Very much would be my hope, yes. The last few years at United have given me little faith though.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
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We could have got him AND Gakpo if we hadn't stupidly spent £85m on Antony
'rightly' is it? Awesome. Are you also 'rightly' praising the home form in equal measures?
Easy now, we don't do this "praise" thing in this place. It is all about the sweet doom and gloom.
Fair enough - I'll sharpen my pitchfork ready for the possibility we don't win on Sunday - that'll learn 'em
He's already brought through Garnacho and been working perfectly with him... Ten hag gives them chances if they are ready for it. Pellistri has had some appearances, but obviously he feels he isn't ready, but also irrespective of the fact that he plays only on the right, not centrally.
I don't get why you are talking as if what he is doing or trying isn't working, or why something has to change. We are in the fa cup final. We won the league Cup. We are comfortably in top 4. All this despite the very shit selection options he's had in attack. It is very clearly working.
Yes I think he was the only one available for what was allowed to be spent. He was a known quantity for Ten Hag: he knew he would get a hard working pressing machine that could bring others into play.
It‘s not odd at all, but extremely logical.
So you're saying he shouldn't have brought someone in simply because he knows them but instead loan in a striker from the Championship which he had little to knowledge of being new to England, which he would have had to lean on the recruitment department but he shouldn't use our recruitment department?
But i'm sure Middlesbrough or Coventry City who were fighting to get promotion would have gladly loaned us Chuba Akpom or Viktor Gyökeres. Sure.
So you're saying he shouldn't have brought someone in simply because he knows them but instead loan in a striker from the Championship which he had little to knowledge of being new to England, which he would have had to lean on the recruitment department but he shouldn't use our recruitment department?
But i'm sure Middlesbrough or Coventry City who were fighting to get promotion would have gladly loaned us Chuba Akpom or Viktor Gyökeres. Sure.
fecking hell… incredible.
Some of you deserve exactly what you’re getting - and will likely continue to get.
So let's keep on throwing awful player like Weghorst at the opposition when we're in tight corner instead of trying a youngster ?
You realize Ten Hag had played Weghorst out of position too, right ? He has even tried to play him as damn number 10 playmaker. How bad is that ?
So you're saying he shouldn't have brought someone in simply because he knows them but instead loan in a striker from the Championship which he had little to knowledge of being new to England, which he would have had to lean on the recruitment department but he shouldn't use our recruitment department?
But i'm sure Middlesbrough or Coventry City who were fighting to get promotion would have gladly loaned us Chuba Akpom or Viktor Gyökeres. Sure.
Yeah Man United couldn't scout a single stop gap cheap striker in the entire world except a Burnley reject. Makes perfect sense and very logical.
Two cup finals in his first season in a new league. Coping with a thin squad, a winter WC and a massive fixture pile up afterwards, and we are still well in the running for a top 4 spot. Not to mention the turmoil surrounding the possible sale of the club. He's done all right. The losses to Liverpool, Brentford, and City were demoralizing, and that still rankles but I wouldn't judge him until he's had a normal season.
You're figuratively shitting yourself and throwing your toys out of the pram because the person that can't be named was a deviant, Ronaldo was washed and quit on the team, Martial couldn't stay fit and ETH had no money to reinforce CF in January and brought in someone who had a decent WC and his best trait was something ETH values in CF which is pressing.
To play devils advocate, if everyone else had a 'normal' season also, we wouldn't be in the top 4. Both Liverpool and Chelsea would be above us.
After the game against West Ham we have two games in as many weeks for the first time since....well, what feels like an eternity. Both games (Wolves and Bournemouth are Saturday matches at 3 o clock).
Did you use Essien's calculator to figure that out?
Even then that's a slap in the face...Saturday, 3pm matches on back to back weeks while others get staggered to Sunday or even Monday.
The Essien-Allardyce calculator
Highly disagree. Chelsea still would have been a mess and Liverpool were below us before the WC break and since the WC break we've played 36 matches and they've played 26 matches.
People forget we got screwed with the Queen's death having 2 matches postponed. 2 matches we ended up drawing because in part to fixture congestion. Had we played those matches when they were supposed to happen, who knows maybe we get 6 points instead of 2. 4 extra points has us 67 and top 4 basically confirmed
I was warming to him and thought we were making progress, but we have gone backwards since the cup win
If you go by that logic then Newcastle wouldn't be either, and arsenal would be fighting it out for 4th too.
He isn't without some faults because there are valid concerns about rotation and he should probably trust youngsters a bit more. Transfer policy is another worry, but that has nothing to do with him. If our genius crew behind him still thinks the best way to go in the market is to fully go with manager choices we will spend shitloads and have a return of feck all for years to come (as it's been the case too long).
However, he absolutely proved enough to have a massive credit going forward for me. Because at our absolute peak this season (which started after the WC and ended around the time we played against Barcelona), we played, without a doubt, our best football in last 10 years. In my view, to reach such level after the season before where players looked in full disarray means much more than simply judging him wheather this team will finish top 4 or not. Which we will.
