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Erik ten Hag | 2024/25
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The difference between sacking him now or 3 months down the line, is at this point the season can still be salvaged if we get a right manager in. It was the same problem we did with Jose and Ole, we left them in for too long and were sacked at a stage where the squad/fans had given up on the season.
Even if he were to somehow turn the team around and have us winning, he is nowhere near the quality of the manager to be winning the league. So, I and many others are not accepting of sacrificing yet another season, in hopes of an underperforming manager to have turned it around.
So, if things go indeed go south, are you willing to write this season off?.
We don't need stat to tell us Onana is shit. Thanks anyway. And I cant stand him taking forever to kick a simple pass when playing out from the back even when we were losing.
I am far from demanding a title challenge. Playing decent football and dominating against non-PL opposition, and getting good comfortable results against lower table teams, while making it competetive against our "rivals" in the league, is where my expectations are at these days - a low bar Ten Hag doesn't seem able to reach.
I might even settle for a handful of matches where players perform anywhere near what Ajax did in the CL in his last Ajax season. He really doesn't have to do much, but he has to do something.
After 3 games the season is not currently "in need of saving". Ten Hag's history as manager means there is just as much chance of him turning it around as there is him not turning it around.
The very same INEOS who we have praised for the recruitment of staff and this summer window decided to keep him on after speaking to different managers. In no world does it then make sense to sack him after 3 games, it would be a silly move on INEOS's part to back a manager and give him only 3 games to prove them right or wrong. Its actually silly I need to even spell that out.
The squad is not at a level yet to be able to win a league, it is in my opinion good enough to qualify for a champions league spot with a good manager. So if Ten Hag got top 4 with this squad then it wouldn't be a "wasted season". Whether he would be the manager to continue after that is another question and would be based on his performance this season. If your expectations are for us to win a league this season then...
There is no "foregone conclusion" that he will fail. You can point to last season and say that's proof we will fail, you can point to the first season and say from this exact same position we got 3rd and a cup. You can point to the pool match and how we ended at Brighton to say we look just as bad as last season, you can point to the City, Fulham and first half v Brighton matches to say we looked a lot better than last season. Either way its not a foregone conclusion, just the same way there its no forgone conclusion that if we get an interim e.g. Ruud that its another Ole or another Rangnick. So at the moment, yes its not the best start to a season, however, there is no need to hit the panic button just yet. We shall see where we are in a month or two.
Nigerian?
First thing the new manager does when he comes in will be to replace Onana with Bayindir(he too may need replacing) but I'm sure any new manager not blinded by ego will bench Onana. He simply doesn't have the fundamentals a keeper should have. The supposed ball playing ability he has is not even helping the team, it's more of a hindrance if anything. I wanna see quick long throws out like Henderson to Shaw at the Etihad that led to a goal. I want to see a keeper coming out to claim corner kicks, I wanna see a keeper that can get down quick enough at the near post. It's not too much to ask for.
Yuh it’s all very bizarre. Taking swings at a fair few too..
Poorly.
How is there? You do realise that the Eredivisie is literally levels below the PL and the question is always whether impressive performance there - from managers and players - will translate to the PL. Ten Hag is not the first to come here and fail to make the leap, but there’s nothing to hang a hat on during his PL stint to say the bolded with any conviction.
Going off form over the duration of his tenure, the first part of the first season is the outlier and we’ve spent a lot longer looking poor under him than like we’re about to turn a positive corner. The trends are the opposite, even.
If anything winning FA Cup in his second season has emboldened him to do whatever the hell he wants.
Even Crystal Palace did not apply the logic of ‘he did well in Netherlands so he must be great’ and fired De Boer seven games in.
You made the point that it would be ok to sack in a couple of months if performances don't improve.
We just seem to have reset the clock at the start of the season and have gone, hey its just three games. By that logic, wouldn't it be stupid of INEOS to sack him after just "3 months" considering the backing they have given ETH. Afterall, a manager can only achieve so much in 3 months right??
