Very true.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Agreed. The signings have not been much of a problem, Antony is the only one sticks out negatively and even he has some qualities that could be useful to a good team (just not the ones you'd expect at this price). Onana, Martinez, Casemiro, Hojlund etc. have been decent enough, it's just that despite this we have not progressed as a team at all and do not seem capable of playing good football consistently in a sustainable way. Not just against good teams but against anyone. I think it's very reductive to just focus on his signings and pretend that's the only issue.
If we ever sell Mason Mount for £40m+ then I would be amazed. There’s no scenario I can see that happening.
He's English, young and has a good reputation from his Chelsea days. We'd get £40m bids easily, Premier League teams love to pay a lot for this type of player. Ward-Prowse cost West Ham £30m at nearly 29 and Mount is a better player.
Mount was out of contract at the end pf this season, missed games through injury last season and his form also dipped. We could have saved that money until January, Kamikaze set up from the beginning of the season with Cas, Mount and Bruno pushing high up the pitch.
Managers after match comments, if he believes his comments there is something wrong or is he a wind up merchant. He certainly winds me up.
Managers after match comments, if he believes his comments there is something wrong or is he a wind up merchant. He certainly winds me up.
No, I mean what you have said is looking more and more likely to be true. Despite some mini runs of form, the fact we haven't been able to build on it from a performance standpoint makes us question whether we are adopting the best system for our players.
I'm not sure him scoring against Brentford in an otherwise terrible display is going to cut it unfortunately. There's little so far to suggest he isn't another Van de Beek style signing.
You're mad then.
I would love to try a midfield of Casemiro with Mount and Mainoo in front of him as 8's. ETH should try this but he obviously won't drop Bruno.
There's little to suggest anything about Mount in a United shirt as he's been out for so much of the season and has had no chance to show what he can do. The evidence from Chelsea shows he can be a brilliantly useful player in the premiership if he is used correctly.
Whether EtH knows how he is going to do that or not is a separate conversation. But Mount has shown he can be head and shoulders above VdB in a premiership team.
Okay, I wasn't sure.
I should add that this isn't to say that our players are all good and the manager is the only reason behind our results. My point is and has always been that what we are witnessing is an average manager who is unable to create any coherent set of 11 players. And I also think that it's mental, for some reason he refuses to challenge his initial plans and actually adapt to the situation which is strange since we are talking about a manager that used very different systems with different clubs and at Ajax he adapted brilliantly to very different set of players.
It may ruffle some feathers but my guess is that because United doesn't have a hands-on technical structure above the manager, his lack of self questioning has been exposed. He doesn't have a Overmars breathing over his shoulder and questioning him or imposing a certain direction.
Also, yes some of our players are subpar and they should be sold or left out of the team more often than not.
Is there just me who now thinks we should try and play how he initially wanted to when he started? I think we have the players for it now. Especially in Onana, Martinez, Mainoo etc.
Garnacho can be the inverted winger on the right that Antony should have been and we have a proper holdup player in Hojlund.
Garnacho can be the inverted winger on the right that Antony should have been and we have a proper holdup player in Hojlund.
Or Casemiro and Mainoo with Antony centrally. It could fail but Antony's combination of workrate and decent technique in tight space could be a better fit centrally.
Feel free to come back to me when we sell him then.
Anyway, this is the ETH thread. Can you explain to me why you agree with @JPRouve’s post that the manager doesn’t know how to use his own signings and we are only as high as 6th because we have talented players but yet think ETH is the man to take us forwards?
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Sorry done it again I can’t separate you from SM!
I think he’s a very good player far better than a Donny.
Do you mean Mount played terribly against Brentford?
He’s been injured so how anyone is making any judgement right now is ludicrous.
He’s going to be a judge him halfway through next season kind of player.
He quite clearly does not mean Mount played terribly as he was only subbed in with 10 minutes of regular time to go, he means the entire team played horribly which I think everyone bar ETH's most devoted fans agree with.
Nonsense. Arteta was an assistant at City before managing any team, same with Alonso, Zidane. If you have the knowledge and a clear plan in place, the level is irrelevant.
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Good Lord no. Antony would get bullied centrally
Casemiro, Mainoo and Mount makes the most sense to get a bit more control. In the short term as we know Bruno won’t be dropped we might need Mount instead of Garnacho at times.
I’ve been thinking about where could this team head and personally I think something like this would suit us long term far better:
Onana
Dalot Diomande Martinez Shaw*
Onana
Mount Mainoo
Williams Højlund Garnacho
If Mount doesn’t work out bring in a Wirtz/El Khannouss style player.
