Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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DJ_21 said:
Ten Hag will of course make mistakes but the most important thing is he how comes back from them… he is still learning things about his new team… he adapts his tactics based on the opposition as we seen against Liverpool when he decided to go long instead of play out from the back after getting spanked by Brentford… he’s already made ruthless decisions in dropping Ronaldo and Maguire. The 2 previous managers would never of done that… they stuck with the same 11 week in and week out even after losing and getting battered most weeks. This man is 100% the right man to make us successful again and when guardiola leaves city, we’ll be in a position to overtake them!
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Exactly and that's what makes a great manager. There isn't a manager in the game that doesn't make mistakes, it's football sometimes you get things wrong.

Anyone who thought ten Hag would come in and turn things around to the point that we're winning nearly every week and achieving 90+ points were kidding themselves. I'm still confident we'll finish in the top four but I expected us to have runs like we've had since the Brentford game then hit a bump in the road like today.
 
sixdwarf said:
Puzzled that anyone could argue that Ten Hag is right to leave Ronaldo out because he doesnt fit the pressing game. What pressing game? There was none today. Ten Hag has done nothing other than disrespect Ronnie today.
Ronaldo presses as much, if not more, than Rashford
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:lol:
 
frostbite said:
Let me add two things:

1. Today we did not have any terrible individual errors. We were losing 6-1 because we were too open in the back. This loss is mostly on ETH, he made too many mistakes. We certainly needed to have two defensive players in the middle (perhaps Casemiro and Fred, plus Eriksen) and we needed to have Sancho and Antony helping in defense because neither Dalot nor Malacia are top players and it was expected that they will have a hard time today. We all hope that ETH learned his lesson.

2. This loss means very little. It was an expected loss. We won against Arsenal and Liverpool, which is great. We need to win against all the other teams. We are not expected to beat City, that's okay.
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I don't agree with point one, we could of played with 2 DMS had the wingers deep protecting the fullbacks and played in a low block looking for fast transitions but it's not what ten hag wants us to do, it's not what any of us really want to see either, and in your second point you say that it's pretty much a free hit as we are not expected to get anything from the game.

ETH wants to progress us into a high press possession based side so why not give it a go against the very best, a good acid test to see where we need to improve and what players can cope with the pressure.

As it turns out there is alot to improve on and some players struggled to deal with the pressure, ETH would of learnt plenty from today and that's hopefully going to be very important going forward.

Maybe if we sat back and tried to counter we might of got a backs against the wall result good for the short term not necceserialy good for the long term.
 
Am I the only one who is irked about what he said about why he didn't bring Ronaldo on? Out of respect, really? I'm not having Ronaldo in the squad just so he will start against some random Joes in the Europa League; I want him to be in a position to help us for as long as he wears the red shirt, especially if the other guys do not deliver at all by halftime.
 
Cheimoon said:
As is yours that Ten Hag set up not to defend from the front. Even if that's what's happened, it doesn't mean that it was intended.

More generally, that's an issue with a lot of the analysis after a failed game. People assume (at least implicitly) that everything that happened was intentional and therefore bad planning, but in reality, we usually don't know what the coach had wanted exactly (except when it gets explained afterwards). So when @JPRouve talks about learning, we can't actually be sure what's been learned exactly. Maybe Ten Hag now knows that his approach didn't work against City. Or maybe it's that it can't be executed with these players. Or maybe rather that it can't be executed until players get more confident, and/or more experienced.

Obviously, everybody is free to assume and hypothesize as they wish; but it would make sense if posters were a bit less self-assured in their analyses of United's approach and its execution.
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Spot on.

I think some posters get drowned in tactics when in reality, if a team plays without confidence, tactics etc are irrelevant.

You won't see what the coach wanted or in fact what the players wanted pre game.
 
It's annoying to hear him say it's unacceptable for the players to not have belief that they could win today when he left multiple champions League winners on the bench.

I have come to respect Ten Hag and I'm glad he is our manager now but today he blew that game and he is totally to blame for the thrashing we got.

What was unacceptable is him leaving the likes of Casemiro and yes I would have started Ronaldo too.

We were not going to press City to death when we haven't pressed anyone with any great degree this season.

