I don’t want to bracket anybody anything but we all do it to fair.. I hate people labelling me something because I have one viewpoint on one topic. Particularly happens in emotional discussions, I find in general people are really bad at open dialogue when they take a “if you don’t agree with my interpretation of this thing you are (insert some derogatory or insulting word)”. What is really frustrating is when you try to elaborate on a view and people ignore it so they can keep you stuck in the bracelet that suits them.
As I said, there is no right/wrong viewpoint to have regarding whether the club should keep/sack ETH. With that, there is no argument that can say why it was right/wrong to keep him.
What you have to ask and what any objective observer would do, is what are the reasons why it might of made sense to keep him. This is where people struggle. Instead of doing this, they revert to “only reason is cause they don’t know what they are doing or don’t see what I see” sort of sentiments. I can come up with plenty of reasons why he should be sacked or kept, I don’t think the answer is perfectly obvious given where the club is at the moment.
The only objective stance on this is to be unsure on his position. That doesn’t mean you can’t be unsure of even leaning that it’s a huge risk.
Many people have made balanced posts on why it might make sense to retain him. I’ve made posts, quite extensive , but like you say, you get one word snarky responses or they pick one element and focus on that ignoring all else.
It looks like it comes down to the fact that since ETH has been at the club; it’s been a mess. He joined a mess, has had to work with uncertainty over his position since the club was up for sale, had ridiculous amount of player issues/dramas in a really short period of time and the injuries on top of it.
I feel a lot of people have been taking a “yeh but..” approach that is really sidestepping the probable reason why he’d been kept. It is very difficult to quantify how much all the injuries/drama/dysfunction has been playing with the management of the team. Perhaps it doesn’t explain what we got last season, perhaps it’s some, perhaps it’s a lot of the problem. We don’t know, but many presume “it’s not an excuse” and they quote one thing from another club with none of the combined issues our club has had for a decade, as if that proves a point.
Going back to your stats discussion. I wasn’t saying stats don’t matter, I was saying they don’t categorically prove “that manager is not good enough” in isolation. If we looked at the stats of most league winning teams outside of city, the season after they win the league, I’d say they paint a very interesting picture. A lot of league winners struggle the next season.
New United managers have been getting a decent bounce, one good season and it all falls apart, we don’t win leagues but I feel there’s multiple layers of issues that can include players realising the squad isn’t good enough to react peak levels and/or club not being able to build on momentum which can demoralise the squad (like when Dalot/fred were bought after we finished 2nd).
Why is that relevant? Because it’s not necessarily a reflection that a manager is not good enough, it’s a reflection that for numerous reasons, the squad has struggled to maintain standards. The manager can be part of that, but we’ve seen seasons where league winners have fallen apart. Leicester, Chelsea, even Liverpool.
Oddly enough, after Liverpools league win the next One where they only got 11 more points then our paltry 57 this season. The season before ETH took over , pool played as many games as United in ETH first season and they looked bad the season after.
That’s what some of us think about United who played similar amount of games as pool the next season in ETH first season , but also had a World Cup squeezed in between. A lot of EPL teams have been having injury issues , but a lot of them didn’t also play as many games as United, having multiple player dramas while the clib was for sale leaving everybody at the club clueless to the direction it was going.
How do you think senior ambitious players felt with so much ambiguity over the club and manager ? Most felt new owners will want their own man, so ETH position has been on the block since 6 months into his reign at the club.
Does all this make our weird formation/form/performances ok or understandable ? No, it doesn’t , but it adds more context to “we concede loads of shots and play awful football” that really assumes United has had a period like every other club and the only real issue is a manager who hasn’t been able to get us playing decent football. He’s had so much sh*te to be handling or navigating, it’s not easy to say for certain that none of that has impacted his ability to do what he is capable of doing. Regardless of anything else, trying to create a positive/winning squad culture could not of been easy.
So it looks like INEOs reviewed a lot , including the awful football and felt that the mitigating circumstances were extremely relevant. Coupled with that, they felt that where the club is right now, that replacing ETH is unfeasible or just not required for numerous reasons that could include the alternative options.
