Why does he want a left footed CB but then is happy to play a right footed right back at left back?
It's just a nonsense.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Why does he want a left footed CB but then is happy to play a right footed right back at left back?
It's just a nonsense.
Not a single manager can change like 11 players at once, even weeding-out process takes time.
Think he's obligated to pick a few of them given our injuries. But also he seems to have a very clear discipline on the team - if they turn up on time and train well, they will start. If they don't play well, they are dropped after their credit runs out. Rashford was on a lot of credit coming into this season from last, but Ten Hag has maintained consistency with dropping him for 2 consecutive games.
Also, a complete culture reset requires competence from people above Ten Hag. He cant be tasked with it single handedly and expected to succeed within 18 months.
Ten Hag can’t change the culture of the club
If he is supposed to have him dictating the play, maybe we can start Bruno as RB? He is busy and stuff and the other RBs are shit so why not, right? Fecking hell, I was wondering how anybody in the club was able to convince themselves that fielding Bruno AND Pogba could be a good idea. I thought, it was so obvious. Yet here we are and people think, we can just put our AM as a double pivot because why the hell not. Thank god, we found a place for Scott fecking McTominay. What a shame it would have been.
Yeah that had me chuckling as well. The last big character in this club has been Ibrahimovic. McTom seems to either have no idea what a big character is or (and I consider that as more likely) was happily ready to accept seeing himself and people like Onana, Rashford and Bruno as big characters. Players ready to issue grand apologies and talk the talk.
It's not nonsense.
It is nonsese
But sadly most of players signed by ETH are even worse..
I really just feel like he's missing the point or the cause of why he is failing whenever I hear his press conferences these days. Going on about "we can beat any opponent" or "look at Everton, Galatasaray and Chelsea as examples of good performances"... Man, 2 of those were not good performances even though the opposition is mediocre, and the 3rd was yes a good performance but with massive holes in transition defence but also against a garbage side so we didn't get punished.
I really just think he doesn't know how to organize a team to defend at this point. I don't know what else to say. It's not running, it's not work rate. It's positioning, compactness, organized pressing and covering, shutting down space to make it hard for teams to get at you .. this is all so easy against us.
I really just think he doesn't know how to organize a team to defend at this point. I don't know what else to say. It's not running, it's not work rate. It's positioning, compactness, organized pressing and covering, shutting down space to make it hard for teams to get at you .. this is all so easy against us.
Yeah I will admit I'm struggling to come up with names,however surely someone could come in as interim until the summer who can at least give us more control of games. Hopefully then there will be more permanent options for INEOS to choose
Shows how little some fans know really. A left footer at cb is not a new thing. It might be favoured by some and not others but Ten hag isn't the only manager to favour it. But hey it's open season so let's just get annoyed by literally everything.
This view is too narrow and reductive. It stands to reason that if our problems are bigger than just the manager, changing the manager alone will achieve nothing.
You cant say serial winners like LVG and Mourinho didnt win here because they ‘weren’t good enough’. You have to ask if they can win with Chelsea, Inter, Porto, Madrid, Ajax and Barcelona between them why it didn’t happen for them here.
Moyes has won a European competition with West Ham. Solskjaer won the league multiple times at Molde and the youth cup here at United. ETH won cups and leagues with Ajax and took a young team to the CL semis. It’s too easy to point the finger at the manager, when our whole club is imploding around him. It’s the players, the owners, the board, the infrastructure, our methods and processes, training, and yes the manager plays a role too but I can tell you now there isn’t a man or woman in football around the world who can lead this team to win in our current guise.
Even our own great legend SAF would struggle right now, because he had the backing of Gill and Martin Edwards before him. The club was unified on the same page, behind the manager and focused solely on winning football matches. We can’t say that now.
He keeps on referring to the Everton and Gala game as evidence we can perform to a really high level.
