I'm going to respond to this post in this thread, so as not to take the 'Club Ownership' thread off topic.
I do understand more now after reading through most of this thread why so many are for Ten Hag to get the sack. What baffled me the most is how the narrative changes when looking back. Last season, there was nothing about Ten Hag and his tactics - the narrative was The Glazers 20 years of neglect has truly caught up on the entire club. Now, the narrative looking back - it's all Ten Hag's fault for style of play but that that was with a severely injured squad. One could argue maybe that has something to do with the coaches and the training etc...
His first season there was nothing but praise but now the narrative there is 3 years of bad football even though it's only 3 games into his third year.
Did you just completely blank last season out of your mind entirely?
ETH's tactics and style of play last season got exposed and criticised more than any other manager we've had in modern history. And rightfully so, as it was blindingly obvious right from preseason that the tactics were never going to work. He effectively sacrificed the middle of the pitch entirely and expected one player to do everything in there, leading us to be constantly overrun all season and facing record amounts of shots on our goal. Hence the constant talk of 'chaos-ball' and 'suicidal tactics' by the fans. At a time where basically every top team (and most decent lower teams) are trying to compress the play and force the opposition into as small a space as possible when they have the ball, we did the exact opposite and had huge gaps all over the place that encouraged opposition teams to exploit.
Most fans started off last season by trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking that while it was a bad sign that he tried playing that way it surely wouldn't take long for him to realise it wasn't working and move to a more suitable style. But the longer the season wore on, the longer he refused to change, and each passing month more fans joined the 'sack him' group. I personally held out until about February or so, although I'd been losing more and more hope the longer the season went on. It wasn't until the final four games of the season that ETH finally changed things up and compressed the play, and suddenly we started playing better and getting more results despite having arguably more injuries than we'd had at any other point of the season. Of course, there are other fans who constantly insisted it was just injuries, but the longer the season wore on the less people were in that group.
Even his first season, while starting well, we played fairly poorly for most of the second half of the season. There was enough there that people were hopeful though.
For this season, once the hierarchy decided to give him time I personally am letting him get a bit of a restart. Not a completely clean start as ETH's diabolical performance last season will always raise very serious questions over his judgement and ability, but I'll give him a bit of time. The start of the season hasn't been great, but I also don't think it's been as bad as last season. He's been playing a bit more compactly and not sacrificing the midfield as much, so it's enough that I'm not instantly on the 'sack him' wagon again. I'm certainly not confident about it, but there's a small chance he can turn it around.