Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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Brentford H
Sheffield United A
Copenhagen H

Three games before we lose to City and get knocked out by Newcastle in the league cup - if he doesn't win these three he is in big, big trouble.
 
What, when and where was this statement.

From Fabrizio Romano's account:
Erik ten Hag: "We stick together, we are together in this. Me, directors, team, all together we will fight".

"We know we have to do better. We are on it".
 
Funny how I almost completely agree with your analysis but want to get rid of this rebuild thinking once and for all instead of reinforcing it.

Don't try to win the title in five years, try to be better than last season every season. Keep changing everything you have to when you see the need for it, including the manager, DoF and other staff as well as players. Which is almost the same as you said just that I do want to include more positions as potentially open for change.

But as you said the key in this is doing a gradual change every time. United tends to write off everything the last manager did and call every of his signings "deadwood" instead of actively looking for a way to take the existing squad and work with that when you change the manager.

I don't know, my feeling is rather that Ten Hag adapted his system toonmuch tonthe expectations with all the "we want tonbecome.the best transition team in the world" stuff. He didn't achieve what he achieved with Ajax playing transition football. If the club wanted that, they could have sticksd with Rangnick or signed a coach who actually stands ford this philosophy, say Roger Schmidt, Marco Rose or Hasenhüttl or something like this.

One reason for Ten Hag adapting is that he tried to keep what was working, I guess. The best players at United over the last years were Bruno and Rashford. But I'm not sure their play style is suitable for the very top teams at all as they play very risky and wasteful. It may lead to them having excellent statistics when in form but the team itself would probably score more (and concede less) when they played more grounded. Meanwhile, you see that players like Antony and Sancho who like to go for the simple option and play more patiently struggle to make an impact. While I'm sure this has much to do with them being out of form (when not suspended, that is), it's only natural that in a team that consists of "patient" and "impatient" players, the impatient ones will stand out more as they go for the risky option and finish off a passing sequence earlier than the patient players would. Hence the "all he does is passing it back, he never challenges his full back or makes something happen" criticism directed at Sancho and Antony.

Whatever you want to do, you should do it with consequence. If you want to play transition football, build a team consisting of players who excel at it. But then you should sign the players for it as well. I don't think a transition can challenge City, Liverpool or Arsenal over the course of 38 games but iif the club insists on the "United way", then fine.
 
That was cohesive? You really need to watch more football if you think that. Honestly it was a dogs dinner and we had little control. Constantly giving the ball away. Reliance on hopeful long balls and counters.

Their first goal, our attack completely sits off their defenders on the ball, almost on the half way line. They play a long ball and are 1v1 with our last defender. How does that happen? Our team isn't pressing, yet we're wide open with a high line. We're a compete mess.

Right now a few people are still saying they think ETH can turn it around. And by turn it around I'm guessing they mean stop losing all the time. But the bigger picture is that we should have been closer to what arsenal were last season. A reasonable challenge even if we do eventually drop off. To go from getting beat regularly, to being the best team in the country/Europe is a step that ETH simply won't be able to make. And that's what we really should be expecting, not avoiding defeat to dross teams.

:rolleyes:
 
From Fabrizio Romano's account:
Erik ten Hag: "We stick together, we are together in this. Me, directors, team, all together we will fight".

"We know we have to do better. We are on it".

I hear this shit every damn week. It gets as boring as player twitter apologies. Get to the training ground and start coaching, Erik.
 
Brentford H
Sheffield United A
Copenhagen H

Three games before we lose to City and get knocked out by Newcastle in the league cup - if he doesn't win these three he is in big, big trouble.

The three are all piss easy games United should win comfortably but United can and will surprise us all.
 
I don't know, my feeling is rather that Ten Hag adapted his system toonmuch tonthe expectations with all the "we want tonbecome.the best transition team in the world" stuff. He didn't achieve what he achieved with Ajax playing transition football. If the club wanted that, they could have sticksd with Rangnick or signed a coach who actually stands ford this philosophy, say Roger Schmidt, Marco Rose or Hasenhüttl or something like this.

