Manchester United ‘mediocrity culture’ established by ‘clueless’ boss might be too much for Amorim

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer put a ‘mediocrity culture’ in place at Manchester United which could humble Ruben Amorim if his system ‘fetishisation’ doesn’t stop.

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A pint of Sir Alex’s finest

Forgot Southgate, but there is a former England manager who Man Utd may well be calling in around March/April…hello Big Sam, we’ve missed you!

JC, a very happy Abu Dhabi Geordie

To all the smart arses saying Sir Gareth Southgate will be next United manager to save them from relegation: knob off.

Gareth Southgate has an abysmal relegation record having relegated Middlesbrough in his only club job. He also got England relegated from the top tier of the Nations League.

He wasn’t suited for the United job two months ago and he isn’t now.

We need someone who knows how to keep struggling clubs in the league. David Moyes has just ruled himself out of taking over a club in a relegation battle. It means only one thing.

Big Sam, your time is now.

Ashmundo

Time to speak in the only language Sir Jim understands

Beginning with a caveat, I’m a Man Utd fan. I ended up turning off the game at about 40 minutes, not with the usual anger but just a dull disappointment, which is arguably worse as a fan.

I have a couple of kids and am fortunate to live near a zoo. I don’t mind paying the entry for the zoo as it is entertaining. There are some zebras there. As this is a football site, let’s imagine they are “Newcastle United”. They move as a coordinated unit and have a semblance of knowing what they’re doing about them. They aren’t the most exotic animal in the zoo, but they are worthy of the cost of admission.

At the arse end of the zoo is the decrepit, sh*tty red panda enclosure. To keep this football related, let’s refer to them as “Manchester United”. The red panda basically hides up a tree and sh*ts contemptuously down on everyone and everything, while stuffing its face. 4 times out of 5 you don’t even see the little sh*tbag as it hides from all attention. I would argue this doesn’t justify paying the entry. Also, non of that money now goes to conservation efforts.

What I’m saying here is, all we as MUFC fans can do now is stop putting money into the club in any way. Not only is it a clown car, the wheels have fallen off and it’s on fire. Support the club emotionally, but not financially. They understand nothing else.

Richard (£40,000 from charity – another win for marginal gains. Good job guys.)

MORE ON THE MANCHESTER UNITED MESS FROM F365

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👉 Zirkzee nightmare proved Man Utd fans are not actually a uniquely tolerant, civilised breed

Fan service

Decent, balanced article on Zirkzee and Man Utd I thought by Dave Tickner, but I think there is a nugget of truth in the opinion Man Utd fans are particularly loyal to players and managers.

As a more casual barstool supporter I find the match-going fans, who quite reasonably consider themselves ‘proper fans’, a self-conscious bunch.

Years of success (admittedly ever distant years) and prawn sandwich brigade accusations have made them, I think, pretty sensitive to being mistaken for glory supporters.

Hence overtly sticking with players/managers is a chance to show how loyal they are. The Glazers are the lightning rod for anger, partly because they probably should be, partly because it’s seen as a free hit to get annoyed without being disloyal.

What I don’t get with F365 is immediately nailing your colours so firmly to the Ruben Amiron mast (although this has decreased a little currently). Normally your agendas are quite see through, was this one some sort of pre-emptive ‘he won’t know our league’ anti-PFM strike?

At this stage it’s too early to judge if he’ll be good long term, especially without having brought in any players. But he has made the worst Untied side in 30+ years, according to league finish, inarguable poorer so far. Lower than the standards that got Ten Haag sacked. By comparison, Wolves’s new manager took over a worse position, ie in the relegation zone not 13th, and has overseen an immediate improvement.

On a different note, commiserations to Fulham fans over Bournemouth’s late equaliser not being disallowed the other day. Lovely finish but a clear foul immediately before in which an attacking player studded a Fulham, defender halfway up his shin.

VAR did not intervene, commentary told us, on the basis that it was just the attacker’s ‘momentum’ that had caused the contact. Aren’t most fouls caused by a player not getting the ball then their momentum taking them into a player? Utterly ludicrous even by VAR’s dreadful standards.

Ronnie Buzzard, Manchester

Solskjaer’s treason

I still think Ole’s disastrous reign was one of the most horrific things that has happened in the history of Man UTD. It will take years to recover from the mediocrity culture he established.

