Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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He's not the only one with a veto though. Look at the interview and then tell me if SAF would ever have put up with something like that. And people wonder why the recruitment has been bad.

Edit: Ole said he was trying to get them to sign Haaland before he went to City. Did they do it - no. Think how different it could have been if they had.

I don't get the Haaland stuff. Yes, we know that Ole was pushing for United to sign him even when he was managing him for Molde.

Doesn't really change the fact that Haaland&Co have always planned this as a step by step thing, rather than trying to bridge the gap as early as possible. Clubs were taking notice of him when he was at Molde, clubs were definetely aware of him after his performances in Austria and there were no shortage of clubs making offers when he ended up joining Dortmund.
 
I thought it was largely reported that John Murtough's cock up that led to Jude eventually making the decision to snub us.

Doubt it.

It's just the obvious choice. Join Dortmund on a contract where you have an agreement on an exit strategy, less pressure, more likely to get chances in the league and CL. More likely to leave the club as a more established players with more suitors, increased wages, so even if you look out of place at your next destination you should still be able to find a club that was interested when you were at Dortmund.
 
If EtH can be flexible and deploy appropriate tactics (rather than all out pressing) based on his team's injury situation, I am happy to support him continuing as manager. With a dedicated group of experts taking care of all other aspects and him fully focusing on coaching, perhaps stability is the way to go. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, the U18s have done well with his philosophy. Maybe the future is also more secure. Winning the FA Cup has certainly helped sentiment. Ultimately, it SJR's team have to objectively decide.
 
Tuchel has proven he can win the biggest prizes at the highest level playing good football. He didn't manage to win the league against a freak invincible team.

His career has dwarved Ten Hag's to date which is why you finding it laughable to say he is an upgrade is absolutely absurd and proves a clear bias.

Who has shown more ability to be a manager at the top level to date, Ten Hag or Tuchel? I'm genuinely fascinated to hear your opinion.
They finished 3rd.
 
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.

How has Ten Hag done significantly worse than Poch? They’re done as bad as each other. As for Tuchel he just managed to get third in a 1 horse race:
 
In short, after 2 years and 400M, we are nowhere near developing the style of play we want. We also broke all unwanted records for losses, chances against us, negative GD and whatnot. He has to go.
 
This place is crazy man, Manchester United just had a season in which we finished 8th with a negative GD & went out in the group stages of the CL and half the people want the manager back. Standards are in the gutter. I don’t really care what the market is like & who is available, you have to assess ETH on his own basis and make the decision. How can anyone know what the manager market will be like in December or next summer ? If we keep him then he will be sacked by December anyways and you are basically throwing another season away. There is also the question of transfers this summer, we have wasted so much money on his transfers that I don’t want more of his guys . This guy after two years in charge said this week that if we buy the right players we can be back fighting for top 4 next season , that’s just pathetic imo .
 
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This place is crazy man, Manchester United just had a season in which we finished 8th with a negative GD & went out in the group stages of the CL and half the people want the manager back. Standards are in the gutter
Last match syndrome. People want Amarabat to stay after one good game.
 
The poll is 45/54 because we won the FA Cup, that's it.

Part of it yes, but not everyone is that simplistic. It is possible that some people are able to simultaneously recognise that the season was terrible and still think he deserves a chance/is currently better than the alternatives to start next season under the new structure, and that not be based on 1 good performance.
 
Part of it yes, but not everyone is that simplistic. It is possible that some people are able to simultaneously recognise that the season was terrible and still think he deserves a chance/is currently better than the alternatives to start next season under the new structure, and that not be based on 1 good performance.

Well it’s quite a coincidence that it went from 30% to 45% over the last 2 days then
 
(Copied over from the locked thread)

It would take someone with a heart of stone to not be immensely proud and fully appreciative of EtH and his men yesterday, or not to admire his bold OT address, or even not to be incensed at the appalling press conference straight after we deservedly won the FA against what many consider the best team in world football. I've been watching videos, reading articles, all sorts, just basking in the joy of it all.

