Neither of them are upgrades. Both could do “ok”, both could fail miserably.
Why change a manager that’s won two trophies (and set some really bad records admittedly) over them? When we have our full squad available, we look a decent team.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Why change a manager that’s won two trophies (and set some really bad records admittedly) over them? When we have our full squad available, we look a decent team.
Klopp was given time and good working conditions. Same with Arteta. Pep basically already had a winning team and a successful project built by others in advance which was designed to persuade him to join.
The clubs who go through managers like pokemon cards are Spurs, Chelsea and us. In other words the ones who are not challenging.
I don't really know much about European football (I heard Madrid and Dortmund both press and play for possession) but in England I don't think City getting knocked out of the FA Cup in the final on its own suggests football is moving on. How far down the final league table do you go before you find a team that doesn't high press and try and dominate possession? It's basically us, and even then not for the lack of trying.
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Because Tuchel is better than him. Having a better manager is a good thing when your current one has spent the entire season being so tactically blind and stubborn that you get dominated most weeks.
Awful league and CL campaign. Ten Hag, rightfully, is getting a lot of criticism for it.
And yet, I absolutely hope he gets another season. There is - in my opinion - a bigger chance that next season ten Hag's approach will start to properly function and make us challengers, in comparison to McKenna or Tuchel coming in and being successful. I've been very critical of ten Hag's forward-press, passive defence, ocean-in-the-middle approach, but it's also utterly cynical to claim that he stuck with it just because he is hopelessly stubborn or clueless. As he has himself said several times, the management team made a conscious choice to not abandon the set-up in light of injury set-backs, in order to better develop a long term system. It backfired and we have paid a rather heavy price for it this season, and yet, it's very visible that in the moments Martinez and a couple of his hospital friends are available the approach works, giving legs to the notion that the long term bet might pay out and next season we could make ten Hag's set-up work consistently.
I know that every s**t manager makes the excuse that "this 4-0 loss to Crystal Palace is just part of a process". But it's also true that very often progress in football is not linear - we've seen it with Sir Alex, Klopp, Arteta among many. And in ten Hag's case, if you dismiss your bitter feelings towards him for a minute, it's quite evident that he's a good tactician and seems to have retained a strong trust of his players (which is quite impressive in a period where the team isn't doing well).
I'm thus at a place where it seems more plausible that if we let ten Hag build on his two seasons and considering that next season he will certainly have a far better availability of players required for his style, we are more likely to become title challengers than having McKenna, Tuchel, De Zerbi or Pochettino coming in cold, having to face the unforgiving environment of being a United manager.
And yet, I absolutely hope he gets another season. There is - in my opinion - a bigger chance that next season ten Hag's approach will start to properly function and make us challengers, in comparison to McKenna or Tuchel coming in and being successful. I've been very critical of ten Hag's forward-press, passive defence, ocean-in-the-middle approach, but it's also utterly cynical to claim that he stuck with it just because he is hopelessly stubborn or clueless. As he has himself said several times, the management team made a conscious choice to not abandon the set-up in light of injury set-backs, in order to better develop a long term system. It backfired and we have paid a rather heavy price for it this season, and yet, it's very visible that in the moments Martinez and a couple of his hospital friends are available the approach works, giving legs to the notion that the long term bet might pay out and next season we could make ten Hag's set-up work consistently.
I know that every s**t manager makes the excuse that "this 4-0 loss to Crystal Palace is just part of a process". But it's also true that very often progress in football is not linear - we've seen it with Sir Alex, Klopp, Arteta among many. And in ten Hag's case, if you dismiss your bitter feelings towards him for a minute, it's quite evident that he's a good tactician and seems to have retained a strong trust of his players (which is quite impressive in a period where the team isn't doing well).
