Jesus christ. We didn't have the money to outlay 20m in the first place. That's why it was a loan to begin with. What bit are you struggling with.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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I wonder why WTH had less money to buy Amrabat?
There's an athletic article you can dive into re. The review by Arnold and subsequent decisions, and how that was suspect to say the least.
Because Murtough can't negotiate for shit? Sponsor renewals and also shit sells? Many reasons that pre date the manager
He's the replacement head scout. So either a reliable aebsite is making whole persons up, or you've been caught in yet another lie.
Or ETH won't exercise his veto when the prices become outrageous.
Define elite. Would you consider Dortmund elite? Or Ajax or say Benfica or Roma? Or Milan?
Pep explaining why De Bruyne was taken off for being wasteful with the ball.
Vetos work both ways
This one is very simple. Klopp is 1) a brilliant manager and 2) he has been there for what 8 years now? During which time he has built a brilliant squad with help of a decent run club.
You've taken a listing on transfer market to assume knowledge of the working of the club. I'm going by the key sources from Athletic, which state Lawler and Bout were sacked, everything went to Murtough who wasn't clued up for ten hag.
Do you want me to show you the article?
My Benfica mates were winding me up about ETH and how bad he is. They also all want Their manager out as he’s not done well at all. There weren’t happy with my retort that he could be the next Benfica manager that may be his level. Some on here will always make excuses for he others can see him for what he is. A manager well out his depth.
The scouting department of United is public knowledge, matey.
The true working of our scouting department is actually briefed by the Athletic, and explained why it was so shite and might as well have been non existent.
This is from the Athletic:
"paint a picture of a club acting without an established plan. It transpired that, although United use a tailormade scouting database containing thousands of reports, nobody had assembled a so-called “shadow squad” of potential signings in each position, as is customary at clubs across the football pyramid. United were starting from scratch, rather than having potential deals lined up."
In other words you can employ all you want, if you're not listening to scouts or actually collating targets, you're setting the coach up to fail. That's not a ten hag point that's just an obvious given, and is no surprise why all other managers felt short changed in targets before ten hag.
Pep shits the bed at Anfield every time.
I agree that ETH has underwhelmed. But this is just one Liverpool performance. They've scraped so many last min wins against poor opposition too. They could easily have 10 fewer points and that'll perfectly fit their performances over the season.
In other words United has a scouting department. Thank you for confirming it.
Liverpool’s performance today highlighted you don’t need a fully fit starting XI to compete and go toe-to-toe with the city team. All you need is coaching, structure, tactics and being able to motivate players - in short, management. City players had no time on the ball and Liverpool were counterattacking with purpose and threat.
But its not fair to EtH to compare to Klopp. So lets compare him to the managers of the team below him, W Ham, Brighton, Wolves, Newcastle and Chelsea, all of whom have outscored us in the PL. Yet, somehow we have to believe that our back-4 being out is the reason why our midfield and attack can’t hold on to the ball and pose any kind of sustained threat.
But its not fair to EtH to compare to Klopp. So lets compare him to the managers of the team below him, W Ham, Brighton, Wolves, Newcastle and Chelsea, all of whom have outscored us in the PL. Yet, somehow we have to believe that our back-4 being out is the reason why our midfield and attack can’t hold on to the ball and pose any kind of sustained threat.
Do you want to be pedantic - here il change my point to "we might as well not have one".
It doesn't detract to the actual problem at our club, which you know is accurate.
It is not unfair to conclude our managers have essentially worked without the support of a proper scouting structure.
You never did. The "fully fit starting XI" for any club just doesn't play that often, it's natural as footballers pick up injuries constantly. That excuse has always been a fecking joke in terms of us getting bent over and dominated by shit clubs constantly just because we are missing a couple of defenders.
Which has nothing to do with actual training ground coaching, pre-match tactics, in game management, or anything else that also plagues our team.
They built a brilliant squad and that squad also got old and has gaps and needed a rebuild now. It's far from a perfect squad now. The only answer to his question is your first point. Klopp is a brilliant manager and knows how to coach his system and find a proper balance to make it work even if they have injuries.