We need that little bit more physicality but also technicians in midfield which I’d argue Mount and Mainoo are the best we have in the squad.
* We need to plan to replace Shaw because he can’t play most games
They were all around 40 when they made their step up, and in Alonso’s case he did not go straight to a huge club - Leverkusen were basically an upper half aspiring Bundesliga team when he joined. Frank is 50 and has managed Denmark youth teams, Brondby and Brentford. He’s not a young manager trying to get his first proper gig.
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That’s why it was posed as a question. It’s an odd response then when I’m just talking about Mount to be like “he scored but the side was shit” how is that relevant?
I don’t think any fan here has said we played well against Brentford. It was shocking.
There is no reason to state that he would get bullied. And I simply offered an additional option, I'm not in the business of imagining a single option and not thinking about others, yes Maino,, Casemiro and Mount makes sense but it's not the only thing that a manager should try. It's senseless to eliminate options without trying them, especially when it costs you nothing unlike signing new expensive players.
Age has nothing to do with it. Leverkusen is a huge step up coming from managing a B team in Spain - they are consistently in Europa/CL every season.
Age is actually important in this case, managers tend to have success before 50 and decline in their early 50s. There are exceptions but age is a factor to take into account.
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How many duels does he win out wide?
Now put him inside where typically the physicality is greater. I’m confident that no manager will put Antony inside for this exact reason. He lacks so much of what the PL demands in central areas.
I can guarantee we’re Ten Hag to move him central people (unless by miracle it worked) would tear into him for being clueless and misusing a player (like when Di Maria was played central)
Casemiro has enjoyed expressing himself more, maybe that's part of why he's here in his mind, to play more advanced at times. He did really well last season and helped score important goals. Physically he looks knackered, slow and late to tackles, we're desperate for goals but we could really do with Case sitting back covering and probably recovering his own fitness with Mainoo and others ahead in midfield like Kroos and Modric would be. Mainoo has looked very good getting involved higher up.
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Do you have data to back this point up?
Well a 40-year old is not going to have an abundance of top level experience, you're usually appointing them based on potential. An older manager only has certain amount of upside though we have seen some of them make a step up at 50+ and still be successful (e.g. Valverde at Barca).
Not sure i'd agree with that.
Which is why i brought Frank up, he's younger than Ten Hag and has alot of potential. My point was just because he's at Brentford doesn't mean he couldn't step up to a big team - we've see younger managers with much less experience make the step up. I'm not saying he should be the next United manager, but I think he could do a far better job then Ten Hag.
I used to have it but I don't right now. IIRC the average age of a CL winners was in the mid 40s and managers tend to have most of their success during the first decade of their careers.
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If you can find it I’d be interested to see it.
Neither would Carlo!
If Murtough hadn't overpaid for Mount and Hojlund, we could have funded a center back. If he also negotiated well for Antony, we would have been able to afford a center back.
If he could sell remotely well, we'd have been able to fund a center back.
Now do this in the PL where half the league don't come to the match with the intention of trying to concede less than 3 goals against you and see that as a win.
All the noise going into the preseason was that United were going to buy 3 first team players in the summer, which suggests the manager and Murtough had a plan on who they were going to sign and how they were going to improve the squad regardless of the outlay.
Of course it helps when the best teams you face on a weekly basis are a few levels below the worst teams that you face in Premier League (bar PSV, Feyenoord and Alkmaar who are around mid-table PL level).
That's fine, take a random set of manager and check whether their career was more successful during the first decade or not, that first decade is almost always in the 30s-40s. 15-20 years at the top is not that common which is what most +50 years old successful managers would have to do.
No, there was a lot of reports of us wanting a CB, kim being a big choice for us. There were reports of ten hag wanting two strikers too, because he didn't believe Hojlund was ready to take the entire burden.
He is in 250k/week though which makes the pool of squads who can offer that salary quite small. I think we can easily get 40m for him, but we probably need to continue paying part of his salary for a while, which means that we will get far less than 40m. Also, his reputation will be in tatters when we decide to sell him. He had a bad season last year, was pretty much non-existent this season, and won't start for us while Bruno is here. 3+ years can ruin a reputation.
We had a similar situation with Maguire in the summer, when we accepted the bid, but Maguire was asking for us to pay him the money he will lose by switching clubs.
In any case, Mount was a terrible signing, and it seems that the only people who didn't realize that were EtH and his disciples.
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