Lesser players on the whole I’m not sure at all, especially Newcastle. We had no depth beyond the starting 11, with European football and once again, midweek fixtures consecutively for half the season. We didn’t need a complete squad overhaul because we had a good squad that’s complete nonsense
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Well yeah it was an issue last season and the only senior midfielders available were…drum roll…last season’s midfielders!
This thread is a complete car crash. Christ on a bike.
I’ve never seen people want to be right so badly that they invalidate anything positive that their club achieves, and cling on to the negatives by willfully ignoring any sort of context. I feel sorry for them.
Wish I could be bothered to take down the names of the posters pointing fingers, so I can come back in few months when the new signings have a chance and we haven't lost all our LB and CB depth chart to injuries.
It’s pointless they’ll be completely silent when this happens. It’s all about being right, and some are still butt hurt that they insisted Solskjaer was anything but wildly under qualified and were proven dead wrong
Eddie Howe did very well with Newcastle. He should get a lot of credit for it. He may have had an inferior squad than us but he had way more time with them in training and no Europe so were fresh each weekend.
We may have an overall better squad but we also played way more games than them, so little time for training and much less freshness each weekend.
My question though is why does Eddie Howe get credit for last season and not ETH?
It was a result that could have gone the other way, but in truth we’ve been poor since summer training matches. Wolves, poor. Spurs, poor. Forest, poor. Arsenal, better but far from anywhere near the level we expect even with the injury issues.
The car needs a tuneup, mates.
The car needs a tuneup, mates.
This an argument I see thrown around a lot at people whenever people have a criticism of ETH.
At times statements need to be taken at face value and countered with a reasoned argument. Fans can support our manager and want him to succeed but also criticise him for not prioritising how they’d prefer him to go about it.
Your way of supporting the club is not the absolute.
Agreed with people being so reactionary to the result but where is this we win if Ganarcho stayed back one inch from?
If he stayed behind, he probably wouldn't have scored or even if he did, Arsenal could still score two more, etc. Fact is we didn't get the gosl and they got three in total. I wonder if some people are starting to find any type of feel-good stuff from these games just to be reactionary back to the other side.
No it is not. You can play well and create goal scoring chances but if your striker is shite or the ref decides to feck you up then it's very hard to win. Just look at Arteta and have some patience.
Give me strength. You’d better tell the EPL then, that results should have no bearing on the league table and points should be awarded for style of play.
So what you’re saying is that results don’t matter in the least, as long as we’re “improving”. ETH has had a full season and now we’re into the second season. How many seasons is it going to take for this “improvement” to show in results? Three? Five?
If you look at Arteta's Arsenal or Klopp's Liverpool, then probably 3. Pep's City doesn't count since they played the long game knowing that they would get him as regards recruitment.
As someone who never thought Solskjaer was fit for the job, I can say that when the same criticism was raised about him, people would make exactly the same arguments in his defense as we're now seeing from yourself in regards to Ten Hag.
Give it time, it'll be fine. We finished second last season, what more do people want? Solskjaer can be our Arteta. Yada Yada. And so it went on.
People decide they like a manager and at that point they decide to go on a personal crusade to defend them at all costs and absolve them of all blame. It happened less with Moyes but thanks to Fergusons speech even he was vehemently blindly defended by a minority.
All this is to say that it's boring to hear these "what ifs" and "should've and could've" excuses over and over in an attempt to knock back any valid criticism.
Right now we find ourselves watching the same chaotic football where players struggle to keep possession, struggle to make simple passes, have poor movement off the ball, and once again we have a negative goal difference and disappointing results. The general concensus is we've been bad since the league cup final. Yet we hear its knee jerk to be raising concerns about the manager. What's knee jerk about having concerns after 7 months of poor football?
It's a fair point when the performances deserve results, but they don't. We've been poor for a long time.
We conceded 110seconds after our first goal ? What makes you think we'd have won and not crumble like our usual selves ?
Van Gaal rightly used to say that in England, people judge the results and not the performances. If anything, Ten Hag has more of my faith post the Arsenal game. Genuinely believe that we came with a proper tactical plan. Don't know what people believe or remember from difficult away games in the past but we can't have a swashbuckling domination of the game particularly one where Arsenal started as the favorites.
In fact, I liked the game plan which required at least one Arsenal player to start the press on Onana creating space for one additional player. The fact that Arsenal didn't want to do was a part of their risk management. Naturally, there are things where our plan did falter as neither of the starting front 3 were able to hold on to the ball much longer and also, Bruno didn't do enough to retain, recycle or create. Hopefully, these are teething issues and we get better as the season progresses.
