Come on now. Whilst I agree with the sentiment to a degree how do you inspire and motivate when the players simply don't want you there?
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
- Status
Come on now. Whilst I agree with the sentiment to a degree how do you inspire and motivate when the players simply don't want you there?
The style of play really has to improve that’s for sure, I have no issue with that critique of ETH. For what it’s worth I don’t think your wrong at all, we just find ourselves at different ends of the spectrum.
I see alot of reasons as to why we’re looking so incoherent, reasons that have already been covered on here a hundred times so I don’t feel the need to go into them again.
Right now we’re in the fecking ditch and so everything ETH is doing and has done gets viewed through a different lens than previously. But there’s nothing he hasn’t proved in my eyes that the likes of Amorim, Tuchel, Nagelsmann or whoever would suddenly fix.
What the hell would they do with a Dalot-Evans-Varane-AWB defence which is somehow apparently one of the most consistant defensive constellations we’ve put out this year?
It’s been turd sandwhich after turd sandwich since ETH came in. I don’t think the conditions at the club were primed for success and he’s not really had the peace to really implement his ideas. I mean, when games are coming thick and fast you’re picking between Wout Weghorst and Sabitzer as a false nine or Amrabat and Lindelöf for LB then yeah, I guess you are going to make mistakes, tinkering and overthinking only to get something resembling a working unit.
Yes they do, unless this has changed since Ole was sacked. He said so himself.
Can you point out where we pointed to injuries as an excuse in the games you mentioned?
There isn't any distinction at all in practical terms, it was a season long loan with a mid season break clause, which the club always intended on activating if Shaw or Malacia were back, which one was and the other was expected to be as per the medical team.
Honestly trying to blame ETH for listening to the medical team is a new low in terms of the sanity of criticisms in this thread.
Until recently I would have agreed but I can't see why Ole would make it up.
Maybe by scouts he referred to head scouts Lawler and Bout? Unsure on their level of influence
If you guys are talking about the Reguilon loan then he himself has said it was only a 6 month loan.
Yeah I'd have thought so, I never thought every scout.
I agree that we’ve been bad and performances have been shocking. We differ in that I don’t know how all the other stuff has played a Role. You are taking the view that it shouldn’t mean we can’t still meet certain standards. I don’t know how reasonable or fair that is because there were more than savage injuries at the club.
- history of over spending on players which continued under ETH , not his fault
- history of extending contracts of players who nobody wanted to or shouldn’t be here
- poor squad balance which is the clubs fault , no striker or Weghorst level alternative offered
- huge drama with at least 5 senior players in the space of 15 months , I include Rashford who nobody is blaming on ETH
- club sale - leaving everybody in limbo as to the future of the club and the manager
- injuries that quite frankly none of you factor in properly. Not one of you have done any meaningful research to try and explain how our injuries are no worse then anybody else.
All these things have destabilised plans and surely affected team morale. The question is to what degree. Maybe not enough to explain the season but they definitely played a role that any manager would struggle to navigate.
Our best form was after Ronaldo left and the team focused on football. We could build momentum and then we ran out of steam after league cup. All in all , after the season before , it was a good season.
From the off this season things haven’t been right. We looked as off as Liverpool did last season (the season after they played as many games as us). Then we had loads of injuries ti improving players , didn’t have a striker and Anthony , Greenwood , Sancho and even Rashford issues.
So I find this “everybody has injuries” statement a bad faith comment cause it’s not just injuries and not all injuries are the same. It’s everything that’s happened. Maybe a world class manager would somehow make it all work while the chaos has been going on but we just don’t know because we haven’t seen any manager have to navigate as many issues in such a short period of time.
How many sex scandals or players on the piss or lazy players or Pierce Morgan interviews have Ange had to manage at spurs? When Kane left how did Ange manage with only weghorst or a half fit youngster from serie A? How safe did Ange feel when spurs were put up for sale 5 months after he hired and what did his squad think about their futures?
United players/managers are expected to compete near or at the top and they are having to do so in the most dysfunctional set of circumstances. It’s hard enough to play well when you have a consistently starting squad that’s getting tired but we can’t even get to that point.
You can only see this as a defence of ETH because you don’t see the bigger picture. These are conditions our managers are having to work in that make it harder for our teams , regardless of who the manager is. Throw in Pep to that sh*t show and maybe we play better football and do better but we still don’t win anything. That’s just not good enough.
