Yup. I hate how we’re constantly in transition and always going back to square one. We need to get rid of EtH but I have no faith that any of the managers that are being named as possible replacements for him could break the cycle, which is what we need to do. We need someone who takes us beyond challenging endlessly for the top four like Spurs and get in someone who actually gets us competing with the top dogs.
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25
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Not harsh at all especially for a manager in their third season.
Yes I was going to give him at least 117 to bed in.
It seems many of our players have thrived on international duty. I wonder what the difference is?
These past few weeks couldn’t have exposed ETH as the poor coach/man manager he is any more. Southampton must be licking their lips.
These past few weeks couldn’t have exposed ETH as the poor coach/man manager he is any more. Southampton must be licking their lips.
It's the lack of vibes, we need vibes.
No the vibes most of us on here are feeling!
No, I agree.
We've done limping through large chunks of the season. We know it's unsustainable, and regardless of how much and how well we've spent, we've seen far worse sides put in far more cohesive performances on a far more regular basis.
Palace away is the sort of game that, in a season that's largely going well, you can forgive a draw, or even a defeat, but when it's your fifth game of the season, and you've already lost away to Brighton, you really have to be winning.
Ultimately, as unimpressed as I am by our squad, I still don't think we should be losing more than two or three times at home across the season, and even away from home we shouldn't be looking at more than five or six defeats at the absolute maximum.
It says everything that people are looking at the two weeks of fixtures after the international break and they're not full of confidence about a string of good wins. A newly promoted side, a team from League One, the (distant) third best Dutch team (currently 11th), and a distinctly mid-table Palace side. Four from four, or feck him off.
Ten Hag should try wearing a turtleneck again.
Impressive how clueless the team looks even though he has had that many games to coach them.
Would be an improvement on Ten Hag's zero vibes and zero tactical nous.
He has improved us a lot since Liverpool game, give it a few more days and we will be close to where we aim to be. Then unfortunately we will have to play football again.
Absolutely not. We over rate our players massively. It should be a top 6 side but put together with top 3 finances. That’s the problem. Those list of players aren’t better than what obviously the top three have. Spurs have better players and Chelsea, Villa, Newcastle is basically a toss up.
Midtable is where we at. Somewhere between 7th and 14th, depending on injuries and players form.
Most of this is just funny, nothing more to say. At least the next manager will be seen as a genius and buy himself a lot of patience for making a good, underrated squad play to their level.
No argument then, just the same old "ignore what's said and pretend they all love the manager"
City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have better squads.
The same plus Spurs have better first XIs.
Our forward options are weak.
Which is the funny bit?
I think our squad is capable of better than what we're seeing, but it's a very underwhelming bunch, especially in midfield and attack. We've got far too much young and learning in attack and too much past it in midfield.
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Where would you place our squad at then?
I’d struggle to name a position that we are comfortably top 4 for in terms of squad quality and depth apart from maybe CB now and RB too?
I don't think Chelsea and Spurs do, at all. Liverpool only because of 4 all-timer players carrying them, otherwise the rest of their squad isn't exactly elite either.
That’s on the manager then. He’s brought in the majority of these sub standard players.
Not a chance.. with a forward line like ours we can only hope for 5-8.. there is not enough goals and 2 of them shouldnt be anywhere near a team like United, one had just arrived and 2 is still very young. Our strongest part is the defence, where we still have 2 players who cant be trusted to be fit and a keeper who is not good at anything really..To get into top 4, we need extreme luck and a great manager, which we dont have.
You're just shitting on our players thinking other teams have it better.
Onana is a better ball-player and passer than any rival keeper bar Ederson, and even though he wouldn't get in over Vicario or Alisson at Spurs or Liverpool, he sure as hell would start for Chelsea, and probably Arsenal too. Obviously starts for Newcastle and West Ham too. Villa is debatable.
"Our defense is okay": Dalot and Mazraoui are both among the best full-backs in the league, just that both of them objectively cannot be considered the best. Both of them have a good case for being a top 5 right-back though. De Ligt and Maguire are both up there with the best organizer-type CCBs around, like Dias or Guehi. Yoro has best in the world potential. Martínez is probably the best passer (Stones and White being his only competition in this regard IMO), and most press-resistant CB/LB in the world. Shaw is the best traditional left-back in the world when he's fit. Malacia is a very solid inverted full-back rotational player. Which rival teams do you think have a better defense on paper other than Arsenal, City and Liverpool?
Fernandes is the second best #10 in the world after De Bruyne. But casuals will say "Odegaard is miles better" etc. I don't have the energy to argue against these types of posts anymore, with people who don't know what makes a #10 actually great, or just cannot judge talent and players at all.
Mainoo has a case for starting for every single team in the league, even City and Arsenal.
Rashford will be back to his best as well, which is 2nd best LW in the league after Son, as soon as he's not being played far away from the opposition goal as a touchline winger.