In fact, I liked the game plan which required at least one Arsenal player to start the press on Onana creating space for one additional player. The fact that Arsenal didn't want to do was a part of their risk management. Naturally, there are things where our plan did falter as neither of the starting front 3 were able to hold on to the ball much longer and also, Bruno didn't do enough to retain, recycle or create. Hopefully, these are teething issues and we get better as the season progresses.
Huh?
So last seasons results weren't an improvement? 3rd place, the first trophy in years and another final.
If he gets the axe, in the end, it will be mainly because accepted the job on the premise that he will build his system around the existing star players. He should have said no. Every day that goes by, he will have less and less leverage until his position will eventually become unattainable. The same thing happened to Solskjaer who was a far more indulging man manager.
You can already see it. Someone (an all in all good poster) basically claimed that Sancho should feel aggrieved because the two #10s is the most stupid thing ever. Well, it worked for him throughout his career and it almost landed him a CL final. Playing attractive, free-scoring football and dismantling some of the big boys on the way. But let's side with Sancho and the rest of the gang who are full of quality and proven winners. It's like some if you want to relive the same script. Misery lives company and all that
What's actually mind boggling is bringing up Newcastle and Brighton or Klopp for comparison. The environment at those clubs couldn't be more different than what any manager has to deal with here. Newcastle are building from the ground up. There's not a single player in their squad who feels entitled and wouldn't go through a brick wall to prove that he's worthy of the big salary and his place in the spotlight. Brighton are full of players who know that, if they perform well and follow their manager's instructions, a big move may be in the cards sooner rather than later. Howe and De Zerbi would get eaten alive at OT. Klopp, on the other hand, enjoys SAF levels of trust and respect at Anfield. Can you imagine (someone like) Darwin posting the same tweet, after not getting picked in the MD squad, and garnering any sympathy from the scousers?
There's also no point in asking for a DoF since the latter will be just another employee reflecting the wants of the higher-ups. You want this club to put restraints on the manager? This club, whose academy promotes strictly sprinters and wrestlers? The club that up until recently believed that De Gea was one if the best GKs in the world, that Martial is a WC talent and that bringing Ronaldo back was the final piece of a title-winning team? You're telling me that this club will appoint a competent DoF. And then you complain about the manager wanting to bring in his own players? Dream on. It's a cul-de-sac alright, but more than one people are responsible for it
The truth is that the Glazers will never allow a reset like the one the Arsenal board attempted. It's just too much for them. So, we'll stay in this state of a perpetual rebuild. Always failing to realise that a fresh start is sometimes the best way to cull the toxicity. But it won't happen. People ask who will be next? Here's my prediction. It will be Conte with his result-oriented approach and the sit back and hit on the counter tactics that our starlets seem to favour so much. And in two years time, we'll be in the same position scratching our heads, trying to figure out what went wrong.
You can already see it. Someone (an all in all good poster) basically claimed that Sancho should feel aggrieved because the two #10s is the most stupid thing ever. Well, it worked for him throughout his career and it almost landed him a CL final. Playing attractive, free-scoring football and dismantling some of the big boys on the way. But let's side with Sancho and the rest of the gang who are full of quality and proven winners. It's like some if you want to relive the same script. Misery lives company and all that
What's actually mind boggling is bringing up Newcastle and Brighton or Klopp for comparison. The environment at those clubs couldn't be more different than what any manager has to deal with here. Newcastle are building from the ground up. There's not a single player in their squad who feels entitled and wouldn't go through a brick wall to prove that he's worthy of the big salary and his place in the spotlight. Brighton are full of players who know that, if they perform well and follow their manager's instructions, a big move may be in the cards sooner rather than later. Howe and De Zerbi would get eaten alive at OT. Klopp, on the other hand, enjoys SAF levels of trust and respect at Anfield. Can you imagine (someone like) Darwin posting the same tweet, after not getting picked in the MD squad, and garnering any sympathy from the scousers?
There's also no point in asking for a DoF since the latter will be just another employee reflecting the wants of the higher-ups. You want this club to put restraints on the manager? This club, whose academy promotes strictly sprinters and wrestlers? The club that up until recently believed that De Gea was one if the best GKs in the world, that Martial is a WC talent and that bringing Ronaldo back was the final piece of a title-winning team? You're telling me that this club will appoint a competent DoF. And then you complain about the manager wanting to bring in his own players? Dream on. It's a cul-de-sac alright, but more than one people are responsible for it
The truth is that the Glazers will never allow a reset like the one the Arsenal board attempted. It's just too much for them. So, we'll stay in this state of a perpetual rebuild. Always failing to realise that a fresh start is sometimes the best way to cull the toxicity. But it won't happen. People ask who will be next? Here's my prediction. It will be Conte with his result-oriented approach and the sit back and hit on the counter tactics that our starlets seem to favour so much. And in two years time, we'll be in the same position scratching our heads, trying to figure out what went wrong.
