Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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Injuries have contributed to our dusfunction at the back but cant be blamed for our complete lack of style in possession.

I would also suggest that martinez and Shaw both seemed to have their condition managed fairly poorly on their returns from injury that might have contributed to them getting injured again

Also, the laughable transfer dealings bave led to the point where we are completely reliant on top injury prone players at the back to progress the ball up the pitch..

I listen to talk of the devils podcast sometimes but find it a hard listen sometimes given they are clearly reluctant to criticise the club as a result of the access they get

Yeah that's exactly why they hold back on the criticism,same with certain fan channels such as ahem United Stand. Mainly because some on there are from the Fergie back your manager generation
 
Yep, and that's when City sat in a bit to try to draw us out of our parked bus position. Yet we only kept possession as we shit the pants as soon as we got into their half and passed it all the way back to safety :lol:
It was tragic to watch.
I hesitated when I typed "good" but considering the very low bar, I really thought it was for us.
 
Ten Hag: “We defended brilliantly out of possession, we were close to winning or at least getting a draw here”.

“It was a good performance overall. The players gave everything”.

Shit like this is just a stackable offense immediately at this point. He has been here long enough and he is now happy with this

Remember when even after a win he would say standards need to be high etc.

I am so disappointed I fell for his act
 
I do find the floor level standards very concerning. I suspect that even relegation contenders would be taking a long, hard look at themselves after a showing like the one we watched yesterday. But here we are, Manchester United crowing about how we made it difficult for City for 45 minutes by all sitting behind the ball.
 
Been the same for me. A lot of people swept it under the carpet as means of coping and denial, but I just can't. It was a nightmare, and I was shocked to see so many trying to brush it away like it's nothing. The scum humiliated us in the worst way. One of the absolute lowest points in my years of supporting this club. That, and his later admission that he is going for a counterattacking style eroded my belief in him significantly.

I have absolutely no faith in this manager. Needs to go as soon as possible.

Absolutely superb post and pleased to see I'm not the only one who is permanently scarred by it. We got absolutely annihilated and some just accept it as a "bad day at the office"
 
Absolutely superb post and pleased to see I'm not the only one who is permanently scarred by it. We got absolutely annihilated and some just accept it as a "bad day at the office"
Mine wasn't the 7-0 itself but more the refusal to learn anything at all from it. Just showed me that he might genuinely be deluded and too pigheaded to lead a club of this stature. Even the very greatest managers learned lessons from past experiences. That's how you become great and stay great.
 
I honestly do not understand why so many people pretend last season never happened. Not only did United with a small squad contend with a grueling 70 odd game Europa league campaign. They added to that getting to two domestic cup finals, in a season with a world cup slap bang in the middle,very little rest plus a summer of Euro Nations League football. Its why in general injuries gave been rife up and down the league.

United in particular have suffered the worst because key players who helped the manager paper of the cracks in the entire squad last season, hiding how bad it truly is, have all broken down, which has aldo has a resultant negative avalanche on our performances and results this year.



But instead ETH detractors on here prefer to pretend our manager and coaching staff just went rancid over night. Forgot how to coach, do physio work nor manager player workload. That these players 'carried them" last seaaon....

I was not a detractor after we beat Barcelona in Europa and won League Cup,thought ok let's build on this in the summer. Then he oversaw that abomination at Anfield and I lost all hope. Sorry to the old school fans who will call me a plastic but couldn't accept that happened.
 
Mine wasn't the 7-0 itself but more the refusal to learn anything at all from it. Just showed me that he might genuinely be deluded and too pigheaded to lead a club of this stature. Even the very greatest managers learned lessons from past experiences. That's how you become great and stay great.

When we lost 6-1 to City in 2011, we then went on to concede 2 goals in the next 9 games, winning 8 of them. We did lose the title on goal difference to City under circumstances we would all prefer to forget about, but we ran them close all season long despite their historic season with 89 points (our third highest tally in a 38-game season).
 
Shit like this is just a stackable offense immediately at this point. He has been here long enough and he is now happy with this

Remember when even after a win he would say standards need to be high etc.

I am so disappointed I fell for his act
He can't say, "We tried but we came short. It was a bad day at the office". Then he will be accused of repeating the same shit after every loss.
He can't say "My players played like shit and should be embarassed". Then he will be accused of throwing players under the bus.
He cannot say "I am a shit coach and our tactics are bad". He would be accused of being a loser. No coach would say that.

It is up to the guys above him to see how he is coaching and attribute the blame and sack him if not good enough.
 
