Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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The "good run" has been streaky runs against weak opposition. The only half decent team in the run was Villa, and they struggled against Forest today as their surprise season is turning.
That half decent team is ahead of us in the table, you do realise that? They also beat City and Arsenal in consecutive games.

You have such an obvious bias against Ten Hag, it's ridiculous.
 
I think when our fans try to break down his failures into team selections and transfers, they miss the trick. His failure is in his tactics and training. His job isn't simply to pick the team and recruit talent, it's to prepare the players for the game and send them out with clear winning instructions and the right shape to allow the team of individuals to play with enough cohesion to create chances, score goals, control the game and limit chance concessions. That's what we're actually paying him for, and he's consistently failed to deliver this in any shape or form this season. We need to stop acting like we're Aston Villa or West Ham. We are the largest football club on the planet and have spent enough money to ensure that we get the best talent and management. I should still expect for us to play better than clubs who on paper have sigificantly less talent than we do, with an understanding that lack of depth may lead to inconsistency which would stop us from challenging. Not that we play bad in every game and cling on to games where we show a little sign of knowling how to play football.As a club, we may have a 3 year rebuild in mind to get us back to the top, but it doesn't mean we wait three years to see good football or to get the best talent. 3 years may be the deadline, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to and looking to get there as soon as possible.

The way we play is the issue. We don't have attacking formulas, we struggle to get the ball into the opposition half and we don't control games. Our forwards recieve little service and our players lack the cohesion to pull off even the most basic patterns of play. Tools which even Fulham and Luton were able to display against us. As fans, we need to be honest and not simply base decisions out of anger and recent results. Can anyone say that they expect a team containing Bruno, Onana, Casemiro, Varane and Rashford get dominated like this. This season, we've had similar performances whilst also playing with Shaw, Licha, Hojlund and Garnacho. On paper, at various points, people have described all of these players as being talented. Even Dalot has played well recently. Yet as a team, they truly suck. These aren't bad players by any stretch of the imagination. AWB, Maguire, Mount and Mainoo are also not bad players. Yet people treat these players like they are bad based on their play this season under this manager. This is not a situation where he lost the dressing room and they downed tools. This is a situation where we've just been consistently bad. Yet fans find ways to blame previously proven blayers.Ten Haag iss the problem here. Not them. There's just no cohesion; both defensively and in attack. How is Bruno supposed to play the ball successfully, when our players are so wide and fluid? Where are the passing options? What's our game plan in attack? How is our midfield supposed to defend against counters when our entire team is wide and out of position? Why is Onana instructed to kick long?

People were annoyed about the way the press attacked Ten Haag. However the truth is he hasn't come under the requisite amount of pressure that he should have been facing. We've lost ten league games this year, are 8 points off 4th spot, have played terribly all year, with a goal difference of 0 after 26 games. As fans, we simply shouldn't be accepting that. The cohesion of the team comes down to the coach, no matter how much people would like to blame everyone else. Why did we sell De Gea and buy Onana, if Onana is not a presence playing out of the back?

That scenario explains the actual problem we've had in regard to structure over the last ten years. We abandoned a legend for the sake of a manager who hadn't gotten the team to play good football, on the basis that the KEEPER would be what would get us there. Similar to the Ronaldo and Maguire situation, a player was painted as the reason why we don't play good football, in an attempt to defend the manager and deflect from the fact that our play was poor. It's been a struggle to score goals this season, and our number 9's have all had issues with getting service, similar to Weghorst and Ronaldo. Our pressing is also still poor, despite the changes we made, as this was the reason Ronaldo was binned. As a club and fanbase, we turned our back on players with no evidence as a means to " support the manager" and have gotten no reward for this. A club with a good structure, like Bayern, would have questioned the validity of all these ideas. People question player power, but a manager not producing results and under pressure, will do anything to keep their job. The club would have assessed the situation, looked into the way the team was playing and made a decision on the manager in a quick enough fashion as to not derail the club. At these clubs, based on play and money spent, outside of Mourinho and Ole, none of the managers we hired would have made it past their first season. Ole would have been sacked after the 6-1 loss to Spurs in 2020. As a club, we have only taken action on players and managers once the media and fanbase have completely turned

