Because injuries and new board
No blind loyalty here, I'm not that bothered if he gets sacked but I'm not against giving him another season either
Unpopular Opinion | Not sacking Ten Hag
- Thread starter Nickelodeon
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran are here to talk about a frustrating 2 points dropped at Crystal Palace. They then discuss the regeneration of Old Trafford. Finally, Nik is joined by special guest Michael Statham from the Football Oranje podcast - who gives us a more in depth look at our EL opposition FC Twente, and then runs through the (many) Dutch connections currently at United.
Because injuries and new board
No blind loyalty here, I'm not that bothered if he gets sacked but I'm not against giving him another season either
Sacking the manager will do nothing apart from give us a new manager bounce and benefit us in the short term. Hopefully a new football structure is on its way in, which will give us the building blocks to work from, without that it'll just be another lamb for the slaughter.
Its not EtH's fault, its the hierarchy.
Its not EtH's fault, its the hierarchy.
Ten "excuses" Hag is a fraud. Other teams have had similar injuries but have performed much better
Injuries don't wash because Newcastle and Chelsea have experienced numerous injuries too, but aren't useless in attack.
We've watched ten Hag's United team struggle to score goals 2 seasons in a row in The PL. 58 goals last season. 52 goals so far this season.
No matter what other issues Spurs, Newcastle and Chelsea have, they don't struggle to score goals and their managers generally get the best out of their attackers.
We've had the majority of our 1st choice attackers available all season. Rashford, Garnacho, Antony, Bruno and Højlund have rarely been unavailable. Just 33 PL goals.
Strikers have really struggled under ten Hag. Even Bruno's numbers have dropped off a lot. He didn't get going until April.
What is ten Hag's fault? Anything?
8th flatters us. Performance wise it would be difficult to worse but I don't think we'll be better than those 7 under Ten Hag.
Squad wise none of Villa, Chelsea, Spurs or Newcastle have question marks all over the team like us. They aren't going to stand still either.
You can barely point to a single position in the team and say 'yeah that's sorted for a few years'.
Apart from as soon as he was fit he came straight into the side.
Are they? Antony might the only example of that.
Fine, agree to disagree on that.
Garnacho has scored 9 in 46? He's not been amazing, but he's played a lot of top level games for a 19 year old (PL, CL and soon to be a final) and nearly hitting double figures. It's a good season, I'm not expecting him to be carrying us. Also no one you've mentioned has come close to his levels in comparison.
We've been very boring to watch as a United fan this season. We're crap at attacking and poor at defending. Historically that's been a bad combination in football.
Cannot do anything right, yes if you ignore the rest of his managerial career. Most top coaches in the world have had a stinker at some point. I'm not sure what magical fix is to be gained by sacking ETH.
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I can’t say we’ve been boring. Stressful absolutely but not boring. It’s end to end stuff.
No one else has had the injuries we had to deal with - not even close
Upfront Ten Hag was failed by the board before the season even started - he was told Mason Greenwood would be part of his squad, then they changed their mind just before the transfer window closed and didn't bring in anyone else
So we went into the season very light upfront - raw Hojlund (who also had some injury issues) with worthless Martial as back up. All summer I had said that we desperately needed another striker and then again in January but nothing.
Also not sure how he can legislate for your most senior attacker, who got 30 goals last season, decide to not even output a third of that. His persistence with Antony has been an obvious error and maybe should have played Amad more, but how does that make up for that shortfall?
Glad you're enjoying it mate. I'm sure we're popular with the neutrals as well.
But as a United fan who'd like to see us control games, be solid in defence and have some sort of structure to our attacks I'm finding what I'd loosely refer to as our style of play incredibly boring and frustrating to watch.
Aren't we 4th in the PL injury table?
Both Chelsea and Newcastle had more injuries than us this season. That's not debatable, it's a fact.
Transfermarkt link
Liverpool came 3rd despite having a pretty similar number of injuries to us
He has had two seasons in England. In the first one, he played OleBall, we were ok overall, with a very good 2 month spell, but also some disgusting humiliations. The other season is the worst season United had in the last 30 years at least.
I do not care what he did at Ajax. Frank de Boer won 4 titles there and was one of the worst managers ever in EPL.
I do not think anyone is expecting a magic fix. Just that having a competent manager is quite important. EtH is far from competent.
I’m convinced you don’t watch United. Either that, or you don’t understand the game.
Yes 3 teams have had worse injuries than us. We've only really seriously had a CB and LB injury all season.
I've seen people taking on this thread talking about a safe space for people who want to keep Ten Hag in. Genuinely the most pathetic weasels you could ever come across. We've a goal difference of -3 and Arsenal has one of +60. Anyone defending this can go and do one.
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You can’t say the end to end is boring.
The main problem isn't our injuries - yes we have been ravaged in defense, but we have strikers who don't score goals, midfielders who let opponents ran past us and a goalkeeper who can't save shots. And let's be honest, we have looked crap even when the majority of our problems have been available - just slightly less crap
I suggest you do more research if you actually think that's true. And again, ten Hag's training methods and the recovery techniques we use all need to be questioned.
The fact that he was willing to work with Greenwood is just another reason to dislike him. I don't think ten Hag respects women. He defended his sex pest pal, Overmars, too. What's a little bit of rough roleplay, heh? The shit tactics aside, he he has questionable morals.
The 5 players I mentioned should all be scoring more goals. Rashford aside, Martial had the best goals to minutes ratio under ten Hag last season.
