I voted Sack, but hearing the alternatives Sir Alex Southgate I am going to change to keep.
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Sacked
- Thread starter Cheimoon
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Well if we're talking about the context of our squad performance, it's quite easy to point to we're creating chances that we're not finishing? The fact we're outperforming our xGA (which pretty much all teams are in the league) means my point about our defence being good holds up too? Not scoring your chances affects the whole team and scoring half of the chances you create shows an obvious issue in the squad - one that a lot of people highlighted in the summer. We are conceding too many chances, but 4.59 xAG of those came from the Spurs game, so that also needs context.
I'm not denying we're underperforming, but there are obvious areas where we are that should be adressed. Our attack is shite at converting and our midfield wasn't prioritised in the summer and we're suffering for it. Our defence, where we invested the most, has improved.
Sorry, but the only other team under performing their xG as bad as us is Southampton, that says a lot about our attackers. Teams hover around their xG, not convert 50% of it. Your 1-3 less than their xG is in the context of a whole season.
FYI I'm using https://understat.com/league/EPL/2024 for the stats.
I'm not saying it's all rosy and only finishing chances is our issue, but it's clearly a massive problem. We all know midfield is what it is and we have to hope Ugarte can improve it, because we have no other options apart from kids. I don't like how many chances we're conceding, but if you watch our games, you can clearly see our defenders and keepers are the only ones playing well.
Anyone on here work in Visas and Immigration who get revoke his visa whilst he’s out in Portugal?
ETH's football is worse. But, that wasn't the point. The point is that it's very difficult to translate football from weaker leagues into the PL.
I think it's fair for many people to have accepted that he should get another chance given he'd won trophies, the second by beating the best team in the league in the final, and he'd shown an ability to have the team play a different way in that game.
There was also the potential that we were so bad because of so many injuries (I never believed that personally, but could understand the logic), and some of the office pitch drama he had to deal with.
As it is, he's been given another shot and we've started the season badly. He seems to have come up with yet another muddled style of play which doesn't really work. We look ok for portions if the game against poor opposition, looking terrible for the rest of it. In addition the sequence seems to be involve
It's what needs to happen, and you need a manager that inspires and motivates that work ethic.
The teams at the top are where they are because their managers have players with quality and also motivate them to run as much or more than their opponents every week as well.
Of course you could argue players should be able to motivate themselves, but that's not the reality. If it was, there wouldn't be any requirement to pay huge sums of money to managers.
Basically we've played 2 good teams this season and we got dismantled by both. AT HOME.
There is that City game which we drew in the Charity Shield that made some of us believe we are close to their level.
I think we as a fans should keep an eye on these two appointments. From the outset they look pretty laughable. One has been managing in the Championship and the other just got relegated from the Premier League.
However in this current era where it’s all about first team head coaches and football directors running things, as opposed to a manager, these guys look fairly competent albeit very early on. Whether they have the staying power is another thing but they’ve got their teams organised, playing coherently, scoring goals and winning games… so that whole ‘a manager needs money and time to put his stamp on things’ notion peddled in the past by the likes of Gary Neville is absolute bollocks. A few weeks and it can look much better.
And in the future, I think fans will need to get used to that approach. We’re no longer after managers. We’re after first team head coaches. There’s probably going to be names in there that when you first think of them, you would dismiss them but when you drill down further into what they do and coupled with a whole new power structure at United, it will start to make more sense.
And with that said new power structure, removing the head coach will be a whole lot fecking easier because we’re no longer chained to a single manager’s vision. We could appoint a guy and he does amazingly for 12 months then the shit hits the fan? Sack him off and move onto the next one until we find one that can win serious stuff for us.
I'm assuming they're just extrapolating from expected Points at this stage?
If you add this context, you also have to accept a significant chunk of that xGA comes in a single game when we were down to 10 though.
It’s so early in the season this can swing wildly but im certain not anyone on here is surprised goals have been the issue for us. We were 6th for xG and 11th for xG next to Arsenal and after that horrendous game we’ve dropped into the doldrums.
Defensively we were much better until last game which is backed up by stats but that performance really sucked. There is a slightly interesting period now though where, should ETH survive at least until Villa, we will play a midfield without Bruno and it will be intriguing to see if the setup is more balanced.
Lose to Villa and he’s toast, it could be a true bald pheonix from the ashes if he can survive though.
I thought we were absolute bobbins in the Fulham game, and was very worried after it tbh. But, I was told on here that it was actually a good performance.
It is unbelievable that he still has supporters who "believe" in him. We have less points than arguably the only club in the league that has been run even worse than us in the last decade. 15 games is not a small sample size FFS, it is 40% of a full season!
I repeatedly posted in this thread and others that the pre-season results set the telemetry for the output in performances throughout the season.