However, he absolutely proved enough to have a massive credit going forward for me. Because at our absolute peak this season (which started after the WC and ended around the time we played against Barcelona), we played, without a doubt, our best football in last 10 years. In my view, to reach such level after the season before where players looked in full disarray means much more than simply judging him wheather this team will finish top 4 or not. Which we will.
If we don't make top 4 from the position we were in then doubts about him would be completely justified, it would be disaster.
Ultimately though changing manager again won't achieve anything with these same players.
After the cup has as much to do with who was available
Eriksen was out.
Then we lose Casemiro for 4 league matches
Then the same match Garnacho goes out to a dangerous scissor tackle
Then Rashford and Shaw pickup injuries that for all we know could be playing thru them
Then Martinez and Varane go out injured absolutely freakishly in the same match
Not to mention after West Ham we will finally have our first proper rest in-between matches for the first time since December.
What I don’t get about arguments like this, is no one ever does it for title races, or relegation scraps? The title race has pretty much always been between 2 teams, meaning at least 2 or 3 of the top 6 (not including Spurs) are having a bad season, at any one time. We could go through all our title wins and say “well, it was easy in 96 cos we only had Newcastle to fight since Liverpool, Arsenal, Villa & Blackburn we’re all having bad seasons” … but we don’t.
We also don’t snipe at Spurs or Chelsea or whoever getting top 4 at our expanse cos they were “lucky we had a bad season”
Like, I get it. I understand the inclination. But it’s wildly pessimistic, and only ever done to do us down. There has never been a single season of football where every top team is playing brilliantly to their ‘normal’ level.
Yep, top four finish and one or two cups. Thank Gawd you aren‘t in charge.
We needed a strong Jan transfer window. We need strong window after strong window due to years of poor recruitment and there’s nothing to say we are great at it even now. We were in 4 comps so it wasn’t hard to predict injuries. We’ve made massive progress. McFred and the likes are now mainly bench options. The next level is having stronger bench options again. It’s a long process and we have to be optimistic we’ll scrape 4th and push on.
There's no need to pretend Ighalo was anything other than completely over the hill and nowhere near PL standard when discussing Wout's performance. There's enough to complain about.
Ighalo was slow and generally useless contributing zero league goals. Me hole he was much better.
The comment was in the context of Utd transfers and playing Weghorst.
I think ETH has done really well to get a trophy and another final.
Just don’t think he’s to be trusted in the market.
Weghorst, Antony for 90m ffs.
Wants to keep DDG.
You'd think so but overall, he gets a thumbs up from me this season. A lot will depend on what happens with the sale and how much money we get to spend. There are so many areas that need attention. Players to sell, players to acquire and selling clubs will know our needs and price accordingly.
I think in any case the coach shouldn't be a scout as well, but re. De Gea specifically - he says that what what does he really think? He has also been praising Maguire but is currently playing his best RB out of position to avoid having to play Maguire. I would take Ten Hag's public comments with quite a large grain of salt and wait to see what actually happens in the summer. (And even then, if no money is available for a GK, maybe extending De Gea is the only option.)
(Incidentally, the lack of opportunities for Pellistri and Elanga might also be down to them just being seriously sub-par in Ten Hag's eyes.)
He's a Chelsea fan.
He does from me also, although I think he's hugely naive in some areas and he'll need to learn fast to survive.
Next season will be more of the same unless there's drastic changes. We can't keep spending £200m on 3 players and then saying "we'll fix x position next summer", it's an absolute mugs game. This summer a CF and MC, next summer a GK and RB, the summer after another MC and CB, then the forward we signed is 34 and we're back to square one, and Sancho, Maguire and Martial are still here because we can't sell them, maybe even Antony at that point also.
We need to just clear the decks and start taking gambles on players with the right attributes with lower fees. It's much easier to buy a Mitoma before he goes to Brighton, if it turns out he's not up to it then just sell him at face value and job done, no big deal. We will continue recycling managers until the recruitment issue is fixed and Ten Hag needs to take control of that and demand we do things differently because the current clown show let him spend all the budget on Antony...
Yeah the home form deserves some praise
We also need to look to our academy/youth teams and we must attract the best and brightest. We won't do that unless we have the best facilities on offer. Why is it that we don't get a Mitoma? What are our scouts doing? I honestly don't know. Since Woodward, it's been a saga of paying massive fees for players who often aren't up to snuff. Maybe get Van Der Sar in to oversee things but the uncertainty surrounding the club at the moment means that we'll likely start our business well into the window while the new owners take stock.
From what I've read, the scouts have been repeatedly marginalized and overruled over the years.
Fair enough then
Antony is a good signing, but I agree we overpaid by about 30 million.
Still haven‘t heard who you would have signed instead of WW. He works hard and was known by Ten Hag. Who could we have signed for a 3 million fee that could be trusted to deliver?
De Gea is not easily replaced, it will require a big investment. Money that can be spent on a striker and midfielder for example.
There are good logical reasons for the choices that were made.
I hadn't heard that. Shame if true and a false economy.
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