Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Votes can now be changed

Erik ten Hag

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Just to put another perspective on this. As a Manchester United fan, I was absolutely delighted when I heard Klopp was leaving Liverpool as I will be when Pep decides to leave City. It weakens our biggest rivals. Conversely, anyone who supports Liverpool or City, who I’ve spoken to, were over the moon when we decided to keep EtH in the summer. The results so far this season have backed up their delight!
 
sparx99 said:
Sure, but we aren’t attacking exactly the same way for three seasons. There has been a marked improvement from last year in terms of the chances being made.

At this point it’s on the players missing those chances and we are stuck with them until January. If you want to blame Ten Hag for hitching his success to these players then that’s fair. But it’s not tactics that are the problem in attack right now. We are missing clear chances.
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sparx99 said:
Yes, I was specifically discussing our attacking form though. You can’t make the players better finishers. You can create more chances and that’s what we’re doing.

Last season is last season. The disaster was a combination of Ten Hags tactics and the injuries coupled with poor form of key players.

The only yardstick that matters is how we are compared to the teams we are competing against this season. Outside of the Liverpool game we deservedly beat Fulham & Southampton and should have beaten Palace. We wouldn’t be the first team to not be able to win a game we deserved to win. The Brighton game was more even but most would say we deserved a point if not more especially with the freak offside goal.

It feels like to me that people are being extremely reactionary to any and everything this season because they have already made their minds up. Results need to improve but the unlike last season our underlying performance suggests that should happen.
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I just dispute that the tactical failings in attack have been adequately eradicated. I still think we have lots of tactical issues in attack. Despite creating more chances this season, we still often look slow, imbalanced and lacking in ideas when trying to break teams down. Especially later in matches once our opponents to have made adjustments. Ten Hag hasn’t yet demonstrated an ability to himself respond with changes which can force a break through, despite now having much better options off the bench.

So no, I just don’t accept our consistent lack of goals is simply and only down to poor finishing. All teams miss chances. Palace also missed chances.I think Ten Hag’s coaching, set up and tactics are still a limiting factor in our attack. I still have no doubt that other managers could get a better attacking tune out of this set of players.

I still don’t feel as if sufficient goals are an inevitability with this team set up in this way, especially when we have much tougher opponents coming up. And I still don’t feel it’s an inevitability that our results will improve just because we m’re creating more chances and had a good half against a poor Palace team and a good result against a poor Southampton team. We’ve seen so many false dawns and many of our previous failings which have regularly cost us results are still there.

Is that a reactionary take? Or are there some legitimate justifications for being underwhelmed by a slight increase in chances created during a fairly gentle start to the season?
 
Top_Bins said:
They're a well coached side.
There's always the possibility he flukes a win I suppose.
Would be just our luck for him to limp on 'til Xmas and kill our season again.
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Yeah especially when you have Romano coming out with quotes about INEOS giving him time for Yoro to come back.
 
RDCR07 said:
Give it to Ruud and get Amorim in next summer. Don’t care if we have pay £20m for his release clause.
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Problem with paying a high release clause will only lead to super high expectations. It didnt work at Bayern recently and Chelsea a while ago. The fans will be expecting magic, a Harry Potter instead of a manager adjusting to a new league.

Amorim has not managed at a high level very long either, no different to ETH before he came here.
 
Quoted in the Guardian as asking for more time having ‘made the choice to sign young players’. Slightly ambiguous as from recent transfer history it would appear that is an Ineos policy; the previous policy - where it’s logical to assume he had more input - being more consistent with ‘made the choice to sign my former players’.

It would be nice if someone, anyone, using the expression ‘more time’ would actually define it. Constantly used be the media, particularly pundits, and, without setting out how long they actually mean, it’s absurd.
 
Sarni said:
Yeah and league is also meaningless because we won’t get relegated whether we finish 16th or 5th. And we probably won’t finish lower than 10th anyway

CL is also not very important because we aren’t going to win it anyway. Essentially only League Cup and FA Cup are important because if you lose you are out.
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No, League Cup and FA cup are important because they are the famous “cups”. The cups that has made Eric Ten Hag the 2nd best manager in Premier league so he says.

Because just saying Carling Cup makes us look like Rawkites, rather say we won the cup.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
You seem to be trying to change what is being discussed? Who said we went ‘toe to toe’? I said it wasn’t like the 0-5 drubbing.

