Someone's having a real laugh - sperm of gollum to Utd.

[Baltar]

It's just a blip, fluke win by Liverpool. Ole must stay!

[Pidge]

[KMD7]

[deiseach]

On 16/10/2021 at 18:07, magicrat said:

Couldnt give a fuck whether they sack him I want us to wipe the floor with the cunts

Anyone who didn't upvote this at the time can go back and do so now. You're welcome.

[J-V]

I think he’s doing a good job

[Anubis]

 

 

 

 

 

[Stouffer]

Luke Shaw has a decent pair of jerbs.

[joe_fishfish]

How have they not sacked him yet?

[J-V]

1 minute ago, joe_fishfish said:

How have they not sacked him yet?

Deserves a new contract to be fair

[Pete]

5 minutes ago, joe_fishfish said:

How have they not sacked him yet?

They don’t sack managers do they. It’s not ‘the United way’

[TheHowieLama]

7 minutes ago, joe_fishfish said:

How have they not sacked him yet?

Who do they get?

 

Seriously? Conte would blow the entire club and boardroom up in less than 6 months. Zidane has never "coached" anyone.

 

They are fucked.

[manwiththestick]

Trust the process.

[polymerpunkah]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[deiseach]

Eamonn Sweeney's take in the Sunday Independent before the game on the respective managers is looking pretty good right about now.

Quote

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's reign is founded on fantasy. If Jurgen Klopp was managing Man United they’d probably win the Premier League.

That’s unusual in a game where special pleading, cliché and obfuscation are the lingua franca. Look at Pep Guardiola who’d like to be regarded as a principled and intelligent man yet sits happily atop Manchester City’s empire of dirt.

 

When Klopp said last season he had no interest in becoming German manager, you believed him. He does not box clever or play mind games. He is an honest man.

 

That quality was invaluable when six defeats in seven games left Liverpool eighth at the start of March with just ten league games left. A Champions League spot looked almost impossible yet Klopp, eschewing panic or self-pity, rallied his troops for a run of eight wins and two draws which earned an unlikely third place. It sowed the seeds of this season’s renaissance.

 

The German’s thoughtful decency makes him a perfect manager for the standard-bearers in England’s most left-wing city, one containing five of Britain’s six safest Labour Party seats.

 

It was supporter reaction, for example, which forced the club to abandon plans to put staff on the UK government’s furlough scheme. Anfield is one place a Saudi or UAE takeover simply wouldn’t be allowed. Klopp, principled, passionate and down to earth, mirrors the way Liverpool likes to think about itself. It’s a match made in heaven. No other major club would be so greatly diminished by losing their current manager.

 

His trademark realism enables Klopp to excel at the fundamental managerial art of making players better. Who’d have thought Jordan Henderson could reach such heights? Or Andy Robertson? Sadio Mane’s time at Southampton suggested a good player rather than a budding superstar while Roberto Firmino took a quantum leap forward under Klopp.

 

Then there’s Mohamed Salah. Has any player improved so dramatically midway through his career? At 25 Lionel Messi had won four world player of the year awards and three Champions Leagues while Cristiano Ronaldo had been world player of the year, twice Premier League player of the year and Champions League victor.

 

Salah hit his quarter-century after spells at Basel, Chelsea, Fiorentina and Roma earned him a reputation as talented but flaky. His biggest honours were Swiss League titles and an Arab Footballer of the Year award.

 

Klopp turned the Egyptian into one of the world’s best players. Who’s better at the moment? It’s funny to think that just three years ago Liverpool’s sale of Philippe Coutinho was decried as proof the club lacked the ambition to win major honours.

 

We should have learned our lesson but this season’s previews were full of assertions that Liverpool’s inactivity in the transfer market would see them fall behind big spending Chelsea and Man United.

 

United’s 5-1 opening day win over Leeds led to even more predictions that this could be their season to regain the title.

 

No-one says that anymore. The idea of United winning the Premier League already seems a fantasy.

 

Solskjaer’s whole managerial reign is founded on fantasy. Nobody really thinks he’s good enough for the United job. Even the arguments in his support seem like that traditional Irish political excuse of the “I know you don’t believe this but can you 100 per cent prove I’m lying?” variety.

