When did I say this?
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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There’s a lot of captain hindsight’s posting here in relation to Antony. “He’s only a 30m player”, etc. where were you all when we were buying him? Apart from the Dutch lad telling us he’s overhyped, most of you were saying spend what it takes
You defend him like you're being paid.
Shhh.. He will tell you now that he's not blindly defending him even if pretty much all his posts are.
"Ok ETH boss, whatever you want, sir. Please praise me, I'm a good boy"
Is Murtough ETH's boss or his job is to sniff manager's farts and give a score?
If people at the club were so smart and they had known Antony had red flags all over him, why hadn't they vetoed it? Right, they were the ones suggested Sancho whom had equal red flags. The truth is recruitment team didn't know it better, otherwise the money would have gone elsewhere. Let's be real, they are the ones that have total control over signings, they just choose not to because they're spineless incompetent cnuts.
ETH can have a say in every thing but his wish is not final seal.
That and it was Murtough's first window, backing the manager he brought here. It would've taken some serious time traveling for him to see this coming and have the balls to veto one of Ten Hag's top targets.
Easy now, if you day the Antony signing is down to failures on both sides hel try and claim you are blindly absolving the manager of all blame.
So his job in the first window was to sign all of the managers first choice signings? Because it's his first summer?
Not sure you got his job spec.
The board decided to vetoe Antony deal.
The manager cult : "Feck sake the Glazers are throwing our beloved manager under the bus! They aren't giving him the RW he needs! They refused to pay extra cash to back the manager! Glazers have the ruined the club!".
Etc.. Etc.
Probably not the same people. The "spend what it takes" crowd tend to be the people who won't stand for any criticism of transfers.
More made up shit I see.
I knew that you have English reading issues but this is another level. You do realize I'm talking about hypothetical situation in which the board denied the deal and how the manager supporters - like you by the way - would have responded?
I don't think I'm dim but thanks for going personal, shows the level of your posts.
Pretty much.
I've never heard of over backing the manager to be a criticism though. Must be a caf thing
I'm not sure how you can just so quickly say I absolve ten Hag of ANY blame when I literally didnt. Unless there are comprehension struggles.
Blindly backing managers is always poor. This has been debated to death long before ten hag. Even klopp doesn't have blind faith, for a good reason. The man wouldn't have got salah if he had his way.
I'm saying ETH can shit and fart all he wants but a proper structure would never let Antony signing to happen. It's not even 50/50 when the one that penned the deal was ETH's boss, this is an indisputable fact.
It's only 50/50 at this club, they're equally clueless so manager shares the blame but it shouldn't be this way in the first place.
You think Pep have total control in all players that City sign? heck not.
Fair value was probably around 50m, you dont get a Brazilian international for 30m - many did question the price being paid for him TBF, I guess the hope was that ETH knew better.
It was yet another case of the club panic buying at the end of the window and that's something that has happened long before Ten Hag.
Id say Antony was ok last season, at least chipped in with a few important goals and did a defensive shift for the team - he's clearly worse this season though but then so are many others.
I agree a proper structure wouldn't allow Antony to happen. I think Antony wouldn't be a name on the shortlist and Ten Hag would have to settle for Gakpo instead.
Which is not. It's clear that LVG warning about playing time got to the head of many players and in Gakpo case, he seemed to stay put for half a season until the World Cup had passed until pushing for a move in January (which RvN advised against).
So either wouldn't have happened or we had to pay over the odd again. Not sure how Gakpo would fit into this team in medium and long term. He's not CF. Right wing would be a big shoe horn role given that he's the type should be allowed to shoot. We may think Gakpo would fill in for Rashford in his cold game, but likely they would step on each other foots and affect Rashford's "good season".
Good recruitment team would have got us some of the Kim Min Jae, Bissouma, Enzo, Palhinha, Kvaratskhelia, Muani (free), Mitoma, Kubo, Isak, Trossard... for the fee we paid last summer.
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Yeah it's almost like nobody here has the tiniest clue about anything and just heap all the blame for everything on the most visible person associated with the club.
Think that can be applied to 50% of the postings in most United threads. Our version of the Trumpian world of #MUGA
I said that Raphinha was way better than him and we should be going for the superior player that would be the cheaper option too. When we signed Antony I said that we were getting fleeced.
I mainly post on here mate.
I remember there was a lot of scepticism surrounding the price-tag and his ability to live up to it, particularly in reference to Ajax fan comments as well as the Youtube compilations/his stats, though i don't think many people éxpected him to be quite so average-to-poor ( a few top corner curlers and scoring against Barca aside)...I said that Raphinha was way better than him and we should be going for the superior player that would be the cheaper option too. When we signed Antony I said that we were getting fleeced.
Wasn't there talk Bruno advised the club to go in for Raphinha at the time? At least we know that barring injury, he'd be creating chances so long as we got him the ball, based on time at Leeds (and for about 35-40m cheaper than Antony)...