We could have R9 up front, and even he would struggle to score goals in this team.
We’ve not scored many team goals. A lot of them have been moments involving individual brilliance, which are fine in isolation but hardly indicative of what someone expects from a team when they’re looking for entertainment.
Right, because keeping ETH is what will benefit us in the long termThe Structure will come and turn him into Fergie 2.0.
Nothing can possibly be ETH's fault. He only got £450m of players he asked for, does the coaching, decides the system, does the preparation, tactics, and game management, and is responsible for the training intensity and recovery time after games, etc.
If anything he should sack the club for mistreating him.
My view is that its not 1 persons fault, changing the manager on its own wont fix the issues and turn us into title challengers. Without a proper structure in place we're setting any manager up to fail and it wont work, in my view.
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Our poor performances stretch back to the window including after the league cup win last season. This included results like the 7-0 to Liverpool, 4-0 to Brighton, defeats to West Ham and very lucky victories against Fulham. In these games, we didn’t have any of the injuries and still played dreadfully and conceded plenty of goals.
It’s really not clear to me that just having those individuals would mean we’d start playing well with the tactics we have under Ten Hag. We’ve lost games where Shaw has played this season (Bournemouth) convincingly so I don’t think that excuse flies. If he needs all of his first choice players fit to be able to win games against mid-table sides, then I don’t think that’s a good sign for a Man Utd manager - they need to be able to adapt and get results in adverse situations. Doesn’t seem like Ten Hag is in anyway willing to change and adapt to circumstances.
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So to be clear you disagree with all 4 points:
- The drop down from having Shaw or Malacia to any of Lindelof, AWB, Dalot or Amrabat causes significant structural and tactical problems at LB
- This decreases the defensive stability, the ability to progress out from the back.
- This also hampers our ability to attack down the left hand side as it limits our overlapping play.
- It also impacts our midfield as we have no one happy to tuck inside to form a LCB or LDM role.
This is before we consider that even the replacement LBs not only are they not LBs but they also aren’t consistent in who plays there.
The end to end is not equal. We are getting dry humped. It’s not boring, it’s depressing.
The problems exposed in our opening game of the season have not been resolved, not a single one. He has had his first choice players available at times but it made no difference, he is totally incapable of solving even simple structural issues within the team. Not being able to change tactics or admit when his plan is not working is nothing to do with the hierarchy or larger issues at the club, it is entirely down to the manager. The level of incompetence combined with arrogance that he displays weekly makes him for me the worst manager of the post Fergie era and his attitude is frankly an insult to the fans.
I keep reiterating this, even we give consideration to last season the fully fit team beyond February / March performed quite badly but pragmatism determined results.
It's a fundamental reminder to many sentimental fans that the performances are the only dimension a team carries from one season to another. Erik has done nothing to build the teams momentum in this regard, he decided to essentially abandon what conjured some success last season with the double pivot midfield and I imagine if he was to stay he could determine a new approach again in the summer, it's basically a reset every single season from a tactical standpoint.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether ETH should be sacked. However I don't think any sensible person thinks he won't get sacked in the summer if not before. It's all a bit pointless in that sense. Surely you can't come back from this even if it wasn't your fault?
He should definitely be sacked but I don't think he will be.
There’s no chance you thought at the start of this season we’d struggle to finish in the top 8? That is a lie.
It's not as simple as numbers of injuries, if your 3rd choice CB and 4th choice midfielder is out the whole season then it doesn't impact as much as a 1st choice player out even 50% of the time
are they playing midfielders in defence?
40+ different back 4 combos?
or having a bench with 2 keepers and 5 completely untried kids?
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I mean, they played Dan Burn at CB and he is one of the slowest fullbacks I've ever seen. And still put 4 and 5 past Sheffield and Burnley.
I have no interest in your moral analysis of Ten Hag but at least it's clear now that you have a personal vendetta against him.
The point here is that he was completely failed by the board over Greenwood with a major Uturn just before the window shut.
I had no issue with Greenwood going out loan, the problem was the timing and not bringing anyone to replace him.
Going into a season with just Hojlund & Martial as striker options was always likely to end badly, I said as much all summer.
This is pure club propaganda and simply untrue. Everything that follows this statement is therefore irrelevant, RAWK-style nonsense that tries to put a positive spin on a turd of a season.
So why you start a new thread for an opinion which has been voiced numerous times in the ETH thread, hubris? there is nothing new here needs merging
I can't think of another manager who has survived such a poor performance at such a big club.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sport/fo...-erik-ten-hag-martin-samuel-comment-0s6s8w9p5
Ten Hag has three games to avoid becoming United’s first Premier League manager to record a negative goal difference and letting in just three more goals will make this United’s poorest defensive account, too. On 14 occasions in all competitions United have conceded three goals or more.
And that has got to register with an organisation as ruthless and methodical as Ineos, more than one glorious moment in the sun. The plan, plainly, was for a lengthy internal appraisal unfolding while the team ticked over under Ten Hag, with a decision on the way forward at the end. That no longer seems possible because the team no longer tick over. The change is going to have to be made this summer, more pressingly than anticipated.
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It is a very influential propaganda department that forces the club the play with over 40 combinations at the back, with no left back at all for around 75% of the season, and without his key players combined ever having been available.
He'll probably go, but he has definitely been dealt a bad hand.
Didn't we have Reguilon until January and then Shaw from was it December until February?