One reason for Ten Hag adapting is that he tried to keep what was working, I guess. The best players at United over the last years were Bruno and Rashford. But I'm not sure their play style is suitable for the very top teams at all as they play very risky and wasteful. It may lead to them having excellent statistics when in form but the team itself would probably score more (and concede less) when they played more grounded. Meanwhile, you see that players like Antony and Sancho who like to go for the simple option and play more patiently struggle to make an impact. While I'm sure this has much to do with them being out of form (when not suspended, that is), it's only natural that in a team that consists of "patient" and "impatient" players, the impatient ones will stand out more as they go for the risky option and finish off a passing sequence earlier than the patient players would. Hence the "all he does is passing it back, he never challenges his full back or makes something happen" criticism directed at Sancho and Antony.

Whatever you want to do, you should do it with consequence. If you want to play transition football, build a team consisting of players who excel at it. But then you should sign the players for it as well. I don't think a transition can challenge City, Liverpool or Arsenal over the course of 38 games but iif the club insists on the "United way", then fine.
I agree so far that I think EtH is more pragmatic than LvG or Mou and is not the worst option, but I still think that the style he tries to play at the moment is a bad fit for some of their players.
 
Of all the excuses being made for him I think my favorite one is that our struggles are down to the fact that he’s trying to get our players to play this incredible, complex and beautiful possession style football and they are struggling with the demands of it.
 
If we lose against Brentford I think it's over for him, the pressure would be too much and the players will 100% down tools.... as opposed to the 90% they have now
 
De Zerbi was just an example but I agree that we need to see out the season but Erik himself needs to show something. We are falling prey to familiar issues like tactical indiscipline, lack of effort and concentration and he is just watching and playing the same players. He needs to rein in the big players because their wastefulness in possession is costing us.

Defensive collapses are to be expected given the number of injuries we are nursing but there is no excuse for zero effort or just losing our collective heads. The leadership nucleus has to change and shift it to calmer players who react well to adversity. I agree with the poster above that suggested benching Bruno for Eriksen as he is a fine creator with a calm head.

I don't agree with Bruno for Eriksen, as the latter simply doesn't have the legs anymore, but if Hannibal is fit he could come in with Mount moving forward, or maybe Lindelof at LB (he's been a disaster at CB recently so he can do less damage there) with Amrabat moving in to the middle.

Bruno, Rashford Onana, we've got a few players who look like they could use a few bench appearances to build some confidence (and allow some mental rest and recovery), but with our ridiculous injury list it's very difficult to do that at the moment.
 
Reflecting on this again...it seems to me that ETH has tried to change too much too soon.

In fairness to ANY footballer, it must be incredibly difficult to completely change the way you have played for years overnight. Johnny Evans actually alluded to this in his post-match interview following the Burnley game.

Last season, we looked, by and large, to be a fair/good football team. We looked compact, we kept plenty of clean sheets, we carried a goal threat. Most of all, we looked organised.

This season, we look an absolute mess. We've got huge, gaping holes all over the pitch and players popping up in all sorts of unorthodox positions that don't seem to suit them. We don't appear to be a possession team, or a long ball team, or a transition team...its not clear what we are.

I am 100% of the belief that our problems are tactical. I'm sick of hearing about the Glazers and Arnold and Murtough. I have made the point elsewhere, if we were talking about winning major trophies i.e. competing with the Oil Cheats, then yeah, I'd understand the argument that that's going to be extremely difficult without a world class management team.

However, they're not the reason we can't beat Palace, Galatasary or Brighton at home. The squad we have should be more than good enough to win those games and achieve a respectable league position.

For me, the problem is that we've changed too much too soon. OK, so I see the advantages of squeezing up the pitch, of moving full backs into midfield, of having CBs run forward to receive passes, of having a single pivot, of having four AMs occupying the half-spaces to overload the opposition, of having a ball-playing goalkeeper and of having a target-man style forward...but is it a good idea to implement all of those things at once?

What chance do the players actually have of learning that system in what accounts to a pre-season of about 6-8 weeks and then whatever time they get in between the 60-odd matches we play each season?

Would it not have been far, far better to implement these changes slowly, gradually working on one or two things at a time? It's like we're haunted by this spectre of Sir Alex Ferguson, our History and the Oil Cheats dominance of the modern era. We're rushing to do everything, as if we can fix this all in one season.

