I really don’t think I am going overboard at all, though. I think Ten Hag has been an overall failure and should be sacked. But winning the FA Cup and beating Liverpool and City along the way is an impressive achievement, regardless.
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Votes can now be changed
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
Yep. I’m unsure why it’s up for discussion.
Generally speaking, I don’t think fans are remotely desperate to criticize every aspect. If anything, I think most fans have been a lot more patient that fans of other clubs would have been.
The crux for me is that our underperformance in the league and in Europe under Ten Hag has been significant enough over an extended period of time that most of us are unwilling to view that cup success in isolation, or as some kind of shield from what are very valid points of criticism.
Yes, it was lovely to win a cup, and yes, there were some great performances against some very strong teams. But even in that cup run we still severely underperformed against some very weak teams, revealing many of the recurring failings and weaknesses that have plagued us in the league and in Europe (I.E. capitulating and conceding numerous goals in games that we should have buried).
Calling fans who point that out as “desperate to criticize” doesn’t seem like a particularly reasonable take to me.
It’s been a rollercoaster with Ten Hag that’s for sure!
The Barca games were brilliant, and the Liverpool semi/City final, even Newcastle in the League Cup. Picked up a couple of good wins against City, Arsenal, Liverpool in the league too.
On the flip side some horrendous defeats and capitulations though.
Just no consistency. Strange.
He’s a cup manager, but it’s the league where you’ll be judged. The same again this season won’t be enough to save him.
This suggests we don’t train as well, and that Ten Hag isn’t as good as they think
It would point to Eth not being capable of motivating the players on match day. Lacking poor man management skills. In the past he's often spoke about building a strong, fit, robust team that runs more than the opposition. This never materialised, and in most games we are the ones being overrun, outran, out muscled and out scored !!
I don’t see why you can’t be rational, and say that whilst Eric isn’t good enough, that winning the cup was a good achievement. I find that a balanced and reasonable view. I don’t see the need to needlessly criticise certain aspects.
Agreed
I think it’s deeper than that. A coach who was there for 2 years as part of this staff doesn’t know what is going on in match day. That’s a serious problem. If a head coach doesn’t know what the feck is going on with his own team he has long overstayed his welcome.
Against what now?
Agreed. I’m just commenting on it surface level. It’s just comical to present “we train really well but come match day we’re all shocked. There’s no better than EtH” as some sort of defence. Those statement(s) are verifiably false by most metrics.
I mean, brother you’ve been getting your back kicked-in by half of the teams in the league for like two years. You’re out of touch, make flawed assessments, opps have you figured out and you’re unable to find in-game and long-term solutions.
Against what now?
TypoWe didn't even dominate them for that long. It was only the first half that we dominated. Their manager then made tactical changes at halftime to take it to us (as opposed to playing scared like they did in the first half) and right from that period forward it was basically a 50/50 performance that then swung further and further in their favour as the game went on.
Does he forget for most of the league games?
What do you mean? In his first season we've beaten every single big team at OT. So clearly it's not an isolated statistic. He even beat Barca in Europa League that year.
The thing that gets us in trouble are his suicidal tactics that he abandoned after the 1st season in charge.
How do I know it's not just a fluke?
So while we are currently playing suicide ball, ETH has shown that when he wants to he can ditch that and get us a result as evidenced by matches against City and Pool in the FA cup.
Yeah we didn't cope with the opposition well last season whenever they tried to attack. Didn't seem to matter the level of the opposition.
So we can beat big teams sometimes, mostly at home whenever we don't use Ten Hags tactics.
What do you mean by Ten Hag tactics?So we can beat big teams sometimes, mostly at home whenever we don't use Ten Hags tactics.
Are we at a point where managers now trademark their tactics?
The players probably look good in training because they’re playing against each other.
I think saying it was a good achievement whilst also pointing out there were some elements of luck and some underperformances in that cup run is also a very balanced and reasonable view, is it not?
That doesn’t mean people “desperate to criticize” or “needlessly” critising - it’s just reality, and a part of the broader context of where we’re at under Ten Hag.
Just run in a straight line. It’s like playing fifa on beginner where nobody tackles you
I felt there was a needless playing down of the achievement, almost insinuating it was just down to luck that he won the trophy full stop. Hence my response.
None of the comments you were responding to came across as “desperate to criticize” to me. They mostly noted the good wins against good opposition, whilst also highlighting the fact that there were some fortunate moments and underwhelming performances against some lesser teams.
Would be comical for sure!
Even during the days when we dominated the league, rivals like Liverpool always gave us a tough time. So why is it now considered such an incredible achievement that we can step up our game against them? Are we expected to get battered every time? While I was thrilled that we won the tournament, I don’t see beating a rival as something extraordinary. Have our standards really fallen that far?