I'm thus at a place where it seems more plausible that if we let ten Hag build on his two seasons and considering that next season he will certainly have a far better availability of players required for his style, we are more likely to become title challengers than having McKenna, Tuchel, De Zerbi or Pochettino coming in cold, having to face the unforgiving environment of being a United manager.
yeah it's incredible, it's not like they had much of a budget or anything... proper champ manager stuff
is that the first time a manager has won back-two-back promotions in his first two seasons as a manager?
it would be ideal if he could stay there or go to Brighton for a season or two
This is how Real Madrid qualified against Man city ( the biggest club in the world you know), they did what united did for not 1 half, but 4 halves. Donkeys like Ogden "armchair experts" are not worth listening to.
Yes because United and Real Madrid are apt comparisons. Christ on a bike. Real Madrid have shown they can win in every way imaginable. This is just a preposterous comparison to make.
I agree that ESPN coverage and punditry is about the worst in the business, but it’s smoke and mirrors to discount the validity of what he was saying just because of where he said it.
The fact is, Ten Hag used yesterdays game to say that having everyone fit, the game showed “what the team was capable of”, and that they were finally able to “play football they way we wanted to”. Well I bloody well hope not. What it showed, if anything was that with everyone fit he was capable of putting a game plan together that could produce a result, but the way we played and how we got that result was surely, surely, not indicative of the type of football we want to play.
This is apparently also a manager that can only produce when all his players are fit - if you listen to him - and can only produce when Martinez is fit - if you listen to the Caf - which is another huge red flag. A good manager has to be able to produce at least a competent performance during an injury crisis, even if no one is expecting you to perform at your best.
It’s also worth remembering, and I pointed this out earlier, to which no one had a reply, but at the start of the season - his second season - we lost 6 of our first 10 games with a nearly full fit squad. That kind of horrendous loss rate continued throughout the season, and was later explained away by some as the result of an injury crisis, but we came out the gate this season losing every other game. Spurs, Arsenal. Bayern, Palace, Brighton and Galatasaray, all turned us over in the first 10 games. We scored 15 and conceded 18 in that period. That run of 4 wins and 6 losses in the first ten games also included the opening day 1-0 over Wolves, where they tore us to pieces and had a stonewall penalty not given, and a very lucky 3-2 win over ten man Forest. So it could have been even worse.
Our form had been dismal since the Carabao cup final win last season, and has stayed pretty consistently poor regardless of personnel.
I think a lot of people, myself certainly, would be happy to give him another season if there were signs of actual progression in the team. There were a fair few people at the end of last season who were ringing alarms bells and saying he was shit, and I very vigorously defended him. I saw enough last season to see he had us moving in the right direction, and put the late season slump down to fatigue. Fatigue from competing on so many fronts (a consequence of success). But we came out of the gates this season looking completely clueless and disorganised with a non-sensical tactical approach. Almost every fan on this forum has been screaming for nearly the entire season about the absurdity of our midfield set up. Yet we win the FA cup with a park the bus performance, and suddenly people are all “give him time”.
I’d LOVE to give him time, IF he had shown any signs this season that he was building something, that he was moving us towards a clear style of play. But he simply hasn’t. He’s persisted with a baffling non-midfield set up, resulting in a record amount of goals and shots on goal conceded, as well as our lowest ever PL finish; and then in the final weeks of the season abandoned that approach for an ultra conservative 4-2-4-0 to win a cup. So what the giddy feck is the plan for next season? Park the bus? Back to tactical seppuku? Something new we haven’t seen yet, meaning we’ve built no foundation over his first two years? No, I’m sorry, but whichever way I shake it, he just doesn’t cut the mustard. He’s developed nothing in the last two years that can be built on. We are basically starting from scratch next season, with or without him, because there is nothing about the way we’ve set up this season that is even remotely usable for next season. That is damning.
The two things I will give him credit for, because a bad manager can do good things, is his consistent commitment to bringing through youth players in a meaningful way (vital for a United manager), and the way he’s handled disciplinary issues - which I fundamentally agree with. The problem is, if you are going to rule with an iron fist - especially in modern football where players are all over paid prima Donna’s - you have to back it up by being successful on the pitch. Otherwise it just doesn’t work.