A full rebuild, which this is, should be considered a 5YR project. Gradually implementing the system we want and slowly buying the players we want, as the budget allows.

The big problem we have is, no manager ever gets to stay for 5YRs because we blow-up, we have a bit of relative success, achieve a decent league finish...and then we immediately rip-off the stabilisers and end-up going straight over the handlebars at 40mph.

We've got to get used to the idea that there's no quick fix to this. Many people say that, but I don't think they really understand the extent of it. For example, we talk about Spurs improvement under Ange, as an argument for the idea that change can happen fast...but all he's done is organise them and improve the spirit, with a few minor tactical tweaks. The baseline expectation is so much lower.

They might have a half-decent season, but they won't win the league...and if eventually IF that becomes the expectation, they'll almost certainly fail and blow-up like we do regularly.

So to summarise - we need to stop rushing! We need to stop having one decent season and then completely changing the way we want to play in search of the 90+ points we need to win the league. Change should be slow, careful and deliberate. There needs to be an acceptance that a period of boring stability is needed before we can really start hunting major trophies. Three of four consecutive seasons of Champions League finishes and small, steady tweaks on the pitch would frustrate the fans - but we've got to stop this cycle.
I agree. Seems like he is trying to change a lot, while hit by a massive injury crisis and off field crisis the same time. Bundled together it's been chaos.

I salute his intentions I.e. wanting to play more from the back, and trying to win the ball higher up but a compromise has to be made with the players he has and to minimise their limitations. I don't know if this means we should revert a bit more to our previous more compact style (as we slowly get the Shaws and Martinezs back) or pray that everything will click soon
 
Funny how I almost completely agree with your analysis but want to get rid of this rebuild thinking once and for all instead of reinforcing it.

Don't try to win the title in five years, try to be better than last season every season. Keep changing everything you have to when you see the need for it, including the manager, DoF and other staff as well as players. Which is almost the same as you said just that I do want to include more positions as potentially open for change.

But as you said the key in this is doing a gradual change every time. United tends to write off everything the last manager did and call every of his signings "deadwood" instead of actively looking for a way to take the existing squad and work with that when you change the manager.

A good manager will bring the best out of players at his disposal, that's literally manager's job. Pep is among the best at that, he recycles players, moves them to different positions, changes their roles to extract the best out of them. Stones was largely laughed at as a pointless / bad signing and he was among their most important players last year after his role changed. There are very few or almost no players at City that you'd say are underperforming relative to expectations whereas United is full of them and it's never manager's fault.
 
Of all the excuses being made for him I think my favorite one is that our struggles are down to the fact that he’s trying to get our players to play this incredible, complex and beautiful possession style football and they are struggling with the demands of it.

Agree this is nonsense, when get passed off the pitch by teams who should have no right to do so in theory.
 
I feel really bad for ETH but some of what’s happening is on him. I feel his arrogance in totally ignoring Rangnick’s opinions and refusing to work with him is eventually catching up with him. He may be a good coach but he’s so far shown he’s not an excellent manager.

United shouldn’t have allowed an incoming manager especially one who’s now making his name to dictate to them on how the footballing side of the club should be run. But that is what we get for being absolutely shit at putting a proper footballing system in place.

A club like United should have taken the bold decision in actually making Ralf do the work he knows best. Many may not agree with me but I think if Ralf had stayed on and actually done the work of a footballing director we would have been in a much better place. Yes he has a loud mouth but he knew what he was talking about. If the club has managed to shut him up after cutting ties with him, why couldn’t the club do the same and keep him here to do the “open heart surgery” ?

Ten Hag’s signings bar Martinez and Hojlund (imo) have so far been shit. We still can’t see any style of play and the mentality of this team is very shockingly weak for a United team. Erik will end up paying with his job if he can’t stop the rot real quick.

Really mental what’s happening to the club but this is what happens when we keep incompetent people in charge of the club. And oh feck the Glazers because without them we’d be in a far better place as a club.
 
