I have to agree. It seems Ole wouldnt listen to Carrick and McKenna when they wanted to evolve a more expansive style of play which is a shame. But overall football was better, even if not by much. ETH has spent a fortune and we are now worse than when he joined. Takes some doing
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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We scored a brilliant goal out of the blue and were then forced to defend our box for the rest of the game. Competitive and well drilled just doesn't cut it for me. We need to offer so much more.
He also has the worst loss rate and worst GD of our previous post Fergie managers.
Ole scored the most goals, LVG had the most possession and Mourinho got the most points and trophies.
Perhaps if firing a manager is poor decision making we shouldn't have fired either of those three, because they had a favourable statistic against the other managers.
Agreed. Its embarassing that people post this stuff. I need to be careful with what I say, but I wonder how long people have watched United, have they played any football or understand the game. ETH spent £400m mainly on his selected players, he was meant to be the next big thing, and after 18 months all he can do is get us to sit in a super deep block and lob it long on the break. When we tried in second half we simply couldnt get out of half. The thing is I doubt its much better with Martinez, Shaw and Hojlund there. We had his first choice midfield and 2 out 3 first choice strikers. Our back 4 have close to 280 caps or so between them... this is not the united way or what this club is about. its not acceptable
You ask how many people watch and understand this game before then saying Ten Hag specifically spent £400m and got his own players in, without being aware of the structure we have or the targets or basically anything in the recruitment obstacles.
Nice work, really, keep it up.
He has the demeanour of a man who knows he’s gone.
The wins we’ve had have been mostly unconvincing, involving late comebacks, poor 1st halfs followed by amazing 2nd halfs and spending large periods of matches on the ropes despite winning. Look at all the shots at goal we’re conceding game by game regardless of whether it’s Newport County or Man City.
Enough with the cult of manager stuff. It really isn’t as simple as blindly giving someone ample time to figure it out. Ferguson wasn’t just some random run of the mill manager. He beat Real Madrid and Bayern Munich to a European trophy with Aberdeen of all teams, and is still the last guy to take the Scottish League trophy outside of Glasgow over 40 years on. He was the GOAT manager.
The wins we’ve had have been mostly unconvincing, involving late comebacks, poor 1st halfs followed by amazing 2nd halfs and spending large periods of matches on the ropes despite winning. Look at all the shots at goal we’re conceding game by game regardless of whether it’s Newport County or Man City.
Enough with the cult of manager stuff. It really isn’t as simple as blindly giving someone ample time to figure it out. Ferguson wasn’t just some random run of the mill manager. He beat Real Madrid and Bayern Munich to a European trophy with Aberdeen of all teams, and is still the last guy to take the Scottish League trophy outside of Glasgow over 40 years on. He was the GOAT manager.
Fun fact: we had less possession (26%) than they had shots (27)
We should have used that opportunity to go for the kill, City were rattled and even misplacing passes for moments after the goal, but we did nothing to capitalise.
I actually think the opposite. He seems very confident to me, like a man who has been assured he will keep his job for the considerable future regardless of results (which I think he will BTW, I got him as completely safe).
Unbelievable that people are still backing a manager that sends us out to make a game against our rivals look like a training match.
It's humiliating. You have to try and cause problems for the opposition, not just go out to camp out in your own box for most of the game.
This isn't just against City or Liverpool, we're doing this against nearly every team but sometimes get away with it because our players aren't actually as bad as a lot of people think.
Absolutely rancid management, can't believe he's still here.
It's humiliating. You have to try and cause problems for the opposition, not just go out to camp out in your own box for most of the game.
This isn't just against City or Liverpool, we're doing this against nearly every team but sometimes get away with it because our players aren't actually as bad as a lot of people think.
Absolutely rancid management, can't believe he's still here.
He's obviously gone in the summer.
The problem is that there's no obvious replacement.
No manager goes into their last year of contract feeling safe. If hes not in talks for a contract extension that are progressing and done before this season ends there's no other outcome.
This is such a poor narrowminded viewpoint, especially considering we also have lower rankings in so many other metrics.
Ole's team at their peak would be more than capable of beating this team and comfortably so.