Been the same for me. A lot of people swept it under the carpet as means of coping and denial, but I just can't. It was a nightmare, and I was shocked to see so many trying to brush it away like it's nothing. The scum humiliated us in the worst way. One of the absolute lowest points in my years of supporting this club. That, and his later admission that he is going for a counterattacking style eroded my belief in him significantly.

I have absolutely no faith in this manager. Needs to go as soon as possible.
Yup. That was the beginning of the end for me too. Not trusted him since and have essentially waited for him to fail, sounds bad but you just do not lose 7-0 to them. No top manager would lose like that in those circumstances. No ten men. It wasn’t an unbelievable Liverpool team.

And if we’re being brutally honest this team has never fully recovered from that hammering. Before that game this was a team who in the space of a few months had become very difficult to beat and who had beaten Liverpool, city, Barcelona and Newcastle deservedly and ran themselves into the ground doing so.
Since that game this team basically lose every other game. They look weak, uninspiring, clueless, lethargic and void of confidence. The same way Ten Hag looks on a match day and when he opens his mouth in a post match press conference after every defeat. That loss broke him and it broke this squad and there’s no turning it round until there’s mass changes.
 
He needs to win at least 1 game vs Liverpool, to regain some dignity to this season.

But I'm convinced he is done. Not entirely his fault, but I think everyone lost faith in him at this point. Including me. Worse team with worse players stood up to City this season and played much, much better.
 
I was all for giving him more time. This season however has shown he is simply not the right calibre for this job. Eleven defeats to date and more to come. Just can't see a plan or structure with his team's. Tactically nieve.
The players are far from blameless, but he sticks with them and keeps playing some out of position.

Lindlof - never going to work at left back. The obvious answer to this is play him right back and Dalot on the left.

Anthony - what a waste of time. He's simply no where near united class.

Onana - frightens the defence to death. They have no idea what he is going to do. You can't play Infront of that chaos.

There is so much dead wood there now. There needs to be a massive clear out and a new manager to start again.
 
I dont get why people get so outraged still by what he says in the press, he isn't going to throw the players under the bus or anything like, you think he believes what he says or says that to the players because I highly doubt he does
 
I think he can be judged against this game amongst others.

I don't disagree.

That's what I meant to say, essentially.

The reaction is bound to be a bit odd - in the sense that everyone and his granny expected precisely the outcome we got, and so: why freak out? - but it isn't "knee-jerk" either, because there's obviously a wider context.
 
I dont get why people get so outraged still by what he says in the press, he isn't going to throw the players under the bus or anything like, you think he believes what he says or says that to the players because I highly doubt he does
Klopp blamed the wind, grass, ball bounce and what not for their losses. Doesn't really mean he is deluded. Managers talk a lot of shit in press conference. There is no point in trying to derive meaning from the press conference talk. Managers can lie as they please.
 
Klopp blamed the wind, grass, ball bounce and what not for their losses. Doesn't really mean he is deluded. Managers talk a lot of shit in press conference. There is no point in trying to derive meaning from the press conference talk. Managers can lie as they please.

Exactly my point its pointless yet to some it's like he spat in their face or something just best to ignore them they rarely give a true view to anything
 
Onana - frightens the defence to death. They have no idea what he is going to do. You can't play Infront of that chaos.

I'm not sold on Onana, but I don't think he's an inherently chaotic player. He could be good (possibly even very good) in the right setup. You can't stick any random selection of defenders (or players, in general) in front of him and hope to get the best out of him, though.

Anthony - what a waste of time. He's simply no where near united class.

Being the main (probably the only, actually - but certainly the main) reason why this depressingly mediocre player was brought in for stupid money is a sackable offence in itself. So - yeah.
 
I think it's interesting how his rhetoric has changed. Last season he was all about brutal honesty when we were shit, and even when we were good his focus was on what we needed to do better. This season he's the complete opposite, and constantly praising bad performances. I suspect it's because he knows how mentally fragile the squad is, and that being honest about the state of our performances will just push us deeper into the shit.
 
Potter, Tuchel, De Zerbi, Inzaghi, Emery… there are plenty who could and would do a better job.

Half would at least play more forward thinking football and the others like Tuchel and Emery are just better managers if you want a trophy or two.
You’d take Graham Potter? I’m really worried Ineos might agree with you
 
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).

Well that would definitely make me doubt whether INEOS are the people to improve things
 
I think it's interesting how his rhetoric has changed. Last season he was all about brutal honesty when we were shit, and even when we were good his focus was on what we needed to do better. This season he's the complete opposite, and constantly praising bad performances. I suspect it's because he knows how mentally fragile the squad is, and that being honest about the state of our performances will just push us deeper into the shit.

