Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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What do you think would happen to Ancelotti if Madrid played the same and conceded the same number of shots against Getafe, Osasuna, and Las Palmas, and were sitting 7th in La Liga, and finished dead last in a group with Galatasaray and Copenhagen?
Trick question. They would never allow it to come even close to that. They don't know you're supposed to give failing managers time.
 
What do you think would happen to Ancelotti if Madrid played the same and conceded the same number of shots against Getafe, Osasuna, and Las Palmas, and were sitting 7th in La Liga, and finished dead last in a group with Galatasaray and Copenhagen?

He wouldn't be able to set foot in Madrid.

Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.
 
Yeah the first bolded period there in a top league should have given him an idea as to how the second bolded period would go.
Turns out scoring bucketloads of goals against the likes of Go Ahead Crows and Kaiserslautern doesn't translate to Premier League success, who would've guessed?
 
That’s literally what SJR said was part of the problem and why he’s spent over a billion to get control of football operations, but sure you know better!!!

And Ten Hag is on record as saying he demanded significant control over identifying targets and transfers as a condition for coming. He wanted and accepts that responsibility.

Now having said that, I'm not saying United's recruitment hasn't been a shit show for years. But the current captain steering that particular sinking ship is Erik.

Both statements by Jim and Erik can be and are true.

I never said ETH wasn’t involved in the Weghorst deal, I said the fact our managers keep ending up with these sort of quick fix plasters is a club issue.

Which was the question I initially asked you to which you replied with your last condescending post (hence my rude response). Which included the following.

Are you telling me United managers chose Weghorst , Ighalo and to keep Martial even though United offered them far better alternatives?

Let's address this specifically then. You appreciate Ten Hag was heavily involved in the Weghorst deal, we both seem to agree that the club wouldn't be shopping at the top end of the market in January. So when we signed Weghorst we can safely assume Ten Hag wanted him as a low cost loan option.

Do you agree?
 
Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.

It must be long.

:lol:
 
Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.
You ok?
 
Palace in the cup is the only game Onana didn`t have much to do. Wasn`t a big score but we actually controlled the game for large parts. Palace barely got a sniff.
Apart from that it is revolving doors through our midfield more or less every single game.
But what about that time we smashed Everton 3-0 you might say? Everton managed 24 shots to our 9…
We beat West ham 3-0 as well, that was convincing and dominating right? They managed 22 shots..

We've been shit, but this isolating of "we faced this many shots!" is just bizarre. It's a worrying stat in the context of all of the other obvious issues. It's not at all worrying when we're running out as deserved 3-0 winners.

For context, here's some of our wins in the 2011/12 season:

Spurs (H) - Won 3-0 - Spurs 21 shots to our 28
Arsenal (H) - Won 8-2 - Arsenal 20 shots to our 25
Bolton (A) - Won 5-0 - Bolton 22 shots to our 14
Chelsea (H) - Won 3-1 - Chelsea 22 shots to our 14
Everton (A) - Won 1-0 - Everton 19 shots to our 7

Then there's games like this where we were winning and still conceding 15+ shots:

West Brom (A) - Won 2-1 - West Brom 16 shots to our 11
Norwich (H) - Won 2-0 - Norwich 17 shots to our 20
Fulham (A) - Won 5-0 - Fulham 15 shots to our 18
Norwich (A) - Won 2-1 - Norwich 16 shots to our 11
Spurs (A) - Won 3-1 - Spurs 18 shots to our 6
 
Palace in the cup is the only game Onana didn`t have much to do. Wasn`t a big score but we actually controlled the game for large parts. Palace barely got a sniff.
Apart from that it is revolving doors through our midfield more or less every single game.
But what about that time we smashed Everton 3-0 you might say? Everton managed 24 shots to our 9…
We beat West ham 3-0 as well, that was convincing and dominating right? They managed 22 shots..

Yeah I think the League Cup game against Palace is the only dominant win we've had the entire season.

I think the home game against Chelsea we were the better side and deserved to win but it was still a pretty chaotic match and we were clinging on a bit towards the end.

It's pretty pathetic to be in mid April and have that as your deserved wins for the season.
 
We've been shit, but this isolating of "we faced this many shots!" is just bizarre. It's a worrying stat in the context of all of the other obvious issues. It's not at all worrying when we're running out as deserved 3-0 winners.

