He's talking about 19/20 where Fellaini and Herrera had left
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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He's talking about 19/20 where Fellaini and Herrera had left
Ole's first full season was 2019-20, Herrera left at that time, Lukaku left too.
I would say it's equally terrible till we sign a midfielder which will only make it just lightly better because at the time Martial and Rashford were better and not on their last chance. We also had Greenwood waiting to take his chance, I remember him really impressing in pre-season.
Agreed, and add to this the fact Eriksen has been very successful in the Premier league for many more years than he ever played in Holland.
Malacia is obviously a player that caught Ten Hag's eye when Ajax played aginst his team and whom I suspect he would have signed for Ajax this summer if he hadn't become united manager.
He's bought Martinez because he thinks he's one of the best players from Ajax who can make his style of football work faster at United.
He wasn't carrying transfers at Ajax so of course his targets are going to be from personal knowledge. If the transfers don't improve us the club execs are the ones who should be held accountable. What is ETH even supposed to do with no scouting infrastructure on ground? I simply can't blame him if the summer targets bomb or barely improve us. In that scenario we would say the football department should have actually done it's job.
He is a great manager. I love how direct and demanding he is
ETH has raided Ajax for their performance analyst. A key man for sure
ETH has raided Ajax for their performance analyst. A key man for sure
More jobs for the boys
The man's taking huge risks
Majaxchester United
What risks?
He vetoed Pau Torres who is to say that he is the only player he turned down. He is backing the players he knows best hope they pay off.
One of those YouTuber analyst guys thinks our press didn’t work against Villa because Martial, Sancho and Rashford were too slow off the mark when we needed them to press. That’s a worry to me. Are we heading for the same dysfunctional attempts to become a high pressing team we’ve already suffered under Rangnick because we don’t have the players with the footballing smarts/workrate to implement it?
I think it will take a while before we become consistent at pressing.
When you move away from a system where "pressing" means leaking stuff to media and doing tik tok videos, there's bound to be hiccups. Rangnick did not have the authority to deal with players, poor guy. ETH now does & we can expect changes in the right direction, even if slow.
You take that back!
The only Dutch player, and first signing he got was a Feyenoord player
Manenoord United ftw.
Definitely. But it would be very naive to assume that all footballers are created equal when it comes to being able to do the sort of aggressive pressing from the front that most tops teams favour. Which should be even more of a concern for a squad like ours, that has so little depth up front and hasn’t yet signed any attacking players on the basis they have the specific qualities the manager wants/needs.
You should read properly I said "Ole first full season".
Our pressing hasn't been great thus far. I think our build-up play with most of our first XI has improved tremendously in the short period even without Martinez/Eriksen featuring.
There's a few times when a player from the front stands off too much and engages way too late and it breaks the entire press essentially. But I do think we've been more compact fairly and we've pushed the team higher up, so sometimes we've managed to box teams in.
And the intensity sometimes is lacking, but growing pains. I had a feeling our pressing would take longer to be supremely adept in.
There's a few times when a player from the front stands off too much and engages way too late and it breaks the entire press essentially. But I do think we've been more compact fairly and we've pushed the team higher up, so sometimes we've managed to box teams in.
And the intensity sometimes is lacking, but growing pains. I had a feeling our pressing would take longer to be supremely adept in.
If these YouTube analysts were any good they wouldn’t be YouTube analysts. None of them are any good with the exception of Pythagoras in Boots, of course.
Subscribe to Pythagoras in Boots today.
Closer to the stretford end and the tunnels afaik
Not a concern Hag is buying familiar players. The squad is so weak, it needs fixing asap.
Next thing is fixing midfield. In our preseason games we have been capable of pressing but not ball retention. A quality dlp will help a lot with that.
We need to press, get the ball back and be able to keep it if there is no direct way forward. Otherwise we will have no control over games in defense and attack.
I suppose we must accept this season will be about development and training. Unless we get prime signings in we may not make top four.
Next thing is fixing midfield. In our preseason games we have been capable of pressing but not ball retention. A quality dlp will help a lot with that.
We need to press, get the ball back and be able to keep it if there is no direct way forward. Otherwise we will have no control over games in defense and attack.
I suppose we must accept this season will be about development and training. Unless we get prime signings in we may not make top four.
It's a valid point, one thing is to make Martial, Rashford, Sanchez press more (in terms of effort), but the other thing is our "squad depth" is so poor we will probably need them to start every game.
I guess with their lack of defensive effort something can be done right away, but it's quite a challenge not to run them into the ground after a few games of high-intense pressing from the top.
What happened to Ralf's video analysts? I think he bought in a couple.
I don't want to focus on Villa too much because shit conditions, shit pitch etc. but there were several times against Atleti, Vallecano and Pool where the switch to the opposite flank was too easy. I think it's mostly because the players are just getting used to the system rather than insufficient work rate from our forwards. Ronaldo is the only one I'd single out here - he makes Martial look like peak Tevez, so that's something.
Anyway, we did let a concerning number of runs at our defence. (5-6 each game?). I think it'll take some time for us to press well and until then we'll leak maybe a goal every other game because of the failed press.
I'd keep an eye on metrics like High Pressures, PPDA here: https://dataviz.theanalyst.com/season-reviews/2021/
Data from the new season will be available once GW1 finishes. I'd encourage you to take a look at the data from last season to note how abysmal we were (look for "TEAM SEQUENCE PRESSURES" but the rest are informative as well).
We should hopefully now be in the same league as City, Pool, Chelsea and Brighton (lol).
