Manchester United messed up a lot before finally firing Erik ten Hag, but Ruben Amorim made the worst choice of the year.
10 ) Wolves backing Gary ONeil
It was akin to that picture of a man gripping so ludicrously tightly onto a sandwich as to essentially put his thumb through it, to which somebody advised him to relax because nobody was going to take it away. Prior to ONeil’s and five of his backroom staff’s four-year contract extensions,
I saw him linked to the England job, said Wolves sporting director Matt Hobbs. I get it. He should be in demand at various venues. When we met him, we thought there might be anything unique about him. He wasn’t imagining anything, though
. It was suggested in April that ONeil interviewed for the upcoming Liverpool vacancy, while Manchester United explored his suitability during The Great And Hilarious Undermining Of Erik Ten Hag. It seems like they would have looked at Chelsea, which they definitely did.
There was certainly justification for keeping ONeil in place after he replaced Julen Lopetegui on the eve of the season before guiding Wolves to relatively comfortable safety with no pre-season and a sub-optimal transfer philosophy, but the signs were there that a new deal was not particularly necessary for a manager whose contract had two years remaining anyway.
Wolves finished last season with two victories from 13 and started this year with one defeat in 12 as ONeil’s situation changed from rumors of a complete loss to rumors of losing his job a few activities after than was appropriate.
If Wolves wanted to back ONeil and show him support, it might have been more useful in the exchange market than the fine print of his contract. Despite a ten-day delay, it was stated in the
Premier League January transfer window losers column that ten days after Kai Havertz was ruled out for the rest of the season due to a hamstring injury, that Arsenal know that acknowledging but failing to address the ticking timebomb next to their season is, at best, a calculated gamble.
It might all still be the mere precursor to Champions League glory as everyone in the squad is given a go up front, culminating in Barcelona failing to counter the centre-forward stylings of Neto in Munich come May.
It looks like a unnecessary clutter toward the conclusion of what is likely to be a fifth straight year without dinnerware, which Mikel Arteta can’t ignore by citing two Community Shields.
When they needed one final push over the line in the transfer market, Arteta and his team sourced only two apparent makeshift strikers in Riccardo Calafiori and Mikel Merino, while the Raheem Sterling loan has been an inexorable disappointment.
Various factors play a role in the likely hat-trick of Premier League runners-up finishes, but the winter’s strict focus on The Process was particularly uninspiring.
8 ) West Ham appointing Lopetegui
David Moyes had come to accept that it was the right decision for both parties. He had surpassed the unthinkably great canopy at West Ham, leaving behind a balance that allowed them to continue their quest for more while maintaining his own reputation over the course of four and a half years of consistency.There is little point in pretending the marriage hadnt been rendered antiquated and the validity of his agreement provided a normal terminal for both to walk on.
Moyes ‘ success at Everton has highlighted his undeniable abilities as a coach, but West Ham were right to change their management style by appointing his less experienced Spanish copy Lopetegui, which was a mistake.
West Ham described the 58-year-old as widely respected for his clear football philosophy, flexible tactical approach, competitive character and man-management skills when appointing him, only for his lack of any discernible football principles, a tactical approach so fluid as to have the consistency of stale water and man-management skills acclaimed enough to include two high-profile arguments with first-team players in seven months to play a part in his eventual and inevitable demise. In 20 Premier League games under Lopetegui, West Ham scored 24 targets, conceded 39, and collected 23 items, all of which were supported by a sizable summer investment. Three weeks after his sack, an completely skint Everton brought in Moyes and had scored 15, conceded nine and collected 15 items in eight games. Also Guillem Balague can’t deny that the comparison is utterly ugly.
7 ) Ipswich and their goalkeepers
No player has made more errors leading to a shot in the Premier League this season than Aro Muric ( five ). The manager was signed by Ipswich for 15 meters, but they have had to permanently lose him twice, most recently with the acquisition of Alex Palmer, who has become very capable.There is no way of saying clearly that Ipswich had had fared better this season had they not wasted so much time and cash on a keeper who has seldom if ever shown any degree of Premier League suitability, but one thing is for certain: they had clearly had fared better this season had they not wasted so much time and money on a keeper who has seldom if ever shown any degree of Premier League suitability. No player has this season’s Premier League made more errors than Robert Sanchez ( 5 ).
6 ) Chelsea and their keepers. Chelsea signed the guard two years ago for 25m and have had to lose him this year for his continued emphasis on being Robert Sanchez.
There is no way to say without a doubt that Chelsea’s performance this season would have been better if they hadn’t spent more than$ 1 billion on a squad that currently has no keeper who is currently more than painfully average, but one thing is certain: their most recent move for the position is hilariously stupid.