He messed up today and hopefully knows that now and will be better next time
 
Not good stuff today. 2 big problems from what I saw, though I watched it with my girlfriend and not engrossed tactically:

1. We didn't retreat with our forwards or press. Too much space to cover.

2. Probably should have gone 5 at the back today. We did well against Liverpool and Arsenal but that meant City had seen us play this way and they're just a much better team. 5 at the back might have surprised them, though obviously they're used to facing that too. And we had Shaw available, or Casemiro in a back 3. Might have worked better than what we saw today.
 
Truth is, none of us can say for sure that some other system or line up would make any huge difference today.

Manager pretty much said the same. Tactics or players are irrelevant if the attitude isn't spot on. It was clear within a few minutes that the players expected a hammering.
 
Think most of today was on the players. But also think ETH made the wrong decision going man to man in the middle. We got schooled in the first half. Casemiro should have started imo.
 
I don't think we even committed to pressing today.

We just played a high line, but there was no coordinated pressing. There were a few times Bruno did his customary no man's press, but it led to nothing. If the players didn't follow instructions through, that's a different problem then.

We have to get better at keeping the ball/recycling it and then pressing high to squeeze teams.

We haven't pressed well in a single game all season.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
I don't think we even committed to pressing today.

We just played a high line, but there was no coordinated pressing. There were a few times Bruno did his customary no man's press, but it led to nothing. If the players didn't follow instructions through, that's a different problem then.

We have to get better at keeping the ball/recycling it and then pressing high to squeeze teams.

We haven't pressed well in a single game all season.
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Impossible to press when you have such distance between players. Midfielders all to deep, forwards left alone to run circles trying to catch their passing. Left lots of space in the middle for them to control the game.
 
The biggest problem is a midfield 3 of McTominay (or Casemiro), Eriksen and Bruno is never going to be a road to success in big games like this. It's way too lightweight. One of Eriksen or Bruno has to be dropped for games like this.

Don't understand how anyone can think Ronaldo would have been the answer. It wasn't his kind of game at all. Ronaldo lives off service at this point in his career, what service would he have gotten today? None. He was useless in this type of game last year too.
 
NewUser777 said:
Impossible to press when you have such distance between players. Midfielders all to deep, forwards left alone to run circles trying to catch their passing. Left lots of space in the middle for them to control the game.
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That's my entire point.

I have no problems with the approach of trying out a high line vs City, but you can't play a high line without a detailed pressing plan. We just played a high line and gave up lots of territory.
 
RazorOz said:
The biggest problem is a midfield 3 of McTominay (or Casemiro), Eriksen and Bruno is never going to be a road to success in big games like this. It's way too lightweight. One of Eriksen or Bruno has to be dropped for games like this.

Don't understand how anyone can think Ronaldo would have been the answer. It wasn't his kind of game at all. Ronaldo lives off service at this point in his career, what service would he have gotten today? None. He was useless in this type of game last year too.
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People who think Ronaldo makes a difference in that game must be wumming.
 
Playing Martinez today against the likes of Haaland was just a recipe for disaster, it's a game where a fit and club available Eric Bailly would have been more suitable, aside from Varane we have no
tough defenders capable of marking the likes of Haaland.

Not the most glaring of issues though in the team as everyone aside from Martial was bad, Antony's goal would give him a pass too.

ETH has his favourites and it's becoming an issue that's the main problem. That and our midfield is shite and we still don't have another good central defender and a tall striker.
 
The worst thing today was that he didn't change it after 15-20 mins. Every manager can get a starting 11 wrong, even Pep can.

What worried me was it was so obvious after just 10 mins what the issue was. The midfield was being totally over ran and he didn't change anything before the result was settled.

At 1-0 we were getting pummeled and he didn't change anything. Very poor in game management. This was one thing I always admired about Mourinho in whatever club he was at. He wasn't afraid to admit he was wrong after quarter of a game and change something.

Erik will learn a lot from today. He got it badly badly wrong and essentially handed City an easy derby win. Next season we can't go there and play that openly and stand off them. They will do the same again. If the players weren't listening to him he should have dragged somebody off and made a statement.
 
Adnan said:
He was absolutely correct to setup the way he did. Because we're trying to evolve as a football team and not carry on with the reactive approach we've seen in prior years where we've made no attempt from the get-go to play through the midfield. And hence have ceded control to the opposition and got some favourable results, which imo built up a false sense of security among many fans when it was clear for me to see that our approach to the game wasn't sustainable.

