Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Sacked

[Lash]

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.

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,

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.

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.

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'?

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.

 

[tomaldinho1]

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.

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.

 

[justsomebloke]

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.

No, I mean they may just use the xPTS stat and multiply that up to 38. But could also be some more complex modelling.

 

[Jock Steins Boots]

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

I find him quite arrogant at times. I don't know if thats just the translation from Dutch to English, but he always comes across like he's not wrong and the process simply hasn't kicked in yet.
There's a world of difference though, between him and Fergie. Fergie had a vision and was almost on the verge of being booted out, but all of sudden, his vision started to work. I've not seen a single time that ETHs vision has worked. The FA Cup final was good, but any single final can be good, just ask Portsmouth and Harry Redknapp.
Its should be obvious to anyone now, that ETHs plan isn't working. There's not even been a good run of games where you can say its working and the odd losses against Liverpool or City have just been flukes.

Right now, I would literally take Phil Parkinson from Wrexham over ETH, he'd have more of a clue.

 

[Sarni]

So if i just take Brighton and Palace, where we should really at minimum be getting a draw and win if we could finish our chances, we'd be on 10 points. I'm not denying the Spurs and Liverpool games were terrible and I think there are varying reasons as to why they were such bad performances, but a large part for me is midfield. That's the area we didn't prioritise this summer, so it's not really a surprise.

I mean, Cook, Christie, Semenyo, Tavernier and Smith. They are very much championship level to me. Iraola would be my choice for a manager in the league, for what it's worth. Something about that region creates quality managers!

Not true. If we look purely at xG, then Brighton game is loss most of the time (their 2.1 vs ours 1.4 indicating we would actually draw this game only 3-4 times out of 10), and Palace game is a win in 2/3 cases (theirs 1.1 vs ours 1.7), so no way we should be getting 'draw at minimum' at Brighton or winning Palace game easily.

And even with those games adding 3 more points to our tally this will have still been a horrible start because we've seen that we are still utterly hopeless against good teams, and only really excel against struggling teams like Southampton and Palace.

 

[spwd]

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.

Sorry, I should have said "Every man and his dog with any sense".

 

[appleman]

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

As a person, he is hit and miss and kind of too stuck in his own/the football world. Sometimes he comes with good things and comments, sometimes he seems backwards as heckity heck.

As a trainer/manager I do like him and his ideas, but at this point even I start to think it's better to quit while they're ahead.

Possibly the Bruno ban is a blessing in disguise, but I am not hopeful anymore. It's still early in the season with an unseasoned and ungelled squad, but if the ball doesn't get rolling in 2-3 games, I would fully understand a change of plans very soon. But improvement has to become apparent now. It's always a gamble whether things will or will not change while either keeping or replacing your manager. Could fire someone one game too early, could be one month too late. You never know as you only get to see one of the timelines.

But based on chances, and the way things are run at United, it might be better to just be as direct and safe as possible in your plans until there is some foundation to build from. Now they are trying to build without basically any. So some games give hope, and others make you wonder if anything changed at all in more than two years. Maybe it's the squad and too many of the individual players not having the talent for consistency, but maybe it's time to just play it safe and play some type of Ole-ball and hope for the best with a bunch of talented players. Get some big striker name to glorify your lack of plans, until there are more talents developed to actually really build one.

ETH can build a solid team and plan, but here at this club it's getting a little predictable to see all hope lost just 1-2 games after you gained it.

 

[erikcred]

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.

Against Liverpool he didn't have Ugarte. Against Spurs, he had Ugarte who wasn't ready but played him anyway. Got it.

By the same reasoning, surely it's unfair to expect results in the next three games when poor ETH doesn't have Bruno as an option. The only reasonable step now is to ignore any bad results till Bruno comes back and until Ugarte gets up to pace whichever happens later.

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

Not true. If we look purely at xG, then Brighton game is loss most of the time (their 2.1 vs ours 1.4 indicating we would actually draw this game only 3-4 times out of 10), and Palace game is a win in 2/3 cases (theirs 1.1 vs ours 1.7), so no way we should be getting 'draw at minimum' at Brighton or winning Palace game easily.

