Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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tjb said:
The issue I have is you haven't even mentioned tactics. What good is getting rid of negative dressing room influences when the tactics don't put our players in positions to succeed. That's the job of the manager more than anything. The failure of his tactics have consistently been blamed on players and now its being exposed that all of that was crap. Started with Maguire at the start of last season. Then Ronaldo's pressing. Sancho's mentality. Then our lack of striking options. Then it moved to Casemiro's lack of pace. Then Rashford's selfishness. Then Varane aging.Then Bruno's erratic passing. Now we're at whether Hojlund is actually good. Soon it will be Martinez' height. What people don't realize is that by defending him, people are actually just blaming the players. Asking for time for him, is literally suggesting that his tactics could work with better players. Yet he hasn't proven it can work at all and we've invested so much in the squad with players who seemingly had quality before coming here. Everything points to him not belonging at this level. From the space and time his tactics need offensively. Too the defensive openness. To his naive game management. Without even pointing out the poor transfers, man management, and press conferences. At this point, we can still get top 4. We can still win the FA cup. We can still get positive performances from players within the squad that can improve their morale and encourage fans. You can only waste so many seasons before losing the interest and financial capacity as a top club. Every game is important. Keeping him as filler till the end of this season, doesn't show ambition or commitment.
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The reason that didn’t mention tactics is for me all the issues that you have mentioned yourself, plus others have an affect on the tactics that he has tried to implement. People will call them excuses, however for me they are contributing factors which, whatever way you cut it will cause changes to the first team and thus how we play. I’d like to see a stat showing how many times we have played our first team for more than 3 games in comparison to top teams. I think this would be enlightening. You say that people shouldn’t blame players but they do have an impact if they are inconsistent, which they are.

I would say he is an example of the fine margins in football. Last season before the Martinez injury we were in the quarter finals of Europe, multiple cups and doing well in the league. We loose our most influential player and the wheels come off. For me we improved from the season before just lacked consistency, which was to expected coming from where we were/ are.

A job of a manager is to adapt sure, but if you have also issues with your second 11 and players in general poor or average form it’s difficult, in my mind anyway. I’m not saying he is blame free, but it’s like attempting to find rational is only met with scorn. This I think is not necessary, and just leads to insults and negativity.

Can I ask who you think we we should be chasing that shows we have ambitions? I’m just thinking based on your criteria that it’s going to be difficult as previous failings make most people ineligible.
 
I am fairly sick of our football under him and his tedious soundbites but if (as it seems) half the dressing room are going to war with him the club need to 100% back him until the end of the season - and make clear to the players this is what's happening.

This is not about Erik ten Hag, this is about the institution of Manchester United manager. If players think they can call him a liar on social media and then spend 4 months earning £350k a week and playing FIFA, or go out on the piss the morning of training and then pull a sickie - also while earning £350k, and also get away with it because the club will just sack the manager and you'll get yet another chance, then we are absolutely fecked as a club.

He has had to deal with so much off field shit since he started it's hard to truly judge him until we're through that. I just wish he'd do more to help himself in the meantime, like not persisting with terrible systems and underperforming players.

But in a strange way, I get it. When you're at war, you need to keep the ones you can trust on your side.
 
For the love of god, change formations away to Wolves. Our next 3 games are Wolves, West Ham and Aston Villa. I'm really shocked at his refusal to make earlier subs and what on earth happens at the start of the second half? Can our players wake up and not concede?
 
Woziak said:
Anything other than 0-5 which is what should have happened is a truly awful performance!
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Cup upsets always happen, and we did navigate out of the potential for one in fairness. The problem is we needed to play a full strength team to do so and had the same problems we have seen all season. On the back of a truly terrible season.

Their manager tweaked his formation and we did nothing to counteract it as far as I could tell. ETH just isn't it.
 
If we use similar tactics against Wolves we are in big trouble and even West Ham at home is not looking good. Can’t see what anyone can do to sort this lot out but just get through the rest of the season and a) see who buy and b) see who the manager is. Anyone expecting a massive improvement in form before the season ends is delusional.
 