He lived in a fantasy, illusionary world and you could see that on how he went about managing. And then he was in charge of the transfers! the transfers for pete sake!

Of course he was far from the main culprit. Lord knows there are plenty of blame to go around but the way he insisted on some players, like a child on certain toys, still brings tear to my eyes.

We spent an entire summer trying to lure Bissaka and Maguire with our world-class negotiating technics. I’m not saying they are bad players; they’re good but no other team does that. They just move on and find other players.

He also insisted on Sancho and refused to buy anybody else [Jota was right f**king there]; next summer he got Sancho but he didn’t know how he works so he put it on the shelf.

Then he nurtured a culture of mediocrity and made average players think they’re stars. Just look at contract extensions for Shaw, Martial [FFS] and Phil Jones, among others.

That’s why I’m dead against extending any contract at this club; newest exhibits Rashford & Fernandes and now Amad.

In fact whenever they talk of extending contracts we should all scream THIS IS MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!

Anyway, Ole always remains a legend but they guy was clueless AF and back then I predicted his chickens will come to roost eventually but hey we were playing United way; whatever the f**k that means now.

So what I prescribe? Sell every last one of em [okay maybe not Mainoo; poor chap]. I know that’s not possible but these players are representing a subpar culture that was allowed to grow so… a new contract for Maguire you say? Buddy in what world do you live in? Liverpool hasn’t extended Van Dijk’s yet but lo and behold; Mr. Maguire’s to the rescue! again he’s a good player but he can be a good player elsewhere.

Karen Asad

Generation game

A generation is defined by the length of time where people pass it over, so to speak, to the next group. It is relatively easy to quantify, but length differs upon culture, sex, and eras. However, it is safe to say that it is in the ballpark of 25 years; kids grow up, and have their own kids twenty-five years later, and so on. But what of football clubs?

Obviously the age begins later for players at around 18 or so, but more often than not a couple of years later at 20. Now whilst many are still highly adept footballers at 30, the drop off does start not long after (and that drop off varies greatly the further back in position they play in).

Whilst not scientific, a period of 12 years is a somewhat acceptable length of time, or generation (this could be extended to 15 – again, this is a generalisation).

At the end of this season, it will be 12 years since Manchester United last won the PL, but in that time they have picked up 2 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, and a Europa Cup. Five cups in 12 years (1 every 2.4 years), which isn’t too bad (nope, not including the Shield).

But that is a generation done and gone. United were THE team – a generational team – but it is over. It’s done. It is time that the media at large, including F365 (and a fair few fans), acknowledged this. No more This Is United We’re Talking About, that club doesn’t exist anymore. It is dead.

Whilst some of you may be sniggering away at all of this, that is not what this mail is trying to make you do. It is simply to point out that the goliath is dead, so leave it be. To many are living in the past, as though it is still relevant today. It isn’t.

Their time may yet come again in the future, they may once again be the behemoth the media still believe they are, but it won’t be for a very long time; they will win the odd trophy, hell! may even pick up a title along the way, but to be generational again? Not happening for a very long time.

Media, all of you, get it into your heads that it is over; it is akin to ‘back in my day’. Yeah, it might well have been, but your day is done, just like it has been for all generational teams of the past.

Mike D 

Formations

I was chatting to my brother in law last week about players from what I would say was the PL heyday of United, Arsenal, Chelsea and the occasional Liverpool or Newcastle. What we meant by heyday is possibly just whimsical thoughts of a ‘better time’ but it was also the time of an almost ubiquitous 4-4-2 formation; Shearer and Ferdinand, Cantona and Hughes, Sheringham and Klinsmann, Quinn and Philips, and so on.

We concluded that players back then were really players in that position. Rarely would you ask a full back to play in midfield, or expect them to do so competently. Wingers were wingers and strikers were strikers, none of this “can play across the front three” that is now so often required. You had midfielders who could, you know, tackle, track, pass and move, and score. Some were more adventurous than others but ultimately you had two players in the middle who sat and patrolled with the other being a greater attacking threat. Now we have “true number 8’s” – what in the juddering f**k is a True 8 when it’s at home?

So why, now, are fans like United’s (only saying them due to a mail this morning but others too) saying the squad isn’t suited to 3-4-3? It’s a football pitch, with players who really have no excuse not to be able to play in a formation that they’re being coached to do, unless, that is, they are a) really sh*t at something which is ultimately quite a simple thing, playing football or b) the coach is useless.