For context, here's some of our wins in the 2011/12 season:

Spurs (H) - Won 3-0 - Spurs 21 shots to our 28
Arsenal (H) - Won 8-2 - Arsenal 20 shots to our 25
Bolton (A) - Won 5-0 - Bolton 22 shots to our 14
Chelsea (H) - Won 3-1 - Chelsea 22 shots to our 14
Everton (A) - Won 1-0 - Everton 19 shots to our 7

Then there's games like this where we were winning and still conceding 15+ shots:

West Brom (A) - Won 2-1 - West Brom 16 shots to our 11
Norwich (H) - Won 2-0 - Norwich 17 shots to our 20
Fulham (A) - Won 5-0 - Fulham 15 shots to our 18
Norwich (A) - Won 2-1 - Norwich 16 shots to our 11
Spurs (A) - Won 3-1 - Spurs 18 shots to our 6

There is a tendency to hyper focus on one thing as if only one thing is wrong with us. Sometimes it’s xG, sometimes it’s possession and lately it’s been the shot count.

If we ‘looked’ better in our games while conceding lots of shots I don’t think we’d worry about it as much. However, we all know that watching us feels like we are getting away with it a lot of the time. It felt like a matter of time before Brentford would score.

We never really seem secure with any lead even if it’s multi-goal leads and that cost us in the Champions League earlier in the season and has cost us lately with the leads we’ve let slip. We nearly blew a lead at Wolves on top of the other recent ones.
 
There is a tendency to hyper focus on one thing as if only one thing is wrong with us. Sometimes it’s xG, sometimes it’s possession and lately it’s been the shot count.

If we ‘looked’ better in our games while conceding lots of shots I don’t think we’d worry about it as much. However, we all know that watching us feels like we are getting away with it a lot of the time. It felt like a matter of time before Brentford would score.

We never really seem secure with any lead even if it’s multi-goal leads and that cost us in the Champions League earlier in the season and has cost us lately with the leads we’ve let slip. We nearly blew a lead at Wolves on top of the other recent ones.

That's what I mean though. We don't need to hyperfocus on these things. Just watch the games and you can see we're crap.

These attempts at sounding more informed by bringing up these isolated stats often make people look daft, especially when they're used to make out we didn't deserve two of the only comfortable wins we've had all season.

I'd argue that we did look secure in those CL games, right up until individual (often goalkeeping) errors inexplicably let the other side back in. Hitting the panic button after conceding has been a feature of this team for a while.
 
Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.
I agree with the points regarding the RM and us vs City, go back to the matchday threads on recent City games and lots of posters were having a go at ETH for his tactics
 
Yeah I think the League Cup game against Palace is the only dominant win we've had the entire season.

I think the home game against Chelsea we were the better side and deserved to win but it was still a pretty chaotic match and we were clinging on a bit towards the end.

It's pretty pathetic to be in mid April and have that as your deserved wins for the season.
Yeah, i think we have a few games here and there this season where it feels like we actually edged it and came out deserved winners after all. But Palace is the only game that felt like a win was ever the only outcome.
 
I'll just take you back to this:



You've tied yourself in knots over this, just to try and compound the point that Ten Hag isn't up to it.

Happens every time we get close to sacking a manager. Suddenly one of the previous failures actually had some wonderful traits in comparison to whoever we're currently wanting rid of, and posters start making weird arguments about them.

How have I tied myself in knots? I made a simple observation that a creative risk taker like Bruno may have helped the football LVG had us playing, and that he might have even taught Bruno to value possession and choose his risks better. I didn't say for certain, it was just a very straughtforward opinion. You came in and said he'd have hated him, even though others also disagreed and I gave you examples of bigger risk takers that he liked.

You've then took us all round the houses. You've even made me have to make a devil's advocate argument for LVG (even though I couldn't stand him, as i keep pointing out) as you were that unwilling to concede he doesn't like risk, then he doesn't like dribblers etc (the one thing he mentioned he liked when we signed Di Maria too. Couldn't write it!). At this stage I think you just crave the attention/ engagement from another human being. Every time I've crossed paths with you or seen your posts to others, it's always the same thing. Not to mention how you just ignore every question or source request when you claim anything, and instead take the argument off in another wild tangent with another strawman argument.
 
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More fallacy. It doesn't matter if Madrid plays like that against Bournemouth or Brentford. Their parking the bus last night, an exact copy of ETH tactics, was and is hailed being genius and their manager Ancelotti should replace ETH. When ETH does it, invents it its "" we play bad!!11!!!"
The Rock? Is that you :wenger: ?
 
We've been shit, but this isolating of "we faced this many shots!" is just bizarre. It's a worrying stat in the context of all of the other obvious issues. It's not at all worrying when we're running out as deserved 3-0 winners.