I feel really bad for ETH but some of what’s happening is on him. I feel his arrogance in totally ignoring Rangnick’s opinions and refusing to work with him is eventually catching up with him. He may be a good coach but he’s so far shown he’s not an excellent manager.

United shouldn’t have allowed an incoming manager especially one who’s now making his name to dictate to them on how the footballing side of the club should be run. But that is what we get for being absolutely shit at putting a proper footballing system in place.

A club like United should have taken the bold decision in actually making Ralf do the work he knows best. Many may not agree with me but I think if Ralf had stayed on and actually done the work of a footballing director we would have been in a much better place. Yes he has a loud mouth but he knew what he was talking about. If the club has managed to shut him up after cutting ties with him, why couldn’t the club do the same and keep him here to do the “open heart surgery” ?

Ten Hag’s signings bar Martinez and Hojlund (imo) have so far been shit. We still can’t see any style of play and the mentality of this team is very shockingly weak for a United team. Erik will end up paying with his job if he can’t stop the rot real quick. Really mental what’s happening to the club but this is what happens when we keep incompetent people in charge of the club. And oh feck the Glazers because without them we’d be in a far better place as a club.

We seemed to have a good plan in place with Rangnick working as a consultant and trying to build the basics of a successful club, something that he had previously done at Red Bull projects with success. No idea why we ditched that, the fact that we went on to sign every single available former Ajax players probably means ETH's preference was to pick his own targets but the club should not have budged to that request and should have had him work with Rangnick (or another experienced DOF / consultant).
 
I really want him change it up at the weekend, change the set up. I fear he is too stubborn to do this. Any manager would have gone back to basics by now with the amount of goals we leaked but he's continued playing the same way.
 
I still back ten hag but he has to fix the horrible football we saw yesterday. The lack of control across 90 minutes was absolutely shocking. The manager didnt bother to communicate to these guys to slow down and maintain possession... against a team as lousy as Galatasaray. This same thing happened against burnley...and brighton.

This new horrible longball/ hoofball hybrid thing will get him fired. People can be patient if the football is good...we can take the losses if we try to play well, if we can see that what we are trying to do is nice....but if it continues to be like it was yesterday, where we see that where we want to go is actually horrible...he will lose all the fans.

It actually doesnt matter if we had won...playing the way we did, fans would still doubt him seriously. He absolutely needs to go back to having a style of play that emphasizes control and is nice to watch. One where we can see the players who obviously dont fit....but this new style where everyone is gang ho... every one is just smashing it...from bruno to mount to casemiro to rashford etc...this new style where the whole team looks disorganized will end in his demise
 
We seemed to have a good plan in place with Rangnick working as a consultant and trying to build the basics of a successful club, something that he had previously done at Red Bull projects with success. No idea why we ditched that, the fact that we went on to sign every single available former Ajax players probably means ETH's preference was to pick his own targets but the club should not have budged to that request and should have had him work with Rangnick (or another experienced DOF / consultant).
Really baffling isn’t it. For once it seemed like the club had finally stumbled on a magic formula (which other clubs had already been using) which was going to turn our fortunes around but we stupidly ruin with by giving all the power to the manager again. Seems like this club never learns. Vaas said this (Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact same fecking thing over and over again expecting shit to change) in Far Cry 3 and it really sums up our club.
 
Buy him some players who fit the tactical style in January to fix the squad then.
 
ETH biggest problem is the Glazers, however not far behind that Asteroid impacting problem is his own stubbornness and ego.

He needs to stop saying the team must do better, the players must do better, No Eric you must do better and quickly?

You’ve made many mistakes in 16-17 months and some good things too but you can not create an us and them scenario where you clearly have favourites.

Jadon Sancho is a clown but he’s only saying what most of the squad probably think, it doesn’t matter how badly Onana, Varane, Martinez, Casemiero, Mount, Bruno, Rashford and Anthony play they will always start if fit.

Currently two at most of those players should be starting and Maguire or Evans should have started yesterday to move Lindelof to right back and Dalot to left to give the team balance he could have started Garnaucho left and Rashford right so he had pace up front to scare Galatasaray and force them back into a defensive position, there was clearly huge spaces between their defence and midfield last night and we should have exposed that and had four or five goals at least!

