[ad_1]
The midweek Champions League defeat in Turkey could be, or at least should be, the end for this particular group of Manchester United players.
And it may also have marked the end for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as a coach there, because I just can’t see him changing things in a way that leads to improvement.
The terrible state of United right now is not just due to the manager and I have some sympathy for him, but it is only a matter of time before he is fired. They can do it now or in six months, but then it’s only six months wasted. He will be fired at some point, so they should make the decision now, go ahead and try to figure it out. Because United, with this coach and this group of players, is not going anywhere.
I can’t pretend that I like Manchester United, given my experience in club football, but I like that the Premier League is strong, and a strong Manchester United makes the league stronger overall. However, they are stuck like a club. When they seem to have turned a corner, they fail again, they are too inconsistent as a club and as a team.
There has been a lot of goodwill on the part of the manager, a lot of former United players in the media, but the sad reality is that he has not changed the team in any way, and has not improved them in any way.
I don’t see the benefit of keeping Solskjaer as a coach. He seems to have no authority over the team or its players, and that was summed up with the first goal in Turkey in the middle of the week. If you have instructed the players on what to do and they respect you, they will be in the correct positions and will remain there until the danger passes. But that goal suggests to me that the United players now believe they can do whatever they want. They don’t respect what they have been told.
As a defense, I was horrified by Basaksehir’s first goal against United on Wednesday night – the fact that not a single United player covered his back. There is a foul everywhere: they had gotten into the big boys, but they didn’t get the ball into the area, they just passed it and passed until they lost possession.
I can understand what Nemanja Matic was thinking when he moved on, he thought he could help when United had the ball, give them another option.
But the fact that they didn’t have two men in cover was just ridiculous, truly unforgivable. For me, it showed a complete lack of organization and discipline.
In my playing career, you would only see 10 players advancing if you were 1-0 down and it was the last minute. You don’t do that 15 minutes into an away game in the Champions League when it’s 0-0.
Those players would have been told before the game what to do and where to be on set pieces: who was going to attack the ball, who was at the back post, who should attack the goalkeeper. But always, always, you would have two hidden players as a cover. Every training session I had just before a big game, they gave you those instructions, the coaches told you who should be left behind, so I’m sure the United players were told and it was a lack of discipline that saw them. don’t do it. . They don’t listen to their manager.
I’m sure two United players were instructed to stay behind, I don’t know for sure, but I guess it was Matic and Aaron Wan-Bissaka. So why did they feel the need to get involved in the prep game? They went out of position and I guess Demba Ba couldn’t believe his luck when he found himself alone with the ball at his feet.
The players have let Solskjaer down but he has also made mistakes: he has not brought out the best in Paul Pogba, he has not used Donny van de Beek, Bruno Fernandes is regressing and it is a club where not everyone is pulling in the same direction. . There is no leadership in the field. Solskjaer has part of the blame for where they are, although he is not the first coach to fail with this group of players.
It is a group similar to that of José Mourinho. People laughed when José said that finishing second and winning the Europa League at United was one of his greatest achievements, but look at him now and it seems like a miracle that they finish second with this squad.
United in 2020 is a massive demotion from what Manchester United used to be and clearly not good enough. We can see that in the results. That team is not good enough to challenge the Premier League, you could list their best players from one to 14 and there is not a single one that is good enough. Whether it’s skill, mentality or both, I don’t know, but they are way behind players like Liverpool.
The problem with United is that they sign names: they signed Fernandes, they signed Pobga. Liverpool goes out to sign footballers, they signed James Milner and Jordan Henderson, who are 100% footballers. They are not interested in anything more than being a professional footballer, they give their maximum effort in every game.
What United has are spectacular players who will give a spectacular result from time to time, like beating PSG, but they do not have that player who can be a nucleus for the team, someone who can be an engine in midfield, someone who offers safety, who they can trust all the time. They have players who can turn it on … when it interests them.
If they were proud of their work as players, Istanbul this week should have been a win, but since it’s not a glamorous game like PSG, the players didn’t come up, they didn’t feel like they had to show up because it was ‘just’ Istanbul, and once you adopt that attitude, it’s over.
Every time you think that together they have turned a corner, they fail again, and that must be a massive frustration for their followers.
If United hang on to Solskjaer for a few months, they will have a couple of wins, as they did against PSG last season, but they will also have a lot of losses. They will always have that routine of ups and downs and will never be a challenge for the titles.
[ad_2]