Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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if he's in charge of transfer, he needs to force players to do IQ test before signing.
 
It was still a terrible game and we should not be scrapping a win against a poor Nottingham team.

I think many on here have fallen in love with the idea of ten Hag but ultimately he’s very far from elite level and will not lead us to major trophies. The fact we allowed him to spend £500m on his targets, nearly all of whom are dross, is mind boggling.

Actually it 5 billion £
And agreed, all are dross including Onana, Martinez, Casemiro.
 
Is this the best this guy can do? Because it aint good enough.
With NO.1 CB missing second half NO.1. LB missing whole game and no striker since october last year. I would say yeah, this is the best he can do. Its good enough so far.
 
Some good attacking play in the 2nd half. The lack of control is ridiculous though, as soon as teams start pressing us we fold.
 
It's an issue that we can't hold onto the ball. We were punished out of possession for Forest's first goal. And the final 10 minutes was agonising when we kept giving the ball away.
 
He needs a few games where the team peppers the opposition, 4-0, 5-0's, and that should be games against wolves or forest at home

and most importantly he has to get the team playing his style consistently. The club has to get in more players before the window ends, it's a must
 
It should not be possible to spend so much money and end up here. A 10 men Forest have us against the ropes at OT.
I seriously gave a sigh of relief when they got the red card. There was no chance we were not going to have them chase shadows for the remainder of the game. But no, backs against the ropes. Erik still needs time of course but he isn`t pulling up trees so far.
 
Why we never defend result with trying to have possession? Instead he always parks the bus basically. And then we blame stupid corner, free kick or whatever when we concede late goal.
This.

Every single time we go ahead ever, we completely stop playing. They were actually all over us towards the end. It's embarrassing. I wouldn't even mind if it was a one off, but it's every game. People seriously need to take off their rose tinted glasses. The whole performance in terms of control and finishing yet again was abysmal
 
The physical level of the team is very concerning. Lisandro looks miles off it, Cas is really struggling defensively in space while Eriksen, you know what you get, quality on the ball, weak physical level.
 
The composure in midfield and in the team will cost him. We dont dominate at all. Our passing is regressing by the game.
This 100%. Lots of weak mentality players. I will guarantee the away form will be worse than last season.
 
We scored from brilliantly worked free kick that has clearly been practiced, a great attack and a deserved penalty, yet people calling the goals "individual moments".

We easily should have scored at least 3 more, created tons of chances and there are very clear patterns of play.

I enjoyed this game a lot, we showed fighting spirit and completely pinned them against the wall after going 0-2 behind.

Our attackers are in terrible form and make some awful decisions. Hojlund can't possible do any worse than Martial.
 
What individual moments. The penalty?

That 2nd goal was a well worked set piece. The 1st goal was constant pressure and a well worked pass and move with a whipped in pass to Erikson.
Yeah, the pen, the first two of our goals. We were throwing caution to the wind and went all guns blazing, when teams like City and Arsenal would stay calm and trust their style of play. We don't even have that and can't control a game against 10 championship level players.
 
Kinda of joke to me that he cannot get this team to hold the ball and punish Forest. If this is City or Liverpool, it would punish Forest ruthlessly. Speechless.... is ETH losing the dressing room?

Yes, as evidenced by the come back from 2 nil down
 
Kinda of joke to me that he cannot get this team to hold the ball and punish Forest. If this is City or Liverpool, it would punish Forest ruthlessly. Speechless.... is ETH losing the dressing room?

We don't have a striker
 
Ooof. He's either gonna live or die by the single pivot.

The issue is that the personnel don't suit the tactics and the tactics don't suit the personnel. It's essentially 5 players pressing with Rashford, Martial, Garnacho, Bruno, Antony and/or Sancho but they are are exceptionally bad with their timings, technique and game intelligence. It's just run hard and fast at a player, lett them dribble past them, not get goal side and then Casemiro and the rest of the defence finding themselves with the opposition team running at them. Ultimately, it's on ETH though as the lack of organisation and recognition of it is bad. A simple change of tactics would be to just sit closer together and not press that high. It's suicidal tactics atm.
 
