Erik ten Hag | 2024/25

Erik ten Hag

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RedSky said:
Reminder for those attempting to say people are over reacting after a few games.
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Exactly. Its insane to treat a manager in his 3rd season like its his first season. He should be judged in concert of what happened last season. He doesn't get a blank slate every season other wise we will be stuck where we are forever. He had to start well because last season was a failure. The FA cup was a consolation prize. But missing out on top 4 and no discernable playing style meant last season was a failure
 
Ichabod Ferguson said:
There's barely even a reaction to this game, let alone an overreaction, it's just people saying the same stuff they've been saying for a year.
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This is true. Twente came to OT, had their day out, their fans stayed after dancing and jumping up and down, their players celebrating and saying they could have won post-match - and hardly anyone finds it surprising or like there’s hardly any outrage or reaction, as you said.

Even Gullit was saying this doesn’t surprise anyone as it’s what we’ve come to expect under Ten Hag
 
I fecking hate his press conferences. Three years in and the cheeky knobhead still has the audacity to call his team “a work in process”.
 
George The Best said:
The stats don’t really matter, but the results do. The table doesn’t lie. We’ve had a relatively easy fixture list so far, with only Liverpool that should have been our only real test. As we stand today Newcastle, Brighton. Forest and Fulham are all above us. That’s a disgrace.
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I think what people don't truly understand is, to justify his stay, Ten Hag would have needed to have a drastically improved start to the season, both in results and performance.
Our fans seem to think that we have an obligation to will managers to success. We don't. It's business, where the results and performance directly affect our operations and finances. It's not sentimental and it should not be, unless the figure in question has shown quality to deserve that consideration. Arsenal under Wenger owed him that. In addition, he was producing good football, but did not have the funds required to deserve that level of expectation.

Ten Hag has actually proven that he is not qualified for the job. His performance last season, FA Cup or no FA Cup, was the worst by any Man United manager. The dispiriting impact it had on the club, fans and players cannot truly be explained. No other big club with our status would have tolerated even half of what went on last season. He doesn't deserve the time and I personally don't think that was the point. I think people like to think that INEOS did not find the right manager; I don't actually think this is true. I think INEOS didn't find the right manager that would justify replacing Ten Hag at the time of winning the FA Cup and prior to setting up the senior management structure. I believe they would have changed course if they believed there was a truly exceptional manager like a Klopp or Pep, who could handle the blowback of the sacking and not having a structure temporarily. Essentially, I think time rather than quality was the main factor in their decision. I believe they've given Ten Hag the opportunity to impress, whilst using the lack of fanfare and pressure to place structures and showcase their abilities in the market without distraction. They're able to focus on planning the new stadium, bringing in new signings and bringing in new personnel without the instability of a new manager.

This means, Ten Hag was nobody's choice, but rather a short term stopgap of stability. In addition, poor results have decimated any hostility that would have arisen from sacking Ten Hag at the end of the summer. United fans and the media tend to have short memories in regard to these type of things, and would quickly have turned on INEOS for taking that decision without giving Ten Hag a chance to turn it around. Noone can say that they haven't given him time now. Noone can say it was injuries or lack of support or lack of signings. This is not to say that they callously planned this out, but made the decision hoping that Ten Hag really would turn things around, with the safeguard that if he didn't, a lot of positive things would have taken place and any potential blowback would have dissipated.
 
RDCR07 said:
I fecking hate his press conferences. Three years in and the cheeky knobhead still has the audacity to call his team “a work in process”.
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Well he is not wrong about that. The team clearly is not a finished product and a work in process. He is atleast partly to blame for that though, the work he is doing on the team isnt really developing as fast as we would hope.
 
Stadjer said:
Well he is not wrong about that. The team clearly is not a finished product and a work in process. He is atleast partly to blame for that though, the work he is doing on the team isnt really developing as fast as we would hope.
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The team might not be a finished product, but I bet the next manager is going to look like a right genius when he gets them to perform a lot better that what Ten Hag is doing.
 
