I thought it was great cup run because we won the competition by beating two of our biggest rivals. It’s definitely something I would remember. It’s certainly a far better run than the Europa league, EFL Cup, and FA Cup that we previously won under Mourinho and LVG.
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25 | Votes can now be changed
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
Just saw this on Reddit
Taken from the squeeky bug time thread on Reddit. First bit is about the presenter saying to the two guests.
“We’re all talking about whether he should lose his job or not”; that is a shocking line. It’s a witch hunt against EtH right now. These shambolic outlets, and penniless ex-professionals have nothing better to do than fire shots at United. We started the season playing some of the best football I have seen us play post-Fergie era, we have a blip at Palace (Hendo had a blinder btw, shouldn’t have let him go) and all of a sudden the media pile in on us. Since then, is it any surprise we have struggled?! When all anyone does is criticise us?! It’s got to destroy the players confidence when that happens, and EtH is left with the impossible task of picking those lads up whilst everyone kicks them, and him, whilst they are down.
Taken from the squeeky bug time thread on Reddit. First bit is about the presenter saying to the two guests.“We’re all talking about whether he should lose his job or not”; that is a shocking line. It’s a witch hunt against EtH right now. These shambolic outlets, and penniless ex-professionals have nothing better to do than fire shots at United. We started the season playing some of the best football I have seen us play post-Fergie era, we have a blip at Palace (Hendo had a blinder btw, shouldn’t have let him go) and all of a sudden the media pile in on us. Since then, is it any surprise we have struggled?! When all anyone does is criticise us?! It’s got to destroy the players confidence when that happens, and EtH is left with the impossible task of picking those lads up whilst everyone kicks them, and him, whilst they are down.
His philosophy on the ball is to play from the back and being aggressive in attack. Basically, as the ball is progressed, he wants everyone to go all out attack, which allows his team to be vulnerable from counter attack but in return the teams will get to create lot of chances. It reflects to the amount of times we conceded goals from losing possession in dangerous area but also having high xG. The number 1 issue about the risk we are taking in his philosophy is we have average and inexperienced attackers who tend to make poor decision making on the final third such as not being clinical and trying to shoot in difficult angle rather than pass/cross. That means there is no balance in this risk because we don’t have world class and clinical attackers who can overweight the high risk of being vulnerable in defense.
His philosophy off the ball is to be proactive by defending man to man. The PL requires great physicality to defend one v one or man to man. We lack the physicality to defend man to man. When I said physicality, I’m not just talking about strength but also stamina, fitness, and also pace.
Ten hag is very naive and too stubborn to adapt. Currently, the risks in his philosophy overweight the benefits due to both of the players he have and the physical demands in PL. He needs to adapt to succeed in here. Pep adapts, he used to play with overlapping full backs in Barcelona, but in PL, he played centre back with great physicality and good on the ball as full backs to adapt with PL’s physical environment and still maintain his philosophy of playing.
May be by playing different formation or structure and still maintain his philosophy by identifying the weakness and the risk of his philosophy and how changing the structure of the team will help ten hag to reduce the risk of his philosophy. I think the idea of playing 352/343 could help him because one, you’re adding centre back in this formation so that means you’re adding another player with more physicality than someone like Antony, Garnacho, Amad, or Rashford. Then, Having 3 centre back means you add extra body during the build up phase means if somehow the team loses possession in midfield, you have 3 players behind to cover.
His philosophy off the ball is to be proactive by defending man to man. The PL requires great physicality to defend one v one or man to man. We lack the physicality to defend man to man. When I said physicality, I’m not just talking about strength but also stamina, fitness, and also pace.
Ten hag is very naive and too stubborn to adapt. Currently, the risks in his philosophy overweight the benefits due to both of the players he have and the physical demands in PL. He needs to adapt to succeed in here. Pep adapts, he used to play with overlapping full backs in Barcelona, but in PL, he played centre back with great physicality and good on the ball as full backs to adapt with PL’s physical environment and still maintain his philosophy of playing.
May be by playing different formation or structure and still maintain his philosophy by identifying the weakness and the risk of his philosophy and how changing the structure of the team will help ten hag to reduce the risk of his philosophy. I think the idea of playing 352/343 could help him because one, you’re adding centre back in this formation so that means you’re adding another player with more physicality than someone like Antony, Garnacho, Amad, or Rashford. Then, Having 3 centre back means you add extra body during the build up phase means if somehow the team loses possession in midfield, you have 3 players behind to cover.
I genuinely thought he was going to be sacked this week. Now that that didn't happen... November international break is the next logical break point, and if not then the summer. Sadly I get the feeling the cost to sack him is playing too big of a role for the new owners.
