Erik ten Hag | 2024/25

[Alex99]

Let's not get carried away, Barnsley players are worth around 300k each, that's a week of Bruno's Salary. This was more like training

We let a 2-0 lead slip against Newport and a 3-0 lead slip against Coventry last season.

Regardless of Barnsley being objectively shite, this was a massive improvement.

 

[Mickeza]

Barnsley would have had double digit shots against us last season - tonight they had 3. We’ve definitely improved - whether we’ve improved enough only time will tell - Saturday a big test.

 

[BorisManUtd]

It's a small sample of games but what I like so far is we aren't conceding as many shots as last season. I know that was easy to achieve as last season was ridiculous in that regard but hopefully things are starting to improve in that department (and in others).

Beating Southampton and Barnsley won't make ten Hag's position safer but at least it was 2 convincing wins for a change.

 

[DJ_21]

You can clearly see our style as changed this season. The amount of cutbacks we’re creating only happens with good passing and patterns of play.

 

[JB08]

Give him another new contract!

 

[FromTheBench]

Hopefully the last 60 mins of southampton game is a turning point because we were poor this season until then.

Am not exactly going into palace spurs villa though. Lets see and hope for the best.

 

[Sarni]

Onana’s penalty save may be a turning point for him.

 

[glazed]

How are people still complaining....

Don't think you can draw many conclusions from Southampton and Barnsley to be fair. We need to judge ETH on the entire run between now and the new year.

 

[CannibalSpectre]

Gonna also credit him for selling Wan Bissaka and bringing in Maz. One of the best moves we’ve made post Sir Alex.

It's only been a few games and he struggled in his biggest test yet against Liverpool. I'd wait before making such a claim.

I remember how excited many a supproter became after we signed Telles and they thought he was going to usurp Shaw and nail down that leftback role for years. It was the same with Alexander Buttner at LB after his goal acoring and assist making debut againat Wigan and Darmian at RB who was supposed to be one of Europe's best young fullbacks

 

[golden_blunder]

Let's not get carried away, Barnsley players are worth around 300k each, that's a week of Bruno's Salary. This was more like training

Training can be used to build confidence

 

[despairingfool]

Hopefully he won't start Mainoo vs Crystal Palace. Eriksen, Ugarte, Casemiro should play with Fernandes, Rashford, Garnacho.

 

[Zumbi]

I think we absolutely would have conceded a low amount of goals if we didn‘t suffer the injuries to our backline that we did. Evans played the most games from our cb‘s.

Even so, we conceded less than four teams above us.

To say our defense conceded a catastrophic amount of goals last season is just plain wrong.

Your arguments are so incredibly dishonest.

You’ve gone from claiming we conceded “few goals”, to being called out for it and then changing it to the claim that “we would have conceded a low amount of goals if we didn’t suffer the injuries…”, to completely straw manning Iker Quesadillas with the nonsense claim that “to say our defense conceded a catastrophic amount of goals last season is just plain wrong”.

He never said that. Stop making things up. It’s just obnoxious. I can see why so many have you set to “ignore”.

 

[FrankWhite]

Nice to see some goals, some good performances.

Let's not forget though we saw similar this time last season before Palace brought us down to earth on the Saturday...

I was thinking this but it's not exactly apples for apples. The Palace game was largely our starters against their backups. 8/11 of the starters today, won't start this weekend.
Obviously still a lot to prove but this feels different. We have genuine competition for places and depth. You could argue we have the 3rd best squad in league.

 

[Someone]

We struggled against most weak sides last season, so it's nice to see us brush aside teams with ease. You can only take positives from this game, and in 10 games or so we'll know if it's another false dawn or not.

 

[AshRK]

We struggled against most weak sides last season, so it's nice to see us brush aside teams with ease. You can only take positives from this game, and in 10 games or so we'll know if it's another false dawn or not.

Yes. We even let Newport look threatening against us.