 

Wednesday’s match against Atalanta seemed a microcosm of his time in charge. At half-time the funeral rites were being readied. But the second-half comeback enables him to limp on for another while.

 

It’s worth remembering that Solskjaer only took the job as a caretaker until a more suitable candidate could be appointed at the end of the season. But United got carried away by a good run of results as players who’d been working to rule under Jose Mourinho suddenly sprang to life.

 

Solskjaer was lucky then and has been lucky since that former teammates, so merciless with his predecessors, have tirelessly fought his corner in the media. Gary Neville’s admission that he won’t criticise his old teammate is almost admirable on one level. Didn’t EM Forster say he’d prefer to betray his country than his friend?

 

But nothing Neville says about Solskjaer should be taken seriously. The former defender has been hugely influential in persuading United fans to blame the club owners for on-field failure.

 

Pretending the club, which contains three of the league’s five biggest signings and an array of world-class talent, is starved of funds is some con trick. Arguments about the money taken out of the club by the Glazers are irrelevant to the team’s performance but they helped Solskjaer survive.

 

Now the reality of the situation finally seems to be dawning on the Red Devils faithful. The arrival of Raphael Varane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho makes it impossible to pretend that Solskjaer just doesn’t have the players.

 

The contrast with Liverpool, whose squad is weaker in terms of individual talent, doesn’t help the manager’s cause either. Though no doubt some diehards will keep insisting that a big-money holding midfielder or an extra centre-back will finally give Ole the necessary ammunition to win something.

 

Solskjaer’s media appearances are very different from Klopp’s. Perpetually claiming his critics have now been vanquished, getting snippy about pundit comments and sometimes just seeming confused, he often appears like a man acting in bad faith.

 

Even the United manager himself seems to suspect he’s not up to the job. Whereas Klopp always seems relaxed and confident because he’s secure in his own worth.

 

The home team have every chance of getting a result today. They’re always capable of a big performance when they decide to stir themselves. But in the long run Liverpool will prevail because a genuine manager trumps a counterfeit one.

 

United won’t come back to life till they come back to reality.

His follow-up isn't too bad either, with bonus dig at the Green and Gold brigade.

Quote

United need to find a new boss who their star players will actually respect
    
The players knew recent results put Solskjaer under severe pressure which would be greatly increased by the high-profile nature of this fixture.

 

Such circumstances sometimes motivate a team to pull out all the stops for the boss.

 

Instead, United’s combination of self-indulgence, carelessness and indiscipline came off like a 90-minute plea for the manager’s departure.

 

Almost three years ago a 3-1 defeat by Liverpool at Anfield led to Jose Mourinho’s sacking. There was general agreement that the performance was unforgivable, a disgrace to a great club etc. But it was like the 1968 European Cup final display compared to yesterday’s fiasco.

 

Chickens came home to roost so ferociously they turned out to be birds of prey in disguise. Solskjaer’s United have long adopted the attitude of the titular hero in The Mask of Zorro who quips, “I needed that scratch to awaken me”, on receiving a wound early in a swordfight.

 

The drawbacks of this lackadaisical approach against a really good team were made plain when Liverpool, after being handed an early lead, had no intention of being hauled back by their unpredictable foes.

 

“You never knew what they’re going to do next” may be an endearing quirk in a six-year-old child but it’s an awful indictment of a top football team.

 

Though perhaps calling United a ‘team’ is not entirely accurate. They’re more a collection of individuals which, under pressure, becomes a lot less than the sum of its parts.

 

The damage was done by the time Paul Pogba arrived on the pitch yet his attitude summed up United’s. The Frenchman is one of the best midfielders in the world and after the defeat by Leicester spoke about the need for the team to get their act together.

 

Yet, introduced in the hope he’d lead a rally, Pogba’s sole contributions were to give the ball away for Liverpool’s fifth goal and get sent off for a horrible tackle on Naby Keita he must have known would earn a red card.

 

He wasn’t the only United player who didn’t seem too worried about staying on the pitch. Cristiano Ronaldo’s kick at Curtis Jones as the Liverpool player lay on the ground also flirted with dismissal while tackles by Bruno Fernandes on Jones and Harry Maguire on Diogo Jota suggested a collective losing of the rag.

 

Fernandes did manage to get off early when subbed in the 62nd minute. So did Marcus Rashford who epitomised United’s rampant self-indulgence with a wild 30-yard backpass in the 32nd minute which almost put Mohamed Salah in for a goal.

