Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Sacked

Erik ten Hag

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Robbie Boy said:
We're in a scenario whereby there's some rabid posters who will never take to him, no matter what he does. These are the posters who actually try to dismiss the fact that he's won two trophies, made it to 3 finals, got 3rd place in his first season and has the second highest points in the league out of all our post-Fergie managers. There's actually posters who will claim he's "worse than Moyes". When you have an agenda on the internet, you gotta stand by it at all costs.

However, while I can acknowledge that he has done some good, there's also been a-lot of bad. Last season was an absolute shambles barring an excellent FA Cup win. The problem is that we were so bad last season, that slight improvements won't be hard to find. The question is whether you think these improvements will be enough for us to turn into a genuinely good side who will do well this season? For me, it's still a no. The first 45 against Palace was a good watch and we should have been ahead. The problem was that lots of issues of the past raised their heads in the second half.

If we can put together some performances like the first half against Palace for a longer period and actually rack some wins up, then great, I'm open to him changing my mind. However, right now, I really just don't see him getting us enough goals/wins. The defence looks so much better with De Ligt, and we have definitely tightned up. So there are some positives, but lots of issues still remain.
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I will use one of my 3 post a day to say that this is one of the best post on this site for many years.. And I agree with everything in this post
 
Mike Smalling said:
Didn't catch the game, but looks like we created enough chances to score, and kept it fairly tight at the back? If so, it seems harsh to go after him for this game in particular, even though the result is not what we needed. Hopefully we can continue to string together good performances, and results will come, but it seems clear that we will have to keep many clean sheets to get wins consistently. We are simply not clinical upfront.
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They didn't offer much but had 3 huge chances. We passed around at the back a lot, created 3 good chances ourselves in the first half and not a lot, if anything in the second half.
 
Robbie Boy said:
We're in a scenario whereby there's some rabid posters who will never take to him, no matter what he does. These are the posters who actually try to dismiss the fact that he's won two trophies, made it to 3 finals, got 3rd place in his first season and has the second highest points in the league out of all our post-Fergie managers. There's actually posters who will claim he's "worse than Moyes". When you have an agenda on the internet, you gotta stand by it at all costs.

However, while I can acknowledge that he has done some good, there's also been a-lot of bad. Last season was an absolute shambles barring an excellent FA Cup win. The problem is that we were so bad last season, that slight improvements won't be hard to find. The question is whether you think these improvements will be enough for us to turn into a genuinely good side who will do well this season? For me, it's still a no. The first 45 against Palace was a good watch and we should have been ahead. The problem was that lots of issues of the past raised their heads in the second half.

If we can put together some performances like the first half against Palace for a longer period and actually rack some wins up, then great, I'm open to him changing my mind. However, right now, I really just don't see him getting us enough goals/wins. The defence looks so much better with De Ligt, and we have definitely tightned up. So there are some positives, but lots of issues still remain.
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This is a brilliant post, very well said. Really balanced analysis and exactly where I stand with him too.
 
Micky Targaryen said:
Here's some more for added context:

Crystal Palace supporters are satisfied with the result because of their current form, and they created some solid chances and could've bagged the win on another day.

Man Utd supporters are satisfied with the result because they dominated the game for 60 mins, and created some solid chances and could've bagged the win on another day.

Can you see any difference in the standards and ambitions in either sets of supporters? Me neither.
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Way to completely misrepresent something to make your point. Did anyone actually say they were satisfied with the result? All I see are people saying the performance was good and not the result. Disappointing result, encouraging performance.
 
Zumbi said:
You can’t logically argue that the means are more important than the ends simply because the means have a chance of getting us to the ends. That just doesn’t make any sense.
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On a small sample size, it makes sense.

Let’s put it like this: if you massively outperform your xG in five games but are playing like shit, eventually you will start dropping points and get closer to your true level.

We have underperformed compared to our xG: there is nothing we can do about it now except practice finishing, gain confidence and get an experienced goalscorer in if needed in January.
 
Bestie07 said:
We actually saw ten Hag's vision in action for the majority of the first half in action yesterday, and I was impressed. I don't care too much about the fact that we couldn't convert our chances as we will ultimately start to score goals as long as we keep on creating chances.