Tottenham and Arsenal are two of the three best teams in the league, yes would have been cool to get something out of these games, but it's a perfectly ok start. They won the games they had to win, which is way more important in the PL anyway, ask Klopp.
Do you really want to try to argue that Newcastle had a better squad than us last season?
Can't be bothered breaking it all down right now but I'll go through and explain it I need to. You're only claiming they're better because, guess what, Howe took a group of players and had them playing way ahead of where they had ever done, and created a solid unit. Which is exactly my point. Other managers do that.
Yes they had less games, but we have better depth and, regardless of all of that, they played better football than us. Where were they in the table when he took over? His impact was instant, which is my point. Less games doesn't = better football. And it's worth pointing out that there were many games against lower league opposition where we were all criticising him for fielding too many first team players. He chose to drive them into the ground early on.
And my issue with ETH, as it was with Ole, is that despite the relative success, we don't play good football. It's a discussion on style of play, and Howe and others were used as an example that you don't actually need 18 new top class players to implement your ideas.
It's not an OK start, not at all. It's a bad start, not a disaster but it's pretty bad.
Just browsed the last couple of pages and genuinely regret doing so. I've been right in spending as little time as possible on here going by the state of discussions. Madness that there's a significant amount of posters entertaining the idea of sacking ETH. Defeat against Arsenal stings, but acting as though the performance wasn't much improved from what we've come to experience most of the time away from home against big sides is so blind. Arsenal couldn't suffocate us so that we hoof the ball back at them and face wave after wave of attack, because we are now capable of building play competently from the back. And whenever they had the ball in their back line, they found it very difficult to naturally progress it to their midfield, because our press was good. A lot of posters cannot or are incapable of watching a game and forming an objective analysis because it's much easier to follow the narratives being spun in the media and then jumping on to any factoid that confirms what they've been fed, such as a scoreline or any other standalone statline, pathetic.
They've had a good start but come on.
What does this even mean, he has axed so many players and is clearly rebuilding the squad most clubs cannot do that in a year, 3 of the biggest names in the squad have either left or we have tried to sell.
Already cleared out or tried to clear out
De Gea
Ronaldo
Maguire
Telles
Bailly
Donny
Fred
And plenty more I can't be arsed to name, its clear the club are rebuilding the squad it's getting younger and the wage bill is coming down.
It's a shame most posters here won't have the patience to understand Rome wasn't In a day and expect after a solid year 1 to be challenging for the title immediately in year 2
Unfortunately many posters, and United fans in general, are never able to apply logic or context to a situation. Too many of them seem to have their brains hooked directly into the twitter discourse. Look how many threads you'll find talking about how we don't have a style of play, or we still play 'oleball', etc.
You are genuinely better off avoiding it. There's only a few rational posters left, and half of them are probably oppo fans! There's plenty of good podcasts and YouTube channels run by United fans that focus on analysis and try not to mix in emotions, like people Goldbridge often resort to. They're your best bet if your want a football fix in the midst of all this negativity.
I know, I've heard it all now. If we'd beat them then we'd be the best team in the league
Very good post.
I still have faith in EtH, we have been unlucky in terms of injuries, not getting the players in when needed (Amrabaat but we'll not discuss about why), and when you try new tactics you learn quickly like against Wolves and Spurs even though we improved against Spurs.
We've had nearly moments in the 2 biggest games, Bruno's header v Spurs, Garnacho v Arsenal, they go in/in your favour the game dynamic shifts and we probably win those games.
I want to see how things progress over the season with players back from injury, how Højlund performs, and can he get the team playing how he wants.
The only worrying things I've seen is the lack of tactical shift when things aren't working and the praise for Martial.
It's exhausting just reading the meltdown whenever United lose a game...even when they win this place is still full of negativity.
Imagine having your annual review at work, but it happened everyday at 6:30pm haha.
Everyone needs to chill and wait until (at least) 10 games into the season before making any opinions on what this team can achieve this season.
This is simply not true at all, why are people making stuff up just to suit their agenda ffs.
I like how the wins are 'struggled' but the losses don't contain anything about how we played. Do you notice how subliminally you pick the negative side of it?
We played awful against Wolves and won, we played decent first half against Spurs and should've really been 2 - 0 up if not for bad finishing. We had an atrocious first 4 minutes against Forest (including a goal that just bounced off of Boly's face by accident) but we absolutely dominated the rest of that game and easily deserved to win. And imo we played well against Arsenal and if that Garnacho goal is ruled onside we're all talking about what a great result that is.
Yeah, I felt a lot more optimistic in that loss than many other wins. There are greenshoots of a structure beginning to emerge there and it could have gone a lot smoother without the off field issues but the job the manager is doing has been good.
