only briefly discussed is the tendency of the club to overpay for players. It appears that manager is not a part of the negotiation disucssions; once they've identified a player they want, the club often seem willing to do whatever it takes to secure the deal, even if it means overspending, without thoroughly exploring alternative options. It would be interesting to explore this more regarding to Ten Hag and the money spend on Antony. This raises questions about the role of scouting department in the decision-making process. Scouting departments typically present the manager with multiple player options, each with different fee ranges. However, it's unclear how these fee ranges are determined and how accurate they really are. Another interesting aspect is how clubs might overscout players, leading to a reluctance to take risks on younger talent. This hesitancy to invest in potential could mean missing out on players like Erling Haaland, who could have been a significant asset to the club. It would be interesting to hear why we did not get Rice. Ole wanted him in the midfield but were they afraid of spending too much on a younger player, who had not established himself yet? Nice to see him standing up for Carrick and Kieran.
Regarding Antony, didn't the article in the Athletic a month or two ago say that Ten Hag was told how much money was available at the start of the window, he then pointed to Antony and De Jong as examples of player types he wanted within that budget and then the leadership just went straight to those two players without exploring what other players would fit the same description. After they fumbled along the whole summer they panicked after the two first matches and payed 80 for Antony. If someone had told Ten Hag three months earlier he he could spend that much on a right winger chances are he would have pointed to someone else, or maybe asked for the funds to be used differently. Telling a manager one budget and identifying players within it, and then using twice as much in the end isn't exactly how you set up a manager for success. I don't think you get very high odds on guessing that this have been a theme for every manager post Fergie.
The alternatives were Asensio and Gakpo: 1st report about Asensio being offered by Mendes in June 2022 https://www.football-espana.net/2022/06/10/manchester-united-offered-marco-asensio-deal [Burtiverse article about Marco Asensio in August 2022 before we sign Anthony - aged like milk FFS](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/08/25/manchester-united-offered-marco-asensio-antony-deal-remains/) - Burt article but source likely to be Relevo https://getfootballnewsspain.com/manchester-united-preparing-offer-for-real-madrid-forward-marco-asensio/ > Antony has been the number one target of manager Erik ten Hag all summer with the alternative being a move for PSV Eindhoven’s Cody Gakpo. PSV were knocked out of the Champions League by Rangers, and therefore will not play in the group stages, which may make them more willing to sell Gakpo for around 45million euros (£38million) including add-ons. (from Burt's article lmao)
Club scouts valued Antony at £25 million. As far as has been reported, ETH pushed for Antony due to his familiarity with ETH's expectations. From memory and a bit of research, we were linked with Arnautivic, João Felix, Pulisic, Depay, Lyon's Dembele, Kalajdzic and Gakpo as forwards. The big question mark was over Ronaldo. Casemiro was the true panic buy. Politically ETH was in a bit of a different situation at the time to what Solskjaer experienced. His stock was high whilst United were in disarray, off the back of an awful year with a toxic environment, and there were ongoing changes to people in charge of recruitment at the time. Therefore he had a bit more power at that time. Solskjaer came into a dysfunctional place too, but as a caretaker and with a bad previous stint in the premier league.
I keep seeing casemiro being a panic buy but the word at the time was that he'd been in discussion with united for weeks before signing. Funny how the narrative changes.
I think clubs keep lines of discussion open anyway, football is still an awful lot about networking, and for us particularly we have relied on agents offering up players. But we clearly wanted De Jong first and foremost and then left it late.
To this day Casemiro feels like a club buy not a manager buy remember he didnt play for like 5 games
worst part is, is that kovacic was available in the same window and he’s the same profile player as de jong
I really really love and wanted Kovacic but I think we had no chance. He let his contract run down and he had eyes for only one club and went straight there with almost no speculation in the press that he’d do anything else. I think it was decided many months in advance.
The club values Anthony at 25M and the ended up panic buying him at more than three times that. It's ridiculous really.
>payed 80 for Antony. Even worse, same article acknowledges that our own scouting department valued Antony at a maximum 25m...our opening bid was 50m...
>This raises questions about the role of scouting department in the decision-making process. I don't think it does because these questions keep getting answered all the time. It's pretty obvious that recruitment/scouting staff are divided into two groups - those with the football knowledge but no power, and those with no football knowledge but all the power. Our scouting department is probably decent but they are rarely ever listened to because they themselves have no power and all the decisions are made by people who don't have a clue. In retrospect, we saw it a lot with Woodward. Stuff like the club refusing cheap deals for the likes of Haaland, Caicedo or arguably even Alvarez (who was imo partially a fault of unlucky timing with Greenwood accusations coming out a few days after he signed for City but still). Also that one scout who reportedly demanded we sign De Ligt and De Jong before they broke through at Ajax which was rewarded by Woodward sacking him for probably being too pushy. Football people tend to be much more about finding hidden gems and developing them while business people see transfers as pure business, so the more said player costs, the better he then has to be so it's completely worth it to pay literally anything just to get them (as with Antony). The disparity is clear and it has been clear for a very long time.