We let De Gea go because Ten Haag, the only football mind with power made that direction. We were cold in our dealing with De Gea due to him not being wanted by Ten Haag, because we were just going along with what the manager wanted, as we put 100% trust in his idea. We bought Mount for the same reason, without a question. Yet its quite clear now that the manager isn't the brightest in terms of ideas and formulating a contingency plan. He was never good enough to treat with that much respect. So now we are in a situation where he's failing and blaming the club for it, despite having the freedom to do whatever he wanted outside of deals we couldn't complete ( due to player preference). There are people who think the failed structure is in us not getting De Jong; but the truth is the failure is actually in the lack of pressure Ten Haag received after failing to win his first two games of 2022-2023. We're too understanding, too slow to react, not cut throat enough and lack a sense of urgency for a team our size. You don't big trophies without a sense of urgency.

I agree and especially the bolded part. Erik will never have United winning the league because he lacks the tactical pedigree to do so. There's no separation from the opposition regardless of player quality.

His tactical ineptitude is the most disappointing feat about his tenure at United. I've used this analogy before but if the only takeaway from training is that the team can press it's literally like saying a car is good for driving in a straight line, but has no other nuances in any other area concerning it's functionality.

The team is poor in possession, open throughout the midfield, only defensive when playing the entire game compact therefore offering no attacking threat. The manager has been unable to find equilibrium in multiple phases of the game.

I have held this opinion from around 8 games into the season. United will not succeed with him as a manager.
 
Has there been a game this season where we have played well for longer than 20 minutes?

Outplayed AGAIN today, AT HOME, against Fulham.
He seems to have absolutely no clue. Tbh the writing was in the wall when he said that ridiculous thing about him not trying to make us play like Ajax.

I'd like to see nagelsman.
 
The cycle of United: Get battered at the start of the season (We're crap, ETH out) > Pick up a few points by playing the worst teams in the league (people ask, are we turning a corner?) > Lose to the bigger teams (We're crap again) > Beat weaker teams again from moments of brilliance (We're turning a corner, give ETH time) > Get beaten as our form player carrying us has run out of form or is injured (we're crap) > Begins again.
 
The high point of his tenure was the 2-0 home win against Spurs early last season, where we played brilliantly controlled, high press football. What happened to that team? While injuries have played their part, the way we set up is an absolute joke and has been for a long time. We are ridiculously porous and have little threat going forwards, except on rapid transitions. ETH lost his way a long time ago. He abandoned his early vision and is having us play in a way that none of his previous teams have set up. He’s made a mockery of his own credentials for the job.

The bigger picture, as he puts it, is that he is the final catalyst for a change in structure - to move away from letting the manager have so much control in deciding targets, playing style, signings etc. So in a destructive way, he has aided the most important transition we could make. But it is clear that once the strategic review is complete and the necessary people are in place; he will be the next name to go. He must be the final name in a long line of failures at this club; and we move forwards with a fresh structure and a new head coach to lead us into a new era. A clean sweep break from the last decade of waste and incompetence is needed.
 
Club Captain.
Our talisman.
28th minute.
In front of home fans.
Knowing we are in must wins game to achieve Champions League Football.

Imagine Vidic, Rio, Keane, Scholes, Giggs, serving us this kind of shit every week.



Remember the last minute pass from Bruno in the last game. This is who he is to our team play..

When people, ETH included will open up their eyes it will be very late.
You



I said I would have sold him last summer. With how shit he’s been this year he now HAS to be sold this summer.
 
That half decent team is ahead of us in the table, you do realise that? They also beat City and Arsenal in consecutive games.

You have such an obvious bias against Ten Hag, it's ridiculous.
Villa? That was before the winter break, they were on a bad run and just got destroyed by Chelsea. It was an easy run ffs, we could and should have won all games this month. Other than West Ham, all of them were edgy affairs.
 
19th in the league in shots conceded.... Like how does that happen to Man United? :lol: that is a pathetic level of coaching. There is no excusing it. No forgiveness for injuries. We are absolutely a garbage side because of his coaching.
 
