Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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Juicy Juiced said:
Sorry it's 4AM over here.

Half of the players you mentioted can play better and we saw it. Just imagine where would be if we had sold Harry and McTominay.

Can we upgrade on them? Off course. I would sell all of them bar young kids. But I don't blame them when they have to play in this suicidal formation (Rashford lazines aside). Tactic so good it fall apart when you miss your LB.

We have a lot duds, but are they that bad to be outplayed by every club? Nah
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Maybe had we sold maguire and Mctominay and bought a decent back up striker and a A pacey CB we might be in a better shape.

These players have proven enough that they are not that good to challenge for the title and hence if we are to move it to the next level, no matter who the manager is we need to move past them.
 
Can we please stop with the 'At least with Ten Hag, we can see what he's trying to do and the patterns'. I'm not sure what games people are watching to say this - neither the eye test or the stats back up that he has anything resembling a coherent or structured plan.

I'm not even Ten Hag out but to claim we're progressing and that you can see a plan is absurd. It's just to denigrate Ole as the twitter fan base which has seeped into here hounded him out, claiming his football was terrible and that once we have a tactical manager we'd be flying up the league. I'm also not claiming Ole was the right man to take the club forward but the football he played is miles ahead of anything we've seen under Ten Hag.
 
He’s a manager with no Plan B. His first XI is a good team. But when he has to reshuffle, he is not so good at it. I’m afraid he is that type of head coach, as much as I like him as a person.
 
AshRK said:
What has that got to do with my post. My post never suggested anything to defend eth. In fact I specifically said he should be sacked but then we also need to look at certain players who have outlasted their stay.

Eth getting flowers or not is not the point here. If you want to credit the players for finishing 2nd or 3rd then you also have to look at them when they finish 6th and some players are going to finish 6th (including this season) 4th time..so why should they get another free pass but the manager keeps on getting replaced.
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:D you've been pushed to the wall to accept ETH is bad, that's why you bring the narrative of 'from 2019 players'

If all these players are very dubious, ETH spent 400m to upgrade this team, where is the upgrade.
Klopp did a complete overhaul after finishing 5,now you can the upgrade and value for the money spent.

ETH has binned off
Ronaldo, Sancho, De Gea. Signed off Antony, Onana, Mount etc all with his utmost discretion but he still doesn't know how to coach the team.

Its not about players. Fulham had Iwobi and Pereira, Arsenal and United rejects cutting us through time from time but astonishingly United have 'bad players' than those 2 rejects.

As bad as it may be, we don't have championship winning team but we have a team good enough to not get overrun every single weekend.

Now, the Glazers, Directors blame game will end we have new ownership. Let's see, probably ETH needs Ashworth to be around for him to play modern football.
 
AshRK said:
Maybe had we sold maguire and Mctominay and bought a decent back up striker and a A pacey CB we might be in a better shape.

These players have proven enough that they are not that good to challenge for the title and hence if we are to move it to the next level, no matter who the manager is we need to move past them.
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Most likely that we would downgrade. Only bright side of not selling them, for me, was that ETH didn't get more money to waste. Same was it in January too.

I am not saying that they are good for titles, but also not this bad. And we can't sell them in one summer. It will be slow proces and probably very painfull beacuse of our wages.
 
Licha-Vidic said:
:D you've been pushed to the wall to accept ETH is bad, that's why you bring the narrative of 'from 2019 players'

If all these players are very dubious, ETH spent 400m to upgrade this team, where is the upgrade.
Klopp did a complete overhaul after finishing 5,now you can the upgrade and value for the money spent.

ETH has binned off
Ronaldo, Sancho, De Gea. Signed off Antony, Onana, Mount etc all with his utmost discretion but he still doesn't know how to coach the team.

Its not about players. Fulham had Iwobi and Pereira, Arsenal and United rejects cutting us through time from time but astonishingly United have 'bad players' than those 2 rejects.

As bad as it may be, we don't have championship winning team but we have a team good enough to not get overrun every single weekend.

Now, the Glazers, Directors blame game will end we have new ownership. Let's see, probably ETH needs Ashworth to be around for him to play modern football.
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You clearly didn't read my post. Already said eth needs to go. Your random paragraphs has no context to my post.