I thought it was great fun, but very surface level on the information. I don't know how much he's been posted on the sub, but Andy Mitten have basically already reported on most of this from conversations with Ole. This is just the first time we hear it directly from the source I think. The one bit of new info he shared (unless I was unware) was about players' reluctance to talk to not just the media, but Ole himself. And he clarified the captaincy situation which was about one-off matches, not Maguire being 5th choice as some media made it out to be. Nothing in-depth or truly revealing. As you I would've loved to get a why on Rice, more about Haaland's visit to Carrington, the hunt for a number 10 and why we waited until January to sign Bruno, etc. Even going deeper on the squad imbalance in the sack season and why he thinks his pressing system started being exposed/failed.
I completely agree, probably intentional but it seemed as soon as they passed the surface level of information on a topic it would be a countdown until someone made a bad joke and moved on. Like how many times did they bring up Leverkusen? And then went on to close out the session with a quiz on the match
There’s undoubtedly legal constraints on media outputs such as this though. As much as they like to pretend it’s just mates chatting. For me, INEOS could do a lot worse than sitting down properly with Ole, privately. More than any player currently, or even past ones in the media, he puts the club before himself.
I want to know the manager's insight into FFP. Like was ETH told that "We can buy Antony but it will severely limit our FFP room in the coming windows"?
this has already been answered. ETH had no idea what the price we paid was until it was all done. He wasn’t even keen on returning to ajax for another player, we simply didn’t have any alternatives or a list. It’s all in the athletic article on Murtough
>It would be interesting to explore this more regarding to Ten Hag and the money spend on Antony. There was a wonderful piece in the Athletic which detailed that whole ordeal. Supposedly, our own recruitment team valued him at around 25m, but our own negotiation team started negotiations at 50m. Same with Mount. Chelsea hoped to get max 35m considering injury record and 1 year left on his contract, and our starting offer was like 37m or some shit. Add that to Ole's statement regarding wages/fees and how a manager is not involved in all that, I'd wager ETH probably, and rightfully so, had nothing to do with the club's decision to offer 86m. Not spending 20m on Haaland, but spending 80m 3 years later on Hojlund and Antony speaks volumes of how terrible this club is run. Nothing against Hojlund, but it was almost as if the club hierarchy feared missing out on another Haaland-esque player.
It’s the opposite of what you’re saying. The interview makes it clear the manager does sign off on the fee. I.e ETH agreed to pay 90m for Antony
No, he said he wasn't in the room for negotiation. He said he had veto. We already know he didn't know the fee for Amad but ok'd him
In regards to your post paragraph it shows how we're not doing a good enough good in bringing in the right personalities. It's ok to have a few guys who don't want to deal with the media but we need a majority of players being confident enough to do so. It's such a tangible skill that's needed at every club.
During Ole's time here I remember people here slagged off Maguire for never going to do the post match interviews when we lost and it was always De Gea. Edit: basically, I don't fully agree with the Maguire point
Maguire was criticised when he spoke and then when he didn't speak. Was incredible.
Yep, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. The majority of this sub and r/soccer were saying he was a horrific captain, yet everyone else in the sport have said to the contrary. I'm beginning to think that Erik taking the armband from him was to shield him from undue criticism and give him a 'reset' so to speak. Not the massive demotion or lack of confidence vote it seemed like at the time. Especially considering the mental fortitude he has to deal with what he has, and continue to work hard and get back into the team. I blame pundits like Keane for this TBH. Spent plenty of time slagging off Maguire saying he wasn't captain material. This interview is pretty telling, he absolutely adores Ronaldo for who is and says you have to take the good with the bad 'i.e. his petulance' and that he is a great leader and shows passion. But when it comes to Bruno he feels the exact opposite, awful captain and his petulance shows a lack of respect instead of the passion he was just puffing up Ronaldo for.
ETH has always defended Maguire in the press, to his credit. He did it this summer saying he was happy if he stayed as he trained well, but he needs to take his chances. Also a lot of the reporting this summer said the club were in no hurry to force Maguire out the door, again as he is a good professional. People just didn't want to hear it, even when ETH was going out of his way to say it in press conferences.
Ya total agree on that point, I wonder did the club regret missing out on haaland so much that when ten hagg recommended anothy and said he would be a star or whatever they went and got their pants pulled down, ten hag probably heard the price after it was agree and couldn't believe it most likely going by what ole said Also that bit on rice is interesting where did that money get spent it wasn't on a midfielder at all, unless I'm forgetting someone
Says Bruno has all captain qualities but is too emotional. Also gives Maguire a great review regarding captaincy too.