Mourinho's team would frustrate them to death as attacking coordination, and breaking down opposition has been ETH teams' biggest weakness.
Heck vs a LVG team they'd struggle as they're so poor with possession, they simply wouldn't have the ball.
That's not true. Some do. Christian Streich does it for a decade now. But that's a rare exception, not the norm, I agree with that
Is this our starting 11? Hojlund for Antony probably.
7 of them started the game yesterday.
1 came from the bench. That's 8 players.
That's 72% of the starting 11 were available for the game yesterday.
Remove Mount add Mainoo then it comes to around 9 players give or take.
Injury issues is not the main problem we have now.
We genuinely are missing Hojlund, Martinez, Shaw only from that starting 11.
7 of them started the game yesterday.
1 came from the bench. That's 8 players.
That's 72% of the starting 11 were available for the game yesterday.
Remove Mount add Mainoo then it comes to around 9 players give or take.
Injury issues is not the main problem we have now.
We genuinely are missing Hojlund, Martinez, Shaw only from that starting 11.
I do find it quite hard to believe he's got as many defenders left. We're still so far off. Even with our best team, we've flattered to deceive more often than not. Granted we haven't seen it very often, but thats just life. We've not seen a style or anything implemented throughout the squad, and to me that's so disappointing nearly two years in.
Yeah but Martinez is actually worth 10 players. So ETH has been operating with 12 of his 11 starters out.
I believe that the praising of our first half-defence is grossly overestimated.
For instance :-
1. Haaland misses an open goal from a couple of yards away.
2. Foden misses a 1-on-1 with the nearest defender nowhere to be seen
A great defensive performance does not factor in the above and still retain its strength of argumentation. We are a freakish miss and an Onana heroic away from the defence being criticised for being poor in the first half and a two goals conceded.
This. It's not one or the other.
fair enoughI mean, injuries are part of football. A manager's job is to, well, manage. I'm sure Ole, Mourinho etc would all argue that if their best 11 was fit they would have beat XYZ. The times we've had our best 11 fit this season the performances were hardly champagne football.
I took a look, just out of curiosity, and under Ten Hag in the league we've only ever scored 3 or more goals 10 times. Under Mourinho we did it 19 times and under Ole we did it 30 times. Sure score lines don't always reflect the football, but that's a considerable difference.
I mean, you can be convinced other managers would struggle. However, the assertion that "no manager would have succeeded" is not rooted in reality. Again, Ten Hag hasn't at any point in his career been among the best in his profession.
I think he will get 2 or 3 extra years very soon with assurances from the club that we trust him.
The fact that we are then also missing their understudies (Martial, Malacia, Maguire) is quite important though. We had a player playing completely out of position and had no real option but to play a false 9.
No chance in hell. You have to be showing more, especially under the circumstances of new owners, with new ideas, wanting to make a impact and change the course of the ship. Said it before, only thing saving him is winning the league. He's done here.
When Shaw and Martinez play, our ball control improves a lot, so Ten Hag should have wisely spent 400M on recruiting more players in that mould.
Not having proper structure at the club and silly deals approved by Richard/John didn't help it either, so all are in this.
Agreed that injuries didn't help this year but most of his signings are still got question marks hanging around them.
It feels pain to see 700M spent by Ole/ETH and we are still talking about signing more than 7/8 players to put up a decent fight.
I don't think ETH is a bad manager (he also won UEFA award for best football played with Ajax) but the more I see him "he was like a big fish in the small pond at Ajax" but the pressure of being UTD manager is not easy especially lot of this is his own doings like signing players by his choice.
We can talk all day about the his/club mistakes but only way forward is "hoping the new management team fix the recruitment as a starting point".
Not having proper structure at the club and silly deals approved by Richard/John didn't help it either, so all are in this.
Agreed that injuries didn't help this year but most of his signings are still got question marks hanging around them.
It feels pain to see 700M spent by Ole/ETH and we are still talking about signing more than 7/8 players to put up a decent fight.
I don't think ETH is a bad manager (he also won UEFA award for best football played with Ajax) but the more I see him "he was like a big fish in the small pond at Ajax" but the pressure of being UTD manager is not easy especially lot of this is his own doings like signing players by his choice.
