Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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To be honest, we could've kept Fred, signed a cheap keeper and blown the entire transfer budget on an Osimhen and been far better off for it.

Absolutely.

Or even - and hear me out on this - kept Fred, not signed Mount, signed Hojlund but also signed a back up work horse CF, to support Hojlund for a few seasons, no one glamorous, but ideally PL proven.

Would’ve been a much wiser use of the dosh and we’d be better off for it.
 
Gotta sell rashford & bruno for that to happens. But club will never do it.
He already realized that and double downed on quick transition route. But its not working either since our pressing in final third is very bad
Nonsense. Just you shouldn't need to change your whole style because of 2 players. A team is about balance. KDB and Mahrez gave the ball away plenty - but it's ok because they had Gundogan, Rodri, Bernardo, Grealish to keep the ball. You need risk takers and you need ball retainers. Instead, we have Casemiro with Eriksen/Mount behind Bruno. All of whom regularly have a pass rate of below 80%.
 
Based on what? What shiny new toy do you want next then?

I don’t want any shiny new toy. I want ETH to be the the manager we all want and expect.

Our play, our form and general lack of fitness is inexcusable.

Look at the body language of the players and tell me that everything is right behind the scenes. He’s lost the dressing room. I hope I’m wrong and ETH can turn this around, but I don’t think I am.
 
How much are we paying some of the players ETH has signed so far? If we sack him, few of those might just become the new “deadwood” that we will have a hard time getting rid.
 
I don’t want any shiny new toy. I want ETH to be the the manager we all want and expect.

Our play, our form and general lack of fitness is inexcusable.

Look at the body language of the players and tell me that everything is right behind the scenes. He’s lost the dressing room. I hope I’m wrong and ETH can turn this around, but I don’t think I am.

You say you want ETH to be the manager we all want yet you spout nonsense like this. You have no idea if he's lost the dressing room or not. Repeating it as fact doesn't make it fact.
 
I'm not ignoring signs. I'm just not writing a player off too soon, which too many people on here seem only too happy to do.

If it was just a one-off and once in a blue moon sure, but there's been signs of his decline and he might have fallen off a cliff now.

He's past his best either way. It was always going to be a signing that wouldn't bear fruits the entire length of his contract.
 
Sell Bruno? Jesus Christ.
You realize he's core player and give us trouble as much as he offers, right.
Wanna to play possesion based football with Bruno in the team? Good luck with that.

My post was to answer the other poster why ETH doesn't set up United as he set up Ajax. Not a dig at Bruno intentionally.

Nonsense. Just you shouldn't need to change your whole style because of 2 players. A team is about balance. KDB and Mahrez gave the ball away plenty - but it's ok because they had Gundogan, Rodri, Bernardo, Grealish to keep the ball. You need risk takers and you need ball retainers. Instead, we have Casemiro with Eriksen/Mount behind Bruno. All of whom regularly have a pass rate of below 80%.
Do you think United has the structure to do 180 degree transition smoothly?
You answered yourself. City's already had many players that can cycle the ball, united has 2 (licha and onana). There are only two approaches here. Replace as many players who bad at keeping the ball as possible, or just double down on what this team is already good at.

I have no confidence that club can do the former. That would require long strategic planning.
 
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Alright having had the past 8 hours to stew over that shit show... while I do still firmly think he dropped the ball tactically today, I'll cut him slack with all the off pitch issues. It's an impossible situation unfortunately. And unfortunately, it might end up being his undoing. We'll see. Maybe we just stick with it through what will likely be a failure of a season given the constant shit show going on off the pitch, inevitably impacting on the pitch. Really need to see us commit to a chelsea style of u24 year old targets though for that. Love Casemiro, but a signing like him is a 1-3 year sort of guy. And our current issues lead me to think that cleaning out the rot will take longer now. Really it's actually not for sure known how long it'll take. The Glazers will surely eventually leave, right? Maybe then the cloud can be lifted and we can start having positive vibes again. That alone has a big impact, as it did for Newcastle.
I'm an easy man to please, I just want a midfielder that's good at passing and solid defensively (and isn't an old). Why is this so difficult for us.
 
You say you want ETH to be the manager we all want yet you spout nonsense like this. You have no idea if he's lost the dressing room or not. Repeating it as fact doesn't make it fact.

When exactly did I say it was a fact? It’s my opinion!
 
Playing out from the back is not a single thing. It's the thing that teams practice more than anything else. Dunk said it recently and De Bruyne said they spend the majority of their sessions practicing it over and over again. Last season we tried to play out from the back with De Gea and abandoned that after 2 games. We went long most games. It's essentially something new for the team in this case.
Plenty of other teams in the league seem to improve it fairly quickly. Newcastle, Spurs, Brighton, Chelsea.
 
