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The 2017-2018 season is famous in English football for Manchester City’s glorious 100 points league campaign. However, everyone forgets that Manchester United ended the season with 81 points.
Generally, 81 points mean you’d be very much in contention for the title. But that fantastic Manchester City season made them look not even close.
After this, Jose Mourinho lost his mojo. As a result, he was sacked in the middle of the next season. And with that, United lost their mojo too.
They hired Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He was supposed to rebuild the team. He was in the process. But his Europa League final defeat against Villareal somehow showed that he was not the man to bring them on top again.
There were plenty of shouts then to sack him. However, United didn’t want to be rash. So they extended his contract till 2024, But the later incidents proved they missed a cut.
By the start of the next season, Ole had lost more grounds. By November, United were 7th in the table with 17 points from 12 games. As a result, he was sacked—wrong decision No. 1.
They hired Ralf Ragnick as their interim manager till the end of the season. Ralf Ragnick is famous for inventing the philosophy of ‘Gegenpressing’, and he is highly adamant about moving from that.
The problem with managers who stick to a particular philosophy is that they need a core group of players with particular skill sets. For United, considering it was mode-season, they were not in good shape to attract players, and Ragnick was not for the long term.
As usual, Ragnick didn’t get his players, the team didn’t do well, and Ragnick was sacked/not renewed.
Since the position became vacant, two names were the most heard - Mauricio Pochettino and Erik Ten Haag. United went for the latter for another regretful decision.
Erik Ten Haag is another coach who strictly sticks to his philosophy. So like Ragnick, he also needs a core of specific skill-sets.
United did a huge miscalculation here. They thought they’d be able to bring players whom they wanted. But their recent performances and the fact that they’ll play Europa League this season took a lot of that pull-power.
As a result, they could not recruit those players. The list of players who rejected them this summer is quite amusingly long.
They needed a coach to bring them results with whatever resources they had. Very few are better at it than Mauricio Pochettino.
At the same time, they hired two philosophical managers in a row. Interestingly, both managers have completely different philosophies. This means they needed two sets of core players with different skill-sets or players who can do both.
All of them seem next to impossible. That also within 6-8 months. Now they acquired Caasemiro. He is a living legend and might give 2-3 seasons of excellent service. But his ball playing is not that good. So once again, it remains to be seen if he can adapt to the ETH game style.
Although United defeated Liverpool 2-1 in the last game week, fans can hardly be assured of consistency till they witness a fluid working midfield and a solid backline.