you've probably missed a few on the bingo card. They've branched out from 'Martinez is injured'.
What about "fine margins"?
The Caf loves that one. The go to argument for why we lose unnecessarily tight games with relegation candidates.
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
What about "fine margins"?
The Caf loves that one. The go to argument for why we lose unnecessarily tight games with relegation candidates.
I said it at the time that the whole way INEOS handled it smelt like Glazers 2.0. Funny that we have come full circle.
They weren’t courageous, they didn’t make a statement after the FA Cup that the new owners would not tolerate 8th place finishes and +1 goal difference, injuries and a minor trophy be damned.
Don’t you think that at the very least we need to achieve top 4 or it’s a lost season? If we put a “safe” point total at 75pts to reach top 4, if we go 10 matches into the season and manage 15 points, we need 60 points from 28 matches. Almost 2.2 points per match…
There is no guarantee that his replacement would be any better, but there is a possibility that a Tuchel could turn us around quick enough now that we can hit top 4
There’s more argument for sacking him now than there was in the summer, although I still believe he would’ve gone had there been a top class replacement available. It was a combination of that plus winning the FA Cup that tilted things in his favour. He’s still on borrowed time, and I don’t think INEOS will rush to get just anyone in, even if they’d be a moderate improvement. Not unless the next month is a complete disaster. The “new structure” really is putting a system in place where we can replace the head coach without having to turn over half the team. I think that’s the long term goal. We’re closer to than now than we’ve ever been.
I see posts like this and I genuinely have to wonder if you've been under a rock for the past decade.
We've achieved your "safe" points total of 75 points just twice since Fergie retired. With Mourinho in 17/18, and with Ten Hag in 22/23. We've finished outside of the top four in six of the 11 post-Fergie seasons.
We are far removed from being able to consider failing to finish in the top four a "lost season". We've a good enough squad to make a tilt at it, but even with a 'good' season (and certainly one far better than last season), we could still miss out.
It really is quite damning that some of us are willing to accept that losing 3 out of 6 games is OK! It's precisely the reason we will never progress as a club continuing with a manager that has consistently shown that his team is inconsistent! There is no magic strategy/tactic/confidence boost that is going create the level of performance that should be expected from a Utd manager. We just need to acknowledge that (sooner rather than later) and move on.
Trouble is there is no such thing as a fresh start, even if there were some valid reasons for last season's underperformance that a new management team took on board.
ETH was always going to be vulnerable to a bad start from the press, let alone from a portion of the fans. Unfortunately that is what is happening.
I voted Back but I regret it now, Mods, can I change my vote?
In the real word at billion dollar businesses, what new owners will and won't tolerate isn't something that has to be done in a big public statement. It can also be done a step at a time.
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Nobody thinks it is OK. But I am not sure the owners are ready yet to say they got it wrong with Ten Hag. We'll have to see what happens over the next few games.
For me the bigger issue than waiting too long, is the uncoordinated succession of managers - we've jumped around managers with wildly different footballing philosophies and so haven't been able to build any continuity, which has led to us starting a rebuild from the ground up after 3 years at most. Throwing another random manager with a different approach is simply the more of the same in my book, it'll be a waste of another 3 years as opposed to at most one more season under Ten Hag if he doesn't turn things around. That's a big part of why I'm so against the idea of sacking him now.
(Joker voice):
They really do, MadDogg. They really do.
The Glazers would have absolutely sacked EtH even after victory, if only they had a suitable replacement.
They did this with Jose and LvG.
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I think the bolded is what took place, but I really hope INEOS tell EtH no more losses in Sept, EtH must sustain a winning streak with proper playing style, we can't just wait for things to click, EtH himself has to be ruthless and bench or even exclude from match squad players that aren't giving 100%, a shift has to take place, we can't have a terrible start again.
but that's me hoping though, I doubt INEOS will rush anything but I really hope they just sack him if we lose any game in Sept
Which other club spends £600-650m in a 2 year period with the goal being to have a tilt at top 4?
Why would Ineos hire a random manager with a history for playing a different style than the one they're trying to implement though?
I'd been under the impression the Woodward days of just hiring the biggest name available regardless of style were over.