Also, why do we have these arbitrary, if he doesn't perform in XX games/months, he gets the sack?. What if he wins the next 10 games on the trot and loses the next 15?. do we reset the clock again?. The fact of the matter is that we have had a huge sample size across three seasons, and you continue to ignore the trend.
I think we also need to remove the shame element to not being able to cut it. If he can’t, he can’t. He tried, we tried. Move on. It’s not some abnormal cycle and I feel it’s been treated too preciously, like emotional investment is factoring in where football has little time for that. We aren’t special or unique when it comes to failure and should stop acting like we are.
Hanging a hat on each new guy potentially becoming the next Busby or Ferguson really does a tailspin on fans when it comes to letting go, I feel. Like every single bit of juice has to be squeezed at the cost of literal years of setback and fallout.
Managers turning things around are incredibly rare, Ferguson was 40 years ago, Arteta is the only recent one that passes that test and even with him there was gradual improvement year on year. Klopp doesn’t belong here because contrary to the common belief he was good at Liverpool from the start.
I don’t even know what ETH turning things around would mean as he has exhibited so many red flags that are almost certain not to go away that his ceiling appears to be quite low already. Are we happy lingering between 5th and 7th as long as it makes the manager happy and proves we are not a sacking club, whatever benefit to our reputation this may translate into? Because that is likely as far as he can take us in the best case scenario (with the occasional top 4 finish if some of our rivals fall apart).
I do hope he goes soon, he really isn't up to the task. Last year was diabolical, we were lucky to finish eighth. I know he has plenty of excuses but even with all of the injuries he, still had us finish behind newcastle and chelsea who both had more total injuries and longer total time missed through injury than we did.
A well reasoned argument that supports the “3 games” defense.
I grant you the performance against. United were what Americans call the moral winners, having done more to deserve victory than City.
But we barely scraped by Fulham, a side whose neck we should be putting our boot on.
As for Brighton, we indeed could have won the game but we botched it. Missed chances, poor defending, collapse at the end. But yes, we could have won the game had we performed better. But it’s not performing to the required standard that’s the problem. We lost a lot of games last season where glimpses of solid play were apparent but we were unable to sustain solid play for 90 minutes. What we saw last is what we’ve seen so far.
And then Liverpool, I was actually very encouraged by what we saw in the first 30 minutes. But the collapse happened, just one week after the collapse to Brighton, which itself was only a week after an underwhelming performance against Fulham, our lone win of the season.
Onana's distribution has been quite poor since signing for us. Even if was as good as you say, his complete lack of goalkeeping ability is a problem in of itself.
I would agree that Fernandes on his day is at that level, yeah. The problem is that he is way too inconsistent and erratic to rely on. When he's good, he's amazing. But his lowest level is shocking.
Rashford has literally been at 'his best' in like 2 seasons out of the 8 he has played for us. I still don't get the hype over such an inconsistent player.
As for Zirkzee, we have a small sample size for his time in the PL to even make that statement, of which he was abysmal for the majority of his time on the pitch. It's too early to judge him and I'm not saying he's shit but saying he would be a key player at Newcastle or villa is an overreaction based on what we've seen.
I do agree our squad is a lot better than it looks right now though, even the players mentioned above. I just don't think they're as good as you're making about but easily enough to make top 4.
I'd argue that with Jose and Ole they had earned the time to turn things around, which is why they were sacked late. However, with Ten Hag, he's been on a stay of execution since last November. We've already given him all the time needed to turn things around. If we lose against Southampton or play poor football, he should be sacked.
It's a massive disservice to accredit individual accolades in performances without assessing the relativity of the system and coaches they are playing under in retrospect.
I'm subjectively confident that neither Isak, Gordon or Harvey Barnes in this instance have the same output in a Erik Ten Hag outfit compared to the way they are deployed under Howe's philosophy. Also consider the neutrality in the way United progress the ball from the wider areas it requires so much self-intuitive attribution as most of the chance creation doesn't stem from the midfield but from the wide play which explains why Hojlund was bereft of service last season as would any traditional 9 in the way Erik organizes the phases of play.