And even with those games adding 3 more points to our tally this will have still been a horrible start because we've seen that we are still utterly hopeless against good teams, and only really excel against struggling teams like Southampton and Palace.

xPts had United at 8.62 before the Spurs game. That's about as close to 10 points as it is to where United actually was (7 points).
(there is the issue of the disallowed goal tho)

 

[Vault Dweller]

No, I mean they may just use the xPTS stat and multiply that up to 38. But could also be some more complex modelling.

Hmm yeah maybe. But I'm not fond of those kind of stats just due to the nature of football, but I understand they are just predictions.

 

[TsuWave]

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.

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.

"Who else?" argument was being made long before the cup final. I've had exchanges with posters here before about it, but it never made sense when speaking of/trying to apply it to Ten Hag. "Who else?" only ever makes sense when you're speaking of easily verifiably great/proven managers - the likes of Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, etc (and even then, them being great/proven doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't be a better fit at a specific time/period for a club if things were as bad as they are for United)

That reasoning doesn't apply for up and coming managers like Ten Hag. The perception of Ten Hag among sections of the United fanbase has always been wildly inflated - and I don't really understand why. The guy isn't even particularly charismatic. In the old thread people were scoffing at Emery, a better manager, to prop Ten Hag and I was so confused. Ten Hag took over an Ajax team that missed out on the title by 1 point, and did well with them winning multiple Eredivisie titles, but that team wasn't miles away from it, as mentioned, and it's the Eredivisie (all due respect) - and it's Ajax. He also had a CL semi-final run, and his Ajax team played attractive football (which to me was his biggest selling point, but the guy got here and said we're not going to play like Ajax ), but he still has a lot to prove. He still is (or was) an up-and-coming manager, in a very good upward trend - so giving him the job at the time made sense, but acting like he's in the tier of managers that "can't" be replaced doesn't. People here were posting as if the guy was rubbing shoulders with Pep and Klopp or something. Even earlier in this thread, people were name dropping Klopp as if only the likes of him could replace Ten Hag and it had me asking the below:

Who do you guys think Ten Hag is? The idea that only the likes of Klopp would be improvements is comical at this point. Please rest

People are seeing clubs go pull managers from second tier leagues and do relatively well, but then get here and ask "who else?" about Erik ten Hag. Come on

 

[sugar_kane]

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.

I would love to hear directly from Klopp one day what happened in that conversation between him and Woodward, and why he avoided us.

Apparently Woodward denies ever calling it the club "Disneyland" and the only source I can find is the Ralph Honigstein book which I suspect may be paraphrasing.

While I can't stand Woodward and don't deny he probably put Klopp off the job I think back then no-one really wanted to touch us with a barge pole (because of Fergie's legacy) and I don't think that's changed today, maybe it's even worse now.

So far we've only managed to convince someone who should have never had it in a million years (Moyes), a legend but past-it and clearly a bit of a nutcase (Van Gaal), another past-it legend with a massive ego who happily burns down any club he goes to (Mourinho), a club legend who again would have never got the job in any other scenario (Solksjaer)

Ten Hag was the first time we ever brought in a manager on the up, who was highly rated elsewhere and could have easily turned us down. Even though his failure is largely on him I wouldn't be surprised if this puts other managers in his situation off us.

 

[Telsim]

Craig Burley is spot on here

Truth. I'm long past caring about tired explanations, pathetic excuses, pointless statistics, and the opinion of resident football "experts". I'm not wasting my time entertaining any of that tripe anymore. All I trust is what I see. And what I saw was him getting cut down by Hurzeler two games into his first big job. Humiliated by Slot three games into his tenure at Liverpool without receiving any support in the summer. United getting shit on 3:0 at home by Liverpool. A nothing game versus Crystal Palace. An insipid draw at home against Twente, with a full strength squad. And then, the calamity against Tottenham. All of that after last season, after the 7:0 against Liverpool the season before, after everything he has been given. That's the absolute end of the line for me. All I care about regarding this club right now is this manager getting sacked. That, and the parasites still being majority owners, of course, a fact that has seemingly faded into obscurity. This team is going nowhere under him, just as it isn't under them, and that is crystal clear to everyone with eyes. Except, apparently, the "best-in-class", much vaunted, gigabrained INEOS hires. All of this is part of their impeccable vision and commitment, and we should all "trust the process". If this was under the Glazers proper, there would probably be loud boos at Old Trafford.

