Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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This.

It’s easy to get upset about our first performance of the season, especially after the build up to the season start.

However look at what ETH achieved last year. If by Xmas there’s no improvement then fair enough, but give the guy a chance.
 
city-puma said:
When I checked the stats and saw Wolf had 22 shots, I couldn’t believe it. I remember when Ole figured out how to play them, we normally limit them less than 6 shots per game. Since then, we normally dominated play against them. People must be completely shocked today.
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Last night's Wolves are nothing like the teams we played when Ole was our manager.
Now they rely on carrying the ball in empty spaces created by their organised pressing traps and deep defence. Neves and Moutinho used to ping balls to Podence, Neto and Traore in the channels
 
Borys said:
Half of the Cafe could see that coming. We pushed high (especially Bruno and Mount), Wolves were happy to sit tight and wait for a counter, they got quite a few of those and caused us troubles, especially runners through midfield.

Btw this is exactly what happened against Lens first half.

The thing with this setup is you need players who are very good on the ball and a system that helps to keep it. The latter is much bigger issue than the former, so ETH has some work to do.
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This, it's stupid to build a team on that Guardiola formation with players that handle the ball like a hot potato such as Varane, Casemiro, AWB, Bruno and Rashford. That's half a team so it's just too much, those turnovers are fatal when you have a 32 year old on his last legs as you DM and progression is affected because build up play is one of Casemiro's weaknesses. It was just naivety to build for such a way of play when the core of your side only excels in counter attacking.
 
AneRu said:
This, it's stupid to build a team on that Guardiola formation with players that handle the ball like a hot potato such as Varane, Casemiro, AWB, Bruno and Rashford. That's half a team so it's just too much, those turnovers are fatal when you have a 32 year old on his last legs as you DM and progression is affected because build up play is one of Casemiro's weaknesses. It was just naivety to build for such a way of play when the core of your side only excels in counter attacking.
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Exactly, mount isn't even that good at protecting the ball either. Beginning to look like handing over complete control of our transfers to someone who didn't even have that level of control at ajax is a questionable decision.
 
georgipep said:
Last night's Wolves are nothing like the teams we played when Ole was our manager.
Now they rely on carrying the ball in empty spaces created by their organised pressing traps and deep defence. Neves and Moutinho used to ping balls to Podence, Neto and Traore in the channels
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Rather ironically I felt wolves last night played quite similar to how Ole would set up against City quite often you would see our midfielders and full backs running through city's press rather than trying to pass there way out. And it quite often worked aswell. Wolves were excellent and rather unlucky last night.

Although we were pretty good in the middle of the game we were awful at the start and the end. Wolves were a constant threat on the counter as soon as we worked it into the attacking third they would pounce on us win it back and the drive through midfield to start an attack of there own.

Much to ponder for ETH but this is a work in progress let's hope he gets it working soon.
 
Matt851 said:
Exactly, mount isn't even that good at protecting the ball either. Beginning to look like handing over complete control of our transfers to someone who didn't even have that level of control at ajax is a questionable decision.
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It was not just questionable, it was idiotic and now looks like it will blow up in our faces with the club on the hook for a billion in owed transfer fees. Good thing is that a massive failure hastens the Glazers departure and allows us to rebuild under a proper ownership.
 
Donut said:
I know it’s kneejerk but soon there might be an argument to be made that ALL of his signings turn out poor. Let’s see about Hojlund, but we should definitely stop signing blindly his wishes.
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Martinez is good and hopefully Onana sorts out our GK issues but yeah, the rest are shocking.

I just can't understand how a supposedly world class manager who watched us get battered and overrun time after time last season genuinely thought "yup let's sign Mason Mount to sort out our midfield".
 
Samid said:
Martinez is good and hopefully Onana sorts out our GK issues but yeah, the rest are shocking.

I just can't understand how a supposedly world class manager who watched us get battered and overrun time after time last season genuinely thought "yup let's sign Mason Mount to sort out our midfield".
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According to Ajax fans on here, he tried playing Haller at LW and Kudus at LB. What I'm saying is, don't try to understand his thinking because you'll be wasting your time. Last season I was pulling my hair out watching Weghorst play no10 whilst Bruno was on the wings. Sometimes I feel like he does stupid stuff just to try and look clever.
 
pocco said:
According to Ajax fans on here, he tried playing Haller at LW and Kudus at LB. What I'm saying is, don't try to understand his thinking because you'll be wasting your time. Last season I was pulling my hair out watching Weghorst play no10 whilst Bruno was on the wings. Sometimes I feel like he does stupid stuff just to try and look clever.
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Bruno as LW up against Trent was criminal. The complete lack of awareness to pick up glaringly obvious observations is mind-boggling.
 