That half decent team is ahead of us in the table, you do realise that? They also beat City and Arsenal in consecutive games.

You have such an obvious bias against Ten Hag, it's ridiculous.
Villa being ahead of us in the table isn't exactly the best defense of ETH
 
Player/salary wise, he is absolutely the biggest problem on the team. His salary/stature is on par with Salah and Haaland. He isn’t good enough to be in the first team, nevermind on that standing.

Who is “blaming everything on him”?
Sorry, him and Bruno. My bad. Forgot about him too. They're the causes if you look at the posts. ETH, Bruno and Rashford.
 
Again, what would people have done differently?

- Start Diallo instead at RW after he’s been out all season?
- Start ??? at ST as we’ve got such a depth of talent in that position?
- Who would have magically played in CM when Mainoo had a poor game?

I get we’re depressingly used to being overrun in midfield, but what’s the solution? Who (within the squad) is being overlooked who can provide the energy and quality to stop this?

I get the performance was shit, I get that the result was shit, but with long term injuries to key players who are integral to the way we want to play, what do we expect?
It's less on the players available and more on how they're coached to play. The players we have had to pick from shouldn't be conceding more shots than Burnley and Luton. It's as simple as that. Ten Hag doesn't know how to coach any defence and we are a mess every game.
 
no not at all,

however, he is our talisman, our highest paid player so of course the expectation is high with him. He should in theory by our spark. He should be a shining light in this team, this club. Lead by example. Always give 100%, after all he is United born and bred right?

that’s why he gets called out. He probably runs the least out of everyone and that’s no exaggeration. He doesn’t press, barely tracks back and ducks out of 50/50s constantly. His body language doesn’t seem right either.

something is a miss with him, it’s just a absolute fact at this point.

One thing is certain, ETH doesn’t instruct him to do any of the above. The blame with him is that he keeps on picking him despite this.
That's because he's set the team up so poorly that we're depending on individual moments from Rashford than putting players like Bruno and Rashford in a position to be most effective rather than dependent on them to pull it out of nothing like we did last season.
 
It's less on the players available and more on how they're coached to play. The players we have had to pick from shouldn't be conceding more shots than Burnley and Luton. It's as simple as that. Ten Hag doesn't know how to coach any defence and we are a mess every game.

Correct. Magically getting better players will never change that fact.
 
I agree that Ten Hag needs to go because of terrible tactics and poor recruitment, a sign that he doesn't know how he wants his team to play.

But, some individual players also need to go.
 
Yep. Anything beyond the league table or final score line is meaningless to many here though.

I was saying this last week. You cannot have a low goal difference, average less shots than you concede, have 51% possession and expect consistent wins.

I mentioned that Liverpool and City had impressive stats prior to their rise in 2018. It wasn't a coincidence.

The club can't simply hope to be successful, they have to see the signs before choosing to support the manager. Outcome bias is a mistake we've consistently made at United over the last ten years, because we didn't have people above the manager who knew how to assess performance. There are the numbers and there is also the eye test from actually understanding what you are watching. We didn't have people who truly understood what they were watching and how far it was from other teams with comparatively worse players. Inter on paper have a worse team than we do, they can go to a UCL final, beat Atletico and deserve it with players who we threw away. Yes it's Serie A, but under Ten Haag we can;t produce good performances against anyone
 
We have had some great results in recent weeks but we still play the same way every week, win or lose.
 
Please for the love of all that is holy, get Naggelsmann in before a serious club manages to woo him.
He's the Germany manager until the Euros. He's not leaving that to start a club job now. He'll have suitors after the Euros in the summer.
 
Club Captain.
Our talisman.
28th minute.
In front of home fans.
Knowing we are in must wins game to achieve Champions League Football.

Imagine Vidic, Rio, Keane, Scholes, Giggs, serving us this kind of shit every week.



Remember the last minute pass from Bruno in the last game. This is who he is to our team play..

When people, ETH included will open up their eyes it will be very late.
You


He's pulled that pass off half the time he tries it. It was a good idea, poor execution. He's been in bad form though so it'll not come off for him.
 
