Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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Emery has discussed this - aside from having to replace Wenger (we know how badly replacing long-standing managers can go), he committed 'crime' of trying to run most of his team business and press comms in English rather than delegating to a translator, before being fully fluent, which basically had him mocked and on the backfoot from the press: that's the English press in a country which is notoriously monolingual and 3/4 of whom don't have anything beyond faded GCCSE French/Spanish/German.

Emery's doing alright at Villa, I'd say, and I suspect he'd probably be doing better than ETH if he was here (particular in instilling a style), even with this mixed-up squad, injuries and our dear owners.

Weird yardstick to measure a manager’s success. Press conference has nothing to do with how a manager handles the team. English
 
Its unbelievable seeing Xavi giving a lot of youngster a chance and ETH seems to hate youth and only wants to give his fav players minutes even though they are almost all in bad form!
 
Decimated them yet they finished 3rd and only 5pts behind arguably our best PL season since SAF left.

They admittedly lost their way after all the injuries but they recovered and made a push to finish the season very well. Even twatted us 4-2 at home near the end of the season with a centre back partnership of Rhys Williams and Nat Phillips. If you can tell me where both of those players are today without googling it, I’ll give you my life savings.

Surely if they recovered well that means that there's an argument for giving Ten Hag more time given the situation. Liverpool were shite for 2/3 of that season and went on a title form run at the end.

Also when they twatted us, we had schedule issues and had to play 5 games in 9 days, including two EL semi final games. So some context is needed
 
Don’t really want him sacked, first because of player power

I don’t get this - are there reports that he’s fallen out with the locker room or that players are pushing for him to be sacked? Only players he’s fallen out with were shipped out or are banished - and not too much has been made of it because there’s seemingly a general understanding that those were “correct” decisions and that people stand behind him for them. So why would sacking him translate to player power? Surely if he was to get the sack it’s because he’s been poor, no?
 
Yes every manager that we get need to have the highest standards while managing United. I was just pointing out that just because a manager has done well at other clubs, they don’t become automatically good at managing United.
SAF - succesful elsewhere, eventually siccessful at United but in the modern game he would have been sacked before the success arrived

Moyes - succesful at Preston and Everton, couldn't hack United

VdG - serial winner at various clubs as well as stints as a national team manager

Jose - serial winner at multiple clubs

Ole - out of his depth at United, got gthe job on sentiment really

Ralf - most people had never heard of him, was only ever meant to be an interim, told his bosses a few home truths which didn't go down well, he wasn't wrong about those though

EtH - jury is out, started off generally OK but seems to have gotten lost this season

So if we don't stick with EtH we may as well get a complete unknown because going with known managers with some success or name recognition hasn't worked out well
 
Yes every manager that we get need to have the highest standards while managing United. I was just pointing out that just because a manager has done well at other clubs, they don’t become automatically good at managing United.

What’s understood doesn’t need explaining, especially when I didn’t imply that in my post - appointments are made with a lot of factors taken into consideration - and I just happen to believe the table tilts towards Emery on some crucial points when compared to Ten Hag
 
What does that even mean? Moyes was Ferguson's. Pep has now reportedly told people De Zerbi will be City's next manager - it doesn't really amount to anything.
Moyes wasn't Ferguson's first choice.
 
What does that even mean? Moyes was Ferguson's. Pep has now reportedly told people De Zerbi will be City's next manager - it doesn't really amount to anything.
Does this mean Pep is leaving! City fans must be going nuts with this breaking news!
 
Onana, Evans, Antony, Amrabat, Højlund. Almost half the 11

You know Evans, Amrabat, and Erickson are desperate signings right? They are here to plug the hole simply because they are "available"...The manager has to sign up so many near-retirement players and the team is now suffering...
 
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He needs to go back to the basics of football management like he did when he first arrived, and drop badly performing superstars.

I don't understand why this team has players that are deemed undroppable no matter how badly they're playing. It's not as if they have PL or CL medals in the bank that have earned them this status.

They've had periods in previous seasons of several months where they've played well, and for this reason, they seemingly can never be dropped, ever. Madness.
 
I have been very supportive but if Garnacho does not begin to start most games, I will lose patience. Hojlund and Garnacho are our only game changers at this point.
 
Van Dijk and another CB were out for the season a few years back and it decimated their league form! Fabinho had to go in to CB role which impacted their ability to control games as he was out of midfield, and Liverpool ended up finishing with 30 fewer points than the season prior.

Pep has never had a situation where one area of the team has been wiped out. He’s had numerous injuries across the team, but never isolated to one area of the pitch. City are also in a unique position where they've always had resources to handle those injury ‘crises’.

But let’s not let facts get in the way of making a half-baked point.

Sure but those teams when mostly/fully fit were dominant sides and better than any team in the world. It showed what they were when fully at it. We aren't even close to that. I think the injury thing is somewhat of an excuse but we have 0 injuries to our attack and our midfield is mostly fit now as well. Yet we stilll struggle to impose ourselves on teams, don't create much, and seem to not have any real identity as a side.
 
Uh we had top 4 to play for at the end of last season, unless you're being sarcastic.

