Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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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.
Agree that's was the best performance under him. Yet he sold Fred who was man of the match in that and a number of other decent displays. He doesn't know what's he's doing at this point.
 
Weird thing is that the midfield set up last year wasn't that bad at all for the kost 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).

This is the one thing I struggle with. He had periods last season where our midfield looked solid. Always struggled up front, always had gaps in dealing with set plays and counter, but the midfield was solid. TBH, finding out why shouldn't be our focus. We don't owe him that understanding, he's simply not good enough and hasn't shown himself to be.
 
He can’t pick a team or appropriate substitutes, he needs to go back to Ajax
 
Ten Hag: "We showed big personality and character..."
"You have to see the bigger picture. The bigger picture looks very good..."

He's lost it
 
We need a deep dive "criminal style" investigation into why we have so many injuries to so many crucial players at various times all this season.

We won 4 league games in a roll, just starting to build up a head of steam and playing decent football, and then boom, our top/best/most in form player is injured.

It's no wonder ETH is constantly under pressure, how many times has he managed to field his best 11 this season? these constant injuries is simply not acceptable.
 
TLDR; I asked ChatGPT to summarise

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:D maybe I'm a bit long winded
 
Ten Hag: "We showed big personality and character..."
"You have to see the bigger picture. The bigger picture looks very good..."

He's lost it
The only time Ten Hag has taken the blame for a loss was when Onana had the worst game of career vs Galatasaray. He's a huge cop out when it comes to accountability.
 


I'm sorry if someone already posted this here. Last season ten Hag was scared after those few losses at start of the season (Brentford, Brighton) and made our team much more compact. In return we weren't exactly shining in attack but were good enough to win most games and have a strong season, finishing 3rd and winning a cup. This season he's just failing tactically and the result is getting knocked out of CL, Carabao Cup and being 6th in the league. Unlikely Fa Cup campaign will be different.

It's obvious we've had many injuries this season (and to some of our most important players) but that is not an excuse for the level of our performances. It's just not good enough and while I can see ten Hag surviving until May, don't think he'll be manager of United after that. And he's smart guy who'll know he deserved the sack in the end.
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?
That's still my favourite United game under ten Hag. Thing is - Spurs under Conte often played negative football away to big sides, but we were also really good and played with great intensity and energy. Fred if I remember correctly was MotM then. We've missed his energy in some games this season.
 
Why does he play Garnacho on the left when he's better on the right? Just - why?
 
I don't understand how we can look so unmotivated for so long in these games

we have 3 or 4 players who genuinely seem to give a shit and the rest you can flip a coin on whether they bother to turn up

Rashford is a disgrace

but ETH is the one in charge of motivating these cnuts, and he's failed
 
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.

I think as fans, use coming up with LVG's red army after just a few poor months of his tenure is quite telling. It's actually sad, as we have so much support to give to a talented manager, but we've been unfortunate that the club has simply made poor decisions on who they hire. I think we support to early. I can't imagine Madrid hiring a manager from Porto and coming up with songs and uncompromising support after 2 months of poor football. You can only get that at United. Best fans, but also the most gullible.
 
This is it totally. Even if you think about our wins I struggle to think of any that we have deserved. Most of the time we are played off the park and this isn't just against the top six. It's against the bottom six as well.

We don't have the players to play the system he wants and he cannot and will not consider a more pragmatic formation.
Is not like he's trying either, if we were trying to play high intensity possession based football and we were failing I'd be more patient. Thinking were a work in progress but we have regressed, last season you could see where we were heading, right now it's only hoof ball and not even proper hoof ball. We're not even a well structured counter attacking team, we are weak defensively, the midfield has no control whatsoever we allow opposition to have 20+ shots per game and we're not talking about top opposition, any team has this. We never look under control even against poor teams home or away doesn't matter we always look fragile.

