My god the Hysteria is palpable!
Won't someone, anyone do something?
Won't someone, anyone do something?
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Votes can now be changed
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
This is neither something I said, nor something I reacted to.
I agree. We aren't. Applies to the fans who think "bring in anybody, can't get worse" and it applies to the fans who say "well if we don't a clue who to bring in, then lets keep it as it is for now".
The last 10 (maybe even more) years have been unacceptable in terms of how we acted as a football club. At some point, the consequences of our bad decisions would mount and they would hurt. They do now when we finally brought in somebody who was supposed to update our football to a level, 80% of clubs out there are already on. Will ETH be able to achieve that? No I guess he won't and who knows, maybe he'll get burned on the way, personally not an issue with it. But the direction we've taken is the right one. Positional fluidity, organized pressing, patterns of play and building from the back - those things aren't inventions of ETH and we have to continue that path. Even if it hurts for a while longer. Obviously, there most likely is somebody out there who can achieve that better than ETH does and when he is avaiblable, go for it. But talk about bringing in Ole or Warnock or stuff like that tells me that some fans undervalue the issue we have at hand - middle- and longterm wise.
I know the tenseness is contagious ^^Settle down mate, you're getting yourself worked up in here.
Maybe he meant “could” rather than “would”. Which is fair, we almost went out to Coventry
Something doesn’t add up.
If it’s how McCarthy seems to think it is, then the coaching team is deluded as to what a good training session is, or the players have a mental breakdown when it comes to match day.
Both scenarios boil back to the manager. He bought a load of those players so he knows how they train and if they are mentally strong.
If the coaching teams are exaggerating how well training is going then it’s his remit.
There was the Romero handball on a shot by Garnacho: clear penalty.
AWB getting a harsh penalty against him: Coventry was it?
Or maybe they are training purely the game model, the game model looks good in training but on match day the players we have, are either developing or not good enough to dictate the game model on the opponent which is the ultimate aim of a game model approach (see City).
That's not to say I want to keep Ten Hag, but that may be why THEY want to.
Indeed, I think a lot of people are baffled.
The reports of player buy in, good training sessions and board support for 10Hag have been there since the start of the season.
The manager is pissing off many posters on here with his calls for patience. He must be expecting things to start clicking soon.
I believe there is something wrong with our mentality: a lack of character and professionalism to bring the performances required at this level.
It totally adds up, the coaching staff is incompetent. And it adds up even more if you consider the idea that they evaluate players that are coached by the same people and look good when together but out of nowhere look poor when they face players coached by someone else.
I’d say we are a bigger club now than when Denis Law stuck the dagger in.
Players having mental breakdowns or something not working yet makes sense for a few matches but not for 20 months at this stage.
Those things happen, but usually, it is for a short amount of time. When Pep took over Barca, they lost the first match against a promoted team in Camp Nou, then drew against some random team, and needed last-minute wins against Shakhtar and Betis. The training was probably great, but players were still not properly used to it, which resulted in underwhelming performances, but that was for something like 4-5 matches, and afterwards, they were great. We saw early in Klopp's and Pep's regimes in England, that teamed look good for the most part, but something was missing, until eventually clicked.
Here, it is the typical midtable/low-table performance every week for 20 months now. The only reason why last year we finished 8th instead of 10th-16th (when advanced metrics put us), is cause we had probably the third/fourth-best squad in the league.
So, I go with coaches not being nowhere good enough, and self-judging themselves as great. Happened with Moyes, with Ole, and with past it LvG and Mourinho, all of whom didn't do anything special after leaving United.
Precisely.
He's been expecting everything to magically click for 18 months. At this stage he's probably hoping more than anything.
Nah he said if the ref did his job we’d have gone out. Implying there was some kind of error.
That’s why I say it’s his remit if the coaching team are producing rubbish. ETH fault
I know but I felt that it should be emphasized that it actually makes sense. And if true it also doesn't point to future progress since the coaching staff believes or believed that they were doing a good job when they weren't.
