Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

Status
Not open for further replies.
We can't keep saying that if we don't sign a midfielder or this or that player we can't play ETH football.

We were told that GK was our main problem and signing Onana will make us press high and play attacking football. Based on Wolves game we were actually worse than when DDG was GK. We were playing counter attacking football and our midfield was non existent against Wolves.

We need to start playing much better than that. Our passing was really bad and no team work at all. We were lucky and Wolves should have won comfortably.
 
Yakuza_devils said:
We can't keep saying that if we don't sign a midfielder or this or that player we can't play ETH football.

We were told that GK was our main problem and signing Onana will make us press high and play attacking football. Based on Wolves game we were actually worse than when DDG was GK. We were playing counter attacking football and our midfield was non existent against Wolves.

We need to start playing much better than that. Our passing was really bad and no team work at all. We were lucky and Wolves should have won comfortably.
Click to expand...

I don’t know what that is anymore, because I don’t think he’s trying to implement the same style as at Ajax, and what he says doesn’t come close to matching what we see on the pitch.
 
He always plays with a line of 5 against the opposition back line, against wolves this was AWB, Antony, Rashford, Mount and Garnacho.

Casemiro needs support from the centre backs, Shaw and Fernandes.

Adding another midfielder doesn’t help unless shaw joins the front 5 and Garnacho or Mount drop out.
 
Cathy Ferguson said:
How do you expect our midfield to be setup in 3 months time? Will it still be Casemiro, Bruno and Mount?
Click to expand...
Probably. It can be successful. Just needs tactical adjustments. Also needs players to just be sharper on the ball to get things to work better or lose every single 50/50.
 
gajender said:
I am not impatient and nor I am suggesting to change manager but What I want is definite improvement in our style of football , more cohesion and better chance creation .

Last season there were mitigating circumstances so quality of football could be excused but now it's more or less Ten Hag's team so expecting good football is bare minimum and 10 -12 games into the season we definitely should atleast be doing that by that time most of new signings should be up and running as well .
Click to expand...
Sure, we should expect to see improved football and I'm sure we will. People losing their shit after the first game of the season where we won is a bit crazy though.
 
Was a little taken aback by that performance, i'll have to admit. Massive EtH fan and expected things to click a little more at this stage, with an exciting performance to kick off the season, full of energy, pressing, movement and pace. Got none of it and we looked even more confused/lacklustre than we did at times last season. Unprepared and more than half the team out there looked out of sorts/form as well. Maybe it's too many tweaks? As an example, I'm sure i saw Bruno out wide in the right back position a few times, covering and/or trying to receive the ball ala Mainoo in a preseason match iirc. Oh well, still fully back the manager but yeah, that performance all of a sudden has me concerned, when all i felt going into the game was excitement. Another example would be Shaw coming in field and not keeping/providing the width...(small tweaks but worked against us and not particularly for us)

Positives: got the 3 points after a poor performance, Onana & the defence were solid and things can only improve (touch wood!)

Negatives: pretty much the above plus midfield is looking woefully light, off the pace and all over the place. The wingers - less said, the better.

On a final note, one last observation: one thing City & such teams are great at, is persistent "tactical" fouling to prevent counter attacks when possession is turned over. We don't do it but rather allow players just to waltz through our midfield, all the way to our penalty area. Possibly something we will need to become more "aware" of, or we're going to become extremely susceptible to the counterattack ourselves.

Onwards and upwards!
 
VP89 said:
I don't think it would take long. The whole team have been training on this, some games will be up some down but theyl learn from it more and more.

Antony was the least of our problems and showed better variation in play against Wolves. He also operated with no overlapping full back pretty much the entire game. How many wingers can you name that would flourish with that lack of support?
Click to expand...

The assist for the goal came from Wan Bissaka, who had more end product than the 100M winger with frost tips who keeps wanting to cut in and get crowded out.
 
To be fair, he did show his ability to adapt his tactics and manage our Primadonnas after last season's shocking start albeit not with the players he brought in. I hope he can be equally ruthless if this standard continues in August. And also adapt his tactics accordingly. It's more important to acknowledge, rectify and overcome mistakes (if they are indeed mistakes).
 
fallengt said:
First match is a legit 4/10 from ETH.
Click to expand...

Its worse that he showed no signs of adapting to the opposition nullifying his game plan by either asking Bruno to drop deeper or bring on Eriksen sooner and help switch the play quicker to get the Wolves defense moving. The team got worse by the second half after having time to think through the opposition tactics.
 
Being potentially bought by Qatar and spending multiple seasons letting EtH build a successful team like a 5 year old building Lego Hogwarts isn't going to mix.

