Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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The league cup isn't really that important for them this season. Their main target is to rebuild the team, restore their identity and finish top 4 if possible. They are well on track in all of these.
Any cup competition isn’t to be sniffed at if you’ve gone barren for as long as Spurs have, and the great football already slowed down, they just struggled to beat (very fortuitously at that) Sheffield at home.


And also 2nd in the table.
I didn’t know the season finishes after 5 games now, grand achievement indeed.
 
Maybe just maybe, doing it in Eredivise and EPL is world apart. Yes, I know he did well in CL with Ajax too. But PL is a different beast. Every games is 110% efforts. No easy games like in Eredivise with Ajax.

ETH doesn't have track records at big leagues. It's his second season with 400M spent but our style of play is atrocious. Things look bleak now. It's a false dawn again?
 
And then we trust the next manager to spend those pennies, whoever it is? That’s a curious conclusion.
I don't want ETH or any other manager to be trusted with driving our transfer strategy or scouting anymore. Get proper specialists in place for that.
 
I don't want ETH or any other manager to be trusted with driving our transfer strategy or scouting anymore. Get proper specialists in place for that.

I agree. We need someone who is capable and a strong hand in telling Ten Hag to concentrate on coaching.

Cast our minds back to Ole's demise. Do we think he is really under pressure?
 
Next they got battered by Brentford and then splashed out on Casemiro (who they did need despite it being short term) and then Antony to produce balance on the right.
Casemiro was basically signed before Brentford as he famously text to say the result made him even more determined to join, not less. He wasn't a reaction to the cuffing.
 
Casemiro was basically signed before Brentford as he famously text to say the result made him even more determined to join, not less. He wasn't a reaction to the cuffing.

Yes, I know it emerged he was in the plans, but they spent €100 euro on Anthony.
 
There's more to it than that. Within a month of taking the job, the cult of personality builds around the manager. The back the manager anthem gets louder and louder. More and more spoke gets blown up the managerial arsehole by the fans and those around the club.

So even a humble coach, who knows his limitations starts to believe he's some cult leader. They all turn into insufferable arrogant cocks quite soon after taking the job unfortunately, and then its hard to put them back in their place.
Maybe the solution is to hire a manager the fanbase hates, and use that as a pretext to strip the position of all its responsibilities other than coaching.
 
You just cant be selective in your assessment conveniently leaving out the good stuff they are doing just to prove a point.
There’s nothing selective about the statement I made, those are plain facts.

Yes, they are doing well now (mostly because they have a pretty easy fixture run), but they’ve also fecked up and showed signs of slowing down. If we play Brentford, Burnley, Sheffield and Bournemouth and fail to match their results, then by all means, but saying a coach who operates in a vastly less pressurised environment, with a kinder fixture list, is the benchmark for instilling a playstyle and transforming a club is just pure knee jerk nonsense.

It’s obviously pretty miserable being a Utd fan right now, but we need to be level headed. We had a shit pre season with a lot of flying around for commercial reason, we had a long list of injuries, we had tough opening fixtures in which although we’ve underperformed, we’ve also been unlucky in. We aren’t going to challenge for the league but once we get players back we will start getting result and be in top 4 contention, which is the ceiling of this team. The real worry, and the one question we need to ask vigorously, is why after all the money spent, that remains our ceiling, and calling to sack a manager who by general consensus exceeded expectations in his first season after 5 games doesn’t address that.
 
There is a league cup games against Palace coming up...I hope EtH can field a side which is free of the doom and gloom and instead full fresh faces.

--------- Hojlund ---------
Garnacho - Pellestri
---------- Mount ----------
- Amrabat - Mainoo -

I would really love to see this!
 
Keep. I have plenty of concerns but he deserves more than 5 games at the start of a season where he's missing numerous players and the club is a complete mess off the pitch.

Ultimately it'll make no difference anyway. I don't expect him to be here in 12 months time but until the ownership is sorted and we have a proper structure in place, no manager is going to be successful. Last year was as good as it'll get otherwise and even if those changes are made it's not going to be a quick fix. 90% of this forum wanted Ten Hag and were prepared to give him at least a couple years because they understood that, now isn't the time to give up on him.
 
