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Whilst it was far from impressive last night I do want to make a couple of points to try and put United’s current situation into a perspective not many are considering. I see many people just saying there is no plan - just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
I see some saying (and I agree with them) that the football isn’t great. No it isn’t, but surely it’s indisputable that under Ole United have played their most attractive and most coherent football in the post-Ferguson era? A low bar, but more experienced coaches have failed.
The fact that it was once attractive gives some fair hope that it can be again. It also gives the players less excuse. They’ve been able to show at least two good runs of form under him. They need to take some responsibility when they’re poor in games like last night.
Everyone knows that this team was between 3rd and 8th last season. Everybody knew it needed to be strengthened in areas where it wasn’t. We know Ole isn’t to blame for that and that any successor will have the same issues. We’ve seen that pattern often enough.
It took 18 months for Ole to build a team which played the best football since Fergie. It will likely take another 18 to get an effective plan B and also a new plan A now Pogba seems to be on the periphery. The Q is, is it worth the investment or do we start the cycle again?
Fundamentally people are upset that we played two DMs at home. Me too, it seemed unnecessary against a team who haven’t won yet. But Palace could have scored 5 against us. We’re not that good. Defensively we need protection. That’s the hard reality.
So does Ole fight for the result or to go out at least trying to do the attacking idea even though it could have cost us (and yesterday you could argue that the extra DM was, actually, necessary in the end)?
He gets criticised for naivety if we were left wide open. Criticised for negativity when cautious. The latter was more conducive to a win, as unconvincing as it was, because that’s the reality.
“We’re better than that, we should be battering teams like that” sure, even this team should have done better - but they’re low on confidence. We’ve seen that they can do better under this manager. Every manager deserves the chance to turn around form if it isn’t clearly terminal
Again I think we can all agree that the ceiling for this squad is third, all being well, and that’s what Ole got last season. The achievement deserved better or more sensible transfers. So we’re back in the lottery of an unpredictable poor league.
That’s not Ole’s fault, but now the transfer window is a distant memory to the goldfish. So that is forgotten and all that’s left is the idea that Man Utd should be doing better than 1-0 and two DMs against WBA. I agree, but as noted, it’s complicated.
So the Q is have we seen enough to justify investment of more time or do we take the risk (and it is a risk) of a new complete reset?
I would be reluctant to make a change on that basis. There’s no standout candidate and I can see the value in more time.
I would be reluctant to make a change on that basis. There’s no standout candidate and I can see the value in more time.
Admittedly that’s heart v head - I can present logical arguments to support Ole but that’s a best case scenario, weighed against my doubt that the job is too big for him. But I still don’t think it’s blind faith as I realised it was under LVG and Jose at the end.
I don’t want to shamelessly plug here, but it’s something we’ve talked about on the latest season of @OnManUtdPodcast (and something I’ll talk about on tomorrow’s #TalkingDevils) but any manager is seeing two processes - 1) transition of inheritance 2) building his own team
