Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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I'm sure the structure has not been helpful for anyone, and especially someone like ETH - who came from the Netherlands, which was a huge step up, and then needed to make another step up with the control he was given over players signings instead of having a club sturcture to help identify the players needed for the sort of football he wanted to play. He wouldn't have had the knowledge of the market available to United so it's not surprising he turned to his own personal knowledge regardingf the players he chose, which was a pretty limited market. He needed help and probably didn't get it.

People would say it's his fault because he wanted that power, but can you blame him for not trusting United, looking at recent years - and also the issues we had in the scouting department as the time following the sacking of two leading ones?

If we had a good structure that helped him get the right players and focus on coaching the team - which is the reason we got him in the first place - then maybe, MAYBE, things wouldn't have been different.

Could that still change if we get that structure in place now? In theory, yes, but I also fear the milk might have soured with him and that it's too late.
Pressures will actually increase on the coach when Ineos begin making squad changes. The notion that this structure will come in and EtH will suddenly be operating in some perfect environment is fanciful.

Ineos are investing a shit ton of money into this project [we hope], they’re not going to stand for ‘my first choice centre back is unavailable so my first choice midfield can’t retain a football.’.

Antony was with him at Ajax. Was bought under his advisement & has declined dramatically as a player. The narrative that once he’s just coaching the players they’ll suddenly turn into world beaters is just positive spin.

It’s unfair to blame him on the actual player recruitment as he should never have been given the power but as he has been, it is only common sense to assess the profile of player he thinks can prosper in this league and begin to worry. Whilst teams like Arsenal and Citeh are building around technical athletes this guy is signing players of a far less robust profile bar maybe Hojlund.

You’re right. The milk has soured.
 
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I mean in that scenario he'd finish probably one place behind where his side would be expected to given the injuries. Don't see it as a major issue, especially if he locks in CL football and ends the season strongly. People tend to remember the latest form and results when extrapolating.
You talk about latest form as if we have only recently been in poor form but in reality we have only actually been good for about a third of a season, the rest has been poor.

Unless there is a miraculous upturn in form and performances I would really hope the board wouldn't be swayed by CL football in the instance we finish fifth unconvincingly
 
Pressures will actually increase on the coach when Ineos begin making squad changes. The notion that this structure will come in and EtH will suddenly be operating in some perfect environment is fanciful.

Ineos are investing a shit ton of money into this project [we hope], there not going to stand for ‘my first choice centre back is unavailable so my first choice midfield can’t retain a football.’.

Antony was with him at Ajax. Was bought under his advisement & has declined dramatically as a player. The narrative that once he”s just coaching the players they’ll suddenly turn into world beaters is any positive spin.

It’s unfair to blame him on the actual player recruitment as he should never have been given the power but as he has been it’s only common sense to assess the profile of player he thinks can prosper in this league and begin to worry. Whilst teams like Arsenal and Citeh are building around technical athletes this guy is signing players of a far less robust profile bar maybe Hojlund.

You’re right. The milk has soured.
INEOS surely can see that Ten Hag is not suited to the Premiership
 
My issue is that sacking the manager delays yeh big decisions. Arteta made some massive calls at Arsenal. He shipped off Aubamayang who was their top scorner for years. It would have been easy to say “they are making a mistake” just like you’re saying with Rashford. The sum of the team is greater than the sum of the individuals and if we sack the manager we just roll the dice again. We have seen it time and time again the players get a stay of execution. If Ashworth can change that than I’d be happy to change the manager, but we have no evidence of that currently.

I just feel like wasn't there a way we could make massive calls over players like Casemiro or Rashford, however also kept an open mind about managers available this summer
 
The way some people go on, our whole season depended on Shaw and Martinez staying fit. I agree Martinez has been a big loss but we've never been able to count on Shaw staying fit. I like him, but he's hardly prime Maldini. How many more goals do people think we would have scored with them in the team?
 
I just feel like wasn't there a way we could make massive calls over players like Casemiro or Rashford, however also kept an open mind about managers available this summer
This./

The argument that you can’t address the staff in the dugout aswell as on the pitch is disingenuous at best.

No manager has their ideal squad 18 months into their tenure, that is no excuse to throw hands up in the air & say ‘can’t do anything until we’ve spent a billion & get no injuries for a year.’.
 
This./

The argument that you can’t address the staff in the dugout aswell as on the pitch is disingenuous at best.