Stop banging on about ETH. He is not as important as what INEOs will hopefully do. If they set the structure right , to elite levels, then the ETH situation will take care of itself, which will be either him being gone or kept on (if INEOs (feel it makes sense).
Last edited:
That’s why I’m more focused on INEOs than ETH. I used to always argue with a mate of mine that if I took over United I’d just find out what Pool/city are doing right and just poach all the best ideas/people and make it work. It’s pretty much what they seem to be doing. It’s gonna take time and they will make mistakes but im more optimistic.
Keep the faith brother …..
I never said you did, but check your posts the day we lost to Bournemouth (9th December).
Yeah, I recall thinking we actually didn't play that badly. We handled their Crosses terribly and missed Varane. Ten hag dropped Varane if I'm not mistaken so that games on him.
But if the club’s incompetent through and through , how can any manager succeed and meet elite level targets in a club that’s nowhere near elite level run?
And don’t give me “well we could at least play decent football”, that’s not good enough. If we were doing that people would be complaining that we aren’t even close to competing. The club isn’t setup to succeed, so when things start going wrong we fall badly , just like league winning teams whose form collapses the season after winning a league. Negative momentum and loss in form can cripple a team.
This happens to all United managers because the club throws money at the problem without fixing the underlying issues. They are expected to challange for the league “cause 400 million spent” in an environment that a mid table club wouldn’t be happy with. Our club doesn’t help managers , it undermines them, particularly with awful squad balances and pathetic loan alternatives.
I didn't blame ETH. I explicitly stated that the responsibles are either the Murtough, the owners, ETH or the all of them. And not the medical staff which was the point made initially.
Agreed, that’s how I feel.
Yes.
If you don’t think the average person is intelligent enough to recognise and critique tactics, then close your account on the forum. By the sounds of it they’ll have you on Monday Night Football soon, you’ll be able to tell Carragher he doesn’t know anything about Ten Hag’s system either! I agree people shouldn’t hurl insults at our manager or players, but it is definitely possible to understand what we’re trying to do tactically and to decide for ourselves if this system is suited to the Premier League.The mere fact that people will defend this kind of abomination shows how far standards have fallen here.
I truly hope INEOS completely change the mindset going forward.
The fanbase has immensely high standards for the players, but not for the managers post-SAF.
I think the club has been run absolutely terribly since Fergie left. In fact, Fergie was merely papering over the huge cracks during his later years.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are numerous unprofessional players within the ranks, and this has been a theme for a long time now. Managers have certainly faced internal issues with players etc. there's no doubt about that.
However, our managers have also been part of the issue due to poor recruitment and not successfully implementing a positive culture. Maybe the barriers they faced were too much, and let's hope that INEOS can turn things around in that respect. From the perspective of fan and Board patience though; I feel that managers have been afforded far too much leeway. Pretty much every post-Fergie appointment should have been binned off before they eventually were.
Sums it up well.
There's definitely loads of problems at this club. But the managers hired themselves have also been problems. The fact that none of them managed a top club after United is indicative that they weren't top quality(Mourinho way past his prime doesn't count as top quality). Each manager hired had a clear ceiling of top 4 and lows that were abysmal.
Ten Hag's management this season is worse than Moyes' season. Our attacking/defensive metrics are terrible for a club of this size(and the talent we have) and we couldn't even make it out of the CL group stages. That said, I will agree his management last season was clearly far better than what Moyes achieved.
And I truly don't think that title winning team has more individual quality than our team now(it's debatable either way IMO). SAF heavily papered over a lot of cracks for our squad then.
Anything but a win today would really put pressure on him. I’m surprised we haven’t really had many reports claiming he’s under fire have we?
So you are basically just saying there is nothing the manager could do to improve things. No one doubts its a challenging role but regularly look entirely uncoached and consistently exhibit the same tactical flaws over the best part of a year. Its not asking much to expect him to identify the flaws and do something to address them
You mention all our managers post fergie have struggled and obviously a big part of that is the structure but that has also led to us hiring managers that weren't suited to the job
The fact is ten hag has had more influence over transfers than any manager post fergie and his inadequacies on this front have led to the squad being weaker. For example we could have signed a back up striker or ball playing centre back / left back with the money used on his priority signing (mount) who is injured again after being injured for much of the previous year
Exactly. For most of us the idea isn't that the manager and in this case ETH is the only issue(he quite obviously isn't), it isn't to say that the players or executives are perfect but simply that the managers are in large part as flawed as the aforementioned groups. And to be perfectly clear, my criticism is more aimed at executives and fans who are being slow when it comes to accepting the idea of moving on, the same is true for our handling of players, we are too slow to move them on, we wait until we reach a point where their reputations and values have plummeted.
