Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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The one hopefully silver lining is that ETH sees this evidence as to us being a much more long term project than our run suggested. And accordingly needing upgrades in personnel and of course coaching to make that possible.

As much as we have improved our possession play for example needs a lot of work. And is he willing to watch DDG constantly boot it upfield for the next two years with us needing to play on the break as we can’t hold on to the ball?

As long as we have DDG starting there is a ceiling to the level of performance and results for us.
 
It's fecking hard to take a 7-0 defeat nevermind Liverpool and in the season where we thought we finally turned a corner.
 
It reminded me of the 6-1 to City in the way we were playing kind of okay but quickly lost the plot

I can’t for the life of me understand the decisions today. Rashford should be on Trent. Bruno central and if you absolutely have to play Wout, stick him up front. Dalot was having clear problems at the back and should have been hooked at half time.

It will be difficult to recover from this mentally, and I hope it doesn’t derail our season. But I still back the manager and hope he’s given a lot of time to build the team he wants.
 
My worry is at what point does it stop becoming a freak result?

4 against Brentford
3 against Brighton
3 against villa
6 against city
7 against Liverpool

All that in one season with 12 games still to go

The manager should have plans in place when things aren't going to plan

Some of the players shouldn't have returned at half time

I still believe in what he's doing but results like these are becoming synonymous with us and they need to stop

Why is 3 against Brighton and villa in this list?

Synonymous is nonsense
 
Outside of the league, winning the FA Cup and Europa is very realistic. Talk of the quadruple is just fancy since mathematically it's possible but hardly anyone truly expects a collapse from both Arsenal and City. You say people get easily fooled by a winning run? I say the winning runs in our season so far tells us more about the team than the 3 bad defeats which constitute less than 10% of games we played so far. I don't think anyone on this forum, punditry, or ETH has said we are the finished product but we are not far from challenging. This ridiculous result seem to have made people forget we have already beaten all of Barcelona, Arsenal, City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Newcastle already this season.
Another trophy is realistic but I’m not getting head of myself. If we win either it will be bloody brilliant. Long way to go.

I agree with the bolded bit. We’ve made a lot of progress which people will lose sight of due to a few awful results. It’s impatient the manager and players react but have confidence in the improvements made. I’m just saying that we still much to improve at whereas the results caused people to jump the gun a bit. You know how it is, people need a story -United can win it all! United are terrible!
 
Teams that conceded 2 or fewer goals at Anfield this season

Wolves
Everton
Chelsea (0-0 draw)
Leicester City
Leeds (Leeds won 2-1)
West Ham (1 goal conceded)
City (1 goal conceded)
Newcastle
Palace (1-1 draw)


Teams to concede 3 or more goals at Anfield

Southampton (19th in the league, 3-1 loss)
Bournemouth (9 goals) (bottom of the league, most goals conceded this season)
Brighton (3-3 draw)


It really doesn't reflect good on him that the only other teams to lose at Anfield this season while allowing 3 or more goals to that lot are the 2 teams that sit at the bottom of the table right now.
 
Why is 3 against Brighton and villa in this list?

Synonymous is nonsense
In the previous two seasons before we have conceded 3 or more goals on 8 occasions

It includes 4 against Brighton and Watford
4 and 5 against Liverpool
6 against city and spurs

It's like we fold like cardboards under pressure

Now I know this is a new manager and he's gradually rebuilding us but it's like we either have no clue how to shut games like these down or we just don't care

In anyway it doesn't look good
 
H
Shouldn't be one now, regardless of the cups we win.
Who the feck has an open top bus just for winning the league cup anyway? Is that even a thing. Didn’t enter my head that we would. Not even if we win another trophy to be honest. League or champions league for open top bus, let it actually mean something
 
My worry is at what point does it stop becoming a freak result?

4 against Brentford
3 against Brighton
3 against villa
6 against city
7 against Liverpool

All that in one season with 12 games still to go

The manager should have plans in place when things aren't going to plan

Some of the players shouldn't have returned at half time

I still believe in what he's doing but results like these are becoming synonymous with us and they need to stop
I mean Villa and Brighton were pretty normal defeats (Brighton was 2-1). City was 6-3 but yeah that game was a battering, more of a battering than today if you look at performance and not score really. Arsenal away was also a bit of a battering but one where the finishing for us and them was really in our favor (and we still lost).

Basically, we've been great at home, a bit shit in the big away games. 1 win and 1 loss against each of those big teams. Not the end of the world really. Prefer it to not be hammerings, but that'll come. Ten Hag will need to adapt a bit, which is to be expected. It's his first season in the prem, he's done a great job but there are also other great managers, managers who Ten Hag will do well to be compared to by the time he is done like Klopp and Pep.
 