No manager has their ideal squad 18 months into their tenure, that is no excuse to throw hands up in the air & say ‘can’t do anything until we’ve spent a billion & get no injuries for a year.’.
Spurs were just down van de Ven in defence last night and got thumped 3-0 by Fulham.

This league is brutal and any side has the quality to do damage so having your best players out absolutely prevents you from doing things like challenging for the league or having an easy ride into the CL.
 
The way some people go on, our whole season depended on Shaw and Martinez staying fit. I agree Martinez has been a big loss but we've never been able to count on Shaw staying fit. I like him, but he's hardly prime Maldini. How many more goals do people think we would have scored with them in the team?
A lot more. Martinez helps us build through the lines quicker and incisively with his passing and Shaw’s overlapping runs gives Rashford the space to cut inside and shoot or play it out wide.

Both players back for the majority of the season would transform our left side.
 
The way some people go on, our whole season depended on Shaw and Martinez staying fit. I agree Martinez has been a big loss but we've never been able to count on Shaw staying fit. I like him, but he's hardly prime Maldini. How many more goals do people think we would have scored with them in the team?
We had scored 3 more goals after 28 games last season. With Rashford at his peak.
 
Spurs were just down van de Ven in defence last night and got thumped 3-0 by Fulham.

This league is brutal and any side has the quality to do damage so having your best players out absolutely prevents you from doing things like challenging for the league or having an easy ride into the CL.
So then why would you setup to cede the midfield every game?
 
We had scored 3 more goals after 28 games last season. With Rashford at his peak.
Our attacking play last season largely involved just getting the ball to Rushford and we haven't been able to move beyond that.

Also if Shaw and martinez were so central to us playing halfway competent football you would think ten hag might have focused on signing another centre back or back up who could support that to play alongside martinez or act as back up at centre back or left back. Instead he prioritised Mount and onana, Mount in particular was an odd choice. Its just all quite incoherent
 
Someone posted before about a younger generation of fans who don't know where success comes from and seem to think it just needs blind loyalty to a manager. Not sure how much truth there is but there is a significant minority of fans who take this line and seem determined to excuse the manager at every turn. The one about 'keep sacking managers' is the dumbest. Of the post Fergie managers, who should we have stuck with. If we had honored Moyes's 7 year contract, anyone seriously suggesting we would be challenging for PL. LVG was heading for retirement before Woodward stepped in, Ole was a great guy but probably the most under qualified manager ever. Mou was horrible and toxic. ETH on paper looked better than this lot but maybe he just isn't good enough. The club is bigger the manager, there will never be another Fergie, people need to stop obsessing.
Delusion is an issue holding us back. It's not just something affecting the fanbase though. Did anyone see Rio's combined 11 in advance of the game today? I mean WTF, not one of our team would get into a Liverpool 11. It hurts like f**k to say that but burying our heads in the sand is not going to put us back at the top table. Yet for all of our shortcomings there are factors that make a utd win today not unlikely. Erasmus is back. We are at home. It is the only piece of silverware left for us. They are cocky and carrying injuries. We can win this. Meanwhile Rio needs to stay off the Charlie.
 
Recent reports pointing towards him staying are exactly what I had expected. He will get a free pass because he’s great at talking himself out of trouble and pretending everything is great / blaming others and different factors.
 
Recent reports pointing towards him staying are exactly what I had expected. He will get a free pass because he’s great at talking himself out of trouble and pretending everything is great / blaming others and different factors.

You don't think much of INEOS do you if you think ETH can just talk himself out of trouble?
 
Recent reports pointing towards him staying are exactly what I had expected. He will get a free pass because he’s great at talking himself out of trouble and pretending everything is great / blaming others and different factors.
Or you aren't in a position to fairly evaluate him.
 
Recent reports pointing towards him staying are exactly what I had expected. He will get a free pass because he’s great at talking himself out of trouble and pretending everything is great / blaming others and different factors.
I think reports that the cost of sacking him is a factor may have some truth to them.
 
Our attacking play last season largely involved just getting the ball to Rushford and we haven't been able to move beyond that.

Also if Shaw and martinez were so central to us playing halfway competent football you would think ten hag might have focused on signing another centre back or back up who could support that to play alongside martinez or act as back up at centre back or left back. Instead he prioritised Mount and onana, Mount in particular was an odd choice. Its just all quite incoherent
The impact that Martinez has on our attacking play is heavily exaggerated. We were very average in attack last season, massively reliant on Rashford. I said it myself multiple times which is why our struggles this season hasn't surprised me.
 