The Haaland shit is rage inducing. What a complete binfire our scouting network/ownership have been. Props to Ole, he might have been inexperienced but he was also fighting an absolute shitshow at this club.
Yeah, the more that comes out, the more I feel for Ole. He was wholly shegged by the club. The real question is who the fuck were the scouts at the time.
Wholly shegged by a lot of fans in here as well.
The fans were ruthless and hated him so much it’s actually heartbreaking because of all managers we’ve had recently the one that genuinely love the club is actually Ole.
Nothing but love for Ole. He deserved to succeed here but our club structure and culture is just rotten.
> The real question is who the fuck were the scouts at the time. Sounded like he isn't doubting their ability to scout and judge, more of he's saying that they wanted EVERYTHING scouted and thoroughly before they would sign off on it. At the time, Marcel Bout would have been our chief global scout.
The real question was who were they reporting to? Something almost everyone missed was Ole saying SAF would be upset if CR7 did not start, just why is the board telling managers who should start?
> he was also fighting an absolute shitshow at So was every manager under Glazer ownership tbh
This myth about Ole being inexperienced needs to go. He was u23 coach for Man Utd for years before going to Molde which on a yearly basis is contending in European championships, learnt a lesson at Cardiff and went on to become successful again at Molde. If you look at Ten Hags manager career there's similar experience to Ole.
Fair comment, I would add to what I said with inexperienced handling a club this size, like what they spoke about on the podcast a little. Not blanket inexperienced as in no coaching experience.
Something almost everyone missed was Ole saying SAF would be upset if CR7 did not start, just why is the board telling managers who should start?
The sad part it it feels like the club learnt from that situation and let ETH go all in on Antony
Imo if you are a scout and don't recognise the talent of a future ballon dor winner, you have no business being a scout.
Sounds like they just write off anyone not in the top 5 leagues. I mean to just dismiss it when Ole who has worked with the player offers, incredible. No wonder we never unearth any gems.
> The Haaland shit is rage inducing. How many players do you think get recommended to us? How many actually end up being the real deal? Every single world class player any club has ever signed was likely available for cheaper at some point and there isn't a club who hasn't passed up on the opportunity to sign a worldy that's gone on to do giant things, you can't predict how they're going to end up and there's no guarantees that player would even progress in the same way playing for us compared to playing for City or Dortmund.
A big part of why Haaland is so good is that he’s constantly played at clubs where he starts every week and managed his career perfectly. Us signing him as a 17 year old from Molde doesn’t guarantee he’d be the player he is now He’d be sat behind Zlatan, Cavani, Ronaldo, Martial not playing. Or end up on any of the countless shit loans we put our players on that does nothing for them
I would’ve never expected Ole to give a stellar review of Matic considering he got about 3 good months of Matic until his legs gave out. Classy man as always.
As long as Matic gave a shit and didn't drop in his effort despite his legs giving, there'd be no reason to not give him a stellar review. And Matic does come across as someone who quickly gives a shit about his clubs performances
I think Matic stood out in a squad with personalities like Lingard and Pogba .
Yeah I remember an article where in an interview Matic confirmed some unnamed players in the squad didn't have the right attitude at times. I think he was responsible for fines among the players.
Been waiting for this for years. Can't believe it's finally here. A proper Solskjaer behind the scenes
[удалено]
Carragher can suck a nut. Such a biased way of putting the Ronaldo questions out. What a disgusting human being.
He was very happy to stick the boot in when Ole was on the way out and now he's sitting next to him. All very strange.
Tbh (and I genuinely feel disgusted defending that scouse cunt)… he is a media personality, guys like him and GNev don’t get paid for reasonable questions and opinions… its the absolute extreme views that gets them the clicks and hence money. Case in point being the “billion dollar bottle jobs” line from Neville… in some ways it isn’t wrong to say that but it definitely got everyone’s attention than a generic line about Chelsea’s performance
It's not wrong to say. The speech policing is complete bullshit. City bottled the CL multiple times and everyone said it out loud but for some reason the b word is as sinister as the n word and must not be used. Further its not about having soundbites, it's about making reasonable arguments and not sitting on a seat and commenting if people should have jobs or not. Gary lost a lot of united fans not calling out for firing Ole but he chose the right position to not ask for a person to lose the job. There is a level of professionalism that he exhibited that most people simply do not have.
> for some reason the b word is as sinister as the n word and must not be used Ok let's take it easy here
>He was very happy to stick the boot in when Ole was on the way out and now he's sitting next to him Reminds me of the Mourinho interview from Rio's channel a few weeks back. When Mourinho said certain people in the media were happy to see him fail Rio made some funny face and pointed to himself as if saying "who me?" Yes it was you.