Really dont remember any clamor to sign him. An average player at best. Terrible signing and appalling judgement by ETHI said that Raphinha was way better than him and we should be going for the superior player that would be the cheaper option too. When we signed Antony I said that we were getting fleeced.
Ah. I concede that I may have misunderstood your post. As I read what you wrote, it seemed like you where saying Ten Hag have full control over signings, ie. is the one who points at and decides.
What Dawson writes there, is of course that Ten Hag said he didn’t want to be sole decider, but he didn’t want to be without control, and that he accepted the post when he was admitted ‘more input’ (than Man Utd had first offered).
This reads more like a normal recruitment organization, where a DoF/Sporting director and some recruitment personnel finds players based on the manager’s profile descriptions, come up with candidates, and the manager has final control in being able to say yes or no (veto). It saves the manager from what Benitez in his time at Valencia called ‘I asked for a couch, and they gave me a lamp’, and is something completely different than manager saying ‘I want Martinez, period’. Which was more what I mistook(?) your post to mean.
Of course, at Ten Hag’s point of hire, the situation was that United had just fired their two heads of recruitment, and had a consultant (Rangnick) who decreed open heart surgery while saying that Ten Hag was the best coach possible for the job, so it was obvious to most that the first window was going to lean heavily on Ten Hag’s recommendations. That’s a quite heavy limitation, but the alternative would have made Ten Hag’s job impossible, as demonstrated by the start of last season. Getting over the CL line with loans like Weghorst and Sabitzer was proof of Ten Hag’s ability, but also that Man Utd was saving their serious money for the summer when their new recruitment set up had gotten time to get going.
If, at this point, United still don’t have any output beyond what Ten Hag has knowledge of through his sources, it’s quite damning on the club, ie someone on the Galzer - Arnold - Murtaugh line.
He does have his uses and he's a profile that we had been missing for a long time before we signed him. It's also evident that he understands what ten Hag wants better than most of our other players, since he played for him at Ajax before. He presses and positions himself better than any other winger in the squad when we don't have possession. We still massively overpaid, though, he's a 40m player, not double that.
In an ideal world the club would've already identified every realistically available left footed right winger by the time ten Hag came to the club and we could've gone for someone like Moussa Diaby instead. I'm optimistic that with Ineos restructuring the football side, we won't have blunders like making Antony the most expensive signing of the summer, anymore.
Hopefully, when the next world beater talent appears in this position, we go and sign him. The market always produces new talents, so we just need to be patient and accept that Antony will be first choice until there's a new Saka/Robben/Salah etc. out there that we can go for. Sadly, left footed right wingers of that ilk are a rare breed.
I don’t remember what I wrote a year ago, but imagine ‘spend what it takes’ could be an option. With Sancho turning out to be yet another ‘I dont actually play on the right side’-RF, and alternatives there where two teenagers not quite at the level of Rangers and Alaves, I was ready for pretty much anything.
Tbh honest, I’m not sure Raphina would be what we needed. United with and without Antony last season was very different, and his main contribution was in defence, press, and bringing the ball out of defence. Raphina would’nt have brought that. If you square our CL bumper income with his fee, I think maybe you get close to his general worth in the market.
He has to change it up, or get the chop
Without trying to be a smart arse, what was the point in bringing the issue with when he was bought? Except to try and deflect the part of the blame that goes to ETH? I've read your post, and Adnan's I also remember Adnan bigging Antony last summer to how good and unique he was. So not sure what are you trying to get to.
What should I take? He says It's the club's fault but not ETH and Anotny's. ETH coached that guy for 2 years, and decided it's the player I need in England and it's worth the money Ajax is asking, there is no getting around that.
You better not open that Antony transfer thread of last year, someone will find a way to ban me for being too negative regarding the spending back then.
Something seems amiss here!
I suppose we don't do draws much though
Considering our form since the League Cup final, that's wild
I suppose we don't do draws much though
Something seems amiss here!
Considering our form since the League Cup final, that's wild
I suppose we don't do draws much though
Don’t do draws and other managers didn’t have the luxury of statpadding against crap EL opposition while also playing all domestic cup matches at home.
That’s not true at all. They own the football club that is currently top of Ligue Un. How is that compatible with them not being “football people”?
Have you not been following Manchester United these last 10 years?
We are at that stage where saying something even remotely positive about the manager will lead to hysteria from 8-10 posters who will descend upon you with righteousness. Among the many downsides of a slump in form is the upsurge in incessant negativity on this forum. I came across a post recently which said that ETH's achievements at Ajax can be completely discarded because it was all Overmars and VDS. The only saving grace is reading @Adnan once in a while.
He also got Mount wrong which might not make him incompetent as a manager and coach, but it suggest that he is not United standard and under no circumstances should he sign another player for us. Casemiro fantastic last season until March but now looks spent. Etc.
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