If we get new owners, and we still don't have any tangible growth or consistency (i.e. still settling for 3rd/4th place every year because we can't possibly catch City/Arsenal) then he will be disposed of by any new ownership regime. He will know this. This is why the ownership debacle is now ridiculous. The club needs clarity.

Under the glazers we'll never modernise as a club, and EtH can tinker away all he wants unless we start to get really terrible and fall out of the top 4 considerably.

I really like Ten Hag, but I really don't like United at the moment.
 
Pronewbie said:
To be fair, he did show his ability to adapt his tactics and manage our Primadonnas after last season's shocking start albeit not with the players he brought in. I hope he can be equally ruthless if this standard continues in August. And also adapt his tactics accordingly. It's more important to acknowledge, rectify and overcome mistakes (if they are indeed mistakes).
Click to expand...

It was easy to be ruthless and show players out the door when he didn't spend an absolute fortune on them. How is he going to do the same to someone like Antony or Mount?
 
Westerkerk said:
Being potentially bought by Qatar and spending multiple seasons letting EtH build a successful team like a 5 year old building Lego Hogwarts isn't going to mix.

If we get new owners, and we still don't have any tangible growth or consistency (i.e. still settling for 3rd/4th place every year because we can't possibly catch City/Arsenal) then he will be disposed of by any new ownership regime. He will know this. This is why the ownership debacle is now ridiculous. The club needs clarity.

Under the glazers we'll never modernise as a club, and EtH can tinker away all he wants unless we start to get really terrible and fall out of the top 4 considerably.

I really like Ten Hag, but I really don't like United at the moment.
Click to expand...
Now it is top 5. As long as EPL is in top 2 leagues, top 5 teams go to UCL.
 
Last edited:
Wednesday at Stoke said:
The assist for the goal came from Wan Bissaka, who had more end product than the 100M winger with frost tips who keeps wanting to cut in and get crowded out.
Click to expand...

What’s his hairstyle got to do with anything? I’ve never understood this bizarre obsession folk have with football players haircuts like it directly affects their performance on the pitch.
 
Revan said:
Hojlund and Casemiro are the only players without a history in the Dutch league.

Eriksen, Malacia, Antony, Lisandro, Mount and Onana all played there.

The recruitment process is clearly and obviously still manager driven. Which is obviously a problem. We have by far the highest net spent in the world in recent years and still a crap squad.
Click to expand...

There is also an aspect of top players being willing to join. And it's obviously easier to attract talent when the said player is familiar with the manager.

Also of the 4 signings you listed from the last season, 3 were quite a success so I don't know what the fuss is about.
 
astracrazy said:
It's not, there have been numerous posts explaining how our transfer policy now works.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that for a second, all the posts are doing is defining the structure but there's no evidence to support that if the club disprove of a signing that they will inform the manager to move on.

If that's the case then as revealed by reports Kolo Muani would be here because some at the club had him as a preferred option. It's very vague but all the evidence thus far points to the manager making all the decisions. It's been the case for the last ten years. You cannot tell me the club were targeting Rabiot and Arnoutovic ? There was also articles that ETH dismissed the scouting network last season because it was still in it's infancy and he had his own shortlist.

Report below

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ex...ited-transfer-news-Erik-ten-Hag-shortlist/amp
 
CG1010 said:
There is also an aspect of top players being willing to join. And it's obviously easier to attract talent when the said player is familiar with the manager.
Click to expand...

It is Man United, most players want to come here.

CG1010 said:
Also of the 4 signings you listed from the last season, 3 were quite a success so I don't know what the fuss is about.
Click to expand...
Antony and Malacia were definitely not a success. Eriksen was ok as a stop gap. I do not rate Martinez as much as Caf, but I think he was ok.
 
Not sure if already discussed but quite a brutal article today in Times by Martin Samuel. Suggests current mess is on ETH, he's very focused on recruiting from Dutch league and players he knows or saw play against Ajax (Mount had a season there). Suggest Rice was open to a Utd move (other sources disagree) but that he or Kane were the sort of players United need to move to next level. Must admit I feel very underwhelmed by Mount and we clearly cant rely on Casemiro. ETH and football directors should have told Maguire its leave or play for U21s. He's not good enough and stops us signing or even trying young players.
 
What current mess? We won on Monday night. Made progress last season. The performance on Monday was crap but take a step back.
 
Come on. We were bossed by Wolves, completely bossed. Much as we would love him to do well, Antony looks a dud for the money, I am sure Mount will improve but many question how he fits the team and other players. ETH obsession with players from Dutch league is not good. Best run teams have DoF or similar who proposes transfers and then manager OKs. We seem to be almost entirely led by manager's choices.
 