Unless it’s c) both of the above.

Either way, I don’t buy that 25 players are only capable of playing in one system, or that this one particular system is impossible to play in. I suspect it’s just that the United squad is genuinely, and laughably, awful.

P.S – Ange, wake up boyo; we have all these injuries because of you…no other club has six players out with hamstring injuries.

Dan

Is my geriatric millennial memory failing me, or is the phenomenon of managers only being able to competently set up teams in one formation, using only players specifically bought for them and their special formation, a very modern development?

When did it become acceptable for incoming managers to simply write off inherited players rather than being expected to try to actually improve them? You know, do a bit of the coaching they’re paid so handsomely to undertake – instead of simply crying that they need to spend at least half a billion pounds buying new players to suit their one formation.

I’m thinking specifically of Amorim and Ange this season, and Kompany’s shamelessly negligent 2023/2024 campaign, which saw Burnley relegated in service to his arrogance and vanity.

Thinking of the managers – good and bad – that I grew up with, while some certainly had a default formation and playing style, I don’t remember any being so completely obsessed with one as many modern managers seem to be.

Putting aside the ‘generational’ managers of that era (’90s/’00s) like Ferguson, Wenger, and Mourinho, the example of Martin O’Neill provides a very stark comparison to the problems with Amorim and Ange.

In the late ’90s, O’Neill was one of the top young managers, having made Leicester a very solid mid-table team while also leading them into Europe after winning the League Cup a couple of times. By that point – due to his clearly outstanding man management, overachievement with a small club, and general persona – he was frequently mentioned as one of the potential contenders to succeed Alex Ferguson at Manchester United when he eventually retired.

In 2000, he took the job at Celtic, who were in a poor state with just one token championship over the last 12 years with the previous season a disaster under John Barnes. Rangers were so dominant – and stacked with top-class internationals under a top manager in Dick Advocaat – that I remember Chick Young saying, “It’ll take a generation for Celtic to catch up to Rangers.”

O’Neill signed a few journeymen and no-names, the exception being Chris Sutton – unfairly considered a joke due to just one bad season at Chelsea in an otherwise excellent career. He then coached a team and squad consisting overwhelmingly of previously underperforming players he’d inherited to Celtic’s first treble since the Lisbon Lions over 30 years earlier.

He took players like Bobby Petta, who had been regarded as a punchline in his debut season the year before, and improved him so much that the guy tore up Rangers down the left wing in the first Old Firm derby of the season, forcing his opponent at right-back to be subbed off after just 20 minutes in a game Celtic won 6-2. Another standout was Stilyan Petrov, signed by John Barnes the previous season, who had shown very little quality until then. Larsson, of course, was already established as a top talent, but under O’Neill – and returning from a near career-ending leg break – he hit ridiculous new heights, scoring over 50 goals that season.

The impact of O’Neill’s coaching is summed up by one of the GOAT chants celebrating winger Petta’s transformation from joke to form so good it earned him a call-up to the Dutch national team: “Bobby Petta, Bobby Petta, he was shite, but now he’s better!”

That was a proper manager doing what he’s paid to do – managing a squad so that it can (at minimum) produce a competent team and coaching players so that they perform at least to their abilities, and sometimes beyond them. No fetishization of a specific formation. No whining that “these aren’t my players, I need other players just for my special system.”

There was no question about the value added to Celtic by bringing in someone like O’Neill as manager. But if many modern managers have only one system they can work with, which only functions with players they’ve specifically bought (and whom they can’t be expected to improve through coaching anyway), what is the point of them? You may as well return to the early 20th-century model of teams selected by club boards and committees.

Calum, Scotland

PS Had Sir Alex retired in 2002 as planned – or at any point in the early-mid ’00s – I’m quite certain Martin O’Neill would have been chosen as his successor and regardless of what Sir Alex achieved in his later years, I don’t doubt Man Utd would today be in a far stronger position had that happened.

Better than therapy

Wow, I had to explain to my son why I was giggling so much after the first 20 minutes of the game – my childhood and then early adult years were filled with smug, entitled (plastic) Man Utd fans, who gloated over Newcastle’s demise and decline and I had to endure them after every one-sided, easy victory for their team and after every shellacking that was doled out.

So to watch this demon of my youth completely bossed in a way I have not seen, even if just for 20-30 minutes, AT OLD TRAFFORD, healed a lot of past hurt.