He knows it’s shit, this is his way of trying to keep the fragments of what’s left of our shredded moral.
 
I dont get why people get so outraged still by what he says in the press, he isn't going to throw the players under the bus or anything like, you think he believes what he says or says that to the players because I highly doubt he does

I think people get off on being enraged.
 
Mine wasn't the 7-0 itself but more the refusal to learn anything at all from it. Just showed me that he might genuinely be deluded and too pigheaded to lead a club of this stature. Even the very greatest managers learned lessons from past experiences. That's how you become great and stay great.
This, we're still doing the suicidal man-to-man marking which resulted in us imploding in that game. All the best teams mark zonally, it's basic stuff.
 
I'm sorry, you said nobody can teach these players to play possession football. I pointed out that they probably can. It's more of the usual bollocks from you in moving the goal posts all over to try to vindicate this manager.

Vincent Kompany has Burnley playing possession based football, they're just not very good because their players aren't very good at this level. They lost 2-0 at the weekend against a better team, yet had 75% of the possession. You're just buying into this idea that we have 30+ players who can't play possession football, again to vindicate the manager. Onana, Varane, Martinez, Eriksen, Dalot, Casemiro, Amrabat, Antony, Mount, Shaw, Mainoo, possibly Hojlund and Garnacho, probably Amad - all of these players have either played possession based football elsewhere (some to a very high level) or are capable of it. If you disagree with any of them then explain why you don't think they could, yet worse players in the league can.

I'm not suggesting throwing any random manager at the job, I've suggested two managers that have shown they can get teams playing possession football, and/or who like to deploy a pressing game. In fact I'd say they are closer to Nagelsmann than ETH has been for us. In my opinion Nagelsmann values possession and control much more than ETH. He also plays a much higher defensive line with a more aggressive press. Lopetegui ticks both of these boxes. Nagelsmann in the past has also adopted a 3/5 at the back system which is fluid, as did Graham Potter at Brighton. Again, not something ETH is even using here. So how can you claim the manager is having the foundations laid by the guy doing none of this, and be against caretaker managers who would offer some or all of this? Again, like Nagelsmann, these managers are also very flexible and fluid in the formations they adopt during a game and across a whole season. Something that, again, Ten Hag is not. Amazing foundations this guy is laying.

Pep Guardiola himself has talked about how much of a fan of Potter he was. He enjoyed the principles of his football, calling him the 'best English manager' and said that as a player he would have loved to have played in his system. He failed at Chelsea in a bizarre set of circumstances, whereby the UK government had practically seized control of the club and forced it's sale. They were then took over by a consortium headed up by a guy from American Baseball of all things, who spent a ridiculous amount of money on a number of players, many of which hadn't even established themselves at their current club let alone the top level of football. I think that is a pretty extenuating circumstance, and this is now proven given that they have since spent a further £250m and have a capable manager, yet still aren't any better. You say he failed in his one chance at a big club, and then recommend Marco Rose who lasted a massive one season at a well run Dortumund? Ok then pal. The same Rose that finished 3rd in a weak CL group with Dortmund, then got pumped by Rangers in the Europa League and knocked out of the German Cup by St Pauli?

You know what though, if push came to shove then I'd give Rose a shot, though he would be far away from any of my top choices and rightly so. But can you see how easy it is to just sit here and pick apart any manager?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your desires here, as you keep championing managers who have teams playing possession without any success. Do you want us to have 75% possession and lose all the time? Or go back to the slow motion LVG days? If so, then your arguments and suggestions actually make a lot more sense, and while I'll disagree with your priorities, at least it isn't wild "anyone but ETH" hyperbole.

If that's the case, then Potter and Lopetegui make sense as suggestions too, that way their 100% failure rate at big clubs doesn't matter. Potter at Chelsea would be exactly what he'd get here; a squad built without his input that isn't suited to the football he played at Brighton. Therefore, it stands to reason that the result would be the same.

As it is I'm fairly sure you don't want that, and you've let the mask slip yet again with your first paragraph. Literally nothing about this debate from my side is to vindicate our current manager, I'm discussing with you about who the replacement should be, but you're so desperate to replace Ten Hag that you keep trying to bring it back to point scoring with him rather than addressing the obvious shortcomings in your preferred replacements. You're operating from the assumption that literally anyone else would be better than Ten Hag, which is hyperbolic and demonstrably false - he doesn't have the lowest PPG in club history like one of your suggestions. It can always get worse.

