Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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We need to wait until both Casemiro and Eriksen are back in the team before making a judgement.

Those 2 were key players before the injuries and suspensions.

There's basically no midfield creativity without them which is an important part of any good team.
 
They're not dud players, he's got them playing in every competition deep into the season which has caused injuries and fatigue. He should have managed the competitions better, he's picked the same squad almost every game. We've got reserve players that could have played in the league cup, we didn't even play a difficult side en route to the final. Now we're paying the price.
You can't continue to win or compete for title with Mctominay as your primary midfielder or Martial who is hardly fit or wout who is a burnley reject as you forwards. There is gaping holes in our squad and we have been super unfortunate with injuries to players in key positions.

Hindsight is funny and people would now say he could have played B squad in domestic cup competitions, well had he lost then the same would have moaned and said he is another bottler. You saw how crap we looked when we did play our fringe players against West ham and Fulham in the FA cup. We just don't have that good of a squad like some of you think we have.

We are where we should be. People who expect us to fight for the title should actually give credit to ETH that he has managed to increase our expectations early in his tenure.
 
The midfield is shit, we know that but it's his job to find something that works and he's not. It can't be down to Casemiro all the time to bail us out of the shit. He got Sabitzer in January, he sent Sancho away for months to get better, they're both shite. He needs to get a tune out of these players.

I see our future every time we play, we've been gash and continue to be gash. We're on the wrong end of batterings most weeks at the moment. We'll scrape through Sevilla, get another 2 games against Sporting, they'll smash us, Brighton will dump us out of the FA cup and we'll be sitting 5th or 6th by that point.

Then the narrative really changes.
All right then. Thanks. No need to watch any more games.

Also I like your definition of a hammering. Strange one. You keep repeating it.
 
If this is legit and a goalkeeper isn’t one of our top three priorities, then the manager is writing his own P45 and you can legitimately ponder what a post-ETH United looks like. De Gea is an absolute millstone around the neck of this team. He will cost the manager his job.


Come of it.

I mean, yes DDG should be replaced, but striker and midfield situation is or should be a top priority.

You go all guns blazing about 'post ETH United'. Jesus.
 
Come of it.

I mean, yes DDG should be replaced, but striker and midfield situation is or should be a top priority.

You go all guns blazing about 'post ETH United'. Jesus.
You cannot persist with De Gea. He is killing us, absolutely killing us.

You won’t be able to play a higher defensive line, you won’t greatly reduce the number of goals conceded from crosses and set pieces, and you won’t be able to effectively play out from the back until that man is gone.

He’s barely a PL standard goalkeeper nowadays. Comfortably the weakest man near the first team. Zero interest from anyone, and I mean anyone at all, in competing for his signature this summer. Even a top 4 rival wants McTominay in comparison.
 
You cannot persist with De Gea. He is killing us, absolutely killing us.

You won’t be able to play a higher defensive line, you won’t greatly reduce the number of goals conceded from crosses and set pieces, and you won’t be able to effectively play out from the back until that man is gone.

He’s barely a PL standard goalkeeper nowadays. Comfortably the weakest man near the first team. Zero interest from anyone, and I mean anyone at all, in competing for his signature this summer.
All good man, but the stuff about ETH getting the sack and post United hurts my eyes. I'm just wondering why you didnt follow it with 'I like ETH'.
 
All right then. Thanks. No need to watch any more games.

Also I like your definition of a hammering. Strange one. You keep repeating it.
Well we have been, 7-0, then Fulham hammered us until they got everyone sent off and now Newcastle could have had 4. You fear the worst against Brentford this Wednesday night, they'll cut through us time and time again.
 
It could be a league cup, our biggest hiding ever to a rival and a europa league finish. That could literally be his United legacy at this point.

People need to be alive to where we are.

Nobody is calling for Ten Hag's head but acting as if we had such a tremendous season is a big lie.
Chelsea, Liverpool, Westham, Brighton have all conceded less goals than us.