However, my concern is ten Hag's in game management as his substitutions made us progressively worse. There was no need to take off Zirkzee to play Rashford/Hojlund through the middle as either of them can't take care of the ball to save their lives. He followed this up with replacing Amad, instead of a visibly tiring Garnacho, and we then had a front three which kept giving the ball away and we reverted to last year's team. Didn't help that he kept Bruno who kept on turning over possession as well.

The problem with this scenario is that if we even continue to grow as a team and become capable to title challenges and deep European runs, this type of in game management is going to cost us in the crucial games that decide these trophies.
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This is one of my biggest gripes with him and why I fear he's not an elite manager.

How many times did SAF turnaround a game with a substitution?

EtH, to be fair, is also a master at changing games with his subs. The problem is he usually makes us much worse.

His substitutions vs Brighton were very poor and ended up costing us and I feel he intervened again in a negative way vs Palace. They couldn't handle Zirkee and his link-up play...as you said, when he came off and we bought on Rashford and Hojlund it was the same old issues...not able to hold the ball, not able to keep possession.
 
crossy1686 said:
When we get relegated we can proudly say that we went down playing ‘our way’.
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How does that make sense? Based on stats we should be in top four right now.
We would have to be unlucky every game or players would have to deliberately miss chances all season.

Even the loss against Pool was avoidable if we hadn’t made those big individual errors and put some of our big chances away.
 
Lentwood said:
This is one of my biggest gripes with him and why I fear he's not an elite manager.

How many times did SAF turnaround a game with a substitution?

EtH, to be fair, is also a master at changing games with his subs. The problem is he usually makes us much worse.

His substitutions vs Brighton were very poor and ended up costing us and I feel he intervened again in a negative way vs Palace. They couldn't handle Zirkee and his link-up play...as you said, when he came off and we bought on Rashford and Hojlund it was the same old issues...not able to hold the ball, not able to keep possession.
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This is spot on. You have to question if he really knows what he's doing in these cases. Making the right subs, at the right time is a big part of what makes a manager elite, or average.
 
Robbie Boy said:
We're in a scenario whereby there's some rabid posters who will never take to him, no matter what he does. These are the posters who actually try to dismiss the fact that he's won two trophies, made it to 3 finals, got 3rd place in his first season and has the second highest points in the league out of all our post-Fergie managers. There's actually posters who will claim he's "worse than Moyes". When you have an agenda on the internet, you gotta stand by it at all costs.
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I don't think that's actually true, at all. A convincing win on Saturday would have brought a smidgen of hope back to many posters, I reckon. However the same issues continue to crop up, despite some improvement.
 
By Christmas (which is what I always thought he should get) we’ll have a very good understanding of whether Zirkzee and Hojlund will be capable of scoring the goals we need. That’s also enough time to give us a fair assessment of what Ugarte brings to the team. I think he needs those 3 to have all cemented their place as first teamers, be in the top 6 with a realistic chance of top 4. Then he gets to the end of the season for me.We won’t be top 6 if those 3 ain’t performing well. And we can just add them to Antony and Mount as bad buys..
 
Shark said:
I don't think that's actually true, at all. A convincing win on Saturday would have brought a smidgen of hope back to many posters, I reckon. However the same issues continue to crop up, despite some improvement.
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I'm not talking about rational posters with doubts. I'm talking about the handful of agenda driven melts in here.

The rest of your post basically summarised some of what I said in the rest of my post that you cut off in your quote.
 
Red in STL said:
Bruno plays every PL game, how would we know? Barnsley isn't an objective game to determine we're more fluid without him
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Well if you want a fair comparison then despite the two assists we looked a lot less fluid against Barnsley when he came on.

That's him all over really, he puts up the numbers but the overall team game suffers.
 
Robbie Boy said:
I'm not talking about rational posters with doubts. I'm talking about the handful of agenda driven melts in here.

The rest of your post basically summarised some of what I said in the rest of my post that you cut off in your quote.
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To play devil's advocate though, it can appear that there's more agenda driven melts, than there actually are in reality, and you'll find if/when ETH manages to deliver consistency in results and performances, they'll almost disappear. It's the same at any big club, sometimes you just have to step back and realize that we're nowhere close to where we should be and until we are there's going to be division among the fan base in terms of expectations.
 