But over the long-term, the tactics of Mourinho and Ole have only contributed to us regressing as a football team, and there's going to be teething problems under EtH when he's clearly attempting to transition from a reactive approach to a more proactive one. We can't carry on playing McFred together if we have any ambitions of evolving as a team. And when you attempt to evolve as a football team, then there's going to be teething problems along the way where certain deficiencies will clearly be exposed. And it should make it easier to identify which players are capable of contributing in a more dominating approach and which ones are not. So for me, the result today was very disappointing but it's part of the learning curve towards becoming a more dominant team.

It's going to take time but I'm more confident now after the 6-3 loss than I ever was under Ole and Mourinho when they won at City. And the reason for that is simply down to how we were approaching games. And if you're Man Utd and approach games by ceding control from the get-go, then we aren't going to challenge any time soon until we change our mindset. And with ten Hag we will look to evolve into a proactive attacking team, but it's going to take time and patience. City spent over £200m on players in Guardiola first season at the club and another £285m in Guardiola's second season at the club. This is what we're up against and it's going to take time and patience to become competitive with a club like City who are bank rolled by a nation state.
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great post.
 
RedDevilQuebecois said:
Am I the only one who is irked about what he said about why he didn't bring Ronaldo on? Out of respect, really? I'm not having Ronaldo in the squad just so he will start against some random Joes in the Europa League; I want him to be in a position to help us for as long as he wears the red shirt, especially if the other guys do not deliver at all by halftime.
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Just play this scenario, it's an alternate universe, and CR7 comes on. He doesn't impact the game like Martial does, and the game finished 6-1 or 7-1. You know what all those dudes like Roy Keane et al are going to say? Exactly what Ten Hag brought up. How disrespectful to bring on CR7 for scraps in a blowout of a derby. Unless he was starting, this was never going to go well with his former teammates given how the game played out. Can you really struggle to imagine them having that take if he did come on in that game? Martial coming on was the right move.
 
Skills said:
Does he survive this result at Real Madrid?
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Would Real Madrid allow themselves to be this far behind their biggest rivals for a decade. ETH wouldn't be starting from so far behind at any other club who cared about being elite.

For us, today was painful and truly hurt. For the Glazer's it was Sunday and their share dipped a little.
 
I think his defensive shape is quite ambitious as he allows attackers to stay in positions where they can counter if we win the ball.

The problem is if and when we don't win the ball back we then have to be heroes in defence.

I'm sure it will work better when we have a natural CM, ST and a GK that can play the way he wants. But at the moment I do think we'd benefit from being more compact or less stretched from back to front when we're off the ball. The good possession and transition teams have hurt us. Brighton, Brentford and now City.
We can't act as though Arsenal didn't outplay us for large spells in that game either.

Not signing De Jong was a miss but we shouldve had backups. All of our creative players seemed like they forgot how to make a 15 yard pass today. We deserved to get slapped by City in the first half. You can't set up to aggressively counter but not make simple passes to launch attacks. That will never end well. The players let the manager down today who set them up to be able to attack.

Random rant over.
 
alexthelion said:
It's not just pressing, Ronaldo should be put out to pasture, his time has gone.
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His physical presence was sorely needed at times though. Martial in the end was a good call from ETH, but by then city had taken the foot off the pedal.
 
Adnan said:
He was absolutely correct to setup the way he did. Because we're trying to evolve as a football team and not carry on with the reactive approach we've seen in prior years where we've made no attempt from the get-go to play through the midfield. And hence have ceded control to the opposition and got some favourable results, which imo built up a false sense of security among many fans when it was clear for me to see that our approach to the game wasn't sustainable.

But over the long-term, the tactics of Mourinho and Ole have only contributed to us regressing as a football team, and there's going to be teething problems under EtH when he's clearly attempting to transition from a reactive approach to a more proactive one. We can't carry on playing McFred together if we have any ambitions of evolving as a team. And when you attempt to evolve as a football team, then there's going to be teething problems along the way where certain deficiencies will clearly be exposed. And it should make it easier to identify which players are capable of contributing in a more dominating approach and which ones are not. So for me, the result today was very disappointing but it's part of the learning curve towards becoming a more dominant team.

