Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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The same scouting team that said Antony is worth no more than 25m?
They said he's not worth more than £40m after that. And in spite of that Murtough still went in to pay 86m because Ten Hag challenged him to get reinforcements.

Sounds like Murtough is a bit of a **** rather than a DoF capable of challenging the coach. Again, this is why we have a structural issue more than a managerial one.
 
My argument is that he had to go into a loan market because we couldn't afford permanent deals. And that midfielders half decent on loan who are available is quite rare. Unless you got a couple in mind.

We wanted to sign him outright though by all accounts - we agreed to pay half his fee to make it a loan for now. Thankfully things transpired against our plans with this one.

And let's not forget practically everyone on here wanted him also. He was just another mistake.
 
They said he's not worth more than £40m after that. And in spite of that Murtough still went in to pay 86m because Ten Hag challenged him to get reinforcements.

Sounds like Murtough is a bit of a **** rather than a DoF capable of challenging the coach. Again, this is why we have a structural issue more than a managerial one.

As per The Athletic on the signing and fee for Antony...

'Ten Hag’s influence proved pivotal to the level of finance United reached'
 
They said he's not worth more than £40m after that. And in spite of that Murtough still went in to pay 86m because Ten Hag challenged him to get reinforcements.

Sounds like Murtough is a bit of a **** rather than a DoF capable of challenging the coach. Again, this is why we have a structural issue more than a managerial one.

Surely it’s both though? However you slice it, ETH clearly wanted Antony. I’d have expected any half decent coach to be able to tell that he wasn’t going to be good enough in the premier league. I can see why a new manager insisting that a player they’ve just worked with is exactly what we need would hold considerable sway.
 
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We wanted to sign him outright though by all accounts - we agreed to pay half his fee to make it a loan for now. Thankfully things transpired against our plans with this one.

And let's not forget practically everyone on here wanted him also. He was just another mistake.
Where is the articles that show this?
As per The Athletic on the signing and fee for Antony...

'Ten Hag’s influence proved pivotal to the level of finance United reached'
You're cherry picking the article line. I said ten hag challenged the higher ups to get the deal done, and it's pretty much in sync with what you said.

My point is, managers should be supported by not being exposed in areas out of their remit. Being in the room and having a say on transfers is not sole authority, and Murtough rested entire authority on ten hag hoping he won't get found out. He did this with his Rangnick hire too by the way. Again, a structural problem not a coaching one.
Surely it’s both though? However you slice it, ETH clearly wanted Antony. I’d have expected any half decent coach to be able to tell that he wasn’t going to be good enough in the premier league. I can see why a new manager insisting that a player they’ve just worked with is exactly what we need would hold considerable sway.
Yes, I said maybe 10 times on the forum that I blame Ten Hag for Antony. But that's one deal, and it was a deal that could have been done for probably half the amount had Murtough known how to negotiate.
 
If I recall correctly Rooney was looking pretty far from the player he was, hence LVG trying to make him into a midfielder at times, and others like Valencia were struggling with injuries and also not quite the level they were as a result.

He wasn't quite the player he was no but considering where he was in his prime he was still a boody good player. Valencia played 44 games that year and we also had Young and Nani to be fair.
 
Right. But isn't this missing the forest for the trees?

Managers aren't hired to implement systems. They are hired to win football matches and trophies. The systems they implement are just a tool to achieve this goal. If the manager only has one tool in their toolkit then that is very bad.

That’s like saying Pep should have won the prem in his first season without replacing any players, otherwise he’s no good..
Of course managers have their own systems, there’s no way you can really judge wether it’s effective or not until he has players capable of implementing it, he’s bought players, and most of them got injured, he’s bringing kids off the bench against Man City because there’s nobody else.. our new owners have said quite clearly that you can’t judge anyone under the previous structure, if ten hag was managing city right now, they wouldn’t be putting men behind the ball against anyone, and we know that because he didn’t do it at his previous club that actually had a decent structure above him,
It all boils down to recruitment really
 
What I often find strange is how like clock work our fans in droves turn on a manager every 2 years and label them incompetent, stless frauds, completely certain "the next" manager will miraculously improve the results and consistency of the players on the books. It's never remembered that each change of footballing directiin has NEVER been accompanied with a proper player clesd out to suit the new direction to install a new identity.