It's less on the players available and more on how they're coached to play. The players we have had to pick from shouldn't be conceding more shots than Burnley and Luton. It's as simple as that. Ten Hag doesn't know how to coach any defence and we are a mess every game.

The selection and transfer talk is a cop out. He's a poor tactician who gets away with it because he's dutch.

He's had enough time to prove himself now and he just always come off looking clueless. People may laugh at this, but the reason we have such a bad record against the top 9 away from home is because he's the worst manager we've had in regard to setting up for specific games. He's a worse tactician than Ole. Ole could at least get us to set up well on the counter, Ten Haag is as bad defensively as I've seen at a top club.
 
The most disappointing thing about him is that the team doesn't look like it's being coached very well. Bruno is still doing Bruno things. Some players still look like they haven't a clue what to do with the ball. Dare I say, there's no patterns of play. Not much difference from the Ole days. Guy is still relying on McTominay to miraculously come up with goals, even at the detriment of him doing feck all on the ball in the build up.
 
Not the man for Manchester United.

Pretty much since the League Cup final he's be awful. We've picked up a few results lately but not a single one has been convincing, I'm struggling to remember a single decent performance in the league all season. Get rid, get rid of as many players as possible and start a fresh next year. He's performing at Moyes level with a lot more money to boot.
 
The manager who marginalizes Bruno, Rashford, Antony, Maguire, Mctominay and Casemiro all at the same time is the manager who will make the first meaningful progress in the post-Fergie era. They have become major major stumbling blocks to any kind of progress in this team like Fellaini and Ashley Young used to be. With them still playing key roles in the team there is no chance of making any meaningful progress. We must move on from all 6 of them for the club to move forward.
Remove McSauce and Maguire from that list, they have their own deficiencies but we don't play transitional football because of them.

  • Bruno is the main problem. A very big problem. He's the maguire of 2021. We play how we play because of him. We are open because of his 1 man press and non existing midfield. Our football since 2020 went to the dogs, and you can tell who we signed that time and who became our talisman.
  • Casemiro is a dead-end player we will get nothing new from him. He's achieved everything he can achieve. If he leaves, he leaves and I believe the team can replace number 6 with another.
  • Rashford as much as he's a transitional player, I believe he's like that because our team doesn't have any other way of playing. If we tried to change our style of play I believe Rashford could also have evolved. Probably now it's abit too late for him to learn new tricks but LVG gave us Rashford, he wasn't a transitional coach.
  • Antony I have nothing to say, he absolutely doesn't impact our game to warrant any kind of inclusion in the team or even in our arguments as fans.

The easiest and quickest remedy is binning off Bruno. With that we get a stable team which can be upgraded in every window and a scalebale playing style.

If we try to change our we play with Bruno in it, it will be like playing with 10 players, the guy can't dribble, can't shield a ball, can't run with the ball with speed, can't hold the ball for more than 10 seconds to save his life.
 
I think when our fans try to break down his failures into team selections and transfers, they miss the trick. His failure is in his tactics and training. His job isn't simply to pick the team and recruit talent, it's to prepare the players for the game and send them out with clear winning instructions and the right shape to allow the team of individuals to play with enough cohesion to create chances, score goals, control the game and limit chance concessions. That's what we're actually paying him for, and he's consistently failed to deliver this in any shape or form this season. We need to stop acting like we're Aston Villa or West Ham. We are the largest football club on the planet and have spent enough money to ensure that we get the best talent and management. I should still expect for us to play better than clubs who on paper have sigificantly less talent than we do, with an understanding that lack of depth may lead to inconsistency which would stop us from challenging. Not that we play bad in every game and cling on to games where we show a little sign of knowling how to play football.As a club, we may have a 3 year rebuild in mind to get us back to the top, but it doesn't mean we wait three years to see good football or to get the best talent. 3 years may be the deadline, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to and looking to get there as soon as possible.