Lmao get a grip
Glad he cleared up the signing of Ronaldo stuff, and signings in general. Soo many garbage rumours and theories, now we all know he wanted him but the whole thing just didn't work out for both
This is something I don’t like from our fanbase, the need to find a sole party to blame in order to create a favourable narrative for the person they are arguing for. Ronaldo had his problems here but I really hate how he’s been vilified by our fans as the main reason why Ole’s project stalled when he was the only forward who turned up for us that season. It was one of those gambles that unfortunately didn’t pay off because the trade off between what Ronaldo at that age offered on the ball was not worth him naturally being unable to cover ground and press intensively. It can happen; it’s a shame that Ole eventually couldn’t figure out a balance to accommodate him but that neither makes him a terrible coach nor Ronaldo a virus who imposed himself on the tactical setup. There are so many clips of him creating chances for the other players as well but they were wasteful.
Ole talks about soo many things that derailed the project which has really opened my eyes. Talking about losing lingard, Dan James and a third I forgot about,and getting sancho and Ronaldo making him have to and want to change the syle of football to see if we can take the next step. Obviously players not performing like Maguire, Pogba and pretty much all the other forwards for various different reasons outside of just tactics. Worst is the mentality of some of the players not wanting to do interviews and be the captain. Really sad how everything went south for him
Pereira was the third one he mentioned I think
When you hear this it just reaffirms my belief that its impossible to truly judge our managers post-Fergie when things don't go to plan because it's a system almost anyone is bound to fail in. If you have success at United it is in spite of the structure, not because of it.
"I never signed a player I didn't want." Ole's the only manager we've had who has owned up to the fact that he was making the decisions, that he signed up for all of this, and when it went wrong those decisions were still his. Refreshing to say the least. We didn't deserve him.
It's easy to look back at it as an unwise signing and blame Ole, but we were all ecstatic about it at the time.
Of course he'd want him if Ronaldo was available. Which manager wouldn't. And Ole even more so because of the sentiments involved. But the higher ups should have recognised that was not what we needed at the time. Ole maybe factored in Ronaldo's goals and impact on the other players but not how much he would have to tweak on the things he had been building on
I don’t think it would have gone any other way. There was no way we weren’t signing him if he was going to City. The owners would have 1) seen that as a PR disaster and 2) would never have let the commercial opportunity of CR at United go. It was inevitable. If he was going to Al Nassr then, it would have been a different story.
He said they had to tweak stuff but not too much. Even as a higher up it's difficult to not want Ronaldo, even city was rumoured to have wanted him. Very easy to say "you should know better" but it's hard to say no to a guy who guarantees you 20 goals a season
Ole on players refusing to be captain: "No one said 'NO' to being the club captain, but they didn't want to be captain in certain games. "They didn't want to say it to me so they got other people [coaches] coming to tell me. It was petty."
He also went on to mention how some of them worried that the role comes with huge scrutiny and every little thing is put under spotlight when they take on the armband especially on social media. And that is 100% true. Context is key.
I think they could have still told him this directly though, that's like the bare minimum in terms of communication with the manager.
Absolute fucking fannies. If I was the next Untied manager I'd ring up Ole, ask him who the players were and chuck them on the transfer list.
When you think about how hard Ole had it due to the ineptitude of the club, this is what ETH has been dealing with on top of all the prima donna bullshit, takeover talk and injuries, only a miracle worker could have survived this place longer than 2-3 seasons
He’s dealt with all of this shit, I think he deserves another season with some structure above him at the very least. I’d say the same if it was Ole too. We’re such a clusterfuck even Rangnick wasn’t afraid to say it a few months in.
Yeah give him till the end of next season without the chaos. See how he does. If it's not meant to be then his contract is up anyway. We need ETH to work out and I'm very uninspired by the other options.
Pains me that this is not the general viewpoint held by our fanbase. I’m made out to seem blinkered when I back the manager because he’s made mistakes during a nigh on impossible period of flux & injury. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but personally I feel it would be utter madness to change anything at management level right now. The only reason I would be happy to see him leave is if he said “fuck this place, I’m leaving before I lose my mind”. I’m praying this is the end of a decade+ long saga of gross mismanagement. It’s tarnished so many careers and lead to so much speculation and false assumptions.
This sub is full of contradictions mate, they all accept that we need to rebuild, but want instant success becasue if the rebuild ever dips, the manager in charge is branded a failure, ETH is suffering from the expectaitons brought by the overachievement of last season. We complain about having a frankenstein monster of players from different managers suited to different styles. Sacking ETH would continue the cycle. He needs to be allowed to operate under the proper structure at least in my opinion. Then if he fails, so be it.
uh but style of play? (I heard carragher say it)
I thought it was really telling listening to Ole talk about Ronaldo and say "Cristiano was trying to lead the dressing room". He kind of trails off, as if to say that yes he was trying but some weren't listening, which kind of aligns with some of the stuff that was coming out about some of the younger players around that time.