Instead each manager going in a new direction merely inherits a majority of players from a different footballing ethos, incredible expected to shoe horn them into their preffered identity. That coupled with a brief of "improving the form of previous regimes" often leads to a first season or two of papering over the cracks. Then once the boss settled in the job tries to fully bed in his true ideals. He finds himself hampered in recruitment and replacement of unsuitable personnel and trying to fully implent a footballig identity to a group ill suited.

Going one of two ways:
either the squad gets caught out unable go implement a new style and performances plummet
or
the new boss attempts to compromise his ideals, resulting in Frankenstein system the manager isn't an expert at implementing, with a schism developed between the players and the coach as both sides become disillusioned with a job neither can fully master.

Meanwhile for the fans, they are killed by the false dawn of old again. They see player they imagine better than then truly failing to do the basics in a system that doesnt quite suit most of them. But lo & behold they are beguiled by hope again and start baying for a new messiah to take them to the orknjsed land of better football.

its completly baffling the vast majority CAN'T accept the simple truth. All the managers recruited since SAF can't ALL be incompetent. With the one common factor running through each failed manager era being a failed recruitment and football direction department.

Some times folks straight up forget footballing success begins and falls with your recruitment and football direction department. If you consistently can't buy or sell without waste and needless loss. If you can't coherrently structure a playing squad over time headed in singular footballing direction, in a scientific fashion. 9/10 times you will fail. You will be lost in thr proverbial wilderness making do with an oasis or two of unsustainable success. Even if you throw billions at your fate. That is why I simply can't undertand all the ire directed at the current manager.


Honestly till our footballing equivalent of "the front office" is fixed. We should not be fooled into believing recruiting a new manager will make an iota of a difference. We should all be tired of managerial false dawns by now.

You're just describing the situation whenever a new manager joins any club. Managers don't get to clear out the full playing staff nor should they.

There's only one relevant judgment with a manager, are they getting the best out of the players available? If the answer is no they'll be sacked, determining then that the new manager should get rid of all players makes no sense.
 
Good for you. I'm responding to what you posted; not really bothered with checking what you may or may not have posted previously with regard to this.
But my post was about Amrabat. Had feck all to do with Antony?!
Probably, the dutch Tony Pulis did sign Antony and Mount after all.
Amrabat on a loan market. He also signed Licha so who knows.
 
But my post was about Amrabat. Had feck all to do with Antony?!

Amrabat on a loan market. He also signed Licha so who knows.

One decent signing does't excuse the abomination that is his general talent ID, man manahment, in game managment and decisions and his playing "style"

We are genuinely bottom 3 worst teams to watch in the league.
 
One decent signing does't excuse the abomination that is his general talent ID, man manahment, in game managment and decisions and his playing "style"

We are genuinely bottom 3 worst teams to watch in the league.
Sorry, are we mixing recruitment with coaching?

Im talking about recruitment and how he hasn't been supported.

If you want to talk coaching and man management, that's a different debate all together. Sounds like you just want to have a moan than debate the topic at hand.
 
If I recall correctly Rooney was looking pretty far from the player he was, hence LVG trying to make him into a midfielder at times, and others like Valencia were struggling with injuries and also not quite the level they were as a result.

Rooney would have been gone in the summer of 2013 had Fergie not been retiring, but not because he was on his last legs.

Valencia was a mainstay in the team for another five seasons though.
 
Sorry, are we mixing recruitment with coaching?

Im talking about recruitment and how he hasn't been supported.

If you want to talk coaching and man management, that's a different debate all together. Sounds like you just want to have a moan than debate the topic at hand.

