Why do we treat him like he has some amazing football CV? He doesn't. Bayern's B team, Utrecht and then Ajax. De Boer had a better record than him at Ajax but he's treated as having a worse CV despite being the first in Ajax AND Dutch history to win the Eredivisie four times.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Because he had those 3 good performances in the CL 5 years ago.
Honestly, if Mourinho didn't have his character flaws I could make the argument for him. However, I agree with you on Ole. Out of all the managers, he was the one with the most potential to succeed, as there was so much tactical ground he had not yet covered. He was the one who could learn on the job, with the humility to make changes and accept help. He had us in decent positions, and even though he struggled with dealing with low blocks, this is something he could eventually learn. Despite that, United isn't a place where any manager should be learning on the job. We are way to big to be dealing with growing pains from managers and should never be in a position to accept that, which is why we had to eventually sack him, he was just too far away from being a manager at United's level, despite having the enthusiasm for growth. Out of all the managers,
Honestly, I don't think its nearly as bad as it seems. Ole got a team far worse than this to 3rd in 2020, as did Mourinho in 2018.
In our squad, we have Onana, Dalot, AWB, Varane, Maguire, Licha, Shaw, Malacia, Casemiro, Mainoo, Mount, Eriksen, Fernandes, Rashford, Garnacho and Hojlund. Despite our overall performance, these are at the very least good players who have proven to be of decent quality or have shown potential to be of decent quality in their time here, in their national teams and prior to their arrival. Ten Haag's need to have only players that suit his single-minded brand of football should not have a bearing on that fact. At the very least, these are players that have value.
It's popular to say the players aren't great or they aren't playing for the manager on this forum. However, Ten Haag has failed to get this group of players to function as a unit that can create chances, control games and concede fewer goals than they score, despite the qualities these individuals have. That failure is on him. Between 2011 and 2018, Wenger had Arsenal scoring more that 70+ goals a season for all but 2 seasons ( the others being 65 and 68). They were still able to play good football despite squad limitations and countless injuries. Yet Ten Haag is telling us that he can't get a squad with the above group of players featuring to have more than a -5 goal difference after 20 league games?
When criticizing Ten Haag, I think people criticizing his transfers are glossing over his real failure so far. Despite spending 400m+ on players, he still hasn't gotten the team to play decent football. With the highlight being on poor performances rather than the amount/ players he spent the 400m on.
Here lies the clubs issue. A manager like Ten Haag should have been under pressure after our first 5 games last season. Instead, because we believed in him, we supported his decisions on Ronaldo, Maguire and Sancho, blaming Ronaldo and Maguire for a lot of our early season failures, then blaming Weighorst for our lack of scoring to end the season. Based on performances on the pitch, he did not earn our support until after the world cup, yet he was provided with praise and support prior to this. Why? "Because United need fixing, so any manager that could get the lazy, degenerate group of players to play well is all good in my book." It's been the media and the club's stance. Yet when we were winning trophies and since Sir Alex left, other clubs have had struggles and have not won trophies. We don't expect them to take this same stance on the players every season their team doesn't perform. Instead those teams sacked the managers that didn't perform and moved on to a manager that could get their players to play winning football. Like any other struggling outfit, those teams had dressing room squables, tensions between players and staff and an all around unpleasant vibe. That's what happens when teams don't perform well. At United, from the very first season after Moyes, it was all about putting players in their place. LVG was given free reign to tear apart the remaining remnants of Fergie's squad. Jose was given free reign to bully every player he needed to. Rangnick was given free reign to lambast the squad at any opportunity, and Ten Haag has been given free reign to absolve himself of any wrongdoing. Where other clubs sack the managers after poor/average seasons, we stay on course to consistently try to do a full rebuild, always failing spectacularly and leaving the squad in worse shape than managers had previously found it.
My point here is that, as a club, we are far too supportive of managers due to our long term success under Sir Alex. Which has led to us dealing with failure in a more self-flaggelating manner than other clubs have. This has then led to us turning to each manager as a saviour, without the manager needing to prove anything. This has then also led to us giving the managers too much time, as the club has always been in support of long term rebuilds based around an almost complete turnover of the squad. This has then also allowed managers to get away with poor/average first seasons without proper assessment, where small victories are treated as huge successes and signs for success in the future. During this period, lines like the "new players need time to gel" and " complex tactics take time to develop, our players are so technically poor, so they need to time adapt to the system". This goes on for too long. Leading to us eventually realizing that regardless of squad changes, the manager was actually showing his actual style of play the season prior. Eventually leading to the manager being sacked. Ending with us wasting several seasons on rebuilds that were never in the process of being successful. However, due to short-sightedness and lack of football knowledge in the senior leadership team, the club ends up listening to British-media's pro-manager anti-player stance and starts the whole process again with a new, strict and all knowing saviour with a philosophy to take us back to where we want to be, given free reign to wreck the squad however he sees fit.
In the decade under review, we've had RVP, Nani, Valencia, Carrick, Rooney, Evra, Rafael, DDG, Smalling, Di Maria, Shaw, Mata, Martial, Rashford, Memphis Depay, Ibrahimovic, Pogba, Mhikitaryan, Matic, Lukaku, Sanchez, Dalot, AWB, Maguire, Bruno, Cavani, Greenwood, Licha, Varane, Casemiro, Eriksen, Mainoo, Mount and Hojlund. Most teams don't have and couldn't afford to have the players listed. Yet somehow, the managers never have enough quality available to them to play good football ( not even talking about winning trophies or challenging).
