Tag: Ryan Giggs

Strings of Life

Ferguson, Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, Best, Cantona, Keane, Blind, Mata…. Zlatan

Comings and goings are part of football – rhythm is rhythm

Sunday, May 19th 2013 – the last day of the season and the last match in the managerial career of Sir Alex Ferguson; it was at the Hawthorns against West Brom and it ended five all. FIVE ALL. It was a downright bonkers match and seemingly the result of Sir Alex’s pre-match encouragement to ‘go and express yourselves’, they certainly did that. Maybe, just maybe it was the last time Manchester United showed themselves in a real attacking way.
Saturday, May 21st 2016 – Manchester United win the FA Cup final against Crystal Palace, Louis Van Gaal winning the first trophy since the end of the Ferguson era and losing his job hours later. In the intervening three years United have become a laughing-stock; David Moyes’ management made our world-class players second guess themselves, apparently his coaching methods and dossiers would focus on so many positive aspects of the opposition, the United squad would leave team meetings thinking Crystal Palace had turned into Barcelona.

sharpemcclaircantona_zpseaiktujcLouis Van Gaal came across with more promise and in the end did not deliver us to a position much higher than that of laughing-stock. It’s unfair to call him clueless, it’s perhaps nicer to say that whatever ideas were in his head never quite made it to the match day football pitch. I am glad he is gone, he had to go, it seems ruthless to do so as quickly as we did but such is life; Van Gaal knew the industry he was in.

Jose will do a lot right at Manchester United. His methods have a lot of fans worried and a lot of players are seeking assurances, sorry if this sounds cold, but all of this is good to hear. I like the idea that certain players are looking over their shoulder, I think some of them were never United quality and that some buys were only brought in because they played at a level a previous manager knew and was comfortable with. The wilderness years (they weren’t really, were they, but go with it) need to end and end now but they have changed my views on certain things.

Will he play United’s way, is he a United type? Leave all that at the door please. The men in charge of this decision saw fit to give the keys to Camelot to DAVID MOYES on the say so of Sir Alex Ferguson, the same Ferguson who had doubts about Jose. He chose DAVID MOYES. He told David Moyes that he was the next manager of Manchester United. I thank him for everything he has done in bringing my football team where we are, but he needs to sit down and be quiet. DAVID MOYES. Sir Alex has forfeited his right to express his opinion.

Juan Mata. I love Juan Mata. He comes across like he knows what playing for Manchester United is about. I’m sure he does. He’s a lovely guy by all accounts but that doesn’t change the fact that, like Van Gaal, he knows the business he got into. Jose has a history of getting rid of Juan Mata so our Spanish genius is allowed to wonder if the same will happen now. Probably. And I’ll be sad but I’ve lost Kanchelskis when I didn’t want to, Ince when I didn’t want to, Alan Smith when I didn’t want to, the man in charge decided it was time to go and they went. We will move on from the loss by buying a player of equal or better quallity. They decided to bench Best, he decided he’d move on. We moved on from Eric Cantona in terms of quality, there have been better players at OT since the Frenchman said au reviour, none have meant the same to me personally, he is the King, but we did move on from him.
Daley Blind almost made Mourinho’s mind up for him by speaking out in support of Louis Van Gaal. It’s commendable, on some level but on another more realistic level you cannot have a player appear to call out the upper level management on the way they handle anything. An ex player mouthing off is bad enough, you wish they just leave the memories alone, but a player currently on club books cannot say the things attributed to Blind. Players do grow a set when they are with their international squads, Blind’s pair appear to have gained him a first class ticket out of Manchester.

I want Manchester United to be the best they can be, I’m sorry that certain players had their Old Trafford years while we were shit and won’t taste the glory that might be about to come back – but they have Man United on their CV so I’m sure they will be fine. The same applies to Ryan Giggs, we have to leave at the door his history with us – it’s as a player for one thing, he has yet to achieve anything as a coach and he has been part of the backroom at Old Trafford during not one but two disastrous periods. He may achieve good things as a coach, but he will have to do that away from us for now. The reports that he is “disappointed” not to be considered for the main job can be believed but I have to ask, how big is Ryan Giggs’ ego for him to be thinking he was in with a legitimate shout of the managing at Manchester United. Someday maybe, not now. He may be dissapointed and surprised, I was not.

Thanks for the memories, Ryan, my God they were good. We love you.

At the end of the day, there is one thing to bear in mind; players come and go, they smack you with brilliance and then depart and most of them ride of into the sunset without opening their gobs and ruining their mystique. Managers come and go, this one will go, eventually, hopefully at the end of a haul of silverware and the start of a period of continued dominance; the foundations laid to rule Britannia, once again.

The fans are Manchester United, we will be here for every game next season and beyond – you cannot leave your football team (OK so you can, some United fans have proven that too now I come to think of it, splitters).

Welcome back, Manchester United – let’s go and sign Ibrahimovic – he’s an arrogant SOB and I’m going to love him, WE are going to love him. It’ll be a good ride, hold on tight.

Tabula Rasa

AT various times this season you were warned, warned by everyone who puts pen to paper in the name of Manchester United, that it would get worse before it gets better. Yesterday was the beginning of the end of the “getting worse” part. The first game under the stewardship of Ryan Giggs wasn’t the total transformation and complete rebirth that many had hoped for, that was too much to ask, but it showed enough.

There was enough made of the implied change in spirit, mood and dare I say it, direction, that the actual change was always going to be slower. Donkey David banished, the Class of ’92 come back to steer the ship and under the favourite son Ryan Giggs, the direction is always going to be seen as forward even if it isnt.

There’s a pic of Evra smiling, oh and David and he’s smiling too, there’s a picture of Robin Van Persie and, well betya by golly wow he’s smiling. Yes, we get it, everyone is happy, taking special note of the ones that gave clues to the unrest… smiles all round. Message understood. Everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet now, everyone is UNITED  y’know, just in case the subtlety is lost.

For most of the season it’s looked so utterly rudderless out there and there and for all the previous manager may have had an idea what to do it never really seemed that way, so something else, anything else would do.

Happier than the Pharrell song. Smiling. Get it?

Ryan and his team are in a win win situation. There are only a handful of games to play, it’s not possible to achieve much more than victories in all of them; even in that case the points at the end would still be the lowest since Noah were a lad or whenever the stats say, all sources say he isn’t being considered for the job full time so Ryan Giggs and every member of his staff can walk away with their status undiminished. Getting that job is “the proudest moment” and it’s one that will cost Giggs nothing and benefit him greatly.

It’s a tabula rasa, a blank slate, the questions are being asked and plans are being made, somewhere deep inside Old Trafford somebody in a suit is talking to someone in a foreign country about things we don’t know yet, polishing a compass that he holds in his sleeve… all of that will come in its own time.

For now, the change was swift and merciless, and on the face of it, it has worked, the closer inspection is for someone else’s eye. GTS