I finally opted in too all kinds of TV subscriptions to watch United again. Staying up at 5am to watch us while on a business trip, too. Hadn't been the case for years! Long may it continue indeed.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
- Status
I hear you, bud! Absolute waste of 3-years.
That number looks bad only if you're not getting anywhere in terms of progress/trophies.
I got the same impression after the last 3 games. It is a sign of not only team adapting to ETH game, but also players getting some confidence. Even Fred and McTominay seem capable of doing it now and the play just looks much smoother.
Last edited:
All of a sudden with DvB, the performance of Garnacho and Maguire back the squad looks in decent shape. Fully fit we definitely have a top 4 squad. Desperately could do with a new young striker in the winter when winter Ronny goes.
I have no idea about Gerrard. Don't watch anything related to them. Same for Darwin. I have heard him praise Martinez a few times though so yes, he has. I don't think he has released an official statement on it if thats what you're after.
Erik?
Carragher did double down on Martinez
Murtough gets a lot of stick but the choice of ETH is a masterstroke. Could turn out to be the turning point for United post SAF.
He’s brilliant isn’t he.
I think he was the obvious choice though. Most fans wanted him.
I wouldn't give Murtough all the credit. I think huge fan pressure played a big part, for a while it sounded like the club had the hots for Poch.
Going by United ways Pochettino was the obvious choice.
100 per cent. You could tell by how the 'usual suspects' in the media were banging the drum for Poch that he was club choice.
The fans being on the verge of open rebellion is the main reason Ten Hag is here. The club felt pressured to go with the popular choice. To the point that they, clearly, hadn't even profiled the kind of players that might be able to fit into Ten Hag's system.
We got Ten Hag because most of us were crying out for Ten Hag. Thank God for that too. Cos we're finally starting to look like a proper team.
Yes but there's been an obvious effort to modernize the club football culture and move away from the "old ways" Ole tried to bring back going back to the appointment of Rangnick.
Yep, even our ex-players were insisting Poch and Conte (
) were the best choices. Thank feck the club didn't listen to them and instead succumbed to fan pressure.There was a poll on here that had ETH as the outstanding favourite. Gary Neville did one on Twitter too and remarked how surprised he was that ETH was the overwhelming choice.
Of course he was surprised, he thought Poch will win it easy. Probably wished he did not do that poll.
He clearly isn't. We signed up Ole Gunnar Solskjær on a permanent basis on the back of the flukiest result ever, and paid £80m for Maguire and made him captain. Both far bigger mistakes than bringing in Ronaldo, who was our top scorer by a wide margin last season and single-handedly dragged a poor side to the Champions League play-offs.
Things have gone tits-up over the last few months with Ronaldo, but this narrative about it being a huge mistake to bring him in is silly to me, when you consider what he did last year.
What I like the most about him is how effortlessly players are slotting in and out of the team without us losing any composure or control. Signs of a very good system when there's virtually no signs of drop off between first choice and back up players.
What? After the match I deserve some time online too.
I was talking about United inner workings. Pochettino is more in lines with our previous appointments.
Ah ok. I thought 'United ways' was another forum or something
Yes I guess so. I do like what Murtough has done so far though I wouldn't give him too much credit for just picking the right choice compared to what Woodward would've done.
The one season I’m enjoying and looking forward for United games has to be the season with a fecking World Cup in the middle of it
Some people at the club wanted Poch and that goes back six years but Murtough and Fletcher led the managerial search and all the reports say that they were blown away after interviewing ten Hag. I don't think fan pressure had anything to do with ten Hag's appointment.Yep, even our ex-players were insisting Poch and Conte (
Agreed. Everyone, except media pundits, was in agreement EtH was the guy to go for.
Thanks but you are giving us too much credits. We are not at that stage yet but things are gradually getting there, I believe. That's what you get from good works on the training pitch.
Trust me. The club did their due process and interviewed all their choices. It's not succumbing to fan pressure or anything like that.Yep, even our ex-players were insisting Poch and Conte (
The question that was discussed several times on this forum is how much Ronaldo was responsible for creating the issues last season, so it is an open question if the performance he delivered outweighed the issues he created.