The way we play is the issue. We don't have attacking formulas, we struggle to get the ball into the opposition half and we don't control games. Our forwards recieve little service and our players lack the cohesion to pull off even the most basic patterns of play. Tools which even Fulham and Luton were able to display against us. As fans, we need to be honest and not simply base decisions out of anger and recent results. Can anyone say that they expect a team containing Bruno, Onana, Casemiro, Varane and Rashford get dominated like this. This season, we've had similar performances whilst also playing with Shaw, Licha, Hojlund and Garnacho. On paper, at various points, people have described all of these players as being talented. Even Dalot has played well recently. Yet as a team, they truly suck. These aren't bad players by any stretch of the imagination. AWB, Maguire, Mount and Mainoo are also not bad players. Yet people treat these players like they are bad based on their play this season under this manager. This is not a situation where he lost the dressing room and they downed tools. This is a situation where we've just been consistently bad. Yet fans find ways to blame previously proven blayers.Ten Haag iss the problem here. Not them. There's just no cohesion; both defensively and in attack. How is Bruno supposed to play the ball successfully, when our players are so wide and fluid? Where are the passing options? What's our game plan in attack? How is our midfield supposed to defend against counters when our entire team is wide and out of position? Why is Onana instructed to kick long?

People were annoyed about the way the press attacked Ten Haag. However the truth is he hasn't come under the requisite amount of pressure that he should have been facing. We've lost ten league games this year, are 8 points off 4th spot, have played terribly all year, with a goal difference of 0 after 26 games. As fans, we simply shouldn't be accepting that. The cohesion of the team comes down to the coach, no matter how much people would like to blame everyone else. Why did we sell De Gea and buy Onana, if Onana is not a presence playing out of the back?

That scenario explains the actual problem we've had in regard to structure over the last ten years. We abandoned a legend for the sake of a manager who hadn't gotten the team to play good football, on the basis that the KEEPER would be what would get us there. Similar to the Ronaldo and Maguire situation, a player was painted as the reason why we don't play good football, in an attempt to defend the manager and deflect from the fact that our play was poor. It's been a struggle to score goals this season, and our number 9's have all had issues with getting service, similar to Weghorst and Ronaldo. Our pressing is also still poor, despite the changes we made, as this was the reason Ronaldo was binned. As a club and fanbase, we turned our back on players with no evidence as a means to " support the manager" and have gotten no reward for this. A club with a good structure, like Bayern, would have questioned the validity of all these ideas. People question player power, but a manager not producing results and under pressure, will do anything to keep their job. The club would have assessed the situation, looked into the way the team was playing and made a decision on the manager in a quick enough fashion as to not derail the club. At these clubs, based on play and money spent, outside of Mourinho and Ole, none of the managers we hired would have made it past their first season. Ole would have been sacked after the 6-1 loss to Spurs in 2020. As a club, we have only taken action on players and managers once the media and fanbase have completely turned

We let De Gea go because Ten Haag, the only football mind with power made that direction. We were cold in our dealing with De Gea due to him not being wanted by Ten Haag, because we were just going along with what the manager wanted, as we put 100% trust in his idea. We bought Mount for the same reason, without a question. Yet its quite clear now that the manager isn't the brightest in terms of ideas and formulating a contingency plan. He was never good enough to treat with that much respect. So now we are in a situation where he's failing and blaming the club for it, despite having the freedom to do whatever he wanted outside of deals we couldn't complete ( due to player preference). There are people who think the failed structure is in us not getting De Jong; but the truth is the failure is actually in the lack of pressure Ten Haag received after failing to win his first two games of 2022-2023. We're too understanding, too slow to react, not cut throat enough and lack a sense of urgency for a team our size. You don't big trophies without a sense of urgency.
Not gonna agree about what other clubs would do because as seen with Bayern sacking Nagelsman for Tuchel, no one is perfect.

But I agree that the issue is not the talent but the tactics. They've been horrible all season and he's barely changed them. Last season too they weren't great attacking wise but at least the team wasn't a sieve IIRC. This season we've been both bad in attack and defence and it's primarily because we're set up that way. We've won most of our games just because we've had better players than the opposition despite the opposition playing better.

As always, a manager should be able to impose his style and it should show regardless of the personnel. Spurs have got that this season. They maintain their playstyle despite losing their best players at various points this season and they're a good team.
 