Kinda of joke to me that he cannot get this team to hold the ball and punish Forest. If this is City or Liverpool, it would punish Forest ruthlessly. Speechless.... is ETH losing the dressing room?
Yeh they turned it around from 2 nil down to spite him.
 
He needs a few games where the team peppers the opposition, 4-0, 5-0's, and that should be games against wolves or forest at home

and most importantly he has to get the team playing his style consistently. The club has to get in more players before the window ends, it's a must
To be fair our XG must be insane for 3 games. Even just the last two.
If Hojlund hits the ground running we will be flying
 
Yeah, the pen, the first two of our goals. We were throwing caution to the wind and went all guns blazing, when teams like City and Arsenal would stay calm and trust their style of play. We don't even have that and can't control a game against 10 championship level players.

You mean, the same Arsenal that just failed to beat 10 man Fulham? Right.
 
After we scored the 3rd goal, what’s going on?!
It’s so disappointed to see the players dropping the gears. They can’t keep possession against 10 men Forrest.
but, they did come back. Everyone seemed completely exhausted.
 
our heads have dropped plenty of times post EtH - weird that you'd use that as an argument
Why is it weird? The players fought back and we won playing some good football and dominating the majority of the game. It wouldn't have happened pre EtH 100%
 
Comeback wins like that are always really good fun but the fact that we were 2 down in the first place and then needed some debatable decisions to go our way tells you that there are still significant issues to work out and given how tough our next 2 games look it could look quite bad in a few weeks unless the performances improve drastically from the 1st 3 games (and the latter part of last season).

For the first time I am starting to have broader concerns about the manger though (not to the point that he should be under any real pressure but concerns that need to be resolved). His first year it wasn't clear what specific style of football he was trying to implement but in a way he earned credit for showing pragmatism to have a good season despite so many issues (late signings, Ronaldo hanging around and players, like De Gea, who clearly didn't fit his ideas).

The concern is that he should have more of an imprint on this team by now and he doesn't, which either indicates he maybe doesn't have a particularly clear plan or is struggling to implement it, while a good number of his signings to this point (because he's clearly driving them and I'm not sure what Murtough or our supposedly huge scouting network are doing) speak to someone potentially trying to build a really elite Eredivisie side rather than one that will seriously compete with the best sides in the Premier League at any stage.
 
It's an issue that we can't hold onto the ball. We were punished out of possession for Forest's first goal. And the final 10 minutes was agonising when we kept giving the ball away.

Mount would have had a field day today with all the space and runners.

Really great for us to show the fight to win it. Lack of control is a worry but with fitness should come aggression and winning our 50/50s and then more control. We looked awful in the first game. Really good in the first half v Spurs and decent today with better fight and fitness. You can see things slowly starting to click again. I genuinely believe we were unfit and that’s why we faded badly v spurs and started sluggish today.
 
Why is it weird? The players fought back and we won playing some good football and dominating the majority of the game. It wouldn't have happened pre EtH yet 100%

My post clearly states our heads have dropped plenty of times under EtH. please read below:

We've only come back to win after being down once under Ten Hag so there really isn't a precedent of comebacks under him.
 
The composure in midfield and in the team will cost him. We dont dominate at all. Our passing is regressing by the game.
And it’s all his doing. He’s signed 3 midfielders who are all poor passers of the ball from a ball retention and composure perspective. It’s crazy. And what’s worse is none of them (and the players already here like Fernandes) seem any better at keeping it as you say. Extremely concerning.
 
Why we never defend result with trying to have possession? Instead he always parks the bus basically. And then we blame stupid corner, free kick or whatever when we concede late goal.
Casemiro, Bruno, Ericksen , Rashford, McT, Wana Bissaka, Dalot, that is half of your team.

You can't recycle the ball with these players.
How this is hard to understand?
 
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