A big part of a managers job is making things work even if you have injuries, finding the best balance with what you have unavailable. If Ten Hag is useless at that, then whats the point in him? If he can only make his starting 11 work (which so far he can't even get that going to a high level), then he's never going to succeed as a manager at a big club. At the end of the day, if people are using excuses for a manager, then that manager is in fact just failing at what he should be doing.
Wait..wait .. we can sub people off for losing possession all the time?
Someone fecking tell ETH, now.
No, I'm not talking about coaching here. Frustrations around cohesion I can empathise with and won't argue about. I'm talking about the broad level recruitment.
That doesn’t wash. Pep often shat the bed against United at the Etihad
woulda/coulda - fact of the matter is a manager at the top end is supposed to manage and often required to find solutions and get results - even when quality’s lacking - it just means having the capacity to turn the players at their disposal into mentality monsters/passion merchants in order to grind results. Seldom do managers have optimal/ideal circumstances. Ten Hag just doesn’t have it in him.
You could say the same about us (if 10 points fewer is even enough).
Your point is still wrong. And it's not unfair, it's a made up claim.
Just think about the article that you quoted for one second and you will realize that its framing is total bs. In order to have a shadow squad, you need to know what the manager want, the manager has to tell you what he wants and he has to know what he precisely wants and it's not something that you will do in a couple of months, no scouting department can build a shadow squad before a new cycle starts, it's something that he is based on insight. And that's where ETH comes in, in 2022 the club started with what he wanted they tried to get Timber, De Jong, Antony, Brobbey, Malacia, three of these players weren't available to us and we moved to alternatives that presumably suited him in Martinez and Casemiro which are both quality players, on top of Antony. The only issue in that has been that we didn't bring a striker in place of Brobbey.
And I will insist on that point, the article is totally flawed when its criticism is based on something that can't be done without heavy inputs from the coaching staff unless the club imposes a tactical setup which can happen in some clubs such as Ajax but that's not the norm. The norm is that the head coach can't rely on transfers from day one, he has to work with the players at his disposal and find out what works and doesn't work then with time the scouting and data science departments can build a compilation that fits the need of the current head coach or squad.
Otherwise what criteria are they supposed to use in order to filter and compile reports? Are these criteria imposed on the manager and if they are what exactly is the difference between that context and one where the manager has to maximize his current team and has no say in who is signed?
And the end of the day, the club accepted his requests and tried to sign all his favored targets. And that has nothing to do with a "lack of support", it's about wrongly trusting your new manager input which can and will also ruin your scouting compilations because the lad can't be trusted.
Was thinking superclub, but yeah he’ll struggle with some of those you’ve listed
Plus he has veto power. Every transfer has his agreement. Who knows, it’s possible that he has vetoed players who actually could have been good additions to the squad.
Add on the fact that there is some culpability in not vetoing Antony, Onana, Mount, Weghorst, Amrabaat, potentially Malacia… well, I mean, they’ve all been pretty bad.
There is no universe that exists where ETH does not have at least some responsibility for the poor transfer record over the last 4 windows.
Nobody is impressed with our scouting department or our DoF or data / analytics head. They should definitely be better. But ETH is still at least partially on the hook for this mess.
When you combine that with his tactical ineptitude, I don’t see how you can keep him on.
By that logic, we shouldn't even have Ten Hag as we should have kept Moyes, or LVG or Jose. The latter two unquestionably much better coaches than ETH.
Mate this is a forum where people excuse EtH for results because he doesn’t have his ideal starting 11 every second of every game, so there’s certainly a universe where people will excuse him of any transfer activity in it’s entirety.
Damning praise
The Liverpool performance is like the final dagger blow to the ETH excuses. Even with a weakened team they went out to win the game and probably should have, whilst we parked the double decker and acted like we don't belong on the same pitch as them.
I made this point after they beat Chelsea in the cup too, but he subbed on a load of kids in extra time and they didn't miss a beat. I thought Chelsea were in the ascendancy but the fresh legs and younger players who knew their roles and looked fired up, went out and turned the game back in their favour. When you think of the excuses we hear, it just makes a mockery of us. The reality is that it does just show the gulf in quality between the coaches. A truly good manager can get a tune out of even backup players, and at the very least they're understanding of the tactical approach and their role in the team.