Chelsea, Liverpool, Westham are in crisis mode.

We have a goal difference of 4 in April.
We've Conceded 37 goals already. This season we will leak the second most in premier league history for United. It will be more than 44 goals for sure.
Last 4 games we have faced 81 shots. 81.

We are just 3 points more than last season, last season we have Ole and Ralf. Total carnage. Interim manager replacing a once interim manager.


Next season genuine progression of the team must be seen. This will be away from home being competitive as hell. This story of being outplayed away from home has to stop.

Strongly disagree. If we fail to get a CL spot in a season where both Chelsea and Liverpool have struggled, it will be a massive failure of a season despite League Cup.


If we fail to get champions league this season, then next season will be a daunting task to get it.

Maybe also the players might start to question his decisions, and you know when that happens, we have competent players who knows how to throw a manager under the bus.

Yes, any trophy would have done. Heck, I'd even say that finishing 5th and a League Cup would be better than 4th and no trophy. The rebuild was always going to be a gradual process and that run after the World Cup was quite unexpected. How many expected us to be in this position after Brentford away?

This is Ten Hag's first season. At the moment, he's on course to at least equal Mourinho. In his first season, we had as many bad moments as good (Like ETH) but the season was a success in the end.

If we're still losing every away game v a team in the top 6 next season, I'd be concerned. We're a long way from that.
But where is Mourinho? He was sacked not because of trophies but because the performance of the team did not improve to a higher level.

Already ten Hag has spent 230m.

Add another 120m this summer, he will be the most backed manager in United history. At 350m

Problem is, the club needs to see improvement on the pitch after spending over 350m is two summer.

A carabao cup only without champions league, again without a title race next season will be disastrous.

First, He needs champions league football next season. Then
This next summer window is a make or break for him, if we play as we have played this season after spending another 120m then sadly he will be sacked.
 
Well we have been, 7-0, then Fulham hammered us until they got everyone sent off and now Newcastle could have had 4. You fear the worst against Brentford this Wednesday night, they'll cut through us time and time again.
So you count a 3-1 win and a 2-0 defeat as 'hammerings'.

Got it.
 
All good man, but the stuff about ETH getting the sack and post United hurts my eyes. I'm just wondering why you didnt follow it with 'I like ETH'.
Because persisting with De Gea will only lead to the inevitable mediocrity on the field, which will eventually cost any manager his job. It doesn’t matter who the manager is.

If United’s 1st team goalkeeper retired tomorrow and De Gea was otherwise available as a free agent after leaving another club, we would have zero interest in him. Why do we keep doing this?
 
Then what do we do? Back him again in the summer, another £200m and hope for the best? I know we need new players but we should make top 4 this season with no danger at all.

Well yeah.

If we get a new guy in he'll also need £200 million.
 
Thing is, the games we lost against top half teams, there's zero argument to be had that those games could have gone either way - with luck, referee decisions, etc. We were comprehensively outplayed in every single one of them bar Arsenal at Emirates but even there the result flattered us as they were all over us. City, Liverpool, Brentford, Newcastle and Villa you could have zero discussion about, all were very heavy batterings where we could have probably conceded more (Liverpool game aside which was probably more of a 3-0/4-0 than 7-0).

Meanwhile our only convincing win against a top half team where you could say there was no other outcome possible was Spurs. Arsenal, Liverpool and City at Old Trafford were fair wins but were not firm, strong victories which I'd like to see come at some point. We have literally beaten one top half team in that manner all season.

I don't know how anyone could not have an issue with that. I know Brentford and Brighton were early in the season but we basically put in the same performance against Newcastle literally yesterday.

And I'm not even saying ETH is wrong for the job or trying to downplay the effect he's had on the club, just merely pointing out there is a serious issue with how we play against good teams and there's been almost no improvement with that over the course of season, which is concerning if our long term goal is to go toe to toe with those teams.
Very good post

My only defence for Ten Hag is that yesterday, and in a lot of those games mentioned and recently, he was missing his starting 2 midfielders. The chasm in terms of ability is huge. Take the 2 best midfielders out of any team and they'll struggle but especially with us.