This is exactly the argument to keep ETH till atleast first half of next season. Tuchel should be available even by then as no other major job is available anyway.
ETH has performed poorly but has some success. And he has not lost the dressing room. Giving it another 6 months to see how it goes.
This is the only fanbase on the planet that would dare to argue that Tuchel isn't an upgrade on Ten Hag 
Thus we circle back to the only reason why they were given the time - they provided more or less constant progress in terms of quality of football, obvious styles of play, and results.
I get we are in feel good mode and happy with Erik for delivering us a trophy against 115 but let’s not forget why the majority were EtH out.
This was about a month ago with a respectable lineup and was one of the most embarrassing performances I’ve ever seen despite the result. Only players missing from our strongest 11 were Shaw, Casemiro and Martinez and the last two came off the bench.
Brentford had 31 shots and hit the woodwork 4 times. We had 11 shots. Xg Brentford 3.11 vs United 0.51
To make matters worse we couldn’t even complete the smash and grab after scoring in the 96th minute, we conceded 3 minutes later.
This year I watched some of the worst football ever from a United team from a structural and tactical setup, game after game. All that can’t just be swept under the rug because of a cup win.
This was about a month ago with a respectable lineup and was one of the most embarrassing performances I’ve ever seen despite the result. Only players missing from our strongest 11 were Shaw, Casemiro and Martinez and the last two came off the bench.
Brentford had 31 shots and hit the woodwork 4 times. We had 11 shots. Xg Brentford 3.11 vs United 0.51
To make matters worse we couldn’t even complete the smash and grab after scoring in the 96th minute, we conceded 3 minutes later.
This year I watched some of the worst football ever from a United team from a structural and tactical setup, game after game. All that can’t just be swept under the rug because of a cup win.
Bit of a double standard considering ETH has done significantly worse than both. And I say that as someone who isn't a fan of Pochettino and doesn't want us to hire him.
He will be sacked. However, this just shows our fanbase what we can be. This guy has been as arrogant as anyone over the last two weeks, and our fans have chosen to ignore it. The post-game press conference was terrible. You finish eighth for perhaps the world's biggest club, which has provided you with funds for transfers. Despite never having won a top five league or the Champions League, he has the audacity to boast about his winning trophies elsewhere, with or without us, and our fans are loving it. They're not going to retain him, partly because he's been acting like a brat for the past few weeks.
The larger point here is that our fans are pretty self flagellating. The club is at fault for everything apparently. We couldn't sack him before the final publicly due to how poor it would look. We keep him, leaks come out and its the clubs fault again. We can't sack him so quickly after the final as it would be another LVG. It's ridiculous. For all the talk about no one is bigger than the club, we sure do try to make the club look worse than anyone. People always seem to act like everyone gets treated unfairly by the club, when for the most part I've seen the club bending over backwards to keep fans happy, resulting in poor decisions. A club with the size and stature of United heading into a new phase cannot afford to keep a manager who hasn't proven that he can cut it in the Premier League after 2 seasons.
It would be one thing if INEOS kept him on because they believed with the system and tactics displayed on the pitch, that he could get us challenging for top trophies. Nothing in the last year suggests that this guy can win a league title or a champions league. Not his tactics, not his man-management ability, not his use of squad depth, not his game management ability and not his adaptability. Yet people are adjusting their views on blind faith and a will to blame our players and the club for his failings. Every manager at a top club has to deal with the pressure of knowing that poor performances lead to sacking. Yet, only United out of the top clubs, have fans and media representatives turning it into the end of the world. It's the reason we still have fans talking glowingly about LVG, Mourinho and Ole. A lot of our fans seem to think supporting the club means supporting the manager. Rashford won't get the same grace from fans. Bruno, who's been a superstar since he came here doesn't either. Yet this guy, who has failed so spectacularly this season is.
