If true, worrying signs because this pretty much confirms the cracks, between players, players-coaches relationshp.
Hope TheSUN just being TheSUN here.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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If true, worrying signs because this pretty much confirms the cracks, between players, players-coaches relationshp.
Hope TheSUN just being TheSUN here.
Anfield can't get any worse than last season, surely? And it's still only 3 points. I never expected us to win at Liverpool even when SAF was in charge tbh so I wouldn't put too much expectation on that fixture.
Hopefully Radcliffe can help to implement some changes to the structure above ETH. But I imagine it will be a slow process, unfortunately.
I heard the new recruitment team has been set up and was actually overseeing the transfer last summer. So, they didn’t do well in the first window. Overpaying has been a continuation from the previous regime.
I don’t think that recruitment team will be kept in place by INEOS,they will want to put their stamp on that side of the club. I just hope is Erik is prepared to relinquish some control of recruitment,he did at Ajax so hopeful he will be prepared to do it here too. My concern is what will results be like by the time this finally gets sorted.
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De Zerbi, like ETH, is a head coach not a manager. He will crumble under the chaotic structure here like Ten Hag has. Until we overhaul our structure we need a manager not a head coach. Ancelotti would be ideal for where we're currently at but not likely.
Good decision
You don't have a clue or maybe you stopped watching us after the Carabao cup final.
There is no narrative, it's things most people see except those that think ETH is infallible. Several posters brought up issues that about our setup last season, from Eriksen in midfield, Antony being shite, Casemiro losing his ability to cover ground etc. The drubbings we got last season were no coincidence and they are continuing this year.
Keep having your head in the sand.
Why the hell is sensitive issues like this always reported on. I'd prefer the club to get on with such issues behind closed doors without the public knowing.
Now the fans will certain expectations and if the players/manager doesn't deliver there's yet more pressure.
Yeah we are sluggish when it comes to sorting out that sort of thing,as I said earlier it should have been put in place a decade ago when Gill went.
Why not just name another big club manager who has more players of his own but playing the same shit level of football.
In fact 12 new players of his own should be more than enough to at least make some improvements/progression. Rarely does any manager afford or need a wholesale change of 20+ players before making an impact.
Its the sun. Don't even know if true or not. And when a crisis is around the corner, the vultures will start circling and usually find bits and pieces here and there to overblow it. Only works because mostly the fan base is so fickle. But look who I am telling that
Don't dilute the role the Glazers had in stealing the club with the abject performances that an ETH team is producing. The Glazers don't coach the players; pick the starting 11. In fact, ETH has been generously supported by his management.
Even if we get new owners it is not going to be like some magical wand --- and things will change especially the footballing performances. I don't think the footballing problems are as simple as that.
Bringing in a whole new management structure above ETH, or whether he is still around isn't any guarantee. It is more a reflection of the desperation that United fans have for improvements.
But I bet we will all be disappointed in 18-24 months' time and we will be back to where we are today.
Things aren't as simple as just waving a magic wand ie. ownership change or a new manager or a new DOF. Otherwise, things would have changed a long time ago.
The previous so & so (for position XX) was useless and now this new guy we have coming in is the dog's bollocks. We can apply that to any United employees. Then 18 months down the road....
We are just oversimplifying the situation and looking for scapegoats. From the outside, we have so little information about the constraints, circumstances/context or data that were used to make internal management decisions -- since they are internal.
At best, we are projecting our frustrations.
Even with footballing analysis, we are judging based on hindsight when 99.999% here have ever set up a team for a match.
We need to have some self-awareness and taper our expectations. Things arent always that obvious or they would have been fixed a long time ago.
No doubt the manager has to shoulder some of the blame. But to say that his signings are failures because they lack physicality is bollocks. They were physical enough to compete last year and, if anything, we are more athletic this year with the additions of Hojlund over Martial and Mount over Eriksen (which I admit hasn't worked yet). I get that the team and ETH are underperforming, but making up theories about a supposed lack of physicality is just trying to find another angle to get rid of the manager.
Because he is a driven, determined manager who did a brilliant job last season. He took us from nowhere to 3rd and a trophy as well as another final. He is clearly a perfectionist who is obsessed with being the best, even though our performances are far from that right now.
Thats not a club statement.
