Erik ten Hag | 2024/25

Erik ten Hag

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Hugh Jass said:
It still looks like good individuals rather than a good team.
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Today we did look more like a football team, with severe obvious weaknesses. Some of the link up play prior to a brain fart in the last third was sensational.
 
On the plus side, we're not as suicidally open as we were last season. First half we were the better team and there were periods we actually played nice football, but for the second game in a row we lost control as soon as we took Mount off as he's the one really giving our midfield legs. Even though he's not playing all that well on the individual level, he does seem important to the team as a whole.

Changing our midfield to an aging Casemiro, a tiring Mainoo and McTominay for the last 15 minutes....not sure what the hell that was.
 
I just don’t see how any team that is consistently so open at the back and yet averages like 1.2 goals scored a game is ever going to be successful at this level. What do I know though, the owners believe in him & we just have to live with it.
 
VP89 said:
This season is a new one and we aren't playing the same system as we did last season. Relax it's two games
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New season, same story.

Two games. We looked average in both and have already lost one. Just wait until the early season optimism wares off the players.
We'll be just as bad as last season.
 
Pickle85 said:
Of the signings we've made, only Zirkzee has minutes. We've been missing our first choice centre forward and left back. Last season was an ugly watch but I don't think it's time to push the panic button just yet.

I get it's frustrating and I do think we'll see the back of him this season, but I'll be interested to see how we look when de ligt is established, ugarte comes in and we get Hojlund back.
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How come Brighton, without their first-choice striker, left-back, both midfielders and being led by a new manager managed to win then? And Mazraoui has played two full matches and De Ligt has gotten minutes in both matches.
 
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
 
Godfather said:
Will be quite a hustle to get rid off all these Ajax guys again.
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Boggles the mind that he has been backed to the extent he has. You just know the next manager will have zero use for most of these players apart from Yoro maybe who looks like a future star.
 
We laughed at Liverpool going 30 years without the League. What with City bulldozing it year after year I think we will be thereabouts before we have a sniff
 
Bobski said:
Utd are now committed to Ten Hag, bringing in the players he wants means it has to work otherwise a new manager will be ripping up the squad again, which Utd can't afford. Ugarte will cement that, another hyper presser rather than an all rounder.
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This post is 100% bs. One of the reasons we have a DoF is to stop that from happening.
 
Things were always going to turn sour quickly this season if we were still shite. Was obvious when they decided to keep him.

Unfortunately we are still shite and the inevitable is going to happen. Just a matter of when
 
I guess the general excuse for this season will be "too many new players" so it will take time to gel.
 
Pickle85 said:
Won a cup and we had significant injury problems throughout. Yes, we didn't look good last season, but I didn't see much today to throw toys out of the pram about.
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Any manager can fluke a cup. Southgate almost won a Euros.

ten Hag handed us our worst PL season in history. To say we didn't look good is an understatement.
 
GMoore23 said:
New season, same story.

Two games. We looked average in both and have already lost one. Just wait until the early season optimism wares off the players.
We'll be just as bad as last season.
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We didn't look average in both though. We looked good vs Fulham and unfortunate not to score more. Today we had issues creating against Brighton and that needs addressing, but it was a very tricky tie on the calander and I don't think we deserved to lose the game either.
 
I wonder what he will do when he gets a striker. Right now our 3 midfielders gets to play in their natural position. Casemiro, Mainoo and Mount all play where they want to play. Unfortunately it’s only possible because Bruno is playing as a false 9. It’s early days, but we struggle to score without a striker.

So now what. What do we do when we get a striker? Mount back to CM instead of Mainoo or Casemiro? Bench Mount?
 
On the players that loss for me with lapses in concentration. Messed up on the offside goal. Then the goals conceded. Maguire unable to deal with a cross for the 1st and the whole left hand side of the defence going AWOL for the 2nd in the 5th minutes of added time.
 
BluesJr said:
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
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What was unlucky about 3 unmarked Brighton players in our box in the 94th minute?
 
BluesJr said:
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
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There's nothing objective about luck. Once you keep blaming it every game, you are not unlucky you are just not that good.
 
Pickle85 said:
This wasn't a poor Brighton team, though. They will end up top eight or thereabouts. Not a good result but a loss away at Brighton to a last minute goal is hardly a disaster.
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The strength of Brighton's team is subjective, but even by your own admission losing to a team ranging anywhere between 10th-8th is a poor poor result.

On the backend of last season it is certainly a disaster because the worst thing for the players is becoming accustomed to defeat, there are a few in the squad that collapse under pressure and we're already two games in and United will be taking the rounds for the headlines this weekend.

The result today was a disgrace.
 
Impressed by Brighton. Hürzeler's first top flight season. Locking the game up and being content with the point would have been the easy, safe, decision - which weirdly enough felt like it's what we tried to do - instead they kept going for the win

Big dog, bit nuts
 
Pickle85 said:
Of the signings we've made, only Zirkzee has minutes. We've been missing our first choice centre forward and left back. Last season was an ugly watch but I don't think it's time to push the panic button just yet.