I wish he'd give Mainoo and Iqbal a go. Realistically what is there to lose? We are being poned either way.
 
You expect us to control games with their replacements, Fred and McTominay in midfield?

Why? What evidence is that based on?

There's plenty of teams in the league with worse midfields who remain solid, how do you think they manage it? Tactics or luck?

There's always this lazy analysis that we need 11 world class players or we can't cope. Newcastle had a much harder time against Notts Forrest and Bournemouth than they did us yesterday, it's not just player quality sometimes it's the use of the players.

We all know these players weaknesses as should the manager, when we have to rely on them we need to play to their limits. We failed to do so yesterday and just went with our normal gameplan.
 
We've seen better performances than yesterday by using McTominay and Fred in positions they are familiar with.

No one has banged the 'quality of players are more important than any manager' drum more than me, but I was also told that with better coaching we should expect more from these players. Was I just right all along.
Abso bloody exactly
 
In my mind, it should always go without saying that a manager should get 3 years to establish their team, coaching setup, and style of play. I think it was a mistake we didn't give Van Gall another season, and I think it was a mistake not to keep Ole until the end of last season - I think things would've settled a bit and not looked quite as bad as they did at that precise moment.

Judging ETH only on results and progress in competitions, it's got to be a positive year. There's a very good chance we'll win at least one more trophy, and it shouldn't be too hard to get top 4. At the start of the season that would've looked excellent.

Having said that, some of the praise that's been given to him this season has been absurd. Journos have been lauding him as a 'genius' many times over, and people on here have been talking like the football has been silky smooth and light years away from previous seasons. It just hasn't. It's been improved by 2 particular quality additions (Martinez and Casamiro), a solid third (Erikson), and one of Rashford's hot streaks, but I don't see any significant improvement to any other element of our approach to matches, or 'mindset', or any of that nonsense people have been harping on about. I'm not saying we should expect there to be - we're less than one year in - but the genius talk has been bizarre.

It's very weird what bias and narrative can do. Many had formed their opinion long ago about Ole and were convinced that he was just a nice guy, not a good coach. But he'd coached well in a foreign league, come over, saved one season then had 2 really good seasons after that, interspersed with some purple patches, some great performances, some excellent results, and some awful dips. Under Ole, Bruno had an exceptional run of form, Rashford had ups and downs, Martial, Shaw and Fred too. But people had made their minds up that the guy with the roll-neck sweater was Pep incarnate, and even when the return is almost identical to those seasons under Ole, have hailed it to be galaxy brain excellence.

But have those people actually watched us since the world cup? Have people seen the persistence in playing a lanky guy as a high-press, drop-deep, false nine every single game with absolutely no goal return, impactful hold-up play, or even aerial threat? Imagine Ole playing Wout like that? Carnage! Does winning a tin pot trophy make so much difference? Do people remember we were 11 penalties into a shootout close to winning the Europe League under Ole? or that we won the league cup and Europe league under Mourinho? and the FA cup under Van Gaal? Did that change the world? Were any of those particularly relevant?

People are so blinkered. We did ok with Ole for a bit and then the wheels came off when Ronaldo returned. Things are OK with Ten Hag and should hopefully get better with the right investment in the right areas. You don't have to be team OGS or team ETH. We're a pretty average team playing pretty disjointed, average football. Just like we have been for most of the last ten years. Those arguing that the football has been treacle are too invested in the narrative they want to be true.

Let's give this current guy a chance - things are hopefully moving forward and it's not a false dawn. But don't claim him as the messiah for Christ's sake. So far he's performing right about par with the squad he has. No need to get rid of him, no reason to birth his children, no reason to panic, no reason to celebrate.
Wonderful post
 
We've seen better performances than yesterday by using McTominay and Fred in positions they are familiar with.