That half decent team is ahead of us in the table, you do realise that? They also beat City and Arsenal in consecutive games.

You have such an obvious bias against Ten Hag, it's ridiculous.
My point was that all the other teams in this run should be easy pickings, so us being on a "good run" where we barely scraped results was something that would obviously change if we stopped being lucky or faced better teams. Today we weren't unlucky, we just weren't lucky.

I called Villa half decent precisely because they are ahead of us in the table. They've had a great season, for being Villa. Last season they wouldn't have been talked about as close to decent. And their season is trending downwards now. When we faced them now they were a worse performing team than earlier in the season.

Bias against Ten Hag? You can search my posts where earlier this season I said I thought he would still be the manager here in 5 years if he wanted to, because I thought there had been positive signs last season and we just had an unlucky start to this season.
It was finally around Christmas (I think) where I finally turned on him as I feel he consistently gets almost every tactical disposition wrong. He seems to set us up wrong from start, and his changes during games usually has us playing worse. Yes, Scott has been a super sub to nick us goals, but usually only after we struggled from his other changes. The way we defend leads usually gives the opponents way too many chances to pull it back as well.
The football is usually boring to watch, and we look to play negative football at times where players are scared of relying on their own abilities. There were moments today where we delivered exciting play, but it was over as quickly as they started, we aren't able to be consistent over a period of time.
The only thing he has impressed me with lately is that he's stopped insisting on playing Antony every match when he clearly needed a break to lower the pressure on himself and try to turn things around like Maguire seems to have been able to.
 
The selection and transfer talk is a cop out. He's a poor tactician who gets away with it because he's dutch.

He's had enough time to prove himself now and he just always come off looking clueless. People may laugh at this, but the reason we have such a bad record against the top 9 away from home is because he's the worst manager we've had in regard to setting up for specific games. He's a worse tactician than Ole. Ole could at least get us to set up well on the counter, Ten Haag is as bad defensively as I've seen at a top club.
Yeah it's just hugely damning on him how frequently he gets outcoached
 
Both him and most the players need to go. At this point I've seen enough of his philosophy to not want to see any more of it in this league, and I've seen enough of the players to not want a new manager to be stuck with them either
 
The high point of his tenure was the 2-0 home win against Spurs early last season, where we played brilliantly controlled, high press football. What happened to that team? While injuries have played their part, the way we set up is an absolute joke and has been for a long time. We are ridiculously porous and have little threat going forwards, except on rapid transitions. ETH lost his way a long time ago. He abandoned his early vision and is having us play in a way that none of his previous teams have set up. He’s made a mockery of his own credentials for the job.

The bigger picture, as he puts it, is that he is the final catalyst for a change in structure - to move away from letting the manager have so much control in deciding targets, playing style, signings etc. So in a destructive way, he has aided the most important transition we could make. But it is clear that once the strategic review is complete and the necessary people are in place; he will be the next name to go. He must be the final name in a long line of failures at this club; and we move forwards with a fresh structure and a new head coach to lead us into a new era. A clean sweep break from the last decade of waste and incompetence is needed.

I think at this level pretty much all teams are capable of good performances here and there. Sometimes it just clicks. Epsecially when you have a few decent players.

As fans we just cling onto those performances a bit too much, more out of hope than aything.
 
The selection and transfer talk is a cop out. He's a poor tactician who gets away with it because he's dutch.
malreynolds-firefly.gif
 
Weird thing is that the midfield set up last year wasn't that bad at all for the most part with Casemiro, Erisken and Bruno and was probably one of only two midfields in the post Fergie era that i can remember enjoying watching (the other being the Herrera, Matic and Pogba combination that got Ole his job).
 
I am pretty sure we don't need lot of new players to become solid top4 side, good manager will need lot less money than Ten Hag needed for this shite. It's absolutely impossible to look good even for some of our good players with this type of shite tactics and football we play.

We have lot of good young players, few solid senior players, and we need new 3-5 solid players for next year and we will be fine. But new manager with actual style of play and someone who can outplay opposite manager is a start.
 