All that said, if we're going to be a successful club again, we're going to need to be a lot less emotive or sentimental in our decision making than some of the themes I've seen emerge from Saturday's victory.

Remember how hysterical we were after beating Liverpool? It didn't change a thing.

Structural Issues:
We played Wolves at the start of the season and had 37 more league games to rectify the huge structural problems that were apparent, and we didn't until Arsenal towards the end of the season (and when we made the changes the fans, ex-players and pundits had been calling out for, guess what, we improved). Who knew? Everyone bar EtH it seems.

Vulnerability and weird selections/snubs:
We've thrown leads away comically on most competitions including a 3-0 lead away to a lower league side, EtH persisted with underperforming players and benched (or completely ignored) the likes of Amad even when they showed they were better than the players he stubbornly stuck to. When asked he claimed forward players need a lot of trust to perform, I found it funny that he could not see the irony.

Injury issues were not purely bad luck:
And talking of injuries, how many of those were self inflicted by training sessions, the fact that EtH doesn't really use his squad if he doesn't have to (he'd play the same 11 every single game), and the fact we basically looked like an even more erratic, older, more expensively assembled version of Bielsa's Leeds who had to run the entire length of the pitch back and forth for most of the season because we had a huge structural hole in the middle of the park, and we kept on trying low percentage long balls straight to the forwards?

Specific player dependence:
We cannot be so dependent on specific players that we fall apart in their absence. At points this season we were only lacking one or two starting players.

EtH contributed to the failed 'structure':
It's difficult to know why the club leadership were so inept behind the scenes and INEOS has thankfully gone about removing the management structure, however, EtH is not just a victim of the structure, he's part of it, in fact, in some ways he played a part in designing it by insisting on full control.

Questionable to ridiculous signings:
With his this control he pushed for very questionable and wasteful signings that turned out to be just that. Damningly, he had worked with a lot of these players.


I'll let the professionals do their job, but I have gradually lost more and more confidence in his ability to lead us to success over the course of the season and his weird views on our performances during recent press conferences (one of the latest being we were better than City in last year's FA cup final) do not help.

If by some miracle he stays on, we'll all jump on the support bandwagon but it would be pure hope rather than actual evidence that I'd be riding on.
 
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The FA cup win is glorious. Beating City (even though they looked half drunk) after a horrible horrible season was joyous. Kudos to Ten Hag for finally realizing that the team he built isn't made for progressive football and sitting back & being compact was our best hope for this tie. Beating Liverpool on the way to this cup win makes it sweeter. No can say that we had an easy route to the final like last year's league cup.

However, Ten Hag still need to go. The overall body of work has been far from impressive. The football in the last eighteen months has been horrendous and I don't see it changing very much. Like most decent managers, he can get results when we play as an underdog, but his primary style of football is naive and not suited to this league. It leaves too many gaps in the midfield and leaves the defense vulnerable. On top, his ability to recognize talent needed for this league, his squad management & rotation, his in game management and overall charisma leaves much to be desired. I cannot see us challenging for the big two prizes with him.

INEOS do have a tough decision to make, though. His stock is pretty high at the moment and if the next manager doesn't turn to be good or the new management takes time to get us out of the mess Ten Hag created with his signings then things will get toxic pretty fast. Watch folks who don't like "negativity" act like total wankers everywhere on social media. Every move by the next manager will be scrutinized in the minutest detail and chastised. The press who are after Ten Hag at the moment and don't think he is good enough will most likely do an about turn and criticize us for sacking a manager who won two trophies in two seasons.

They still have to make the decision. If they had decided that a change is warranted before the cup final then they have to go through with it. They can't think about the pressure and the scrutiny that would come from the fans and the media. They have to have conviction in their decision making. Otherwise we'd see redux of the same stupidity we saw under the Glazers and Woody who gave Ole a permanent contract after a good manager bounce and didn't even wait till the end of the season to assess the situation as they had planned.

It's for INEOS to decide if they like the Glazers are happy to see us continue as a yo-yo club that wins an odd trophy. Or they really want to see us back at the top. And maybe they think Ten Hag is the man for that for all we know.