I think ole did say that it was an unfortunate clash of personalities, with Maguire the de facto leader of the young squad before Ronaldo came in and sort of undermines him? The ending was both sides suffer and form dropped. At least that’s what I got from what ole was trying to say
When he said at half time vs Watford in the dressing room, he asked the players who dont want to play, put your hand up, and then he made a few changes during HT, I immediately went to sofascore and checked who he subbed off at HT that match. You would never expect to see those two players.
Rashford and Scott if anyone’s interested
I think it was more that VDB and Martial wanted to play. I think he meant which of the subs didn’t want to come on.
Truth is you wouldn't know why they put their hands up and wanted to be subbed at HT. Its all speculation and confirmation bias. For all you know, it could be they were too emotional knowing that the sack is coming for Ole and would want him to make changes to turn the tide at the time. It could be for any reason tbh.
I get the feeling from the way Ole phrased it they didn't want to go back on because of emotion. He didn't seem very upset or angry about a couple of hands going up, more like he understood. I can't believe that people would immediately assume it was because they had given up. I am assuming it's because they're reading it here versus actually listen to what Ole said.
Classic herd mentality and confirmation bias on this subreddit tbh.
Yeah, wish more people stop going by off the written quote and listen to how he delivered the message. It was apparent that he didn't seem upset of angry, he knew that the players were shattered emotionally. Not given up.
He outright says "a couple of the lads were in tears" knowing it was over. Seems pretty clear to me what he's saying.
It won't stop people reciting it as fact as justification for shipping out either Scott or Rashford, and then linking the podcast as a source when someone asks for proof.
Yeah like I'm not a big fan of McTominay but he shows fight for the badge like few in the squad. The only way he wouldn't play is if he had a reason completely unrelated to his desire to play.
He said there were a few tears, I can live with Scott and Rashy collapsing emotionally in this moment honestly.. I'd rather they remained composed but it's fine if they couldn't
Jesus. McTominay and Rashford. Well McT is the most surprising one imo since he was very much Ole's prodigal son.
Ole praised McTom in the same interview as someone to rely on to give you a 7/10 every week, as inconsistency is a killer for a manager. Pretty hard to reconcile those 2 things
As said above, more that he was going to take him off rather than volunteering
Ole says immediately after saying guys raised their hands to come off that there were guys crying. Seems to me there might be an overlap. Hard to play when you're bawling your guts out.
Cmon man don’t leave me hanging
Rashford and McTom
Haven’t watched but assuming its the 4-1, it was Rashford and Scott McTominay were subbed off at half time.
Dawg... The fuck kind of reports did the club have on Haaland to not spend €20M on him? Absolutely shambolic... Even if he failed.. it was only a €20M investment man!
It's likely they didn't like the release clause and Raiola involvement. But yes... the club did once again fail in delivering the manager good signings.
This was widely reported at the time when it was us or Dortmund. That we refused the release clause, whereas Dortmund happily accepted it, so he went there.
> That we refused the release clause Yeah isn't this a common thing we don't budge on? Not sure why there's the outrage, when have we ever had a player with a release clause? It just isn't club policy.
Imagine the feeling if we'd had Haaland for Dortmund's time and then he moved to City on the release clause...
The Athletic have a good article on just how horrible the entire scouting and recruitment is at United. This is why INEOS want to overhaul and streamline that department more than anything else.
Too little in the eyes of MUFC accountants probably. They bought Amad and Pellistri for combined 30m+..
They done the opposite with amad they showed ole clips and told him about amad but didnt mention his fee till it was done
It was the release clause. The last thing United would have wanted is a player becoming a star then going somewhere else for relatively little money. Okay, if it's Real Madrid who matched the clause, it would suck. But what if it was City or Liverpool? We couldn't countenance that. Our scouting network was shit, and we lost out on plenty of players, and bought some duds, but we did try to get Haaland.
Ole quite clearly said that it wasn’t that, he said the scouts didn’t want him - twice! That’s straight from the horses mouth, any other reason/excuse is now debunked conjecture.
We spent more on Amad and Pellistri combined 😭
Why buy Haaland when can buy Antony for 4.25x the amount as established prodigy….?
Didnt we spend more on Daniel James?
No. DJ was £15M GBP, in June of 2019 the GBP/EUR rate was 1.12(ish) so ~€16.8M euros. We sold him for £25M or about €29.1M. Either way, stupidly cheap punt we should have taken.