Are these similar aside from being losses?

(xG)
United 1.52 v 1.5 Pool
United 1.36 v 4.05 Pool
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So, nice. There is a good way to lose. We are losing now but in a good way, that’s tremendous progress.
You like a Pool fan with the alternative table.

Truth is the progress we have witnessed is to go from losing to losing, still by playing boring football and that looks like a good thing for some of you, which should justify not sacking the guy.
 
ayushreddevil9 said:
Blind favoritism for some players is just nauseating.
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He's always accused of this but he's dropped almost every player in the squad at some point.

There's only Bruno left who hasn't been left out and you could argue it's only the last few games where there's a strong reason to do so.

ETH having favourites is a bit of a myth.
 
George The Best said:
But Rasmus is not a natural proven goal scorer - was the point.
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Then why did TH buy him as a main striker for if this is the case, when we need an out and out goalscorer? £70 million down the drain then, if we cant play him to score plenty goals
 
Nogho said:
For us who wants EtH gone yesterday, can you feel that all the people who defends him never have arguments for why. They just use "Fergie got a couple of years", "We cant keep firing managers", "The group must settle" etc. Often not a single one of actual football progress or liking him as a person.

For me, he should have left Carrington after the big Liverpool defeat. Haven't enjoyed my team since.
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sparx99 said:
I’m not deflecting from Ten Hag’s failures. However, it was a lack of creativity that was the issue last season. We literally weren’t even having shots. Compared to this season where we are right up at the top in terms of chance creation and it’s night and day. It’s a fact that we have missed loads of chances.

The other thing is that if you take an early chance you get even more later in games. If you have a lead you tend to get opportunities as the other team chases the game. Look at the missed chances late against Fulham for example.

When I talk about Ten Hag ‘hitching his success to these players’ I’m the one blaming him. I think he made a horrible mistake building around Rashford and Bruno. Two extremely unreliable players. I think he has then compounded that mistake by betting on youth around them. Choosing the promise of Hojlund over a more senior striker.

Many on here have demanded the end to signings like Varane, Casemiro, Falcao or Cavani. Well the flip side is that potential is only that until it develops. I’m glad that we are building on youth but I’m not sure our fan base has the patience for it whether it’s Ten Hag or whoever replaces him.
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We have the 6th best xg in the league so far.
We are 10th for xga, and our expected points has us 7th and we are actually 11th.

The stats suggest we should be mid-table and we are. 3 years and 600million to take us from just outside the top 4 to mid table is frankly appalling.

It is a small sample size this season so it could improve, but it doesn't look that likely.

It is an improvement on last season's stats that had us 14th though, so well done ETH I guess.
 
Teja said:
Ultimately you either accept injuries as an excuse for last season or you don't. First season was just fine in terms of performance / results. I think having negative GD in the league despite the injuries is cause for sacking but the consensus both here and by the management team was to not look too closely into last season because of the injury crisis.

I can begrudgingly accept that and move on and suggest you do the same. We add depth to deal with injuries, give him the new structure and see what happens. Once you arrive at that conclusion, it's hard to do the mental gymnastics to promptly turn around and sack him again after 3 games.

He's clearly on a short leash but the underlying data is one reason to wait a bit longer. He won't make it till the end of the season anyway if results stay this way - data or not.
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I don't accept excuses as to why people can't do their jobs. We've seen many other managers, including some of our own, get results with a weakened team. It's ridiculous to suggest we need the best players in every position to beat teams like Palace and Ten Hag can't be judged until that is true. We're not the only team to suffer injuries, it isn't unprecedented.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Sorry can you rephrase this. As I read it you are saying:

We’ve changed from relegation to 8 to place? I don’t understand, we finished 8th last season, this season we are 11th. I’m lost what I am trying to have both ways.

The underlying stats last season had us somewhere near 14th, now they have us 5th.
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We finished 8th last season despite underlying stats saying we were significantly worse than that. We're currently about where underlying stats say we should be (you say 5th everything else I've seen suggests 7th or 8th).

Putting aside for a second that 7th/8th is not good enough for a United manager, and taking your 5th. You're left with two options:

A) Underlying stats are very important and are the true judge of where a team is.