It said it here mockingly, but this is INEOS' big first test. Let's see what happens.
Good post - I also think if we keep ETH, everything will be scrutinized too. If things don't go well people will start asking why we didn't go for x, y or z. If McKenna, Tuchel or Poch have a great start to the season that's better than ours, questions will be asked why we just let them go to another club.
 
Part of it yes, but not everyone is that simplistic. It is possible that some people are able to simultaneously recognise that the season was terrible and still think he deserves a chance/is currently better than the alternatives to start next season under the new structure, and that not be based on 1 good performance.
Why does he 'deserve' a chance that our other recently sacked managers didn't get even though he just had a season worse than all of them?
 
It was executed shit and the tactics themselves certainly needed tweaking. He's the first to admit that - he called the league campaign "crap" by his own words. That's not his standard and it's not his ceiling.
That's nice. He's had 18 months to tweak it, though. Why are we rolling the dice that this summer it'll suddenly come to him? We can't afford another season like the one we just had. People are way, way too soft with him for some reason.
 
We know he can do better than this season. But what if we have another plague of injuries again, also, what if his training, his staff are the reason for all of the fitness issues?
 
The fans that want him out will turn on the new guy after about another 2 years and be saying the same things about him. If the club had listened to these, SAF would have been sacked before he ever got going. ETH had terrible luck this year with injuries. That's not his fault, it's just bad luck.
Absolute bollox. Shaw and Martinez being out shouldn't cause the fecking world to collapse. We lost 3 nil to Bournemouth at home! We got 1 point from Forest! Injuries being an excuse for a £1bn team finishing 8th with negative goal difference is deranged.
 
I'd guess the majority of RedCafe now want him to stay because there is undoubtedly some who don't bother changing their vote

end of season was surely the time to reset the poll
 
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.
@simonhch with another banger.
 
Trainspotting should have redcafe produced sequel Pollspotting.
 
I wish the club would just either back him or move on, the last thing we want is uncertainty hanging over us going into pre-season.
A big few days coming up for Ineos.
 
That's nice. He's had 18 months to tweak it, though. Why are we rolling the dice that this summer it'll suddenly come to him? We can't afford another season like the one we just had. People are way, way too soft with him for some reason.
It wasn't open for 18 months, and there are other factors. No ones being too soft, he won back to back trophies for the first time since 16/17 and the alternatives probably wont do better than that. At best back to back top 4.
 
I wish the club would just either back him or move on, the last thing we want is uncertainty hanging over us going into pre-season.
A big few days coming up for Ineos.

They probably aren't going to sack him while he is on holiday.
 
Poch finished above Ten Hag with the shitshow that is chelsea, not to mention a massive injury list as well, whilst getting them playing good football to watch,.

They were also a laughing stock for a large portion of the season and because of that, he was sacked. It's a hard pass from me.
 
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Without a doubt. All the horrible performances, all the records broken negatively, -1GD and 8th place have been forgotten just like that
Just like that? You mean winning a major trophy against our cross-town rivals, denying them a double.
 
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.


Sounds like you've been borrowing facts from Benitez.
 
It wasn't open for 18 months, and there are other factors. No ones being too soft, he won back to back trophies for the first time since 16/17 and the alternatives probably wont do better than that. At best back to back top 4.
We've been rudderless for more than just this season. To suggest we didn't hobble over the line last season is either disingenuous or the result of some seriously rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. We just don't know what ten Hag wants us to look like and you can't have that at United after 2 years and close to half a billion spent. We've got potential academy worldies that we owe a proper system and structure to.

The alternatives could easily have us in a better place than where we are currently at, be reasonable. We are in the gutter. Saturday doesn't change the fact that we are basically starting from the ground up - again.
 
Winning the FA cup is great but manager assessments at United should never be made based on domestic cup competitions.
 
And that was his stubbornness in thinking it would eventually click like it did with Ajax when everyone doubted him. He should now know the PL is a different beast, but he should also have room to make his mistakes, so long as he keeps us relevant. He did that this year by bringing home the FA Cup.