In a results business where your performance is paramount I do not see how someone can overcook either. I’m genuinely baffled by that sentence, are you saying underperformance &/or poor results are being overstated?
I'm saying the underperformance being specifically down to him is overcooked. He's made some mistakes, big ones, but most managers will here. The underperformance in resutls from the team however, is also due to concentrated injuries at the back which none of our rival clubs has really faced to the duration we have.
I highlighted win% in your post, you claimed his win percentage was in some way proof he is doing well & I just delved deeper. I’m not saying progress isn’t linear then criticising the win%. I was critiquing your use of win% without context.
Then look at points per game.
As for progress not being linear, I’ve touched on how before we’d even kicked a ball this season people were making excuses for how 4th would be ok and how the injuries narrative [which again when looked at with context shows we don’t play in a silo and the teams we play have injuries/suspensions too] 5th would now suddenly be acceptable, yet he is leading a team languishing in 6th praying for a miracle.
You go on to say I've fallen into a trap before falling into a trap yourself by using the "other teams have injuries" narrative, when they havent been as plagued as we have with key players out in one particular area for pretty much all season. 5th isn't terrible by the way, we'd probably be expected for 4th with our squad and where we are in the process (not ahead of Arsenal City Liverpool). If we finished 5th we probably wouldn't be too far off the 4th place anyway. Underperformance? Sure. Catastrophic? feck no.
As for being on track with Liverpool last year. Not sure about the relevance, we weren’t as good as them prior and aren’t going to be as good as they are this season next season. You’re falling into the trap I see many do in defence of EtH on here and not discussing the man on his own merits but throwing in what few other managers have done as outliers..
Not sure about the relevance? If the best manager in the world can have an unexplained off season, why cant a manager who is still trying to fix his squad, instil much needed discipline, and fight worse injuries?
Which is exactly why expectations have been lowered to a 5th place finish which he is currently not on target for. Whilst the team currently in 5th place, Spurs, started the season with a worse set of resources and have had their own injury issues.
As above, finishing 5th is probably around what is reasonable given the injuries and squad status relative to 3 teams who are very more established in their personnel / playing style above us. As for Spurs, when they had concentrated injuries in the backline similar to ours, they had something like 5 points out of a possible 15. They were nimble on wage bills to essentially throw out their maguire equivalent and bring in a very highly rated progressive CB of their own to keep going. You make it sound like Ange inherited a bad team - if you go through his personnel he has more players suited to his style. 2 very attacking minded and polished wingback/fullbacks, a speedster cheat code of a CB that enables their suicidal high line, a world cup winning CB, the best or 2nd best attacker in the premier league and an overlay with creative outlets such as Maddison are all broadly at his disposal too. They aren't some sort of mug team and generally spend better than we do, which has nothing to do with management.
Part of management is making the best out of what you have at your disposal. No manager has an ideal squad only 18 months into their tenure so they have to tailor their approach to what they have. EtH is not maximising this squad at all but persisting with a flawed tactic off the back of, ‘once you give me another £400mil & a squad with no injuries for a whole season things will be fine’, which is never going to happen.
Falling into another trap here - £400m as an indicement on ten hag alone. This isn't even worth debating to be honest. Riddled with flawed logic.
It’s not up to you and me to throw names around a forum for the next manager, it just muddies the water and diverts the discussion from the incumbent. No matter who we hire they will have their naysayers so all we can do is assess the current managers performance.
I am not asking you to hire them. I'm asking you to point to better ones thats all. This is just a debate and managerial candidates aren't hidden gems - they are publically known. INEOS arent going to unearth some managerial guru from Chile that we haven't heard of. If they sack Ten Hag they'll hire a name we all know a lot about, so my question to you is how would any such names be it Potter, Amorim, Nagelsmann, Tuchel, Simeone etc. not come without their own big risks.
 
You don't think much of INEOS do you if you think ETH can just talk himself out of trouble?
I don’t. I guess years of following this club have taught me to really tone down my expectations.
 
Or you aren't in a position to fairly evaluate him.

Yeah, and we won’t be next year either because there will still be some injuries, he still won’t have got all the players he had wanted, squad still won’t be ‘his’ and besides what does 1 year working under ‘structure’ going to do? He needs more. I think we are stuck with him for a long, long time because same excuses will be here.
 
It's been a horrific season.

It’s actually been a typical Glazer season tbh. United tend to have a good year, which for them is 2nd or 3rd. Then it’s followed by a poor year finishing 4th/5th/6th.