I think the early results of the season made him change his mind and he abandoned his idea, at least he doesn't talk about it. Now it seems he's all about results fearing of losing his job but even while the last results have been good anyone can see this team is a disaster it's only a matter of time before results catch up with performances.
 
Sorry, him and Bruno. My bad. Forgot about him too. They're the causes if you look at the posts. ETH, Bruno and Rashford.

There are definitely many more culprits, buts it’s a question of what we can fix now. And we can definitely improve the coaching and definitely have a better player on 300k a week.
 
A lot of our squad are not athletic enough, The athletic ones are either very young, or lack enough technique to be United players or are injured.

Having our best players (Martinez and Shaw) back for a few matches really papered over the cracks of the previous regime's squad building.

I think too much has been made about Ten Hag's comments about never playing like Ajax. I'm sure this would be his preference but he can hardly rubbish his players to the media so in an attempt to be supportive of his players he ended up being blunt in a typical Dutch manner.
 
I think as fans, use coming up with LVG's red army after just a few poor months of his tenure is quite telling. It's actually sad, as we have so much support to give to a talented manager, but we've been unfortunate that the club has simply made poor decisions on who they hire. I think we support to early. I can't imagine Madrid hiring a manager from Porto and coming up with songs and uncompromising support after 2 months of poor football. You can only get that at United. Best fans, but also the most gullible.

We are very nice, no doubt about that.

I personally thought people got carried away last season, said so at the time.

Defended him this season when the injuries were out of control.

But now, with not that many out really, we're back to completely losing it again.

I think time's up.
 
But magically turning them in to world beaters when they’ve failed numerous other managers is a reasonable expectation?

Numerous?????

From that 11 Bruno, Rashford, Maguire and Dalot have had good performances under other managers. Is it Varane or Casemiro you're talking about?

Fred, Mctominay, Martial, Lindelof, Lingard, Pogba and Matic are gone or barely play. So yes, its a reasonable expectation, people tend to group players when trying to defend our failed managers. We've only had 5 permanent managers, as much as Madrid over the last decade.
 
I held out hope last season that we’d get to see his vision more fully implemented this year with players having a full season in his system under their belt, and another transfer window to plug a hole or two. At this point I still can’t rightly articulate what his vision is and that is the most disappointing aspect of our current situation. It feels like we fired Ole to move away from Oleball and yet we’re still just relying on individual brilliance to win us games without ever looking like a real cohesive unit.

We’re crap to watch and, despite the opportunity to re-entrench ourselves at the top of the league we’ve instead been leapfrogged by teams like Villa and Spurs who hired managers with real vision and the ability to get their teams playing their style of football.
 
If our games were regularly finishing 4-3 and whatever, you'd be able to argue in favour of what we're seeing, and that by tightening up a little bit we're going places. Similar to Klopp's first couple of seasons at Liverpool.

But we're seeing absolutely no attacking return for what is a suicidal system. It's just been the worst of both worlds.
Exactly. Poor both ways. Beyond poor
 
Numerous?????

From that 11 Bruno, Rashford, Maguire and Dalot have had good performances under other managers. Is it Varane or Casemiro you're talking about?

Fred, Mctominay, Martial, Lindelof, Lingard, Pogba and Matic are gone or barely play. So yes, its a reasonable expectation, people tend to group players when trying to defend our failed managers. We've only had 5 permanent managers, as much as Madrid over the last decade.


Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?
 
He's simply not up to it. New direction is needed for next season. The new ownership will give him enough rope to hang himself this season.
 
I think even if I tried to defend ten Hag (we've had many injuries, missing Martinez, not being that far away from top 4 etc) what is really poor is having a 0 goal difference after 26 games. That's just awful and a good indicator of a poor side.
 
I've backed the manager pretty much the whole time he has been here but it's clear he isn't the one to take us forward, I surmise Ineos also know this but aren't going to be broadcasting this.

Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?