I'd love to spend nearly half a billion and say I haven't been supported, sounds like ten hag fanboys clutching at anything they can. Classic modern day fans support managers over what is best for the club.
 
I'd love to spend nearly half a billion and say I haven't been supported, sounds like ten hag fanboys clutching at anything they can. Classic modern day fans support managers over what is best for the club.
Okay so you want to have a whinge without actually considering what's going on. You do you.
 
You're just describing the situation whenever a new manager joins any club. Managers don't get to clear out the full playing staff nor should they.

There's only one relevant judgment with a manager, are they getting the best out of the players available? If the answer is no they'll be sacked, determining then that the new manager should get rid of all players makes no sense.
Yeah imagine the day a new manager comes in at a new club at this level and is allowed to clear out the entire playing squad :lol:
This isn’t League one or two where players are on one year deals and 1k a week.
You’re wasting your breathe though with that poster, whose genuinely one of the worse on here.
 
Barcelona in the EL will always stands out for me. Brilliant over the two legs.
The thing I can't understand. Why did the manager change things this season instead of building upon the tactics which saw us beat Arsenal, Spurs, City, Barcelona and win the League Cup. The only issue I had with ten Hag last season was his squad management which lead to a dip in form later in the season.
This season, he's just been a disaster all round with poor squad management once again combined with laughable tactics.
This is the biggest question mark for me as well.

Yes, we overachieved last season, and our away from was horrific...but we had a very, very good season all in all. The Barca EL tie and league cup win was the stand out of me as well, but we had a great home record vs the big 6 as well.

It really should have been a platform to build on...but we've regressed massively this season which is a huge shame. I'm hoping EtH can pull it around but some of his decision making really needs to be scrutinised.
 
You're just describing the situation whenever a new manager joins any club. Managers don't get to clear out the full playing staff nor should they.

There's only one relevant judgment with a manager, are they getting the best out of the players available? If the answer is no they'll be sacked, determining then that the new manager should get rid of all players makes no sense.
Yeah imagine the day a new manager comes in at a new club at this level and is allowed to clear out the entire playing squad :lol:
This isn’t League one or two where players are on one year deals and 1k a week.
You’re wasting your breathe though with that poster, whose genuinely one of the worse on here.

If you've got a squad of players who are, by and large, not of the quality to compete at the very top of the league, then the only way for any manager to realistically achieve the ambition of competing at the top of the league is to replace the vast majority of them.

When Liverpool finished second and won the CL in 2018/19, 10 of their 14 highest appearance makers were Klopp signings, and an 11th was an academy graduate that made his debut under him.

This is the very definition of a "clear out".
 
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Thanks :)
 
Okay so you want to have a whinge without actually considering what's going on. You do you.

I applaud your commitment but you’d have better joy pissing against a hurricane wind then getting some posters to understand “that particular thing you are really angry about is more a club thing then a manager thing”.

It’s like posters getting angry with his interviews. I always felt a managers interview seldom tells us anything and unless they were fun, funny or gaslighting rivals, there was nothing worth getting animated about them. I also felt that the main time a manager can use an interview is to take the focus off the team/players.

Like Fergie saying one player could have been killed for a fairly minor incident. If a manager is saying crazy stuff and the media (and chumps following the media) are talking about the manager, not the sh*te performance, then they’ve done their job and taken a hit for their team.

And sometimes a manager doesn’t lay into his team or “say the truth” because there is no benefit to it. Maybe the press talking about ETH and not the fact that we are so far behind City somewhat takes pressure of the team. Regardless, people on here are just looking to find ANYTHING they can to get their rage hit.
 
The thing I can't understand. Why did the manager change things this season instead of building upon the tactics which saw us beat Arsenal, Spurs, City, Barcelona and win the League Cup. The only issue I had with ten Hag last season was his squad management which lead to a dip in form later in the season.
This season, he's just been a disaster all round with poor squad management once again combined with laughable tactics.