Let's be fair here mate in any other season he would have probably been sacked by Xmas but for the takeover going through.

He seems intelligent enough to have realized that. So when he wasn't sacked, if he didn't take that opportunity to course correct then he can have no complaints if/when he loses his job.
 
He served up a shit meal every week, blamed it on not having the ingredients and fecking gave you the pudding at the end of the season as a sweetener.
Im still starving.....
 
This place is crazy man, Manchester United just had a season in which we finished 8th with a negative GD & went out in the group stages of the CL and half the people want the manager back. Standards are in the gutter. I don’t really care what the market is like & who is available, you have to assess ETH on his own basis and make the decision. How can anyone know what the manager market will be like in December or next summer ? If we keep him then he will be sacked by December anyways and you are basically throwing another season away. There is also the question of transfers this summer, we have wasted so much money on his transfers that I don’t want more of his guys . This guy after two years in charge said this week that if we buy the right players we can be back fighting for top 4 next season , that’s just pathetic imo .

Agreed!
At some point you have to decide whether it will work or not and mid season is not the time to do it. I have a bad feeling that next season will be much the same if we stick with ETH. Getting walloped every week by shit teams is not progress. Hopefully Ratcliffes professional review will see past one or two good games per season.
 
This has been so mismanaged. Turned into a pantomime now.

We should've made a decision months ago, let Ten Hag know and had someone lined up to walk in asap. It really looks like we’re still in talks with multiple potential managers. It’s weak and indecisive leadership.

I expect Chelsea making moves for McKenna may have prompted us to move - if that’s the case:

1. Just go and get your man (rightly or wrongly)
2. We shouldn’t be letting other clubs actions (and certainly not Tod Boehly) influence or decisions.

If im Ten Hag, I go on a nice long holiday now and cease all communication with the club. When I return, if there’s not a contract termination waiting for me, I demand a contract extension.

How this has been handled, hasn’t filled me with confidence with INEOS.
 
We've been rudderless for more than just this season. To suggest we didn't hobble over the line last season is either disingenuous or the result of some seriously rose-tinted nostalgia goggles. We just don't know what ten Hag wants us to look like and you can't have that at United after 2 years and close to half a billion spent. We've got potential academy worldies that we owe a proper system and structure to.

The alternatives could easily have us in a better place than where we are currently at, be reasonable. We are in the gutter. Saturday doesn't change the fact that we are basically starting from the ground up - again.

I would say that having 4-5 young players we can build around for the next decade is a lot better than aging strikers, failed wonderkids and one dimensional defenders. Not sure how much credit Ten Hag deserves for it, but we are definitely not needing to build from the ground up again. We have a solid young core.


Hojlund
Garnacho -×- Diallo
Mainoo - ×
× -× - Kambwala - ×
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Add to that elite talent like Bruno, Shaw and Martinez, and there is definitely something to build on there.
 
Of course. Because we had Casemiro and McT doing what Deklan Rice or prime N'golo Kante needed to do. And Maguire and Evans not doing what players like Martinez and Virgil van Dijk do. But he played it anyway because he thought to do otherwise was to waste the season and put us back further. .

That's never made sense to me, he wanted Casemiro. He's admitted that recently.

Maguire and Evans can play a high line, Martinez isn't fast and Van Dijk isn't a United player.

So if he was committing to this system regardless of personnel why is the back 4 sitting so deep leaving a chasm where our midfield should be. When obviously the defence should be pushing up. It all makes zero sense.

Ironically persevering with this setup wasted the season, put us back further and is likely to lose him his job.

He thought he could get a tune out of the players he had and he was wrong

Yeah he seems to have greatly misjudged tye entire situation alright. He needed to be more adaptable.
 
I've been in the "EtH out" camp for the past few months but I must admit I'm softening my stance a little bit. Maybe it's just emotions.
If the players are still behind him I'm kinda open to have him try and prove himself for another half a season or so
 
He still needs to go. An FA cup win won’t change what I’ve watched all season
 
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