Big characters he can't control,thanks for confirming what we already suspected about toxic dressing room problems
To be fair he's had 3 windows. Although we do little business in the January window so technically 2.
if character is measured in insta followers, presumably
I think this is false. We’ve done the interim thing with Rangnick and he got precisely zero respect from the players or club officials. He was a lame duck place holder while we finalised with Erik for the following season.
We can’t afford to write off half a season and start from scratch next summer. I think when players come back as they are starting to, with Erik in charge we stand a chance of putting a run together and having a strong finish to the season. If we go the interim route our players will relax, take their foot off the gas and we will have a worse time than 2 years ago under Ralf.
The left footed left sided CB thing still doesn't make sense to me. Sure, there was one instance in the Chelsea game where it made sense and Shaw was able to lob a clean pass to the left wing that a right footed player would've not been able to do, but the counter to that is the lack of a natural CB playing in that spot, unable to maintain the right defensive shape and helping the opposition create chances. We're also playing our best left back out of position to have this.
It's the same with McT charging forwards and overloading the box whilst nearly standing on Højlund's shoulders. Yes, he's more likely than Højlund to score right now and having that extra body in the box is another player who can get on the end of a pass, but we now have a massive gap in midfield that constantly gets exploited on the counter when we inevitably, 9 times out of 10, lose possession on the edge of the oppo's box. Likewise with the Shaw experiment, we end up with players forced out of position (in this instance Fernandes).
It's the same with McT charging forwards and overloading the box whilst nearly standing on Højlund's shoulders. Yes, he's more likely than Højlund to score right now and having that extra body in the box is another player who can get on the end of a pass, but we now have a massive gap in midfield that constantly gets exploited on the counter when we inevitably, 9 times out of 10, lose possession on the edge of the oppo's box. Likewise with the Shaw experiment, we end up with players forced out of position (in this instance Fernandes).
God the level of ETH can do no wrong copium here is reaching insane levels.
serial winner LVG?!
Ole won at Molde?!
Moyes won the conference trophy?!
We hired 4 shit permanent managers on the bounce, each were terrible hires for a variety of well covered reasons, and then we hired a shit 5th one who is proving the old adage- Eredivisie is not a proving ground for top level managers.
The bit in bold is the concerning part. He's had a full season and half to put this right and it's still not happening. It's a consistent theme. This team doesn't score goals and It doesn't appear to be fixing itself. Then we get undone by a stupid mistake. It's not sustainable.
Right, so a quote that literally states ‘it’s not a case where it’s a little bit toxic at times’ and you take that as confirmation that it is in fact toxic and the manager has lost the dressing room?! There no hope for some of you……
And having players on 300k+ per week who are useless & hard to ship out, he is really having a tough job.
I haven’t said he can do no wrong. I’ve expressly stated that ETH has a role in our struggles, but you haven’t quoted that part cos it does suit your BS agenda. Stop putting words in my mouth.
My point being winning is winning. It happens everywhere except United, and we need to question why and address that - not just hand it on one guy and continue round in circles.
Not all areas, we apparently have to forget applying any standards to the manager.
In the last few days he has publicly said "we are not good enough to be consistent" and "we are very good".
Yeah people like that have no context at all. Mourinho came from his worst season in his career where he looked on the verge of a psychosis. LVG hadn't been hot property for years. Calling Ole a serial winner for his time at Molde is insane. Ten haag did well at Ajax but stepping up to Man utd is a big task. Poch hasnt been remarkable despite doing a fine job at Spurs.
Yeah I agree. Surely if Shaw is at LB, the chosen CB should be able to give him the ball to make the pass. It’s the same as a CB taking the goal kicks to Onana can play out from the back?! It’s a weird one.
At least he's consistently inconsistent.
My favourite one is when Maguire takes the goal kick, passes it to Onana, who then passes it to Maguire. There's so many instances this season that remind me of that Simpsons episode where they're watching the Mexico v Portugal football match. Center holds it, holds it, HOLDS IT!