Nice one. Did you read the original post that I was replying to? Did I say we were doing well or anything of the sort? I said our deficiencies this year have nothing to do with a lack of physicality. If that was the case why wasn't it an issue last year? But keep jumping to conclusions without knowing the facts. Let me guess - you're ETH out? Shocker.
What is their to mend? What is he too mean? Trains too hard? Asks them to be punctual and well rested? Talk about inmate running the asylum. How can one take any of this seriously.
Exactly. Halfway last season, around the Barcelona games, Ten Hag was really getting somewhere with United, and individual players. And he got there through his own doing: he wasn't inheriting Ole's tactics and trying to hang on to them. But somehow, things went downhill from there, and now especially this season.
It doesn't make sense that Ten Hag both was responsible for that uphill trajectory and is also an idiot who knows nothing about tactics and player development. But United's squad is arguably stronger right now, and Ten Hag if anything should know it better, and the PL as well.
So what changed? I would argue that the principal issue is that Ten Hag is having to adjust to playing a second-string defence of players that don't fit proactive high-line defending, therefore had to adjust his approach - and in the process messes up all aspects of his intended defensive and attacking play and patterns.
That's obviously on Ten Hag. Well, he can't help that United's squad is still so disjointed in its depth, that's due to United flipflopping on style for a decade now. But he probably could have managed the current situation better from a tactical viewpoint. That's not a reason to fire him though. I would say that he needs to be given time to train and play games with his intended first team. If things still suck then, then yes, time to go. But sacking Ten Hag because he isn't handling an absurd injury crisis well with this disjointed squad doesn't sound sensible to me.
He'd get a lot more understanding about missing personnel if he didn't waste huge money on his two big summer signings. The lack of impact from Antony and Mount is killing him.
United is a graveyard for talent - it is where careers come to die or stagnate. ETH should take responsibility for our fortunes but the writing was on the wall the moment he put ink to paper.
If this is true, he's gone. These arent staff from the local Sainsburys. They're millionaire footballers. If they have a problem with you, then that's talking to them one on one is a terrible idea.
No it absolutely doesn't. The manager can do great (alright he isn't at the moment) with the squad but this club is poisonous from the top and if you think that that culture will not eventually trickle down to the team itself then I have no idea what to tell you.
Why is it a bad idea? I don't get it.
Pretty much every presser EtH's given after the Carabao final is the same. We could just pick one and play it after every game and nobody will notice. This just shows underlying issues that haven't been resolved for an year and only getting worse. As much as the owners need to change, we just can't keep justifying everything with them. This team should be doing better!
I'm still for keeping EtH but only if he is willing to work with the (supposed) new footballing structure and if he is willing to relinquish some of the control over transfers he currently has. We need to be moving forward as a club with the manager being a cog in the wheel and not the main driving force.
How does he have more of his own players? He's only got 5 or 6 starters in. We've seen loads of managers over the years fail at big clubs, largely because of them being in a similar situation of the club having a mess of a squad but not having the money or the will to do anything about it. So the easiest solution is to change manager every 12 to 18 months. Every Liverpool manager up to Klopp. Or every Chelsea manager over the last 10 years.
Why not just accept that in 10 years not one coach or manager has been able to come into the club and been a success because the whole structure around the football side is a mess?
It's a pick'n'mix squad of average players on above average wages. A bunch of average unwanted players who won't leave because they're on too much money. Rarely does any manager come into such a shit show of a club and be a success within a year.
I'm not defending the football, it's puke, but the guy is still having to field Maguire, Dalot, McT, Martial, AWB, Lindelof. Players who were never good enough for any top team. Players who we are used to seeing playing shite football every week over a number of years. But all of a sudden people expect a 2nd/3rd/4th manager to get them playing decent football. They are garbage players and it doesn't matter who is in charge they serve up garbage football. And when they're making up half your team every week what else would you expect?
Which of the previous managers were expected to exceed realistic expectations immediately? We back managers and give them more time than most clubs do. Unless the issue is the definition of realistic expectations. Last season's 3rd place is for some reason portrayed as some sort of a miracle when even someone like Ole did it better and more than once.
Unless Ratcliffe is a personal fan of his, he's done.
After his recent statement on his new playstyle at United, I'd want him gone inmediately if I were a United supporter. I mean, what the feck?
That's where he lost me. People say that he has been saying that for a while but I was ignorant.