Rangnick worked for Red Bull. He surely had connections and could've recommended a few names. If only the club and manager hadn't been such arrogant fools and thought they got this figured it out.
Didnt some of Ajax fans here reminded us that the mastermind behind that team was Overmars and ETH transfers were mostly hot garbage. The right move was RR as DOF and ETH as manager. If he didnt want to accept such setup we can just find another manager back then. RR was trash as manager but his record as DoF is better than anyone in our current dumpster setup. All his recommendation ended up at other top teams, mainly gvardiol (who has just became the most ex CB that goes to our rival) and nkunku. He literally labelled Gvardiol as a "must buy". This man might be trash as a manager but he knows a good player with potential when he sees one.
 
A number of unusual poor decisions which I felt from the Gaffer against Brighton:

1) Taking off McT only in the 85th min. Dude did not offer much. Surely nail in coffin that he is not good enough for United's 1st team. Seems to save his best only for Scotland.

2) I was baffled Eriksen was allowed to play the whole game. He was completely gassed maybe from the 60th min onwards. And was anyone similarly exasperated with his corner kicks? They were low & very poorly taken. We were wasting set pieces (unless ETH instructed him not to whip in high corner balls). Should have been subbed off way earlier.

3) ETH made his tactical changes way too late. Even the commentators mentioned it was surprising nothing changed and no subs at half time.

4) This to me was critical - It was completely shocking he took off Hojlund, 1 of our most energetic & direct players (who just scored a brilliant finish leaving VAR aside, goodness), for Martial (delivered nothing for 35 min as expected). He lost the OT crowd and the fans' support here. In SAF's time, he would have kept his main striker on and thrown another striker(s) on! (That's how we won 1999 Final, no?).

5) Garnacho, another direct, pacey player who can lift the crowd and stretch Brighton's flanks, came on way too late in 85th min. I mean seriously, what does ETH expect him to do in 5 min?

6) We saw within what, 10 min (?), what a young, hungry player like Hannibal can bring in with the type of energy, positivity and bravery. For the crap we were seeing from the supposedly more "senior" players, I would rather we play the younglings more often and send a strong message to the whole squad.

We essentially lost to Brighton's B Team, considering they had a no of key players out. And we have Onana to thank too for playing his part in making 3 key saves. Else the score would have been 1-6.

Shocking game. Again, we have the odd loss here and there during SAF's time at OT but this was different and we were so completely outplayed and lost the crowd. Harrowing.
 
Plenty of other teams in the league seem to improve it fairly quickly. Newcastle, Spurs, Brighton, Chelsea.
We have been really good with it this season. Its the bit after getting the ball into midfield that our issue as demonstrated against Arsenal especially.

Not having a single midfielder that can progress the ball with dribbling is a really big issue.
 
I'm an easy man to please, I just want a midfielder that's good at passing and solid defensively (and isn't an old). Why is this so difficult for us.
I do think Amrabat will solve a lot of problems for us. But at the same time, if ten Hag does the diamond again, it'll be useless, as that just has massive holes on either flank that are very easy to exploit. Amrabat next to Casemiro should be very good though. Bruno as the 10, Mount on the right half spaces with Dalot overlapping him and Garnacho being an impact sub has a lof of positives in it. Or it should. We'll see how we do it.
 
You realize he's core player and give us trouble as much as he offers, right.
Wanna to play possesion based football with Bruno in the team? Good luck with that.

My post was to answer the other poster why ETH doesn't set up United as he set up Ajax. Not a dig at Bruno intentionally.

Bruno is our best signing post-fergie imo. I think you're way off.
 
He was lucky he didn’t get sacked after the Liverpool shit show last season.

If he can’t turn this around I can see him being gone by Christmas.

But the problem we’ve got is that we will be back to square one. Most of his signings are likely going to be surplus to requirements for the next manager and we’ll need to spend £500-£600 million changing the squad AGAIN.

it’s an unsustainable cycle. We need a competent DOF with a club vision that each incoming manager needs to match.
 
We have been really good with it this season. Its the bit after getting the ball into midfield that our issue as demonstrated against Arsenal especially.

Not having a single midfielder that can progress the ball with dribbling is a really big issue.
God help us if this is considered good. A clanger from Onana and the defence is on the horizon. It almost happened in the first half today.
 
The same problems existed when other members of the squad were fit though. Varane, Shaw, Antony and Mount were all playing in the first couple of games and we were also abject in those matches. I think it's a bit fanciful to expect our fortunes to change when those players are back, but it's also not a sign of a great manager if he can't cope with a bit of adversity.