 

[Blood Mage]

Hopefully he won't start Mainoo vs Crystal Palace. Eriksen, Ugarte, Casemiro should play with Fernandes, Rashford, Garnacho.

It was Barnsley. Eriksen doesn't have the legs to play against PL opposition anymore, Mainoo will come in for him.

 

[Red in STL]

It was Barnsley. Eriksen doesn't have the legs to play against PL opposition anymore, Mainoo will come in for him.

Eriksen did just fine last weekend against PL opposition, he'll drop out becausw 3 games in a week is pribably too much, he might get on sooner than we'd wish though because I doubt Ugarte would get away with the number of fouls he did today without a yellow card, he needs a bit of time to adjust

 

[NLunited]

Your arguments are so incredibly dishonest.

You’ve gone from claiming we conceded “few goals”, to being called out for it and then changing it to the claim that “we would have conceded a low amount of goals if we didn’t suffer the injuries…”, to completely straw manning Iker Quesadillas with the nonsense claim that “to say our defense conceded a catastrophic amount of goals last season is just plain wrong”.

He never said that. Stop making things up. It’s just obnoxious. I can see why so many have you set to “ignore”.

The fact is we conceded less than the four teams above us, which I remembered from last season. The amount of goals against us is absolutely used over and over to paint a catastrophic picture, without mentioning that fact, or without mentioning we had an insane amount of injuries to our backline. I‘d call that dishonest.

I have a bunch of moaners on ignore and will keep adding more. Feel free to do the same to me.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Fabulous performance. Hoepfully Southampton away was a turning point becuase there was a clear and obvious improvement in our general play in these two games. Hoepfully it doesn’t dissipate as soon as play better teams.

Great stuff.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Hopefully he won't start Mainoo vs Crystal Palace. Eriksen, Ugarte, Casemiro should play with Fernandes, Rashford, Garnacho.

No chance. Eriksen doesn’t have the legs to handle a team like Palace. And with Casemiro next to him it’ll be brutal. These things work against lower league opponents or just really poor teams.

 

[Owen Hargo]

Let's not get carried away, Barnsley players are worth around 300k each, that's a week of Bruno's Salary. This was more like training

We almost drew to Newport and lost to Coventry last season. We didn’t even rotate in both games. I see there is a progress here in terms killing games early.

 

[JediSith]

I’m optimistic. I think we will see a noticeable style of play, was pretty obvious during first 20 mins vs Liverpool. The quality of our squad and players should see us get to finals and surprise many in the league.

 

[Greyfog]

Not only does he always win in his second season. He wins in all the seasons! Erik!

 

[tenpoless]

So what did he do this time that pissed you off? I think winning 7-0 against a minnow is unethical. Those Barnsley players have a family to feed and he's making life harder for them.

 

[Borys]

Erik looks a different manager now. The team feels different. It's what I expected to be frank considering we have a really good squad now.

The only thing is Erik solved some some problems he caused himself (pushing the team high and set to press, bypassing midfield, playing one midfielder, Antony..), so he doesn't get that much credit from me and I'm far from convinced. But, there is an improvement and that has to be stated.

Big test will be against a team we're not expected to beat with hands tied behind our back, I guess Palace over the weekend is an interesting one.

 

[Golden Nugget]

So what did he do this time that pissed you off? I think winning 7-0 against a minnow is unethical. Those Barnsley players have a family to feed and he's making life harder for them.

He did well. I do however wished he brought on Wheatley on or have Amass on the bench. I mean the likes of Bruno and Amad hardly need minutes and would have been good to give the youngsters a run out

 

[Zumbi]

The fact is we conceded less than the four teams above us, which I remembered from last season. The amount of goals against us is absolutely used over and over to paint a catastrophic picture, without mentioning that fact, or without mentioning we had an insane amount of injuries to our backline. I‘d call that dishonest.

I have a bunch of moaners on ignore and will keep adding more. Feel free to do the same to me.

Which is a point you can easily make without needing to repeatedly change your claims when called out on your BS, and then dishonestly strawmanning people.

