Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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other maybe but I haven't scapegoated him for anything
I blame him for being stubborn to change our tactics when it clearly wasn't working all season, the rest is just noise to me
with that sort of mind-set I don't think he has what it takes
Anyone els think he’s staying? Or still reckon he’s getting sacked? If so they’re dragging it out aren’t they.
You're right, I don't think SAF benefitted from our academy at all.
According to the poll YES. I'm wondering what the Eth IN croud are looking forward to for next season
Jim is an empty headed Billionaire that’s playing at football tbf
sacked
they are approaching other managers I'm not sure what else people need to see
he won the cup and the club have to go through the motions of the end of year review and wotnot
but like, they are approaching other managers
I know I already said that but I feel like it needs repeating for some reason, he's gone
Yeah this is where I am at the minute. I've been Ten Haag out for the last few months but that display in the FA Cup Final does give out some optimism. Like you I can't really muster any enthusiasm for some of the replacements touted either...
Poch - Hasn't won anything and is coming off a string of sackings at lesser clubs.
Southgate - Please no.
De Zerbi - Brighton have been worse than us this season. Not convinced the coaching there is as important as the scouting/transfer structure in place.
Tuchel - Probably the most interesting of the lot but how much of a step up is he from ETH?
Personally I wouldn't be unhappy if he was given more time and we kept an eye on the likes of McKenna and Carrick. No more Anthony's though.
He chose the profile of the squad
He hasnt though, look at who has majoritively played due to injuries (Assume you agree last year was a good first season). This year Varane, AWB, Dalot, Bruno, Mctom, Maguire, Rashford werent bought by him and I think he should have got more out of them but the issue remains for me, we have players that suit a possession game, some that suit a counter, some that prefer sitting deep and others happy to push up high. Its very hard to implement a style when we dont have an XI for me capable of playing 1 way.
I think thats forced his "Transitional" style but we dont have the legs in midfield or CB with the injuries to Martinez, Shaw etc so we sit deep with Maguire and Evans and counter but I dont think it suited to some of his signings who clearly prefer the higher line style... Just my view on it
That's not actually a reasonable representation of the argument though is it? In fact it's borderline bad faith. Ten Hag isn't at Chelsea, he doesn't have Pochettino's track record of abject failure or Tuchel's history of causing chaos. I wouldn't need to be clamouring for him to reluctantly have him at the front of the queue of a list of awful names. Ten Hag had a record before United (including his first season at United) which made him a high potential candidate who could have had multiple upsides. None of the proposed candidates have that. I'm not interested in paying £6m to sack Ten Hag, pay another £5m to bring in Poch, then pay another £10m to sack him in 18 months time when it turns out "slightly better than EtH's worst season" isn't good enough either. That's £20m we could be spending on a player, or a stadium, or a training ground.
None of the candidates have even close to a record which suggests they would be good United managers, EtH at least has the possibility that he might stop being a stubborn arse and play a sensible system he can obviously coach well. And my biggest objection to him was his eye for a player, if INEOS are actually doing their job that's no longer an issue. No matter where EtH managed this season, if that was the list of options I'd still have him above the others.
Like I said, it's head in the sand, grass is always greener, disingenuous nonsense that just because EtH deserves to be sacked for his performance this season we absolutely should do it regardless of who else we get in to replace him. EtH can deserve to be sacked, he can still also be the best of the people who can realistically get.
Put it this way, EtH started at a 7 based on his work at Ajax, went up to an 8 after least season and is probably about a 5.5/10 prospect now after this farcical season. A 5.5 is well within the range of "deserves to be sacked" IF there is someone better. But it's not a trigger, if there's no manager better than a 5 out there who we can actually get then getting rid of him is a totally emotive decision based on a desire to punish failure rather than do what is best for the club.
I agree, Newcastle and Chelsea have better coached players at the moment. What also we have seen as the similar groups of players under various managers do the same.
Our recruitment over the various managers has been the same too, over priced.
How can it serve no purpose? we were trophyless for 6 years. Clearly he knows how to win something.
You see keeping Ten Hag as INEOS incompetence but who is to say they get Tuchel and we are still 6th at Christmas, what would you call that foresight?
As we speak, a furtive (and traitorous) prison guard is ejecting scrawled comms from x orifice. Minutes later, Ashworth is using the dim light to read.
“Roy Keane hopes he stays on. Caf is 50/50”
The prisoner of the garden moves his weary weight off his bunk and starts to scrawl his reply…
“Roy Keane hopes he stays on. Caf is 50/50”
The prisoner of the garden moves his weary weight off his bunk and starts to scrawl his reply…
Ok I can accept him going but only if the right man who’s better gets brought in. We’re looking at Thomas Frank, who’s never won a trophy, pochettino who challenged Leicester for the league, bottled french league against Lille, bottled a 2 goal lead against Madrid with mbappe, Neymar and Messi. Got sacked from Chelsea. Only ever won anything in a 1 team league. Erik Ten Hag ended our 6 year trophy wait and as now won us 2. Think he needs a bit more respect than he’s getting.
