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Tanguy Ndombele

Yes totally agree with this.

He took the worse Man U team in decades to second in the league and winning the Europa league.

He has also at times in his career coached teams to play different types of football. At the moment he is just doing the best with what he has. I think if he is given a full year we will see an improvement in style. I say this as someone who decided to go out for the second half on Saturday. Im neither a hater or a lover but lets give the guy who has been a success time to improve the team.

So much of the criticism of him seems to come from ex pros now doing punditry work. To be fair Mourinho has himself to blame with the whole special one nonsense he did when he was younger. This is why I tell my son, how you behave now will impact on how people view you in later life, whether you like it or not.

huh!! Hold up!! Jose's criticism also comes from the mentality of the team. Spurs has at times played scared e.g. Leipzip match. I didnt understand why the team played defensively. Leipzig is a better 'TEAM' than us = yes but we were at home. Also Jose has a problem vs 3 man defence formations. His record against such is awful.
 
Perhaps there is an underlying issue with an injury that is causing him to look undercooked off the ball / defensively. He was called out for saying he didn’t feel right but history is littered with players playing through the pain barrier to the detriment of performing at 400%.
Ironically Lamela is brave because he can run around a bit fouling people for 20 minutes but yet can’t string 3 consecutive 90 minutes together.
There seems to be a distinct lack of patience considering how much change we are going through, 6 new players in the first team squad and a new manager mid season, in our first full season at a new ground.
We benefited from the consistency we had under Poch in terms of his leadership and personnel, as do Liverpool, City, Wolves and Sheffield Utd currently!

Even Cheatski who are the one team conditioned to cope with change are not bedding in any new signings from another country.
That’s because they only made one signing form another country and he is injured
 
You do realise Dele does probably more defensive work than anyone? When he came off on Wednesday he’d covered more ground than any other player on our team. Good luck getting that side of Dele’s role out of Ndom.

Yes, I realise that. But running round aimlessly and doing donkey work while having zero positive influence on our attacking game isn't what I look for in a player that is supposed to be one of our main creative outlets. Hence, the only way I see Ndombele being effective is by taking Alli's place: stick Ndombele up there then bring in Dier (or similar) into centre midfield.

The whole Dele runs around a lot thing is just his supporters using the last fig leaf of legitimacy to try and defence what have become shockingly poor performances. If all you want is a player to cover the ground and do defensive work, we may as well sign up Mo Farah and put him up there, or play Wanyama off the striker.

From a player playing in Alli's position, I'd rather have assists, goals, link up play and through balls than headless chicken style industry. So the point I was making is you could move Ndombele into Alli's attacking role as he might actually influence the game when shorn of defensive responsibilities, then bring another central midfield in to add more steel into the centre of the pitch.

If Alli's last remaining attribute is running around and defending, then he - or any supposedly creative attacker - is going to find playing time very limited. Hasn't he been dropped recently? Actually, and correct my if I'm wrong, but when he was hauled off against Leipzig didn't we look a different proposition?
 
He probably doesn't realize, no. In fact, I'd say most don't, despite overwhelming evidence that suggests otherwise.

I do realise, yes. I realise that his game has disintegrated to such an extent that rather than pointing to goals, assists and quality performances, we now use km covered as the yardstick by which to judge our main creative outlet.
 
Chelsea
Pulisic
Of course! My point remains though, we were strong under Poch for a long time due to the consistency of the message and personnel but could have done with incremental change during the last couple of seasons, as at present I’d say we have quite a lot of upheaval going on which will take time to settle down.
Even a club with United’s resources have struggled because of this whilst Liverpool seem to be adding players to the squad and acclimatising them without any real pressure to deliver. I think Fergie’s been quoted that the best time to strengthen is when you are strong, whereas historically it has felt Levy is of the opposite opinion.
 
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Of course! My point remains though, we were strong under Poch for a long time due to the consistency of the message and personnel but could have done with incremental change during the last couple of seasons, as at present I’d say we have quite a lot of upheaval going on which will take time to settle down.
Even a club with United’s resources have struggled because of this whilst Liverpool seem to be adding players to the squad and acclimatise them without any real pressure to deliver. I think Fergie’s been quoted that the best time to strengthen is when you are strong, whereas historically it has felt Levy is of the opposite opinion.
No historically we have strengthened
The issue of course is the quality of those
In reality we didn’t have the money we have now as it was also being used on the ground
Now we are buying a higher clamber if player even if fans don’t see it
And that can only help but the players do need time
 