Hes got absolutely no excuses this season
 
AneRu said:
It was not just questionable, it was idiotic and now looks like it will blow up in our faces with the club on the hook for a billion in owed transfer fees. Good thing is that a massive failure hastens the Glazers departure and allows us to rebuild under a proper ownership.
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I don't get what our director of football actually does, he seems like a complete non entity but the glazers never seemed willing to countenance getting a proper one
 
Onanawhatsmyname said:
This.

It’s easy to get upset about our first performance of the season, especially after the build up to the season start.

However look at what ETH achieved last year. If by Xmas there’s no improvement then fair enough, but give the guy a chance.
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By xmas? We’ll be out of title contention and struggling to make top 4 if we wait that long.

He needs to fix this in weeks
 
Two main issues yesterday:
1. ETH got the tactics wrong
2. Players underperformed

I fully trust ETH and his staff will make it better next time. Also, players are far better than how they played yesterday. So hoping things will get better.
 
Matt851 said:
I don't get what our director of football actually does, he seems like a complete non entity but the glazers never seemed willing to countenance getting a proper one
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As we have seen recruitment is a major determinant in whether a club succeeds or fails it boggles the mind how they completely deferred to him this major and costly function. The bummer is that if he fails we pay him £20m or so. So far the idea that Mount can play in a three with Bruno doesn't look like it was well thought out and at this level it's criminal to commit £60m towards an ill-thought out idea.

If this regime fails Murtough needs to go and Arnold too for being so reckless entrusting so much money to a manager and ignoring the recruitment structure they built.
 
AneRu said:
If this regime fails Murtough needs to go and Arnold too for being so reckless entrusting so much money to a manager and ignoring the recruitment structure they built.
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Aye, Murtough's recruitment structure before ETH was a massive success.
 
Desert Eagle said:
Since he has come in it is clear he has looked at what we have and decided to build a team around Bruno and Rashford. All this talk about being the best transition team is because that's where both these players excel almost exclusively in fact. He has made one captain and given the other a huge contract extension. Both play almost every game. Both of them are very good but have a very low bottom level.

The question we have to ask ourselves and the same one ETH needs to figure out is what is how we get a team that can compete with city that features these two players as their core components.

Forgetting the defensive five for now, I'll separate the discussion into two parts. We need a midfield that gets the best out of Bruno and an attack that gets the best out of rashford.

I think a midfield of Enzo, caicedo and Bruno would be something close to the best you could hope for so we should pursue those profiles of players(yes it won't be easy) What we currently have with Bruno, casemiro and mount/eriksen lacks too much defensively and physically. When Mainoo gets healthy he could help us in this regard too.
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You don't want to know the answer to the question you ask. And no, that midfield wouldn't achieve much more than a top-four finish.
 
Samid said:
Martinez is good and hopefully Onana sorts out our GK issues but yeah, the rest are shocking.

I just can't understand how a supposedly world class manager who watched us get battered and overrun time after time last season genuinely thought "yup let's sign Mason Mount to sort out our midfield".
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I am worried. I think his idea of playing Casemiro with Mount and Bruno will be an absolute disaster. As you already wrote, how can he see that midfield and think Mount will fix something.
 
SteveCoppellFan said:
Aye, Murtough's recruitment structure before ETH was a massive success.
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He wasn't powerful then, if remember correctly he and Ole had equal power and then there was Woodward. He didn't take responsibility with ETH, its not like he had to completely sideline him on recruitment but he had to set hard budgetary milestones over which we wouldn't go and possibly insist on comparisons with other targets which would have avoided the Antony and FDJ sagas. Remember Salah wasn't Klopp's first choice but he was made to listen and put up with the club's choice.
 
pocco said:
According to Ajax fans on here, he tried playing Haller at LW and Kudus at LB. What I'm saying is, don't try to understand his thinking because you'll be wasting your time. Last season I was pulling my hair out watching Weghorst play no10 whilst Bruno was on the wings. Sometimes I feel like he does stupid stuff just to try and look clever.
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It's the fact that he could get away with it in the Eridivisie because Ajax were overwhelmingly better than the majority of the league. He's in a competitive league now for once.
 