Hojlund was injured for 13 games. Casemiro, our only DM, a role this squad desperately needed since before Ten Hag was injured for 17 games 83 days, Mainoo was injured for 16 games, Varane 16 games, Aaron Wan-Bissaka 21 games. Of our first team only Bruno, Rashford and Dalot stayed relatively fit throughout, on top of that where's the rotation options? Oh yeah a few of them had injuries throughout the season too. The injuries are exactly why we finished 8th and the lack of quality fit second xi players compounded that fact.
Hojlund missed 8 league games. Half the season???
Poch didn't have Nkunku for almost the whole season and was stuck with Jackson who cant shoot for toffee. Sterling and Mudryk are arguably even worse than Antony and Rashford. They should have scored 30 goals more than us but still scored 20 more.
What happened at Ajax is irrelevant, honestly. It's like saying Bodgers is an attacking genius because look at how many Celtic score.
I keep reading this and I think okay sure.. was Martial fit all season?
Think if he is staying then there has to be a contract extension. You cant have a manager in last year of his contract.
Winning the Europa league. Back to our very good form his first season with the return of long term injuries and new additions. The new setup of the board to help him work with players and not waste his energy on transfers just like what he did in Ajax.
Or Hojlund.
But that's literally HIS choice, he chose Eriksen/Antony/Martinez/Onana/Hojlund/Mount as targets to acquire when none of them had much in common. I mean buying Antony and then saying "we want to play fast transitional football" is just such a daft contradiction of actions I don't know where to begin, which just further highlights that either A. He didn't really know what he wanted or B. He's god awful at identifying players to fit footballing styles himself. Either way doesn't shine positively on him.
I don't disagree with the squad being a weird amalgamation of styles. I said so even last summer that it was the biggest issue and it's also why in transfer threads I've advocated for almost completely cleaning house throught the spine of the team first and foremost because we are laughably unathletic compared to any other decent team, let alone top team, at CB and DM. I'm just saying that a good manager that had as much power as ETH did would have either accepted that Bruno/Rashford thrive in a transitional team as the "best" players and look to compliment them and that style to the best of his ability, or cleaned many of the misfitting players out and fully looked to adapt the squad fully to a more techincal side. B
But that's sort of another argument in and of itself as it then delves into "should he even have that power in the first place", but my main criticism of him the entire year is the lack of ability/willingness from him to adapt/adjust after it was obvious our "high press transitional style" was a trainwreck a couple of months into the season for a variety of factors. Instead he stubbornly insisted we were playing well and playing how he wished, and that stubborness and failure is fecking sackable in any other profession much less managing one of the biggest clubs in the world while getting historically bad results. I'm sorry, injuries or not you can't just say "Oh he's just Dutch and stubborn" for being a fool and completely outclassed for months on end while he persists with something that was clearly failing from day 1.
Right because the only other improvement over finishing 8th is winning the title? I get it, if you don't win the title, the only other place you can finish is 8th with a negative goal difference and no other position is possible. And obviously no other teams in league have injuries at all and only Ten Hag has had to do miracles to get us to 8th.
And we sacked managers before finishing outside of the top 4, not sure what's so surprising that there'd be people calling to sack someone who has gotten us to 8th.
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No but these people wont remember that, a PL winning team hitting 99 points, without their 2 best players struggling to get top 4?
Apparently according to the poster, Liverpool didnt change their style, were amazing, pressing well playing well but they lost games.
Thats with just a few CB injuries, let alone having no backup ST, CDM's injured and no LB.
Its almost as if, managers dont need their best players to win titles, Arsenal fell off last season because their 1 CB got injured, yet we have fans who think Injuries make no difference.
It's worth pointing out this is faulty logic, you don't need to be looking forward to anything (in fact you could suspect the season will be another failure) and still think it's the least worst option. The manager market seems dead right now.
Yes, insults are definitely helpful discourse.
yeah the options are really weak, and that's the best argument I can make for keeping Ten Hag at this point
I like the guy but I don't trust him with tactics
I'd like to see someone make a case for keeping him that addresses the tactical shortcomings. All I hear is injuries and he won the cup. There's a lot more to it that that. How about how the team has been setup for the last 12 months? Someone make it make sense.
There is no doubt Tuchel is a step up from Erik, personally would put him in that same tier with Simeone/Enrique just below the elites such as Guardiola/Klopp/Ancelotti.
I can't decide if Pochettino just needs to be somewhere with a better structure or he's a busted flush. I liked what I saw of De Zerbi last season but the heavy defeats this season worry me.