No they wouldn’t, his sacking would’ve been justified as he’d led us to our worst finish in PL history and also had us dumped out of a CL group that we should’ve got through comfortably. Instead they made a knee jerk decision off the back of us winning the FA Cup. Now, unsurprisingly the shit form has continued into this season and we’re currently sitting 14th with a negative goal difference. Absolute shambles.
To be fair there was so much bitching and moaning in the media about that offside being unfair/incorrect. I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking it was an incorrect decision.
I’m not blaming anyone but it’s important to point out its factually incorrect if they are basing an opinion on it.
Pretty simple. The coaches think the players look good in training playing against our own badly recruited players, like Antony who our coach decided was worth paying £90m for. As soon as they come up against the faster, stronger, better players in opposition sides they look average.
Beyond that you don't judge the merit of a decision based on what someone else may or may not have said about it. That argument is based on appearance more than logic and it's also not even true statistically.
The key word is "could" - he'll only get everything due under his contract if he is sacked and then doesn't work for two years, but he won't get that all at once - the club would just continue to pay his salary under his existing contract. Far more likely, as the vast majority of managers do, is he takes a pay off (and even that may not get paid all at once) and takes a new job next season.
And that's not the point I'm making at all. Jim Ratcliffe, when pressed on it, made the point that he pays people to make decisions like whether Ten Hag should be sacked. I assume that the people referred to are the key Football Executives he's appointed. My opinion is that those people will not consider the cost to the club of that decision because that's not what they are paid to do - they are football people, not money people. If they decide he should go, for footballing reasons, I don't believe that someone else in the club on the financial side can essentially veto that decision on a purely financial basis. No top football executive would work in that system and they will have sought clarity on how things operate before taking the job.
If it's "millions" upfront it'll be much less than he's due under his contract. And those millions are not "unexpected" because the club considered sacking him in the summer (hence interviewing other candidates) and then chose to activate a clause in his contract which would increase the cost of sacking him. Clearly, that has all be considered. The idea that they would take the decision to activate a clause in his contract so as to make him unsackable because of the cost is madness.
The likely cost to the club of sticking with a manager they think will fail is likely to be far in excess of the cost of getting rid of him.
If the club can't afford to sack a manager with under 2 years left on his contract then there's much bigger issues.
Fair enough mate.
I should probably read your entire conversation but why are you fixated on the paying him upfront? The issue for United as far as I know isn't about cash flow but accounting, if you sack him you have to write the entire cost of his sacking in your books at the date it happened regardless of the payments choices. So if United are in a difficult situation when it comes FFP/FSR then the issue with sacking him is that you have to quickly offset it with a legitimate injection of revenue.
Any other big club, Real / Bayern / Juve etc, remove Ten Hag for the CL failure alone. The fact we finished 8th after a disappointing year and he still wasn’t removed was bonkers !
Again the start to the season, with us somehow going backwards still, should result in direct action from the board.
Why do we always have to act so slowly and get so attached to underperforming managers.
We need a ruthless streak to be making urgent decisions, before our season becomes a write off.
What about our constant humiliations of 3-0 + against the big teams in the PL then? What about his absolutely disgusting record vs the top 6 teams?
We know the club has many big issues - that's why the club is where it is, cutting costs wherever possible and shaking everything up behind the scenes. Leaning on the line "then there's much bigger issues" in several posts isn't giving anybody anything to think about - we already know there are.
But yeah, I don't know what you're arguing anymore apart from a church&state-style separation between the football and the money, as though the two have no impact on one another.
To make myself as abundantly clear as it is possible to do so without drawing a picture, I have provided a possible reason as to why not everyone at the club is on the same page over Ten Hag's immediate future. Once again, if you have alternative theories, by all means put them forward and we can discuss them.
