Get the fancams out

It’s a stupid stat. And if somebody carves out like a 2 v 1, and then the gk narrowly intercepts the final pass at last second, it’s 0? Stupid. Same goes for some bs offside ruling out 5 goals, xg = zero.

Idk why we don’t have a better stat. I preferred football before all this bogus stats, they’re for fans too I doubt anyone serious in an a***yst role looks at that. Maybe useful on an individual basis to judge over time are they good at finishing (versus say just actually watching their games and scouting them properly).

Mou

Even if this is true (it isn’t — of course managers are of varying levels, same way footballers are) — It’s all well and good screaming until you’re blue in the face about how the Glazers haven’t put money into the club in over 20 years and how Diogo Dalot is dumber than the homeless man who sits outside your local train station, but none of this absolves the fundamental point that a manager must take actual responsibility for results.

Something that some of you seem wilfully ignoring, and I’m not entirely sure why.

Because our managers are being asked to take responsibility for impactful issues that are larger than them

This is a fallacy that just won’t ever get resolved. Outside of Pep, no manager in world football ever lives in a perfect utopia where he gets every transfer target he wants and has the best directors ever above him.

If this is the case — should we just never criticise any manager we have, ever?

I think everyone has the right to criticize the manager for things they control. I don’t think Amorim is necessarily blameless (man marking vs zonal on corners and set pieces) but when you compare our last two decades from a structural and football planning viewpoint we are so far behind the rest of Europe and we continue to fall further and it’s not because of the arbitrary manager

Yes, yes, we know how terrible the Glazers are and how backwards the club is. But Ruben Amorim (and any other manager) we’ve appointed are not poor martyrs doing this job out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re paid exceptionally handsomely to do this job. They’re given the opportunity of a lifetime to manage the biggest club they ever will in their career.

On a major level, my criticism is not directly on poor auld Ruben Amorim, or ten Hag, or anyone else who has failed prior. My criticism is on whoever is holding the legal position of Manager of this club.

It’s a bare minimum of Manchester United’s manager to perform. I don’t care if the players don’t suit manager X’s system; if manager Y wanted player A but got player B; if the roofs leaky — c’est la vie.

There’s a baseline that has to be maintained. And most of the managers we’ve had post-SAF either haven’t hit or didn’t hit it consistently.

This doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge or accept those fundamental flaws at the club — I agree. But there’s far, far, far too much noise placed on that. Football’s a lot simpler than we make it out to be, most times.

Not to sound like a reductionist, but when did we ignore that a manager's job is to win football games? And at big clubs, it's to win substantially more often than not. The average lifespan of a manager at a club is 2-3 seasons.

When did we start getting into systems that are multi-year projects requiring an entire squad overhaul? Other than the absolute elite (which it's debatable if we're even there anymore) the majority of football clubs can't afford to do that. This is the Americanization of football with decade-long rebuilds and whatnot. Except there's no safety cushion for failing in this sport.

But a manager at Manchester United Football Club is able to act with impunity as long as he as slyly adjusts expectations through the media. You look at Amorim's record and the pathetic goalscoring droughts, and it's a miracle he's still here. In Italy, he would have been sacked 7 or 8 times by now

Do you want think the clubs structural and off field stability directly impacts a managers bare minimum requirement of winning football matches?

Not close to the impact some make it out to be, no.

If club structure didn’t significantly impact a manager’s success, elite clubs wouldn’t invest in directors of football, data driven recruitment, or long term planning

You have passed the baton well done 👏

I feel like a virus who’s infected KOP’s mind lol

We should be winning more games than we are right now. I don’t think anyone denies that. But there are a billion reasons why we aren’t, and another billion ways to go about how we fix that.

The base of the on pitch problems are that the club is filled with incredibly poor players who fundamentally lack the basics of being good players. Because of poor ownership we have to sell a lot of these players for way more than we can get for them. Both in what was negotiated for the player at the point of purchase and what has been put into the club by our “owners”.

That leaves whoever is in charge right now (it’s worse now than it has ever been before financially) with a mighty job - probably the worst job in football all things considered.

Ruben isn’t blameless, but I don’t believe there’s anyone out there who would do a whole lot better right now.

If we are able to shift some players and get some new ones in the summer, based on what we’ve seen previously I think his way of playing football is very attractive.

There certainly won’t be the “it’s too defensive” remarks when we get the wing backs going. Plus, we know it brings results. They won their first league title in 20 odd years and were unbeaten in the UCL before he joined us. Regardless of how good the Portuguese league is, that’s levels ahead of us right now. I think he’s worth the time.

It’d be a real shame to lose him before we could bring in what he wants, all because it’s a mismatch of previous managers with no identity & the previous manager going gangbusters buying some of the worst technical profiles I’ve ever seen watching football for 25+ years.

Ruben’s Red Army 🇾🇪

Are there managers out there who would do a better job of setting us up in 4231 and getting results this season with counter attacking football? Yes absolutely.

Are there managers who can do that, be charismatic, AND instill a long-term style of play that United fans will get behind? Much harder to answer. Time will tell if Ruben is that guy but right now im okay with optimizing for personality and potential style of play.

Maybe it’s just the scars of Ole and Ten Hag but going through the whole “getting results” initially thing only to soon regress back to mediocrity sounds terrible. It can’t be overstated how s***e the squad is, we genuinely have a bottom 3 attack in the league with or without Amad, Antony, and Rashford. Ruben has to do a better job of coaching what’s left, but between burnout, lack of seniority in the squad, and generally low game iq of these players I’m not surprised the ideas are taking longer to set in.

I give up

We’re so cooked

He’s had enough

This explains a lot

😂

This is me every Sunday while everyone is watching this team struggle until Bruno bails us out in 80th min.