Having said all that, I'd be able to accept Potter as a manager if the new regime want him and will support him as part of their vision, as it's feasible that he could eventually have us comfortable in possession and controlling games, but we'd have to accept that we're gonna be rubbish for at least a couple of seasons until we've been able to build a squad that can do what he wants. Until then, we're a lot more likely to look like his Chelsea than his Brighton. The idea that he'd have this lot playing comfortable possession football overnight is nonsense, as has been shown emphatically by his Chelsea stint.
 
Or maybe might expect something vaguely coherent and grounded from the manager? Just a thought. Or is it OK spout b*llocks?

When you don’t know why a manager is saying what they are saying , you aren’t really in a position to judge. You can pretend to know what a professional manager should say and let the media influence what you want to believe , but a manager usually try’s to say what they think will either help or not hurt their team.

You can disagree but what do you know about managing professional players? Managers try different techniques at different times. Hell didn’t Klopp do weird sh*te like get his team to do some sort of weird lap of honor when they drew 2-2 at home with West Brom?

So it’s not always obvious what a managers motive is for saying certain things. If you take everything they say literally then I get why you’d get so angry at the pressers.
 
I think its all down to personnel but at United the manager has a sizeable role in that.

Should he have a prominent role in recruitment is a different debate.

Currently the manager does have a big role and the front four(including its backups) is a big, unsolved problem.

The manager should have a role in recruitment, no doubt, but we shouldn't be almost totally reliant on him. Well run clubs have an entire department dedicated to identifying required profiles and targets that fit that profile, whereas we've been relying on the manager to do that job, on top of their actual job. The only exceptions have been when Woodward, and now Murtough, have forced a player on the manager, which has happened a fair bit too.

Fortunately it looks like that won't be an issue for too much longer, as it appears that we're putting into place a much better sporting structure that will support the manager. More than any managerial replacement, that's the biggest step towards modernisation we could possibly take.
 
Don‘t get me wrong I am also disgusted by our football and how we were dominated yesterday and our progress in general.
All I am saying is that there were only 2 possible outcomes yesterday: Trying to play in a way that we get completely smashed or trying to defend with all we got and get a few counter attacks in.
Anyone who expected something else is delusional.
 
I dont get why people get so outraged still by what he says in the press, he isn't going to throw the players under the bus or anything like, you think he believes what he says or says that to the players because I highly doubt he does
If you already made up your mind that he isn't responsible for anything, then it's easier to digest I suppose
 
We have no style of play. Players look uncomfortable on the ball.

Liverpool have injuries too but even the academy kids follow their 1st teams style and it shows. Same with Brighton - tons of injuries yet they have a style. Spurs have a new manager and hes implemented a style in 1 season.

Out style is - kick the ball long and hope someone gets to it first and scores.
 
Its easier to digest if you just think of these things as a contractual obligation and no manager really wants to do it or give anything of substance away when doing them
The thing about Erik though is that he seems to be a direct, straight talking guy. And given how the way he insists on setting up our midfield this season, it's not that difficult to fathom that he might actually mean what he says, particularly about the tactics and performance.
 
Don‘t get me wrong I am also disgusted by our football and how we were dominated yesterday and our progress in general.
All I am saying is that there were only 2 possible outcomes yesterday: Trying to play in a way that we get completely smashed or trying to defend with all we got and get a few counter attacks in.
Anyone who expected something else is delusional.
How we were dominated yesterday was an illustration how dire we are under this manager. It's been a year like this. And millions wasted on top of it.
 
A loss to City shouldn't be the end of the world, but it's not just City is it? It's been a horrid season in terms of results and performances. He has failed miserably. It's just a case of now or at the end of the season, but he's done.
 
The FA cup match against Liverpool feels like a huge game, bigger than normal. If he can win that and, by some miracle, City get overconfident and Newcastle beat them then he might be able to go on to win an FA Cup. That might not be enough to save him anyway as top 5 feels like it's slipping away.

For our sake, he better hope he gets some players back for that game. AwB and Hojlund especially.
 
The FA cup match against Liverpool feels like a huge game, bigger than normal. If he can win that and, by some miracle, City get overconfident and Newcastle beat them then he might be able to go on to win an FA Cup. That might not be enough to save him anyway as top 5 feels like it's slipping away.

For our sake, he better hope he gets some players back for that game. AwB and Hojlund especially.

Its a trophyless season without CL football next year I think.
 
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