Perhaps, and there's a reasonable argument to be made that ETH will have to rejig his style/expectations of his squad similarly to last season. We started terribly last year in part because of a poor window and in part because ETH expected too much from his squad. He then changed his blueprint to fit the skillset he was managing.

I think he's currently expecting too much from this set of players and he'll have to revert to type to an extent. Onana could become a real issue in this case.
 
God help us if this is considered good. A clanger from Onana and the defence is on the horizon. It almost happened in the first half today.
Almost happened to Brighton too go figure.

We have easily played the ball out from the back into midfield and that is where our build up is breaking down
 
You say you want ETH to be the manager we all want yet you spout nonsense like this. You have no idea if he's lost the dressing room or not. Repeating it as fact doesn't make it fact.

To be fair, you can read what Keano said years a go and easily think he was talking about today.

You would fall out with these players. The players got away with murder. They hide behind the manager. They have thrown him under the bus. Players who turn up overweight, do not train properly and are not producing – for some to down tools, shame on some of those players. I am not Jose’s biggest fan, but I can’t tolerate footballers who hide behind agents, their pals in the media—it is a bit of a joke.

These are the players that threw Mourinho under the bus. They'll do the same to Ole. Leopards don't change their spots. There are too many bluffers at this club to get Man United back to the top.

It's quite easy to fear the worst. Many players have changed in those years but we still look like a team of bluffers. Overweight players not training properly and not producing, using their pals in the media.

We are all desperate for ETH to be successful, but we've seen it all before.
 
I think it's too late for that now. We have too many players not suited to possession football. Casemiro/Mount/Bruno/Rashford are all bad at ball retention and are more suited to transition play and the manager spent about 130 mill on 2 of them...
Never too late.
 
Best Manager we have had in a decade to modernize our play and people want to sack him. Cafe overreaction in full effect.
 
Except he didn't.

Really? We must watch different games then. We press high now, our ball retention out of the back is far and away better. We have elements of positional play. We play in a 3-2-5 buildup structure.

Might just be me though.
 
He's no better than previous managers but until we recruit better players it will just be more of the same no matter who we get. Stop thinking one man will save us. The squad simply isn't fit for purpose, overpaid, overrated dross.
 
Best Manager we have had in a decade to modernize our play and people want to sack him. Cafe overreaction in full effect.
First modern manager we've had in a decade. There might be better. You don't have to marry the first decent girl you meet.
 
That's why they bought Amrabat.
I refuse to get my hopes up until I've seen it happen.

I do think Amrabat will solve a lot of problems for us. But at the same time, if ten Hag does the diamond again, it'll be useless, as that just has massive holes on either flank that are very easy to exploit. Amrabat next to Casemiro should be very good though. Bruno as the 10, Mount on the right half spaces with Dalot overlapping him and Garnacho being an impact sub has a lof of positives in it. Or it should. We'll see how we do it.
If Mount can actually be effective on the right for us I may actually start to believe our luck is turning around a bit, given how cursed a position it's been and how eyebrow-raising a transfer it was.
 
First modern manager we've had in a decade. There might be better. You don't have to marry the first decent girl you meet.

I don't disagree with your point. We don't need to chop and change every speed bump in the road. Last year he brought us back to the Champions League while performing well in the league. Based on that he deserves a chance to make things right.

If he looked out of his depth or the team looked lost then I agree its time to go. I put some of this on the players too.
 
First modern manager we've had in a decade. There might be better. You don't have to marry the first decent girl you meet.
So we are supposed to write off last season (the one where he secured UCL football and got to 2 cup finals without a proper CF) based on 5 games this season because?

We are supposed to ignore the massive injury crisis because?

We are supposed to ignore all the off field issues because?

I am all for ETH going if he proves not to be good enough. But he has to be given a chance for feck sakes.

Even with the signings. Some of you act like Pep did not make any transfer mistakes in his first 2 summers at City or Klopp didn’t at pool

This fan base is extremely toxic and its not just Glazers that is the issue
 
So we are supposed to write off last season (the one where he secured UCL football and got to 2 cup finals without a proper CF) based on 5 games this season because?

We are supposed to ignore the massive injury crisis because?

We are supposed to ignore all the off field issues because?
We don't have to sack him yet, bit we also don't have to treat him like some infallible Messiah. He has some credit .
 
We don't have to sack him yet, bit we also don't have to treat him like some infallible Messiah. He has some credit .
Who is treating him like an infllible messiah by the way? The fans who think after 5 games into a season where we have a clear injury crisis its harsh to be questioning his job?
 
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