Many downplayed it's significance because key players were missing but objectively by the managers own admission the team were losing frequent games Erik set out to entirely win.
There's causation to believe Erik is the worst manager of all perhaps with the exception of Ragnick because between Jose / Ole especially it was clear they lost the dressing room and the team capitulated as a result.
Erik has amassed even worse results by comparison yet it's clearly been evident (up until this point at least) that the players haven't downed tools.
That speaks volumes about his managerial pedigree and capacity.
He is undeniably one of the worst managers in the league.
Many downplayed it's significance because key players were missing but objectively by the managers own admission the team were losing frequent games Erik set out to entirely win.
There's causation to believe Erik is the worst manager of all perhaps with the exception of Ragnick because between Jose / Ole especially it was clear they lost the dressing room and the team capitulated as a result.
Erik has amassed even worse results by comparison yet it's clearly been evident (up until this point at least) that the players haven't downed tools.
That speaks volumes about his managerial pedigree and capacity.
He is undeniably one of the worst managers in the league.
Whoever is handling PR and releasing stupid snippets to sources to be released for public consumption really needs to stop digging a hole for INEOS. Every tweet with supposed insider info makes them look worse than the last.
It would be better to say nothing than what they are doing.
It would be better to say nothing than what they are doing.
You already expected 0-3 home losses to Spurs and Liverpool where the scores could've been even worse if one of them didn't start geting cocky in front of our goal and the other didn't have Timo Werner?
Yeah but that's kind of what I'm saying, how do they work that out? By XG? There's too many variables for me to believe in predicting scores like that over the course of the season, too difficult to try and plan.
Nah. Every manager has used excuses.
So everything isn't 100% perfect. That's how it is for everyone. They've still had far more resources than the vast majority of managers.
SAF has done all the hard work for these guys.
What more can they need to at least produce a team that can compete?
No, I expected our midfield to have to have the same problems it did last season and against the better teams in the league it would be a big problem.
Why is he not sacked? Ineos / and the Glazers are not serious
Who?
Bournemouth play quite a direct style which could work well with the players we have. But with managers like Iraola, Hasenhuttl and Bielsa, they play with such an intense press that it requires complete buy in from the players for it to be effective. Unfortunately I'm not sure the players would completely buy in to that and probably wouldn't work.
I think it's fair to say that when he took over, but one of Iraola's biggest strengths so far at Bournemouth is how much he's improved players individually. Semenyo's performances for nearly a year now have been absolutely brilliant and he's getting better and better so I can't accept that he's anywhere near a Championship level player. I rate him really highly and I reckon by the end of the season there's gonna be links to bigger clubs.
Cook and Christie run that midfield and anytime one of them (Christie especially) gets subbed they lose a lot of control in there and aren't as effective in their press. Tavernier and Smith I'll give you as they could probably find better in those positions.
It really is a brilliant imageThat analogy made me laugh out loud
Perhaps the stats need addressing in a longer window - I'm not 'lash-ing' out
but the football is atrocious and personally I'm not keen to see him around for another week. Would happily take anything other than Southgate- hell ask ChatGPT to replace him for a game and let it give the instructions. Every manager we have appointed post Fergie was either not good enough or past their sell by date and all except Moyes have been heavilly backed in the transfer windows but has wasted the money on the wrong players like LVG wasting 65m on ADM who we didnt need, Mourinho wasting 80m on Lukaku when there were surely better options available for less money, and Ole spending 80m on Maguire when again there were probably other options available for less.
There are managers like Klopp and Ancellotti that would have succeeded if given the backing some of our post Fergie managers have had and even managers like Conte and Sarri who both took on the mess at Chelsea and won the title in their first season.
I've made the "who else is out there" argument before but it comes to a point where things are so bad that the risk of it being better under another manager becomes greater.
I mean ten Hag is not even challenging for top 4 at this point.
It’s all the 3-0’s 4-0 hammerings that are the worst thing . When we lose we lose in style
Absolutely.
The who else is better was an argument made right after the FA cup win. Thats always been our biggest problem... rose tinted googles. Me included in fairness. Because we beat City. However such decision should have never been given to the fans to begin with, INEOS should have done much better and thought of the big picture more than the small picture and to me, the easiest for new owners has always been to start with a new manager. They brought in Omar and Wilcox only to keep the manager which means they dont even know if the first two work as expected, diluted by the old managers performance. Thats very weird.
ten Hag signed Casemiro, Mount, and Ugarte. We also have Mainoo (one of England's biggest talents) and Bruno Fernandes. If there's anyone to blame for a completely dysfunctional midfield, it's ten Hag.
Considering this is a glaring weakness that every blind man and his blind dog can see, what has ETH tried to do to ensure that against the better teams in the league (so, about 7 of them) 'big problem' is not the same as 'cricket score'?