Shark said:
To play devil's advocate though, it can appear that there's more agenda driven melts, than there actually are in reality, and you'll find if/when ETH manages to deliver consistency in results and performances, they'll almost disappear. It's the same at any big club, sometimes you just have to step back and realize that we're nowhere close to where we should be and until we are there's going to be division among the fan base in terms of expectations.
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You're talking about something I'm not talking about, though. I'm literally talking about a handful of posters in here who can't give any credit whatsoever and who will never change their stance. There's no devil's advocate to play. Go look and you'll spot the 5 or so of them easily enough.
 
Robbie Boy said:
You're talking about something I'm not talking about, though. I'm literally talking about a handful of posters in here who can't give any credit whatsoever and who will never change their stance. There's no devil's advocate to play. Go look and you'll spot the 5 or so of them easily enough.
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That's fair enough, and the rest of your post I fully agree with. I just think things can become skewed regarding the fan base, when we're lingering in 11th place, on the back of the season we previously endured. I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt as emotions are incredibly high, at the moment.
 
Zumbi said:
You’re contradicting yourself. As we’ve already agreed, the new management structure exists to provide continuity and consistency of philosophy and personnel irrespective of manager. Therefore any recruitment actions they take cannot be portrayed as backing for a particular manager - it’s abundantly clear that Ineos would have bought new players in this summer whether Ten Hag was the manager or not. Similarly, they were always going to bring new staff in and reshape other areas of the club whether Ten Hag was manager or not. Therefore that cannot logically be used as evidence of them backing him, it’s just evidence of the restructuring that everyone knew they were going to do when they took over the footballing side of things.

The only actual evidence we have of them backing him, is them not sacking him. But they were close enough to it that they spoke to multiple potential candidates. That does not scream undying support. The only logical conclusion is that he’s actually on pretty thin ice.

If results don’t improve fast, his job is very much at risk. We’re well beyond the point of “progress behind the scenes” being enough (whatever that even means). Points wise, we’re currently on course for a worse finish than last season. That’s just not good enough and their patience will run out soon if he doesn’t turn things around results wise.
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I was referring to consistency in terms of the overall vision, playing style, players, and the support structure above him. We currently play a hybrid 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 high-press system aimed at dominating possession, which shifts into a 3-2-4-1 when in possession. Hiring someone like Amorim or Inzaghi, who prefers a back-five system, wouldn’t make sense as we don’t play that way nor have the players for that setup. So any new hire should be one who likes/prefers to play that hybrid system we currently play and as such should have no issues implementing his ideas quickly.

Replacing the coaching staff and medical staff can be viewed as backing ETH though, as new managers typically bring in their own team. In rare cases, they may even want to bring in their own physios or fitness coaches. All the recent hires could be let go very soon if the new manager doesn’t fancy them, so it might have made more sense to retain the previous staff and assemble a new group in consultation with the new manager.

As I mentioned earlier, while the results have been disappointing, the performances have been encouraging, and the underlying metrics suggest we should be higher up the table. The club may view this as progress(for now) and might want to see if the manager can sustain these performances while improving results. I agree that they won’t keep him for long if the results continue to suffer like this. However, I also think that we will start seeing the results turn around soon which may well see him lasting till the end of the season.
 
Borys said:
Interesting take. I'm not even sure you're serious here, but assuming you are, surely the coaching stuff deserves credit in the first place for improvement in our overall game? Or alternatively it's just the players that we got are better and enable this change.
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No I'm not entirely serious I'm just highlighting the illogic of blaming ETH for bad coaching off the back of the Palace game, where the main problem was up front. What I actually think is that we have somewhat improved many of our problems but not our centre forward one.
Sarni said:
Honest question: let’s say we have an underwhelming season again and finish 8th or below, largely driven by lack of goals as defense will have improved to less than 50 goals conceded. Would you be OK giving ETH another season with better coaches who can fix the scoring problem?
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If we're still not scoring at xmas but making a ton of chances then we have the wrong centre forwards. Not sure sacking ETH fixes that. But equally we can expect to lose lots of games and he will have to go.
 