Wigan, Newport, Forest, Liverpool, Coventry and then City.
I’ll give you Liverpool and City.
City faced Huddersfield, Spurs, Luton, Newcastle, Chelsea and United. All bar one team were PL level.
United have not won the league for 11 years and counting, personally I don't care how many FA Cups, League Cups and Europa Leagues are won. United should be challenging for league titles and getting to the latter stages of the CL. Cups are nice but our managers should only be judged on the main two, regardless of what else is won in the mean time.
ETH can point to them two trophies all he wants, the league should be what he is judged on regardless.
So why doesn't he ditch it then whenever we're up against it? Is it because he can't or won't? Either option is a sackable offense
Are you saying Ashworth is an absolute dud as a sporting director? Thats not good.
I think he’s average. He’s probably good at building departments, making them work together, but I don't trust him to make good football decisions because he’s too close to bang average coaches like Southgate and Boothroyd. It might not matter much depending on Wilcox and Berrada’s influence
You don’t think this was an unnecessarily negative comment in response to me suggesting the cup win was impressive? That was literally the only comment I responded to as such, and is a sarcastic comment mocking the achievement.
I will only say it once more now, but I do not think Ten Hag should be our manager and should be sacked.
So you agree with me then
Sorry mate more power to you, but this is some serious rubbish, nobody else plays with such large gaps between the lines, nobody, because it is mental to do so.
We have not lost and drawn all the games we have due to bad luck, maybe the Rashford sending off in Europe last season, maybe the Zirkzee offside touch, but the vast, vast majority is down to piss poor coaching and tactics..... Honestly the cult of ETH has some weird Koresh Kool-Aid going on, 2 seasons and 7 games of rubbish and people are still kneeling down at his altar! and telling everyone else that they are blind because they cannot see the light, could just be a reflection off his head!
And literally letting Football Manager auto run our team would be better than Ten Hag, any manager within reason will be a massive upgrade, ETH is a train wreck and he is not going to improve, you know what I work in management and I have to sit through these management BS seminars every now and then, and "actionism and impulsive. The opposite of smart and foreseeing" is the kind of empty meaningless tripe that they peddle and try to make it sound like it has some gravitas and great wisdom.... what you have said is literally meaningless, it is just words designed to sound wise and therefore must be correct! just to be clear actionism (not that it is a word) can be smart and foreseeing, inactionism (also not a word) prevents necessary change and creates a negative reinforcement spiral, see I can make up management BS too.
£17m may be set in stone, like I said it is a fairly safe bet that another decent manager, even if not our dream manager will save us that in prize money, hell they only have to finish 8th again, which ETH is not going to manage and we are £22m better off that 14th which is where we should have finished last season and where we will finish this season if we stick with the bald one! at some point that becomes inevitable, the longer you leave it the worse the odds are that somebody else will be able to rescue anything from our season.
Honestly it mostly was down to luck. The most fluent performance of the entire cup run was the win in the final against City. The 3rd round win away to Wigan was comfortable but pretty much everything between then and the final involved us riding our luck in some capacity.
4th round: We were pegged back to 2-2 after going 0-2 up against Newport County. We salvaged the win but it wasn't a good performance and it was fortunate we weren't facing better opposition than a League Two side.
5th round: It required a last minute winner from Casemiro to scrape through against Forest in a game where we were unconvincing.
Quarter Final: Entertaining match but not one we ever really had control of. It was a topsy turvy match which required an 87th minute equaliser and coming from behind in extra time to win. Still a good win nonetheless.
Semi Final: Blew a 3 goal lead against Championship opposition and needed intervention from VAR to prevent us from losing the game outright. Ended up winning on penalties.
I think you can point to lots of individual moments, but at the end of the day, winning a cup and beating big teams on the way takes a bit more than luck. The majority of teams never win any trophies, including teams like Spurs who have lots of good players.
A side point, but I also think United’s fan base is a big part of why we win so many second rate trophies, even when we’re not a great team. Using the Spurs comparison again, they’ve arguably been a better team than United over the last decade, but United have won five (?) trophies in that time, and Spurs have won none. I sometimes wonder whether our huge support is an important factor in this, because our team and management hasn’t been very good in that time.
Last edited:
Ok I give up. We seem to be stuck with EtH until his contract runs out. This being the case, I hope he finds a suitable balance between his counter attacking game aka Oleball (saving his skin) and his suicidal pressing and leaving gaps in the middle of the field. One can only hope.
So you think being 14th is not below their objectives?
Well we're 14th and 5 pts off the relegation zone and he's still here. So the next "low" is being in the relegation zone. So maybe that's the breaking point.
Can’t believe he hasn’t got to feck yet.