I think you point towards an answer there: The tactics employed last year have not been abandoned, but simply do not look the same when players cannot implement them due to incoherent team sheets.

Squad management is indistinguishable from the issue of injuries/missing players.
 
Okay so you want to have a whinge without actually considering what's going on. You do you.

He's right though. We really don't owe him anything at the club. Honestly for all the talk about structure supporting the manager, I think our failure in this club has been our lack of ruthlessness at the executive level. The structure so many people are pleased about, will make us more effective and efficient in the transfer market. However, the real selling point is that it protects the club from our poor managers. INEOS coming in with new staff members at the executive and football operations level, supports the club, not the manager.

We've had managers like Mourinho and Van Gaal come in trying to be messiah, tearing apart our squads and management of that squad, without interference from the club outside of a block for the transfer of Martial. They were allowed to make wholesale changes, and despite average to poor performances during a majority of their tenure, they were given way too much job security, as much support as any club in Europe can give. Yet you have fans here blaming the club for not supporting these managers, where they would most likely have been sacked within the first 6 months of other top european clubs.

Look at the climate, look at what other clubs do and the budget other clubs get. No club gives a manager 2 years without expecting good performances and advancements. No club gives a manager 400m and expects them to not be in a position to challenge. No top club would allow a manager play football in which they concede more shots than they attempt themselves. No top club would allow a manager stay after having a - 2 goal difference in March. None. That's the climate and there's a reason for that climate. You cannot afford to be poor for a long period of time. It can affect your wealth, but also your status and the ability to attract top level players. So it makes no sense to keep a failing manager who hasn't proven he can produce performances at your club, if the risk is even a season of your overall status being reduced. We are lucky to have survived this long due to the sheer amount of success we've previously had at the club. But if we keep going like this, we keep allowing poor managers the chance to keep us uncompetitive by giving endless time, we keep signing poor players, we can end up like AC Milan. Where the legend of the club still remains, but you no longer have the money or appeal to get back to the top of the european game. We can't afford to risk that by giving Ten Haag a chance, because that's what's at stake, irelavancy. What INEOS is providing is the executive setup to bring us into the 21st century in regard to our decision making. At board level we have been far too emotional and political on the football side. Sacking Ten Haag is the logical decision; the statistics, metrics and eye test says that the football we play is horrible. The money spent tells us that the squad we have available should not be performing at this level, regardless of injuries. The comparative metrics tell us that teams with far less talent even in depth are performing far better on the pitch than we are. Teams like Brighton can play out of the back, yet Varane can't.

Ten Haag is not the first manager from a weaker league to fail at the top level. As a club, we weren't wrong to pursue him, but we are wrong to persist with him for this long. He should have been sacked in December.
 
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I applaud your commitment but you’d have better joy pissing against a hurricane wind then getting some posters to understand “that particular thing you are really angry about is more a club thing then a manager thing”.

It’s like posters getting angry with his interviews. I always felt a managers interview seldom tells us anything and unless they were fun, funny or gaslighting rivals, there was nothing worth getting animated about them. I also felt that the main time a manager can use an interview is to take the focus off the team/players.

Like Fergie saying one player could have been killed for a fairly minor incident. If a manager is saying crazy stuff and the media (and chumps following the media) are talking about the manager, not the sh*te performance, then they’ve done their job and taken a hit for their team.

And sometimes a manager doesn’t lay into his team or “say the truth” because there is no benefit to it. Maybe the press talking about ETH and not the fact that we are so far behind City somewhat takes pressure of the team. Regardless, people on here are just looking to find ANYTHING they can to get their rage hit.
Yeah I feel there is little point now. People are just too angry and not looking at where the root of the problems are.
 
You're just describing the situation whenever a new manager joins any club. Managers don't get to clear out the full playing staff nor should they.
I'm responsible strictly for what I say. Not your straw man interpretation of it..