I get it's frustrating and I do think we'll see the back of him this season, but I'll be interested to see how we look when de ligt is established, ugarte comes in and we get Hojlund back.
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I don't think those 3 coming in will change the overarching plan though, which is my point and the same reason I rolled my eyes at people using the injury excuse last season. It's not like I'm watching us constantly make individual errors where better personnel might have done differently. Sure it happens occassionally but not so consistently to be a pattern. I'm watching this gameplan consistently amount to us blowing our load of energy in the first hour of a game, and then when we struggle to score (due to having to play Mount in the first place to have this pressing shape come off properly), we throw caution to the wind and turn every match into a coinflip. It's utterly unsustainable unless you are rolling out prime CR7 and co in attack and know they'll be lethal enough to just win you games, but when instead you're rolling out young attackers still developing in the PL you need to be giving them the best platform possible to succeed, not just saying "hey you'll get 2 chances to bag us a goal in these isolated scenarios, but in return we'll be conceding chances on the other end so don't feck up!".

I've had the same complaint about Ten Hag since the start of last season: it never seems like he knows how exactly he wants his team to function. Half the time we are trying to be this high pressing unit playing technical, intricate stuff while the other half we are looking to play hyper direct and put teams to the sword within 4 or 5 passes end to end. The end result becomes a team that doesn't really excel in either game state and results are predictably hit or miss.
 
hobbers said:
What was unlucky about 3 unmarked Brighton players in our box in the 94th minute?
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Our disallowed goal is incredibly unlucky which completely then affects the rest of the game. Also, at the end is on the players, football is about in game intelligence and not enough of those players smelled danger. The manager can’t do anything about that.
 
Valencia Shin Crosses said:
I'm still mindblown that so many had their heads turned by that cup final win. Especially considering we won in very much a flukey fashion, it's not like we spanked the champions or anything.
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This, it's shocking. You get shit football served for 1,5 season and then a couple of games with good result (and a fair bit of luck), and suddenly people change their minds.

He was given a lifeline from Ineos but he's still on a very very thin ice.
 
MadDogg said:
On the plus side, we're not as suicidally open as we were last season. First half we were the better team and there were periods we actually played nice football, but for the second game in a row we lost control as soon as we took Mount off as he's the one really giving our midfield legs. Even though he's not playing all that well on the individual level, he does seem important to the team as a whole.

Changing our midfield to an aging Casemiro, a tiring Mainoo and McTominay for the last 15 minutes....not sure what the hell that was.
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No other options though?
 
BluesJr said:
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
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The stats say we were second best in most metrics. If someone sees the game different to you, bold of you to assume that you are the objective one despite the stats saying other wise, and resorting to the most objective of all metrics ' team luckiness'.
 
VP89 said:
We didn't look average in both though. We looked good vs Fulham and unfortunate not to score more. Today we had issues creating against Brighton and that needs addressing, but it was a very tricky tie on the calander and I don't think we deserved to lose the game either.
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I thought we looked average in both, to be honest. Nothing special. Not very many chances created.
 
BluesJr said:
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
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Unlucky? Brighton hit the woodwork, and had a chance cleared off the line, and generally looked more threatening and more cohesive after our decent 40 min start. They are also embedding multiple signings and a 30 year old manager.

It’s embarrassing.
 
The Firestarter said:
There's nothing objective about luck. Once you keep blaming it every game, you are not unlucky you are just not that good.
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Today was a good performance. Both things can be true. This was NOT like other performances last season.
 
Who's Kissing Cameras? said:
Unlucky? Brighton hit the woodwork, and had a chance cleared off the line, and generally looked more threatening and more cohesive after our decent 40 min start. They are also embedding multiple signings and a 30 year old manager.

It’s embarrassing.
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We were the better team.
 
BluesJr said:
People are so unable to objectively ingest football. We played well and controlled large parts of the game, we are a very unlucky team. That’s what happened yet again today.
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If you call that control, I just don't know. Maybe in comparison to the shit show that was last season it perhaps looked like control, but it's certainly not my idea if it. Brighton easily getting at our back four time and time again.
 
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BarstoolProphet said:
How come Brighton, without their first-choice striker, left-back, both midfielders and being led by a new manager managed to win then? And Mazraoui has played two full matches and De Ligt has gotten minutes in both matches.
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Brighton don't really have a first choice striker, do they? In mf they're missing march but who's the other miss? And estup was in and out of the team last season whether available or not. So no, their absentees aren't as significant as ours. De ligt has had mins in both matches but he's very, very much just being brought up to speed. Maz is our second choice right back; I don't think he starts when everyone is fit.
 
VP89 said:
We didn't look average in both though. We looked good vs Fulham and unfortunate not to score more. Today we had issues creating against Brighton and that needs addressing, but it was a very tricky tie on the calander and I don't think we deserved to lose the game either.
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If you think we looked good against Fulham then I'm not sure you can remember us when we were actually good.

We went life and death with them for large parts of the match and at one point, it looked like they were the more likely winner.
We used to crush teams like them. They're absolutely shit.
 
Who's Kissing Cameras? said:
Unlucky? Brighton hit the woodwork, and had a chance cleared off the line, and generally looked more threatening and more cohesive after our decent 40 min start. They are also embedding multiple signings and a 30 year old manager.

It’s embarrassing.
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The result was a coinflip basically at the end. Which is the entire issue, as it's how I feel every fecking Ten Hag game goes. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.
 
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