Money spent should be a criticism of the DOF/board not the manager.

Money wasted negotiating with the selling club is 100% on the board and not EtH.

Equally the failure to sell previous managers players has feck all to do with the current manager.
 
We definitely didn't play in 4312. Some sites may pretend that we did but we didn't, Eriksen and Casemiro touches are evenly spread respectively left and right side of the pitch, Rashford was heavily on the left and in his regular position, Hojlund was central as was Bruno, McTominay was slightly more inside than a regular right midfielder but wasn't involved in general midfield play and was not operating as a central midfielder.
We played a 442 variation with a diamond in midfield. We clearly did not play 4231 as you suggested
 
All those who are massive fans of ETH, how do you explain playing Bruno at the b
Do you think our transfer business got any worse under ten Hag, rather than just continue the consistent, wasteful awfulness of the last ten years?
It’s probably getting a lot worse because almost every transfer we overpaid massively, 25-50% more, case by case. However, in the meantime, the whole market inflates a lot as well.
 
Garnacho, Erikson… and you build a squad for that exactly.
Didnt Garnacho start the first 2 games of the season and was poor with fans calling for him to be dropped?

Didnt Eriksen start the last 2/3 games?
 
Currently no one but ETH needs to pull his fingers and understand that Rashford isn't a midfielder and that his current 4231 assume that he is. Most of our issues have little to do with the board or some luck, it's either due to players not following instructions while somehow always playing the same way and do things that aren't actually natural or they are following instructions and those instructions are bad. As an example we almost always press with an asymmetric 4222, teams struggle with it during the first minutes and then quickly realise that they can bypass it by playing wide in their own third and narrow in the middle third because there is a massive gap in the middle.

ETH is being stubborn for no apparent reason, his 4231 doesn't work, the team isn't compact enough and the players have the very bad habit of slowly carrying the ball in transition instead of passing it and generally adopt a more direct approach.

Before I get accused otherwise, the Glazers need to go but............blaming THEM for us playing like dog shite is too convenient.


A blind man can see we should be playing better than our recent performances. The 6 points we do have we are lucky to have (Wolves & Forest).

The concern is there doesn't appear to be any changes to our style after we've had another schooling. Fernandes still runs around like a headless chicken. Rashford still seems intent on scoring worldy whilst ignoring better positioned team mates.
 
Post SAF, we have changed 5 managers and we are still having the same problem.

Negative football, inconsistent, players moral problems, players deteriorated after rejoining us, sign wrong players, no set style of play from manager to manager, players being paid too much, overpaid for mediocre players, injury problems and the list goes on and on.

Do we still blame the manager?
 
Post SAF, we have changed 5 managers and we are still having the same problem.

Negative football, inconsistent, players moral problems, players deteriorated after rejoining us, sign wrong players, no set style of play from manager to manager, players being paid too much, overpaid for mediocre players, injury problems and the list goes on and on.

Do we still blame the manager?
Absolutely yes for most part there are plenty of things you have listed which are directly under the influence of the manager.
 
Exactly, it's taken him 5 games to implement his style of play, we're 70 games in with ten Hag and we don't have a set style of play that's evident.
I remember people talking that crap after a few games of Jose at Spurs. Lets see how Spurs look after they face some adversity.

United also looked good for a period last season. Sustaining it is the challenge
 
I remember people talking that crap after a few games of Jose at Spurs. Lets see how Spurs look after they face some adversity.
Don't even need to go that far back, people were cursing us for not getting Conte.
 
Performances since the cup final (February) have been poor. We lose against anyone half decent away from home. This season we've been very underwhelming at home too. It's hard to pinpoint anything tactically that we are good at. Transfers have been questionable plus there is a lot of off-field nonsense going on.

Would you sack or keep?

Out of his depth. Would be good for United and for him to go.
 