Or

B) Results are important and how you get there doesn't matter.

I'm sure you'd agree that a 14th place would have gotten ten Hag sacked, so the only reason way we can excuse last season is by the fact he fluked his way to 8th and an FA Cup win.

That implies that you think underlying stats are meaningless, because otherwise you would have sacked ten Hag for overseeing a 14th placed season, so you can't then invoke them this season to explain away poor results. That just reeks of working backwards from a pro ten Hag position.
 
Ichabod Ferguson said:
We finished 8th last season despite underlying stats saying we were significantly worse than that. We're currently about where underlying stats say we should be (you say 5th everything else I've seen suggests 7th or 8th).

Putting aside for a second that 7th/8th is not good enough for a United manager, and taking your 5th. You're left with two options:

A) Underlying stats are very important and are the true judge of where a team is.

Or

B) Results are important and how you get there doesn't matter.

I'm sure you'd agree that a 14th place would have gotten ten Hag sacked, so the only reason way we can excuse last season is by the fact he fluked his way to 8th and an FA Cup win.

That implies that you think underlying stats are meaningless, because otherwise you would have sacked ten Hag for overseeing a 14th placed season, so you can't then invoke them this season to explain away poor results. That just reeks of working backwards from a pro ten Hag position.
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Underlying stats once the season is done kind of are. They’re useful to see if a team has been lucky (like we were) or not but the season is done, so it’s not like we’re wondering if anything will change for that specific season.
 
Redfrog said:
So, nice. There is a good way to lose. We are losing now but in a good way, that’s tremendous progress.
You like a Pool fan with the alternative table.

Truth is the progress we have witnessed is to go from losing to losing, still by playing boring football and that looks like a good thing for some of you, which should justify not sacking the guy.
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Or read the chain before hopping in like your username. Guy said there’s no difference we between any of the Pool losses, there clearly is a difference as much as any loss isn’t good.
 
Zumbi said:
Why are you deflecting from the point I made?

Is drawing with Twente a one off result or is it part of a pattern of failure under Ten Hag with only 1 win in 9 in Europe?
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No deflection - thought it was quite an obvious train of thought. Last season was terrible in the CL but your point is if we were so bad it’s a trend, I think we will buck the trend (get out the group). So bet?
 
UnofficialDevil said:
That's what I'm saying. We have outplayed rubbish teams. Southampton, Barnsley, Twente and Palace for 45 minutes. Let's see how good we are against a team with a remotely decent midfield, and then talk about metrics.
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Well you asked me a question and the answer was basically everyone apart from 2 teams. Not saying the results have been good enough but we’ve been the ‘better’ team in 5/7 games.
 
I think he is a decent coach but I don't think he has the right charisma to manager a club like United. His press conference are boring and he comes across as someone very defensive due to maybe his lack of English. I feel he will do fine in other leagues.
 
The first season ended up being acceptable due to the cup win and finishing top 4. It really went downhill, but my thinking was it would be a launching pad to better things, it was a good start. Instead we had last season which was what our worst PL season ever? That took a lot of the shine off the first season, because it showed that our little purple patch where things were looking good was potentially a bit meaningless.

I'm at the point where I don't want to argue with the tiny handful of people on here still genuinely backing him, it's pointless, I assume they think its what they should do, because it can't be based on what they're actually seeing anymore.
 
sparx99 said:
Sure, but we aren’t attacking exactly the same way for three seasons. There has been a marked improvement from last year in terms of the chances being made.

At this point it’s on the players missing those chances and we are stuck with them until January. If you want to blame Ten Hag for hitching his success to these players then that’s fair. But it’s not tactics that are the problem in attack right now. We are missing clear chances.
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So the solution is to buy even more players?
 
sparx99 said:
Sure, but we aren’t attacking exactly the same way for three seasons. There has been a marked improvement from last year in terms of the chances being made.

At this point it’s on the players missing those chances and we are stuck with them until January. If you want to blame Ten Hag for hitching his success to these players then that’s fair. But it’s not tactics that are the problem in attack right now. We are missing clear chances.
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We created feck all against Twente
 
Giggsyking said:
I wonder what does Omar and Dan think at the moment?
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They will know that he should have been sacked in the summer.

The question will be, how low are we going to have to drop for them to publicly admit their mistake?