No, I don’t. It simply pointed out that not all of the cup run was impressive. And that’s just a fact - some of the games were not impressive, and pointing that out doesn’t mean someone is desperate to criticize.
If that's what he needs to do and hasn't done it yet despite it clearly not working then he's not a very good manager. Time to go buddy
When we were coached by another stubborn dutch and former Ajax manager iirc…
England, Brighton and Newcastle seem to have done well since his time at the clubs so he is certainly doing something right. Hopefully the people we have can complement eachother and make it work.
The major problem is they are not in charge of BHA, anymore. The odd CL finish is not good enough. They need to be involved with title races and the business end of all cup competitions.
Berrada has it in his locker, as does Blanc, but both were involved with sports-washing regimes which, of course, don't play with an even hand.
One thing we cannot be tolerant of is repeated failure going rewarded. Mates rates, and the like. If we are not going in the right direction, executive heads need to roll, too.
Correct. Ashworth is an FA man, an “FA-type” through and through. I’d rather we just got rid of him and let Berrada and Wilcox run it. There’s too many of them IMO, and Ashworth is the one with the mediocre record. No wonder he’s stalling on sacking Ten Hag. He probably thinks a season in mid table is pretty good.
What's mediocre about Ashworth's record?
Also, what's so great about the records of Berrada and Wilcox?
Ashworth seems to have done a job good at the places where he worked. Now he needs to step up because its United. It's the same for the others.
We don't create lots of chances, we don't make high XG. We were 11th for XG last season and we are 11th for XG so far this season.
So ETH's high risk philosophy gives us mid table creation stats and the risk gives us mid table XGA stats aswell.
Compared to the previous 3 seasons our XG has been getting progressively worse as has our XGA.
ETH has spent 600 million to make us a considerably worse side. The squad and manager combination is the worst by someway in the post SAF era.
For me, this is the thing. I felt this way last season around November when he didn't even experiment with the formation. He let us struggle throughout the whole of last season without even trying to make a change in tactics or even just formation.
LVG dabbled with a 532, 4312, 433, 4231 and 4141. Moyes tried a 4141 near the end of his tenure. This guy has had 18 months where our tactics haven't worked, yet we're supposed to believe he's able to tinker to make a change. My feeling is that he's not as good tactically as people want us to think, which is quite obvious to see in his in-game management.
Unlikely, but none of us know for sure.
What I'm getting is that if we sack Ashworth now, we'll know to blame Wilcox in 3 months so we can sack him too. Then 3 months later, we'll know it's all Berrada's fault, so we can give him the boot. Of course this will eventually lead to there being nobody left to blame, which will be very difficult for many to contend with. But until then, there will always be a clear person to focus their rage on, which will give them a sense of purpose and fulfillment, or something.
This is how we’ve decided we’re getting through this two week international break isn’t it? Just a wall of silence where he’s neither backed or sacked.
He was already publicly backed a few weeks ago? They're not going to come out every week backing him, that would be ridiculous.
He should be gone, but people furious they haven't said he's staying are weird.
He should be gone, but people furious they haven't said he's staying are weird.
Sir Jim of Brexit publically declined to say whether he still has faith in Ten Hag when asked by the BBC on October 4th. Weird way to back him.
Obviously not talking about that then am I you silly sausage.
Tis like Joe Cole doing the same things as Messi, if not better, in training.
Good post
Am sure you’ll like it. It’s a good place with good people. I know it was tongue-in-cheek, but I don’t think you’ll find ETH particularly representative, he’s a bit of a one off.
Pigeon, that’s all very well, but if any of the usual suspects had put their hands up and admitted they were wrong, I’m sure we wouldn’t be getting the ‘I told you so’ posts from the other usual suspects.
I just came to type this. I really can’t believe a manager has survived this horrible run of results overall and his appalling stats in Europe. We are one point less than our last year abysmal campaign! I know it’s too soon but with the way we are playing, I don’t see redemption for him and our team
Also it would mean, training against poor team mates, will be easy, but when competing against top quality opposition you will be found out.
Imagine, you're a left back, against Antony in training.. You will be prime Roberto Carlos,.. Then on Match day you meet Saka.. It's a different ballgame
Unfortunately if they’re going by the narrative of it’ll be too expensive to fire him they’ll find out it’ll be even more expensive not too when we’re out of Europe and our league form/position will see us with no European football next season and most likely a mid table finish so not much coming in financially from a league finish either.
Sticking with ETH because of the cost of moving him on is basically writing a season off in October and extending his contract was just stupid, if he had 12 months left as he originally did we may have seen ETH fighting to show he deserved to stay rather than just doing the same thing every game and it not working then simply saying “we stick to the plan eh ? We trust the process eh ? We go again”
We’re in October so a new manager bounce with the decent looking set of fixtures we’ve got upcoming could see us go on a good run and bring some confidence back to the players, this is ETH’s third season and it’s turning out to be the worst so far which is scary based on last season and the fact he’s now had over £650 million to spend to have a squad that HE wanted.
