Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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His subs this season in general have been awful but that was something indeed. Also bringing on Kambwala a 19 year old centre back for Evans and then moving the entire defence around to play him at right back.

That reshuffle made perfect sense. Lindelof and Varane were the best central defensive pairing available after Evans got injured and Dalot is a competent left back. Playing Kambwala on the left would have been madness and we had no other defensive options available.
 
It was a plan for sure. Spurs played City in the cup and went toe to toe, Ange and his team werent afraid. Sure we couldnt really do that with our defense. But as a plan goes it was the most basic and we had no way of getting a foothold in the game. His subs as ever are woeful, he keep Anand in the window only to let him rot on the bench. Amrabat, who he chased all summer, just awful. His interviews are embarrassing for the club at this point
We don't have the squad to handle injuries, and Amrabat was a loan dumpster dive. If you think he goes for Amrabat with an actual budget to hand then that's probably a bit naieve. Our issue is that we never had good recruitment, and that predates ten hag.
 
I never compared them. I’m just asking the poster who said that finishing bottom of our CL group was a sackable offence on its own, if he’d extend that same logic to Sir Alex who did so twice with a much better side. Or do you look at the context (transition and injuries) and allow them to see the job through?

Fergie had been here for 19 years when he got eliminated in CL groups, it was the first time he was knocked out in groups as well and we had been competing there since 1996-97 without pause. It's really not comparable with ETH who has achieved virtually nothing here and has zero credit in the bank.

I don't think injuries can really excuse going out from that group. It'd be one thing if we were paired with decent, tough teams but we basically had the easiest group imaginable with two absolutely Conference League teams in Copenhagen and Galatasaray. To only win 4 points out of 12 against them is ridiculous even with 3-4 first team players out.
 
Not sure calling something a disaster is a ringing endorsement.

Your obsession with making excuses on the other hand is embarrassing.
Missing a lot of key players isn't really an excuse. We were expected to lose yesterday and we lost. I don't need to excuse anything.

But mindlessly comparing across seasons without context is pretty in form for you. I don't need to continue on the debate though, @BenitoSTARR already addressed all of your points but you keep moaning like a broken record.
 
That reshuffle made perfect sense. Lindelof and Varane were the best central defensive pairing available after Evans got injured and Dalot is a competent left back. Playing Kambwala on the left would have been madness and we had no other defensive options available.

I don't think there was much choice. Evans was finished - he'd been racking up mistakes in the preceding ten minutes or so. And if you have to make the change, like you say there isn't much else he can do. Well, there's Amrabat, but Kambwala on the right is a safer bet than Amrabat on the left.
 
Yes, because Moyes and Dyche together have won more trophies that EtH?

You honestly think Moyes couldn’t win that tin cup Dutch league with Ajax? fecking de Boer did that and he got sacked because Palace thought he was a downgrade from Sam Allardyce.
 
I was just thinking that, fans seem to forget that SAF used this tactic even after years building a squad.

The worse one to mind was after we drew 4-4 against Everton. Away to city the next week and Ferguson (understandably) went Uber cautious as our team had blown a 4-2 lead. All we needed to do was not lose that game and city beat us 1-0 but in reality it could have been 5 and we never looked like getting anything out of that game. City went on to win the league and the rest is history.

ETH tactics were not the problem last night.
 
He's not the answer. Like someone said on another post, good manager but not a great one. And we need a great one. I can only imagine that they're waiting for the end of the season when they have a qualified substitute in place to give him the slip.
 
I don't think there was much choice. Evans was finished - he'd been racking up mistakes in the preceding ten minutes or so. And if you have to make the change, like you say there isn't much else he can do. Well, there's Amrabat, but Kambwala on the right is a safer bet than Amrabat on the left.

Exactly. MOTD did an analysis on the two benches. Ours was astonishingly crap/inexperienced compared to City. As soon as we made any substitution we were going to weaken our team. And the more we had to make the worse we were going to get. Which is exactly how it panned out.
 
He's not the answer. Like someone said on another post, good manager but not a great one. And we need a great one. I can only imagine that they're waiting for the end of the season when they have a qualified substitute in place to give him the slip.

As will Munich, Liverpool, Barcelona.

Maybe Real Madrid and Chelsea
 
That reshuffle made perfect sense. Lindelof and Varane were the best central defensive pairing available after Evans got injured and Dalot is a competent left back. Playing Kambwala on the left would have been madness and we had no other defensive options available.