In the last 10 years I can’t remember it being any different.
 
Yeah, and we won’t be next year either because there will still be some injuries, he still won’t have got all the players he had wanted, squad still won’t be ‘his’ and besides what does 1 year working under ‘structure’ going to do? He needs more. I think we are stuck with him for a long, long time because same excuses will be here.
It's almost as though a rebuild takes more than two summers.
 
Recent reports pointing towards him staying are exactly what I had expected. He will get a free pass because he’s great at talking himself out of trouble and pretending everything is great / blaming others and different factors.
Theres between eff all and zero chance ETH is our manager next season. He’s done adsolutely nothing since Ineos took over to warrant staying in situ. Do you seriously believe our new CEO and the team below him will put their faith in ETH. Different if we were playing scintillating football but ravaged but injuries / bad luck. But in reality it’s been putrid football and injuries are used as an excuse. Who honestly thinks we will win today ? Hopefully we get a result. I’m normally the eternal optimist in games like this and the bookies normally skin me but 7/2 today at home crazily looks short so for once I’ll keep my money in my pocket.
 
Yeah, and we won’t be next year either because there will still be some injuries, he still won’t have got all the players he had wanted, squad still won’t be ‘his’ and besides what does 1 year working under ‘structure’ going to do? He needs more. I think we are stuck with him for a long, long time because same excuses will be here.

By the sounds of the the first part of the new staff will only be in place in the summer, and then they will build the structure and all the rest from there. The first season will probably be a write off, so they may choose to write it off with Ten Hag and save on sacking him.
 
By the sounds of the the first part of the new staff will only be in place in the summer, and then they will build the structure and all the rest from there. The first season will probably be a write off, so they may choose to write it off with Ten Hag and save on sacking him.

This is sort of my thinking on some level. Ive said it before, depending on how much work INEOs feel needs to happen , ETH could be a free hit manager for them, especially if he works with them (which I think he will).

I get football is knee jerk in general, but I like the idea of waiting for the right manager and having the right conditions and squad to give him a better chance. I haven’t written off ETH, so he may even start to turn things around but even if he didn’t next season if we were making the right signings and doing the right things in the background it would mean if he was replaced it would give the newer manager a better chance.

Incidentally, from what I hear from the 2023 finance results , it seems like United May of been able to spend a few quid in January. They chose not to for FFP reasons when it looks like it wasn’t as big an issue.

Even if, in this summer, we didn’t spend big, focused on sales and got in strong additions (not 80 mil plus) like an Evra/vidic one (the non obvious ones), and had a more long term approach to squad building, I’d be on board with that.

CL qualification is only important to United now if we are gonna keep blowing stupid money and getting nothing decent for sales. If we sort that out, then CL qualification won’t be required as much as it will be just something the club should just be doing as a matter of fact.
 
Spurs were just down van de Ven in defence last night and got thumped 3-0 by Fulham.

This league is brutal and any side has the quality to do damage so having your best players out absolutely prevents you from doing things like challenging for the league or having an easy ride into the CL.
Not sure what one game has to do with my post which is simply stating a less resourced team have, over the course of the season so far, outperformed United albeit with their own issues.

‘This league is brutal and any side has the quality to do damage’, thanks for that gem.

‘having your best players out absolutely prevents you from doing things like challenging for the league or having an easy ride into the CL.’, I’ll forgive this post as it isn’t quoting one of my many posts from yesterday where I address the lowered expectations EtH is operating under this year. He’s not being asked to challenge for a league & at this point Top5 would suit some. Him being unable to do so isn’t simply about him not having his best players.

The ignorance of your post to try & boil our underperformance this year down to Spurs ‘well Spurs lost to Fulham’.
 
It's almost as though a rebuild takes more than two summers.
It could go on forever at the rate we are signing players that actually improve us as opposed to dross such as Antony, players whose legs go after one season (casemiro) or players that obviously wouldn't improve us (mount)
 
It could go on forever at the rate we are signing players that actually improve us as opposed to dross such as Antony, players whose legs go after one season (casemiro) or players that obviously wouldn't improve us (mount)
I find that unlikely given Ashworth will be supporting the manager from next season and not Murtough.
I disagree about Mount though, if he can stay fit he's actually a very valuable asset.
 
The way some people go on, our whole season depended on Shaw and Martinez staying fit. I agree Martinez has been a big loss but we've never been able to count on Shaw staying fit. I like him, but he's hardly prime Maldini. How many more goals do people think we would have scored with them in the team?