That's why I'm a bit baffled that people think we need wait around to to find a unicorn manager. One with the right pedigree of winning trophies and the exact style of play etc.
Thats great if there is one but If we need a new manager the club will just get the best available that will play the type of football they want to play. That's how it works at most other clubs. We don't need the next Fergie, it's OK if the next manager is only here for a year or two until a better one becomes available.
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I don't believe they would, I'm referring to what many in this thread are advocating for, as those are the only own options that seem to be attainable at the moment.
INEOS seem to be backing Ten Hag, and hopefully are putting real thought into succession planning, so that if we have another sub par season we can bring in a manager who will continue in the direction we're trying to head.
He needs 10 points minimum from the league, smash Twente and Barnsley en a good result against Porto
Which other club spends £600-650m in a 2 year period with the goal being to have a tilt at top 4?
We've wasted money, it's as simple as that.
What point are you making here? Everyone knows we've vastly overspent on basically every signing we've made in the last decade.
If they rate Nagelsmann they should have gone for him this summer. They took their time to back ETH, maybe due to a lack of options rather than a firm belief. We are in trouble if Alonso goes to Real and Nagelsmann is hesitant.
No he was horrible for 12 years and then got better.
I'm assuming they're covering his entire managerial career. He started managing in 2001 but did basically take a decade to do anything of note.
I see posts like this and genuinely wonder if you have conveniently forgotten the history of the club, the revenues, our stature as a club in the game, the standards that SAF helped set.
You are absolutely right, we have failed to reach the CL 6 out of the last 11 years. Does that mean that we meekly accept that and slink away while a cheating club like City, and clubs without our history like Spurs, Villa and Newcastle are better than us?
Yes, by the standards of most of our supporters, a year without CL football is a lost season. It also means 75m in lost revenue and makes recruitment more difficult.
I consider it “lost”. Real Madrid and Barca and Juventus, Bayern and PSG would consider it lost as well. Do you want to swim in those waters or are you happy with domestic cups?
If we stop acting idiotic with managerial appointments it won't. If manager is just a head coach it won't. That was supposed to be the whole point of the new structure.
Possession not pandemonium
It won't be a random manager though. It will be a manager that is suited to how the higher-ups want to play in the long-term, as will every manager going forward. Bearing that in mind, we're left with two possibilities.
1) ETH is suited to that style, in which case replacing him with another manager won't be a drastic difference in style (just the new one will be expected to be more successful at implementing it).
or
2) ETH is not suited to that style, in which case keeping him any longer is a 100% guaranteed complete and utter waste of time, as what he is doing isn't suitable at all for where we want to be.
INEOS/Berrada/Ashworth/Wilcox will know how they want to play going forward. The sooner we start moving towards that goal, the sooner we get there. Alternatively the longer we waste, the longer it's going to take.
I get what you're saying mate but the club could could find one tomorrow. Hiring a coach that will play a similar style to which the club wants is easy there are a lot out there.
Would they be top coaches? Probably not. Do they need to be to bridge the gap until a better candidate is found? Again probably not.
You can tell by the position of his neck that he's not fecking around this time. It's a pose of asserting dominance.
Even if we've wasted money and we have ETH has played a part in that. The point remains which other club spends hundreds of millions every summer building a squad in the mere hope of having a go at top 4?
As opposed to being cemented in the top 4 and looking to challenge for the title. The expectations on what we should be aiming for don't seem to track with what we're spending on fees and wages.
Only Chelsea seem to rival us in this regard.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5294650/2024/09/06/erik-ten-hag-tactics-debunked-manchester-united/
Really informative stuff here.
Really informative stuff here.
Is the Red Cafe's view of Ten Hag ("he's got to go") widely supported by United fans? I don't know other Utd fan sites. I ask because I read in daily newspapers that Ten Hag has the wide support and loyalty of United fans. From what I read here, this is far from the truth. Or are we here a sort of one off bunch of malcontents? It's a genuine question.
This is the sort of deluded nonsense we spent years mocking Liverpool fans for. It doesn't matter what we were doing 10+ years ago. We let things slip too far, and we can no longer hold ourselves to the standards of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, etc. A lot of work needs to be done before we can start thinking in that way, and if we keep trying to hold ourselves to the standards of a team that dominates the league, then we're obviously just setting ourselves up for disappointment, as well as giving any manager we have an impossible task.