There are honest ways to debate, then there’s you.

 

[Mike Smalling]

Biggest sign of improvement will be if he can string together results over an extended period. Fine that we beat one of the worst teams in the PL and a League 1 side convincingly, but it means so little without a win against Palace.

Really we should win our next three games before a couple of tough away fixtures.

 

[Zed is not dead]

Whilst I’d like to see more youth players, I think this is fair enough.

Wheatley is probably our 5th choice striker and we only play one. I doubt he’s ever going to get minutes ahead of Zirkzee, Hojlund, Rashford or false 9 Bruno.

We have many other cup round sto see youth players.
With a summer of both Euros and Copa, and players returning late, it’s much more important to get the playing squad match-fit than to play kids, especially when we have something like 8 games in the next 5 weeks.

 

[troylocker]

Big positives against really weak teams. Expected wins, but apart from the first 30 minutes against Southampton we were quite good.
I wish we could play League 1 teams and newly promoted teams who can't score every week.

We don't though.
Next 6 is: Palace (A), Spurs (H), Villa (A), Brentford (H), West Ham (A) and Chelsea (H). All teams we should beat or be better than if we want to compete for top 4. We're already trailing the top by 6 points, the top 4 by 3 points and sitting 10th in the league. We'll probably need at least 4 wins from that run (preferably with no losses) to still have something to play for in the league this season. Throw in Twente, Fenerbahce, Porto and PAOK in that period as well, which should also be at least 3 wins + a decent performance in Portugal. That run will be a lot more telling and important than yesterdays destruction of a League 1 team.

Do we believe ETH has that in him? I'll be over the moon if sit top 4 in the League and top of our group in the EL come mid November, but somehow I strongly doubt it. That's where we should now be to be fair, and that's setting the bar pretty low.
He should have been gone last season, he should have been gone after Brighton, he should have been gone after Liverpool, but he's still here and probably will be at least untill we only have Cup to play for....the spiral continues.

 

[Escobar]

We need consistency, both in how well we play and winning games. So far that was lacking

 

[romufc]

Big positives against really weak teams. Expected wins, but apart from the first 30 minutes against Southampton we were quite good.
I wish we could play League 1 teams and newly promoted teams who can't score every week.

We don't though.
Next 6 is: Palace (A), Spurs (H), Villa (A), Brentford (H), West Ham (A) and Chelsea (H). All teams we should beat or be better than if we want to compete for top 4. We're already trailing the top by 6 points, the top 4 by 3 points and sitting 10th in the league. We'll probably need at least 4 wins from that run (preferably with no losses) to still have something to play for in the league this season. Throw in Twente, Fenerbahce, Porto and PAOK in that period as well, which should also be at least 3 wins + a decent performance in Portugal. That run will be a lot more telling and important than yesterdays destruction of a League 1 team.

Do we believe ETH has that in him? I'll be over the moon if sit top 4 in the League and top of our group in the EL come mid November, but somehow I strongly doubt it. That's where we should now be to be fair, and that's setting the bar pretty low.
He should have been gone last season, he should have been gone after Brighton, he should have been gone after Liverpool, but he's still here and probably will be at least untill we only have Cup to play for....the spiral continues.

Yep, we take the positives and move on, we cant take too much from that game other than a win. I know we scored 7 and we struggle against most oppositions but in reality, we all want to see how we do against the next 6. We need to get wins against the rivals, which we struggled with last season.

 

[crossy1686]

Incredibly predictable? Really? I expected we'd win, but there's nothing to suggest we were going to score 7 and probably a good few more.

I'm glad I was able to enjoy it though! Feel like some are so far gone they can't even do that.

You don't think a big win against a League One team is predictable? Fecking hell, we've fallen further than I could have ever dreamed in terms of expectation. In terms of goals scored, 7 wasn't predictable, but lets face it, we should be putting at least 3 past a team of this calibre. The predictable nature of all this, which isn't the result, is the fact we beat a League One team easily and will now most likely go on to struggle in a game where the opposition don't let us do whatever we want in their half.