Currently we don’t have players fit to play
4-1-2-3 or even 4-2-3-1 so let’s play 343 at home to Brentford. This might might not be popular but against Brentford at home they will open us up so we need to have a strong defensive unit. Hopefully Reguilon and Tom Heaton are both fit.

T Heaton

V Lindeloft RCB
R Varane cB
H Maguire LCB

S Reguilon
S Amrabat or K Mainoo if fit
Casemiro
D Dalot

Rashford RWS
R Hojlund
A Martial LWS

Bench

Onana
J Evans
W Kambwala
M Mount
S Mctominay or K Mainoo if fit
H Mejbri
A Garnaucho
Antony
Bruno

We need to see a complete all round performance from start to finish with all 16 players being used, so far this season we’ve seen 2 Lucky home wins, 1 lucky away win, 6 awful poor team performances and one complete performance against Crystal Palace reserves.

We’ve played 60% of our games at OLD Trafford and lost 60% of our games.
Rashford and Bruno have both been shite but Rashford offered more from the right last night than Bruno, Mount, Antony or Sancho have all season and he was at best 5/10, pace kills teams!

ETH had a warning last year about the brutality of the PL, well now he’s playing CL and PL and both competitions do not suffer fools gladly, they will find you out and currently ETH has been found out.

I hear all about Dutch Total Football, but only a handful of Dutch coaches have won the CL and none have ever won more than one.

Give me a great British manager any day of the week, for the record they’ve won 11 European cups by 7 different managers and no Dutch Coach has ever won the EPL and never will, their brand of boring sideways football doesn’t work here!

So let’s see if his back room staff can talk some sense into him. He could do with every player right now all pulling in the sane direction so John Murtourgh should start earning his salary by sorting out the Jadon Sancho issue and sit down with both player and manager and resolve the issue.

Eric, you clearly are so arrogant and stubborn you think you have no chance of being sacked however your clearly unaware of who your bosses still are, the Glazers will pull the trigger quickly if they think the on field performance is jeopardising their chance to sell the club for the optimum value?
 
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I really want him change it up at the weekend, change the set up. I fear he is too stubborn to do this. Any manager would have gone back to basics by now with the amount of goals we leaked but he's continued playing the same way.

That's exactly what he did last season if you recall. I think he'd be wise to do it again, but at some point we need to get away from a sort of sit back and counter style.
 
He won’t come back for losing 3 out of his first 5, terrible performances, buying the wrong players, 7-0 Liverpool, 4-0 Brentford, 3-0 Sevilla, two seasons in a row with massive fitness issues at the start of the season, incoherent tactics, serious issues with pressing coordination and intensity and the players clearly not working for him.

Hardly dramatic. It’s just a matter of when now.
I have tried to be patient with ETH, and always accepted that he inherited one of the most difficult jobs in world football. The expectations at our great club are like no other, which is as it should be. However, any dispassionate analysis will highlight dubious signings and worryingly one dimensional tactics. It appears too often that we are little more than a counter-attacking team. That will get a reasonable amount of results, but it won't get us into the same title contending conversation as City, Arsenal, and - it has to be said - Liverpool '2.0'. What worries me most is how exposed we are by basic thrusts down the middle. Saw it again last night for 3rd goal, which was really playground stuff. I don't want to comment on our keeper, other than to say his decision making is highly questionable as seen last night and previous games. The question is, can we pick ourelves up from the floor (again) and move forward under ETH? If not, who is out there as a suitable replacement. I think it goes without saying we need someone with gravitas and who knows the 'utd way'. Are we looking for an ex player, or someone completely left field??? Very frustrated and concerned today after last night.
 
Last year we came two steps forward and summer transfers perhaps pushed us four steps back.
 
I hear all about Dutch Total Football, but only a handful of Dutch coaches have won the CL and none have ever won more than one.

Give me a great British manager any day of the week, for the record they’ve won 11 European cups by 7 different managers and no Dutch Coach has ever won the EPL and never will, their brand of boring sideways football doesn’t work here

On this point, what British manager would you replace him with? I think the United job is too big for any of the British managers that are currently coming to my mind.
 
