Playing the Man Utd blame game; Liverpool, Chelsea to dominate long term

Manchester United fans argue over who is really to blame for the club’s current plight, while Liverpool and Chelsea are being tipped to be the long-term dominant force in the Premier League – all in Your Says of the Day.

Join in the debate here…

 

WHO’S REALLY TO BLAME FOR MAN UTD STRUGGLES?

I find it strange that whenever there is criticism about the Glazers, Ed, the manager or whoever at the club some fans leap to their defence yet the same fans attribute our failure to “mismanagement”. If it’s mismanagement, let’s be more specific and apportion blame. Is it (a) Glazers (b) Ed (c) Scouts (d) the Manager at fault.

The same hypocrisy applies when it comes to players. When we sign a player, fans praise the signing and predict how big a difference it will make. Then as the player delivers sub-standard performances the fans defend the players talking about how they will come good. Then later they seek to attribute our woes to bad signings, not spending wisely, but never actually identify what the bad signings were.

Excluding last summer (its early days for them) these are all our signings:

1] Moyes – Fellaini, Mata

2] LvG – Herrera, Shaw, Rojo, Blind, Di Maria, Depay, Darmian, Schneiderlin. Schweinsteiger, Martial

3] Mourinho – Bailly, Zlatan, Mkhitaryan, Pogba, Lindelöf, Lukaku, Matić, Sánchez, Dalot, Fred

OK, question ……. which of these signings do you consider bad signings and did you say that at the time we signed them ?

MacGuffin

i was over the moon when we signed Pogba, Mikhi, Sanchez, Mata and Di Maria all were star players when we signed them i’m not sure i’d take anyone of them right now

then there are players we knew had the potential but didn’t live up to it…Shaw, Schneiderlin and Depay

The only players who gave their best but were restricted because of their ability, age or injury (in short the best of the bunch) Zlatan, Fellaini, Herrera, Blind and Matic..

Anyway to answer your question they can all be considered bad signings except for Zlatan but at the time i thought they’d make the difference and things would get better

libanski

 

1] Both were overpriced and I had higher hopes for Fellaini than by then over hill Mata,Mata is still here which is unbeievable. Mata was a bad signing and I said it then.

2] Herrera,Depay,DiMaria and Martial were good signings but mismanaged by LVG possession play. Right signings but for the wrong manager which gives another question to this thread: Which were the signings of the manager and which were made by Ed? I questioned Shaw but didnt know a lot about Rojo,Darmian and Schneiderlin. Blind was i happy to sign and Schweini was a gamble.

3]Bailly, Zlatan, Mkhitaryan, Pogba i was happy to sign. I said Fred was a bad signing, Dalot was a good signing. Didnt like Sanchez and Matic but Matic was an clearly upgrade from Carrick in his first season. Wasnt sure about Lukaku and Lindelöf.

Zico

Perhaps I did not make my point clear. People are accusing the club of mismanagement making bad signings BUT at the time of the signing people didn’t say that. Quite the opposite they praised the player and signing.

There’s a big difference between a signing not working out and it turning out to be a bad signing and mismanagement making bad signings.

Forgot to add Falcao to the list. Not a signing but a loan with option.

MacGuffin

Show us where people have “leap to the defence of Ed Woodward” please?

happyhurling

Ed Woodward TEAMtalk

Basically happy, you defend everything and everybody at United up till the death. You are often careful though not to stray too far off your fence by making outright statements that can come back to haunt you. Let’s break it down,

Glazers – well they provide all the funds needed so no reason for complaint there.

Ed – he conducts negotiations well. – You focus onthe signings we get but the ones we dont are always down to us not wanting to be ripped off or we were not interested any
way. You predict more signings and when it doesn’t happen say nothing. Why did we not get the signings …. Ole not want? Glazers wont pay? Ed cant get them over the line? Nope none of those so what is the reason.

Scouts – Well we know you praise them because they uncover “gems” all the time.

Managers – Jeez even as Jose was getting his cards you were the only one here still supporting him.

Players – You have waxed lyrical over every signing, and defended them year after year. Its only after 4 years or more you may say something and even then its they can do a job a squad player.

Club – All criticism was down to the media having an agenda against us and fans jumping on the bandwagon. You concede some criticism may be justified but will never say what is, every criticism is countered by you.

Fans – You have gone after any fan critical of club or team like a pitbull, ridiculing the post or poster.

MacGuffin

@macguffin It’s difficult to apportion blame due to the lack of clarity in the club structure and decision making. Ultimately it’s the owners, they are accountable for every aspect of the club on and off the pitch with their decisions.

When Fergie (and Gill) left it was clearly chaotic, the new owners knew zero about football, but understood sports franchises. They hired a CEO who was an investment banker and started doing what they knew well (sponsorship and merchandise).