For me, its not just that we finished 8th. We played badly all season and he rarely adjusted. He kept stubbornly trudging along with chances after chances being conceded. Almost believing that despite all his failings, we'd still keep him. This poor football ran from the opening game in August till now. He had August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April and May to sort things out or even try to, and he didn't. A season is a very long time and we wasted a whole year on his failings, yet some people would like to do it again due to a cup win. It's funny as if INEOS actually did decide to cede to some short term emotion and keep him, the fans asking for it now will turn on them when they realize that its similar next season. The ones who are more strongly aligned will blame transfer made by INEOS and the structure (ironically), as they would argue that he didn't get to bring in the players he wanted.
This is the only fanbase on the planet that would dare to argue that Tuchel isn't an upgrade on Ten Hag
I'm genuinely in awe reading some of the stuff in here.
Not only is Thomas bloody Tuchel not an upgrade on the man who took a full season to realise that 1 man in midfield was killing us, it is apparently laughable to suggest it.
He won the Bundasliga on goal difference and it was not seen as conviction of him as a coach. You have to remember he was chasing Dortmund, bottled leads and was extremely fortunate Dortmund failed to do their bit on the final day of the season. There was a lot of criticism for him, after he got dumped out of the CL and the German Cup in that year.
He also got dumped out of the German Cup this year from a league 3 German side, not some invincible team. And he finished 3rd in what's always been a 2 horse league of Bayern + one other in what, the past 2 decades at least?
Tuchel ball is a lot more safe, and Ten Hag this season was certainly far too open - I've addressed this and said Ten Hag will very likely tweak and fix (he already showed signs of doing this in the dying embers of the season).
You are talking like Ten Hag is only capable of playing in this open crazy manner, which we both know is untrue.
He won back to back trophies for the first time since 16/17 I believe. And this was his worst season in management. I don't think he's had a season in management where he hasn't won something in fact. Tuchel right now is low in stock, and abrasive. The question shouldn't be "Is Ten Hag an upgrade on Tuchel" but the other way round. I don't see a reason to sack Ten Hag if Tuchel is the guy we're going for. His Bayern stint was appalling and hes known to implode every 2/2.5 years. That's not what we need.
Tuchel just leaded a top club to win nothing since 2011 / out of 1st & 2nd places since 2011 / lost to 3nd division in cup game...
Big upgrade ??
But Tuchel is available this summer, and I doubt he'll be without a club for long after he leave Bayern.
Better at what? His recent year doesn’t shout that.
If there was a fantastic manager option out there, fine. But if it’s another broadly similar (as I said, might be better, might now), I’d stick with the manager who’s in situ, knows the club, players than sack ANOTHER manager in 1-2 years and start all over again… again.
If we’d had two seasons like this one (cup aside) and less injuries, I’d think he’d had plenty of time but we haven’t.
Ive thought Ten Hag was stubborn at times, especially trying to play the same tactics/formation when key players were out and not adapting to who’s available. I was really pleased at what he’s done for the last few games and what we saw in the cup final… McT man marking Rodri, pressing the back line collectively, Amrabat shielding the back line. There was definitely a clear tactic yesterday, one to nullify elements of City and it worked.
Sacking ten Hag will be their first.
Argument for ETH is cup victories and dressing room support. Argument is to give a bit more time and patience and see if it works out. Atleast till November because ETH deserves a chance in my opinion with competent team working with him
Tuchel most likely wont join any club this summer if it aint us.
He won the league, trying to add a bunch of asterisk to it is silly. What if Gvardial and Ortega didn't conspire to both have their worst moments of the season yesterday? What if Alverez didn't miss a sitter?
I'm not talking as though Ten Hag is only capable of playing in an open and crazy manner. I'm talking as though he did so for a full season that killed our season and meant we made no progress on his job to get us closer to Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool.
He actually put us further away with his failure to do his job to a reasonable level.
"Safe" sounds good compared to what we have seen for 18 months. I'm not even going to look it up but I bet "Tuchel ball" averages more goals scored than this 18 month spell by a healthy amount. More safe, in control and better going forward? Sounds good to me.