Many of our fans appear to have lost the plot and are swallowing his line about being unable to do anything with all the injuries
It's unfair to revisit the transfer of a player that had an unexpected string of big injuries. But your point stands if we are talking about the prices of Onana, Lisandro Martinez or Antony who were all priorities for the manager. None of these players are good deals, I like Onana and Martinez but I do think that we paid a premium simply because they were wanted by the manager.
You see this is ETH. First thing is, he did not have to make this statement, it just adds to the sense of confusion around his management team. Second thing is, Luke Shaw was playing until quite recently.. Malacia is clearly long-term. ETH needs to get a grip, and manage things... manage his players, manage his backroom staff, manage himself with the PR side of things.
Everything is an excuse, bad luck, someone else's fault, the player's didn't do something etc, etc.
He needs a result today.
Personally I see signs of progress. What his detractors miss is the huge scale of the disease in the club. Asking one man to fix that in 12 months is not sensible. Getting rid is like a cancer patient refusing chemo and surgery because holistic herbs don't make them sick.
I'm completely in favour of admitting our mistakes quickly and moving on from players and managers when it becomes clear they aren't meeting standards. I can't stand the rationale of those who argue we give a manager 2-3 years, no questions asked. It's a moronic way of running a football club
It creates a sense of confusion among the fanbase. Just look at the threads onthe Caf. People on here are just plain guessing and sometimes making up stories about United.
Ten Hag needs to address it.
What I like about him is that he has shown an ability to make players better, especially young players.
Dalot, Mainoo, AWB, Hojlund, Garnacho, McT, even Rashford last season.
Of course there are failures too and these things don't happen in a straight line. But name one player Moyes made better. Or Jose. Or Ole.
Dalot, Mainoo, AWB, Hojlund, Garnacho, McT, even Rashford last season.
Of course there are failures too and these things don't happen in a straight line. But name one player Moyes made better. Or Jose. Or Ole.
This nonsense again...
If you needed a perfect backroom and board to win anything or play decent football then Klopp wouldn't never have won anything, same applies to SAF who managed the team under the current/old board. The sooner you realise that quality managers do well regardless of who's holding them back the better.
I want to see ETH gone but it would be unreasonable to say he deserves the sack after this season - our injuries are an absolute joke. If anything, the fitness and recovery team should be shown the door after our scouting department.
The sooner you realise they don't the more seriously you will be taken.
Who do you mean? If mount we signed him after he had a period of injuries so perhaps not suprising he is still struggling. Agree on Antony and onana but think martinsz was reasonable value before the injuries
1-3 Brighton
0-2 Spurs
0-1 Palace
2-3 Galatasary
0-3 Newcastle
3-4 Copenhagen
3-3 Galatasary
0-1 Newcastle
0-3 Bournemouth
0-2 West Ham
1-2 Forest
1-2 Fulham
Note that I havent even included the games we were expected to lose.
Unreasonable?
Get this absolute clown out of the club.
He has actively managed to make us the poorest football playing team in the league.
His 'system' is genius in the sense that every other system outplays it.
Our wins are purely down to player talent which has not been replenished well in recent years.
No other club of this size would put up with it.
Fans that believe he should get more time are clearly deluded.
Closest i have ever come to switching games off this season
He has actively managed to make us the poorest football playing team in the league.
His 'system' is genius in the sense that every other system outplays it.
Our wins are purely down to player talent which has not been replenished well in recent years.
No other club of this size would put up with it.
Fans that believe he should get more time are clearly deluded.
Closest i have ever come to switching games off this season
Last edited:
autobiography? cool
People used to get on Ole's back about 'vibes' football. This chaos is way worse than anything we produced back then
Does ETH not have a mind of his own then?
Anyone with half a brain cell could have told you that Shaw constantly has injury problems & relying on Malacia not to have anymore setbacks after two knee operations in the space of six months was a massive risk.
As usual with ETH it’s everyone else’s fault. He’s in self preservation mode and looking for excuses at every turn.
- Status