ETH has done alot of good things and whilst the responsibility doesn't lie squarely on his shoulders, the lack of passing ability in our team is so disheartening to see every game.

I get it we don't want to be a possession based tiki taka team but if you cannot pass the ball competently you can forget about progression of ball through the lines and creating anything of note....precisely what happened in the Wolves game. I simply cannot accept that our squad of players can't pass, it's the most basic requirement of a PL player, so why are we so poor at it? Sometimes it feels that our players have zero understanding of each other and do not anticipate the movement of each other so the passing movement just look shoddy and predictable. Is that due to lack of training drills? I don't know...but given how poor we've been on set pieces you can predict that these things are not being worked on so players are just going through the motions without any real prospect of creating scoring opportunities.

I hope this was just opening game 'rustiness' for the unacceptably poor performance. We should all find put soon enough!
 
Hello, first post here.

Though the first PL match wasnt all that, I think we could see this one coming since the Glazers stall. ETH needs a few choice buyings if he wants to compete with choice buying clubs like Chelsea, LFC nevermind City and no doubt, Spurs going to. If Wolves are so complete and kind of ran all over Man Utd, ETH really needs his own 100 plus midfielders soon. Glazers not giving in was bound to have an effect and in a way they will ruin their own deal, hoping Man Utd stock will rise when in fact, it can soon rather fall on account of falling behind. The spurs game will be interesting. If this went with a 6 goals galore score, maybe the Glazers would hold out even more. Maybe now they hopefully will cave in sooner.

All that said the first 20 minutes were good. Wan Bissaka is fantastic with his telescopic legs defending, but also in attack he was good. Shaw was fantastic. I just felt Rashford is so wasted as a 9, even in poacher role. The minute he veers left you just see he is so much better there. Mount also didnt provide but he was in very advanced positions so who knows for the future. And Onana was ace, just ace. Maybe ETH also underestimated Wolves. I know I did. They gave plenty of power and good for them. Anyway, 1 game in 3 points in the bag. Spurs next. (Man Utd shouldv bought Bissouma tbh. Man Utd can do with a DoF to help ETH out)
 
The direction Ten Hag has taken with the midfield is the first time I'm starting to have some serious doubts about what he's trying to achieve here. It somehow looked even worse in practice than it looked on paper, and I didn't have high hopes for how it looked on paper! The lack of control in midfied is going to be a problem for me this season unless we sign somebody else to remedy that because we look like a juiced up version of the same team that got spanked a number of times last season.

It honestly surprises me that a Dutch manager who used to manage Ajax is so happy to cede control of the ball and seems undeterred by the fact we don't have a single midfielder who can retain the ball well, or even the fact that Casemiro is completely exposed against any counter. Even if the plan is to become the best transitional side, as Ten Hag says, we've got to become so much more decisive when we win the ball up higher up the pitch. We were doing that and then dawdling on it, you need to get the shot off quickly if that's the plan, otherwise it defeats the point.
 
Skills said:
It's the fact that he could get away with it in the Eridivisie because Ajax were overwhelmingly better than the majority of the league. He's in a competitive league now for once.
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Ajax haven't been doing too great in their league since he's left.
 
Very deflated this morning after that performance. I don't know if I'm overreacting, I really hope I am.
 
Not sure what he was smoking when he concocted that Mount, Casemiro and Fernandez midfield but he needs to find a fix for it quickly.
 
Can we just get one or two of the midfielders to drop deeper and actually link play? Instead of having all of our attackers in a parallel line up against the opponents defence?

Also, someone please remind Casemiro and Bruno that they need to sprint.
 
It was a painful watch last night but better than last seasons opener.

We can only improve on it, and it's Spurs next away, suits us better. Another 3 points, and closer to having Rasmus fit and ready.
 
DevilRed said:
Can we just get one or two of the midfielders to drop deeper and actually link play? Instead of having all of our attackers in a parallel line up against the opponents defence?

Also, someone please remind Casemiro and Bruno that they need to sprint.
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It’s staggering how often we’ve seen this over the last ten years.
 