For context, here's some of our wins in the 2011/12 season:

Spurs (H) - Won 3-0 - Spurs 21 shots to our 28
Arsenal (H) - Won 8-2 - Arsenal 20 shots to our 25
Bolton (A) - Won 5-0 - Bolton 22 shots to our 14
Chelsea (H) - Won 3-1 - Chelsea 22 shots to our 14
Everton (A) - Won 1-0 - Everton 19 shots to our 7

Then there's games like this where we were winning and still conceding 15+ shots:

West Brom (A) - Won 2-1 - West Brom 16 shots to our 11
Norwich (H) - Won 2-0 - Norwich 17 shots to our 20
Fulham (A) - Won 5-0 - Fulham 15 shots to our 18
Norwich (A) - Won 2-1 - Norwich 16 shots to our 11
Spurs (A) - Won 3-1 - Spurs 18 shots to our 6

Was just saying we had one game all season we controlled from start to finish, easy as you like. League cup game against Palace.
Both Everton and West ham had their fair chances to get into the games. Even if we came out deserved winners in the end.
The PL is a tough league and you will always have more nailbiters then Palace games, as your examples show, but only one Palace game over a whole season is a bit remarkable for a team of our quality.
The shots metric only show so much, agreed, but it has been a standout metric for us this season.
 
Ridiculous take. We need another 6-8 players to beat Bournemouth, Fulham, Palace, Wolves, Brighton, Forest, West Ham, Brentford? And half of the players he mentioned, ETH signed.
These people don't care. They are too invested in going against the grain and defending Ten Hag no matter what
 
I agree with the points regarding the RM and us vs City, go back to the matchday threads on recent City games and lots of posters were having a go at ETH for his tactics
This is a common theme on this thread.

Ancelotti gets praise for a performance with a top top team that Ten Hag will get destroyed for (with a much poorer squad).

I‘d say there is a Ten Hag out cult more than unconditional support for the guy. I haven‘t seen any poster that unconditionally supports him.
 
This is a common theme on this thread.

Ancelotti gets praise for a performance with a top top team that Ten Hag will get destroyed for (with a much poorer squad).

I‘d say there is a Ten Hag out cult more than unconditional support for the guy. I haven‘t seen any poster that unconditionally supports him.
The difference is that EtH plays this way all the time and Ancelotti only against the reigning treble winners. Does it make sense to criticise EtH for it when you praise Ancelotti for it? Not that much. But this context matters and when the same approach always looks bad you don't trust in it anymore.
 
The difference is that EtH plays this way all the time and Ancelotti only against the reigning treble winners.

Wich is evidently bullshit. We only parked the bus against City this season. Many here actually screamed before why not park the bus when you dont have defenders!!11. Then he finally does it and got slaughtered ten times more.

Then Madrid uses the exact same tactics against City - who knows, taking cue from eth? Because it workd 65 minutes well - but then suddenly its 'why cant we play to the heights of Madrid".

It's beyond hypocrisy. It's not serious.
 
Wich is evidently bullshit. We only parked the bus against City this season. Many here actually screamed before why not park the bus when you dont have defenders!!11. Then he finally does it and got slaughtered ten times more.

Then Madrid uses the exact same tactics against City - who knows, taking cue from eth? Because it workd 65 minutes well - but then suddenly its 'why cant we play to the heights of Madrid".

It's beyond hypocrisy. It's not serious.
Just look at the shots against count.

We concede control and sit deep, no matter who we play - inviting constant pressure...

Or, are you going to say Madrid would also do the same against the mighty Bournemouth/Brentford etc?
 
He was useful first month and a half scoring few goals in league cup and Europa and doing some good pressing (like vs Newcastle in the final and getting an assist for 2nd goal) but afterwards and until the end of the season he looked worse and worse. It was fun having him.

He scored twice. No it was not fun having him considering how unbelievably toothless we were in the run in post cup
 
Wich is evidently bullshit. We only parked the bus against City this season. Many here actually screamed before why not park the bus when you dont have defenders!!11. Then he finally does it and got slaughtered ten times more.

Then Madrid uses the exact same tactics against City - who knows, taking cue from eth? Because it workd 65 minutes well - but then suddenly its 'why cant we play to the heights of Madrid".

It's beyond hypocrisy. It's not serious.
I'd say we also did against Liverpool at Anfield and I can think of one or two of out=r previosu managers who did the same at times, even SAF
 
Give him next season with a fully fit squad.
LEt him sell Ras, Scott, Case, Harry, Lindelof, Sancho etc... then judge him.