Additionally, the season before last Newcastle had statistically the best defence in the league among Shar, Botman and Dan Burns. Not exactly the most renowned names on paper but another example of a defined system that exalts the players contribution. Reading the stats they averaged 52% possession over 38 games having the second lowest percentile for the amount of touches in their defensive penalty area (behind Arsenal). You could throw a Maguire into that Newcastle team that particular season under those parameters and he churns out high level performances as the approach is discernable looking at the data, low block with a flat three midfield that's hard to break down.
A players value massively hinges on perception of the teams collective performances, the only exception is for world class players but because of how compressed the modern game of football has become , there's almost next to teams in world football outside of Madrid that possess world class talent in a plethora of positions. Modern management asphyxiates the need for individual brilliance.
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Do you not think the way we're set up makes these mistakes more likely? When Casemiro is basically playing as the lone midfielder while the other two bomb forward as attackers in possession, are mistakes not likely to happen? Considering Casemiro's strengths and weaknesses, that's a recipe for disaster and everyone can see it except for ETH apparently. Mainoo dropped into his position after he came off and the same thing happened again. Also, when something like this is happening so consistently, it's absolutely the managers intention for this to be the way we are set up. He's basically set up the team treating Casemiro as De Jong, who is press resistant and capable of bringing the ball out defence at a much higher level. The system is absolutely the cause of the habitual errors we keep seeing. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if we actually scored goals, but at the moment it's very much high risk with no reward.
Sure, the errors don't happen every game but that's because most teams don't press as hard or effectively as Liverpool, which really highlighted Casemiro's deficiencies. But on that note, shouldn't a manager play to his players strengths or at least not make him the focal point of the whole system when he clearly isn't the kind of player it requires.
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Yeah, I’ve gone from excited about his arrival to completely disillusioned by him; him turning it around has no grounding in reality, for me.
Mate you need to show some fortitude. We can turn things around with ETH.
Boo, boo on you Sir. We had the most unprecendented injury crisis in the history of injury crises last season.
It all comes down to perspective and how you view things. For example you thought we should have dominated Fulham, I think we did from a chance creation perspective. The players just didn't take the chances. Another day with those same chances and a confident United and 3/4 of those chances go in. Its no exaggeration to say we should have scored at least 3 goals in that match. That is a good attacking performance.
But it is where we are at this current moment, things are finely balanced. You can make an argument for why it won't get better, there has also been enough breadcrumbs for some to think it will get better.
It kind of still continues with Yoro, Shaw, Malacia and Hojlund out. Arguably it’s even worse than last season as it is spread across all formations if you add Mount and Ugarte’s complete lack of fitness which will prevent him from contributing to ETH’s vision for months.
You just know it will be brought up eventually.
Your correct i quoted the wrong stats we man utd had the most individual injuries 45, chelsea 43, newcastle 41.
However Newcastle had the longest total time injured at 1950 days, chelsea 1745, man utd 1620.
More telling is that Newcastle and Chelsea injuries caused them to miss more games than utd, newcastle 245, chelsea 214 man utd 202.
As we had our players available for substantially more games than newcastle snd chelsea it was a pretty poor effort by ETH to finish behind them in the league.
Stats are from premierinjuries.com..
Yeah, but too often we're left talking about the chances we could or should've taken. We as a fan base spend more time fantasising about how we could have got a different result or been more comfortable in a game.
The fact is it rarely happens like that and there are reasons beyond players not taking three or four chances. That happens to every team, we simply don't create enough to be in a comfortable position often. And on the occasions we do, we're probably more likely to blow it than win comfortably which is really poor.
Even if we accept the Fulham game as a decent performance, to follow up by losing an injury time goal to Brighton then getting absolutely savaged by Liverpool (especially at home) is not evidence of anything moving in the right direction.
I've also gone from hopeful after the cup final to really downhearted now. We need to start seeing good performances and wins. I want us to blow Southampton away by a few goals and get the confidence up, I just can't see it though. We very rarely have a comfortable win these days or even a win at all.