I only heard that he said he wants United to be the best transition team in the world. Which was a bit worrying but you could still give him the benefit of the doubt as you can be great in both transition and possession. But that statement is revealing I think and means that it is not going to get better under him.
The Sun is The Sun, for sure. But I’m very sure one-to-ones are happening because I would definitely do that. More or less every individual is suffering from loss of individual confidence and form. They are all losing their personal battles in matches and it’s at the stage where fixing the team means fixing the individuals in the team.
Same, it's a good idea. But I also think it's too late to fix the issues now.
I read a lot of posts on this forum and it is pretty clear that a large, vociferous contingent just do not appreciate the scale of the task.
He has three games. Fulham, FC Copenhagen and Luton will define the rest of the season for ETH. I do worry, because I am not sure we will win any, not sure the players have the fight for it. Other teams, fans, can all see what the mood is.
There was a bit of nuance to it, what he essentially meant was he couldn’t make United play like Ajax because United are United, but also because of the players…
Reports are that he’s concerned about being compared to LVG who came here and tried to do that and we all got super bored and frustrated with that football right away, but the reality is that by not trying to implement a style he knows and can do, he’s becoming more van gaal like by the day.
There’s also reports that United haven’t really done any technical training since April last year due to injuries. So most of the training now consists of hard running and man to man marking, which is why the players aren’t improving. What you would expect from a coach like him is coaching an organised press, pressing angles, zonal positions etc. but we’re doing none of that and it’s showing.
I have to say, I'm in agreement with Goldbridge & Sam at United People that sacking wont help matters & we would undoubtedly suffer in the immediate aftermath.
Look, I've heard from a few usually reliable sources now that a bigger problem than ETH is actually STEVE MCCLAREN, hes created a toxic environment on the training ground & is something of an arsonist in that no sooner has Ten Hag stepped in to solve whatever problem exists between McClaren & a player, McClaren is off creating problems with another player & his ego is such he wont have his authority questioned. Alot of the players cant understand why Ten Hag has stuck with him especially as many people in the dressing room are aware that it is McClaren who is leaking the stories to the press - again causing trouble for the players who are under suspicion but completely innocent. Its really REALLY two faced & nasty of McClaren to go about things that way but the general consensus is that McClaren actually thinks he has a chance to replace Ten Hag one day, so much so that he is prepared to push the manager who brought him back to the club under a bus. McClaren needs to be gone & a new coach employed.
I repeat guys, its McClaren who is leaking stories to the press. Scumbag.
Look, I've heard from a few usually reliable sources now that a bigger problem than ETH is actually STEVE MCCLAREN, hes created a toxic environment on the training ground & is something of an arsonist in that no sooner has Ten Hag stepped in to solve whatever problem exists between McClaren & a player, McClaren is off creating problems with another player & his ego is such he wont have his authority questioned. Alot of the players cant understand why Ten Hag has stuck with him especially as many people in the dressing room are aware that it is McClaren who is leaking the stories to the press - again causing trouble for the players who are under suspicion but completely innocent. Its really REALLY two faced & nasty of McClaren to go about things that way but the general consensus is that McClaren actually thinks he has a chance to replace Ten Hag one day, so much so that he is prepared to push the manager who brought him back to the club under a bus. McClaren needs to be gone & a new coach employed.
I repeat guys, its McClaren who is leaking stories to the press. Scumbag.
It's a shit squad and it's a huge undertaking to clear it out and rebuild it. Whether or not ETH is the right man is another question, but there's no doubt that there are a lot of underlying issues with the structure behind him.
I'll keep saying it, it'll take 3 years to gut this squad and build a new team and get them all up to speed, working together with proper teamwork and understanding to compete at the top consistently over a number of years.
Still a load of average garbage to get rid of from previous managers. Maguire, Lindelof, AWB, Dalot, Martial, McT, Donny, Sancho etc. I'd had reservations about Antony, but I think he's done here.
Several players like Eriksen, Varane, Casemiro, Bruno etc are at an age where they will need to be replaced soon as well.
Realistically out of this current squad when everyone is fit, how many of them are going to be worth anything to you in 3 years? Because that's where we need to be looking.
Onana, Martinez, Shaw, Mount, Rashford, Hojlund, Bruno, Mainoo, Garnacho?
I don't believe we'll win our next two, if he gets to Luton home game I think we should be able to drag 3 points out of that one. It's bleak.
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