Given your reason for keeping Them Hag is that he is "likely" to fix the issues that ruined our season. I'd want a bit more of an in depth reason why your random faith is more valuable than an actually world class manager.
And they didn't have Glazers buying Casemiro, Mason Mount, Weghorst and Johnny Evans.
We know how ETH wants to play and we know he can't because he hasn't got the players. You can blame that on him or bad luck or the Glazers but we know that he has a plan and it's been frustrated by having the wrong players available. If he had the right players then he would have got the results I think.
Howe is a great example. He's done a fine job considering he basically jumped from trying to survive the league to fighting for a European spot.
I guess I'm also a little jaded having experienced coaches come in and not agile enough to keep up with thr league in it's modern form. From that standpoint I'd be open to giving EtH another season under ineos. At the end of the day, it's a major trophy in the cabinet and that's part of what we need.
I haven't mentioned ten hag here though. Im talking purely about 2 candidates getting lots of support. 3rd in Bundesliga with bayern is absolutely disastrous and pochettino cobbled together enough for 6th with a string of final games against teams on the beach. Both are good managers, just not enough to convince me such upheaval is justified.
People always love to big up Pep and Zidane in their first few years in management, ignoring the fact that they had the likes of Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Alves, Ronaldo, Modric, Kroos, Marcelo, Bale etc
Yet what McKenna has done in only 2 years is comparable to them, especially when Ipswich had very little budget, and a lot of the players in the Ipswich squad were not exactly tearing up trees before McKenna arrived.
If you are good enough you are good enough. People on this forum always talk about finding the next Pep or the next Messi and taking a risk, but when such an opportunity arises to take that risk, they don't want that risk to be taken.
If McKenna goes to Chelsea and is a success, the people that didn't want him here, will be the first to slag the club off for missing out on him.
By the way, I would prefer Ten Hag to be given another season, but if the club decides to pull the trigger, I want McKenna before Tuchel or Pochetinno.
Managing football teams to win things and not get dominated by nearly every team they play.
The club are being very poor at communicating the future of our manager after all the press speculation.
The assumption has to be that he is going after the victory parade otherwise they would have said that the speculation was nonsense and he's staying.
The assumption has to be that he is going after the victory parade otherwise they would have said that the speculation was nonsense and he's staying.
So why has the club been poor in communicating it? They haven't.
Because everyone has the right assumption of what will happen without the club having had to make any kind of statement that would always have been ill-timed, before or after the final.
So if you think about it the handling of it has actually been pretty smart.
Till November, when you'll then say no Manager is available and we can't have an interim. I don't know what options people are expecting. There are also managers in a job like Valverde and Motta who can be approached. Amorim is also possible too. Yet for some reason, apparently, all the options suck. Tuchel is a former UCL winner, Pochettino has shown good football he can play as he did so with Spurs. Tuchel's Chelsea were also pretty good as well. This idea that options suck unless Pep and Klopp are available is quite a poor excuse, as Ten Haag has shown nothing to suggest he's anywhere near them.
To be fair, you need your head examined if you'd swap Ten Hag for Poch. I'm certain that with a more healthy squad we'd have done better than Chelsea this season, also Ten Hag knows how to win a trophy in England.
How did he do this season? Win much?
No the league was won by the second best team in the history of the division and he went out after a tight Champions League semi final with Real Madrid.
To help you out in future, those things can be googled. As can the rest of his incredibly impressive career.
A lot of the sites you find will also have details of how Ten Hag got on this year but trust me mate you had to watch it. It was depressingly horrendous nearly every week. Worst I've ever seen, went full tactical suicide after spending half a billion on the wrong players.
Because of all the terrible records he’s set. Because a record breakingly bad PL and CL campaign should probably outweigh a good, albeit pretty lucky, FA cup run. Because even with a full squad available, we’ve mostly not looked like a good team, with the manager’s tactics being one of the most obvious and consistent flaws. Because the type of players he went after has left us with an even more unbalanced squad. Because the profiles of the some of the players he went for further expose the flaws in his tactical approach (was Mount really the right answer for bolstering our midfield?).