Hojlund is one of the few 30-goal per season potential U23 players in the whole world, whilst people are still debating whether he's better than Jackson or not.
The likes of Garnacho, Zirkzee, Amad and Mount would be key players at Villa or Newcastle.
This is why I'm ignoring large parts of posts I'm replying to. Whenever I write long posts and present many valid arguments, I get the same one-liner answer I basically replied to in the first place. What's the point then? These posters likely barely even watched the players they're so confidently talking about anyways. A new manager will likely come in at one point in the next 12 months and we'll see then who was right.
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Our defence in theory is one of the better in the league now, and it shows how quickly you can upgrade an area of a squad with the right investment. In theory.
The idea of squad strength as if it is some fixed value is stupid. Football is not played on paper.
We of have plenty of talent to easily challenge for top 4, and maybe even the league under a really good manager.
These same players go on international duty and are great performers, outperforming some of the players at the likes of City, Liverpool and Arsenal, and yet when the come back to our team they look like they can't even string two passes together.
You can speculate about the squad, but by that same token we also have the worst manager out of the top teams as well.
We of have plenty of talent to easily challenge for top 4, and maybe even the league under a really good manager.
These same players go on international duty and are great performers, outperforming some of the players at the likes of City, Liverpool and Arsenal, and yet when the come back to our team they look like they can't even string two passes together.
You can speculate about the squad, but by that same token we also have the worst manager out of the top teams as well.
Yeah, a lot of people are rating our players and squad based on the clubs worst season in 3 decades. Playing a system that made most of them look shit. Fair enough I suppose.
But under a different manager most of these players could and really should look better. Not many would have rated most of villa's squad as one of the better squads in the league 2 years ago. Yet Emery has elevated them and added some good buys into the mix.
Sorry to say, i have never seen such bs before.. you would have made a great Liverpool fan in 90-00.. There is absolute nothing in Højlunds career that point to him being a potensial 30 goal striker.. After Denmarks game last night, he will be lucky to start again.. The last year Denmark has been better whenever Højlund hasnt played...and the talk about him scoring 30 goals, thats just Liverpool-ish
This is fair and true. I think Ten Hag is seemingly an ordinary manager for this level and is being given far beyond what he deserves by this club and parts of the fanbase. He doesn't seem capable of elevating players and getting more out of what he's got. Even some of the more basic of managers of the past manage to do that, even if its just due to better man management or having personality. But he doesn't seem to have those skills as an outsider looking in.
None of that is true though. I recommend to watch the documentary about the bombing and listen carefully to Watzke.
Zodiac Tuchel didn't say anything. He did whine about wanting to postpone the game only after they lost. He could have said something right away, you know as well as I do that he would have gotten all the attention he wanted.
Yes, he looked off, but that is mainly due to one of the explosives going off very close to him. He composed himself very quickly, quite impressive.
That was the beginning of the end for him at Dortmund, he fell out with Mislintat - or whatever his name is - before that (of course he did...) and then got into it with Watzke after the bombing. There was no coming back from this.
The empathy part made me laugh though. Science fiction.
Players looking better as soon as they play under different coaches with comprehensible systems of play. It is as I have said - he is making the team less than the sum of its parts. The squad isn't brilliant by any means, but a proper manager should challenge Top 4 comfortably with it, especially after a good transfer window. He can't manage unless he has overwhelming quality advantage over the rest of the league. The only thing he is challenging here is the bottom half of the table. The fixture list for the remainder of this month is fairly light, yet I have no doubt the season will be written off by the end of it after a couple more humiliations.
A show of great incompetence by INEOS when they decided to keep him, but doubling down is just negligent.
A show of great incompetence by INEOS when they decided to keep him, but doubling down is just negligent.
See this is the thing. United should never be boring, but that's exactly what we are with how we play. We are so crap to watch and I don't see it improving this season, we might end up being more solid but I can't see us playing exciting football I enjoy. And I haven't done for a while now.
Plus, I think a ruthless club sacks him after the 7-0 to Liverpool. Yes, there are other factors and context, but for the rest of time he was manager of the United team that lost 7-0 away to their fiercest rivals. I look at other huge rivalries, and if that happened say at Rangers / Celtic, Madrid / Barca, even Arsenal / Spurs, does the manager survive that result? I rather doubt it.
Onana is comfortably the worst keeper in last season's top eight. He's save-phobic and prone to massive, costly errors. He may return to his pre-United form, but as of now, he's not come close to looking like the goalkeeper you've described there since moving to the Premier League.
Our defense is probably our best position, but we're yet to see what Yoro can actually offer (and won't for a while), De Ligt is very much settling, we're hoping Martinez can find form from two seasons ago, Maguire remains limited (and error prone), and we don't actually have a fit left-back, with Shaw unable to stay fit for more than a few games, and we've now not seen Malacia in over a year. It may well be the best defense of the "chasing pack", but it's not so much better than the rest that it's going to be a huge difference maker.