 

Four minutes later, a Fernandes flick put Rashford in behind the Liverpool defence. Instead of taking a touch the striker essayed an almost impossible first-time volley which sent the ball trickling wide.

 

Once again a United player seemed more interested in his personal highlight reel than the needs of the team.

 

The collective impression is of a lack of respect for the manager. Solskjaer appears at the mercy of the superstars at his disposal. They seem bigger than him.

 

Self-indulgence is at the root of United’s problems. Not just from the players but from those who appointed Solskjaer in an attempt to curry favour with the club’s fans. Chelsea went the same populist route with Frank Lampard but acted ruthlessly when their mistake became clear.

 

The three title contenders are managed by three world-class managers with phenomenal winning records. United will remain also-rans until they recruit someone of the same calibre.

 

Antonio Conte seems the obvious candidate. Chelsea’s utterly dominant title winning season of 2016-’17 displayed his Premier League credentials and he’s got even better since. His steering of Inter Milan to last season’s Serie A title against 10-in-a-row-seeking Juventus was not only the finest managerial achievement of the year but may have been the greatest of Conte’s glittering career.

 

For all his talent Brendan Rodgers seems much more suited to Arsenal or Spurs than United where his failure at Liverpool would put him under pressure straight away. Zinedine Zidane might be a better fit but his lack of experience away from Real Madrid makes him something of a gamble.

 

Conte’s flinty approach could work wonders with United’s pampered performers.

 

But such speculation presumes the club owners actually want to improve things. There’s still the possibility of them settling, like late-Wenger period Arsenal, for scraping into the Champions League.

 

But the long-term results of steadily decreasing expectations in this way has become obvious at the Emirates. Manchester United need to be better than that, especially with Newcastle looming on the horizon.

 

Yesterday’s performance was the footballing equivalent of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Though no doubt as the remnants of the French army straggled into Paris, Pierre Neville was telling Jean Claude Tyler that the gaffer simply needed time to rebuild the army and bounce back.

 

“They just pressed too high up the steppes today, Jean Claude.”

 

Bonaparte had at least won a few big things in his time. Solskjaer never has and never will.

 

United need a new manager. Failing that, the fans might try another pitch invasion. Maybe Bashar al-Assad or Kim Jong-un fancy investing in a Premier League club.

[Boss]

11 hours ago, Ne Moe Imya said:

It'd be great if they could somehow find ANOTHER manager who a)is a terrible manager way out of his depth, and b) looks like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

 

Moyes and Ole ticked both boxes particularly well, but I'm not sure who else there is out there who would.

 

May I suggest: Someone's having a real laugh - nosferatu to Utd.

 

 

[Tj hooker]

Thanks for those articles @deiseach Sweeney absolutely nails it,  I just hope the Utd hierarchy dont stumble across them .

[deiseach]

1 minute ago, Tj hooker said:

Thanks for those articles @deiseach Sweeney absolutely nails it,  I just hope the Utd hierarchy dont stumble across them .

I hadn't thought of that. Then again, the most important lesson they'd learn is "we need Jurgen Klopp".

 

[Pete]

Quote

United need a new manager. Failing that, the fans might try another pitch invasion. Maybe Bashar al-Assad or Kim Jong-un fancy investing in a Premier League club.

Oof! Twist that knife.

[Preston Red]

That ferret from the LMA was crying about the pressure on the gimp this morning and saying how he exchanged texts with him.

 

I wonder if the other foreign managers were afforded such a luxury when they had their names dragged through the mud.

 

Cunts.

[manwiththestick]

Who's the ferret?

[Lee909]

[KMD7]

We should have unlimited reps on weekends like this. 

[A_S]

20 minutes ago, KMD7 said:

We should have unlimited reps on weekends like this. 

Fuck sake. I tried to rep the post above yours, but was all out, then instinctively went to rep yours in agreement! 

[Mook]

4 minutes ago, A_S said:

Fuck sake. I tried to rep the post above yours, but was all out, then instinctively went to rep yours in agreement! 

Sorted.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

13 hours ago, Stouffer said:

Luke Shaw has a decent pair of jerbs.

Whenever they show him running in slo-mo I start humming the Baywatch theme.