Obstruction happened first so I think that was their call.
In his only full seasons at the club he finished 3rd and 2nd, after taking over a team in 10th and then selling the likes of Lukaku etc. Whilst neither is an achievement and should not be celebrated, it does also show he wasnt the complete failure that he keeps being referred to as. The season we finished third, we had Lingard/Periera/Rashford/Martial as our front four for the first 23-24 games of the season, with Bruno joining at the start of February, that team was expected to finish outside of the top 4 by every single pundit and betting agency out there. Then last season we finished 2nd, but only after City broke the record for most consecutive wins, I believe it was 21 games. It took a record breaking team to beat us and I know a lot is made out of other sides and their injuries, but we also had Pogba out for close to half the season, Cavani injured and suspended from the start of the season through to December, Rashford suffered a fractured back, Martial missed close to 3 months, and we had to literally field 6 youth players on the bench in a few games once most of our depth players picked up injuries. We had our fair share of injuries, and it still took a record breaking City side to beat us to the title.
The one thing that bugged me most regarding the media's criticism of Ole was them calling him a bottle job in the cups. No other manager is judged on winning a cup like Ole is, there are 2 domestic trophies in the league, so at best 2 sides will win a cup each season, that does not mean the other 18 are failures. The only reason the criticism of Ole gained traction was because he was always making it to semi finals before being knocked out, where as if he had followed the path of Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs etc and just been knocked out earlier, then no one would have said anything. Ole also faced more premier league opposition in the cup competitions than any other manager whilst he was in charge. The only one you can really say was a failure was the EL final last season, and even that took over 20 penalties to decide, still we should have found a way to win that and it was a mark against his name.
Ole was a fantastic man manager but his issue this season was that he decided to go into the season with a large squad and it was a lack of game time that resulted in Lingard, Martial, Dalot, Bailly and Henderson starting to get restless and then that was followed up by Pogba's agent criticizing the club in public. As well as Cavani telling the club he wanted to leave England, it just become a mess too big for any manager. Thats also been the issue now under Rangnick, its why things havent improved as much as we had hoped.
So I'd say Ole's problem was squad building, which should have been in the control of a director of football and transfer team to help with that side of the game, instead it was Ole and Woodward. There are some managers, your likes of Zidane who are able to get the best out of high reputation star players, but he struggles with younger players who aren't at that level yet. You then have managers such as Klopp and Mourinho who need a squad thats built on character and system players to excel. Ole fell into the second category, he did reasonably well when he had a squad with low egos, but played with character. However, looking back now it made no sense that we went for players that were just never going to buy into that style of play.
The issue with the club is the culture and players, Van Gaal warned us, Mourinho warned us, and now its Rangnick.