Borninthe80ts said:
People will call them excuses, however for me they are contributing factors which, whatever way you cut it will cause changes to the first team and thus how we play. I’d like to see a stat showing how many times we have played our first team for more than 3 games in comparison to top teams.
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If you don't actually know the stat then it kinda is an excuse, yeah.
 
sugar_kane said:
I am fairly sick of our football under him and his tedious soundbites but if (as it seems) half the dressing room are going to war with him the club need to 100% back him until the end of the season - and make clear to the players this is what's happening.

This is not about Erik ten Hag, this is about the institution of Manchester United manager. If players think they can call him a liar on social media and then spend 4 months earning £350k a week and playing FIFA, or go out on the piss the morning of training and then pull a sickie - also while earning £350k, and also get away with it because the club will just sack the manager and you'll get yet another chance, then we are absolutely fecked as a club.

He has had to deal with so much off field shit since he started it's hard to truly judge him until we're through that. I just wish he'd do more to help himself in the meantime, like not persisting with terrible systems and underperforming players.

But in a strange way, I get it. When you're at war, you need to keep the ones you can trust on your side.
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Where does this idea of half the squad going to war with him come from? We had Sancho and how we have this Rashford "incident" and... that's it? Most managers deal with these issues, they are just not big news like they are when United is involved.
 
AltiUn said:
Or just grow up and accept people have differing opinions to you without labelling them as being part of a cult. I've wanted rid of Ten Hag for months yet I'm seeing people, who I'd otherwise agree with, pretending there's a cult surrounding him. It's pathetic. He's possibly the least divisive manager we've had, I expect the majority would say they want rid of him if asked.
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It’s quite clearly not meant to be taken literally but if you want to get wound up by people’s loose usage of the word cult then go ahead.
 
The lack of control is what really disappoints me with him. We will never compete for the title when we don’t even know how to control games against league 2 sides
 
Precaution said:
Thanks for uhhhh not uhhh beating us uhhhh in a game where I could uhhh be defeated but here's a cold bottle off uhhhh wine so I don't look like I don't know what I'm uhhh doing.
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It was from Fergie as well according to media
 
Still absolutely baffled by how we're supposed to play, we can't control or dictate games and we're useless counter attacking.
 
I'll never cease to be amazed by how childish people get about managers they don't like.

Fair enough if you don't rate him and want him gone, god knows he's given you enough reasons to have that opinion - but we've literally got people in here doing the written version of a six year old putting on a stupid voice and going "duuuuuuh, this is what you sound like". Fecking hell, grow up.
 
Precaution said:
Thanks for uhhhh not uhhh beating us uhhhh in a game where I could uhhh be defeated but here's a cold bottle off uhhhh wine so I don't look like I don't know what I'm uhhh doing.
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Why?

No really, why?
 
Jaae said:
It’s quite clearly not meant to be taken literally but if you want to get wound up by people’s loose usage of the word cult then go ahead.
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Of course it's meant to be taken literally, hence why people keep using it.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
If you don't actually know the stat then it kinda is an excuse, yeah.
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A lack of knowledge doesn’t make something true. I just haven’t/not sure where to find the data. Regardless it’s either you see the issues as having an affect or you don’t. For me missing the players we did for the length of time we did would affect the team as it would others too I’d surmise.
 
Borninthe80ts said:
The reason that didn’t mention tactics is for me all the issues that you have mentioned yourself, plus others have an affect on the tactics that he has tried to implement. People will call them excuses, however for me they are contributing factors which, whatever way you cut it will cause changes to the first team and thus how we play. I’d like to see a stat showing how many times we have played our first team for more than 3 games in comparison to top teams. I think this would be enlightening. You say that people shouldn’t blame players but they do have an impact if they are inconsistent, which they are.

I would say he is an example of the fine margins in football. Last season before the Martinez injury we were in the quarter finals of Europe, multiple cups and doing well in the league. We loose our most influential player and the wheels come off. For me we improved from the season before just lacked consistency, which was to expected coming from where we were/ are.

A job of a manager is to adapt sure, but if you have also issues with your second 11 and players in general poor or average form it’s difficult, in my mind anyway. I’m not saying he is blame free, but it’s like attempting to find rational is only met with scorn. This I think is not necessary, and just leads to insults and negativity.