Shark said:
That's fair enough, and the rest of your post I fully agree with. I just think things can become skewed regarding the fan base, when we're lingering in 11th place, on the back of the season we previously endured. I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt as emotions are incredibly high, at the moment.
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Emotions being high aren't an excuse for how the agenda driven few act, though. They bring their utter bullshit across multiple threads too.

I don't even feel there's that much of a divide tbh. The overwhelming consensus - on here anyway - is that he's not up to the task.
 
Robbie Boy said:
Emotions being high aren't an excuse for how the agenda driven few act, though. They bring their utter bullshit across multiple threads too.

I don't even feel there's that much of a divide tbh. The overwhelming consensus - on here anyway - is that he's not up to the task.
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There's fans who think we should be at least resembling a team that can challenge in the next year, for a title by now, and fans that think seeing improvement this season is enough for the manager to keep his job. As if he's just arrived in the door, probably due to the new ownership. That's where I personally see the division in many of the debates on here, down to expectations.
 
NLunited said:
Longterm, the performance. More points will come if we keep creating those chances.
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Zumbi said:
You can’t logically argue that the means are more important than the ends simply because the means have a chance of getting us to the ends. That just doesn’t make any sense.
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NLunited said:
On a small sample size, it makes sense.

Let’s put it like this: if you massively outperform your xG in five games but are playing like
shit, eventually you will start dropping points and get closer to your true level.

We have underperformed compared to our xG: there is nothing we can do about it now except practice finishing, gain confidence and get an experienced goalscorer in if needed in January.
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You specifically said “long term”. That’s what I responded to. Now you’re changing it to “a small sample size”. Which one is it?

Because long term obviously covers a large sample size. And over a large sample side, results and points matter more than performances, because you cannot forever shield an underperforming manager behind promises of it eventually coming good.

Sure, more points will come if we keep creating chances. Will it be enough points to take us higher than 8th? We have no clue yet. Ten Hag’s team has shown a peculiar ability to drop points in all sorts of ways against all levels of teams whether we’re creating chances or not.
 
Shark said:
There's fans who think we should be at least resembling a team that can challenge in the next year, for a title by now, and fans that think seeing improvement this season is enough for the manager to keep his job. As if he's just arrived in the door, probably due to the new ownership. That's where I personally see the division in many of the debates on here, down to expectations.
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Again, you're conflating expectations with the agenda driven handful who I'm talking about. It is his third season yes, and what we've seen so far, is nowhere near good enough. Those who feel he needs a clean slate because INEOS only came in, are obviously wrong too.
 
sugar_kane said:
Well if you want a fair comparison then despite the two assists we looked a lot less fluid against Barnsley when he came on.

That's him all over really, he puts up the numbers but the overall team game suffers.
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So you'd rather have a player that makes us more fluid than a player who creates assists, and did you not also take in to account the other other changes that may have contributed bto that loss of fluidity?
 
saik said:
I was referring to consistency in terms of the overall vision, playing style, players, and the support structure above him. We currently play a hybrid 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 high-press system aimed at dominating possession, which shifts into a 3-2-4-1 when in possession. Hiring someone like Amorim or Inzaghi, who prefers a back-five system, wouldn’t make sense as we don’t play that way nor have the players for that setup. So any new hire should be one who likes/prefers to play that hybrid system we currently play and as such should have no issues implementing his ideas quickly.

Replacing the coaching staff and medical staff can be viewed as backing ETH though, as new managers typically bring in their own team. In rare cases, they may even want to bring in their own physios or fitness coaches. All the recent hires could be let go very soon if the new manager doesn’t fancy them, so it might have made more sense to retain the previous staff and assemble a new group in consultation with the new manager.

As I mentioned earlier, while the results have been disappointing, the performances have been encouraging, and the underlying metrics suggest we should be higher up the table. The club may view this as progress(for now) and might want to see if the manager can sustain these performances while improving results. I agree that they won’t keep him for long if the results continue to suffer like this. However, I also think that we will start seeing the results turn around soon which may well see him lasting till the end of the season.
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Not necessarily, no. We know Ten Hag was under huge pressure. We know Ineos were always going to bring new people in across the board, including medical staff (no surprise given our horrific injury record under Ten Hag). Some people actually viewed RvN coming in as Ineos bringing in a potential interim in case Ten Hag’s results don’t improve quick enough. No one really knows of course - there’s speculation on both sides.