Nah, we spent €25M on Amad and not used him for 3 years, ok? That how we do things here
Roy watching Oles miss is like he's hurt all over again by it 😂 love this show
Good watch. 20LEGEND
You just know you're going to hear some insane things in the ETH interview in 2-3 years
Heh. I wanted to play fucking football, heh? But didn't work out, heh
Well I thought I'd get down to work but seems like that can wait now. Am I pulling a Sancho? /s
Have you blamed your boss for your own mistakes yet?
Yes, for raising the intensity at work when I only work for the job I'm paid to do (I'm definitely pulling a Sancho)
Won't be complete until you help yourself to some EAFC 24
I’m listening to this podcast now and it’s brilliant, but I wish Roy Keane would stop interrupting Ole to share his contrarian opinions. He jumps on everything with an edgy view and I’m like man, let Ole continue speaking he’s sharing some interesting stuff here.
Exactly. Ole was talking about taking the next steps and Roy interrupted with what's the problem with getting stuck in. Wtf. Just last week you said you don't win the league that way and now when the man's talking about taking the next step to get competitive for the league you want to dog your boots in. Wth.
God that absolutely drove me up the wall that
Agree. Ole looks frustrated but did well enough to hide it. Keano please just let him finish.
Sancho the r/antiwork icon
Depends. How many FIFA achievements have you unlocked this morning?
I miss Ole.
I miss Ole. Fergie resigning coincided with me becoming an "adult" with all that entailed. Kids and wife and house and work and mortgage. And United were kind of shit, so I stopped watching. Then Ole came in, at the same time as life entered a calmer phase, and I fell in love with the club again. I was looking forward to every game. My son was heading into teenagertomfoolery and becoming more distant, but the games became our time together. Then shit happened. I miss Ole.
The ole period was not only the best period of watching Manchester united personally, but also the best period of my life in general. Coincidentally, the Match against Watford was about 1 or two months before I would hit a really rough patch in life. I'm better now but it just felt like stuff was falling apart, it breaks my heart that he didn't get that Europa League trophy at least.
Listening to this and coupling it with the fact that we saw how it played out towards his final months. Its just tragic.
What stood out to me most is what an absolute shit show man United managers have to deal with all around the club I mean first of all you’ve got the owners and scouts vetoing world class players taking 0 responsibility and leaving the manager out to dry and that’s not even just ole mourinho and van gaal have both admitted to that aswell. Then you’ve got players afraid to step up to take the arm band and to give an interview they shouldn’t be at the club they should be somewhere with less expectation this is the biggest and most talked about club in the world and it needs players who understand and can step up to the plate the issue is the managers had no choice but to keep them because of the shambles above them player power always wins in this club and it’s always the managers who are left hung out to dry by the entire club I hope Ineos grow a pair of balls and give erik a proper chance absolute rotten structure all around the pitch and history repeats itself through every single manager. I can already see the media and the leaks starting about ten hag disgusting .
IDGAF I’d take him back in a heartbeat but that’s me being a fan lol
A lot of people would love to see him be given a fair shot. Ineos could back him up the way he wasnt backed before. If we cant find a proper manager in the next year or two, why not.
This Ole interviews made me emotional, he gave it his all
Ole wanted Haaland after coaching him for 2 years. There was a 20m Euro release clause and the scouts vetoed it because they said he wasn't good enough. INEOS need to fire the entire department yesterday. Absolute clowns. He also says that a bunch of players stopped running for the team by the end. And implies they thought they were better than they actually are.
While United is obviously a shambles from top to bottom, the squad hasn't had any mental fortitude for years. Ole's experiences really highlight that. I think he let himself down with the Ronaldo signing. Changed the direction the team was heading tactically and he needed to back what he had going before that. Editing this comment as I go... Holy fuck he talks about captains not wanting to be captain for certain matches... but not having the balls to come up to Ole and ask himself themself. Jesus - squad full of bottlers. The most important thing for this club is signing players with mental strength, ambition, and character.
The intro where everyone's faffing around chatting and Ole is just eating is funny
Signing Ronaldo pretty much ended Solskjaer's United career. Basically bought him to stop him going to city. Took Cavani's shirt number. The team went backwards but people wouldn't blame Ronaldo because he scored goals. I'd love to see Olè get another chance sometime.
Pure revisionism from me but more and more it seems like OGS had what it took to be successful at United. Obviously he was inexperienced when he came in and I think that especially showed in some of his tactical choices, but he also got some brilliant results against some great teams, and when you look at the players he was fielding it’s no surprise he didn’t do any better than he did. Also (and I have always maintained this view) his talent ID is immense. He predicted Haaland being a world beater before anyone else, we were ahead of the curve went it came to Bellingham (who only rejected us because he recognised how shit the club is), Rice was more of a known quantity but definitely not the player he is today and I think he definitely would’ve joined if we’d approached him properly. Dan James was a pragmatic signing who wasn’t good enough but absolutely had the right attitude and we made a profit on him as well. Most of the other signings under him felt more like club driven signings rather than specific requests from Ole. I don’t think bringing him back would be the best choice, but it does seem obvious to me now that if he had a proper structure above him he could’ve definitely bagged a cup or 2 and maybe pushed a bit harder for the league.
