If we'd have had Chelsea/Forest level of luck we'd be in a relegation fight this week.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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If we'd have had Chelsea/Forest level of luck we'd be in a relegation fight this week.
It is a incredible demonstration of the Ajax sheen. I thought Donny would have taught a few how little value that still had, for 2 years much of the fanbase convinced themselves he was this misused game-changer when it was pretty obvious after about 3 games that he was very average.
Give him any excuse you want around injuries, player availability, refs, whatever. Beyond all that his set up of the midfield and use of available resources has been inept.
Someone, anyone, point out what we have seen on the pitch in the last year that convinces you he is the right man for the job.
Why is it luck?
I'm just glad the media are finally calling out his bollocks. Felt like I've been going insane this season trying to decipher if my eyes are deceiving me or he's just bullshitting us all. Some of the stuff he comes out with is absolute bollocks, well most of it is in all honesty. And yet we have fans still embracing this rubbish
Either myself and those who think like me, or those siding with ETH, have genuine mental issues or extreme delusion at the very least. Both sides of the argument are just so far apart that one half the argument is just very, very wrong in their assessment.
Did we have that last season or was it all on the manager forcing them to win games when they all didn't want to?
At least Southgate could make us more defensive and compact and not concede10, 20 shots on goal per match? Dull yes but not as ridiculously open ETH style
ten Hag can piss off for all I care but thinking he's the only problem would be naive. No manager can work with that lot players. And yes, I know most are his signings these days. So they can all pretty much bugger off.
I hope Dan Ashworth gets sorted as soon as possible.
I hope Dan Ashworth gets sorted as soon as possible.
It's United fans, honestly. I think we've got some fans who really don't know what they're talking about when it comes to good players/management, which is surprising when we had 20 odd years of watching what it should look like. I can forgive it when judging players playing elsewhere, as there's so many factors in them transitioning well to the PL. But to watch our own players struggle weekly and still think they're good enough? Sometimes you just need to uphold standards and call a spade a spade.
But do you remember going through the exact same bollocks with Shinji Kagawa and Mkhitaryan? Even Fergie was getting criticised for his use of Kagawa and fans were absolutely adamant that he'd "modernise" our football if played more and in his favoured position. Was the same with Mkhi under Jose. "Doesn't give him enough chances" etc etc. Turns out neither was good enough and eventually just left to lesser leagues one again.
I don't think anybody disagrees regarding the players, it's not either or. In my opinion step 1 is to get the quick and easy win and hire the right coach. Then start with the longer, drawn out process of overhauling the squad. I'd be sure everyone calling for his head would agree with this.
The one thing I will say is that more of this squad may be salvageable than we realise, once we see them under a good coach who organises better.
It's the 15 goals that kill me. It's tied for second worse record, we were equals to Celtic and Cvrena Zvezda.
I think conceding 14 goals less than expected, including your opposition hitting the woodwork or wasting top quality chances so many times, is largely down to luck.
Unless someone genuinely believes all those missed chances are a result of tactics / performances… I don’t think so though and recent weeks seem to confirm that. When our opposition are clinical we are getting spanked heavily by Palace and Bournemouth, every now and again we will fluke a draw like we did against Brentford despite conceding historical number of goal scoring opportunities but it’s not sustainable.
This sentiment was also widely shared before. We fluked many, many 1-goal wins in 50/50 games early in the season which gave us false impression of being a top 5 side, but it eventually ran out and we have been a bottom half team over the last 10 results wise. Performance wise we’ve easily been bottom 10 all year, without question.
Nothing more frustrating than the tolerance our fanbase has for incompetence, all disguised as "backing the manager/player". There isn't a more tolerant set of fans anywhere at a big club apart from possibly Liverpool (which is also why they largely failed for decades before Klopp/Edwards saved them).
That stupid run from Jan-Feb was so annoying because it was incredibly obvious we were getting very lucky winning these coinflip games yet so many thought we were turning a corner because we had a striker on a ridiculous hot streak. Well this is the other side of that same variance, where the purple patch from Hojlund is absent and teams actually finish their dinner against us.
