It's beyond the point of debate whether OGS is in over his head. He simply is. The question has instead become whether he's close enough to where he needs to be, for him to learn on the job before it's too late.Kai wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2019 9:38 amI'd imagine OGS would look for a reaction after the humiliating defeat at OT, but not entirely convinced by his tactics and desire to bring back the 90's United style. He already has a worse points per game ratio than all the previous managers, and I can easily see it getting much worse, may be in well over his head.
Not a fan of speculating too much before a game, I prefer to see how the game unfolds.
Mourinho is many things, but he does know his stuff. He said something on Sky a few weeks ago (although about Lampard's issues, not OGS), that is blatantly obvious (imho) but vastly overlooked by casual spectators - who mostly see football as with and without the ball. But instead of two, it's four phases. Set defensive structure, set attackting structure, transitional defensive structure, and transitional attackting structure. If you watch a lot of football and/or have played at a decent level, you'll instantly know that you get punished if there's no structure in even one of them.
United are decent, maybe even good, at the first two.
Transitioning defensively United are a complete mess. Clearly they're often losing the ball where they're all soundly positioned as is, but when they're not, they just seem to stand around waiting to what they need to react to, rather than being proactive. All top team transition into either dropping back into blocks or pressing up. The number of times they lose possession and just stand around is doing my head in. Often times the front four are caught flat, four players perfectly across the pitch, and just keep those positions, until they're bypassed - four of the them with one simple pass, leaving their back 4 and 2 CM's exposed.
Transitioning attacking everything just blows up with Pogba (and OGS misguided trust in him). Every top top team has an 8, or with more attacking teams a 6, that they explicitely trust to pass or carry the ball without ever, or as close there to as possible, losing the ball dangerously in transition. It's a necessity to truly dominate other teams, because you can push more players in front of the ball. United do too. Problem is, Pogba doesn't live up to that trust. He's losing it multiple times every match in extremely precarious spots. Just look at someone with a similar role but vastly less talent, like Sissoko for Spurs. He never ever loses the ball with the team transitioning with lots of teammates in front of him. Teams are targeting Pogba as a soft spot, trying to nick it off him. It speaks so much against OGS that he hasn't put Pogba out of the firing line in a 10, a 8/10 hybrid, or plain dropped him.
United and OGS are tactically the biggest mess, I can recall seeing in top football for many many years.
I do like to keep an open mind though, I'll give him a chance to change my mind over the course of this season, even though I don't see any positive indicators so far other than helping develop a couple of the younger players like Daniel James. I can't give OGS any credit for the results when he first came in, since I think that was just a positive reaction to Mourinho leaving and the squad felt free again, particularly Pogba with that ridiculous run of form that he had, but you knew he couldn't keep that up and that he would revert to mean eventually.
Just a tough game to call from the off, you said it yourself, could use all the help we could get for this one.