The turning point for most of the negativity was the Mount signing. Lots of fans wanted the Woodward-style marquee signing of Kane for whatever it took (likely £140 million), and to leave the midfield as it was last season.

I don’t think we wanted a marquee signing at all. We knew that we needed a striker and Kane is one of, if not the best strikers in the world. It wasn’t that he was a big name but that he was of the required quality and already PL ready.

Also don’t think we wanted the midfield to stay the same as last year at all. The Mount signing made zero sense given the problems we had and given we had a limited budget it made less than zero sense to buy him.

Most fans were more realistic about the state of the team and the areas it needed improving than ETH and the board were if you judge it on the signings they did make.
 
Its unbelievable seeing Xavi giving a lot of youngster a chance and ETH seems to hate youth and only wants to give his fav players minutes even though they are almost all in bad form!
This is very wild comparison. Outside of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, La Liga teams are poor and it reflects on the talents they assemble. Compare to PL, outside of the top 6 of yesteryears like us, Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Liv, Tottenham, now there are Aston Villa, Newcastle who spend decent fee and assemble quite strong squads. West Ham, Wolves Fulham also spent plenty on smaller scale. Brighton got credit for building a good squad while spending cheap. The competitiveness in transfer market alone blow La Liga out the water. And recent performance show that even West Ham is becoming competitive in ECL and EL level. There is very room to just throw kids when you expect results.

Also Barcelona is currently playing shit on stick football, too. I watched their 3 latest La Liga games (against Athletic Bilbao and Sevilla). Even when they won 2 of the 3, it was a borefest. It is comparing dog shite to cow dung contest.

It's weird to use the playing youth stick to beat ETH. I don't see anyone expect Klopp to play Liverpool kids, and he also even played mostly strong team in EL so far without facing the kind of injury crisis we had. On the other hand, IMO it's an issue to start meh young players like Pellistri against Bayern and against Crystal Palace in PL despite he failed to impress with previous starts. Bruno, McTominay, Amrabat did their job in latest game despite it's not pretty to get us the needed victory. You can complain the style of play but you can't guarantee playing any young players would improve quality of play as well as yielding the same result (a victory).
 
You know Evans, Amrabat, and Erickson are desperate signings right? They are here to plug the hole simply because they are "available"...The manager has to sign up so many near-retirement players and the team is now suffering...

Well you have to be the best manager possible with the cards you're being given. If he needs 25 players that he has to hand pick he has come to the wrong club. Im pretty sure he know what squad he came too. The best managers gets results with what they have. Last season he did just that
 
You know Evans, Amrabat, and Erickson are desperate signings right? They are here to plug the hole simply because they are "available"...The manager has to sign up so many near-retirement players and the team is now suffering...
:lol: Amrabat became a desperate signing because Mount next to Casemiro wasn't working out and we badly missed Fred.
 
You gave the answer yourself. The Saudis.. new owners. It's less about the spending, more about ambition. When owners show they mean business (not the financial kind), the players get the message.

There's no such 'quality' control at United. We can blame ten Hag for not implementing his tactics well, but these players have shown time and again that they throw the manager under the bus when it suits them.. and the ownership enables them with shiny contracts. This has been the case since van Gaal.

I'm pretty sure when ten Hag is sacked in December (yes, that's my prediction), we'll see a scoring spree and articles on how regimented the training was and that the players' "creativity was being stifled." And then we'll know that the van Gaal-Mourinho-Solskjaer cycle is in full swing again.
This.

Players know that an ambitious owner would not be hesitant to kick them out. They rather keep low profile than kicking up a fuss and get noticed for the wrong reason. That's some needed extra motivation.

Here we have accountants renew clearly out of favor players' contracts like Rojo, Bailly, Pogba, DDG (Ignore the context of whether Onana is the right buy), Ighalo, Cavani second season.... Owners and their directors here created extra drama for the teams with these contracts because their accountant style of seeing player as asset, and commercial value may still be valuable in their eyes despite the chaos in the dressing room those want away players bring.
 
Another one bites the dust for me. You shouldn't need this long to coach build up play, attacking patterns into players. His recruitment was also terrible. Hope Murtough leaves with him and we have a coaching replacement lined up for once. You can see the inevitable drubbing from one of our rivals coming up.

On xGD/90, we were 6th last season. Same metric we are currently 11th. Sure we could improve but ultimately after spending 400m or so, we're still a 5th / 6th placed team at best. That was our level for the past decade regardless of the coach and that's our level now.
 
Has arteta really turned it around? He had a good season last season by finishing 2nd but so did ole and mourinho, saf is truly an anomaly in regards to turning it around and creating a dynasty and it's crazy that people are likening ten hag to one of the greatest managers in the history of football.

I feel like I have heard the excuse for giving every manager post fergie more time just because of how fergie turned it around
If you just look at the final standings then there's nothing really to talk about. Mourinho and Ole never really looked like challenging for the title even though they finished 2nd. Arsenal came close last season and are looking likely to challenge again. They are building something which is expected to set them up for future success.
 
