Arsenal do play good football because they have 3 of the best and most balanced attacking players in the league this season. United don't. But Arsenal misses Saliba and have a fragile mentality built up on hot air via Arteta. They have been so fortunate this year with many many things, while United really haven't had such rub of the green.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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Arsenal do play good football because they have 3 of the best and most balanced attacking players in the league this season. United don't. But Arsenal misses Saliba and have a fragile mentality built up on hot air via Arteta. They have been so fortunate this year with many many things, while United really haven't had such rub of the green.
If we had Kane today, it’d have finished 3-0.
So he’s working wonders when his strikers this season have involved a peaked Ronaldo, an unreliable Martial and a Championship bargain bin loan acquisition Weghorst.
So he’s working wonders when his strikers this season have involved a peaked Ronaldo, an unreliable Martial and a Championship bargain bin loan acquisition Weghorst.
Let's just have this Top 4 wrapped up by the Fulham game, play the fringe players and have a nice long rest before the City game.
If I'm being honest, top 4 was par for this season - having had a £250m injection in the squash in the summer. A trophy is nice which is a net positive but I just hope to God he can improve us further next season and get us to play a much better brand of football with an element of control in most games.
I get what you mean but playing a game every 3 days for 3 months straight means very little time to train. We’ve seen that when we have had decent time to train and had our first team fit we’ve played some great football. I think next season with 3-4 additions and a preseason we will challenge for the title.
True. However there are more teams that play much better than we do, who haven't necessarily had longer term managers.
But injuries and fixture congestion have surely not helped, that is clear.
What if Villa had Kane? What would the score have been?
Fair point, I think our best football came before the WC. We used to play a 3 6 1 in possession which was beautiful, never see it anymore.
Lesson well learned from the Spurs game. Have to understand midtable teams like Villa, Spurs will resort to going wide when they are up against it. Block the wide areas, and more importantly look after the ball better. We need to upgrade on Eriksen next season.
No chance. We’ll probably need 3 seasons to fix the 10 years mess we have been in. Players need to go and new one needs to come in and taking time to bed in.
Please, let's not do this again and pretend this is true. Not everything is a 3 year project.
On another day we win the game comfortably. But tactically ten Hag got it spot on and Emery's idea of setting up in a mid-block out of possession without applying adequate pressure should've resulted in a thrashing for Villa. But unfortunately we just couldn't execute the plan due to some poor decision making and poor play upfront.
You might question his subs but he needs reinforcements badly. He's worked magic with Eriksen in the 8 but that's not his position and we need someone who's closer to FdJ.
That’s not really true is it? Look at Newcastle - they were bottom half team last season and look at them now. They’ll be challengers next season.
Really unimpressed? Look at us trying to play out from the back and in possession last season compared to this season, maybe then you'll appreciate the job ten Hag has done and continues to do.
I have criticised him for some of his decisions and subs the past few weeks but one thing I won't criticise him over is how we play in possession.
Ten Hag in my opinion is working wonders with this squad. He's pragmatic enough to prioritise results and I'm sure that given the right players he'll get us playing more like his Ajax sides. Let's not forget that a large chunk of this team are players that have been brought in by different managers, with different styles. Ten Hag isn't infallible but most of our bad play is a symptom of muddled recruitment and bad player identification.
Did you say that at the start of the season? Genuine question
He's not stupid
At the start of the season, we hadn't spent £250m.
Ok whenever we finished spending 250m£
Don't have to be stupid to not know what something represents. Just means he's only focused on the football.
Yep, I would've seen anything other than top 4 as failure.
Done a great job this season, top 4 almost nailed on and won a cup, plus another cup final to come, I really don’t think we’d have expected that at the start of the season.
Uh oh. Once the Glazers find out he's going to be in for some squeezy bum times...
I'm happy enough with the football we showed we can play this season. I think that aside from injuries and fatigue, we struggled to replicate it because the amount of matches we played meant we had less time to train. And this team needs to train, learn the football ETH wants to play, turn good habits into something they do automatically rather then fall back into bad habits.
This seems a bit unlikely to me. The guy has been at United a full season, probably working all hours God sends. I find it a bit hard to believe he has no idea of the context around the ownership and fan sentiment, nor has he heard anything from anybody or wondered what that scarf is. I think after a year at your workplace you would be aware of such an item if it existed.
Is it more unlikely than him openly going against his bosses like this? Doesn't seem like him unless he was really, really pissed off after the January transfer window
We have been very inconsistent this season. I doubt a couple of seasons will fix this. Plus, we need to be very competitive consistently after this. Long term planning is very much needed.
I just think it was an in the moment decision after a game. I doubt he gave it the big analysis, and besides, it's not so much of a big deal anyway.Is it more unlikely than him openly going against his bosses like this? Doesn't seem like him unless he was really, really pissed off after the January transfer window
Let's not get carried away Newcastle aren't challenging for anything next season they are more likely to fall out of top 4 than challenge for the League .
Only team who are guaranteed to be there or there about is City every one else nothing is certain .
Didn't see the game today but he's getting closer to securing a top 4 spot and he's already won a trophy in his first season and reached two finals. Few people would have guessed that after the 4-0 demolition from Brentford back in August.
A word on the pragmatism; thank feck he's pragmatic because i don't think we would be in the position we're in now if we tried to be more open and expansive. It'd be restrictive playing that way when you've only had one good striker all season (who's actually better playing from the left) and very inconsistent wingers, full backs. Next season will show us more about the type of football we should get used to seeing, this season is about making the most of what we have.
A word on the pragmatism; thank feck he's pragmatic because i don't think we would be in the position we're in now if we tried to be more open and expansive. It'd be restrictive playing that way when you've only had one good striker all season (who's actually better playing from the left) and very inconsistent wingers, full backs. Next season will show us more about the type of football we should get used to seeing, this season is about making the most of what we have.
Yes exactly - against Spurs and Chelsea for example we dominated and played good football. We also had our whole team fully fit and non hectic schedule.
They’re going to get Top 4 this season with players like Longstaff in midfield and Dan Burn playing at left back.
They’ll strengthen in the summer
Unless we get the Qatar owners
Is it possible that he actually dropped player after bad performance? I am talking about AWB btw.
Doesn't matter we will see how they manage with the midweek games and this league has only one standout team City there is not much between others
While Newcastle is overperforming their actual squad quality is still not that great and unless they go absolutely crazy in the Market I don't see them making enough progress to even become certain top 4 regulars let alone challengers .
I don't understand where the 250m pound figure comes from? I looked up our transfers on transfermarkt and after adding up all the fees it equaled 243m EURO. When I did the conversion to GBP it was 215m. So we are missing 35m GBP which could have brought us a squad player and helped us tremendously this season in the middle or even up front.
But even without what I listed above, you are implying that ETH received a functioning squad and he just strengthened it, which he didn't. In reality he received a squad that lost Pogba, Matic, Mata and Cavanni. Also you can add Ronaldo(our last season's top scorer) to that list who also refused to train for the start of the season, was being a disruptive influence and fecked off mid season.
As things stand Top4 is an very good result which exceed 85% of fans expectation on Day 2 of the League. A league cup and a FA Cup final is just a bonus on top of that.
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