Eth being bad and some players need replacing are two different statements that can coexist. Not that hard to understand. Unless you are saying every player deserves another fresh start for umpteenth time because hey eth spent 400m.
 
AshRK said:
The players argument even makes more sense if you compare that to arsenal and city. Arteta joined arsenal in December 2019 and since then their board has totally revamped their squad by selling the deadwood and the only two players he had before him joining were young Saka and Martinelli. Both of them have turned out to be really good so make sense to keep them

Now let us look at City players who were at city before December 2019 and are still playong for them
Rodri
Bernardo silva
Walker
Stones
Ederson
KDB
Foden

One could argue all of them are top players who would walk in most teams in the europe.

Now let us look at the Manchester United and the players we have had before October 2019 that are still with the club
Shaw
Martial
Rashford
Lindelof
Dalot
Mctominay
Maguire
AWB

Those are 8 players , more than City and much much more than arsenal. How many from that 8 are remotely close to what City have or that deserve to have stayed for this long or deserve to stay for another season. People may not understand it but this is a huge issue. And the scary part is all these 8 players are still featuring regularly for us in some form.

I am all for sacking ETH but if they think these players and some of the duds purchased after December 2019 deserve to stay for long, then I am not sure what to even say.
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This ignores the context that at the end of that 19/20 season Man Utd finished 3rd whereas Arsenal finished 8th. Then 2nd for Man Utd and 8th for Arsenal again the following season. Season after that Arsenal finished 5th and then Man Utd 6th.

And the following season i.e last season Arsenal finished 2nd and Man Utd finished 3rd.

So out of the last 4 seasons Arsenal have finished in the top 3 once while Man Utd have been in the top 3 thrice. Arsenal had a much weaker squad so of course they had to a bigger overhaul. It's not in a vacuum.
 
Juicy Juiced said:
Most likely that we would downgrade. Only bright side of not selling them, for me, was that ETH didn't get more money to waste. Same was it in January too.

I am not saying that they are good for titles, but also not this bad. And we can't sell them in one summer. It will be slow proces and probably very painfull beacuse of our wages.
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well for starters I am not even a fan of eth or any manager getting full power im deciding who to buy.

Having said that we defenitely would be in a better shape with quick CB instead of maguire and proper back up cf instead of Mctominay. Funnily we would need to make those signings irrespective of the manager again in coming season.
 
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roseguy64 said:
This ignores the context that at the end of that 19/20 season Man Utd finished 3rd whereas Arsenal finished 8th. Then 2nd for Man Utd and 8th for Arsenal again the following season. Season after that Arsenal finished 5th and then Man Utd 6th.

And the following season i.e last season Arsenal finished 2nd and Man Utd finished 3rd.

So out of the last 4 seasons Arsenal have finished in the top 3 once while Man Utd have been in the top 3 thrice. Arsenal had a much weaker squad so of course they had to a bigger overhaul. It's not in a vacuum.
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Well it should be looked from end of 18-19 and not 19-20 season. In 18-19 we finished 6th and Arsenal finished 5th. Not much difference and our squad was hardly filled with world beaters.

Anyways point is the likes of lindelof and martial should have been let go a long back. Also , we should have signed a lb to replace shaw long back. We just like to play catch up and then every season wonder how come we always need 5 new players. It is because we don’t revamp the squad like we should have. We spent crazy amount and yet we end up looking worse.
 
Even the most deluded on here who keep trying to rehash the argument that 'he can only be expected to get results when he has his best eleven on the pitch' really just backs up what the rest of us with a footing in reality have been saying - that he's the antithesis of a good coach.

Good managers elevate their teams and create ones that are greater than the sum of their parts, even teams they have to cobble together. Erik is so far in the other direction he has to have the highest possible sum to even stand toe to toe with relegation fodder, because his coaching and tactical ineptitude take huge chunks off.
 
hobbers said:
Even the most deluded on here who keep trying to rehash the argument that 'he can only be expected to get results when he has his best eleven on the pitch' really just backs up what the rest of us with a footing in reality have been saying - that he's the antithesis of a good coach.