Buy him some players who fit the tactical style in January to fix the squad then.

The problem with that is you know what players we will go for (former Ajax and Eredivisie) and you know they are not good enough to elevate us to a very high level, but will further deplete our budget.

We may be looking at a situation where in 2-3 years time our team will basically be a decent Eredivisie side assembled at enormous cost, and whoever comes after him will be unable to really change much due to budget/FFP constraints.

His signings have actually made us even worse so far, and hard to see how allowing him to bring even more players is going to fix it. He can't even get the best out of players he specifically wanted to sign.

He's a very average manager with the ego of Pep. He probably wouldn't even last at a mid-table PL team.
 
Almost funny how people were saying that he is our best manager in post-SAF era. He is in course to be our worst manager in post-SAF era and this season is making Ole/Rangnick season look great in comparison.

As a reminder, our worst-ever league position was 8th in that Ole/Rangnick season. Let's see if we can a little better.
 
That's exactly what he did last season if you recall. I think he'd be wise to do it again, but at some point we need to get away from a sort of sit back and counter style.
This is true. I think i know what ten hag wants us to do but I don't think the players he has on that pitch are good enough to do it. You need at least 9 players on that pitch to have the energy and workrate off the ball as well as on the ball. If there are 3 or 4 players that are not doing that then everything falls apart. For example when he took off mejbri and put Eriksen on we were ok for about 15 mins but then when they started attacking our midfield was non existent because eriksen and casemiro don't have the legs.

Obviously the goalkeeper didn't help either
 
This is true. I think i know what ten hag wants us to do but I don't think the players he has on that pitch are good enough to do it. You need at least 9 players on that pitch to have the energy and workrate off the ball as well as on the ball. If there are 3 or 4 players that are not doing that then everything falls apart. For example when he took off mejbri and put Eriksen on we were ok for about 15 mins but then when they started attacking our midfield was non existent because eriksen and casemiro don't have the legs.

ETH has brought in 12 players within 2 summer windows. 12.

I dont ever remember any previous managers including Fergie ever being given that level of support in 2 summer windows.
 
Rather then sacking ETH and appointing an interim Id rather the club writes the season off a different way (as that’s exactly what they’d be doing by sacking ETH).

A root an branch restructure to how the club is run from a footballing perspective. An actual plan for the club that isn’t “sign that manager and buy players he wants”. An actual joined up football strategy where the manager is the final piece , not the one who has to make it all work.

This is what successful clubs do. They don’t just rely on a manager making everything work.

Keep ETH, tell him of your overhaul and that he has to accept it but he will have input and go and look to see what all other successful clubs are doing. And then do what Roman Abramovic did, poach all the best people from all the best clubs to make the most of this new structure.

or we sack ETH and hope the next manager just works which is the equivalent of putting an umbrella over the parts of the leaking roof of old Trafford.
 
The results are one thing but the main issue for me are the transfers. He’s blown a load of money on absolute shite.

If he keeps his job until the summer do we then give him yet another 200m? I mean what’s his argument he needs players for his ‘system’ that doesn’t seem to exist?

The league table doesn’t lie but I can’t help but feel we got lucky last season with Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs having a shocking year.

Its a mess from top to bottom, its not like we’re even unlucky we’be been crap and the football is shite
 
Rather then sacking ETH and appointing an interim Id rather the club writes the season off a different way (as that’s exactly what they’d be doing by sacking ETH).

A root an branch restructure to how the club is run from a footballing perspective. An actual plan for the club that isn’t “sign that manager and buy players he wants”. An actual joined up football strategy where the manager is the final piece , not the one who has to make it all work.

This is what successful clubs do. They don’t just rely on a manager making everything work.

Keep ETH, tell him of your overhaul and that he has to accept it but he will have input and go and look to see what all other successful clubs are doing. And then do what Roman Abramovic did, poach all the best people from all the best clubs to make the most of this new structure.

or we sack ETH and hope the next manager just works which is the equivalent of putting an umbrella over the parts of the leaking roof of old Trafford.


Thats what needs to come from the owners though so it won’t happen. The people running the club are the ones failing but they won’t sack themselves.
 
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