I think when our fans try to break down his failures into team selections and transfers, they miss the trick. His failure is in his tactics and training. His job isn't simply to pick the team and recruit talent, it's to prepare the players for the game and send them out with clear winning instructions and the right shape to allow the team of individuals to play with enough cohesion to create chances, score goals, control the game and limit chance concessions. That's what we're actually paying him for, and he's consistently failed to deliver this in any shape or form this season. We need to stop acting like we're Aston Villa or West Ham. We are the largest football club on the planet and have spent enough money to ensure that we get the best talent and management. I should still expect for us to play better than clubs who on paper have sigificantly less talent than we do, with an understanding that lack of depth may lead to inconsistency which would stop us from challenging. Not that we play bad in every game and cling on to games where we show a little sign of knowling how to play football.As a club, we may have a 3 year rebuild in mind to get us back to the top, but it doesn't mean we wait three years to see good football or to get the best talent. 3 years may be the deadline, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to and looking to get there as soon as possible.

The way we play is the issue. We don't have attacking formulas, we struggle to get the ball into the opposition half and we don't control games. Our forwards recieve little service and our players lack the cohesion to pull off even the most basic patterns of play. Tools which even Fulham and Luton were able to display against us. As fans, we need to be honest and not simply base decisions out of anger and recent results. Can anyone say that they expect a team containing Bruno, Onana, Casemiro, Varane and Rashford get dominated like this. This season, we've had similar performances whilst also playing with Shaw, Licha, Hojlund and Garnacho. On paper, at various points, people have described all of these players as being talented. Even Dalot has played well recently. Yet as a team, they truly suck. These aren't bad players by any stretch of the imagination. AWB, Maguire, Mount and Mainoo are also not bad players. Yet people treat these players like they are bad based on their play this season under this manager. This is not a situation where he lost the dressing room and they downed tools. This is a situation where we've just been consistently bad. Yet fans find ways to blame previously proven blayers.Ten Haag iss the problem here. Not them. There's just no cohesion; both defensively and in attack. How is Bruno supposed to play the ball successfully, when our players are so wide and fluid? Where are the passing options? What's our game plan in attack? How is our midfield supposed to defend against counters when our entire team is wide and out of position? Why is Onana instructed to kick long?

People were annoyed about the way the press attacked Ten Haag. However the truth is he hasn't come under the requisite amount of pressure that he should have been facing. We've lost ten league games this year, are 8 points off 4th spot, have played terribly all year, with a goal difference of 0 after 26 games. As fans, we simply shouldn't be accepting that. The cohesion of the team comes down to the coach, no matter how much people would like to blame everyone else. Why did we sell De Gea and buy Onana, if Onana is not a presence playing out of the back?

That scenario explains the actual problem we've had in regard to structure over the last ten years. We abandoned a legend for the sake of a manager who hadn't gotten the team to play good football, on the basis that the KEEPER would be what would get us there. Similar to the Ronaldo and Maguire situation, a player was painted as the reason why we don't play good football, in an attempt to defend the manager and deflect from the fact that our play was poor. It's been a struggle to score goals this season, and our number 9's have all had issues with getting service, similar to Weghorst and Ronaldo. Our pressing is also still poor, despite the changes we made, as this was the reason Ronaldo was binned. As a club and fanbase, we turned our back on players with no evidence as a means to " support the manager" and have gotten no reward for this. A club with a good structure, like Bayern, would have questioned the validity of all these ideas. People question player power, but a manager not producing results and under pressure, will do anything to keep their job. The club would have assessed the situation, looked into the way the team was playing and made a decision on the manager in a quick enough fashion as to not derail the club. At these clubs, based on play and money spent, outside of Mourinho and Ole, none of the managers we hired would have made it past their first season. Ole would have been sacked after the 6-1 loss to Spurs in 2020. As a club, we have only taken action on players and managers once the media and fanbase have completely turned

We let De Gea go because Ten Haag, the only football mind with power made that direction. We were cold in our dealing with De Gea due to him not being wanted by Ten Haag, because we were just going along with what the manager wanted, as we put 100% trust in his idea. We bought Mount for the same reason, without a question. Yet its quite clear now that the manager isn't the brightest in terms of ideas and formulating a contingency plan. He was never good enough to treat with that much respect. So now we are in a situation where he's failing and blaming the club for it, despite having the freedom to do whatever he wanted outside of deals we couldn't complete ( due to player preference). There are people who think the failed structure is in us not getting De Jong; but the truth is the failure is actually in the lack of pressure Ten Haag received after failing to win his first two games of 2022-2023. We're too understanding, too slow to react, not cut throat enough and lack a sense of urgency for a team our size. You don't big trophies without a sense of urgency.