Good managers elevate their teams and create ones that are greater than the sum of their parts, even teams they have to cobble together. Erik is so far in the other direction he has to have the highest possible sum to even stand toe to toe with relegation fodder, because his coaching and tactical ineptitude take huge chunks off.
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Fulham was also missing most of their best players and they dominated us like prime Bayern in fecking OT. No excuse for ETH anymore he and his appaling tactics need to go asap. He's the worst coach post Fergie playstyle wise. I"ll take LVG ambien football over this shitshow. We have 0 fecking GD in February. Deluded fans that still support him need to be checked
 
hobbers said:
Even the most deluded on here who keep trying to rehash the argument that 'he can only be expected to get results when he has his best eleven on the pitch' really just backs up what the rest of us with a footing in reality have been saying - that he's the antithesis of a good coach.

Good managers elevate their teams and create ones that are greater than the sum of their parts, even teams they have to cobble together. Erik is so far in the other direction he has to have the highest possible sum to even stand toe to toe with relegation fodder, because his coaching and tactical ineptitude take huge chunks off.
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Like Moyes or Van Gaal or Mourinho or Solskjaer or Rangnick. All can be accused of the same thing, does that mean they are all rubbish?
 
OldRed1 said:
Like Moyes or Van Gaal or Mourinho or Solskjaer or Rangnick. All can be accused of the same thing, does that mean they are all rubbish?
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Moyes. Good Premier League manager but nowhere near good enough to manage a team in the Top 4 [see jobs post United & about to get canned from the powerhouse that is West Ham].

LvG. I actually quite liked LvG [sacrilege] but as with Jose both managers clearly on the decline.

OgS. Who was he managing before & since?

So yes all of them were rubbish in so much as they were nowhere near the required level to manage a club of Manchester United’s aspirations.

The Glazers were renowned for their poor decision making in terms of staff appointments. All 5 post Fergie managers are further evidence of this. The ‘they can’t all be rubbish’ argument would hold far more weight if any of the 4 managers you listed went onto better once they left. Moyes manages mid table teams in Spain & England. LvG, unfortunately fell ill but was managing a poor Dutch outfit, Jose went directly to Spurs ffs & OgS is still unemployed.

They are all piss poor appointments.

hobbers said:
Even the most deluded on here who keep trying to rehash the argument that 'he can only be expected to get results when he has his best eleven on the pitch' really just backs up what the rest of us with a footing in reality have been saying - that he's the antithesis of a good coach.

Good managers elevate their teams and create ones that are greater than the sum of their parts, even teams they have to cobble together. Erik is so far in the other direction he has to have the highest possible sum to even stand toe to toe with relegation fodder, because his coaching and tactical ineptitude take huge chunks off.
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Perfectly put & something I can remember having multiple Caf members play dumb over. Managers overachieve all the time, EtH has managed this squad downwards.

Nobody with any semblance of reality has this team down as title winners but not being as good as Citeh, ‘pool or Arse isn’t an excuse for the shite EtH is serving.
 
This style of completely giving up all control in games and relying on turnovers to launch direct vertical attacks all game long can win matches, but never leagues. Add to that the fact that we manage to look likely to concede every time the opposition get the ball and it's absolutely pathetic. No patterns or style of build up when we have the ball and no semblance of a good rest defence when we lose it, what the feck do we even do in training besides Bruno just trying to find someone in the front 3 every time the ball comes to him?

We need to upgrade to a manager who can get these guys to actually play football.
 
OldRed1 said:
Like Moyes or Van Gaal or Mourinho or Solskjaer or Rangnick. All can be accused of the same thing, does that mean they are all rubbish?
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Obviously. :lol: Bizarre question.

They were all rubbish managers for us. Ole and Moyes have never had success and could never be top level managers. LVG hadnt been successful since Bayern 2010. Mourinho hasn't been successful since the Chelsea meltdown. Rangnick is a sporting director not a manager.

They all produced teams that were worse than the sum of their parts. Maybe with the exception of Ole's interim period but that was just new manager bounce + post-Mourinho jubilation.

Mourinho and Ole at least recognised their own deficiencies and that's why they relied so heavily on conservative systems and counterattacking. ETH is too deluded for that.
 
His stubbornness is baffling. We have been wide open through the midfield since day 1, except maybe in our draw at Anfield where we actually had two deep pivots. I think it is reasonable to expect a competent manager to adapt to the resources he has each game, each season. If Wolves, Bournemouth, Luton, Fulham even Newport can pepper chances at you with each attack easily, something is seriously wrong. It is no shame if we have to revert back to our shape last season to secure results, but EtH seems to have abandoned it.