I'm not, however, particularly interested in digressions that simply restate points I've already addressed, nor am I interested in speculating on the potential payment plan of somebody's outstanding salary beyond what's been reliably reported (because come on now, that just sounds dull as feck), so I'm unwilling to expend further effort on either of those topics with you.
You are correct and that’s why he has to go. Doing it in one off games is great but by now he should had developed some consistency and he can’t nail it down.
You can’t just be a cup manager at United without steady progression in the league.
Indeed. The entire argument about him being good against big teams in EPL is dubious if not nonsense.
In the league alone:
Big teams who have been good:
Played City 4 times. Won 1, lost 3. GD: -6
Played Liverpool 5 times. Won 1, draw 2, lost 2. GD: -9
Played Arsenal 4 times. Won 1, lost 3. GD: -2
Traditional big 6 teams who have been ok/bad:
Played Chelsea 4 times. Won 2, drew 1, lost 1. GD: +3
Played Spurs 5 times. Won 1, lost 2, drew 2. GD: -3
Not traditional big 6 teams who have been recently good:
Played Newcastle 4 times. Won 1, lost 2, drew 1. GD: -2
Played Villa 5 times. Won 3, lost 1, drew 1. GD: +1
Played Brighton 5 times. Won 1, lost 4. GD: -6
Overall. Won 11, lost 17, drew 7. Points per game: 1.14. Overall GD: -24. Which is extremely poor.
We have done better in the domestic cups though. Wins against Newcastle, Brighton, Liverpool and City (all minimal victories), and losses against Newcastle (3-0) and City (2-1).
Mixed in Europe with win against Barca (minimal victory) and loss against Sevilla (5-2).
Counting everything. 16 wins, 20 losses, 7 draws. GD: -26. Furthermore, the toe to toe is absolute nonsense. Wins against Liverpool in the league and City wins, it was Oleball at its best, total smash and grab. The win against Barca was good. Against Liverpool in the cup was quite good. I do not remember the win against Arsenal, against Brighton, they were in free fall with RdZ leaving and it was a decent performance against Newcastle in the cup. However, almost every time we played a true good team, be it City, Liverpool or Arsenal, it was mostly defending for our lives.
How is this fraud called a big game manager is something I am missing?
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Yup, pretty much.
Didn't he say last week Ten Hag lacks the passion/ fire in the belly to motivate players.
Anyways saying players look great and brilliant in training and then it's a different kettle of fish on matchdays is the players are not as good as think they are as up against better coached teams so that's on the manager with how set up. 18 months in as coaching the team and assembled with his own players and no improvement.
He is so lucky to be still in charge. He won't even change things up to try and improve our style, still sticking to to the same shit on a stick football.
Anyways saying players look great and brilliant in training and then it's a different kettle of fish on matchdays is the players are not as good as think they are as up against better coached teams so that's on the manager with how set up. 18 months in as coaching the team and assembled with his own players and no improvement.
He is so lucky to be still in charge. He won't even change things up to try and improve our style, still sticking to to the same shit on a stick football.
No, because the longer he’s been here and the more money he’s spent, the worse we’ve got.
Their disallowed goal in the last minute of the game, it really was a coin toss which way it went.
It was offside by VAR wasn’t it? Pretty objective and not the ref failing to do their job.
From memory we were denied a penalty and the penalty they got was pretty debatable.
You’ know this to be the case?
What’s their plan than?
What are the specific / measurable objectives that have been set for the manager then?
I can see how you might think that, and I’m not saying you’re wrong.
But the club might not have the same expectations as you at any given point in time, and the manager tends to occupy the middle ground between those perspectives.
Realistically, and I really stress I mean realistically, how bad does it need to get before he's replaced. What needs to happen, what are the red lines?
Might not have come across in my post but I used “(any manager)” to try to focus on the position, or the person.
I really disagree with the bolded though. Some people seem to have bought a whim that he’s some sort of pied piper, leading the club and fans on a merry dance. It’s not a very realistic take, especially when his communication skills and charisma are slated at every opportunity!