I don't want to focus on Villa too much because shit conditions, shit pitch etc. but there were several times against Atleti, Vallecano and Pool where the switch to the opposite flank was too easy. I think it's mostly because the players are just getting used to the system rather than insufficient work rate from our forwards. Ronaldo is the only one I'd single out here - he makes Martial look like peak Tevez, so that's something.
Anyway, we did let a concerning number of runs at our defence. (5-6 each game?). I think it'll take some time for us to press well and until then we'll leak maybe a goal every other game because of the failed press.
I'd keep an eye on metrics like High Pressures, PPDA here: https://dataviz.theanalyst.com/season-reviews/2021/
Data from the new season will be available once GW1 finishes. I'd encourage you to take a look at the data from last season to note how abysmal we were (look for "TEAM SEQUENCE PRESSURES" but the rest are informative as well).
We should hopefully now be in the same league as City, Pool, Chelsea and Brighton (lol).
Exactly. A big challenge with the whole squad depth thing will be that if we’re serious about suddenly getting these players to dramatically increase their fitness and effort levels then we’re basically guaranteed to see a lot of muscular injuries as they get used to being slogged like that. In Klopp’s first season Liverpool seemed to have at least one player go down clutching their hamstring every week. That could decimate our paper thin options up front.
Our pressing has been very good in all games except yesterday. That was no suprise as we had a bunch of players that haven't worked together as much as the boys that played on tour. We also had Ronaldo spearheading the press so that too.
For a team as slow and uncoordinated as we were last year, we have done very well in this short space of time. I'd expect us to get better of course but Rashford, Martial and Sancho have done a great job so far.
For a team as slow and uncoordinated as we were last year, we have done very well in this short space of time. I'd expect us to get better of course but Rashford, Martial and Sancho have done a great job so far.
If it continued like that with him constantly targetting players he knows, I would be concerned.
But the context of this summer is slightly different because the list of club targets that greeted him upon his arrival was drawn up by a recruitment team that literally weeks beforehand had seen its two most senior scouts depart as a part of an intended restructuring. How much faith would you put in the opinion of a recruitment team that the club itself already made clear needs fixing?
Pogba has about 3 world class games a season and Greenwood shouldn't even be considered as part of last seasons squad since he didn’t even get half a season and will never play for us again.
If you compare our squad to last season, it’s stronger right now. Eriksen is absolutely an upgrade on Pogba if you compare their performances over the last 5 years. We still need to replace Greenwood in the squad but we have needed to do that anyway for nearly 8 months!
Eriksen is not a Pogba replacement. Pogba always played in deep midfield for us (apart from LW experiments), while Eriksen always plays as the most advanced midfielder with two supporting midfielders. He gives us options and is a competition for Bruno for no10 position.
If we play Eriksen in deep midfield means we've learnt nothing from Pogba situation.
Agree on Greenwood, this is a massive loss and we had a lot of time to work on that gap.
They're different players. Eriksen doesn't look to play basketball in midfield. He keeps it moving much more.
Eriksen and Pogba are completely different players, not very comparable. Why not compare him to Scholes if we gotta compare? His transition from AM to a deeper mid is remembered fondly.
Tbh my memory is hazy on where Pogba played last season but I’m sure it wasn’t deeper. In fact. He played LW in his best game which was the opening game against Leeds.
I don’t remember much but I don’t think he played deeper much especially at the expense of McFred, but again my memory isn’t great and he also only played about 60% of the season. Pogba playing deeper was also generally when he was at his worst.
So our additions have been pretty good so far but ETH buying only familiar names is still a theme. Can't believe it. Worrying just for worrying.
Well this is nonsense. We totally dominated Villa first half and pinned them in for large parts of the game. Yeah, second half it went to shite but the pitch was shite and maybe they were tired? The press has been far better and more coordinated than anything we’ve seen prior to this pre-season.
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We definitely need one additional pressing forward (preferably two) as Rashford and Martial just can't be relied upon to maintain that intensity over the course of the season. I've been very impressed with Sancho's pressing and work-rate but he's Dortmund trained so you'd expect it.
Becoming a competent pressing team doesn’t happen after a month of preseason.
I would start to get concerned if we don’t see any noticeable improvement around midway through the season. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if it took at least a year for Ten Gag’s ideas to really bake in resonate throughout the team.
We all need a reminder every now and then that it will take time...even a few seasons to fully see what ETH wants.
Season could get very messy with a few injuries to key players but we are all just going to have to give ETH time.
Season could get very messy with a few injuries to key players but we are all just going to have to give ETH time.
For those that complain ETH is leading all the transfers. Do we have a choice? We have a useless scouting department that can't name a striker in Jan when we were in great need to fight for Top 4. We also have a useless DOF that sacks all the head scouts without replacement. He himself is only good in women and youth football signings.
If ETH failed (touch wood) we will be back to the square one. But history has been repeating itself for the last decade. We can just pray that this time will be different because of ETH.
In a season that we need major reinforcement in midfield and attack so far we only signed a CB, young LB and CM on free transfer. We still need 2 to 3 major signings. But I don't think Glazers/Arnold/Murtough can deliver.
Next season will be a good season if we can finish between 4th to 6th.
If ETH failed (touch wood) we will be back to the square one. But history has been repeating itself for the last decade. We can just pray that this time will be different because of ETH.
In a season that we need major reinforcement in midfield and attack so far we only signed a CB, young LB and CM on free transfer. We still need 2 to 3 major signings. But I don't think Glazers/Arnold/Murtough can deliver.
Next season will be a good season if we can finish between 4th to 6th.
Bare in mind we've already seen improvement....
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