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I still think people are looking at this the wrong way. We aren’t getting our Fergie, Klopp or Pep in our next manager. What we need to address are the minimum standards Ineos have for their managers, the f what we’re seeing from EtH is deemed acceptable then we’re fecked.
He’ll be coaching Ajax again in a year or so.
You can prove this with direct quotes from Ten Hag I assume?
Yeah the structure is bad, recruitment has been poor, and things get bad after several years due in no small part to the fact we give managers way too much say on transfers. We also stick with failing managers for too long.
Just like we're doing currently.
That's understandable mate if you spend any amount of time on here reading Ten Hag threads as there's folk on here who'd have us believe we've had the worst injury crisis in the history of football this season.
https://www.givemesport.com/every-premier-league-team-ranked-injuries-suffered/
https://www.planetfootball.com/prem...table-23-24-man-utd-chelsea-arsenal-liverpool
https://onefootball.com/de/news/eve...-have-suffered-from-injuries-in-2324-38857417
Every fan knew we were a shitshow when EtH took over so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt & say EtH will have made a number of enquiries about, as well as seen from the outside, what it can be like to work under Glazer rule.
For that reason I have little sympathy for the whole’ ‘look what he’s been working under’ angle. The guy knew what he was walking into & backed himself.
You can make some arguments about injuries but in the grand scheme, he was giving £400mil, by hopeless owners that he’d have know were useless. With that he’s producing poor performances & a number of his signings need to be the first to leave.
I don’t see Ineos backing this guy with their reputations firmly on the line.
For that reason I have little sympathy for the whole’ ‘look what he’s been working under’ angle. The guy knew what he was walking into & backed himself.
You can make some arguments about injuries but in the grand scheme, he was giving £400mil, by hopeless owners that he’d have know were useless. With that he’s producing poor performances & a number of his signings need to be the first to leave.
I don’t see Ineos backing this guy with their reputations firmly on the line.
Bookmarked. Thanks for this.
I went through the squads for a few of the games we lost at home this year & we actually had less players injured on those days than the teams we lost to.
The injury narrative gathering such pace & becoming something you can’t discuss/disagree with is a prime example of what happens when misinformation is pedestalled.
We’ve certainly been impacted by injuries but they alone are not the reason our players can’t keep a ball for a few passes between them.
For the 100th fecking time, Ten Hag never requested sole ownership of transfers. The fact that he's been exposed into a position that is more than what he signed up for in the transfer front shows there is a massive structural issue at the club - which is also why ever manager before signed big flops too. Shitty transfer business isn't unique to Eric Ten Hag. Happened under Moyes, LVG, Mourinho and Ole.
Ten Hag's wish for a veto and being in the room for transfer strategy only works if we have an actual structure to overlay his suggestions with ones of our own. This is a club that signed Diallo without telling Ole what the fee was, and making him think it was an academy player until saying it's for the first XI
It's a structure that thought "feck it, lets get Casemiro" instead of Rice because they didn't want to fork out as much of an initial outlay. It's a structure that knows Hojlund is £52m but still rock in and drop £76m for banter. There is so much wrong with that structure, that no manager in Ten Hag's place will recruit without a mixed bag.
Erik ten Hag has been confirmed as the new Manchester United manager but is seeing out the season at Ajax.
Ten Hag has given an interview to the Dutch press, where he said that he insisted on total control over United’s transfers.
“I set requirements in advance about how I want to work,” he said.
“If they aren’t granted, I won’t do it. I am ultimately responsible and accounted for the results.
“I don’t want to be the sole ruler, I stand for cooperation, but control in transfers is a condition for me.”
Im getting sick and tired of repeating myself so I'm not going to bother after this post. An element of control is not total control. That should be obvious.
And to @JPRouve whilst accepting the targets should be in sync with Ten Hag, the concept of a shadow squad should still be in existence for the coach to assess. The article states they could offer CB alternatives but they had nothing for the winger option despite ten hags own hesitance to go back to Ajax. Same goes for other areas of the pitch. That is outright abnormal.
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