Sure, there are a few things in the “keep” column. But seems to me there’s a whole lot in the “get rid” column that are impossible to ignore. I don’t personally think it makes any sense to go for Poch and I’m sceptical about Tuchel. But I can totally see why Ineos might decide to try someone different from Ten Hag.
City dominated from Pep's second season and Liverpool's Klopp went on an upward trajectory for several years until they won the league. There was no reason to even think about not keeping them for all these years. And those clubs also had no problems changing managers previously when they thought they weren't going well enough, until they found the right ones.
Our issues, as is well known, have been in the level above the manager and they are now - hopefully - being taken care of with the new structure put in place. Our trouble in the past were not due to us not giving managers enough time, and one of those problems was (not) recruiting the right manager at the right time. Ten Hag was part of that era. Whether he suits the people running the new era, based on what we've seen, I don't know. But stability won't be an issue this summer - because with INEOS coming on and all the changes expected in the club and squad, there won't be any stabilty this summer anyway. So if you're going to make a managerial change - now is actually the time.
I don't even like Poch and I'd still be tempted to swap him for Ten Hag at this point
in the end I'd likely side with Ten Hag and give him another year but...
is there really much between them? Both have serious questions marks
Adding a bunch of asterix? I'm clearly not doing that. I'm saying Tuchel has never looked convincing as a Bayern coach. You seem to think him scraping the league was conviction of him as a coach. You are very much mistaken - Bayern were a worse team under him than under Nagelsmann.
The only way your reasoning will make sense is if you think Ten Hag will continue to play in an open and crazy manner, which he likely won't.
Yes, this season the gap worsened, not just in the team but in the transfer market operations and structurally as we had so much movement. What's your point? It's one season and the process isn't going to be linear. Tuchel put Bayern further away than they ever were in the past 20 years, and his football was dull in the Premier League, and he falls out with everyone. So yeah, not really going to put my eggs in his basket.
Random faith? What on earth is wrong with you? He has never been this open and this exposed with poor execution of his vision outside of this season. It's much more likely that this season is an anomaly than it being the norm. By the way, he doesn't need to be 'world class' to be better than Tuchel right now. Tuchel has underperformed massively, and scoring a lot of goals in the Bundasliga doesn't change that.
Not really. It could be argued that with more time Chelsea would have took off. I mean, they found good form tail end of the season, finished above us, but more importantly their underlying attacking metrics are all better than United’s. His sacking is kinda comical really, because they played decent football just couldn’t convert for large stretches, but it finally clicked. Also, Poch didn’t even get the same number of transfer windows.
Poch over Ten Hag isn’t really crazy.
A structure that ETH has been operating in all of last season and most of this one. Comparing his situation to Klopp, Pep or Arteta is crazy. Like he said, he inherited a huge mess.
Exactly, so what would be the point of ditching Ten Hag to start again with a bloke who there's plenty to be concerned about? Tuchel doesn't excite me much either, but at least I know for a fact he'd be as good a cup manager, if not better than the current manager.
1. you added a bunch of asterix go his win. So I pointed out that could be done with the "2 cups in 2 years" that you are waving the banner to.
2. My point is the manager was brought in with one task and rather than make any progress towards it he has moved in the opposite direction in a way to a genuinely shocking degree.
3. He has been here for 2 years, we have never consistently played good football, 3 quarters of the time the football has been terrible. You want to only judge Tuchel on the last year but hold incredible faith in what Ten Hag did at Ajax and don't judge him by the same standards.
Tuchel has proven he can be a good football manager at a level above that of the Dutch league. That enough plants him firmly ahead. Not to mention the Champions league wins, finals, Bundesliga wins ect.
Who gives us the best shot of playing dominant, controlled football? That’s who has my vote.
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