If we aren't good enough to win anything does it matter if we finish 2nd or 8th? If a painful five years of transition is the price then I will gladly pay it. Southgate is just a step backwards.
It's by far the easiest job in football, relatively speaking. You get significant resources, access to top level talent (despite being far from the top we still attract best in class talent) and expectations which are on level with West Ham, maybe Spurs, two clubs with significantly smaller resources (and I don't think we can even mention Spurs here as they are way more ambitious than us).
Take last season for example, it was a decent season overall, we won 'the trophy', we finished 3rd, and it was widely recognized as a good year. You could lower our points tally by 5-10 points though and see us finish 5th, and I guarantee that vast majority of our fanbase and our owners would have been happy. If you were able to sustain that for 4-5 years running, finishing between 3rd and 5th, on 65-75 points, your job would basically be guaranteed forever, with virtually no pressure or questions asked about the next step. This would not be possible at any other club with similar resources, nowhere in Europe.
We are also relatively lucky that Palace took a bit of time to change the manager and Bournemouth only got going after 8-9 games of season (in which they won zero games), as they've both been considerably better than us since, like on a different level. Brighton turmoil has helped too, and Everton being docked 8 points. All those teams have basically been right at our level (Brighton, Everton, West Ham) for most of the season, or well above our level but for too short of a period (Palace, Bournemouth).
Jeez seeing your stance on him staying get stronger is very depressing indeed and worries me
People still mention that league cup last year as if we won the fecking UCL with how much credit it gave Ten Hag in many eyes. We had a piss easy run to the final and then just scrapped an ugly final win against Newcastle before the entire season turned to absolute garbage. If we lose that final maybe it would have opened peoples eyes quicker to the lack of ability ETH has.
I thought last season was fine although going into last summer it scared the piss out of me that our most important player was an aging Casemiro and we rode a historic Rashford season for basically all of our goals. Then we made Mount our top priority and I began losing faith in ETH for the first time starting there as that was such a clear mistake pursuing him instead of a DM and/or Kim
Don't know who this guy is but fair play to him, he's bang on. We are so terrible by every measurable metric and yet so many have overlooked this for so long
That was the story of last season (aka the best season we've had in living memory). The underlying stats pointed to us being lucky.
xPts had us in 6th - carried by Rashfords incredible run of form.
I am praying he doesn't leave the England job after Euros because then will fear he's coming here
You can't just state that these things are luck, if a striker puts the ball wide from 8 yards, that's not luck. If we score a goal from an unlikely position, that's not luck. Luck is not a term that makes sense if you're talking in statistics.
Yeah it was Rashford turning into Mbappe for a chunk of the season coupled with a pretty solid spine when Martinez/Varane/Casemiro all played together. Was clearly not sustainable going into the following season but for a first year on the job certainly solid enough given the results.
Certainly some failure lies on the medical staff. Casemiro got a second opinion in Brazil on his hamstring and they found he was injured
Ah yes I remember that now
Why is everyone suddenly repeating the "ETH isn't the only problem at the club / we won't suddenly start challenging for the league with a new manager" cliché?
We know he isn't the only problem! That's been established over and over again - the fact that there are a lot of other problems to solve doesn't mean he can just wash his hands of any and all culpability for this disaster of a season.
We know he isn't the only problem! That's been established over and over again - the fact that there are a lot of other problems to solve doesn't mean he can just wash his hands of any and all culpability for this disaster of a season.
What on earth are you talking about? Are we really arguing semantics here? Would you prefer "positive variance" instead as the term used?
If you concede constant high xG chances but are rarely punished with goals then yes it's "luck" over a large enough sample size.
I remember in 17/18 someone on here arguing that it was by design as we had the best shot stopper in the world
I’m not even convinced that EtH was better last year rather than it luckily coinciding with a rare purple patch from Rashford.
Yeah it's a trotted out line by his defenders,other one is how much of a bad character that Tuchel is as well
Most of the stances people use to defend him are bad faith stances and/or arguing against stuff no one ever said
- "he's not the only problem"
- "these same players have let multiple managers down"
- "we've changed managers before, what did that get us?!"