Exactly, I can't understand this sympathetic nonsense to managers who failed their own responsibilities.
Look at the Rodri thread concerning his complaints about being overworked and the idealism projected in that thread amongst many is footballers are well paid therefore it's a small inconvenience.
Now contrast it with the managers who are also competing in one of the best paid professions within a career (irrespective of being successful or failing) are paid a fortune yet fans disregard the players for XYZ reasons but side with the managers in the same principles.
It's foolishness, objectively the only manager who showed progression from philosophical standpoint and perhaps wasn't given as much time as the others was LVG, but even with the benefits of his management there was still issues which if rectified likely would have seen him stay on in the job.
These managers have been given a plethora of resources and as stated have come up with excuses. Subjectively for me at-least aside LVG between Ole, Jose and Moyes (Ragnick was supposed to step into the hierarchy so is an outlier to some degree) none have done anything with their respective careers since to adjudicate that United made a bad decision or mistake with their removal.
Well so far it's 2 own goals to the new "Structure".
I honestly can't believe we've moved on from the Glazers bankers and got even worse ditherers with so called "football" men.
It's just like after the fa cup when every man and his dog knew what should have happened but we got silence for a month while they were doing the completely unnecessary "review". They're probably doing another.
I honestly can't believe we've moved on from the Glazers bankers and got even worse ditherers with so called "football" men.
It's just like after the fa cup when every man and his dog knew what should have happened but we got silence for a month while they were doing the completely unnecessary "review". They're probably doing another.
Klopp himself didn't think it would be possible to succeed here. I wanted us to go for Conte instead of ten Hag but it would've probably been an even bigger disaster than Jose. There's a common theme with all the examples you've given and that's how the club has been run.
You're joking, aren't you? The majority of folk on here wanted ten Hag to keep the job after the FA Cup final (the poll whether to keep or sack completely reversed. It was mental). There was a huge swell of broad support from the fan base (Paddock in particular have been embarrassingly defensive of ten Hag until recently - specifically Joe). Utterly bizarre situation and we've fecked ourselves not just for this season, but in terms of drastically reducing our options moving forward.Well so far it's 2 own goals to the new "Structure".
I honestly can't believe we've moved on from the Glazers bankers and got even worse ditherers with so called "football" men.
It's just like after the fa cup when every man and his dog knew what should have happened but we got silence for a month while they were doing the completely unnecessary "review". They're probably doing another.
The common theme is all of the managers we have hired haven't been up to the job. What have any of them done since getting sacked here? The square root of feck all.
L
It's really damning and not acceptable for a club spending the money we do and with our aspirations.
The ownership should print that out, stick it on his desk and say cheerio Erik.
Perfect summary, describes every game this season without any of the ifs and buts that ultimately don't matter (for every 'if' or 'should have' we might claim, the opposition could say the same).
It's really damning and not acceptable for a club spending the money we do and with our aspirations.
The ownership should print that out, stick it on his desk and say cheerio Erik.
Bang on. The "first half against Palace" thing still annoys me when people say it shows that we can play great under Ten Hag, and it's a glimmer of hope. We didn't even fecking score.
I’m not sure anything confounds me more than anyone in here saying “I like Ten Hag”. Genuinely the most unlikeable of any manager we’ve ever had here
For sure, it's a fair challenge. I think there are flashes of what I expected to see, but it is not often enough. I'm not wedded to Ten hag, I would take a young and up can coming manager in Iraola and I was on the Tuchel train in the summer. If Southgate comes in, I will start playing more golf,Perhaps the stats need addressing in a longer window - I'm not 'lash-ing' out
Sure, we all know how Casermiro is, Mount can't stay fit and Ugarte has hardly been with us yet - I think he will be good for us, but that was his first league start for us and it showed. I'd say it showed against Barnsley too. Our best midfielder in Mainoo is pretty damn slow over big distances, which is not ideal. I think we've just got a group of midfielders that don't compliment each other at all. I would have liked us to get in Ugarte earlier or bolster the midfield further with Rabiot, but that's not been the priority for the club.
Well he didn't have an option for Liverpool as we hadn't bought Ugarte in time and then he tried Ugarte against Spurs, who was well off the pace. Even if he sacrificed Bruno to sure up the midfield, does a Casemiro, Ugarte, Mainoo work? Do we still have the same issues up top? We will probably find out what happens now Bruno is banned what could be the alternative, so let's see what happens there.
Yeah that’s my point - is Amad/Hojlund/Rashford/Nacho/Zirkzee built for that? I think many would try their best but I only think the latter two could likely do it well enough. Hojlund grafts hard but he’s too big/heavy in my mind to be nimble enough to play the central role and cover the distance required.
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