Post SAF, we have changed 5 managers and we are still having the same problem.

Negative football, inconsistent, players moral problems, players deteriorated after rejoining us, sign wrong players, no set style of play from manager to manager, players being paid too much, overpaid for mediocre players, injury problems and the list goes on and on.

Do we still blame the manager?
It's not an either or thing or we could then also conclude that buying and selling players "isn't working" so we should stop doing it.
 
Post SAF, we have changed 5 managers and we are still having the same problem.

Negative football, inconsistent, players moral problems, players deteriorated after rejoining us, sign wrong players, no set style of play from manager to manager, players being paid too much, overpaid for mediocre players, injury problems and the list goes on and on.

Do we still blame the manager?

Of course we can blame the manager for signing wrong players or mediocre players. Boggles my mind that you think the managers have nothing to do with this.

Every one of them bought in some of these mediocre (at least while playing for us) overpaid players that they wanted.

Fellaini;
Di Maria, Depay, Schweinsteiger;
Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez;
Maguire, VDB, Ronaldo, Sancho.

I'm leaving ETH out as his so-far-mediocre signings still have time to make an impact. Looking at you, Antony.

But this idea that managers are blameless for poor transfers makes no sense.
 
Of course we can blame the manager for signing wrong players or mediocre players. Boggles my mind that you think the managers have nothing to do with this.

Every one of them bought in some of these mediocre (at least while playing for us) overpaid players that they wanted.

Fellaini;
Di Maria, Depay, Schweinsteiger;
Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez;
Maguire, VDB, Ronaldo, Sancho.

I'm leaving ETH out as his so-far-mediocre signings still have time to make an impact. Looking at you, Antony.

But this idea that managers are blameless for poor transfers makes no sense.
Signing players that don't fit the team is on the manager, but everything else is a matter of money. Signing someone mediocre for low money to be a reliable squad option is ok, signing him for huge money and give him a big contract is a problem. And that's a matter of the DoF not doing sensible business and not stepping back from interesting transfers once they become to expensive.
 
Does his 2nd season look better than Oles 2nd season so far? He is a good manager I feel but isn't showing his best here. This won't take long this time in my opinion
 
Of course we can blame the manager for signing wrong players or mediocre players. Boggles my mind that you think the managers have nothing to do with this.

Every one of them bought in some of these mediocre (at least while playing for us) overpaid players that they wanted.

Fellaini;
Di Maria, Depay, Schweinsteiger;
Pogba, Lukaku, Sanchez;
Maguire, VDB, Ronaldo, Sancho.

I'm leaving ETH out as his so-far-mediocre signings still have time to make an impact. Looking at you, Antony.

But this idea that managers are blameless for poor transfers makes no sense.
The idea is that managers shouldn't be having near the level of input they've had in something most managers aren't good at. Moyes stopped us signing Thiago. Van Gaal stopped us signing Kroos. This shite has been going on too long.
 
All those who are massive fans of ETH, how do you explain playing Bruno at the back ?

Its not like he started the match with a CB pairing of Licha and Bruno is it?

Team was losing, 10 mins to go so you put on another attacker and ask someone in the midfield to fill in at the back...simple.

Works the other way as well, when you are losing sometimes a manager will tell one of the CB to play up front for a bigger aerial threat.
 
I said to friends in preseason that if I was him, I'd have walked. Club failed him massively, leaving him with 4/5 players he clearly doesn't rate or want. Ultimately I suspect it doesn't really matter who's in charge with those parasites sucking out the little lifeblood the club has left. The fans ire and anger should be directed at the top, and nowhere else.
 
And then we trust the next manager to spend those pennies, whoever it is? That’s a curious conclusion.
Nope, despite the fact this squad needs another £500m spent on it the next manager should operate under the impression they’ll get the same budget the likes of Brighton or Tottenham get each season due to FFP restrictions. Ten Hag might be a good manager but allowing him to buy shite players and refuse to work with current players (because he wants more money) isn’t working. Come in, prove you’re a good manager, be rewarded in time.
 
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