I'm most defintely NOT merely taking about a new manager joining a club. Let alone selling the whole squad:rolleyes:


I'm clearly taking about when a manager is brought into over haul the entirety of a football direction of a given club. In a working environment year one is for assesing the squad to suss out who can measure up to the new direction. Year two is for clearing out every single one that can't and adequately replacing them with those who can longer term. That is what has happened at Manchester City, Liverpool and lattest Arsenal. Plus is in the process at Spurs. Its what happened in Europe at Real Madrid and what has just happened and is in the process of happening at PSG.


Manchester United have close to decade instead chosen to force every manager brought into implement a new footballing direction with mostly the available players on the books. Allowed only a few additions each window. The efficacy of such a strategy is pretty much self evident in that elapsed period.


There's only one relevant judgment with a manager, are they getting the best out of the players available?
No serious club operates that way at the start of implementing a new footballing direction.

If the answer is no they'll be sacked, determining then that the new manager should get rid of all players makes no sense.
of course it can't because it's an incohherent straw man of the point I attempted to make in my earlier post.
 
Imagine the scenes if he pulls off 2 wins against the scousers.

Won't happen unfortunately.
 
This is the biggest question mark for me as well.

Yes, we overachieved last season, and our away from was horrific...but we had a very, very good season all in all. The Barca EL tie and league cup win was the stand out of me as well, but we had a great home record vs the big 6 as well.

It really should have been a platform to build on...but we've regressed massively this season which is a huge shame. I'm hoping EtH can pull it around but some of his decision making really needs to be scrutinised.
And now time for some objectivity. 7-0 Liverpool, 6-3 City. League cup run was piss easy. We won most games by a single goal, we scored the least amount of goals in the top 6 (58, ten less than Newcastle, 14 less than Brighton). It honestly felt like we won most games purely on heart and a united dressing room. Dalot was wildly celebrating corners, Varane screaming Vamos in De Gea's face after a save.

Now imagine if we had an actual quality tactician with that motivated squad.
 
Yeah imagine the day a new manager comes in at a new club at this level and is allowed to clear out the entire playing squad :lol:
This isn’t League one or two where players are on one year deals and 1k a week.
You’re wasting your breathe though with that poster, whose genuinely one of the worse on here.
That's rich from one of those on here who literally puts legendary into the term terrible poster.
 
This is the biggest question mark for me as well.

Yes, we overachieved last season, and our away from was horrific...but we had a very, very good season all in all. The Barca EL tie and league cup win was the stand out of me as well, but we had a great home record vs the big 6 as well.

It really should have been a platform to build on...but we've regressed massively this season which is a huge shame. I'm hoping EtH can pull it around but some of his decision making really needs to be scrutinised.
We have to consider the possibility that all of ETH's success last season was just luck.
 
This is the biggest question mark for me as well.

Yes, we overachieved last season, and our away from was horrific...but we had a very, very good season all in all. The Barca EL tie and league cup win was the stand out of me as well, but we had a great home record vs the big 6 as well.

It really should have been a platform to build on...but we've regressed massively this season which is a huge shame. I'm hoping EtH can pull it around but some of his decision making really needs to be scrutinised.

Decisions are precisely what we should be scrutinising, and paint a far more damning picture of his abilities to manage us than his involvement in transfers, which is what loads in here keep banging on about.

If he doesn't want to commit to a full press because of the injuries, and he clearly doesn't, then he has to commit the other way. Repeatedly setting us up with an attack and midfield bursting forward, while the defense is sitting deep has been a disaster in basically every single game, and yet we keep doing it.

Even the whole Varane thing is a massive black mark on his record. Freezes him out of the line up for a few weeks, explains this as a result of his unsuitability to play left-centre-back, only to completely 180 on that a few weeks later and start playing him there.
 
And now time for some objectivity. 7-0 Liverpool, 6-3 City. League cup run was piss easy. We won most games by a single goal, we scored the least amount of goals in the top 6 (58, ten less than Newcastle, 14 less than Brighton). It honestly felt like we won most games purely on heart and a united dressing room.