It’s a fecking shit situation.
 
£650 million spent and the defence still concedes stupid goals. The midfield can’t control the game. The attack just doesn’t create or score enough goals.

ETH is the worst manager post SAF by a long distance.
 
Redfrog said:
So, nice. There is a good way to lose. We are losing now but in a good way, that’s tremendous progress.
You like a Pool fan with the alternative table.

Truth is the progress we have witnessed is to go from losing to losing, still by playing boring football and that looks like a good thing for some of you, which should justify not sacking the guy.
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There's obviously a big difference between losing 5-0 after being humiliated by the other team, and losing a close fought battle. That wasn't that though, both games we were completely outclassed in and had no shot at getting even a draw. We may have just slightly decrease the degree of embarrassment inflicted.
 
Godfather said:
We created feck all against Twente
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We scored 1 goal from an xG of basically 1. Really no idea what people have on mind when they say that just keep missing chances in a game like that.
 
Feels like we are on the edge of something good, but he’s running out of time. The team needs to start taking their chances in games and showing more composure in games with more dark arts and slowing games down when needed.

Villa and Spurs game are perfect ones for the team to finally take off.
 
Sarni said:
We scored 1 goal from an xG of basically 1. Really no idea what people have on mind when they say that just keep missing chances in a game like that.
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Maybe not the Europa game but in the league we’d have 12 points if our forwards weren’t so inconsistent in finishing.

United have one of the highest XG (a stat I despise in how is used) in the league. That means chance creation is not a problem and once our forwards build some momentum we should start putting teams away.

At the end of the day, out of Uniteds forward line , Bruno is and has been our most productive and clinical forwards. Garnacho , Amad and even Hoijland are young relatively unproven at this level and can’t be expected to consistently prop up a team wanting to challange for top 4.

Rashford having an off season compounded that and while he’s shown glimpses of finding form, the team hasn’t been able to afford him or Bruno being off it.

Zirks has only joined so he’s only settling in now but he works well with the forward line. But that’s more relying on the other attackers getting goals , kind of like weghorst making space for Rashford to get lots of goals.

Many said “if we just conceded less chances , created more chances and had a recognisable style of play I’d be happy”. Well I’d say we can say all three have been accomplished , we just need the team to start taking their chances.
 
Chumpsbechumps said:
Maybe not the Europa game but in the league we’d have 12 points if our forwards weren’t so inconsistent in finishing.

United have one of the highest XG (a stat I despise in how is used) in the league. That means chance creation is not a problem and once our forwards build some momentum we should start putting teams away.

At the end of the day, out of Uniteds forward line , Bruno is and has been our most productive and clinical forwards. Garnacho , Amad and even Hoijland are young relatively unproven at this level and can’t be expected to consistently prop up a team wanting to challange for top 4.

Rashford having an off season compounded that and while he’s shown glimpses of finding form, the team hasn’t been able to afford him or Bruno being off it.

Zirks has only joined so he’s only settling in now but he works well with the forward line. But that’s more relying on the other attackers getting goals , kind of like weghorst making space for Rashford to get lots of goals.

Many said “if we just conceded less chances , created more chances and had a recognisable style of play I’d be happy”. Well I’d say we can say all three have been accomplished , we just need the team to start taking their chances.
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Our xG game by game:

United 2.43 v 0.44 Fulham - we won that game anyway
Brighton 2.09 v 1.43 United - they actually had a higher xG and won. Best case that game should have been a draw, but looking from purely statistical POV we'd draw this game 2-2 only 4 times out of 10.
United 1.52 v 1.50 Liverpool - this is extremely misleading because 1.4 of our xG game when the game was 0-3 and done. We lose that game 10 times out of 10.
Southampton 1.12 v 2.67 United - we won that game anyway. If anything it was more comfortable than that.
Palace 1.01 v 1.70 United - again, we drew that game, statistically we win it 7 times out of 10 due but it's not that obvious

You may argue we should maybe have extra 2 points here on the balance of how this season has progressed so far, Palace being the only game where our lack of finishing actually cost us points.
 
Judas said:
The first season ended up being acceptable due to the cup win and finishing top 4. It really went downhill, but my thinking was it would be a launching pad to better things, it was a good start. Instead we had last season which was what our worst PL season ever? That took a lot of the shine off the first season, because it showed that our little purple patch where things were looking good was potentially a bit meaningless.