Doesn’t seem to have a plan without his best players. He can’t expect Rashford to hold anything upfront. We have no leftback, yet our only natural fullback Dalot is tasked with inverting centrally. Our front 3 has to change positionally entirely with one player out, disrupting their flow. Forson over Amad or someone to just play a false 9 is questionable. Eriksen subbed on as the single pivot with the other two pushed high up is madness. No understanding of physicality needed in midfield as reflected in his signings. Seeing all these repeated signs, he is somehow hoping players ill suited to his system will adapt.

Casemiro when available is already struggling to hold his own in midfield. Without Martinez and Shaw, we lose our ability to knit the defence and attack? This is on the manager to adapt
 
Dr Foo said:
His stubbornness is baffling. We have been wide open through the midfield since day 1, except maybe in our draw at Anfield where we actually had two deep pivots. I think it is reasonable to expect a competent manager to adapt to the resources he has each game, each season. If Wolves, Bournemouth, Luton, Fulham even Newport can pepper chances at you with each attack easily, something is seriously wrong. It is no shame if we have to revert back to our shape last season to secure results, but EtH seems to have abandoned it.

Doesn’t seem to have a plan without his best players. He can’t expect Rashford to hold anything upfront. We have no leftback, yet our only natural fullback Dalot is tasked with inverting centrally. Our front 3 has to change positionally entirely with one player out, disrupting their flow. Forson over Amad or someone to just play a false 9 is questionable. Eriksen subbed on as the single pivot with the other two pushed high up is madness. No understanding of physicality needed in midfield as reflected in his signings. Seeing all these repeated signs, he is somehow hoping players ill suited to his system will adapt.

Casemiro when available is already struggling to hold his own in midfield. Without Martinez and Shaw, we lose our ability to knit the defence and attack? This is on the manager to adapt
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The truly embarrassing part is he’s been without Martinez & Shaw for a ridiculous amount of the season so not changing a tactic in the hopes of 2 injury prone players becoming less injury prone is genuinely one of the worst pieces of management we’ve seen post-Fergie.

Had he used the months where results were truly in the toilet to come up with a tactic that suits the squad instead of his ideals we’d be able to mitigate their benches a little easier, instead were the same team we were last March post Final. Crap.
 
OldRed1 said:
Like Moyes or Van Gaal or Mourinho or Solskjaer or Rangnick. All can be accused of the same thing, does that mean they are all rubbish?
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For being managers of manchester United with the aspirations of competing with Klopp and Pep? Yes, those managers are all rubbish and not good enough. They all had side issues from the club but it is also true that none have been good enough and were the wrong hires.
 
In Rainbows said:
I don't see why that matters. Many players were responsible for Fergie's triumphs. He still got rid when the time came.
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Not the same at all. SAF had unlimited goodwill and did way more for the club than any of the players he got rid of.

ETH has none whatsoever and people are quick to criticize players(who've done far more for the club than ETH) when they were responsible for saving ETH last season.
 
OldRed1 said:
Like Moyes or Van Gaal or Mourinho or Solskjaer or Rangnick. All can be accused of the same thing, does that mean they are all rubbish?
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They're all rubbish if we want to win the league.

All of them have amounted to nothing after United.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
Not the same at all. SAF had unlimited goodwill and did way more for the club than any of the players he got rid of.

ETH has none whatsoever and people are quick to criticize players(who've done far more for the club than ETH) when they were responsible for saving ETH last season.
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Fair.

I’m personally finding the blind backing of EtH distasteful. I understand a number of the squad should be burnt a5 the stake according to some fans but EtH has done very little to earn our fanbases backing & quite frankly his press conferences are a lesson in insulting our intelligence.

Bar Mainoo & Garnacho, I doubt many if any of this squad will be mainsta in the next good United side but with thats nt an excuse for EtH to play a tactic for a squad he doesn’t have for a year.
 
I do not believe we are this bad because of his coaching. I believe we are this good despite it. The man manages to do what klopp and pep were set out to do.
 
Nevilles.Wear.Prada said:
I do not believe we are this bad because of his coaching. I believe we are this good despite it. The man manages to do what klopp and pep were set out to do.
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Honestly never share your opinion again, it makes as much sense as your name, he can’t get the team to press because he hasn’t got a clue and the ETF out brigade have been saying he’s full of shit for a while now
 
There is nothing positive about him, just want him gone.