- "next season will surely not be worse than this!" - this one was a favorite mine and an instant classic
- "want him to stay to clear out the deadwood"
- "gave youth a chance"
I'm sure I missed a bunch of the other nonsensical stuff that gets posted here. It's all just fluff really.
Whatever terminology you want to use, our results have been better than our performances, statistically speaking. Whether you call it luck or statistical inconsistency, or whatever you want to call it, does not matter.
It boils down to the same conclusion, once our results start matching our performance level and statistics - which is inevitable because it almost always happens over long term - we will be at exactly the level we've been playing at. It has been true this season, where earlier in the year we got many results that were more than we deserved and we were close to 4th, however second half of season we got exactly the results we've deserved which saw us move down to 8th (which is still better than our performances merit). We will run out of games this season to fall below any more teams but if we continue on the same trajectory next season, we will probably finish even lower because there are multiple teams below us that have been statistically much better than us over the course of the last 20-25 games. This season is just too short to nullify our significant overperformance in the first half of it, hence we will still finish at respectable 8th.
Performance/stats and results can be out of sync in the short term but they are going to eventually correspond. Perfect example is basketball, a sport I very much enjoy watching. There's ton of metrics there that help assess a player, and they tend to move up and down during season, but over the course of full year for any given player they will usually come to a level that is expected from a player of his quality and talents. If you're an average shooter, you will occasionally have a streak where you won't miss, you will shoot 50%+ from three over the course of 10-15 games, but eventually you will also have a streak where you can't hit and will go < 30% for 10 games in a row, and will eventually get to the 36-38% range that is your real level.
Voted for him to stay as I've resigned myself that he's staying..ffs..
I always hark back to this game in 2022-23 : - https://www.espn.co.uk/football/match/_/gameId/638019/manchester-united-arsenal
We gave Arsenal a good game and from there on it all turned to shit where's Arsenal have kicked on.
Sure I remember Thierry Henry claiming that EtH had progressed Utd quicker than Arteta had in the time he had.
We sure showed him heh!
I always hark back to this game in 2022-23 : - https://www.espn.co.uk/football/match/_/gameId/638019/manchester-united-arsenal
We gave Arsenal a good game and from there on it all turned to shit where's Arsenal have kicked on.
Sure I remember Thierry Henry claiming that EtH had progressed Utd quicker than Arteta had in the time he had.
We sure showed him heh!
Refuse to vote stay despite I fear that's what happens
No worries, I can't find the story I read but apparently at least in theory UEFA can fine sides for fielding weakened sides. How often it's actually happened though I've no idea. BUt I imagine they'd take a dim view on United or another big side playing virtual Youth teams in their competitions. I can remember Liverpool under Rodgers got a telling off for making a load of changes in one game.
I remember in 17/18 someone on here arguing that it was by design as we had the best shot stopper in the world
Oh just go back through this thread and you'll see people say conceding 20 shots a game is fine because they are "low quality shots just adding xG"
See how they work out, if they do well great. If they do poorly then replace them, that's how it should work. Under the Glazers post SAF they've been looking for another Fergie to run the whole show for them. It explains why they waited so long to sack failing managers.
It's my view and hope that if Ineos sort the club out and get a good footballing structure in place the managers position becomes less important. They'll just be handling the first team and become much more interchangeable, DOF etc will provide continuity. And we won't need a rebuild every time we changes manager/style.
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The thing that is missing here is context, though. You can't compare a team to a player, because a team doesn't remain the same(neither does a player, really). Our team this season, where these statistics are coming from, has been ridiculously different from week to week. So you can't really say that we will revert to the mean, because these stats have come from an anomalous period. If the team was settled this would be a far stronger argument.
We've been largely dull and limp in an attacking sense this season anyway.
It's actually pretty interesting how many people would trust the new DoF and for some reason, Ten Hag too, to sell the entire team and buy a new one. Setting aside the fact that this doesn't happen in reality because it's stupid and unfeasable, but still after this abomination of a season there are still people willing to give Ten Hag a chance to oversee what would be the biggest rebuild in world of football.
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