We can talk all day about the his/club mistakes but only way forward is "hoping the new management team fix the recruitment as a starting point".
Yeah, tragic is the right way to describe it. Just about everybody went into this expecting a demolition job which says it all. We aren't remotely competitive, despite the time and investment that has gone into building this side. It's not working and hasn't been for a while.
While mathematically still possible, I don't think we are winning the league.
That's a really bizarre thing to think. Reckon you're just spiralling and imagining the absolute worst case scenario.
Same. I think he'll get next season for sure
It's almost like we are being praised because it wasn't 6 or 7. Even mainstream media were complimentary about our "performance" yesterday. Frightening stuff. We were no better than a "well organised" midtable/struggling to survive side.
Obviously those players who were missing are better than their replacements who played yesterday. Though I agree with you that they probably wouldn't have made a great deal of difference. This is simply due to there being no real plan to compete with these teams, other than to park the bus and hope for the best. A few years ago, we used to dominate possession against any team in the league, bar the top 4 or 5 sides more or less. Nowadays, we still get destroyed by the top sides, but the games against everyone else are a 50/50 fight for control.
I don't think our performance at Anfield was world's apart from that yesterday and I don't mean that as a compliment.
times scoring 3 or more goals in all comps looks something like this:
Mourinho - 32 times
Ole - 49 times
Ten Hag - 23 times
Then Ineos and Ratcliffe should be fired into the fecking sun.
I'm sick to death of us playing like a little team. How are we supposed to compete with these teams if we don't value possession? I see no plan in terms of trying to change that. The thought of Liverpool or Arsenal playing City and only having 27% of the ball is genuinely laughable.
We played at walking pace for most of the game, in other games when we attack our forward players are static waiting for the ball, there is hardly any interchanging of positions to move defenders around. Is this team well coached, absolutely not. The players look unfit, have little idea of what they should be doing. When we do get in front we immediately try and defend especially in the last 15 minutes of games. ETH always goes into defensive mode and takes attacking players off.
This notion of giving abject failure yet another season, just to 'find out' whether this one was an anomaly or not is just absurd. The only managers who warrant that are the ones with massive amount of credit in the bank at said club and enough about what they do to both hang your hat on for the future and also leave reasonable doubt that the calamity is the anomaly and not the mean.
You don't get to tank something and act like it never happened. Even if you stay on, the investigation into the hows and whys of why you got that extra time leaves those who vouch for you with their own heads on the chopping block should you fail. Again.
This thread is a very interesting read which touches on so many different aspects of why people do what they do that it's bonkers - people who happily tear into players and write them off or pointedly declare how long ago such and such was hot property turn around and cite ten Hag of 2019-2021 for performance and why things can and will turn around.
Unless you left of your own accord to fanfare, 2021 is an eon ago in managerial terms. Managers have been touted, appointed and binned off in that period of time and the credentials that got them to that stage poo-poo'd. Whether right or wrong, that's the game, and rarely have any turned it around elsewhere. The 2021 batch are mostly in a worse place now than then, akin to how players like Sancho, Dembele and Camavinga are not regarded in the same way they were then.
Indeed, ten Hag's own Ajax sides have only De Jong regarded the same now as then, and even that's not true as FDJ was one of the hottest things in the game back then. Point is, things and times change and what was is not necessarily what is anymore. Pointing out what Ajax did almost 5yrs ago etc. serves no purpose in the here and now, and it's tragic the amount of times that's brought up now. Half a decade. Stahp.
Ten Hag looks to have massively lost his way and his confidence here. Abandoning his principles has led to ruin, rubbish football and a lot of doubt that didn't exist until he ushered it in. What's more of a concern than anything else is there being no signs at all that he can right the ship. The football shows no signs of change or improvement despite there being a week between our games. How can anything be drilled and not processed over such an extended period of time? I've asked if we are uncoachable in its on thread. Plenty reject the notion, yet we see nothing to suggest we're doing A1 work between games.
This season should never been written off in the first place; overspilling that into a fresh, new season would be gross negligence, as things stand. We're at the stage now where next season has to be at the forefront of everything. Boxing this calamity up, compressing it and blasting it into space should be the order of the day... or should it?