No one has banged the 'quality of players are more important than any manager' drum more than me, but I was also told that with better coaching we should expect more from these players. Was I just right all along.
I'd even say that the more limited the player, the less chances he'd have of performing well in an unfamiliar position (McT as 10, WW as 10 in other games).
 
We're still a work in progress in today's game we were hurt by Newcastle high press. We can't play from the back too many players that aren't comfortable on the ball. De Gea is a liability and McTominay virtually hides away from receiving under pressure.

With Casemiro and Eriksen back we solve that problem, but still we need depth. We need to hit gold with our next transfers. We have way too many passengers in the team. Players such as McTominay, Sabitzer and Specially Weghorst shouldn't be starting for us but they are because there's no one else we can use at the moment.

I trust Ten Hag, back him and he'll deliver. It's frustrating having this set backs and being outplayed but right now we're clearly lacking quality as a squad overall.
You've been trying to "hit gold" for seasons come and gone.

The football has not improved and once again is regressing.

ETH has not given any indication that he wants to build a team with a certain style of play.

You're being lied to and accepting it.
 
Yes, every manager has to deal with injuries and fatigue, I can understand that. However; we cannot keep using fatigue as a reasoning when we have just had a 2 week break, yes some players played in the international break but alot had a 1 week off minimum.

Lack of reinforcements for a manager than spent 230m in the summer, is not an excuse. It seems we are the only played loads of games and we can be bad for 6 weeks and use it as an excuse.
Bad games can happen. I think we should wait until the summer to judge him, as before the season began we’d have all been over the moon with top 4 and a cup.
We also rotated very little when we could have, which was praised at the time as it got us results but seems to be taking its toll now. For instance there was no reason to play a strong team against Nottingham at home after winning 3-0 away, yet we did it. It is taking its toll now in what is going to be our longest season in history.
This is the only thing I would criticise him for. There’s been a couple of games this season we could have rotated and didn’t. Ajax fans warned us about this too.
It could be a league cup, our biggest hiding ever to a rival and a europa league finish. That could literally be his United legacy at this point.
It could also be 3rd place with 3 cups in his first season. That’s why I’ll wait until the end of the season before weighing up his first year.
 
If this is legit and a goalkeeper isn’t one of our top three priorities, then the manager is writing his own P45 and you can legitimately ponder what a post-ETH United looks like. De Gea is an absolute millstone around the neck of this team. He will cost the manager his job.



We need 2 strikers and 2 mids and a new RB before a goalie
 
It will be interesting to see what he will do next game. We get ragdolled every time we go for midfield two if Casemiro isn't in it.

Somehow I think he will go for traditional 4231 and give players a chance to "redeem". But I believe the setup is just wrong. xGA over 3,5 is criminal, and that is considering our CBs had a pretty good game.
 
I will never blame the manager as long as we still keep our loser core. Changing the team's culture will take time. At the top level, talent is nothing without determination and attitude, and we are not that talented.

So far his signing is going in the right direction. Are there any games we can say Antony, Martinez, Casemiro, Eriksen, Wout, Malacia downed tool? They can make mistakes, they can play badly but they always try. The same can't be said about our other players who are still an important part of the team.

I just hope that our existing players will adopt the determination and attitude of our new signings, rather than the opposite, which has been the case for the past decade.
 
That's not entirely true.

We completely outplayed Barcelona with a makeshift team somewhat. We dominated Betis(who gave Real problems).

There were signs of our football progressing in the right direction. It's gone downhill since the Carabao cup final though.

I thought we were woeful at home Vs Barca. That first half they battered us but were just toothless in attack. If they took their chances in that first half then it would have been tie over.