Wasn’t De Boer the one who never won a PL game with palace?
But out of the last 10 press conferences of Pep, how many have you searched for on YouTube and watched from start to finish?
I think in general every manager comes out with the same stuff and it all becomes tedious after a while.
It’s seldom to read something so long and manage to disagree fundamentally with basically every single opinion, fair play
Facts
Fair play to you too
Yeah, true
The fact you can't even be bothered to make arguments against it suggests it isn't all that wrong.
Our mentality is our huge, huge problem for years now. Ole dropped it and Erik is just following that road.
Mentality is everything in sport. Imo, biggest team of all time in any sport is France handball team with Omeyer and Karabatic. That team was nearly flawless in every competition. I read interviews with them and what our players were saying about them; absolute mentality monsters.
United current team is full of players who are just happy to be here and whos heads drop down as soon they concede a goal. And when manager says that "we are in long run process" and praise team in defeat then you can't expect much from this team.
Yes he lost all 4 and never scored a goal but he he had a similer problem to Erik in that he tried to play a style he didnt have the players for and some of the players he did have wouldnt adapt, the difference being that Erik has been given new players but has still failed to get them to play his way.
Wikipedia said:
Yep, apparently he was banging in free kicks and showing off in training, doing stuff the lads who were currently playing couldn't even do. They all saw their arse and refused to play for him.
The most successful french sports ever. Incredible athletes
Winning Eredivisie with Ajax was a MIRACLE after they had not won it for YEARS before he joined. It was such an UNDERDOG story there will be books written about this. And then there are their amazing CL runs.
He also earned a lot of credit by winning a MAJOR TROPHY with United in his FIRST season here while also finishing 3rd against all odds which was a MIRACLE.
100% involved in what? The meeting he is attending? The rest of the season? The INEOS era? New 6 year contract incoming?
Nice one, I see where your travelling with this , let us double down on Martinez with negativity and hope he isn't an ETH success story.
Didn't Hoddle do the same thing with England?
Manchester United coming third in the PL and winning a league cup is now considered a miracle despite signing players like Varane and Casemiro? I can remember when Leicester winning a PL title was considered that.
Why wouldn't I want a player to be a success story? We're desperate for one.
What does this even mean? The wording of the tweet makes no sense. Involved with what? Why the use of "but" when the second half of the sentence has seemingly nothing to do with the first half of the sentence?
Glad I'm not the only one struggling to understand it
You have mentioned 16 players there - I wonder what the general consensus would be about those players being of the required standard to win the league and challenge for the champions league? My opinion is, maybe, 4.
I read it as they will have a meeting but don’t get your hopes up as he will 100% be involved in their vision and the meeting has nothing to do with discussing his future being in doubt
They're clearly sticking with him for now. If we lose a few, I think he'll go but the head coach is the least of our issues right now. There are loads of managers who would love to manage a PL club, let alone United, let's see what Ineos do in the background and then they can cherry pick a coach of their choosing.
Nothing is clear right now. We are eleven points off top four and have barely strung two wins together all season.
I should hate those feckers (
) but what they did and how they did it....every handball fan can just only admire them.Bastards
You nearly had me. I read this post and fell down to my knees in the middle of the aisle at Asda.
It's quite clear he's still in the job... one of the easiest things Ineos could have done was sack him given our form, they haven't and all media points to them not thinking he's a priority to replace.
I will stand by what I have said before, he will have time until either end of next season or very deep into it regardless of results (even if we continue being as inept as we have been for the last several months and are lingering in bottom half) and I expect him to be fully supported in the market come Summer.
And it won’t even take much for him to stay beyond next season, our standards are that low.
Those standards were set by absent owners that probably didn't know the results until they got off the Florida golf course and put it into Google.
I think it's fair to assume the expectations are going to change in some regard and it's probably not going to become more lax.
He isn't going to make it until the end of next season without showing something dramatically better. He'll scrape through this one irrespective of results unless he produces relegation form, but he'll be under the axe in the summer if he continues at this pace, and if they do by some miracle keep him he'll be on thin ice next season. I don't see him making it until the end of next on the current trajectory - the playstyle and/or results will need to be better to get that far.
Not surprising if that's the case. I think Ratcliffe's people will want to get all the other pieces in place before making a decision on ETH, probably when the season ends.
A french winner is rarely likeable indeedI should hate those feckers (
Bastards
I'm fairly confident he's going to be replaced in the summer.
Yes I think so too.
These new guys coming in are looking to be best in class appointments by Sir Jim. Can't say Ten Hag is best in class manager. Ten Hag is a goner for sure.
I am highly doubtful of that. He will be gone this summer latest unless things improve from where they are. I do think he could probably finish outside the CL spots if we're starting to play well + there's a bit of evidence of something building but there's no way we stay as we are and just go into next season with him for me.
He will need a top 4 finish (top 5 if that qualifies for CL). I think we'll fall short and Ratcliffe will sack him in the summer.
The FA cup might save him but it didn't save LvG.
The FA cup might save him but it didn't save LvG.
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