I agree that the idea that he should only be sacked after a loss is illogical. Notwithstanding this, it may be possible that given the number of changes to the backroom staff and players, the hierarchy have decided to give him a bit longer to sort out this enormous mess.
The players are his and the staff are his, if you sack the man - there will need to be yet another rebuild. The cycle may go on and on...
I'm not sure about that. Is it really that much of a big deal? Managers in the PL are sacked all the time, and the coaches/backroom staff are shifted around as a result. I don't think that should be something to cause a delay. Not if we're intending to become a serious club again.
As for the players, well, they shouldn't be entirely "his", since INEOS arrived, they have taken ownership of the footballing structure. ETH should have had input in this sure, but not total control. The players we've signed since INEOS' arrival should be fitting their long term plans which any new manager should be able to come in and manage. The days of scattergun signings controlled by a manager should have ended the moment they took control and if it didn't, we're in the same deep shit as we were prior to their takeover, almost like there was no point.
100%.
To beat City, who have set the benchmark in recent years (vomits in my mouth), the way we did would give anyone cause to think: Could this guy get this level of performance out of these players more often in the right circumstances?
However, they have given it a go and its clear that he can't.
Even if Garnacho hadn't f'd up the 3 on 2 in stoppage time and we had stolen it, what would that have told us? There's quite a body of evidence to suggest the best Ten Hag can do with our squad is set up to counter. Worse, we are even more reactive now than we were when he first took over. Instead of looking something like Jose Mourinho's Madrid we are looking like late stage Mourinho Man Utd. Is that worth persisting with until 2026?
That's my reading of it too. The way we defeated city was very impressive, it wasn't a smash and grab lucky victory, we genuinely deserved to win and were better on the day. If you look at the context, most of the players had come back from being injured too - injuries were a major hinderance last season. So it's not beyond comprehension that INEOS might have looked at it as though he deserves a chance. A lot of fans thought the same.
He has now had that chance, the proof is in the pudding, he has not succeeded and it's time for a change. We are not on an upward trajectory, we are regressing.
As for if we had got the win v.s. Villa, it wouldn't have told us anything, the performance was still very poor, we are toothless and allergic to scoring. The only positive if we're clutching at straws is we weren't as easy to score against... but is that genuine or a one-off? We just shipped 3 to Porto and they scored easily.