The players people want offloaded were part of squads that finished 2nd and 3rd in the Premier League, it has to be possible to get a tune out of them in conjunction with the fresh players that have been brought in.Except for Maguire who seem like he is completely lost
I've watched the full game again. Now let me summarize some of the issues I have taken from second watch.
1. VAR issues.
The Garnacho offside is so close that, the liseman, commentators all saw it as onside. Even from the replay from wide angle camera, it looked 99.9% onside.
The corner for Arsenal second goal. Looking at the Odegaard shot which was given as corner looked like it was not touched by any United player. Another poster here hinted about this after the game. Go re-watch it, make it what you think.
Hojlund penalty. Anywhere else in the pitch it's a foul. Apparently in the Arsenal box it was not a penalty but Havertz non contact fall was immediately given as penalty while Hollund rugby take down was not even checked.
2. Our game play.
As weird as it seems, from minute 60 - 88 we really pushed Arsenal under the cosh. The best we played the whole game.
If you remember the double save/block made from Martial then Rashford rebound, was the peak of the period.
Add after Hojlund came in, we really played extremely well. As much as I hate Bruno he really did collect 3 shielded balls from Hojlund and passed to Rashford extremely well. Bruno was at his best element when he was looking forward with the ball.
Rashy turned Ben White Hojlund trying a flick, (Antony was free on goal if Hojlund missed the pass)
Rashy delaying passing to Hojlund on the quick counter.
It's really surprising if this is how ETH wants us to play. A target man who under pressure control the ball to Bruno/Mount to find quickest pass somewhere. It really looked extremely beautiful.
Even the Garnacho 88 minute goal was in this period. After 3 minutes of coming on.
Sadly, Evans coming on was the main undoing on our part honestly. He was turned over by Jesus on the left hand side. Rice deflected goal was from him. Maguire was surprisingly okay.
By the time of Garnacho disallowed goal, shots on target were 3:2 to Arsenal.
The loss of Lindelof was the main undoing in this game. It disrupted the balance of the team.
My honest opinion, we are doing okay, we will turn the corner in a matter of when not if.
1. VAR issues.
The Garnacho offside is so close that, the liseman, commentators all saw it as onside. Even from the replay from wide angle camera, it looked 99.9% onside.
The corner for Arsenal second goal. Looking at the Odegaard shot which was given as corner looked like it was not touched by any United player. Another poster here hinted about this after the game. Go re-watch it, make it what you think.
Hojlund penalty. Anywhere else in the pitch it's a foul. Apparently in the Arsenal box it was not a penalty but Havertz non contact fall was immediately given as penalty while Hollund rugby take down was not even checked.
2. Our game play.
As weird as it seems, from minute 60 - 88 we really pushed Arsenal under the cosh. The best we played the whole game.
If you remember the double save/block made from Martial then Rashford rebound, was the peak of the period.
Add after Hojlund came in, we really played extremely well. As much as I hate Bruno he really did collect 3 shielded balls from Hojlund and passed to Rashford extremely well. Bruno was at his best element when he was looking forward with the ball.
Rashy turned Ben White Hojlund trying a flick, (Antony was free on goal if Hojlund missed the pass)
Rashy delaying passing to Hojlund on the quick counter.
It's really surprising if this is how ETH wants us to play. A target man who under pressure control the ball to Bruno/Mount to find quickest pass somewhere. It really looked extremely beautiful.
Even the Garnacho 88 minute goal was in this period. After 3 minutes of coming on.
Sadly, Evans coming on was the main undoing on our part honestly. He was turned over by Jesus on the left hand side. Rice deflected goal was from him. Maguire was surprisingly okay.
By the time of Garnacho disallowed goal, shots on target were 3:2 to Arsenal.
The loss of Lindelof was the main undoing in this game. It disrupted the balance of the team.
My honest opinion, we are doing okay, we will turn the corner in a matter of when not if.
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Not true. He has been given north of £400m to spend and a lot of freedom to pick his targets, it's unfair to claim that he was expected to only utilize existing star players.
100% agree with this take - If I was to add anything, I'd like to see Onana do a bit better for that Rice goal as the near post was wide open..
I'm not advocating for patience? Give me a break. I merely mentioned that the manager at this club is given an almost impossible task and that it's completely unfair to compare him to Howe or De Zerbi.
And how much money he has spent is irrelevant. He may spend another 2 billion in the next three years, and the task from up above will still be the same: Create a title-winning team around Rashford and Bruno. No matter the tactics, no matter the formations. In my opinion, it will also be his downfall.
Sensible post. We lost two tough away games in close quarters that at any stage of the season there's small margins between victory and defeat. Especially when you've you resort to bringing on two of your worst CB's in the dying embers. Especially when the manager still has to start Martial up top and his two midfield signings are not on the pitch together yet. Yet against Arsenal there was still improvement as you stated.
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