 

[GDaly95]

I'm trying to understand how its possible for the players to look so poor and so unprofessional, and the best I can come up with is this.

I think Ten Hag has gotten himself into a complete tactical knot as time has gone on. I think this has happened for a few reasons. A small part of this may be things that are outside of his control, such as the calamitous injury crisis last year and a few entirely unexpected issues with players that he could never have foreseen, leading to him having to adapt and make sudden changes to the way we play.

Above all though, I believe (and this is guesswork) that he is a well below average communicator. I get the impression that he struggles greatly to get his ideas across in a concise and understandable way, and that it leads to widespread confusion on the pitch. In order to try and rectify the poor performances, I think he poorly issues more instructions which only amplifies the confusion, and we're in an absolute doom-spiral as a result.

My opinion is that the players are so confused and full of conflicting instructions that they become completely lost on the pitch. They have no sense of where they or their teammates should be positioned. They don't know what the triggers are, they don't know when to press and when to play out or go long. This leads to a completely disjointed team where they essentially look like they haven't been coached. I think trying to make sense of what they're supposed to be doing actually makes them look sluggish and uninterested. So much of their mental energy is focused on trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing at any given time, and as a result the game passes them by and they look like they simply aren't bothered which, given how badly things are going, probably is now true as some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think this is impossible for Ten Hag to walk back. It's gotten too muddled and too convoluted and he is not capable of wiping the slate clean and offering any kind of clarity. I would imagine he can no longer see the wood for the trees himself.

The only solution in my opinion is to sack Ten Hag, and have someone come in who can liberate the players by telling them to forget everything they think they know. I think this would lead to a temporary but extremely sharp uptick in form. I think this is exactly what happened when Ole first came in. I personally don't think it should be Ruud, but a fresh face. I would imagine that the second phase of the process so to speak would be to then slowly instill a sustainable way of playing, after you've given the players a chance to let the fog lift.

 

[erikcred]

I'm trying to understand how its possible for the players to look so poor and so unprofessional, and the best I can come up with is this.

I think Ten Hag has gotten himself into a complete tactical knot as time has gone on. I think this has happened for a few reasons. A small part of this may be things that are outside of his control, such as the calamitous injury crisis last year and a few entirely unexpected issues with players that he could never have foreseen, leading to him having to adapt and make sudden changes to the way we play.

Above all though, I believe (and this is guesswork) that he is a well below average communicator. I get the impression that he struggles greatly to get his ideas across in a concise and understandable way, and that it leads to widespread confusion on the pitch. In order to try and rectify the poor performances, I think he poorly issues more instructions which only amplifies the confusion, and we're in an absolute doom-spiral as a result.

My opinion is that the players are so confused and full of conflicting instructions that they become completely lost on the pitch. They have no sense of where they or their teammates should be positioned. They don't know what the triggers are, they don't know when to press and when to play out or go long. This leads to a completely disjointed team where they essentially look like they haven't been coached. I think trying to make sense of what they're supposed to be doing actually makes them look sluggish and uninterested. So much of their mental energy is focused on trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing at any given time, and as a result the game passes them by and they look like they simply aren't bothered which, given how badly things are going, probably is now true as some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think this is impossible for Ten Hag to walk back. It's gotten too muddled and too convoluted and he is not capable of wiping the slate clean and offering any kind of clarity. I would imagine he can no longer see the wood for the trees himself.

The only solution in my opinion is to sack Ten Hag, and have someone come in who can liberate the players by telling them to forget everything they think they know. I think this would lead to a temporary but extremely sharp uptick in form. I think this is exactly what happened when Ole first came in. I personally don't think it should be Ruud, but a fresh face. I would imagine that the second phase of the process so to speak would be to then slowly instill a sustainable way of playing, after you've given the players a chance to let the fog lift.

Misunderstood genius! New angle?

 

[GDaly95]

Misunderstood genius! New angle?

Fecking hell, you seriously got that from my post?

 

[Trezeguet17]

It's ridiculous that he's still here.

It‘s not even the poor style of play that still shows no sign of improvement after all these years. The worst thing is his transfers, which will damage the club for years to come.