Can I ask who you think we we should be chasing that shows we have ambitions? I’m just thinking based on your criteria that it’s going to be difficult as previous failings make most people ineligible.
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Wheels had come off well before Martinez's injury. We played Sevilla on April 13, the previous 5 league games were a 7-0 loss at Liverpool, 0-0 home draw v Southampton, 2-0 loss at Newcastle (which should have been comfortably 4-0/5-0, we were destroyed) and a scrappy 1-0 win against Brentford at OT, with only a 2-0 win v Everton being a truly decent performance across those 5 fixtures.

We actually improved our league form after that.
 
Oldyella said:
Cup upsets always happen, and we did navigate out of the potential for one in fairness. The problem is we needed to play a full strength team to do so and had the same problems we have seen all season. On the back of a truly terrible season.

Their manager tweaked his formation and we did nothing to counteract it as far as I could tell. ETH just isn't it.
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And in this we completely agree, ETH last season was making mostly the right substitutes and his in game management was excellent, this season something inside him is broke?
 
Sarni said:
Wheels had come off well before Martinez's injury. We played Sevilla on April 13, the previous 5 league games were a 7-0 loss at Liverpool, 0-0 home draw v Southampton, 2-0 loss at Newcastle (which should have been comfortably 4-0/5-0, we were destroyed) and a scrappy 1-0 win against Brentford at OT, with only a 2-0 win v Everton being a truly decent performance across those 5 fixtures.

We actually improved our league form after that.
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My point being was that the comment suggested there was no progress which was why I stated the position at the time. I’m not suggesting at the time that everything was fine but for me I had seen progress.
Im sure in that space of time I can come up with games where we were the better team and lost. We lacked consistency, which I’ve always stated.
 
Borninthe80ts said:
My point being was that the comment suggested there was no progress which was why I stated the position at the time. I’m not suggesting at the time that everything was fine but for me I had seen progress.
Im sure in that space of time I can come up with games where we were the better team and lost. We lacked consistency, which I’ve always stated.
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I don't think so actually. Usually when we lose it's because we have been thoroughly outplayed.
 
Borninthe80ts said:
This will have to be a matter of opinion either way. Sure we have played poor and lost but not always.
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This season, if anything there are games where we played poorly and won in much higher quantity than games where we played at an acceptable level and lost.

I can only maybe think of Spurs and at a push Arsenal games where this happened and arguably in both cases the other team deserved to win more than we did. All our other losses we were outclassed or lost to teams so poor it’s hard to excuse with luck etc.

When it comes to our wins, most of them were tight and could have gone either way. We definitely have more points than our performances have merited.

We have been very consistent this year, ie consistently poor and not capable of handling good teams - especially away from home (but also with increased frequency at home which has added to our misery).
 
gaffs said:
Wolves away, West Ham home, Villa away.

I cant see it getting any more than 4 points here.

I think if he gets 3 or less, it may be time for the sack.
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He won't be sacked, because the league season we have nothing to play for. I doubt anybody truly cares that much about Europa League vs conference league, and we certainly aren't going to rush the managerial appointment if we can't get our ideal guy til the summer just to make sure we finish in the Europa League places or do a bit better in the FA Cup.

Either we can get our managerial target in before the season is done, or ten hag stays til the summer. Because target wise, the season rests entirely on the fa cup which still means no CL football anyway so I can't see people being too fussed.
 
Sarni said:
Ten Hag is navigating us through the worst injury crisis football has ever witnessed (we are talking Guiness book stuff) and still getting a very good win in a crucial FA Cup game at a tough ground yet people don’t appreciate it.
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What makes you say that? When you add up all the days players lost to injury per team, Brentford, Newcastle and Sheffield all had worse injury crises, so United aren't even in the top three injury hit teams this season. And that's just in one league, in one year.. To say we had the worst injury crisis in world football, ever, is crazy. (Article I read was from end of December, but point still stands.)
 
DWelbz19 said:
I’m almost certain that this stint will be the highest level Erik ten Hag manages at.
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I don't understand where people get these opinions from and what they're basing it on. How can they predict such things? Because he finished third at United? Because he did well in a shite league? One half decent CL run (where the rest were pretty average)? It's like they can't admit they were wrong and now resort to "one day he'll prove you wrong, somewhere else" type logic. Based on nothing but fantasy.