Gordon Godot said:
Come on. We were bossed by Wolves, completely bossed. Much as we would love him to do well, Antony looks a dud for the money, I am sure Mount will improve but many question how he fits the team and other players. ETH obsession with players from Dutch league is not good. Best run teams have DoF or similar who proposes transfers and then manager OKs. We seem to be almost entirely led by manager's choices.
Click to expand...
Hojlund and Mount would have been collaborative choices. Onana was an opportunity that presented itself due to Inter's financial woes, and has everything you want in a modern keeper with a recent standout display in the CL final. Ten Hag wanted Kane. Declan Rice preferred to stay in London and went for £105m. Sorry, I don't buy that article from Samuel the notorious Man City defender.
 
Zoo said:
Hojlund and Mount would have been collaborative choices. Onana was an opportunity that presented itself due to Inter's financial woes, and has everything you want in a modern keeper with a recent standout display in the CL final. Ten Hag wanted Kane. Declan Rice preferred to stay in London and went for £105m. Sorry, I don't buy that article from Samuel the notorious Man City defender.
Click to expand...
Just checked the article says Utd 'still a work in progress' which is fair, but says we have missed an opportunity to close the gap and that's on ETH and his recruitment, clearly favouring players he know. Excluding Evans, of ETH's 9 signings 3 played for him and 4 played in Dutch league at some point while he was at Ajax. So 7 out of 9....
 
Yakuza_devils said:
We can't keep saying that if we don't sign a midfielder or this or that player we can't play ETH football.

We were told that GK was our main problem and signing Onana will make us press high and play attacking football. Based on Wolves game we were actually worse than when DDG was GK. We were playing counter attacking football and our midfield was non existent against Wolves.

We need to start playing much better than that. Our passing was really bad and no team work at all. We were lucky and Wolves should have won comfortably.
Click to expand...

No one ever said replacing De Gea will suddenly make things click. It was just one of three priorities to do so, and it was assumed that together with a new more suitable goalie and a new striker, we would also sign a class 8 to be the glue and link the team together, something we have been missing for years. Instead, we signed Mason Mount... who is absolutely nothing like that. Is it to play the new and hip double 10 or whatever, for which we don't have the players?

I don't understand what Ten Hag is trying to do, but I'm willing to wait. We are a work in progress, and Klopp also needed years to build up Liverpool. Ten Hag struggled for a time at Ajax as well. That being said, he did have a proper football structure behind him back then to balance and help him, which is something completely non-existent at our club.
 
astracrazy said:
It's not, there have been numerous posts explaining how our transfer policy now works.
Click to expand...

Then it's even worse if we genuinely have a scouting department / transfer committee and yet we somehow end up identifying those players as the best options available. Especially concerning with Antony who is our biggest acquisition of the last two years and there are so many things wrong with that purchase, starting with the profile of player not being right for the football we are trying to play, and ending with price that is way above market value for a player of his talent and ability.

Mount is probably going to be in the same bracket soon.
 
ShinjiNinja26 said:
What’s his hairstyle got to do with anything? I’ve never understood this bizarre obsession folk have with football players haircuts like it directly affects their performance on the pitch.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Yet you chose to ignore everything else in that post and fixated on hairstyle.
 
Sarni said:
Then it's even worse if we genuinely have a scouting department / transfer committee and yet we somehow end up identifying those players as the best options available. Especially concerning with Antony who is our biggest acquisition of the last two years and there are so many things wrong with that purchase, starting with the profile of player not being right for the football we are trying to play, and ending with price that is way above market value for a player of his talent and ability.

Mount is probably going to be in the same bracket soon.
Click to expand...
All the evidence suggests that ETH dictates transfers. We may have a system that presents option but he is clearly making the final decisions. His bias for Dutch league cannot be ignored. Its really disappointing. I hoped we had turned a corner with a recruitment process that could survive managerial changes, seems we learnt nothing from Ole period.
 
Revan said:
Now it is top 5. As long as EPL is in top 2 leagues, top 5 teams go to UCL.
Click to expand...
Does that come into play this season or next? Good news for us if it's the former because I think we look set for 5th place at best right now.
 
Blood Mage said:
Does that come into play this season or next? Good news for us if it's the former because I think we look set for 5th place at best right now.
Click to expand...
Should be from UCL 24-25, so effectively 5th place sends us to UCL (qualification).
 
sglowrider said:


ETH was out-thought by O'Neill.
Click to expand...

This video reflects terribly on ETH, not only in terms of tactics used against Wolves but also focuses on Antony quite a lot.

Interesting how Erik approaches the next game, I am glad it went that way against Wolves because we learned a lot about the problems this setup generates while getting actually a good result so no harm done.
 
Borys said:
This video reflects terribly on ETH, not only in terms of tactics used against Wolves but also focuses on Antony quite a lot.

Interesting how Erik approaches the next game, I am glad it went that way against Wolves because we learned a lot about the problems this setup generates while getting actually a good result so no harm done.
Click to expand...

