Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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First half hour was how his Ajax side played against top teams in UCL too. Calling it "Oleball" is :lol:
Ball possession is always an overrated stat. The important bit is how the team wins the ball and how they transition.
 
First half hour was how his Ajax side played against top teams in UCL too. Calling it "Oleball" is :lol:
Ball possession is always an overrated stat. The important bit is how the team wins the ball and how they transition.
it looked like the vast majority of liverpool's 70% possession was in their own half.
 
The most pleasing thing last night was that Ten Hag was prepared to be pragmatic and compromise his philosophy to improve our chances of winning a hugely important game.

Secondly, having taken a more pragmatic approach, he was not afraid to make the big decisions on the starting XI to give that approach the best chance of success.
 
Lierpool still ran 110km though with 70% possession.

Comapre that to our running against Brentford when we had most of the ball.
Precisely. The gap in this game was small whereas for us vs Brentford it was far bigger.
 
First half hour was how his Ajax side played against top teams in UCL too. Calling it "Oleball" is :lol:
Ball possession is always an overrated stat. The important bit is how the team wins the ball and how they transition.

yeah I’m struggling to understand why people think he “gave up his philosophy”
 
Just watched the post game press conference of his and he can't stand Jamie Jackson, gave him another death glare. :lol:
Ten Hag always wears a suit, even in his sleep, so obviously he'd have a problem with someone who looks like the guy you call when you need a Shaun Ryder impersonator for a party and no one else is available.
 
First half hour was how his Ajax side played against top teams in UCL too. Calling it "Oleball" is :lol:
Ball possession is always an overrated stat. The important bit is how the team wins the ball and how they transition.
In that case, we looked exactly how we did under Oles good spells. Quick transition and through balls. We also abandoned playing out from the back, and reverted to long balls. We had 285 passes against 678. 56 of them long balls. And not even counting DDG. And you could really se “we wanted it more”
 
A few ten Hag tactics I noticed in the game which in my opinion shows:

1. First 30 minutes we pressed and pressed pool into mistakes then we tired out, this is how ten Hag wants to play for 90 minutes - Elanga's hitting the post came from pressing
2. Martinez & Varane played so many quick balls bypassing the midfield to the wings to exploit TAA & Robertson pushing up, obviously something planned - Sancho's goal came from a quick pass from Martinez to Elanga
3. Switching at halftime to a counter attacking style and bringing Martial on for his hold up play. Realized the team couldn't keep up the high octane pressing the whole 90.

He is a very adaptable coach who will get the best out of this team and turn them into his style of players.
 
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Bellends like Jordan will appear a lot. At every opportunity media will bash him to no end.

Above all this man needs patience and time. Last night's win was great but we wont play like that in other games. Liverpool game needed adaptation and ETH made all the right moves. In majority of games we will be the team which will have the ball more and attack more and its on him to find a way to play in those circumstance which I sure he will. There will be a lot of hickups along the way, defeats and bad games, but as long as the direction is obvious and progress is evident he needs time to get things right.
 
Massive improvement from not only the teams performance but ten hags, his subs was spot on last night, he made massive decisions, his tactics was all good. No one can criticise how much we ran last night, that’s been a bit criticism, being outrun by every opponent, but we out ran Liverpool and dominated like 60 mins of the game. The mission now is to maintain this level.
 
Simon Jordan having a go at Ten Hag for coming out for his post match interview too quickly, like he was revelling in it, and Liverpool were the best team after the first 20 minutes by far. After last night he thinks Ten Hag proved the job was too big for him.

It’s madness. Shows what this club is up against


Was absolutely bonkers even if he had his tongue in his ass.


Basically his take was writing him off completely because of how he looked with a suit on. Honestly don't think any other club goes thru this sort of ballix media nonsense that we get.
 
Simon Jordan can feck off. Small man, my ass. Erik was looking like a fecking chad after that game.

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Talkshite are no better than the Sun, and Jordan's opinion is about as relevant as Agbonlahor's. Not sure why anyone still gives them the time of day.
 
Simon Jordan has a point. Tuchel and Guardiola both look really anaemic which is why you'll rarely catch either of them in a suit. Worrying for us that ETH lacks this fashion directive.

Klopp knows that if he wears giant puffer coats it makes him look jacked and masks the speccy nerd underneath.
 
I think there was always going to be a slow start with ETH. I read somewhere that it took him a while for Ajax to even start playing well during his first 6 months.

Might take longer with this lot and dependent on how we finish the window.
 
Small man? He was taller than everybody stood at the pitch-side interview, apart from Carragher, but including Neville and Keane. If anything, it surprised me how tall he was!
 
While I agree, it was similar to Jose or Ole (against City) but we are conveniently forgetting that the last win against Liverpool was 4 years back. Ole ball or Jose ball , shit wasn't working for 4 years.
 
I think a big part of the low possession was DDG kicking it long. Which just gives it straight back to them every time, because his long kicking is always very inaccurate. That was an obvious instruction after the Brentford horror show and it cost us a lot of the ball but was necessary. Hopefully we can be a bit less extreme in our next few games and pass it out from the back a bit more than we did tonight.

Perhaps Ten Hag will be pragmatic and look to slowly transition from the Oleball that most of the squad is comfortable with. We definitely got some glimpses of decent ball progression yesterday, especially early in the match.

 
Perhaps Ten Hag will be pragmatic and look to slowly transition from the Oleball that most of the squad is comfortable with. We definitely got some glimpses of decent ball progression yesterday, especially early in the match.



that was a really good sequence of building...quick passing and good supporting movements
 
Anybody still doubting Erik ten Hag?

Loved the way Keano looked in total agreement with Ten Hag in the post match interview.
 
Happy he was open to changing. But lets be honest we all know he doesn't want to play like this so its not really any sort of template. Im sure he doesn't get much from this except seeing which players put the effort in.
 
Happy he was open to changing. But lets be honest we all know he doesn't want to play like this so its not really any sort of template. Im sure he doesn't get much from this except seeing which players put the effort in.
It’s good that he can adapt though depending on the opponent.
 
Greatest f-bomb in club history! I hope the players interpret that as frustration as a result of his belief in what they can do when their head isn’t up their arse.
 
Happy he was open to changing. But lets be honest we all know he doesn't want to play like this so its not really any sort of template. Im sure he doesn't get much from this except seeing which players put the effort in.
He wants to play like the first 30 minutes... for 90 minutes.
 
Surprised people are surprised that he is pragmatic, in the true sense of the word rather than the way it has often been incorrectly applied to negative, defensive managers.

For all that Ajax generally dominated possession and played out from the back, it wasn't an accident that they had a giant ent up front in the shape of Haller. They were happy to go long to avoid an opposition press too, particularly in bigger games. But then in that CL run when a false nine was the best practical option, ETH was happy to run with that too.

Will likely be no different here. Broadly the emphasis will be on possession, building from the back and technical ability, because it almost has to be. But even within the opening three games we've seen Eriksen as a false nine against Brighton to a gameplan against Brentford where we were supppsed to draw them in and then go long and then to yesterday's approach against Liverpool which was different again. And Southampton in turn will no doubt see us shift back to something closer to the previous games.
 
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