Donut said:
I know it’s kneejerk but soon there might be an argument to be made that ALL of his signings turn out poor. Let’s see about Hojlund, but we should definitely stop signing blindly his wishes.
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Martinez is excellent and casemiro was brilliant last season. I'm sure he will find his feet again. Malacia & Mount remain to be seen. Antony has been a disappointment for sure.
 
AltiUn said:
Not sure what he was smoking when he concocted that Mount, Casemiro and Fernandez midfield but he needs to find a fix for it quickly.
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If he has any wits about him he should be keeping the likes of Mejbri around cause he is gonna need them once this idiotic experiment fails. He will need players that can play proper traditional midfield roles to survive the season. The longer he persists on this idea the less chance he of surviving, he doesn't want the club to get sold whilst he has questionable results.
 
Erik was a god two days ago, now everyone's worried that he's not made any progress with the team and doesn't have a clue about which players to sign or how to set up the team tactically.

If we still look that bad in a couple of games time I might start to worry myself, but that performance last night was so inexplicably shit it felt like an anomaly.

The team will look a lot better when we can start Martial or Hojlund and have Rashford back out wide with Garnacho as an impact sub.

The midfield really isn't as fecked as everyone says it is (the Sky Sports punditry has a lot to answer for there) - we managed half a season with that set up and we've since added Mount. They just played very badly last night, and will improve. There's a worry that maybe Casemiro is suddenly past it, but let's not forget McTominay of all people kept him out of the side early last season. It's a cliche but he is a bit of a slow starter.
 
ElDiabloRojo said:
It was a painful watch last night but better than last seasons opener.

We can only improve on it, and it's Spurs next away, suits us better. Another 3 points, and closer to having Rasmus fit and ready.
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We were worse last night than Brighton last year.
 
Geistman said:
I have to admit, I am getting somewhat concerned. On one hand Ten Hag does seem to inspire some confidence in the fact he always seems composed and stating what vision he has for the future etc. The team in general is a lot more solid.

The problem I am having is that his signings so far, I can't really say they've been successful. I like Martinez but is that just because I like his attitude?
Antony - I find so frustrating and he cost €95 million.
Eriksen - what moments did he produce last year?
Malacia - One or two good games followed by numerous howlers.

I just want to enjoy watching the team where we play exciting attacking football for the most part. It's been very solid under Ten Hag which is pleasing but has the football been enjoyable?

Is it time to take the signings out of Ten Hags hands. Is he taking on too much work? It might be best he's left to coach the team and leave the signings to the DOF.

On a side note, prepare to have more incidents like the peno that never was, Onana statistically is clearly poor in the air but at least he can pass out from the back eh?

Eridivisie FC
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Martinez was one of the best CBs in the league last year, what on earth are you talking about.

Antony - the price tag is huge and he's not your classic winger, but the reason Ten Hag wants him is obvious given his ball carrying and press resistance.

Eriksen was a free and prior to the injury was pretty good given he was shoehorned into a position he's not previously played. Our record with casemiro and eriksen as the midfield pivot before his injury was superb, we'd not lost a game.

Malacia is a young lad and brought in for competition to Shaw, given it was his first season in a new league he had some superb performances. He had some tough games also, but that's what you'd expect from a prospect. He's a solid option and have no issue when he starts.

Stop rewriting history because we've had a bad performance.
 
Hopefully when Ten Hag watches the game over again with the analysis team and coaches he relises no balance in that trio of midfield.
 
I don't know who it was that predicted it but damn was he right how this topic would turn if the match against Wolves wouldn't be a walk over.
 
I like ETH I’m not going against him but questions will need to be asked if we don’t progress this season.

I want to see a system and style of play, we have no identity what so ever.
 
Ten Hag might not be responsible for the poor performances but he needs to address the structural/tactical issues

Double pivot to support Casemiro?
Shaw or AWB to step into midfield to add to numbers?
Is Amrabat or another player the answer?

Work to be done
 
Underwhelmed by the signing of Mount and still am, also Antony for £80m plus who is basically one footed, and Malacia still an unknown quantity, unless these signings develop another level then maybe questions should be asked about the recruitment.
 
Feck me we are stil way off and its concerning. midfield. Right back, right wing, and striker.
 
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