Another defeat and another team stating how their plan worked, detailing how exactly they were to beat us at home.
ETH has no plan and is the easiest manager to set up against. Changing playing staff isn’t going to change his failing approach.
Needs to go now if we want European football in any form next season.
It is unprecedented the amount of teams that have played us this season and have matter of factly stated how they went about dismantling us, and it is said with such clarity that there is no doubt whatsoever we've been turned over by superior tactics, planning and execution, often with players far, far inferior and less regarded than our own.
Post-game it should always be a strong topic of conversation; the word embarrassing has been misused on the Internet for as long as I can remember, but when supposed inferior coaches and players are able to state with such certitude how they have found themselves winning against you, it's a disgrace and an embarrassment.
Ole got absolutely pilloried for the final run that led to his sacking, with the likes of Troy Deeney declaring, in this same great detail, how and why they beat us, yet we're seeing it so often now, it barely warrants discussion amongst the fanbase.
It's one thing to lose games once in a while, it's a wholly different thing when teams play against you with conviction and certainty of purpose because they feel they have you sussed and have a collective, tactical goal to hammer home. Lesser teams than yourself should never have such overwhelming collective confidence in making you crack, or in outright out-strategising you. Sure, they may win on the crest of a wave and in-game flow, but their first priority should be staying in the game and the second, avoiding a demoralising tonking. Look at how teams approach those in the top 4 and even the collective shock they have when they get anything out of those games and contrast it to us. Manchester United are viewed as a team they can play and have genuine hope against, and with how often our dire midfield set up is strolled through compared to other sides, you can see where that well of belief and conviction or sense of purpose teams have when they play us comes from.
I don't even wish to cite the halcyon days of Fergie, where teams absolutely feared a pasting from us, rather, you can look to even LVG, Mourinho and even Ole (before the wheels came off) and see that standards and expectations are rock bottom now.
Under LVG, for as boring and staid as the football could have been called, teams getting the ball of us or having any concerted period of time with it was utterly exasperating and demoralising for them. He might have bored our fans to death, but he also absolutely crushed the spirit of the opposition, particularly fodder.
Mourinho and his rubbish, bruiser boy football made games about attrition and hardship, putting opposing teams through the grinder (oo err); it took genuine quality and superiority to beat us then.
Ole's teams were basic but without a smirk, one of the best counter-attacking teams in Europe, let alone the league. You could know exactly what we set out to do in Ole's first two seasons and still not be able to stop it. We carried a clear and apparent threat and there was little to be done to stop it.
Fast forward to now? We aren't good at anything. The vaunted pressing data that stops only at the initial press but omits the fallout and yawning chasms in midfield it causes counts for nothing - if your biggest so-called strength is an inlet to your biggest weaknesses, it is categorically not a strength. We cannot defend set pieces; we are dire at attacking set pieces; we do not control games and we do not have an overabundance of supplying the frontline, further, we rely on individual brilliance at a higher rate than Ole did, something Ole was absolutely dragged through the coals for.
Not one of the managers post-Fergie has been good enough or complete, but this is par with Moyes for zero discernible strengths and an abundance of weaknesses.
Ten Hag was quite infamous for vastly overplaying his first xi at Ajax, so much so it was the biggest warning Ajax supporters gave us. What seems to have happened here is that in the absence of a strongest xi, the manager is lost at sea - if everything is not functioning to the wire with optimum efficiency, he doesn't know what to do and cannot use viable workarounds, which sees us doggedly sticking to 'the plan' because without it, at it's optimal best, there's nothing. It's such a letdown.
The conceptualisation of the "modern manager" is someone who is eclectic with contingencies for most things and a clever counter plan prepared in advance should the initial one be breached - you certainly should not hear of opposing players and managers stating how easy it was to do their thing against them. The biggest surprise and letdown of ten Hag's tenure for me is that he has been the antithesis of modernisation, entrenched and unadaptible as he is. By now, there is only Moyes who it might be argue has been more outcoached than ten Hag. Never in my life did I think I'd ever say that about an appointment I was so eager for.
It's like Black Mirror episode by now. You don't need to look beyond the pitch to see this is not and will not be the guy.
We’re finally here we’re finally at the point where we have to explain why a win is handy.
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