There are too many of them to mention.
But for me, the almost 100m transfer of antony is emblematic of ETH era.

What a player. 64 matches in 64 games. Constantly only 3 goals away from a hat-trick

This transfer should be investigated by a commission for money laundering and all those involved should be held accountable.

 

[Woziak]

What's this?

Before the press release before the game he told the media that his dream job was to be FC Twente Chairmen!

That’s the biggest red flag yet?

 

[santeria13]

What?! We didn't offer him a new contract, did we?

They did and he turned it down for some reason. They also haven't sacked him yet, on the back of both our worst PL & European season in history, after being -3 GD and 13th after 6 games into this season, after two consecutive batterings at home. They also gave Bruno a new contract, which doesn't make sense as it's clear he can't play anything but counter-attacking football successfully . They also signed Ugarte, who simply doesn't make any sense for a team aiming to play progressive, attacking football. They also signed Zirkzee who's not even a striker & more of a no10, of which we already had three players who could play that position.

Honestly, I hate to say it but INEOS are looking just as clueless as our old football hierarchy. Is the long term plan to play defensive, counter-attacking football and to sign players/managers who fit that criteria? Cause that would be the only way the decisions lately would make any sense. In fact, I'm pretty sure the old hierarchy would have sacked him by now.

 

[romufc]

If the players don't care then they need to be gone as well, ETH isn't the sole problem.

It doesn' matter what the tactics are if the players don't do the basic stuff professional footballers should be doing, like making simple passes to their team mates, putting some effort in instead of being like statues or a jogging around with the speed of a tortoise

Every player who played yesterday, bar one, should be ashamed of themselves

I keep hearing this about the players.. its nonsense. We have a bought 11 new players in the last 3 years and this nonsense that players are not trying is down to one man.. the manager.

He has had the same issue from game 1 to now. Brentford was the same issue, cut open easily, cant pass, cant defend and cannot attack.. 2 years later its the same story. It is clear the players have not bought into his system and at this stage I do not think they will.

Players should be ashamed but I think the manager has to take 85% of the blame.

 

[bosskeano]

honest question....how can he look in the mirror each morning and be satisfied with the path of the club right now?

 

[Lash]

Not true. If we look purely at xG, then Brighton game is loss most of the time (their 2.1 vs ours 1.4 indicating we would actually draw this game only 3-4 times out of 10), and Palace game is a win in 2/3 cases (theirs 1.1 vs ours 1.7), so no way we should be getting 'draw at minimum' at Brighton or winning Palace game easily.

And even with those games adding 3 more points to our tally this will have still been a horrible start because we've seen that we are still utterly hopeless against good teams, and only really excel against struggling teams like Southampton and Palace.

I wasn't looking at it from a pure xG perspective, more from the chances we created in the game I think we should have scored, but valid counter.

It's definitely a worry, but you would think that the new players would at least improve as they get up to speed. Zirkzee as an example, looks amazing against the shit teams, but absolutely at sea against a high quality pressing team. Ugarte I think will be better than he showed against Spurs and I think that's two pretty key players in our squad who aren't contributing in big game, who should be improving us. Mazraoui has for sure - huge upgrade on Wan Bissaka.

Against Liverpool he didn't have Ugarte. Against Spurs, he had Ugarte who wasn't ready but played him anyway. Got it.

By the same reasoning, surely it's unfair to expect results in the next three games when poor ETH doesn't have Bruno as an option. The only reasonable step now is to ignore any bad results till Bruno comes back and until Ugarte gets up to pace whichever happens later.

Well Ugarte is the only new addition to our midfield, so it's reasonable to think if we wanted our midfield to be different, we'd need to change the personnel.

No, I think in the next three games we should expect to see what a lot of people want, because they'll think we'll be a better team for it - Bruno out the side.

 

[stevoc]

I think, to be fair, the argument is more that stability brings success. The first 2 seasons under ETH have been anything but stable what with the takeover and injuries so I don't think that theory has really been put to the test yet.

If by stability we're talking about just giving a manager a 5 year run regardless of results. Then how many times in the history of football has that ever really lead to success?

I can think of one example and that's about it.

 

[Ayoba]

honest question....how can he look in the mirror each morning and be satisfied with the path of the club right now?

The millions of pounds in salary help. And the further millions he'll get once he's sacked.