I know Rashford hasn't been great recently and today he stunk the place up, to say he failed under LvG is a stretch he was an 18 yo boy and had some very promising performances
 
Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?

Dalot - Played well this season
Varane - Played well last season
Maguire - Played well under Ole i 19/20 and 20/21
Casemiro - Played well last season
Mainoo - Hasn't failed
Bruno - Best player over 5 years, one of the top playmakers in football
Garnacho - Has been good
Rashford - 30 goals a season last season, hasn't failed under anyone which is why his reputation is so high.
Shaw - Has been one of the top left backs in football over the last 3 years

This is why Ten Haag needs to be sacked immediately for me. His presence creates division that allows fans to turn on players the way you have.
If they've failed, then Ten Haag has completely failed them.

What I find laughable is how fans like to cling on to youth players as clean uncorrupted players that should still have a chance due to their general hate of the playing staff. Yet you mention Rasfhrod and Martial failing under LVG and Jose. For me, this is why player power is important. The players are the frontline and have everyone watching them on the pitch when provided with a rubbish set up ( what people ironically are saying Ten Haag has to deal with). Yet you can sit here and say they need to be moved on, whilst supporting a person, who unlike the players you listed, has not proven himself at United.
 
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We need a deep dive "criminal style" investigation into why we have so many injuries to so many crucial players at various times all this season.

We won 4 league games in a roll, just starting to build up a head of steam and playing decent football, and then boom, our top/best/most in form player is injured.

It's no wonder ETH is constantly under pressure, how many times has he managed to field his best 11 this season? these constant injuries is simply not acceptable.
What even is our best 11 though? I doubt he even knows. Also Fulham aren't very good so who we fielded should have been enough
 
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.

Marginalize? Ten Hags tactics got Bruno, the number 10, in many number 10 positions. He was at least 8 or 9 times at the edge of the box with space and time to let a shot go. And he did. Missed, over, wide or just straight at the Fulham keeper.

You can blame Ten Hag all you want but his job is to get guys like Bruno to be in a position to score, live up to the role in that particular position.

With all these injuries this is the time we should expect Bruno to step up. Like a proper Manchester United number 10 should. Captain and all. Lead the line.

But he doesnt. I think Bruno scored 2 or 3 nice, I mean outstanding goals this entire season and thats simply way too low for a top 4 aiming club.

I really think what all these injuries prove, is how feeble our supposed main man is. Even a Lampard, Gerrard, they would step up.

I remain, and not alone in this thread, this squad needs a lot more quality and new players in key positions like at the number 10.

I hope Ten Hag makes needed changes. Im happy he keeps out Antony, so he isnt blind or too egoistic. He took captaincy from Maguire. Now its time to find a new one this summer and let Bruno go. Its maybe even more pressing than getting rid of Rashford.
 
Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?
ETH has failed at United. Also. Case closed.


How Comes when the team plays good it's ETH masterclass but when we play badly it's players fault..
Naah.

ETH primary job is to set up the team with a high % of winning. Irregardless of who is playing or who is missing. That is his primary job. That's why he trains/coach the team, to find a way to win your matches.

If how we play or how we set up he genuinely thinks gives him higher % to win football games then who's to blame?

After 26 games, having lost 10 games, and faced second most shots is acceptable to him, then who's problem is it...

How we played today is how we played against Wolves first game of the season. What lessons did he pick from that game?
Absolutely nothing, 'let's blame injuries' narrative is it.
Yet that game we had everyone in our squad.

If you can't see the logic, then you and ETH are as delusional as they come.
 
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Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?

How did Lindelof, Shaw and Rashford fail under previous managers ? Lindelof was a main player for Ole and Rashford has been pretty much our main attacker since LVG with many goals under his name. Shaw has been one of our best players since 2018.
 
But magically turning them in to world beaters when they’ve failed numerous other managers is a reasonable expectation?