Yeap. It seems that he was found out by a manager who had been in Molineux for all of 4 days only. And our players didn't have a plan B.
 
ScarleyUtd said:
It also exposes some of the real deficiencies in the players we have when the opposition play well, especially down the right.
Click to expand...
We were too slow to adapt and too indecisive in our passing. They were playing narrow and high, which leaves plenty of space to exploit for Antony and Garnacho. On another day, we destroy them.

Our biggest issue was (and this guy doesn‘t bring it up) losing the ball all the time, unforced.
 
Borys said:
This video reflects terribly on ETH, not only in terms of tactics used against Wolves but also focuses on Antony quite a lot.

Interesting how Erik approaches the next game, I am glad it went that way against Wolves because we learned a lot about the problems this setup generates while getting actually a good result so no harm done.
Click to expand...

It is quite baffling how many stinkers Antony is allowed when Pellestri is right there. He's also far from the finished article, but he has the same energy and drive but brings penetration more consistently.
 
I said it last season. ETH had nothing to lose. We were rock bottom and the team were in tatters mentally and in the dressing room. The huge test is this season. Fans were always going to back him last season but even then the signs of improvement were not there for me.

Lvg and Jose all won trophies. So winning the league Cup isn't a great triumph. Were not getting basics right. We can't keep possession and we get simple passes wrong continously.

The season hinges on how well Hojlund turns out. And whether he can get Mount Bruno and Cas working together. It also depends whether our front 3 of either sancho/martial/anthony/hojlund/garnacho start forming partnerships and stop thinking individually which I've seen too often.
 
Borys said:
This video reflects terribly on ETH, not only in terms of tactics used against Wolves but also focuses on Antony quite a lot.

Interesting how Erik approaches the next game, I am glad it went that way against Wolves because we learned a lot about the problems this setup generates while getting actually a good result so no harm done.
Click to expand...

This is why I hate reading the puff pieces from PR feeds of how 'Ten Hag has changed the culture/Ten Hag's amazing training methods' etc. You get it every summer and every time there's a new manager in - have seen it with Ole, Mourinho, Van Gaal. Fact is he's only ever 10-15 games from the sack and the evidence is on the pitch rather than behind the scenes. And if his team doesn't perform there then he'll just be forgotten about as another footnote in United history before the next manager comes in and 'changes the culture' again.
 
I like and rate Ten Hag however I'm disappointed with the style of play we seem to be going with. I assumed that whilst we would play with more verticality, we would also go for technical security and value possession.
 
dubplate warrior said:
I like and rate Ten Hag however I'm disappointed with the style of play we seem to be going with. I assumed that whilst we would play with more verticality, we would also go for technical security and value possession.
Click to expand...

I’m 100% behind him but I also expected he’d value possession a lot more than he has and he’d have implemented clearly defined attacking patterns of play that would enable us to break down low blocks which we’ve struggled with for years. Still only his 2nd season in the job and we’re still evolving but we’re certainly not playing the same brand of football that Ajax were under him, at least not yet anyway.
 
There is an argument to be had that he has been backed last summer and this, there is no doubt about that, despite our dreadful owners, however, he has probably been given the
company credit card which obviously means more debt, having said that, he has not really helped himself in the transfer market, with every game that goes by, Antony
looks more and more like a poor mans version of Nani with a very weak right foot and not at all what you would expect from a player who cost almost £100M, very underwhelming so far.

Then of course there is the curious signing of Mason Mount, who has done absolutely nada in preseason and against Wolves and coming off the back of a season where he did nothing
of note at Chelsea, this season is pretty much make or break for Ten Hag, hopefully everything clicks and our fears wind up baseless ones but there is nowhere to hide this season
for him, £400M spent since he arrived to try and get into the Champions League is not what this club should be about, having said that, the circus off the pitch regarding
any sale of the club needs to be addressed and clarified by the owners as this wont be doing anyone at the club any favours whatsoever, its a circus and a distraction
with the lack of communication from the top down, simply, the club is absolutely crying out for change, and it badly needs to happen soon.
 
I like ETH but...
1. The style of play is still badly defined a year after he got here.
2. Overpaying for players just because he's worked with them before is not best policy.
3. His much lauded ditching of Ronaldo was a confused mess. People seem to forget he made him captain in his final game. Should have drop kicked him into the reserves.
4. Similarly we are stuck with Maguire for another season. ETH should have been ruthless and given him no minutes in pre season and not even put him on the bench on Monday. Mixed messages have given Maguire hope that there is a way back and now we won't sign a better option.
5. My personal bug bear is Rashford's lack of work when he loses the ball. If Haaland can work like a dog who does Rashford think he is? ETH should have stamped this out instantly.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.