They probably felt, that in hand-selected Moyes, they had someone who could follow in Ferguson’s footsteps, and he would manage the football side of the club.

Moyes threw out all the backroom staff, which resulted in the entire structure of the clubs commercial and football side now being ripped up. All the clubs targets were missed the first summer and it’s difficult to say exactly why. It sounds like our targets were both unrealistic and that we couldn’t follow through on them. This can be attributed to Moyes and Ed, but also just down to the general chaos and the structure in place (so blame the Glazers). At the same time as the backroom chaos, we tried to announce how rich we were and could do things other clubs couldn’t in the transfer market.

This started a downward spiral, a trend of buying players because we had to, getting held to ransom by all the shark agents in Europe, and a total failure in our ability to unearth players less well known and at lower cost.

It’s draining to keep running through each manager’s issues, but if you listen to Mourinho, who like him or not, absolutely has to be respected in his views, the structure of the club is not built to support the success of the team and the manager.

Some decisions may have been the managers, but without the support of a good scouting team, would be flawed. Some decisions would have been Ed’s or the scouts, with the manager nodding his head because there were no alternatives or the club had failed to sign them.

Throw into the mix concepts like Sanchez hearing that he was only signed for his marketing abilities and twitter following shortly after he signed, and the difficulty players may have had buying into the general ethos of the club from the top down. It’s one large melting pot of blame and chaos.

Mike 2005

Sounds reasonable but doesn’t really fall in line with facts. Moyes getting rid Fergie’s assistants should not bring chaos. It is expected that a new manager brings in his own people.

And it was hardly hunky dory in Fergie latter years so not sure how desirable it is to keep things unchanged. Look at the players we were signing and the decline in quality of play.

The common gripe from all three managers is that they were not given the players they were assured they would be given and were given players they did not want. That said the players the managers wanted and got were s****.

MacGuffin

 

 

LIVERPOOL, CHELSEA IN PRIME POSITION TO DOMINATE

After last season’s two horse race, teams like Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea have tried to bolster their team to try to bridge the gap. Additions were Pepe, Ndombele, Pulisic and it was expected that at least one of these signings would hit the ground running but they have had an underwhelming start.

Manchester United spent a tidy sum on Fred but they are very low in the table even after the Brazilian got enough time to get acclimatised to the PL.

This would suggest that it isn’t enough to spend money to progress and with City’s players such as Silva, Fernandinho and Aguero getting to the twilight of their career it is quite possible that Liverpool with the majority of the players not yet hitting their prime, is in an advantageous position to lay hands on silverware in the next few seasons?

captkirk

 

Chelsea are by far the closest to dominating the league in the longer term. The players they have coming through are incredible. City are no slouches in this regard either. Their academy has some of the most impressive youngsters around even if the don’t get a chance. Take my word for it, they already have the replacements lined up. Arsenal have their next generation coming through now as well so if they address the issues in their squad, they could be challenging too. There’s no telling how we would respond to Klopp’s departure, especially if we give the job to someone out of sentimentality. We’re the ones who’ll need a major rebuilding in the next few years especially since our youngsters barely get any exposure to higher level football. No one can take anything for granted, we most of all.

Yes a big signings doesn’t always come off but they’re more likely to when they’re made with certain considerations. Their quality, style of play, where and how they’d fit in, how to utilise their strengths in your preferred system and how to improve the flaws in their game, tactical awareness, personality, adaptability etc.

Ndombele can’t be blamed because the entire Spurs team bar Son and Lucas have been shit this year. Pulisic was a benchwarmer at Dortmund and was probably signed for marketing purposes. Pepe probably can’t handle the physicality of the PL yet as most foreigners do. Fred was unsettled by a manager who was causing all sorts of drama off the field who was then replaced by another “tactical genius”.

Our own big signings in recent years have been excellent other than Keita so that says enough about that.

Razor

 

 

FANS TORN OVER EMERY FUTURE

I have to be honest,regardless of the lack of quality in our squad some of the performances are just not upto the standards.Emery has deserved a ridiculous amount of critism(basically more than he should recieve) and yes there is room for improvement.Now many Arsenal fans unreasonably expecting dominant performances like liverpool and city give,it will never happen.Certainly not with this squad,and the lack of quality and stamp in our midfield.

What you have to expect is getting the best out of the group of players in front of You.I don’t think emery is far off by there is room for improvement.

the specialone

No TSO, for me the bottom line is Emery has to go. Why do you jump the gun always thinking that Arsenal fans expect this and expect that, I remember criticising Theo Walcott all of a sudden you said Arsenal fans expect him to be Ronaldo. We never said that once or at least I certainly didn’t and you just pluck out false assumptions from the sky.

the bsm walk

Sorry BSM,You have an opinion as you’re entitled to one.But When I’m going through your post it is just so Subjective.There is no objectivity at all.
It’s impractical and even at times illogical.

the specialone