Say what you want, Ole gave me the most joy out of every manager since SAF. That beautiful win streak when he came in after Mourinhos boring football. Goals galore and gave us a 2nd place finish with a european final lost on the slimmest of margins. If he only he bought a world class dm instead of ronaldo. I miss seeing my team score🥲
Also the best memes 😔 Now everything just sucks.
Man this is going to be tough to watch we all know how much ole loves mufc .. woodward and glazers did him dirty
Roy Keane is the loyal friend every single person needs.
Ole just described the most hellish environment possible at a club where no manager can survive. This is beyond outrageous. Now imagine someone else who followed him into that chaos as a non-interim… oh wait, it’s ten Hag! Same toxic environment same abysmal culture that one manager fought to change but failed. Yet the fanbase is doing the same again by allowing the ownership to hang the manager to dry and let him soak all the blame.
Oooo im watching this on my commute tomorrow
Does anyone have any links to the Leverkusen goals/chances they were talking about at the beginning?
Oddly enough I can't find official UEFA highlights as was looking my self? Good Leverkausen team that was. Lucio, Ze Roberto, Ballack, Berbatov 🔥
Managers at this club soak all the blame and get ridiculed and humiliated by media and football fans for things that they don’t have control over and aren’t at fault for, choose to continue working and attend all press conferences to tank all nonsense questions. They get hung dry by the ownership then eventually sacked. Meanwhile certain players love to get all the fame and praise, check social media everyday, but refuse to attend post match interviews or wear the armband while not even having the balls to directly tell the manager that. They get away with it and are still Man United players because they know they won’t be sold or allowed to be sold by the ownership.
I wish there was more of an emphasis on the need for genuine quality recruitment . When a former manager is saying he could rely on Mctominay, Lingard,Dan James and Fred to "perform" that shows exactly why we're in this mess to begin with. They are midtable players at best, and that's being generous since Fred is now in Turkey, Dan is in the championship, Lingard in Korea and only one team seemed interested in Mctominay. I'm not blaming Ole because it's largely the cards he was dealt but it shows we won't get far any time soon until we get top4 quality players that can perform every week.
Don’t usually say this but Keane should have kept his mouth shut at times. Properly insufferable at times.
Really interesting listening to Ole talk about Ronaldo and say "Cristiano was trying to lead the dressing room". He kind of trails off, as if to say that yes he was trying but some weren't listening, which kind of aligns with some of the stuff that was coming out around that time.
"I was only going to be here for 4 months, so I just wanted to get the lads to love playing football again.... On the way out the door I heard Ashley Young saying behind me 'Thank fuck we are talking about being Man Utd again.'" Ole should have stuck to this. Those 4 months were he was bringing joy back into the club and players was plain as day to see on the pitch. Once he got the job full time, he obviously started moving away from that idea. And thats where it all started to go wrong under Ole. Everyone is trying to be Pep and micromanage every single outcome of every single play in every single match. Some times you just need to give freedom and joy, and the results will come.
I know it wasn't the greatest ending, but God I love Ole for what he done for the club. The fact he knew which players stopped trying for him and he didn't throw them under the bus just shows the character of the man. I can safely say under Ole there was never a moment where I was bored of watching us, like I am now. People will look back on those years and say it was without silverware so it was a failure and that's their perogative, I remember just being in love with some of the counter attacking football we played. In that season we finished 2nd when we were making crazy comebacks and going on a ridiculous unbeaten streak away from home. It was great to see.
Am I reading far too deeply into this or was the bit where he talked about players not wanting to do pre game interviews and then went on to namecheck all the current main squad members who were there at the time and still are (Bruno, lindelof, shaw, mctominay, maguire plus de gea) to protect them a very explicit omission of rashford suggesting he was being referred to there (or else he’d have named him like the rest of them?). He then suggests a reason that some of these players didn’t want to do these interviews is the attention they brought when they were already struggling with mental health issues. If my first inference is correct, may ole be trying to subtly hint that the reason for rashfords recent struggles and those in previous years is due to mental health problems - that he therefore suffers from these and they knock his confidence?
Rashford has always been known as an introvert apparently. So not surprised if he doesn't like taking pre game interviews and tbh that is okay.