Who said I didn't enjoy it? Feels like some of you are quick to gate-keep what people can and can't enjoy. If we put 7 past Palace I'll get excited, if we're uninspired and draw/lose it will be an entirely predictable result based on how we go from game to game under Ten Hag and our away form.

 

[astracrazy]

Don't think you can draw many conclusions from Southampton and Barnsley to be fair. We need to judge ETH on the entire run between now and the new year.

Not what I was referring too to be fair. What exactly do people have to complain about from last night?

 

[Judas]

You don't think a big win against a League One team is predictable? Fecking hell, we've fallen further than I could have ever dreamed in terms of expectation. In terms of goals scored, 7 wasn't predictable, but lets face it, we should be putting at least 3 past a team of this calibre. The predictable nature of all this, which isn't the result, is the fact we beat a League One team easily and will now most likely go on to struggle in a game where the opposition don't let us do whatever we want in their half.

Who said I didn't enjoy it? Feels like some of you are quick to gate-keep what people can and can't enjoy. If we put 7 past Palace I'll get excited, if we're uninspired and draw/lose it will be an entirely predictable result based on how we go from game to game under Ten Hag and our away form.

A big win against anyone right now is far from predictable as we're shit, to be blunt. You can say we should be beating these teams by a wide margin, which is correct, but the pathetic truth is we've not looked remotely capable of doing so for years. It's not predictable that we'd comfortably beat a league one team, which is terrible, but that's reality of where we are sadly.

Your posts don't come across as someone who was able to just switch off and enjoy a nice relaxing win in the league cup, maybe you did, but your tone suggests overwise.

 

[CM]

Let's not get carried away, Barnsley players are worth around 300k each, that's a week of Bruno's Salary. This was more like training

It may not have had the intensity of a competitive game but it goes down in the records as one. It can't be a bad thing for the likes of Rashford and Garnacho to get a couple of goals to get their seasons going.

 

[Oranges038]

How are people still complaining....

Default setting for those who want ETH sacked, can't even enjoy a couple of wins without having a whinge.

7-0 against a league one team is the sort of result you'd expect, but these are no win games, win 7-0 "it's only a league one team", win 2 or 3 nil and it's "we should be putting 6 or 7 past this lot".

I enjoyed the game, the last few goals were nice one touch interplay and it looked like the players were really enjoying themselves out there. There will be more difficult games ahead, but it seems some people just can't enjoy football anymore even just for a few hours.

 

[NLunited]

He did well. I do however wished he brought on Wheatley on or have Amass on the bench. I mean the likes of Bruno and Amad hardly need minutes and would have been good to give the youngsters a run out

I expected that as well. Probably he wanted to keep the first team players sharp and give them confidence, instead of giving game time to youngsters.

 

[romufc]

Default setting for those who want ETH sacked, can't even enjoy a couple of wins without having a whinge.

7-0 against a league one team is the sort of result you'd expect, but these are no win games, win 7-0 "it's only a league one team", win 2 or 3 nil and it's "we should be putting 6 or 7 past this lot".

I enjoyed the game, the last few goals were nice one touch interplay and it looked like the players were really enjoying themselves out there. There will be more difficult games ahead, but it seems some people just can't enjoy football anymore even just for a few hours.

Its hypocritical behaviour at its best.... before the game the same would be saying things like.. we struggle against even League 1 teams look at last season, post this game will say, oh well we are big Manutd so we should win 2/3 nil anyway.

Those fans who are completely unchecked from reality.

 

[NLunited]

Which is a point you can easily make without needing to repeatedly change your claims when called out on your BS, and then dishonestly strawmanning people.

There are honest ways to debate, then there’s you.

I did not fundamentally change my statement. It‘s factually incorrect to state we conceded a big amount of goals, because we conceded less than our direct competitors.

I also called you out on purely negative posting, by which I stand as well.