A. Ive repeatedly said that many of the old guard (Rashford, Bruno, Maguire, McT etc.) should be sold. No need to keep veterans of multiple failures.

B. Not a single person expects any manager we have to turn everyone into “world beaters”. There’s a huge gap between that and conceding the most shots in the league in a season though.
 
We need a deep dive "criminal style" investigation into why we have so many injuries to so many crucial players at various times all this season.
I think it's because last season we went deep into every competition and Ten Hag barely rotated any players. We were 3 games away (the EL semis and final) from playing the maximum amount of games possible. Plus there was a World Cup wedged in between that. I was worried at the time that we would see the negative physical effects the following season and that's how it has transpired. I think Ten Hag was short sighted in his approach last season.
 
The sad thing is that Fulham played better football and desrved to win,I know we have injuries but against average team,at Old Trafford, being the inferior team is due to the manager,he has spent more than £400 and where the money has gone? Antony,Mount,Onana,Malacia,Casemiro ...the money is wasted.And the manager is clueless,what was Antony's substitution in the 99+ minute?!
 
How did Lindelof, Shaw and Rashford fail under previous managers ? Lindelof was a main player for Ole and Rashford has been pretty much our main attacker since LVG with many goals under his name. Shaw has been one of our best players since 2018.

My theory is that he was looking for Pogba, Lingard, Fred, Fellaini and the like and realized we'd already let them go, so settled for calling any player we've had over the last 3 seasons a failure.
 
It has got to the point you'd hope Spurs get their act together to make sure we don't fluke our way into Ten Hag being in charge next season.
 
A. Ive repeatedly said that many of the old guard (Rashford, Bruno, Maguire, McT etc.) should be sold. No need to keep veterans of multiple failures.

B. Not a single person expects any manager we have to turn everyone into “world beaters”. There’s a huge gap between that and conceding the most shots in the league in a season though.
This is what’s really beginning to irk me with posters like the one you’re responding to here.

Absolutely no common sense fan would believe this team was capable of league winning form etc. But there is a long way between world beaters and losing to the likes of Fulham & Bournemouth at home in games they’ve outplayed us.
 
Dalot - failed under Jose, Ole
Varane - failed under Ole
Maguire - failed under Ole
Lindelof - failed under Jose and Ole
Casemiro - failed this season under ETH
Mainoo - hasn’t failed anyone
Forson - n/a
Bruno - Burnt out under Ole
Garnacho - hasn’t failed anyone
Rashford - failed under LvG, Jose, and Ole

Others include:
Martial - failed under LvG, Jose and Ole
Shaw - failed under Jose and Ole
McT - failed under Jose and Ole
AWB - failed under Ole

So what magic wand could ETH wield to turn these guys into consistent title challengers?

This really doesn't make much sense when applied to such a wide amount of players.

What you're arguing would mean no new manager in a top club could be judged unless they made wholesale changes. Managers only get sacked because they can't get a team to perform, to then say well if the last manager couldn't get them to perform the new one can't is madness.
 
I’m not sure why people are baffled about today. It was exactly the same performance we had against Luton, Villa or first half against West Ham, only difference being they took their chances better than West Ham and Villa, and didn’t gift us two goals like Luton. It’s exactly the same game from us. Sometimes it will deliver a win, sometimes it won’t.
 
I don't understand how we can look so unmotivated for so long in these games

we have 3 or 4 players who genuinely seem to give a shit and the rest you can flip a coin on whether they bother to turn up

Rashford is a disgrace

but ETH is the one in charge of motivating these cnuts, and he's failed

I think Rashford has had his fill of Ten Hag, and has probably been obvious for a few months, but people who slate him are right, he really needs to give 100% every game.
Yes, it certainly looks as though some players don't want to break into a sweat, and with several I think they are so arrogant that they think just turning up at OT against Fulham will get us three points. It was patently obvious who were the better 'team', in fact there appeared to be only one 'team' on the pitch.
 
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