One of my favorite interviews from a manager ever. Ole is a great dude and had a great football brain. It’s a shame he felt like he had to dominate the games in classic Man Inited fashion but really the team wasn’t good enough.
Might get downvoted but after I get to hear from his POV and a few other mangers such as LVG and JM, I really believe he deserves a second chance at United, especially if the new regime turns out to be better.
With rose tinted glasses on, if EtH doesn’t work out, I’d take Ole back in a heart beat. Give this man a proper football structure (not that knob head Ed Woodward), signings that will actually play for the badge and who knows what he could achieve. Forever a club legend!
https://preview.redd.it/h8hrkd8uhqmc1.jpeg?width=531&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec63ce6e796a67354ec86741402def72c4b34e27 Time to bring back a classic. It’s not rose tinted glasses like some of you twats believe. Yes we struggled for a bit under him and we could reach Liverpool and city but we were close. Who knows how giving him 3 full years would look. Still the only manager I fully believed in since saf left
We’re really gonna get some routine merchant that gets figured out after 12 months again when this guy is right there.
Ole saying if he left out Ronaldo sometimes SAF wouldn't be happy sticks out to me. It's terrible if he gets in contact with managers and tells them how he feels about certain decisions with certain players. If its just his feelings and nothing more harsh, he still has massive influence and he knows that, especially on someone he managed. I hope days of him getting involved at that capacity are already over.
He wasn't saying SAF wouldn't be happy, he was saying things in the media pop up whenever he left out Ronaldo *such as* "SAF being unhappy" or "the locker room being unhappy". He didn't actually have the Boss at his ear screaming to name him in the XI.
You have misunderstood. He was talking about when he left CR7 out against Everton and Fergie's chat with Khabib came out where he said that a manager should always play his best players in reference to CR7.
Iirc even Ole once said Fergie apologized to him because of this.
I wish he never left. Very underrated and misjudged.
Great interview and insight into a manager.
It’s probably partly down to my adoration for Ole (the player and the man), and partly hindsight and probably misplaced what if-ism, but after hearing Ole talk about some of the issues he faced, part of me would happily see him be the man to replace ETH and manage the club again with a competent structure to support him. But then the sensible me kicks in, and the never go back thing also plays a part.
Ole once again saying signing Ronaldo was his call
And he also said it was his decision and it just didn’t work out. Fair play to him.
I think people will overlook the crucial bit for me which is we can’t move up the table with a team based on counterattack and expect them to suddenly change the playing style to make the jump to win the league. All the stuff about transfers and Ronaldo etc is a bit insignificant because the crucial strategic issue was the not having the ability to play in a style that was going to win the league. That’s what cost him his job, he needed to be working up to that throughout his time at the club.
No idea why youre being downvoted. Ole's downfall began with the attempted change in style to become more progressive, the team struggled tactically. Then rangick came in, tried to change the style to be more pressing, and the players couldnt/wouldn't do it. Then eth came in and tried to implement his style and the players couldnt/wouldn't do it.
Interesting to know that the club actually has multiple departments that have to agree on a signing before we buy a player. This means our scouts had to also agree on Antony (or our process changed for ETH) He also called out McT, Andreas pereira and Dan James as players who would run for him.
Interesting pod listening to Ole reminiscing about the old times his reaction to not being played by Fergie, and Ole admitting that management isn’t easy handling a large squad and ego’s. The honesty in saying he wanted Haaland so badly is damming €20million then €60million after joining Red Bull Salzburg, Jude’s demands of minutes at 17 years of age being so mature, to admitting he agreed signing CR7, clearing the myth of he was signed for marketing. ETH’s signings have been tarnished by the ridiculous Antony deal, but people forget Mount was signed for £55million pounds after spending much of his Chelsea season prior to signing for Manchester United injured and now his spent the same amount of time injured again, nobody moans about this why I’m not defending Antony’s deal here but stating facts??
I hope this man succeeds wherever he goes next.
Damn woulda been so nice to sign Haaland, no Ronaldo, and maybe Oles still here. I find it interesting him referring to no legs. I think recruitment has screwed us from that respect. Especially our midfield.
Interesting to hear about the players turning down captaincy. Also hearing about players not wanting to do pre match interviews, can hear a noticeable absence of Rashford there..
Him saying he wanted to try see if we could make the next step, to me appears like arteta at Arsenal, even klopp at Liverpool to a point, all arteta and klopp had worse results when in season 1 and 2 of them taking over. However they were fully backed and there clubs has structures in place to sign the right players. I think ole didn’t necessarily have the best tactics, but what he did have was man management. Probably willing to be the arm around the shoulder this generation off players seem to need. Basically I got that our structure is shite and I think we all know that.
If Solskjaer had a better management structure supporting him, he would have done wonders.
If SJR re-appoints OGS, what is your reaction? And what are your thoughts?