Problem with Tuchel is never how his teams perform on the pitch, it's that he's incapable of living in the real world and every slight, setback and rejection just gets put in his back pocket and he slowly ruins whatever environment he's in. The guy needs a lobotomy every 18 months.
Tactically on Saturday he wiped the floor with Pep. He fecked Klopp too. I have reservations, too; how we play against defensive low block, Anthony, among them. But he’s a top manager, and no one knows his potential. Give him a chance, Jim.
Yeah there is no doubt it's poor form that we haven't got defenders with similar profiles so the drop off in playing style is huge unfortunately
Yes, but according to fans on here, this means you are Ten Hag in. It is clear that the alternatives are not great, Chelsea going with a promoted Championship manager, Bayern getting a relegated manager, Liverpool got Slot.
Its not great pickings out there for managers, if Ten Hag wasnt in this job, he would be up there in the shortlist.
The problem with just sacking him for sake of sacking him means we again go back to square 1.
How many more seasons are we willing to write off? hiring a new manager just writes off next season because there will be 1st season excuses.
If Ten Hag stays there are none of those, pressure is on from pre season, he has to deliver something next season.
Poll is almost 50-50 now was 38-62 before final
was 38-62 before finalFair point regarding Hojlund, felt like it was more than that but you could argue Chelsea had more players to give motivation to those starting and cause the players to find another level and Palmer came out of nowhere and they got lucky or I doubt they would have scored half that amount.
I don't think what happened at Ajax is irrelevant, it is relevant but it isn't proof he can do it here but it's proof he can play attacking football.
Agreed regarding Antony but I don't also think our backroom staff helped him here, they waited far too long and overpaid and he also didn't have much time to assess what the squad was like and what they could/ couldn't do and as seen from the first few games of his first season which went horribly wrong he couldn't implement the attacking style he wanted to with that squad.
I don't think last year under the Glazers he could "Clean house", we did accept an offer for Maguire and I don't think we would have got to the stage of receiving an offer for Mctominay if he wasn't prepared to let him go so I do think he wants to clear them out but with such inflated contracts the players don't want to go and we can't get good enough offers for them.
I agree his transfers haven't been beyond reproach - I think Onana and Mount will come good once they have the right type of CB in front of them and we play the football to suit them and Mount is more available but Antony there is no coming away from and Casemiro was pure panic buy but given how this club have operated previously, leaving things to the last minute, overly confident on transfers and missing out (De Jong) I think he was offered that or nothing so accepted. I don't think the idea of him having less control over transfers (still consulted) is a bad thing and its how top clubs operate.
Clearly he has faults but I don't see a manager end of the day that is a clear step up overall with the squad and ownership we have.
Well....
But your entire point about "no one better" is just speculation anyways? My point is we've just had 2 seasons of evidence now in what Ten Hag brings, and for the past 18 months now it's been a steady decline in performances and results (FA cup run excluded). We haven't seen "progress" in how he wants to play, in fact we saw regression with "how he wants to play". So the plan is just to hope he reverts back to our season 1 tactics? Not to mention we haven't even had a good performance that was excellent to watch since probably the Spurs 2-0 in 2022?
I personally think you're putting too much stock in Dutch league success with the biggest club in that league. It's a good barometer, and he did a great job there, but we aren't talking about some serial winner that's been at multiple stops and had success every where before coming to United and now recently failing. This isn't me wanting to sack Carlo fecking Ancellotti for Thomas Frank. I mean you call me disengenuous and then your best defense of keeping Ten Hag is "He has the possibility of stop being stubborn and play a sensible system", which is hilariously WHAT HE HAD AN ENTIRE SEASON TO DO. He had 8 months to do what you're hoping he does next season! Instead he burned our entire year to the ground in historically bad fashion by persisting with a god awful setup and then crying about injuries for months on end without proactively looking in any way to play around those injuries.
The "there's no one better" logic is just flawed in any aspect anyways and always will be no matter what we are talking about. If someone shows you they are a failure and failing at the job they have to do, you get rid of them. If a striker misses 50 sitters in a season but the striker market doesn't have some obvious star player available to replace him with, that doesn't mean you just keep the shit player because there isn't an obvious decision to be made. And acting like there isn't a manager that's out there that can improve upon 8th place with a negative goal difference is just as disengenous, especially considering we watched teams managed by fecking Ole get 2nd and 3rd while everyone here called him a buffoon that had 0 clue what he was doing.
Can see him being left in limbo about future because they are dithering due to the result on Saturday
Agree, let them eat cake.
Did you even read the post or do you just want to downplay Sir Alex' work?
Poll is almost 50-50 now
Could see it coming a mile off if we won, like a previous post said I think fan channels have also influenced yes votes
Didn't we lose 7-0 to them and Liverpool also dominated vast portions of the FA Cup tie?
Personally I wish they would just announce either way
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