I want us to be ruthless in all departments, with players as well as managers when it us clearly not working well.
 
You can moan about injuries all you want but it's not a good look when Fulham can have missing starting players and look cohesive at Old Trafford. Guy hasn't done well enough on coaching the team, that's obvious at this point.

If I were INEOS, I'd be making a point to any prospective manager that any plans they come up with won't include the likes of Bruno and Rashford.
 
christy87 said:
Honestly never share your opinion again, it makes as much sense as your name, he can’t get the team to press because he hasn’t got a clue and the ETF out brigade have been saying he’s full of shit for a while now
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:lol:
 
NinjaZombie said:
You can moan about injuries all you want but it's not a good look when Fulham can have missing starting players and look cohesive at Old Trafford. Guy hasn't done well enough on coaching the team, that's obvious at this point.

If I were INEOS, I'd be making a point to any prospective manager that any plans they come up with won't include the likes of Bruno and Rashford.
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I honestly hate this injury narrative, as a United fan I remember beating Arsenal with the twins as our wingers and Gibson and o Shea in midfield, a real manager will get a tune out of anyone, ETF would struggle to get a tune out of the Wolfe tones on the day Ireland reunites
 
NinjaZombie said:
You can moan about injuries all you want but it's not a good look when Fulham can have missing starting players and look cohesive at Old Trafford. Guy hasn't done well enough on coaching the team, that's obvious at this point.

If I were INEOS, I'd be making a point to any prospective manager that any plans they come up with won't include the likes of Bruno and Rashford.
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I made this point in a post a few weeks back.

We are not playing peak Citeh at full strength every week. If you go through our games and just look into the teamsheets with a little depth it doesn’t take too long to come across examples like today where we were outplayed by teams with their own injury issues/suspensions.

Managers shouldn’t simply pick a system that doesn’t suit the squad they have & persist with the excuse, ‘It’ll all come good when you let me spend a billion’. He has not done enough to warrant continuing on with whatever it is he’s doing.
 
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He's the real b*ld fraud :(

I was expecting a lot more tactical nuance and flexibility from him - but his stubbornness on tactics is going to be his downfall.

He's not adapting his tactics for the limited options that he does have. I really want to give him time to come around but the last 3 months have been pretty eye-opening on how badly we adjust when we don't have the right players available for his rigid system
 
We lack athlete. Lindelof, Maguire, Casemiro, Eriksen, McT, Bruno, Varane-he scuttles around, and I know he's a multiple winner of well, everything, but he scuttles about now...it seems like all the teams we play have faster/stronger players than us. Lucic for Fulham today was Paulinha Jr. FFS. So done with most of this squad.
 
DownRiver said:
The last bit of hope from me was that we would get better with creating patterns of play if the team spent more time on the training pitch by having one game a week - lmaooo
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That has been point that hasn't really been explored in all of this: what we see in our weekly outing, is the sum total of a whole week's work, it alone tells you that the manager is incompatible with the squad - we've shown zero capability to control a game all season long. It's beyond grating.

What's worse, ten Hag has been given so many opportunities to address this due to the circumstances of the takeover that it compounds how bad it has been. Any other manager would have been sacked thrice over, so he has messed up, messed up again, and again, and continues to do so, without consequence. What was hoped to happen is that he'd finally turn it around and get a tune out of the team, but the reality is he's removed any last doubt about his aptitude and competence for the job.

You do not need your best xi to play cohesive football, especially against the likes of Fulham, and even more so when their already threadbare squad is itself being tested in the absence of their own key player. There are no excuses for how bad we are with what we have at our disposal, even with Martinez, Shaw and Hojlund out - Fulham would kill to have the remnants of the leftover squad, as would the vast majority of teams who have made mugs of us this season.
 
It's weird. Normally when a bigger team can't beat a lesser team, they usually draw. But in our case, if we can't win, we will just lose most of the time.
When it's 1-1 with 9 added minutes, for some reason I just know the score won't stay like that. Either we win or we lose.
Is it something with the team mentality? Imagine if we could just hold on to a draw for half of our losses, we would be in a much better position for the top 4 race.
 
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