It was unacceptable. On the flip side we’ve been playing every 2-3 days and it’s gotta catch up to a small squad
Yeah its been a hectic fixture list and something had to give. Lets just hope we get the result out of our system in he Europa but I still feel this squad isn't deep enough to chase the Europa, Top 4 and the FA Cup so choices had to be made but we made the wrong one.
 
Teams that conceded 2 or fewer goals at Anfield this season

Wolves
Everton
Chelsea (0-0 draw)
Leicester City
Leeds (Leeds won 2-1)
West Ham (1 goal conceded)
City (1 goal conceded)
Newcastle
Palace (1-1 draw)


Teams to concede 3 or more goals at Anfield

Southampton (19th in the league, 3-1 loss)
Bournemouth (9 goals) (bottom of the league, most goals conceded this season)
Brighton (3-3 draw)


It really doesn't reflect good on him that the only other teams to lose at Anfield this season while allowing 3 or more goals to that lot are the 2 teams that sit at the bottom of the table right now.
Liverpool beat United, United beat Barca, Barca beat Madrid, Madrid beat Liverpool...

Comparing how one team does vs one opponent with how another team does in those games is pretty irrelevant. It tells us nothing.
 
I still can't believe we lost 7-0.

If players display that kind of unprofessionalism and lack of fight again, he's got to axe them from the squad.

Losing to Liverpool at Anfield is fine, but to give up and lose 7-0 is just unbelievable.

It'll be interesting to see how we respond from this.
 
In the previous two seasons before we have conceded 3 or more goals on 8 occasions

It includes 4 against Brighton and Watford
4 and 5 against Liverpool
6 against city and spurs

It's like we fold like cardboards under pressure

Now I know this is a new manager and he's gradually rebuilding us but it's like we either have no clue how to shut games like these down or we just don't care

In anyway it doesn't look good

How is that relevant to analyzing ETH?
 
You can add Fernandes as well .

I actually like Bruno a lot. But I am coming around to thinking along those lines. Mainly because he just doesn't help us in progressing the ball from the back. Now it could very well be instructions but I feel like KDB, Odegaard etc support the progression of the ball much better than him. Its like his only responsibility is in the final 3rd.
 
Ten Haag has done an amazing job. The squad is far from finished and too many players let him down yesterday.Ten Haag has got the best out of some very average players recently such as Fred. Shaw was downright awful yesterday. Weghorst is a stop gap as we have no striker. A result like this will do us good in the long run to
reinforce those standards. We still need more, we need a striker, better quality to support Casimero in midfield and Ten Haag needs sone strong words for Shaw and Bruno about their attitude and standards. If nothing else yesterday forces the new owners to get the check book out.
 
My worry is at what point does it stop becoming a freak result?

4 against Brentford
3 against Brighton
3 against villa
6 against city
7 against Liverpool

All that in one season with 12 games still to go

The manager should have plans in place when things aren't going to plan

Some of the players shouldn't have returned at half time

I still believe in what he's doing but results like these are becoming synonymous with us and they need to stop

Klopp's Pool had a few cricket scores too. That's what happens when you're not perfect at playing out the back and pressing.

Some exceptional finishing / luck / whatever you want to call it doesn't help.

If I blame him for anything it's that he thought he could go to Anfield and attack Pool instead of settling for a counter attacking game.
 
But all this collapse are too frequent.

I believe Elite managers / big club doesn't collapse this frequent.

You see all those collapses last season, at match day 25

we had 43 points, today we have 49 points. Just 6 point difference.

Goal difference was 8. Today 6.

We've conceded more goals now than last season at game 25.

Even Moyes mighty Westham have conceded less goals than us this season. Even Fulham, Brenford, Crystal Palace


We can bury our heads because of carabao cup but no significant changed has occurred, just that Ten Hag demands more than Ole.

we still play counter, even Newcastle had over 60% possession in the final.

remember all the chances Westham had in the previous game, remember Leicester chances, good teams would have blown us away.

Anfield we got such a team and boy we were blown away completely.

Ten Hag needs to do a drastic change or else this players will throw him under the bus. You saw how they were unbothered at Anfield, seems they cam drop such stinkers again because they know nothing will happen.
Forget the past few seasons. Judge us on this season under this manager. Even under SAF when we were winning titles we’d occasionally suffer big losses.
 