I’ve written in before defending Eddie Howe. A few weeks ago this site described him as a mid-table manager who had reached his ceiling. If Howe is a mid-table manager what does that make Amorim, who has been touted around for the past year as one of the next elite level coaches of his generation?

Howe (and his team to be fair) have coached players like Joelinton, Almiron (the version of nearly 2 seasons ago), Longstaff, Schaer, Burn and Murphy to play way above their natural level. Howe has taken what on paper is a few very good players, supplemented with a lot of dross, and turned it in to a team which, most of the time, can stand toe-to-toe with the best in the league.

Even if you look at the signings made with new money there were no ready-made superstars there. Bruno wasn’t the first name on any of the elite European club’s shortlist when signed. Neither was Isak. Both are now worth more than double what they were signed for. Tonali was a shame for the first year but he now looks a class above. Livramento and Hall are showing signs of reaching their potential (I thought Hall was MOTM front to back).

And let’s take this season which hasn’t been smooth sailing. Howe identified a critical problem – his system as it was couldn’t work with both Bruno and Tonali. Howe made changes to improve the performance of the team, moving Tonali to a 6 and Bruno further forward.

Also it appears he’s made the backroom change to bring in someone to oversee a reduction in injuries work – it was rocky in the first months of the season with players below peak fitness, but we have a drastically reduced injury list and a consistent starting XI.

Howe isn’t perfect by any means, but if you made a list of what characteristics you thought defined an elite level football coach he has them. He can coach and motivate players to be better than they normally are, he can take new and promising talents and make them better (and more valuable), and he can identify where things are not working tactically and do something different.

There’s still a long way to go and competition for the European places will be fierce right to the wire. If we get there, Howe has to prove he can manage the burden of extra competitions better than last time, but look at Villa this year – they are managing the CL a lot better than Newcastle did but their league form has suffered, so this is a massive conundrum for teams/coaches that cannot be downplayed.

And lastly, the PSR/FFP problem is something there has to be an answer for, beyond there being a pattern for teams like Newcastle, Villa and maybe now Forest, of having one great season to get there, but European football being an anchor for the following season instead of an opportunity to keep progressing.

James, Leeds

READ MORE: Eddie Howe makes our list of the top ten Premier League managers in 2024

Trust the process

Such a rough run for us Spurs fans lately, and potentially a grueling January to follow.

Yes, I believe on their day (and with enough healthy bodies) Ange’s Spurs can beat anyone, so we could be looking forward to some big wins, but even if we don’t, I just want to share the following thoughts:

1. I still firmly, firmly believe that Ange is the best possible manager for this Spurs team. After Nuno, Mourinho, Conte and (God help us) Stellini, Spurs were absolutely devoid of any identity or strategy outside of having Kane up front. In comes Ange, who breathed new life and confidence into Spurs and gave us the kind of excitement fans had been crying out for. In the time since, he’s had brilliant highs and some terribly frustrating lows but a) he’s been absolutely rocked by devastating injuries and a thin squad (not his fault) and b) he’s up against a crazy competitive premier league. Giving Ange time and backing him is absolutely our best chance to succeed, compared with replacing him with Potter or Terzic or whoever.

2. Even if you do think we’re better off without Ange, the time to replace him is not now – it would be end of season. We’re still healthy in 3 cups, and the league is still quite bunched. He’s got a paper thin squad now. If Ange goes, what will Ryan Mason or Graham Potter do with a back 5 of Forster, Gray, Dragusin, Reguilon and Spence? Back Ange in January, let him ride through the cups, and let’s assess in May.

3. Make no mistake, Ange will succeed. Here or elsewhere. If we sack Ange, have no doubt: Spurs will be sacking Graham Potter or Terzic by October 2026 and talking up Kieran McKenna or Thomas Tuchel. Meanwhile Ange will be a revelation at Man City or Barcelona. If you think that sounds ridiculous that Ange would cash in a ‘bad’ spell at Spurs to a premier gig in Europe, go ask last year’s bottom-of-the-Premier-League Burnley Manager how’s life at Bayern!

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to give credit to John Nicholson. I’ve often criticized some of his contributions in this forum, but I loved reading his recent Commentary on Ange at Spurs. JN is able to look past the feverish media and talking heads who just love the drama and the sackings, and instead is able to see the bigger picture and the enjoyable football at the heart of it.

Trust the process. Ange in.

Andy, THFC, Eire