It's just not fair with so many injuries and primadonas in the squad. Anyone would have failed.
They are just not used to giving 100% each and every game, so you cant expect for any manager to be successful.
He needs players that will sacrifice themselves for the team. At this moment in time, only few are willing to do this (Onana, Dalot, Bruno, Hojlund, Garna, Martinez)

He doesn't deserve the sack. Not under these circumstances
 
This is a common theme on this thread.

Ancelotti gets praise for a performance with a top top team that Ten Hag will get destroyed for (with a much poorer squad).

I‘d say there is a Ten Hag out cult more than unconditional support for the guy. I haven‘t seen any poster that unconditionally supports him.
The bottom line is football is a results business. If you play a certain brand of football and win people can look the other way, however if you play like shit and lose there’s no redeeming qualities.
 
Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.

Yeah! You gonna need a bigger list. But seriously, how can you call this a fallacy? Haven’t you seen any of our games this season? We have not “parked the bus” as you say, but we do have been outplayed in the majority of the games we have played and conceded a ridiculous amount of goals and shots. I see nothing in our approach that suggests that Ten Hag is the man to take us to the next level. Yes, Real was forced to play ultra defensive last night, but City didn’t create that many clear cut chances despite the overwhelming possession they had. Also Real did score 4 against City.
 
These comparisons to Ancelotti miss the mark in the same way the prior comparisons to Fergie, Klopp, Pep, and Arteta also missed the mark. It seems like some posters can't (or won't) wrap their heads around the concept of existing goodwill / "credit in the bank".
 
Are you telling me United managers chose Weghorst , Ighalo and to keep Martial even though United offered them far better alternatives?

I get you can only see this as a defence of ETH (it’s not) , but do you understand part of the infrastructure issues is the lack of support for managers in squad building/management.

Do you understand that regardless of any of the managers we have had, we’d of overpaid for players, given out stupid contracts, kept players nobody wanted, struggled to sell on players and would have squads short on positions?

Do you understand that regardless of manager they rely on the club to acquire their targets? Do you understand that most managers will not publicly question any signing the club makes, even if they didn’t want that player ? Do you understand if a team is lacking in a position and the club has no money, there are limited options for the manager to cho

That doesn’t imply any of our managers have been good enough and doesn’t mean ETH is faultless or that he automatically gets a pass this season.

It implies we have fundamental club dysfunction that’s poorly utilised our resources. That includes a throw sh*t against a wall transfer/manager strategy.

Can some of you give the “all we needed was the right manager” sh*t a rest for awhile. United and Chelsea are spending a fortune and are doing terrible , bad managers is not the consistent variable.
Jesus, tired of this tripe.

Every transfer and loan signing had Ten Hag’s stamp of approval. He has veto power on every incoming and outgoing player, this has been EXTENSIVELY covered in the press.

Nobody is saying there is a world class infrastructure behind Ten Hag, we’re just saying he has *some* responsibility for the players brought in, and probably more than many setups (Chelsea) because he had, in many cases, personal relationships through directly coaching or having a family member represent them.

feck me, the lengths that some people go to defend this clown is beyond me…
 
No he isn’t! He’s improved AwB, Dalot, McT, and he had Rashy playing well last season. There are also quotes by Sabitzer about what a good coach ETH is.
They went through about 3 years where they regularly spent £50 + on fullbacks.! The first thing pep did was boot out Hart. We might spend more through our incompetence but don’t let that fool you into thinking Pep doesn’t get players if his squad shows a weakness.

No they didn’t! You’re rewriting history here chap, City regularly sign top young prospects or proven quality. They can attract those players because they are the dominant team in the league. They don’t have to pay the Utd tax because they have no football heritage!
Actually, City has been accused of under the table payments for players and agents… read: non-taxable, non-football expenses. Real, Barca, PSG all pay full boat, why does City pay less than market for their transfers?

The only one they paid top dollar for was Grealish…
 
These comparisons to Ancelotti miss the mark in the same way the prior comparisons to Fergie, Klopp, Pep, and Arteta also missed the mark. It seems like some posters can't (or won't) wrap their heads around the concept of existing goodwill / "credit in the bank".
Yes, this. Ancelotti has an argument as the greatest manager of all time. If they had a performance like we had at home vs Bournemouth you can bet there would’ve been whistles at the Bernebau
 
Again this is a fallacy! It doesn't matter what if but yeah but no but yeah but woulda coulda. The poster and many others hailed Madrids display last night. Madrid played tactics ETH did to a T against city 6 weeks ago.

You people are not serious people. I'm going to expand the ignore list.
We are serious people because we see nuance.

Were you even alive during the SAF years? Did you not see how he’d come out with a tight 4-4-2 and conservative game plan away in Europe, particularly against giants like Real, Barca, Juventus?

on the flip side, SAF would go at mid table sides away fro home in the PL. He understood that those fixtures won the league.