My point remains - whatever “backing” Ineos gave Ten Hag at the end of the season was obviously very thin, because they were on the verge of replacing him. They don’t get to that point if they’re 100% convinced he’s the right man for the job. Seems to me he’s been given a final chance to show some actual improvement in performances and results, and if that doesn’t come soon his time will be up.

Despite an improvement in performances we’re currently only averaging 1.4 points a game after a fairly straightforward opening set of fixtures. We have much harder games to come, so Ten Hag needs to massively improve our away record and also learn how to squeeze points out of games much more effectively than he has in the past year. His in game management doesn’t convince me he’s capable of doing that consistently enough against the better teams.
 
TheReligion said:
I think because some posters are so entrenched in their views they simply aren’t discussing in good faith. It makes this thread utterly pointless as any reasoned response is drowned out with utter bollocks.
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That's your view from someone who is also entrenched in their opinion. The reality is both sides talk an utter load of bollocks.
 
Salford_Red83 said:
So, performance, not winning, is the most important thing in football?

Got ya!
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Seems like some people are not understanding what that poster is trying to say. If we keeping performing like that, 9 time out of 10 we win that game. It's encouraging to have that performance(disappointing result still mind you, I don't think anyone was debating that) rather than have a plucky 1-0 win like we had in our opening game against Wolves last season where we were absolutely shit and we all know we wouldn't win again playing that way and that it was unsustainable.
 
VP89 said:
Because it was a strong performance.
You can get on the wrong end of a result despite playing very well. Just like you can play terribly and get a jammy result. This isn't a new phenomenon.
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Strong performance is probably taking it to far, it was an OK performance nothing more nothing less. It was an OK performance with a disappointing result and amongst an iffy start to the season on the back of last seasons horrors it's not good enough.

I have no problem saying we have shown improvement from last season it's would be difficult not to in all honesty but we are not anywhere near where we should be.
 
The biggest problem is, I see fans here behaving exactly like ten Hag. After every poor performance (we had already quite a few this year already) they keep repeating the alleged positives like "wooow, our first half was real good, we didn't score but still..." and "i see the progress compared to last year" and so on. Maybe they should look at the table, the poor stats, the poor results, poor performances and admit that in the end what matters is how many points we get. And to be fair, we're trailing by 6 points after just 5 rounds, we don't score goals, we're 11th which is totally embarrassing and there's no progress at all.
 
Zumbi said:
Not necessarily, no. We know Ten Hag was under huge pressure. We know Ineos were always going to bring new people in across the board, including medical staff (no surprise given our horrific injury record under Ten Hag). Some people actually viewed RvN coming in as Ineos bringing in a potential interim in case Ten Hag’s results don’t improve quick enough. No one really knows of course - there’s speculation on both sides.

My point remains - whatever “backing” Ineos gave Ten Hag at the end of the season was obviously very thin, because they were on the verge of replacing him. They don’t get to that point if they’re 100% convinced he’s the right man for the job. Seems to me he’s been given a final chance to show some actual improvement in performances and results, and if that doesn’t come soon his time will be up.

Despite an improvement in performances we’re currently only averaging 1.4 points a game after a fairly straightforward opening set of fixtures. We have much harder games to come, so Ten Hag needs to massively improve our away record and also learn how to squeeze points out of games much more effectively than he has in the past year. His in game management doesn’t convince me he’s capable of doing that consistently enough against the better teams.
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On the flip side, if they were 100% convinced he wasn't up to the task, he wouldn't still be here. While they did explore the possibility of replacing him, other factors likely came into play, and they saw enough merit in keeping him while backing him. That's how I view the situation.

I agree this is his final chance, and there's no question that results need to improve—I'm not disputing that. It's just my personal feeling that the results will come soon.
 
ivaldo said:
Not sure I can agree with that Simon. If anything, I would say its the opposite. We should have been 3 up at half time. That suggests to me the manager knew exactly how to set the team up. There comes a point where a manager must make substitutions, even if the team is playing well. If he kept the side largely the same, and we still finished 0-0, the same criticism would be levied at him.
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However. That is the first time in almost two years I’ve seen him set us up in a way to control games. So I consider that as the outlier not the rule of thumb.
 
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