Normally I'd agree but we went to shit as soon as the change was made. I imagine the defence had trained all week on stopping City and were doing a decent job of it until they all swapped positions around. It might have been worth a punt to keep everyone where they were and just stick Kambwala at CB, which is his natural position after all.
 
The worse one to mind was after we drew 4-4 against Everton. Away to city the next week and Ferguson (understandably) went Uber cautious as our team had blown a 4-2 lead. All we needed to do was not lose that game and city beat us 1-0 but in reality it could have been 5 and we never looked like getting anything out of that game. City went on to win the league and the rest is history.

ETH tactics were not the problem last night.

As others have mentioned here, explain how Bournemouth, Spurs gave City a game but we couldn't.

Also mentioned is that Ferguson didn't completely fold on the possession battle when playing pragmatically either. He had players with good workrate like Park and Rooney harassing them for the ball, we let them stroll the ball all the way to the edge of our box and let them prod and poke for 90 mins. That's not sustainable and you are going to concede multiple goals if that's your strategy.

It's not good enough, go out fighting if your going to go out (which regardless of manager yesterday was pretty likely all things considered).
 
I do not feel comfortable with the amount of excusing that points to Ferguson apparently doing similar / worse job or whatever. We don't owe nearly enough to ETH to wipe the floor with Fergie to protect him.
 
I know one thing; i am sick to death of managers with "fast transition style". First Ole and now Erik are using that phrase and it is basically excuse for not being capable to build dominant playing style.
Fast transition style = sit deep, give possession to other team and play on counters.
Fast transition should be just one small part of style which you play. City, Liverpool and Arsenal do that but only when they have a chance for it. The rest of game they dominate in possession.
I said many times already; only LVG had clear and modern plan how to play football. All other managers brought small club mentality. It really pisses me off how last 7,8 years we play every single big game as underdogs.

Poch and Chelsea are a meme this year but at least they try to play football against City, Arsenal and Liverpool. Our approach is pathetic in those games.
 
Normally I'd agree but we went to shit as soon as the change was made. I imagine the defence had trained all week on stopping City and were doing a decent job of it until they all swapped positions around. It might have been worth a punt to keep everyone where they were and just stick Kambwala at CB, which is his natural position after all.

Lindelof was getting rinsed by Foden at left back. You could have made a case for getting Dalot across to LB even if Evans wasn’t injured. But when he did go off it was a no brainer to use that enforced change as an opportunity to get Dalot across to the left. And there’s no question that Varane + Lindelof is a superior CB partnership to Varane + Kwambala.
 
You honestly think Moyes couldn’t win that tin cup Dutch league with Ajax? fecking de Boer did that and he got sacked because Palace thought he was a downgrade from Sam Allardyce.

Not feeling the whole 'he achieved miracles at Ajax' vibe either. They were underachieving in the league since De Boer but were still consistently finishing 2nd/3rd and just reached an EL final a month before he joined. They also have a higher budget than PSV and Feyenoord combined, they are not minnows.
 
For what it's worth, his post match comments for me are worse than the tactics and performance (which was the only way I expected us to set up). I honestly preferred Moyes' comments after City in 2014 and they were perceived as terrible at the time.
 
Missing a lot of key players isn't really an excuse. We were expected to lose yesterday and we lost. I don't need to excuse anything.

But mindlessly comparing across seasons without context is pretty in form for you. I don't need to continue on the debate though, @BenitoSTARR already addressed all of your points but you keep moaning like a broken record.
It was just an interesting statistic. No need to get so wound up about it.

The only broken record (apart from those Ten Hag keeps making) is you lot who blame injuries for everything.
 
I do not feel comfortable with the amount of excusing that points to Ferguson apparently doing similar / worse job or whatever. We don't owe nearly enough to ETH to wipe the floor with Fergie to protect him.

Are you special or something? We are talking about tactics played by our football club and maybe even pointing out that some posters in here only remember the trophies not the days we used to dig in.
 
I do not feel comfortable with the amount of excusing that points to Ferguson apparently doing similar / worse job or whatever. We don't owe nearly enough to ETH to wipe the floor with Fergie to protect him.

It's ridiculous. Even when Ferguson set up in a defensive way, there was still a plan to break. Still a set up to counter punch.

After 30 mins yesterday we offered nothing. 2 shots is absolutely pathetic. The notion that this was some robust, Ferguson like defensive display when we conceded 27 shots is delusional.
 
He’s absolutely awful. He’s been as disappointing as Sancho. Yes we have injuries and a poor squad but he is partly culpable for that. And the team set up and selection is entirely on him.