Now imagine if we had an actual quality tactician with that motivated squad.
Yes, I'm sure that a quality tactician with a first team featuring the likes of Weghorst, McTominay, Fred, Sancho, Wan Bissaka, etc. as regulars would have swept aside all before them. Deary me.
 
Yeah I feel there is little point now. People are just too angry and not looking at where the root of the problems are.

It’s actually been the EXACT same thing since Moyes. Problem is the manager. Problem is the manager. Problem is the manager. Problem is the manager.

Remarkable how unlucky we are with managers. We can’t even find a manager who can help us consistently qualify for the CL let alone win anything. Jose and LVG were clearly never gonna be strong enough to get us top 4 consistently becahee of their lack in quality

Chelsea can with the CL with Di Matteo and nearly the treble with Avram grant. City can win leagues with Mancini and pelligrini. Liverpool were a Slippy G fall away from Brendan Rodger’s nearly winning the league. Ranieri was able to win the league with Leicester.

Chelsea with the CL with Tuchel , doesn’t have a terrible 2nd season. Then Chelsea is taken over by a clown who is probably closer to how the Glazers run things , spends a fortune and their form falls off a cliff. Almost like spending money badly is a club issue and if you have a muppet running the club it can have serious negative affects on the team’s performances, even for good managers.
 
Yes, I'm sure that a quality tactician with a first team featuring the likes of Weghorst, McTominay, Fred, Sancho, Wan Bissaka, etc. as regulars would have swept aside all before them. Deary me.
Ole finished 3rd and 2nd with most of that squad, isn't beyond the stretches of imagination that a better manager could do better with our resources.
 
Ole finished 3rd and 2nd with most of that squad, isn't beyond the stretches of imagination that a better manager could do better with our resources.
Ole did a good job getting that set of players to 2nd in the league. Ten Hag did a good job last season. Downplaying the jobs they did in those seasons is ridiculous to me.

Saying some mythical great tactician would have taken those teams to big success is fantasy.
 
Ole did a good job getting that set of players to 2nd in the league. Ten Hag did a good job last season. Downplaying the jobs they did in those seasons is ridiculous to me.

Saying some mythical great tactician would have taken those teams to big success is fantasy.
Well I wasn't trying to downplay either, just pointing out that we were xpecting an elite coach to take us to the next level. And we all thought at the time Ten Hag was that coach. Klopp/Pep might not have us winning the league with this squad but I would expect at the ver least to be in the spot as Villa and Spurs right now.
 
Well I wasn't trying to downplay either, just pointing out that we were xpecting an elite coach to take us to the next level. And we all thought at the time Ten Hag was that coach. Klopp/Pep might not have us winning the league with this squad but I would expect at the ver least to be in the spot as Villa and Spurs right now.

If Klopp or Guardiola had this level of injuries with this squad, they'd be in a similar position

A different question would be whether these injuries would have happened with either of those two in charge. Would training be different?

Also, a different question about whether they'd have spent 100 million on Antony last season, 65 million on Mount etc over 12 months meaning they couldn't afford anyone new in January.
 
Well I wasn't trying to downplay either, just pointing out that we were xpecting an elite coach to take us to the next level. And we all thought at the time Ten Hag was that coach. Klopp/Pep might not have us winning the league with this squad but I would expect at the ver least to be in the spot as Villa and Spurs right now.
I think he did well last season. We are nowhere near good enough this season, but there is context around that.

It helped Klopp and Pep a lot that they came into an organisation which was able to clear out the players that the manager decided needed to go, something that hasn't been afforded to any of our club's managers post Fergie really. Even with that Klopp has had seasons when he has finished fifth and scraped fourth with his keeper scoring late winners, when he clearly has the second best squad in the league and is clearly the second best manager in the league.

The next manager that comes in is very unlikely to have a linear progression towards success either, there will definitely be bumps along the way. My fear now is that when any manager has a bad period with the team it becomes terminal too quickly.
 
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