He's just ok, he's not the worst manager that I have ever seen but he's not near the best.
His remit was better our placing whilst also improving our young players and making the football more exciting. On the first he has succeeded but on the other two he hasn't done enough. Kilman and Ait-Nouri have improved under him, but then he hasn't done anything with Hoever (who in fariness does not seem to be good enough), Tote Gomes, Cundle, Trincao, or offered Silva more opportunities to flourish when he does appear to be getting more well-adjusted to this level. The Gomes one is really strange, he looked very raw but started two wins in the league. Then he gets subbed off against Norwich and has never been seen again. Cundle started a win at Spurs then doesn't make another appearance, even off the bench, for 2 months. Then hasn't been seen again after that Newcastle game.
With this existing group of players I think we would have really struggled with a 4 at the back, you could see it in pre-season. He did realise this but did we have to revert to a one-dimensional version of Nuno's tactics? No. We've been lucky to win as many games as we have because the way we defend is pretty rubbish, just fall into that low block and constantly hoof the ball away, fail to hold it up, then it comes straight back. The numbers themselves show how lucky we have been, you can get lucky now and then but it's not sustainable to rely on rare goals from very few chances and then Sa to constantly bail us out. We also struggle to get anything from losing positions.
We've seen plenty of weird appointments in the Premier League, to say he wouldn't have been appointed anywhere else is a bit harsh even if the reasoning was the Mendes link. Came close to replacing Smith at Villa over lockdown didn't he? You see coaches like Frank Lampard, Marco Silva, Mauricio Pellegrino, Jan Siewert, Bob Bradley, Jesse Marsch, Solskjaer, Carlos Carvahal, all get appointed with weak or limited CVs for various reasons. Some people from Portugal said Nuno would be a Mendes stooge, I don't mind us trying a coach from abroad (better than the same old tired British coaches some clubs in the league rely on rotating round and round). Especially when he won a Portuguese title and supposedly had a record of attacking football and doing well with young players, but it hasn't worked out.
Fosun have been pretty ruthless in the past, they pulled the trigger early on Zenga, sought out a replacement for Lambert quickly and Nuno's bad spell also meant the end. We'll have a new manager next season I think. I'm not actively Lage out but wouldn't trouble me too much if he left. The comparisons to Claude Puel at Southampton seem pretty accurate to me.