Maguire hasn't been awful for us the entire time he has been at United and Ole had a bunch of good results early on before they gave him the permanent position. Giving him an extension was mind-boggling however.
Thats if you think that Ronaldos arrival wasn't almost entirely to blame for the cliff we fell off last season. You cannot just look at the goals he scored and say "look, without him we would have been awful". You can just as easily say "look at the season before without him when we scored way more goals and came 2nd" as proof he ruined the team.
I think its somewhere in the middle but Ronaldo has been bad for the team. Bad for our general play. Bad for moral and bad for the managers he has played under.
When? Genuine question because I haven't heard him saying anything bad about him since those first 2 games.
This narrative again. The team got worse with the acquisition of Ronaldo last season. We went from 2nd in the league to completely missing out on CL football.
Team goals scored plummeted and overall football became much worse than the season prior. Ronaldo scoring all the goals off the back of the entire team catering to him and feeding everything to him doesn't mean he dragged the team to anything. He statistically and matter of factly made the team worse.
Same can even be seen this season when the team play much better without him on the pitch. This idea perpetrated around about him almost dragging a sorry team to the CL is one of the most disingenuous narrative ever created. He made the team worse.
Not sure thats quite the same. He said he still has some reservations against tall players in teams that play lots of balls into the box. Those are just hand picked quotes to push the article and get a bit from fans. I have heard him say positive things about Martinez as well since then. You don't have to go one way or the other. He doesn't have to think hes crap or the second coming of christ.
It's been pretty close, though. He's become a meme player, because he's been consistently crap for a long period with major mistakes coming far too frequently.
Of course, there are nuances to everything, and I'm not denying that he might have impacted play negatively to some extent. I would argue that it wasn't as big of an impact as poor coaching, an awful midfield, shaky defense and real lack of quality going forward (Cavani being out all the time, Greenwood missing towards the end, Rashford having his worst season, Sancho not delivering, etc.).
I just can't understand anyone looking at last season and saying Ronaldo was the biggest problem. He scored 24 goals with the next two players coming in at 10 and 6. He scored hattricks in two games we won 3-2. He scored late winners or equalizers in three out of six Champions League games. And yet many saw him, even last season, as a huge mistake. I don't get it.
Very true. I too was saying the same thing and how wrong I was!
Huge huge fan of him and his football. Long may it continue
Nah, saying you’ll be right long term is doubling down. It’s taking away how he’s performing now for some long term point that isn’t being made.
What absolute tripe. Do you honestly believe that he just came in and made everything worse single-handedly? Does none of the blame go to Ole's shit management, Fred and McTominay being complete crap, Shaw and Maguire fecking around in defense on a regular basis, Rashford being an absolute shadow of himself, Pogba only being available for half the games? All of that is down to Ronaldo? Is it even remotely possible that there may be other factors that contributed to us dropping down to sixth in the league?
We collapsed as a team last season for a variety of reasons, but at least Ronaldo put a few goals in, and gave us some moments. Blaming him for everything that went wrong last season is about as asinine as defending him this season.
We support you all the way boss
Then you have to ask "what was the big change from the previous season". I've been a firm critic of Ole since the honeymoon period ended about 3 months after he arrived. That doesn't change the fact that everything fell apart when Ronaldo came back. It wasn't amazing before that but it took a nosedive.
As to other players not performing, thats pretty simple. If the team aren't happy, there are divisions in the changing room and everyone is trying to compensate and also provide for Ronaldo all the time then everyone and every thing will suffer. Last night was a prime example of people desperately trying to set Ronaldo up even when there were better options. When they should have kept the ball and looked for a better opportunity.
Because we play badly as a team when he is on the pitch. Would we have needed those late winners or equalisers if we had a team that was performing well as a unit? It doesn't matter if a player scores 40 goals a season if you would have scored 60 without him. Hes a net detriment. This is the fundamental issue. The Ronaldo supporters believe that without him we would have been bottom half of the table because he salvaged games for us and the rest of us believe that without him we would have been a better team and scored far more goals spread around the team.
Rooney still did some good things at United in his final few years but overall he was a drag factor on the team. Ronaldo is the same. Its just very hard to quantify someones negative impact on a team. The main evidence we have is how United play with and without Ronaldo and we play far better without him.
- Status