I was taking the piss mate. Our injury crisis wasn't uniquely bad last season, a lot of people liked to make out that it was but as bad as it was other teams were suffering as well.
And rightly so as Ten Hag can't be judged until every player in every position plus their back-up is fit, match fit, integrated, up to speed with the new game model, happy and settled and they've all been to Lou Macari's at least once for their Chippy Tea.
Then and only then can we make an assessment on him.
AWB improved some aspects but seemed to get worse in others. Overall I'd say he at stayed about the same rather than declined. De Gea didn't really get worse under him either, he stayed about the same as he had the previous three and a half seasons before ETH joined. Martial was just destroyed by injuries (which started before ETH) so wouldn't link that to ETH either.
Otherwise yeah I'd agree with the rest of it.
That’s fair. For me, you can create dozens of chances and if you score only once and your opponent creates two chances and scores on both, you deserve to lose.
If it were a matter of luck such as bad ref calls and the like, I’m board with the “should have won” thesis on any given day but if you cannot finish on your chances and your opponent can, it’s clear as crystal as to who deserves victory.
Trying hard is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving greatness. We try hard but we have to outscore our opponents. It really is that simple.
Come on, that's ridiculous.
Onana hasn't been as bad as many make out and I still haven't written him off, but there are huge question marks over him. Most of the teams who have a big focus on building out from the back would probably take Onana (and would then have the positioning and team organisation to take advantage of his passing more than we do), but the rest of the teams wouldn't even hesitate to take Pope. Other than his passing he's one of the best keepers in the league and is solid to very good at every aspect.
The last 3 games is showing continuation of a 2-year pattern that he's not capable of setting the team to score lots of goals. Just watching the games, we rarely see a constant 3-4 players in the box to attack the ball, like what we used to under SAF.
If the team is still showing this similar "few in box" pattern in the next 2-3 games, I don't think we'll see anything difference for the rest of season.
If the team is still showing this similar "few in box" pattern in the next 2-3 games, I don't think we'll see anything difference for the rest of season.
I had a poster pretty much claim that the loss against Liverpool was down to ETH not having any choices in central midfield, the set up and tactics were fine apparently, it was just INEOS that fecked up the transfer window.
I have heard every excuse in the book when it comes to ETH. Why isn't that he simply isn't good enough for the Premier League a plausible reason why he is not delivering?
I think it’s safe to say Antony was pretty terrible before he came in…Bruno was better before he came in and Ronaldo is Ronaldo
I think the days of dominating a league with a squad filled of journeymen and a few stars, like Fergie did countless times are long gone. In the early and mid stages of the premier league you just had 2 or 3 teams that would go toe-to toe with the league leaders, most just sat back and tried to win something from a breakaway or corner.
With the modern money in the league you now have teams across the whole of the league filling their squads with £30-40m talent and scouting the world for hidden gems. Yes I know Fergie even got away with playing squad teams against Arsenal etc but I don't think anyone would get away with that now.
What we do need to do is stop just posing simple and obvious threats to the opposition goal. Our attacks are pedestrian and easy to predict and we don't "batter" an opposition with multiple threats across the pitch and rapid fire attacks. My abiding memory of the Fergie era is wave after wave of attacks on the opposition with a threat in every part of the pitch from multiple runners with and without the ball.
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I think the extent of the change compared to last season has actually been disappointingly little. I didn't watch any of our pre-season games so can't comment on those but I thought we played really well against City in the Community Shield and also in the first half vs Fulham. The team looked more compact, were pressing better etc. We actually had the second highest defensive line in the league on the opening weekend. But against both Brighton and Liverpool, a lot of the same issues have resurfaced. Even against Brighton, where I do think there were positive signs in the first half, we mostly struggled to move the ball into their defensive third. Again, a constant issue for Ten Hag's United over his 2 seasons, we just don't seem to be able to progress the ball with any conviction and often resort to bypassing the midfield entirely by playing long from our defensive third.