TLDR; I asked ChatGPT to summarise

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Remove McSauce and Maguire from that list, they have their own deficiencies but we don't play transitional football because of them.

  • Bruno is the main problem. A very big problem. He's the maguire of 2021. We play how we play because of him. We are open because of his 1 man press and non existing midfield. Our football since 2020 went to the dogs, and you can tell who we signed that time and who became our talisman.
  • Casemiro is a dead-end player we will get nothing new from him. He's achieved everything he can achieve. If he leaves, he leaves and I believe the team can replace number 6 with another.
  • Rashford as much as he's a transitional player, I believe he's like that because our team doesn't have any other way of playing. If we tried to change our style of play I believe Rashford could also have evolved. Probably now it's abit too late for him to learn new tricks but LVG gave us Rashford, he wasn't a transitional coach.
  • Antony I have nothing to say, he absolutely doesn't impact our game to warrant any kind of inclusion in the team or even in our arguments as fans.

The easiest and quickest remedy is binning off Bruno. With that we get a stable team which can be upgraded in every window and a scalebale playing style.

If we try to change our we play with Bruno in it, it will be like playing with 10 players, the guy can't dribble, can't shield a ball, can't run with the ball with speed, can't hold the ball for more than 10 seconds to save his life.
This.

The fact that Bruno and Rashford are so many of our fans' favorite players, is pure insanity.

And the club loves them too, judging by their contracts, wages, and star status. Just insane.

I actually think this will still be a problem under the new regime. Most people don't understand the basic principles of why possession is so valuable, including people who've worked in football their entire career.

"The United Way/DNA" will still be the mantra going forward, and it will continue to be our undoing, just as it has been for 11 years. Our club and fanbase honestly believe you can establish a serial winning dynasty with fast-paced counterattacking play, and making players like Bruno its focal point and captain.

I'd laugh, it it weren't so incredibly sad and heartbreaking.
 
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Lindelof at LB is so obvious a huge mistake. They kept exploiting it. Really not sure why he keep persisting on it.
It would be one thing if he actually utilized Dalot for his width as true right fullback but he didn't
The selection and transfer talk is a cop out. He's a poor tactician who gets away with it because he's dutch.

He's had enough time to prove himself now and he just always come off looking clueless. People may laugh at this, but the reason we have such a bad record against the top 9 away from home is because he's the worst manager we've had in regard to setting up for specific games. He's a worse tactician than Ole. Ole could at least get us to set up well on the counter, Ten Haag is as bad defensively as I've seen at a top club.
Agreed. So sick of everyone just blaming things on poor recruitment. Part of successful recruitment is pairing players with your style of play. When you don't have a recognizable style of play why are we surprised that our players brought in tend to regress? You could not name more than a small handful of players who have genuinely improved as footballers in the past decade at our club. Even if we had the worst scouting department in the world, surely we would have lucked into getting a few players correct if the problem was just pure player selection. I find it impossible to actualy assess our overall recruitment capabilities when we don't have a team structure or style of play beyond vague statements of "attacking football" and "the united way" whatever that means.

Even our successful signings and youth players tend to look worse the longer they are at the club. Rashford and Martial looked better overall footballers in their first few seasons, same with Fernandes, Casemiro, Maguire, AWB, and I could go on and on. Until we find a system that improves the players that we already have, our recruitment will not be fixed. Part of why we have no money to spend is because we can't sell players due to the aformentioned stagnation. Even if we were signing players that were not good enough in the long run, we would still be able to offload them and reinvest the money if they showed overall growth and improvement in their time at the club.
 
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