5 ) Manchester Citys summer
Pep Guardiola said it himself:  , In the summer the club thought about it and I said no, I dont want to make any signings. I had a lot of faith in these people, and I now believe I you. But after the injury wow maybe we should have done it. Rodri’s most-if-not-full-of-the-season suspension has accelerated those transport plans that Manchester City put on hold at the discretion of their supervisor, but even with him being present throughout, it was obvious Guardiola took a huge risk.The champions had made a series of transfer mistakes in retrospect, leading to an ageing squad in dire need of fresh blood. Although Savinho did well under the circumstances, Ilkay Gundogans ‘ knees merit praise for not buckling under the existential pressure, but that summer was the most recent in a series that had Manchester City in disarray. Probably not nearly enough has been made of the decision to sell Julian Alvarez, who has scored more than half as many targets as all table clearly one of his former colleagues at Atletico. 4 ) Leicester switching Cooper for Van Nistelrooy
It is unknown what Leicester originally anticipated when they replaced Enzo Maresca, the well-known Championship manager, with Cooper in the summer.There is sympathy for them having to react quickly when their coach was poached shortly before their Premier League return but the eminent risk of appointing a Guardiola disciple and giving him a season to impress in ideal conditions suggested the need for a back-up plan was clear from the start. Between Marescas’s abrupt departure and Cooper’s election as his successor, more than three weeks passed
. Then when a more defensively pragmatic manager dragged a Championship-level squad and League Two-standard defence to 16th on ten points after 12 games, he was sacked and the owner hammered the players. Van Nistelrooy, Cooper’s replacement, has seven points in 15 matches. It has been an absolute masterclass in how not to operate as a newly-promoted Premier League team from a club which does not seem likely to regain that status any time soon. After defeating Leeds in the Championship play-off final, Russell Martin declared,” I love what we do and I’m not going to change it. I love what we do,”
3 ) Everything Southampton did from May 26 to
I. It is up to us to prove ourselves right and make sure we embrace it without losing who we are. The Southampton manager stated in one of his victory speeches that winning this way is the best strategy for me. He neglected to mention whether it was the best way to lose, perhaps he preferred to wait for a seasons worth of experience of doing so each week first.Those critics were correct to voice their reservations right away. This has been an unmitigated disaster of a campaign but crucially not an unexpected one. Prior to the start of Wembley’s campaign, the issues with approach, recruitment, and tactical stubbornness were glaringly obvious, and hardly any attempts were made to resolve them.
Money was spent but only on inexplicably signing the strikeforce of a similarly dreadful relegated Sheffield United side, some completely untested defenders at the top level and Aaron Ramsdale, who once openly admitted he cannot concentrate for the full 90 minutes of a gamewhich honestly seems unideal in a relegation battle when facing 20 shots a game. In a seemingly Kompany-like pitch for a bigger job, Martin unapologetically adhered to his own principles by the deadline of
the lowest bar imaginable: Derby 2007/08][19459006AndtheystillhaventclearedthatbecausetoreiterateSouthamptonhaveneveractuallytriedtobeanythingotherthanacategoricalshamblesAlmostayearhaspassedsincetheappointmentofManchesterUnited’ssystemmanager
with the goal of creating a game model for clubs of all ages[19659042[].It included an audit of managerial incumbent Erik ten Hag and his ability to implement such a philosophy, as well as ensuring recruitment is no longer of the scattergun variety but anchored towards a specific methodology, identity and style of play. The following two paragraphs were included in that Daily Telegraph report:
Despite the manager’s own intentions, United ‘ new power hierarchy recognized that their current squad is not appropriate for a coach who frequently employs a back three and open wing backs that attack.
In other words, they cannot swing wildly from one system to another just to fit a coach, for all his talents, and certainly not when they have yet to even begin the process of gradually unpicking a Frankenstein squad. Not seven months later, Manchester United had supported Ten Hag, signed two more players with whom he had previously worked, paid a high price for his replacement, and hired a coach whose entire inflexible ethos depends primarily on using the exact same formation that the club had openly acknowledged their squad was incapable of playing.
Liverpool had enough about them to reject Amorim because of thatManchester United considered his candidacy in the summer, spent about 200m on more incompatible new signings then brought him in by November. The path is still as clear as ever with the Manchester United U21s, who are currently ninth in the Premier League 2 after losing their most recent encounter in an attacking 4-3-3.
1 ) The system manager not telling Manchester United to do one
Yet the most foolish decision of all was Amorim in not calling the bluff of a regime built on sand and redundancies, whose rank incompetence has been ruthlessly and routinely exposed for months. He said on the eve of his final games as a sports coach in November,” I wanted to stay until the end of the season,” after three days, but I was told it was not possible. It was now or never, or Manchester would go for another option. You can’t say no to it, butIt was an ultimatum full of an unthinkable amount of pressure, and as Amorim said last month, I was aware that it would be difficult and a risk.
But he really should have, because Manchester United had basically no-one else other than Van Nistelrooy on their radar and the last three months at Leicester suggest the Dutchmans glorious interim rule at Old Trafford might have tailed off soon after the honeymoon period was over, leaving time and space for someone to take over permanently and far more neatly in the summer. The never option seems remarkably appealing if it’s not
. Amorim has had to fit his scorched earth policy into one half-season and the result has been a cataclysmically poor start from a manager who, at 39 and on a seemingly inexorable rise, would have had similar career-defining opportunities come around again where he held the power.
Manchester United oversaw a terrible managerial changeAmorim should have noticed and fumbled for the trees when they called.