Yup. It's currently 1.78 for ETH and 1.79 for Ole. Both were nowhere near good enough ,and yes, Ole's football was better under our good runs.
Ole managed for 127 league games, whereas ETH has only managed for 83. It's a safe assumption that ETH will be nowhere near 1.78 ppg if he somehow stayed on for 127 league games. Overall, both tenures generally had me of the belief that were/are complete wastes of time.
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Some people here think any of this guy can make big mistakes because they are « football people ».
For now, I am disappointed by their decisions, especially keeping ETH.
But they know things we don’t so we should blindly follow them.
We have one of the most expansive team in the world and it’s easier to get motivated for 2 FA cup games than for an entire season.
So if we judge ETH on the FA cup run, we should also see that he is abysmal in the league 2 seasons in a row. And the league is our bread and butter. He should have been gone long time ago.
People can point to injuries, to Utd maybe getting the rough end of some calls but if you actually watched the games you know that the pathetic results and points total over the last 18 months massively flatters the performances. This isn't a team playing reasonably well under difficult circumstances shafted by fate, it has been a shambles of structural insanity, comically mismatched styles against the attributes of the player, woeful in game management, an inability or unwillingness to adapt, that has often been bailed out by individual moments.
I ask anyone to look back at that Liverpool FA Cup match, started well for 25 mins then the midfield legs ran out trying to make the incompetent set up work, somehow they couldn't sprint constantly for 90 mins. In the match thread the team was getting ripped apart, Liverpool wasted countless transition opportunities, chances that don't show up on XG because they were not getting shots off, but 5/6 4 on 2, 5 on 2 breaks were messed up by Liverpool, they really should have been 3 up before Utd started to recover a bit physically, then Cup chaos with Bruno at CB carried Utd through.
This was one of his triumphs but showed everything wrong with his approach, there is nothing sustainable about it.
Depressing he is still in charge, how can anyone who has watched his approach have any faith in him? I just don't get it, if he is such a good coach, why do his teams look so badly coached?
I ask anyone to look back at that Liverpool FA Cup match, started well for 25 mins then the midfield legs ran out trying to make the incompetent set up work, somehow they couldn't sprint constantly for 90 mins. In the match thread the team was getting ripped apart, Liverpool wasted countless transition opportunities, chances that don't show up on XG because they were not getting shots off, but 5/6 4 on 2, 5 on 2 breaks were messed up by Liverpool, they really should have been 3 up before Utd started to recover a bit physically, then Cup chaos with Bruno at CB carried Utd through.
This was one of his triumphs but showed everything wrong with his approach, there is nothing sustainable about it.
Depressing he is still in charge, how can anyone who has watched his approach have any faith in him? I just don't get it, if he is such a good coach, why do his teams look so badly coached?
The evident mediocrity of it? Doing a decent job at West Brom. Doing a decent job with England. Doing a short stint at Brighton. Doing a short (and unimpressive) stint at Newcastle.
I'm not saying he's BAD, but he is an FA-type and has his fingerprints on appointing or working with coaches like Hodgson, Boothroyd, Allardyce, Sampson, and Southgate.
Look at City hiring Hugo Viana. Sporting won feck all for years until Viana came in an appointed Amorim and signed hit after hit. That's a standout job. Ashworth has never done a job like that. Maybe he will at United, but no one can say that his record shows he can. I think we've gone all out for someone who is quite middle-of-the-road.
Ashworth might be good at organising a club, but I would hope he does not have the primary say in who we hire as a head coach.
Haha thank you for the reassurance! I actually think that EtH maybe has style of speaking which gets fully translated in Dutch with nuances and all. And perhaps his standard of English just gives people the wrong impression of what he really means. Anyway, I am looking to meet really lovely Dutch people in the Netherlands next year!
It’s rude to point. God I’m bored I hate these international breaks.
At this point, I think any manager not contacted by United this summer should take it as an insult.
The reality of the matter is, we don't know that much. None of the people we hired - Berrada, Ashworth, Wilcox - have performed the roles they now have at a big club like United. We have to trust the people who hired them that they could identify that they had the scope to do well in bigger roles at a bigger club (or choose not to trust).
I wonder what and how these guys are pitching to potential managers if this and the Tuchel rejected us thing are true. Adult Disneyland requiem.
ETH is just as awkward in his native language. He has very poor communication skills and seems to be socially awkward.
Edwin VdS actually called him a “weird man” in his leaving speech