Manchester United will recommence their season with an away fixture at Tottenham Hotspur on Friday night of June 19. It won’t be long now, but until we have football matches again, we still have plenty of news items to cover and analyze.
So let’s take a look at what the Manchester United community is talking about in cyberspace on this Sunday. For our MUFC restarted season preview and best potential starting XI go here. For today’s MUFC transfer talk, go here.
We start with manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer speaking to the Shiv Nadar Foundation, and telling the audience that he has “no rotten apples” in the groups of players that he signed in the transfer market.
The Norwegian said that he strives to build a team with good character, in addition to having a side that gets results.
“I did feel that I was professional and did feel privileged to play for Manchester United,” Solskjaer said.
“I wouldn’t be able to look at myself if I didn’t know I’d given everything for my team-mates and my manager. That’s what I also now look for in players that we sign or we bring up from the youth team. You have to have a good personality and that you are professional because one rotten apple in the basket will make the others rotten.”
“So for me it’s about building a team that will reflect me and my coaching staff’s personalities and views. Of course there are standards because we want to win. We are in the business to win. But the first step to be a Manchester United player and person, you have to be humble enough to know you always have to work hard.”
“Never give in and always do your best, 100 percent effort is required every day and don’t think you are better than you are.”
“You still have to play with that confidence at the same time. It’s a fine balance but that is what is going to make the difference when we want to get to the championship again that we want to win.”
Sticking with the United manager theme, Ryan Giggs served in the role, on a care-taker basis, briefly in 2014 after David Moyes was sacked.
Giggs, who spent 29 years with United in some capacity, was the #2 under Louis van Gaal, and now leads the Wales national team.
He spent 23 years as a player under Sir Alex Ferguson, but says that LVG influenced his leadership style more so than Fergie.
“That’s why I talk about Louis regarding my coaching, because I’m actually two years in the meetings, [taking] responsibility, and I talk so fondly of him because that was really my first coaching role,” Giggs told the Manchester United podcast.
“Whereas when you’re playing, you don’t know the preparation. You don’t know what the manager’s seen on the videos. Players get seven or eight minutes of watching the opposition, but the coaching staff watch hours and hours.”
“So that is completely different, it’s completely different, even though you’ve worked under a manager for so long.”
“It was more sort of the man-management and the different things that Sir Alex would do that I’ve picked up on, whereas with Louis obviously I’ve seen first-hand different systems, why you play the different systems, the reasons for this and the reasons for that.”
“It was a really good experience.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
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