It reminded me of the 6-1 to City in the way we were playing kind of okay but quickly lost the plot

I can’t for the life of me understand the decisions today. Rashford should be on Trent. Bruno central and if you absolutely have to play Wout, stick him up front. Dalot was having clear problems at the back and should have been hooked at half time.

It will be difficult to recover from this mentally, and I hope it doesn’t derail our season. But I still back the manager and hope he’s given a lot of time to build the team he wants.

This! Even at the start of the game I was having a moan at my friend for how we were setup. Rashford should've been on the left. Maybe ETH didn't want him expending energy tracking back. Who knows? Then it could've been Antony on the left because of all the things to knock him for, tracking back and working hard is not one of them.
 
It reminded me of the 6-1 to City in the way we were playing kind of okay but quickly lost the plot

I can’t for the life of me understand the decisions today. Rashford should be on Trent. Bruno central and if you absolutely have to play Wout, stick him up front. Dalot was having clear problems at the back and should have been hooked at half time.

It will be difficult to recover from this mentally, and I hope it doesn’t derail our season. But I still back the manager and hope he’s given a lot of time to build the team he wants.

I saw things the same way, too. Good post. I even thought before their first goal we looked relatively comfortable. But losing 7-0, SEVEN-nil, against our biggest nemesis is such a huge blow that (as strange as this may sound) we probably need to win Europa now to salvage a what has been an encouraging season of real progress.
 
He got a few decisions wrong today
Dalot starting
Bruno out left when Rashford has destroyed Trent a few times
Not starting Sabitzer in a midfield trio
 
The 7-0 isn't on him. Some of the players betrayed him via their attitude and lack of work ethic. It's a big moment for ETH, because a manager much show he is charge after such a defeat. He can't allow the players to take the piss; he must hit them like a ton of bricks now. Multi-millionaires sulking and throwing away seven goals can't be accepted. ETH must draw a line in the sand here.
 
People should be losing their shit. They were saying on the broadcast that it's United's worst ever defeat in this fixture. How long does the game go back? 100 years? 150 years? So there's no worse defeat even in 1893 or something when they played with one defender or whatever? That is bad.

Obviously talking about sacking him is silly. But this has put a massive dent in the narrative that United were on an inexorable path back to the absolute pinnacle of the game. The feeling now is that it may not be so straightforward and there is a lot more work to be done and a lot more overhauling of the squad to be sanctioned.

To be fair much of the commentary on United’s title challenging aspirations were paddled by the media in an effort to garner cheap clicks. The path to league title success for United will take a couple more years I suspect. The lack of reliable squad options puts undue pressure on our first team players and also breeds complacency when their position in the first team hierarchy is secure.

And yes ETH deserves blame for the result just as much as the players do, but the drop in form in the second half was colossal and I’d struggle to think of any manager who would have anticipated that showing after the half time team talk.

If I were ETH, I’d start weeding out players that lack the grit and mental tenacity to get through moments of mental and emotional adversity when losing against top sides. I think we were slightly lucky with the Barca result even if we did put out a decent performance then.
 
The 7-0 isn't on him. Some of the players betrayed him via their attitude and lack of work ethic. It's a big moment for ETH, because a manager much show he is charge after such a defeat. He can't allow the players to take the piss; he must hit them like a ton of bricks now. Multi-millionaires sulking and throwing away seven goals can't be accepted. ETH must draw a line in the sand here.

Yeah, as horrible as it to watch, it should stiffen Ten Hag and the money men into making the hard choices, which presumably are:

1) moving on from De Gea for a keeper who can pass (it's just too big an advantage for the top teams to have someone spraying it out wide to fullbacks well)

2) Looking for a RB, think it might have to be a teenage prospect, who could be in the top bracket of players at his position (though that could be in 2024, but Wan Bissaka's contract situation means that's tricky unless he signs say a 2 year extension to protect his transfer value in exchange for getting another year here to make his case before being sold to a mid-table side looking for a move back to a CL club in 2-3 years).

3) Getting De Jong or another top #8

4) Getting Ten Hag a safety net of a player like Timber to give us a plan B tactically

5) Spending a ton and getting a top striker, which isn't really a tough call at all but a clear necessity

Also the kind of game where you realize that it would be great to win a ton in the next year or two with Casemiro and Eriksen and say go get Kane, but the main task ultimately is building a team for a half decade around Rashford, Lisandro, Antony, Garnacho, Dalot, Shaw, Malacia and whoever else makes it from the youngsters and maybe one or two of Casemiro, Eriksen, Varane or Bruno last a longer time than expected, with one of the midfielders maybe becoming a really good bench option in most games in 2-3 years. Lots of wide talent in that group, but it could really use some quality young talent in the spine like a Ramos/Caicedo or Osimhen/De Jong or Lautaro/Rice kind of double signing down the middle in the summer to get some 22-25 year olds for the long haul.
 