I'm not saying we need some grand 5+ year plan, but this season (and probably next) is likely to be a bit rocky. It's been an encouraging summer, but it's also been one largely spent removing deadwood and adding potential to the squad, rather than any immediate strengthening. It took Arsenal about three or four seasons under Arteta, and Liverpool two or three under Klopp. If we consider this summer just gone, with it being the first under INEOS, the starting point, I think it's more than feasible we could be a solid 2nd/3rd at a minimum, from 2026/27. For what it's worth, I think it's highly likely we'll have a new manager leading us into next season, if not the new year.
City, Arsenal and Liverpool have better squads than us (the asterisk on Liverpool being whether Slot can keep Klopp's work ticking over). Villa, Spurs, Chelsea and Newcastle are all vying for Champions League qualification too. The fact is, we could even end up with 75 points (something we've only done twice since Fergie retired) and still miss out on the Champions League places (it happened to Arsenal in 16/17).
Setting the stall out at "anything but top four and 75 points is complete failure" given our actual position, and not where we were 10+ years ago is just setting yourself up for massive disappointment, because it's simply unrealistic.
I think this is where the shift in attitude will be from INEOS, should results not pick up (dramatically) in the next month or two.
It seems we had two sets of managers in the summer - those we would have hired but couldn't agree terms with, and those we could have agreed terms with but weren't interested in hiring at the time.
Assuming we can't tempt any from the former category, we'll look at some from the latter and reevaluate our stance on them. I just hope Southgate isn't among that list.
I understand your point, but I'd argue that we simply have to forget pretty much everything prior to this summer.
The project effectively started this summer, and our most expensive signing was an 18 year old centre-back who, for this season at least, is probably going to find himself in rotation once he's back fit, rather than being a guaranteed starter.
There are arguments for basically every pre-INEOS, Ten Hag signing to be on the chopping block:
- We're seemingly actively still looking to ship out Casemiro and Antony. That's £140 million investment and about £500k a week in wages.
- Malacia was only ever signed as back-up anyway, and his injury issues have basically rendered him surplus to requirements.
- Eriksen, Evans and Bayindir were only ever going to be short-term options.
- Mount at £55 million seems to have no obvious place in the system and his injury record is going to see him forced further down the pecking order.
- Onana at £45 million has so far been a disaster, and I can't see it changing.
- Hojlund at £65 million remains a very raw talent and will need to kick on.
- Martinez at £50 million, although good in his debut season, missed most of the last, and needs to find his form again.
Plenty of examples where it is. Real, Bayern, PSG are all also billion dollar businesses. They won’t tolerate it. Ambramovich changed the standards of the club at Chelsea when he did so. In this case, after years of mismanagement by the Glazers, I think it would have been wise to do so.
Let me take you back to reality, INEOS and the new upper management of football have been here for like two seconds. A manager who had a season which stared with managing off the field drama and after which had a unbelievable injury crisis a modern football hasn't seen, regarding one specific part of squad (defence) beging absolutely ravaged. Every single person with a right mind would have thought that it's not normal - something went terribly sideways and we need to reach the deep end first and after which see of the manager of the first team is the right one or we need to reconsider and look elsewhere.
Is there an actual source or interview or is it just media coming up with made up news because its international break.
Actually perfect football journalism without the sensationalism!
The quote isn't from Ratcliffe. It's from Steve Bates at givemesports (whoever that is), and has been paraphrased from some alleged insider source at the club.
The four games thing is basically Steve Bates at givemesports (wheovever that is) looking at our first four games after the break being Southampton, Barnsley, Twente and Palace, identifying that it's a fairly kind run, and making the fairly obvious prediction that poor results in that run will put pressure on Ten Hag.
UtdDistrict (whoever they are) have then basically stolen the piece written by Steve Bates at givemesports (whoever that is) and attached a picture of Ratcliffe as if it's come from him, and not Steve Bates at givemesports (whoever that is).
Thanks, good article.
In the end it comes down to performance. Pool pressed well, were more aggressive in midfield and was clinical. They deserved to win 100%.
We made big errors in build up, our press wasn‘t good enough, we missed our big chances.