He'll win the league with Ajax again one day and we'll be getting the "told you so" posts.
 
bosnian_red said:
He won't be sacked, because the league season we have nothing to play for. I doubt anybody truly cares that much about Europa League vs conference league, and we certainly aren't going to rush the managerial appointment if we can't get our ideal guy til the summer just to make sure we finish in the Europa League places or do a bit better in the FA Cup.

Either we can get our managerial target in before the season is done, or ten hag stays til the summer. Because target wise, the season rests entirely on the fa cup which still means no CL football anyway so I can't see people being too fussed.
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I don't want it to happen, but he absolutely could get sacked. If we keep losing he will be gone before the end of the season with McClaren or Fletcher serving as interim until the summer.
 
mav_9me said:
I was hoping to see improved performances after the return of Casemiro, Licha and Shaw. Not much of that today.

I think time is running out for him to establish a style. Either he tweaks things or gets things to work. Right now I don't see either happening. Feels like he is a dead man walking.
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We need Malacia to be back before we can judge EtH.
 
mav_9me said:
I was hoping to see improved performances after the return of Casemiro, Licha and Shaw. Not much of that today.

I think time is running out for him to establish a style. Either he tweaks things or gets things to work. Right now I don't see either happening. Feels like he is a dead man walking.
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I'm not saying you're wrong but it might take more than one game back for these guys as they've been out so long before we can see them at their best. Not saying even then that the style will be miles better, but let's give them a few games to get some sharpness.
 
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The amount of things ten hag has had to deal with since coming in is ridiculous. Some posters will blame ten hag no matter what.
 
red.knight said:
The amount of things ten hag has had to deal with since coming in is ridiculous. Some posters will blame ten hag no matter what.
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Some posters will absolve Ten Haag no matter what. Every manager has to deal with things, but regardless our on field performances have been poor. It's such a cop out. So if Ten Haag has lost every game from August, but Rashford went to a few clubs, would that mean we'd need to wait two seasons from now to sack him?

Because someone has difficulties does not mean their not doing a terrible job. Was Domenech a good coach in 2010?? This isn't Sir Alex, you don't give a manager who has performed poorly, who has hardly ever performed well for you time. Doing that just shows a true lack of ambition, in the same you won't want us to give Antony 3 years to prove he's a good winger
 


  • Ineos already have replacements for Erik ten Hag in mind ahead of the end of the season, though no talks are underway at this stage, FootballTransfers understands.
  • Sir Jim Ratcliffe's consortium is baffled but the recruitment made by the Dutchman and believe that a fresh start is needed in the summer. We are told that there are major concerns about the players who have been bought in by Ten Hag - and even more about why they were chosen. The ambition is to strip the Dutchman of any power when it comes to transfers, with a lot of his deals going through agency SEG.
  • The exit of Jurgen Klopp in the summer window has hastened the need for a fresh face in the dugout, with it being possible that the Reds will be competing for similar names. Despite reports that the group does not see this season as a write-off, it would take a big uptick in displays to see Ten Hag at the helm come the end of the season. Man Utd are unlikely to reach a Champions League spot this season and there is the feeling that a revamp is needed.
  • It's believed that the only good purchases made by Ten Hag, withstanding this season - such as Casemiro and Christian Eriksen - were very obvious choices. There is a want to bring in young English talent and merge that with experienced Premier League players while ensuring that the club does not overpay. Ineos know Man Utd's reputation of being overzealous with funds must be smashed.
  • Ineos will look to fortify Man Utd's financial position this year by injecting personal funds into the club this year, a move that would allow an increase in allowable losses from £15million to £105m over this accounting period.
  • This is expected to provide Man Utd with a substantial boost in its spending capabilities this year, potentially allowing the club to invest between £200m-300m million on player acquisitions - though the actual amount will vary depending on qualification for UCL or Europa League.
  • As previously reported, Michael Olise and Jarrad Branthwaite are among the top targets, along with Marcus Edwards who is seen as a viable replacement for Antony for the first-team.
 
Licha-Vidic said:
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You'd hope it happens sooner rather than later if there's any truth in this. With each passing game our chances of salvaging anything from this season are diminishing further and further, we'd be better off with an interim if we're heading in a different direction anyway.
 
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