And the stats are already starting to reflect the same much dissected problems with United's system - pressing structure is poor, struggle to get the ball into the opposition's defensive third, struggle to sustain pressure once if we do manage to get the ball into the opposition's defensive third because if we lose the ball there, our pressing structure is too poor to win it back or pin the opposition/defend transitions, defensive line is too deep and drops off too readily even when their starting position is high leaving a massive gap for the midfield to cover etc. Over three games (admittedly a very small sample but when it is repeating the same patterns as the 38 games last season, it isn't unreasonable to worry) -
For reference, field tilt measures the relative number of touches in your defensive third vs the oppositions defensive third. Meaning, if you exclude all the touches by both teams in the middle third, if roughly 75% of all remaining touches happen in the opposition final third, then you have a field tilt of 75% in your favour. Now obviously, this needs to be contextualized - if you are keeping the ball in your own defensive third in the hopes of baiting the opposition press (think De Zerbi's Brighton), you will have a lower field tilt. Plus, obviously quality of opposition also matters. We've played Liverpool and Brighton - both excellent teams who we were never going to pin back and dominate for 90 mins - but again, this is a continuation of a pattern from last season. And it is interesting in the above graphic that both us and Arsenal have roughly the same field tilt (around 50%) but combining this stat with our average defensive line height does highlight familiar failings for United, in my view. Add the context of what % of our possession happen in our own half -
And again, our field tilt of ~50% is not necessarily because we are successfully baiting the opposition press. In fact, we spend relatively little time in possession in our own half. Also interesting how high Spurs are on both the % of possession in their own half and field tilt - suggests their possession structure works much better at getting the ball in the opposition third than ours does, and is also much better at sustaining pressure in the final third through their pressing structure. Again, the data clearly shows this (both the positive for Spurs and the issues for us -
Again, I'd add the caveat that Spurs being so good at these metrics does not equate to their impending glorious season or our impending doom. For one, Spurs cannot defend for shit. But the data does reveal a lot about tactical structures and intent. Guardiola and Postecoglou's teams (for instance) have a clear and visible tactical identity - they build patiently from the back, keep possession and move patiently through the thirds, if they lose the ball in the final third, they mostly press in an organized manner to pin teams back, and they play a high defensive line to compress the pitch to make their press more effective. Tactical intent is also clearly visible for Southampton (even though they seem, at least to me, to be in for a LONG season with how they are playing) - they are the lower table side most visibly trying to implement the Guardiola blueprint. Again, the usual caveats of only a three game sample size and we have to account for quality of opposition faced - it's not a coincidence that Leicester's field tilt and defensive line height are the exact mirror of Spurs'. Or that Ipswich, having faced City and Liverpool are among the teams with the poorest field tilts and deepest defensive line.
But again, our numbers are a continuation of last season's. I don't expect Ten Hag to ever fix our defensive issues. A while back, there was a video doing the rounds of Ruud Gullit and Ten Hag debating his Ajax side's transition defending (and how much space they leave in midfield) and while Ten Hag conceded some points, his basic stance of 'these are risks you have to take to play an aggressive, entertaining style of football' is quite revealing about his coaching principles. He, much like everyone else in the world, sees the issues with our transition defending, he just thinks the risk is worth the reward if you can get the attack clicking. Problem is, we've not improved in possession nearly enough to justify this structure, yet. I would give him till the next international. We have a relatively comfortable fixture list coming up, which should give him ample opportunity to show the improvements in possession. If the numbers still look terrible, we should thank him for the two trophies and move him on and start assessing the tactical structures (and their fit to the Premier League) of the likes of Ruben Amorim, Sebastian Hoeness and Simone Inzaghi.
I'd also add that I think the issues with defensive line height are largely an issue with how direct play rather than the pace (or lack thereof) of our backline but this post is already much longer than I intended so I will leave you to it.
Bonus graph for the 'our players are too lazy/not inclined to press/unwilling to engage with the physicality of the league' crowd -