He has had a lot to deal with, both at a board level as well as at the team level. However, the football this season has been absolutely trash. Our players have no clue on the football pitch and nothing in the team is functioning at the moment.
He needs to get this team performing again or else he will be out of the door soon. Not looking forward to playing City & Newcastle.
 
I'm done with sacking managers. I'm still behind him. He was Peps choice to replace him at city. If the players aren't putting the performances in they can go first.
He’d probably do a great job there to be fair. They have the type of players he needs… their players also put in a shift. We just have none motivated and greedy players.
 
If you just look at the final standings then there's nothing really to talk about. Mourinho and Ole never really looked like challenging for the title even though they finished 2nd. Arsenal came close last season and are looking likely to challenge again. They are building something which is expected to set them up for future success.
Last season Arsenal finished on 84 points, which is 3 points more on Mourinho second season here. City last season had some misstep during early season, and not stepping on the gas toward the end, so it looks closer a race than compare 100 point champion to 81 point second place. Leceister won the league with 81 points and noone really challenged them that season.

Ole second place season was not that great. Last season we low key finished 1 morempoint (second highest tally post SAF) than Ole second place season.

Arsenal last season had an incredible first half of the season. They lost their way toward the end of the season. So it's to be seen whether they can challenge in the long run this season. City may start slow, but they have it in them to get on unstoppable run every season. They clearly have the nerve to grind out enough result when it matters. Arsenal hasn't yet shown that they can do something similar, so not having any lead now on City in this early stage of the season, it would be difficult to chase City once they hit form.

Too early to tell who is City rival for this season title race.

Back to us, we're having a bad start this season. Even with our victory, we've already been forced to grind oit result this early. That's the main worry. With our terrible playing style now, if result goes awry too, it would take Arsenal mount proper title challenge in latter sage of this season for our fans to cling onto long term vision with ETH.
 
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If you compare the effect that ETHs has had on his team to say someone like Unai Emery, Postecoglou (sp?) etc then he comes up short.
The best premier league managers have had much more impact in less time.
 
Another one bites the dust for me. You shouldn't need this long to coach build up play, attacking patterns into players. His recruitment was also terrible. Hope Murtough leaves with him and we have a coaching replacement lined up for once. You can see the inevitable drubbing from one of our rivals coming up.

On xGD/90, we were 6th last season. Same metric we are currently 11th. Sure we could improve but ultimately after spending 400m or so, we're still a 5th / 6th placed team at best. That was our level for the past decade regardless of the coach and that's our level now.

How can you get so caught up in stats that you’ve decided we’re a 5th placed team at best despite us finishing third last year?
 
Imagine continuing playing Anthony who doesn't score or assist almost at all, and underperforming Rashford as 2/3 forwards and continue to ask yourself why aren't we scoring more goals. Add Bruno on top of that too. And don't forget he dod the same with fecking Wout half of last season too.

I am begging someone to explain any logic behind those decisions?

For me, he doesn't deserve any sympathy simply because of this simple stubbornness. The guy is literally making himself look like an amateur ever since January last year for some reason.
 
Imagine continuing playing Anthony who doesn't score or assist almost at all, and underperforming Rashford as 2/3 forwards and continue to ask yourself why aren't we scoring more goals. Add Bruno on top of that too. And don't forget he dod the same with fecking Wout half of last season too.

I am begging someone to explain any logic behind those decisions?

For me, he doesn't deserve any sympathy simply because of this simple stubbornness. The guy is literally making himself look like an amateur ever since January last year for some reason.

Who would you play instead of Antony and Rashford?
 
He’d probably do a great job there to be fair. They have the type of players he needs… their players also put in a shift. We just have none motivated and greedy players.
Partially agree. On Saturday you have seen that at least players like Evans is motivated for 3. The runs that he made from box to box being the oldest player on the pitch ... Sir Marcus still put in his best "deer in the headlights" pseudo-dribble shtick ...
 
If you compare the effect that ETHs has had on his team to say someone like Unai Emery, Postecoglou (sp?) etc then he comes up short.
The best premier league managers have had much more impact in less time.
Shortsighted and nonsense.

Emery had more experience at higher level but his first PL experience with Arsenal was worse than our last season. A season has 38 games. We're only 9 games into the new season. 6 points behind table leader with 29 games to play. Not saying we're title challenger especially with how we play, but to point point how close between places at this stage. The hyping of flavor of the month managers at this stage of the season is just silly.

The bestest of the best PL in SAF took while to get a club called Manchester United to get going.
 
Who would you play instead of Antony and Rashford?

Last game we had Garnacho, Mount, Martial, and Pellistri on the bench.

Before we even had Sancho is better goalscorer than Anthony but Ten Hag only rotated him on the left, in the tittle he played him.
 
If you compare the effect that ETHs has had on his team to say someone like Unai Emery, Postecoglou (sp?) etc then he comes up short.
The best premier league managers have had much more impact in less time.

They don’t have the same level of pressure that this man is going through. They do well and it’s just a massive bonus. At United the expectations are there and the noise around the club must make it a tough place to manage. There’s a reason no manager since Ferguson has been able to crack it. The pressure and stress levels are ridiculous.
 
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