Fernandes is basically our only consistently fit, top class player. There's a reason I've largely omitted him from discussion. Mainoo is a phenomenal talent, but still seems to be struggling with the stamina to last 90 minutes. Ugarte will hopefully provide another solid first team option. After that, Casemiro and Eriksen are basically done at this level. I don't think a new manager can do much more than mask their failings a bit better. Mount is as unreliable as Shaw, and is yet to actually show us anything of note anyway.
"Rashford will be back to his best"? When? He's started this season basically as he finished the last. He's made one good cross in three games, and that's been about it as far as his contributions go. Hojlund, Zirkzee, Garnacho and Amad are all unrealised potential. I really hope one or two can kick on this season, but they haven't yet, and so we can only judge them on their current level. We don't have a proven goalscorer, which is a massive black mark against our attack.
Our squad is good enough for top four. Our squad is not good enough to comfortably distance itself from the squads of Villa, Spurs, Chelsea or Newcastle. I don't think that's a particular controversial take, but you seem to have real issue with it.
You're 100% right, in my opinion. We have a good core that should have no problems getting into the top 4, and only needs 3-4 quality additions in order to be able to challenge for the league.
We'll see
So you are judging Onana based on a season where he played for one of the worst teams in the league according to underlying statistics, that ceded possession and control against anyone they faced, even league one sides, and conceded 20 shots every game?
This is basically my whole point, you are judging players based on last season, which is not going to give you true answers.
No let’s add context. Ruud left because he said himself he wasn’t ready for managment and he had to be talked into taking it on on the first place. Ruud has no more experience than Ole had. So for anyone that screamed about Ole being inexperience, they should be doing the same for Ruud too.
I didn’t, I’d give him the interim job. Then again I’d give it to a wheelie bin at this stage
We’ve got a good squad, anyone with any sense knows though there is a glaring issue in the attacking department. Everything else I think we’re comfortably top 4 as long as we sort the injury issues from last year.
But we shouldn’t expect too much right away. We'd need to give the wheelie bin a few windows under a proper structure before we could judge it properly.
Pscyhoanalysis of managers based on how they look and some things they said. Makes sense.
I would say 'close to top 4'.
But the reality is that we are a long way away from City and Liverpool and Arsenal.
We will learn whether that is the case when the recent signings have a chance to make an impact.
We've a lot of unrealised potential and a few players that have shown better going back two or three seasons. The hope is that the former group start kicking on sooner rather than later, and the latter (where not age related) re-find that form. If that happens, I think we are easily a top four side, but it hasn't yet.
In terms of individuals, I think Casemiro is done. I don't think that's a managerial issue. Whether it's physical, mental, or a combination of the two, he's not got it anymore at this level. I also think Rashford is what he is. He's basically become Lingard, but a rung or two above. He's 27 next month and should be in the peak of his career, but we're still waiting for him to reach that next level and find the consistency that would truly mark him as a top player. His best goal return is 17, which he's managed twice. There was a two season gap between those returns, and his next best returns are 11 and 10 goals. I also think Onana and Antony are lost causes. We can mask the failings of the former with better overall performances, and can probably get away with kicking the can down the road there, but I don't think we're ever getting rid of the inexplicable errors. Antony just isn't cut out for this level.
As for Villa, there was already a decent set of players in that team when Emery came in. Gerrard was just an awful, awful manager. They've also spent fairly well. However, I think it's quite likely that we see them noticeably drop off this season. They tailed off a bit at the end of last season, winning just three and losing four of their last 11 league games, and getting tanked by Olympiacos in the Conference League. They've got the increased weight of expectation to perform in the league this season, and an extended Champions League schedule.
I think we need a bit more than that. Injury-wise, we're only really looking at Yoro, Shaw, Mount and Hojlund, at this point. Yoro is 18, Mount hasn't played consistently (or well, for that matter) since his penultimate season at Chelsea, and Hojlund is yet to kick on. Shaw is the only player who I think instantly improves our team, without question. We'd need Yoro to hit the ground running, Mount to essentially seem like a different player, and Hojlund to become a reliable source of goals. I don't think any noticeably improve our first team, and I don't think our current first team comes close to being "comfortably" top four.
I can accept the argument for the defense being top four (although I'm not sure it's "comfortably" so), but not for the goalkeeper (if you count that as a separate position). He's a calamity. If you include Onana in with the defense, he lowers it's average quality, and it's certainly not "comfortably" top four then.
The midfield is also not "comfortably top four" in my opinion, even with Ugarte. Assuming Ugarte/Mainoo/Fernandes becomes the preferred three, we're still an injury or Mainoo getting gassed away from having to call on Mount (if he's even fit), Casemiro, Eriksen or Collyer - a thoroughly underwhelming set of back-ups.
You've acknowledged that the attack is "a glaring issue".
We're good enough for top four. But I really don't get where this "comfortably" thing is coming from.