The more you think about ETH the manager, the more you see some outstanding traits and some absolutely abysmal traits.
Strengths
- He’s definitely has courage
- Promotes Youth
- Fearless
- loyal to his preferred players
- Genuinely respects the club
- Surprisingly Flexible when he’s really up against the wall
- His Domestic Cup record is excellent
- Man management skills to favoured players
Weaknesses
- Stubborn beyond reason
- Tactically inflexible most of the time
- Reeks of Nepotism and Favouritism
- Incapable of managing a complete squad
- Tactically poor in the last 20/25 mins and doesn’t know how to close out matches.
- His philosophy is very short term in his match set up and his season planning, for ETH every game is a cup final when sometimes he needs to realise, it’s ok to play for a draw in a tough away game
- Has a lot to learn especially with big club management to be considered truly Elite
- Man Management skills
- Far too rigid in team
Formation, some games require 3412 or 4232 or a flat 433 formation, Eric won’t change for no one!
The real question that only INEOS can answer is do the pros outweigh the cons to justify giving him another year to prove himself?
Good list.
For me his philosophy to go each game all gung ho is a plus! We have the lowest number of draws and the 2 instances that I can recall where we do play much more for a draw, park the bus, we get shot up the most. Vs City and Vs Brentford.
Also the in game managent criticism is questionable. Many here have shown videos and evidence he begs, screams to players to close up shop, play wisely, but they just don''t seem to listen or open to being guided. Didn't he say that at the city game it took 20 minutes before players started to react to his instructions from the line?
I also think his man management cannot be questioned. He never attacked Ronaldo for instance, even after he detonated several bombs in his face. He kept Sancho out of the limelight, out of any question and was willing for him to leave for 3 months in a time when we desperatly needed him. The players also do seem to like him and noises about training too much, don't seem right. We had several games, the Chelsea one the latest, where players still fight for him when under Ole, it was just a bunch of extras in The Walking Dead.
He has strange kind of character, that I agree. But wasn't it Rashford who said last year he liked this new kind of approach? Didn't we blame Ole, other managers for being too soft on this group? In Erik I do believe we have the right balance of tough love and arm around the shoulder. He finds the good mix for this group. Whether that works when some questionable influences will be gone, I don''t know but for the group we had, the troubles spawned by Sancho, Ronaldo, Ten Hag was nothing but praisyworthy about it imo.
Indeed, we need to improve on the players we have in a number of positions and certainly we need more depth. But I just find the constant calls (ging back years now) ''we'll never get anywhere/win the league/be a top side again etc until we get rid of 99% of these lazy cnuts'' a bit pointless, knee jerk and petty. We have a shit season and suddenly the players are the major problem (yet when we have a decent season they're alright), or there's some sort of infectious negative culture that every new signing is immediately stricken with. And we simply must jettison most of the current players to rid ourselves of it.
The truth is most of the current squad are good players, there's no reason why most or at least a fair amount of them can't be part of a successful side/squad under the right manager/set-up.
Care to name wich ones? For me it seems Bruno, Shaw and Rashford, maybe Casemiro and Martinez are the top pick but in the end, not good enough. Maybe Shaw but he is injured a lot. Garnacho, Mainoo are good but rookies and you cant expect a 45 game run from them.
This squad is capable of a good run, good finish if they are all fit. Good enough for top 4? I doubt it. We managed top 3 when other big clubs have troubles. The current level in the PL is insane. The top 3 after 30 played, have 2, 4 and 3 losses respectively. Last season when we finished 3rd we had 9 losses after 38 played...
At this moment, with our injury list, as
@BenitoSTARR showed, we are punching above our weight in P6. Looking at P4 is just wishfull thinking. But I'm happy to be proven wrong and interested to read wich of the current squad you think is good enough for a succesfull set up (and also, what do you consider a succesful setup. Top 4? Beating City for p1?)
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