Ten Hag is clueless on both fronts.
 
I think we probably have to change managers, but if you think someone will come in and have these players playing consistent good football in short order, you‘ll be disappointed (once again).
 
The difference is that EtH plays this way all the time and Ancelotti only against the reigning treble winners. Does it make sense to criticise EtH for it when you praise Ancelotti for it? Not that much. But this context matters and when the same approach always looks bad you don't trust in it anymore.
ETH plays attacking football most of the time, I think you might want to check what you are drinking.
 
He means that EtH always plays chaos/shit footbal, with his shit tactics and shit formation which leads to players being shit and he doesnt want to change it. Or doesnt know.
In contrast to Carlo who knows how to set up tactics against different oposition.
ETH plays attacking football most of the time, I think you might want to check what you are drinking.
 
We park the bus against virtually any team? Now this is evidently not true and a picture postcard WUM post.



Another fallacy. Said poster claimed why can't we play like Madrid. Madrid parked the bus in the exact same way ETH did. It's 'we play bad'' when the defence comes with results, but when an example of bad play comes, ''we need results''. Pathetic.




More fallacy. It doesn't matter if Madrid plays like that against Bournemouth or Brentford. Their parking the bus last night, an exact copy of ETH tactics, was and is hailed being genius and their manager Ancelotti should replace ETH. When ETH does it, invents it its "" we play bad!!11!!!"
You keep talking about fallacies, and you're the one with the straw man fallacy.

Nobody is saying United park the bus. We're saying Ten Hag's tactics are crap because he doesn't value control or compactness. His team selections do not paint Ten Hag as a manager that values Control. He selects a player like Rashford that hampers his press, which is meant to turn the ball over and give us a numerical advantage and give the opposition the disadvantage of being disorganized. However, teams are easily able to turn that into an advantage because there are massive gaps in the middle because he doesn't have his defenders push up, thereby making the spaces small. This makes pressing easier and allows the team to win back control.

His team selection and tactics show he doesn't value control or compactness. This leads to a huge amount of shots conceded against almost all the teams in the PL. Ancelotti is doing this against City. Even if you value possession, you can lose that battle against a Pep team who are better drilled in that area. That's why Pep's Bayern vs Barca were interesting to watch. Who was going to win that battle would force another team to adapt in something they're not used to doing.

Why are you conflating a single match and criticism towards Ten Hag who has United not exact nearly the same control on smaller sides? You don't have to value possession to the degree Pep values it. Klopp still was able to get his side dominating control, by having a really good pressing side allowing him to give his players multiple big chances at goal, even when they were crap. He still valued compactness.


It's unbelievable how you're deflecting the fact that United are on -1 goal differential, while on the eyes United look terrible to watch. It's both in tandem causing United fans to turn on Ten Hag. If United were not terrible to watch, many of us could see that we were unlucky through variance, or having crap players fumbling their golden opportunities. United are not in that position. We are crap all over.

And unlike previous years, I actually think the players have had good effort this season. I can't blame their effort overall this season. Maybe just recently you can label that criticism towards the entire squad, but apart from players like Rashford, I couldn't fault their effort. It's clearly the tactics that is failing. It's been evident since day 1. We no longer have the excuse of a small sample size.

ETH plays attacking football most of the time, I think you might want to check what you are drinking.
Apart from United clearly playing crap football that everyone can see isn't working in attack, I would like to see the data of our attacking play this season. Maybe I'll look into it in a few hours, and repost this with data. I looked at it a while back and it wasn't pretty. I don't want to reuse those same statistics in this post.

For a side that doesn't value control, United will have more opportunities to win back the ball compared to other teams. But United are clearly not coached well enough to make best of those opportunities and United spend far too much energy to our side of the half.
 
If you went through all our wins this season I think for the vast majority of them we were pretty lucky to get the win.

The amount of times we've played well and won this season is absolutely tiny, genuinely it's been about two or three times all season at most.

We're incredibly lucky to be as high as 7th.

Think I would say Everton away, Chelsea home, second half of Villa home and first half of Spurs away. Struggling to think of any other league games where we played well
 
Who are the people on here praising Ancelotti for their set up and performance vs City? I haven't seen anyone do that.
 
Surely if we had a choice between replacing ten Hag with either Southgate, Potter or Mourinho (the only three choices apparently available to us) and only upgrading 2 or 3 players OR keeping ten Hag and upgrading 8 or 9 players, surely it would have to be the latter.

Yeah despite firmly on the Erik out train if they are the only choices then would agree it's the latter
 
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