 

[Valencia Shin Crosses]

As a person, he is hit and miss and kind of too stuck in his own/the football world. Sometimes he comes with good things and comments, sometimes he seems backwards as heckity heck.

As a trainer/manager I do like him and his ideas, but at this point even I start to think it's better to quit while they're ahead.

Possibly the Bruno ban is a blessing in disguise, but I am not hopeful anymore. It's still early in the season with an unseasoned and ungelled squad, but if the ball doesn't get rolling in 2-3 games, I would fully understand a change of plans very soon. But improvement has to become apparent now. It's always a gamble whether things will or will not change while either keeping or replacing your manager. Could fire someone one game too early, could be one month too late. You never know as you only get to see one of the timelines.

But based on chances, and the way things are run at United, it might be better to just be as direct and safe as possible in your plans until there is some foundation to build from. Now they are trying to build without basically any. So some games give hope, and others make you wonder if anything changed at all in more than two years. Maybe it's the squad and too many of the individual players not having the talent for consistency, but maybe it's time to just play it safe and play some type of Ole-ball and hope for the best with a bunch of talented players. Get some big striker name to glorify your lack of plans, until there are more talents developed to actually really build one.

ETH can build a solid team and plan, but here at this club it's getting a little predictable to see all hope lost just 1-2 games after you gained it.

He’s had 3 fecking years and an entire new XI of players to build a solid team and plan. This argument is gone now (where it might have been valid 18 months ago)

Sick of hearing this rhetoric

 

[GueRed]

Overall ten Hag's low-block/ mid-block, no midfield football has bored me. Most teams play better football than us. We get outplayed by a majority of teams in this league.

The bar is so low these days we get a nil-nil draw away at Selhurst Park and a majority of the fanbase is ecstatic.

 

[bosskeano]

The millions of pounds in salary help. And the further millions he'll get once he's sacked.

so the man has no pride in his work and the delulu is real

 

[Teja]

Looks like the pressure is ramping up. Let's see if INEOS are any more organized than the typical chaos that ensued with Murtough and co. Normal order of operations is we loose against Villa and draw against Porto. International break ensues, no sacking. One or two weeks after the break, we put in a terrible performance against Brentford / West Ham and loose 3-0. Forces their hand.

 

[stevoc]

That'll put us back in the same mess again.

Ask yourself this, what happens if we get our Di Matteo and fluke a big trophy? How far someone like that be allowed to sink the club? Relegation?

We need completely destroy this mindset within the clubs fanbase. And that won't happen until we're willing to see this one out. We've already invested 600m and 2 years into this so let's get something out of it.

I don't think that's possible mate. We've just had 11 years of sections of the fanbase refusing to blame anything on the manager, lumping all of our struggles on the players and refusing to call for the manager/s to be sacked. Despite it being clear at various stages that the managers for the most part have been responsible for us struggling either directly through shite tactics/management or indirectly through the club allowing them to identify and buy a load of mediocre players. Unfortunately 26 years of having one wildly successful man running the show that the fans sided with over everyone else (Owners/Ceo/Directors/Players/etc) has did a number on a load of them and they probably can't imagine not wanting that figure to be replaced by a new guy.

 

[Judas]

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.

Personally think this is crybaby nonsense.

I’d rather be where we are currently instead of with the Glazers purely in control obviously, and I’m sure most would agree. Yes he should have been sacked in the summer, but the attitude towards sacking him was tragic after the FA cup, the noise was overwhelming to keep him, and INEOS clearly did look into getting rid anyway.

They were caught between a rock and a hard place if they’d binned him straight after even though business and footballing wise it was the clear decision, it’s obvious why it didn’t happen.

 

[crossy1686]

Yet we all know that there's not a single manager on the planet who could have been successful over the last 10 years with the way the club has been run.

Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, Zidane, Enrique all would have failed huh? What's the point then? We might as well just fold the club if we're going to spend a billion for nothing.

 

[Xtal]

Our next manager has to be English. I want a dynasty built at Old Trafford again while we claim our perch from Manchester City. Howe, Potter, Southgate in that order. Manchester United is a traditional club, I want an English manager. We have good ones.