You don't get to tank something and act like it never happened. Even if you stay on, the investigation into the hows and whys of why you got that extra time leaves those who vouch for you with their own heads on the chopping block should you fail. Again.
This thread is a very interesting read which touches on so many different aspects of why people do what they do that it's bonkers - people who happily tear into players and write them off or pointedly declare how long ago such and such was hot property turn around and cite ten Hag of 2019-2021 for performance and why things can and will turn around.
Unless you left of your own accord to fanfare, 2021 is an eon ago in managerial terms. Managers have been touted, appointed and binned off in that period of time and the credentials that got them to that stage poo-poo'd. Whether right or wrong, that's the game, and rarely have any turned it around elsewhere. The 2021 batch are mostly in a worse place now than then, akin to how players like Sancho, Dembele and Camavinga are not regarded in the same way they were then.
Indeed, ten Hag's own Ajax sides have only De Jong regarded the same now as then, and even that's not true as FDJ was one of the hottest things in the game back then. Point is, things and times change and what was is not necessarily what is anymore. Pointing out what Ajax did almost 5yrs ago etc. serves no purpose in the here and now, and it's tragic the amount of times that's brought up now. Half a decade. Stahp.
Ten Hag looks to have massively lost his way and his confidence here. Abandoning his principles has led to ruin, rubbish football and a lot of doubt that didn't exist until he ushered it in. What's more of a concern than anything else is there being no signs at all that he can right the ship. The football shows no signs of change or improvement despite there being a week between our games. How can anything be drilled and not processed over such an extended period of time? I've asked if we are uncoachable in its on thread. Plenty reject the notion, yet we see nothing to suggest we're doing A1 work between games.
This season should never been written off in the first place; overspilling that into a fresh, new season would be gross negligence, as things stand. We're at the stage now where next season has to be at the forefront of everything. Boxing this calamity up, compressing it and blasting it into space should be the order of the day... or should it?
We also conceded like three huge chances in just that half. We were hardly a Mourinho-Chelsea esque fortress at the back
Regardless of results and underwhelming performances, there is a fundamental difference between Ten Hag determining incoming and outgoing transfers, and the INEOS model in which the recruitment team have responsibility for transfers, while the coach focuses on coaching the first team. How is this going to be resolved in a way that allows INEOS to give Ten Hag a new contract ?
Does Ten Hag say in private conversations with INEOS that his transfers have been a disaster and he is content for someone else to make transfer decisions in future ?
Do INEOS give in and accept that Ten Hag will continue to be in charge of transfers despite the Antony fiasco ?
When looking at that game, the real question is, if it was an FA Cup game and it was Shrewsbury or Carlisle instead of us, would you actually be completely shocked by how well they performed?
I wouldn't, scored a wonder goal, defended with 11 men without creating anything, City missed chance after chance before eventually sealing the game.
What worries me is his quotes back in November(?) about not being able to play the way Ajax played here. Looking back at some of his biggest Ajax games and not one did they not have the majority of the ball and control the game.
So what’s stopping him from doing it here? Is it the players? The league? That’s why we all wanted him here, to play the football that he implemented at Ajax. If it’s the players, he’s had over £300m spent, why is he nowhere near being able to play that football? Conceding 20+ shots to the likes of Luton is mental.
If it’s the league then maybe he isn’t up to scratch. Big Ange came into Spurs and has them controlling games with 60%+ possession and scoring goals less than 6 months in charge.
With his obsession at buying players that’s he’s worked with previously just tells me that he’s out of ideas and is a stubborn b*stard. The longer he’s here the more I’m losing faith in him.
So what’s stopping him from doing it here? Is it the players? The league? That’s why we all wanted him here, to play the football that he implemented at Ajax. If it’s the players, he’s had over £300m spent, why is he nowhere near being able to play that football? Conceding 20+ shots to the likes of Luton is mental.
If it’s the league then maybe he isn’t up to scratch. Big Ange came into Spurs and has them controlling games with 60%+ possession and scoring goals less than 6 months in charge.
With his obsession at buying players that’s he’s worked with previously just tells me that he’s out of ideas and is a stubborn b*stard. The longer he’s here the more I’m losing faith in him.
It's true. Haaland's miss in particular was shocking.
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