It's going to take time but I'm more confident now after the 6-3 loss than I ever was under Ole and Mourinho when they won at City. And the reason for that is simply down to how we were approaching games. And if you're Man Utd and approach games by ceding control from the get-go, then we aren't going to challenge any time soon until we change our mindset. And with ten Hag we will look to evolve into a proactive attacking team, but it's going to take time and patience. City spent over £200m on players in Guardiola first season at the club and another £285m in Guardiola's second season at the club. This is what we're up against and it's going to take time and patience to become competitive with a club like City who are bank rolled by a nation state.
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We're in this mess due to mismanagement of the club. We've spent more than City so money is not the issue as we've wasted millions and I hate to bring up Woodward again but he's one of the chief culprits for the reason we're yet again undergoing a rebuild.

Its fine to want to evolve as a team to play more progressive front-foot football but even Sir Alex recognized an opposition teams strengths and adapted accordingly.
 
To those who say that ETH is still learning about this squad; do you not think it's worrying he doesn't fully know his squad after how many months in the job?
 
Didn't see the game. But are we at least starting to see a team that can be good in possession with movement that can be derived from coaching yet?
Early days obviously but you can tell quite quickly the intent in coaching even if it's not coming off at the start?
 
Half their goals were simple cutbacks. The defensive structure was all over the place.
 
Waynne said:
We're in this mess due to mismanagement of the club. We've spent more than City so money is not the issue as we've wasted millions and I hate to bring up Woodward again but he's one of the chief culprits for the reason we're yet again undergoing a rebuild.

Its fine to want to evolve as a team to play more progressive front-foot football but even Sir Alex recognized an opposition teams strengths and adapted accordingly.
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I agree that we've wasted millions post Fergie. But we as a club have never been able to match the spending of the City owners who spent almost £500m in Guardiola's first two seasons at the club. And when you as a club have the capacity to spend such sums of money, then it's not difficult to rebuild the squad in one or two windows. And that's what they did whilst being backed by a nation state and having a proactive/attacking head coach to lead the project.

Our biggest issue imo has been that we've appointed the wrong managers. Because when you have a progressive forward thinking manager/head coach at the club, then the recruitment reflects the methods of the manager/head coach. Our recruitment reflected the approach of managers who were either attempting to implement a strategy from a bygone era or were happy to control the game without the ball. Erik ten Hag is the first manager/head coach we've appointed post Fergie who fits the criteria I'm talking about and needs time to implement his methods.

Fergie made many mistakes before winning the league 6 plus years after taking the helm. In European competition there was also question marks over Fergies approach to the game where we would come a cropper very often. And just from the top of my head I remember us being thrashed by Newcastle, Southampton, Chelsea and even City who put 6 past us at Old Trafford.
 
giggs-beckham said:
Didn't see the game. But are we at least starting to see a team that can be good in possession with movement that can be derived from coaching yet?
Early days obviously but you can tell quite quickly the intent in coaching even if it's not coming off at the start?
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I mean there are some positive signs, but it'd have been better seeing them when the game wasn't over versus seeing it when were 4-0 down.
 
Andersonson said:
Mancini is a way better manager. We have played 7 games. And have conceded 4 or more in what, 3 games already? But yeah, that post was a little bit much, but the sense of it stands
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Mancini didn't manage to qualify for the World Cup btw
 
Skills said:
Lopetuigi only got 14 games, and a 5-1 defeat by Barcelona sealed his fate.

We've completely eroded our professional pride away in the last 12 months.
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If we get another thrashing like this in the near future vs a much worse team, then I'd start to worry.
 
Skills said:
Does he survive this result at Real Madrid?
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Xavi's Barca beat Madrid at the Bernabeu 4-0 last season. Ancelotti won the CL later that year. So yeah. It's 1 game against a team that is capable of ripping up any team in world football if they are on it, that's it. No reason to read into it as more than an off day against the best in the world.
 
As bad as the players were, most of that defeat was on ETH. The amount of space afforded in midfield for their goals was criminal.

The bad part is that we've seen 3 or 4 times under Ole that defending deep and counter attacking with pace is a great way to beat this City side, and teams like Spurs and Lyon have also shown it in the CL (and in the league again for Spurs last season). The fact that neither ETH nor anyone in his coaching staff either knew this or had the balls to change the tactical setup isn't particularly ideal. Hopefully they learn.

Frankly with the amount of ability City have very few if any teams are going to win going toe to toe with them, the only team I can recall recently doing so was Chelsea in the CL final.
 
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