We've been poor for a while I think and results have massively masked performances. I said a while ago that it felt like some periods under Ole where we didn't play well but we're killing teams in moments on the break or with a bit of individual quality. I think we're quite predictable and it does feel like teams have sussed us out. Even going back to when Eriksen was still playing just before injury, there were some poor performances then that Eriksen was partly to blame for. People said it at the time, so that shows how long it's been going on in the background. Just we got the results back then.
 
Bad games can happen. I think we should wait until the summer to judge him, as before the season began we’d have all been over the moon with top 4 and a cup.

Yep, that's the test isnt it? Top 4 and a cup. We have achieved one of it.

At the moment, the way we are playing, top 4 does not look guaranteed, we could potentially be out of the top 4 this evening.
 
I thought we were woeful at home Vs Barca. That first half they battered us but were just toothless in attack. If they took their chances in that first half then it would have been tie over.

We've been poor for a while I think and results have massively masked performances. I said a while ago that it felt like some periods under Ole where we didn't play well but we're killing teams in moments on the break or with a bit of individual quality. I think we're quite predictable and it does feel like teams have sussed us out. Even going back to when Eriksen was still playing just before injury, there were some poor performances then that Eriksen was partly to blame for. People said it at the time, so that shows how long it's been going on in the background. Just we got the results back then.

Even if you think they battered us in the 1st half, we battered them more in the 2nd half.

I don't think we've been poor for a while, but I do think some of the praise Ten Hag has gotten has been OTT at times.

Let's see how he does with another pre-season under his belt and more incomings. If we fail to make top 4 though, I'd be worried with a bit because Liverpool/Chelsea likely won't be this bad next season.
 
We also rotated very little when we could have, which was praised at the time as it got us results but seems to be taking its toll now. For instance there was no reason to play a strong team against Nottingham at home after winning 3-0 away, yet we did it. It is taking its toll now in what is going to be our longest season in history.

I get that we could have rotated but that was middle of January, we are now in March.

Majority of the team in Sancho, Rashford, Martial, Shaw, Varane, DDG had at least a week of and most had 2 weeks off. Yet, we looked like we played 2 days ago.

Fatigue is an issue for 1/2 games but not every game since middle of Jan where we have played this kind of football. When was the last time we played well? Have we even played well in an away game since Chelsea away?
 
There's plenty of teams in the league with worse midfields who remain solid, how do you think they manage it? Tactics or luck?

There's always this lazy analysis that we need 11 world class players or we can't cope. Newcastle had a much harder time against Notts Forrest and Bournemouth than they did us yesterday, it's not just player quality sometimes it's the use of the players.

We all know these players weaknesses as should the manager, when we have to rely on them we need to play to their limits. We failed to do so yesterday and just went with our normal gameplan.
Exactly. What I've been saying all through.

The set-up of our team is too basic and too easy to play against.

And it's not luck other teams have better controls than us, it's our midfield. It's the root cause of all our problems.

Bring Scholes and Odergaard in this team, next season without even any other signing we win the league. A midfield of Casemiro, Scholes, Odergaard as a 10 will give us balance, recycling of the football, and control of creating chances going forward.

But now we have some poster midfielders who do nothing at all to recycle or control the game, with zero physicality or higher technical ability to mask their limitations.

Every game is a transition game.
Midfielders who can't hold the ball more than 5 seconds when pressed, either they fall over or get disposed or misplace a pass.
Midfielders who can't dribble, or run with the ball.


Our midfield doesn't offer ball progression, nor game control, nor pressing game, nor football recycling nor physicality/athleticism then you wonder why we get overrun everytime, it's just pure delusions from us the fans.

It's incredible that others can't see how obvious our midfield issues is the main problem we have had ever since.

My take on Ten Hag capabilities will be during summer, if he doesn't sign 2 competent midfielders then his obituary as a United manager will be short.

Football game is 90 minute affair, you need to get a plan (tactics) of how you will control the game for that long. If it was 10 minutes game then fair game, then be transition team but 90 minutes you need players and ways of how you will remain with the ball for most of the time, then use it effectively.
 
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