It certainly doesn't help when this argument is used as a "gotcha" moment. On the other hand, reducing its importance to the level of treating it as a joke doesn't help either. It's not about scoring goals by having defenders fit so much, as it is about having more players in the first phase of build-up able to carry the ball through the lines. Shaw and Martinez are very good at that. Dalot is improving and Mainoo has shown great promise, but we still miss these two. Not to score goals, but to help us progress the ball with safety and, ultimately, spend more time with the ball in the opposition half. It might still not be good enough in the end, but it is a point to discuss.
 
It's almost as though a rebuild takes more than two summers.
Exactly, and the rebuild doesn’t start until he works under new structure. So it’s next Summer and at least two more beyond that he needs to get regardless of results. So we can only really judge him based on 2026-27 performance or maybe even 2027-28.
 
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Exactly, and the rebuild doesn’t start until he works under new structure. So it’s next Summer and at least two more beyond that he needs to get regardless of results.
I mean we have a couple of players to build around in Licha, Hojlund, Mainoo and Garnacho. That's a good spine even if we put question marks over certain big name players such as Onana Bruno and Rashford.

But the squad needs to have player profiles that are similar to each other. It doesn't help our coach if he's trying to drill a high line, but if he has no Shaw he has to play Lindelof / Amrabat who basically can't play a high line as their profiles are completely opposite to the first choice. Same goes for losing Licha and needing Maguire or Evans to step in. Or losing Hojlund and trying to work out some false 9 approach.
 
Can’t believe I’m already seeing posts saying next season will be a write and off and excusing it before it happens.
 
I mean we have a couple of players to build around in Licha, Hojlund, Mainoo and Garnacho. That's a good spine even if we put question marks over certain big name players such as Onana Bruno and Rashford.

But the squad needs to have player profiles that are similar to each other. It doesn't help our coach if he's trying to drill a high line, but if he has no Shaw he has to play Lindelof / Amrabat who basically can't play a high line as their profiles are completely opposite to the first choice. Same goes for losing Licha and needing Maguire or Evans to step in. Or losing Hojlund and trying to work out some false 9 approach.
And it takes 2-3 more years at least to build a team that will be able to play ten Hag football, to have every player capable of playing his way. We will also inevitably have some hits and misses along the way which could extend it by another 1-2 years easily. So it’s really 2027-28 we are looking at when we could reasonably assess him as a manager and expect to see any progress.
 
Our attacking play last season largely involved just getting the ball to Rushford and we haven't been able to move beyond that.

Also if Shaw and martinez were so central to us playing halfway competent football you would think ten hag might have focused on signing another centre back or back up who could support that to play alongside martinez or act as back up at centre back or left back. Instead he prioritised Mount and onana, Mount in particular was an odd choice. Its just all quite incoherent

In the case of Shaw his absence could have been somewhat mitigated by Malacia but he’s been missing all season too. We had too many CBs and all but had offloaded Maguire to West Ham, Moyes even spoke about it as if it were pretty much done at one point but Maguire wouldn’t go. If he had it’s not too unlikely that a more suitable CB would have been brought in to replace him.

While I can see why people were hesistant on Mount, I don’t see why Onana would be looked at as an odd choice. DDG was OOC, Onana was coming off of a very good season with Inter, familiar with the coach and the system and available for a very reasonable fee.
 
And it takes 2-3 more years at least to build a team that will be able to play ten Hag football, to have every player capable of playing his way. We will also inevitably have some hits and misses along the way which could extend it by another 1-2 years easily. So it’s really 2027-28 we are looking at when we could reasonably assess him as a manager and expect to see any progress.
Yeah, that's what we are saying. Thanks for finally seeing our side of things because this has been our narrative all along. I'm really glad you've accurately grasped the point of view without any exaggeration whatsoever.
 
Yeah, that's what we are saying. Thanks for finally seeing our side of things because this has been our narrative all along. I'm really glad you've accurately grasped the point of view without any exaggeration whatsoever.
Thanks. I’m on your side now. It’s ten Hag for life.
 
Yeah, that's what we are saying. Thanks for finally seeing our side of things because this has been our narrative all along. I'm really glad you've accurately grasped the point of view without any exaggeration whatsoever.
It’s got to the point where I don’t even know if these posts are jokes at the moment. Maybe it’s just because I’m tired and my sarcasm radar is off
 
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