 

[Judas]

Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, Zidane, Enrique all would have failed huh? What's the point then? We might as well just fold the club if we're going to spend a billion for nothing.

It’s a load of shite. Even Jose if he’d come in straight after Moyes I think things would have gone different, purely due to the character of squad he'd have inherited.

 

[manichester]

Nero fiddling while Rome is burning.

 

[AndySmith1990]

Yet we all know that there's not a single manager on the planet who could have been successful over the last 10 years with the way the club has been run.

We don't know that though. Despite being owned by leeches and a CEO who was an idiot, we still won some trophies. We simply haven't hired any managers capable of winning the two big ones. That doesn't mean every manager would be incapable.

 

[CraftySoAndSo]

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.

I think in theory it could work really well, and if/when ETH gets the boot he's someone I'd love to see approached especially considering the lack of potential candidates.

If you compare the profile of Bournemouth's first 11 and ours you can see how it can be transferred. In midfield they cover so much ground and constantly snap at the heels of the opposition, often giving away small fouls to either break opposition momentum or a counter. We'd have Ugarte and Mainoo, Ugarte already plays a similar role for Uruguay with Bielsa and would be extremely efficient in that type of role. Plus we wouldn't need to worry about needing technical midfielders as Iraola's direct style focuses on getting the ball to the front four as quickly as possible so wouldn't get caught in midfield so often.

The attacking midfield three are all very pacey and direct, due to their direct style they're never far away from the forward and often run beyond him. Because of this, the forwards link-up play has to be very good but also often is the first man to press. I think we've got the players to play this way very effectively, I'd love to see Diallo off the right, Garnacho off the left and Bruno just off Zirkzee or Hojlund. Or maybe Zirkzee off Hojlund as Kluivert often plays that role for Bournemouth and plays very close to the striker, almost like a second striker which Zirkzee could play very well.

 

[Rooney in Paris]

We don't know that though. Despite being owned by leeches and a CEO who was an idiot, we still won some trophies. We simply haven't hired any managers capable of winning the two big ones. That doesn't mean every manager would be incapable.

It doesn't, and it's pure fiction, and the past anyway, so it doesn't matter too much - but it does make it pretty unlikely. The most successful club of these past 10 years is one where things were ran in an extremely professional (based on cheating, of course) way. Liverpool had a great few years, with little to show for it overall but still competing for the top trophies, with a very good management team in place (until Klopp tried to gain too much importance). Arsenal is on the rise with a very good structure in place. These things matter, and had we succeeded in a more dramatic way, it would have been in spite of our structure, and not thanks to it.

We now seem to have that structure, but it takes time for it to come to fruition. We're definitely in a better place than we have been in years, notwithstanding the over-dramatization of a microcosm of games (in the long run) over the past few weeks.

 

[Captmfla]

Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, Zidane, Enrique all would have failed huh? What's the point then? We might as well just fold the club if we're going to spend a billion for nothing.

Pep won't fail so miserably. He knows how to build a team, play decent football and force the players to work hard. He would bring the team closer to Top 4. Similar can be said with Ancelotti.

Can't say for sure regarding Zidane or Enrique.

 

[stevoc]

Correct.

There's still people defending some our post-Fergie ex-managers, despite the fact that they were all monumental failures. The only argument to be had is who was the "least worst" of the lot. And, that's up to personal preference. I genuinely believe the weird affiliation to managers will continue unabated, no matter how much further we fall.

It'll continue for a long time yet mate I agree, 26 years is a generation. Lot's of United fans knew nothing else but Fergie being manager and continual success, now the last 10 years have been shit. So basically they want Fergie back or the next best thing.

There's a case to be made that the clubs struggles post Fergie have been largely down to the Glazers/Woodward also searching for a new Fergie. Every manager has inherited SAF's power and control over transfers and the football operations instead of implementing a proper footballing structure. And if you go back even further that may have also been the case in the 70's and 80's when the club were searching for the next Busby. It's a bit of a scary thought that outside of the Busby and Fergie eras you have to go back to 1911 when we last won a title under a different manager, and even then we only won two titles pre Busby.

 

[Apokalips]

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

Agreed, he does not have the charm or likability that any of the others (apart from Moyes had).

I really don't get when people say they "love" him because he just has 0 personality and comes across deluded and arrogant now that his performance is so abject.