Dele was in good form and is suffering due to Kane’s absence. The mood was fine when we beat Villa just over a week ago!
And we battered them too
But next day the whole set up had to change because of sons injury
That’s how short termism can affect teams but that was through no fault of the club

I’m now sure that Jose is working in a plan for goals and wins and he has these 8 days to embed it
 
No historically we have strengthened
The issue of course is the quality of those
In reality we didn’t have the money we have now as it was also being used on the ground
Now we are buying a higher clamber if player even if fans don’t see it
And that can only help but the players do need time
Hard to remember how often we have been ‘strong’ under his tenure but I seem to remember that under Redknapp we got CL but didn’t spend, under Ramos won a pot and lost our two best players (not all Levy’s fault tbf but he may have overplayed his hand with Berbs by getting the fee but no adequate replacement) and under what was our best period under him during Poch’s tenure made few investments that looked like they would improve the first team.
I live in hope that the new stadium changes the approach and then it will have been worth it!
 
And we battered them too
But next day the whole set up had to change because of sons injury
That’s how short termism can affect teams but that was through no fault of the club

I’m now sure that Jose is working in a plan for goals and wins and he has these 8 days to embed it
Agree with the sentiment but are you saying it was short term to plan for the season with just Kane and Son and then for the rest of the season with mostly Son or it would have been short term to buy a number 9 as a stop gap / 3rd choice? For me someone did make that decision and it was a big risk to be taking.
 
Agree with the sentiment but are you saying it was short term to plan for the season with just Kane and Son and then for the rest of the season with mostly Son or it would have been short term to buy a number 9 as a stop gap / 3rd choice? For me someone did make that decision and it was a big risk to be taking.
It was clearly Poch plan when he was happy to let Llorente go
Maybe he had more confidence in Parrott and would have him as back up
 
Hard to remember how often we have been ‘strong’ under his tenure but I seem to remember that under Redknapp we got CL but didn’t spend, under Ramos won a pot and lost our two best players (not all Levy’s fault tbf but he may have overplayed his hand with Berbs by getting the fee but no adequate replacement) and under what was our best period under him during Poch’s tenure made few investments that looked like they would improve the first team.
I live in hope that the new stadium changes the approach and then it will have been worth it!
Don’t forget in those periods everything got more expensive and out turnover didn’t increase proportionately
Now it’s increased exponentially
I did sums in the summer and had us making £100m profit after purchases at the current rate (that was before paying for Lo Celso and Bergwein)
We need a reasonable return from CLinwy to keep the coffers topped up but the scope on our commercial revenue is massively untapped
So we have no excuse
Levy doesn’t need the club to make a bug profit, just to not lose money
The value of the club increases the more we spend in the weird way football works, as spending is see as a good thing
The key of course is progress
 
The negativity was amplified by losing to Chelsea probably
Of course. In the same way beating Emirates Marketing Project didn’t mean all problems are solved. It’s going to be difficult but there really is no outstanding team for fourth (or maybe even fifth spot) so a decent run at the end of the season might be enough to steal a CL spot.
Don’t get me wrong I hate losing to them, probably more than Goons, especially given they are a bigger threat to our ambitions currently.
What is especially annoying is that we’ve managed to lose to them twice, when they were under a lot of pressure and we had closed the gap. It’s almost like we have an ingrained mentality issue at the club...
 
It was clearly Poch plan when he was happy to let Llorente go
Maybe he had more confidence in Parrott and would have him as back up
That’s possible and I guess would justify it at the time, but would this mean Mourinho turned down a very average stop gap in Jan too? Can only think that would be due to the sunk cost of the signing and wages would not be available for a higher calibre option in the summer?
 
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Of course. In the same way beating Emirates Marketing Project didn’t mean all problems are solved. It’s going to be difficult but there really is no outstanding team for fourth (or maybe even fifth spot) so a decent run at the end of the season might be enough to steal a CL spot.
Don’t get me wrong I hate losing to them, probably more than Goons, especially given they are a bigger threat to our ambitions currently.
What is especially annoying is that we’ve managed to lose to them twice, when they were under a lot of pressure and we had closed the gap. It’s almost like we have an ingrained meteorology issue at the club...

That is why we have had ( and still do in some) problems in getting over the line. Jose is the man who could change that m e n t al ity but we have to give him time to do so.
 
That’s possible and I guess would justify it at the time, but would this mean Mourinho turned down a very average stop gap in Jan too? Can only think that would be due to the sunk cost of the signing and wages would not be available for a higher calibre option in the summer?
I assumed it was because no one was available that was decent
I can’t think of one player who was to be honest
 
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