Embarrassing is over used on here but yesterday was. Along with several other performances this year.

Dead man walking.
 
For what it's worth, his post match comments for me are worse than the tactics and performance (which was the only way I expected us to set up). I honestly preferred Moyes' comments after City in 2014 and they were perceived as terrible at the time.

I've not watched it, but it can't be worse than the "we aspire to be like them" with a team that had won the EPL the season before? Can it?
 
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It was just an interesting statistic. No need to get so wound up about it.

The only broken record (apart from those Ten Hag keeps making) is you lot who blame injuries for everything.
I'm not blaming injuries for every little bit, and have often enough come out and explained places where ten hag was wrong.

But it's more how you bury your head in the sand whenever looking at the injury situation which I find astounding. Throwing out irrelevant stats just to drive a silly agenda isn't healthy, that's all.
 
It's ridiculous. Even when Ferguson set up in a defensive way, there was still a plan to break. Still a set up to counter punch.

After 30 mins yesterday we offered nothing. 2 shots is absolutely pathetic. The notion that this was some robust, Ferguson like defensive display when we conceded 27 shots is delusional.
True. Having the same idea as SAF in a similar situation is absolutely fine and I wouldn't complain about this approach to the match. But you have to be able to pull it off.
 
Definitely going to be moved on in the summer.

The absolute classic 2 years of a post Fergie United manager. Positive 1st season followed by a horrendously disappointing 2nd.
 
He’s absolutely awful. He’s been as disappointing as Sancho. Yes we have injuries and a poor squad but he is partly culpable for that. And the team set up and selection is entirely on him.

Embarrassing is over used on here but yesterday was. Along with several other performances this year.

Dead man walking.

Yes walks around injuring players, onana and Casemiro was the only players he's purchased. Evans on free was because of ffp
 
Are you special or something? We are talking about tactics played by our football club and maybe even pointing out that some posters in here only remember the trophies not the days we used to dig in.
It's not about tactics, it's perfectly fine to go defensive in an one off game where the occasion suits it. Most managers have done it at one point or another. Yesterday does not bother me.

It's coming up with an excuse for every single ETH failure by digging one particular moment that occurred during Fergie's 27-year reign here that resembled it in any way. Finished bottom of a horrible CL group? Yeah, there was this one time it happened to Fergie. Got dominated by Fulham at home? Happened to Fergie as well when he lost to Middlesbrough or Blackburn at OT. Lost 7-0 to Liverpool? Are you forgetting how Fergie lost 6-1 at home to City?

He's basically compressed all Fergie's worst moments from his successful years into one season and we are now here pretending it's all acceptable somehow.
 
:lol: Right, these two here are both numbers and one is bigger than the other so obviously I can compare them.
Stop acting clever.
It show the disparity of how things are.

City had 74% of possession. 74%. We had 26% does that makes you feel okay?


Something I am 100% sure is, ETH has never had 74% possession in his time at United against any other opponents. Bring here any game which United have had 74% possession against any other team..

Also bring any other game which Man United has had more shots on target than the opponents ball possession?

Also a simple question which nobody has ever answered me in here

  • How comes all this things happen against us only?
  • How comes we never have games which we have 74% possession against our big rivals?
  • How comes against Liverpool we faced a record 34 shots on target, against City 27 shots @Etihad, 21 shots against City @home this season... (Leave alone the 7-0, 6-3 goals of last season)

People have been conditioned to accept mediocrity, till anything else is deemed wrong.

As I said, as delusional as ETH is some fans here are delusional as him or even more. Pure shambles
 
Yesterday was some low moment even in ETH standards..

More shot on targets on us than our ball possession :D you can't make this shit up
4th division Newport were able to jog through our midfield and reach the edge of our box as well. They had 17 shots and 2 goals. Just as an example. We are terrible at defending spaces in general. This derby wasn’t worse then anything else we have served up under Erik. These things happen when we play a quality side.
 
So a lot of our fans are bastards, hmm well I’m not one of those but I have been called one and far worse.
I do know that a lot of our players are lazy useless “bastards”.
Jon Snow does support United!
 
Yesterday was some low moment even in ETH standards..

More shot on targets on us than our ball possession :D you can't make this shit up

I would argue that our loss to City at home earlier this year was miuch worse.

At least - by some minor miracle - we were in this game for almost an hour.
 
I would argue that our loss to City at home earlier this year was miuch worse.

At least - by some minor miracle - we were in this game for almost an hour.