It was unacceptable. On the flip side we’ve been playing every 2-3 days and it’s gotta catch up to a small squad
Tbh i don't agree that we have small team. We don't have team like City or Madrid with 22 classy players but we do have 3 gk, 8 defenders, 6 midfielders and 7 attackers. We can talk about quality of course and quality of sub players (where some of them are not good enough for Man Utd) but squad depth is by the book. 2 players on every position.

Btw, can we put all content related to Morgan on black list :wenger: ?
 
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I don’t know what to say seriously. This loss still hurts physically the next day. Almost soo much that I almost called in sick this morning. But realized rather than being mocked by friends on social media, office would be a relatively safer environment.

What disappointed me most is that players like Varane, Martinez, Shaw and Casemiro didn’t look up for it in the second half, the likes of Dalot, Bruno, Antony, Fred etc I expect these to crumble under pressure. But the players expect to always turn up and remain unfazed and perform consistently in the toughest of places let us down.

ETH has built up alot of goodwill in these past months, but this has slightly damaged that. It’s fine to lose against Liverpool away, but the manner of this defeat should be questioned and players should be held accountable, so that this never happens again.

I hope we recover from this fast and not let this result define our season. Get the top 3, get the other two cups and it will be a very good season.

Lastly what hurt the most was we had a great chance to get one over Liverpool and I was confident for second half, to beat them and ensure they don’t get the top 4 and they are unable to sign any decent players in the summer, but as usual against Pool whenever we needed to beat them to damage their top 4 ambitions we have crumbled and this win would have helped them massively.
 
After thinking about it and sleeping on it, yesterday's hammering is all on him, not the loss as it is normal to lose a game, the hammering is what I am blaming Ten Hag for, and I am not absolving the players here, but Ten Hag should've known that after the quick 2 goals at the start of 2nd half, he should have gone into preservation and damage limitation mode, we could not keep up with Liverpool's intensity with their highline and FBs bombing forward and their CMs attacking the spaces with our midfielders (Fred & Cas) being overrun.

We praised Ten Hag for his decisiveness and subs/tactical adjustments, and yesterday he deserves criticisms for his unexpected naivety and tactical blunders and all criticisms that comes his way, fair or otherwise, is somehow justified since this is a historical loss and the worst defeat in the club's history in over 90 years.

One thing I will say is that, this is not the all-conquering Liverpool of 2018-2020, this is the shit version of Liverpool that was hammered 5-2 at Anfield in UCL by Madrid, a side knocked out of FA & League Cup and lost several home and away games in the league this season and sits 7 points behind us, yesterday everything came off for them, not only attacking wise like Salah's goal and Ferminio's goal, but even defensively, when Allison messed up a ball, he was not punished, Rashford missed an almost sitter on his current electric form, we got behind them several times and nothing came of it for us, it was weird, but Ten Hag should've sensed that it was not working for us and make fundamental changes to stop the leak and limit the damage.

I am still a pro-Ten Hag and a firm believer in him, but last night was shambles and embarrassing and he will need to do a lot to make up for it.
 
My worry is at what point does it stop becoming a freak result?

4 against Brentford
3 against Brighton
3 against villa
6 against city
7 against Liverpool

All that in one season with 12 games still to go

The manager should have plans in place when things aren't going to plan

Some of the players shouldn't have returned at half time

I still believe in what he's doing but results like these are becoming synonymous with us and they need to stop

Except three of those were in the first month of a new manager being in, without all signings completed, never mind bedded in.

Brentford & Brighton we’re shocking performances when ETH’s mentality hadn’t bedded in and City was at a point where they swept away all that came before them, forgetting that we actually showed a good mentality and won the second half.

You also then forget the run we’ve been on since the City game, the best of any team in the top 5 leagues! Even yesterday, a proper No.9 and we go in at half-time ahead.

ETH has performed amazingly well so far this season but let’s not forget the distance he still needs the club to cover as far as replacing those consistently not good enough.
 
The loss yesterday is on Erik. He got the team and tactics completely wrong.

The utter capitulation is on the players. They gave up and that is unforgivable. What they did, or didn’t do in this case, is far worse then Erik picking the wrong team/tactics. All anger should be aimed at them. They were a total embarrassment.

Going forward though, he has to get over his obsession with picking Weghorst & Antony together. Having two attackers in the team that don’t score, create or offer any attacking output is absolutely killing us. The reliance on Rashford to win us games isn’t sustainable.
 
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