I'm at the point where I don't want to argue with the tiny handful of people on here still genuinely backing him, it's pointless, I assume they think its what they should do, because it can't be based on what they're actually seeing anymore.
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Agreed.

Another gripe I have is talking about missed chances, as if the 3/4 genuinely good opportunities we miss in a game are the difference between us getting a result or not. This isn't even accurate, because if you argue that if those chances go in we get a result, then you need to look at the chances we are STILL conceding. Such as, Brighton could have been 3-0 up before we score (Welbeck hits the bar from 5 yards out and Milner has one cleared off the line), Liverpool should have put 5 past us (Salah missed a great opportunity immediately after the 3rd and Szoboszlai mucked about instead of just scoring), Southampton miss a penalty just before we score and then even against Palace we miss a few and then so do they. Just talking about our own missed chances doesn't accurately reflect how the games might have gone looking at other teams chances too.

Finally, I'm also fed up lamenting three chances a game as the definition of being clinical or not. Just watch other teams such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, City etc. It's multiple opportunities a game, very good scoring chances. We have seen it once, against Palace. We don't consistently play games making big opportunities where I would say 'yeah it's just bad finishing letting us down'. We clearly don't create anywhere near enough and that's down to coaching and management for me.
 
Sarni said:
Our xG game by game:

United 2.43 v 0.44 Fulham - we won that game anyway
Brighton 2.09 v 1.43 United - they actually had a higher xG and won. Best case that game should have been a draw, but looking from purely statistical POV we'd draw this game 2-2 only 4 times out of 10.
United 1.52 v 1.50 Liverpool - this is extremely misleading because 1.4 of our xG game when the game was 0-3 and done. We lose that game 10 times out of 10.
Southampton 1.12 v 2.67 United - we won that game anyway. If anything it was more comfortable than that.
Palace 1.01 v 1.70 United - again, we drew that game, statistically we win it 7 times out of 10 due but it's not that obvious

You may argue we should maybe have extra 2 points here on the balance of how this season has progressed so far, Palace being the only game where our lack of finishing actually cost us points.
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Pretty fair assessment of our league games so far. I’d agree with the conclusion that the game against Crystal Palace is the only we should have won but didn’t.
 
Sarni said:
Our xG game by game:

United 2.43 v 0.44 Fulham - we won that game anyway
Brighton 2.09 v 1.43 United - they actually had a higher xG and won. Best case that game should have been a draw, but looking from purely statistical POV we'd draw this game 2-2 only 4 times out of 10.
United 1.52 v 1.50 Liverpool - this is extremely misleading because 1.4 of our xG game when the game was 0-3 and done. We lose that game 10 times out of 10.
Southampton 1.12 v 2.67 United - we won that game anyway. If anything it was more comfortable than that.
Palace 1.01 v 1.70 United - again, we drew that game, statistically we win it 7 times out of 10 due but it's not that obvious

You may argue we should maybe have extra 2 points here on the balance of how this season has progressed so far, Palace being the only game where our lack of finishing actually cost us points.
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Zirkee stopped a defo goal that would have put United 2-1 up against Brighton. I don’t think I have ever seen a goal disallowed for that because it never happens.

You said XG after pool leading doesn’t matter, well United going 2-1 up at that time could of changed the ending and 95th minute winner.

Like I said, I don’t like XG, applying it game on game is not great, but you can’t Select games like pool and say “well that XG doesn’t really tell the full story” and ignore a massive issue with the Brighton one at the same time.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Underlying stats once the season is done kind of are. They’re useful to see if a team has been lucky (like we were) or not but the season is done, so it’s not like we’re wondering if anything will change for that specific season.
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Sure, but if that's your argument then he should have gone in Summer, as he would have done had he actually delivered a 14th place finish.

The fact he's here is because him fluking an eight place finish and the Cup was respectable* despite the performances given the injury situation, but results is the metric that saved him and its only fair if, therefore, results are the metric he continues to be judged by. And, well, the results have continued to be crap.

*I do not actually think last season was ok, even with mitigation, and I'm amazed he survived it. The fact that he only achieved a season that crap and not significantly crapper with huge, huge gobs of luck is hardly worth thinking about.
 
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