Yeah they at least had to play until final whistle yesterday and were not winning until late. At OT they basically stopped playing after an hour and should have still won 7-0.
 
It's not about tactics, it's perfectly fine to go defensive in an one off game where the occasion suits it. Most managers have done it at one point or another. Yesterday does not bother me.

It's coming up with an excuse for every single ETH failure by digging one particular moment that occurred during Fergie's 27-year reign here that resembled it in any way. Finished bottom of a horrible CL group? Yeah, there was this one time it happened to Fergie. Got dominated by Fulham at home? Happened to Fergie as well when he lost to Middlesbrough or Blackburn at OT. Lost 7-0 to Liverpool? Are you forgetting how Fergie lost 6-1 at home to City?

He's basically compressed all Fergie's worst moments from his successful years into one season and we are now here pretending it's all acceptable somehow.
Agreed 100%. Also there were times under Fergie where we simply hadn't signed the players to control the midfield, which forced us at times to be more defensive, especially post the Glazers. But that was really against the likes of Barca, it wasnt evert match against the top 4 teams. His refusal/ inability to replace Scholes was a glaring hole, he made a succession of awful midfield signings. He refused to sanction the agents fee for Hazard, he bizarrely turned down David Silva.

But ETH seems now to view this deep block as his go to strategy in big matches. Its either that or be wide open. THere is no middle ground
 
It's not about tactics, it's perfectly fine to go defensive in an one off game where the occasion suits it. Most managers have done it at one point or another. Yesterday does not bother me.

It's coming up with an excuse for every single ETH failure by digging one particular moment that occurred during Fergie's 27-year reign here that resembled it in any way. Finished bottom of a horrible CL group? Yeah, there was this one time it happened to Fergie. Got dominated by Fulham at home? Happened to Fergie as well when he lost to Middlesbrough or Blackburn at OT. Lost 7-0 to Liverpool? Are you forgetting how Fergie lost 6-1 at home to City?

He's basically compressed all Fergie's worst moments from his successful years into one season and we are now here pretending it's all acceptable somehow.

I was there for 6-1 horrible game,
It's not about tactics, it's perfectly fine to go defensive in an one off game where the occasion suits it. Most managers have done it at one point or another. Yesterday does not bother me.

It's coming up with an excuse for every single ETH failure by digging one particular moment that occurred during Fergie's 27-year reign here that resembled it in any way. Finished bottom of a horrible CL group? Yeah, there was this one time it happened to Fergie. Got dominated by Fulham at home? Happened to Fergie as well when he lost to Middlesbrough or Blackburn at OT. Lost 7-0 to Liverpool? Are you forgetting how Fergie lost 6-1 at home to City?

He's basically compressed all Fergie's worst moments from his successful years into one season and we are now here pretending it's all acceptable somehow.

SAF third year, lost 5-1 to city and we had banners calling for his head. He at the time walked into a club that was a sh*t show at that time - I was very young.

The 7-0 was last season and the lowest champions league group was this season - but I get what you mean - it's not acceptable how this team is playing, but what would you do?

I view it as a process it takes time, sadly I don't think this is the low low point just yet.
 
Stop acting clever.
It show the disparity of how things are.

City had 74% of possession. 74%. We had 26% does that makes you feel okay?


Something I am 100% sure is, ETH has never had 74% possession in his time at United against any other opponents. Bring here any game which United have had 74% possession against any other team..

Also bring any other game which Man United has had more shots on target than the opponents ball possession?

Also a simple question which nobody has ever answered me in here

  • How comes all this things happen against us only?
  • How comes we never have games which we have 74% possession against our big rivals?
  • How comes against Liverpool we faced a record 34 shots on target, against City 27 shots @Etihad, 21 shots against City @home this season... (Leave alone the 7-0, 6-3 goals of last season)

People have been conditioned to accept mediocrity, till anything else is deemed wrong.

As I said, as delusional as ETH is some fans here are delusional as him or even more. Pure shambles

Sure, and the underlying point - that we were basically crap - is of course correct. But come on. He's comparing a finite number of something with a percentage of something else. Just because the latter is normally a bigger number than the former, that doesn't change the fact that this is literally a meaningless juxtaposition. The moral of the story: If you want to take the mickey out of the opposition, don't do it in a way that takes the mickey out of yourself.
 
Yeah they at least had to play until final whistle yesterday and were not winning until late. At OT they basically stopped playing after an hour and should have still won 7-0.
It would not be acceptable to set up at OT in the way we did yesterday.
 
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