Yeah but most managers don't play a left back at CB ahead of a CL winning CB, to then have to play a right back at left back. Your head is too far up his backside if you can't concede this one. I know exactly why he prefers to do it, and it is fine under most circumstances, but the lengths you are going to try to make out he absolutely cannot play bloody Rafael Varane at CB, ahead of Luke Shaw...christ. I bet 99% of football managers would laugh you out of the room if you suggested this. Varane Cb + Shaw LB vs Shaw CB + Dalot LB.....absolute no brainer to anybody except our football genius in charge. No matter what their preferred foot is.
True. I'm expecting him to show up with a full head of hair tomorrow night.
Said who?
Put no words in any mouths. You are trying to pluck a narrative out of thin air that we hired serial winners at the top of their game when we all know that none of those managers were good enough and they all failed because of their own limitations.
Your point that winning is winning is junk. The norweigan league is worthless at a club of Uniteds stature, and at Prem league level in general. As is the Conference league. As are Eredivisie titles.
Lots to look forward to. @VP89 must be salivating at the though of witnessing such masterclasses on a weekly basis. Pep and Klopp will be worried.
By all accounts ETH was more than fine with Maguire being sold last summer. Which would make sense, given all sorts of factors: Maguire was far from a key player in ETH's first seaon, he's on big money, he's an England international, he attracts a lot of unwanted attention (as a meme, etc.), other clubs actually wanted him, etc.
I'm not sure what point - exactly - I'm making here, but perhaps this: it seems extremely unlikely that Maguire bouncing back and making himself a starter again was something ETH actually planned for back before this season started: this ain't 4D chess on ETH's part. It's just that we couldn't get a deal done (with West Ham, the obvious destination for him), and so he stayed.
And then ETH had a falling out of some kind with Varane.
The idea that Maguire has simply moved up in ETH's estimation may have some merit, but come on: it's extremely unlikely that ETH planned all along that Maguire would "accept the challenge" (so to speak) and make himself undroppable.
If we'd managed to agree terms with West Ham, Maguire would've been gone. And back then ETH would've been perfectly fine with that.
I'm not sure what point - exactly - I'm making here, but perhaps this: it seems extremely unlikely that Maguire bouncing back and making himself a starter again was something ETH actually planned for back before this season started: this ain't 4D chess on ETH's part. It's just that we couldn't get a deal done (with West Ham, the obvious destination for him), and so he stayed.
And then ETH had a falling out of some kind with Varane.
The idea that Maguire has simply moved up in ETH's estimation may have some merit, but come on: it's extremely unlikely that ETH planned all along that Maguire would "accept the challenge" (so to speak) and make himself undroppable.
If we'd managed to agree terms with West Ham, Maguire would've been gone. And back then ETH would've been perfectly fine with that.
Up until the last game, Shaw was flawless at LCB. Varane on the other hand has not, and in his last outing looked like he couldn't give a flying feck. He's not the same player that won CLs and is made of glass. It's your head that's up your arse, not mine. You think a left footer being preferred at LCB is nonsense which shows you are just moaning for the sake of moaning now.
Don't tag me in nonsense hyperbole. You have a problem.
The manager has failed within his duties and he should be fired, that doesn't mean Neville is wrong about the other stuff also but that's all noise, when the reality is, if the manager just signed good players with the insane budget he's had, and he had an semblance of in game management, he'd be succeeding despite all those things. Instead, everyone's bringing up the roof at OT instead of talking about why our midfield are man marking the opposition.
Again, no I’m not. I stated that they have all won trophies at other clubs but ‘failed’ at United. I was saying we should question why that is. How are other clubs set up for success in ways that United aren’t?
Maybe if you calmed down a touch, stop being blinded by your rage and indignation and actually read and understand my post you’ll have a better idea of what I’m saying (which by the way is merely my opinion).
If you think he was going to fix this mess in 18 months then there's a problem with your logic.
See now this I don’t get either. Everyone (fans/media) say we are man marking but Erik says 1) we are not and 2) that’s not the intention even, so what’s going on? How are the players supposed to understand what they are doing?
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