GreatDane said:
The team might not be a finished product, but I bet the next manager is going to look like a right genius when he gets them to perform a lot better that what Ten Hag is doing.
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Not saying he shouldn't be sacked, but man, so many people on here are going to be so disappointed when we sack Ten Hag and are still shit.
 
sparx99 said:
It’s interesting that last year seemed to be a tactical failure while this season seems to be individuals letting the team down. Both attacking and defensive stats are improved but ultimately we are relying on inconsistent players.

Now for what it’s worth if this was ETH’a first season I think you look at performances and the underlying stats and you say we’ve been a bit unlucky. Compare that to last year where even when we won we seemed to be the team getting away with things.

The problem is though that even if the model says we are underachieving our xG or whatever that’s likely to be ongoing. Our forwards are likely to consistently under-perform xG because there isn’t a reliable goalscorer amongst them. Any one of them could have a purple patch but you wouldn’t bet on it.

All we can do is hope that we keep creating lots of chances because we need to for this group to score goals. We also need to hope that we can add some more set piece goals because we need as many from all sources as we can get.
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This is his 3rd season now. Besides all the nice looking stats, where I'll agree have improved, his biggest problem is that he fails to find goals in the team.

3 seasons now and we still have trouble finding the back of the net. We got away with it in his first season, last season we didn't, and it seems we are just continuing the trend this season.

So his attacking setup doesn't work. I'm still not sure how he's even trying to find goals. If he can't get goals, he'll never win games which keeps the door open for opposition to come at us because we have no security.
 
Red4ever27 said:
This is like saying we've gone from completely crap to slightly less crap. Which games in particular have we played a lot better in general? Newly promoted Southampton, and that took a penalty save or things could've ended very differently. First half against Palace maybe, I can't think of any others really where we have shown a clear 'marked improvement'.

The underlying stats are demonstrably better than last season because, well, it would be extremely hard to be worse than last season. It is something we shouldn't be comparing our current performances against if we want clear improvement.

For me it's his lack of adaptation, it's the same formation each game with the same instructions, with the same results. We are predictable and not a good predictable. There seems to be no in game management when things aren't working, no tweaks, no new ideas and it shows.

There's a reason not many are saying 'we look a lot better'. Hopefully I'm eating my words by the end of the season and he comes a big success.
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I’ve watched a lot of football this season, only 3 teams have looked really good so far. I’m under no illusions, nor should any of us be, that we are at the top of the totem pole but we should be aiming for 4th/5th in my opinion.

We were crap last season, of course, this season our results have been short of where we’d like them to be but I’m clearly making the point that there has actually been tangible improvement if we’re assessing what we’ve done in games. The amount of replies I get where people want to argue this seems bizarre as it’s literally just a fact. You can argue stats are meaningless, sure, or you can dispute specific areas where it says we are better that you disagree with but no one is saying that.

I can’t work out what you would think is a realistic position we’d be in right now. Had we beaten palace, which we should have done, we’d be 4 points off the top. Would that be good enough?
 
tomaldinho1 said:
14th to 5th in a table of 20 are close together?
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My bad.

I didn't notice that the Sky article was calculating these things based on an accurate knowledge of all 38 games in the 24/25 season.

I was just going off a grand total of five games that I've watched so far, which range from average to shit.
 
Hand-waving away last season as the result of freak injuries whilst simultaneously praising ETH for improvement in performances since last season is having your cake and eating it too.
 
baskinginthesun said:
This is his 3rd season now. Besides all the nice looking stats, where I'll agree have improved, his biggest problem is that he fails to find goals in the team.

3 seasons now and we still have trouble finding the back of the net. We got away with it in his first season, last season we didn't, and it seems we are just continuing the trend this season.

So his attacking setup doesn't work. I'm still not sure how he's even trying to find goals. If he can't get goals, he'll never win games which keeps the door open for opposition to come at us because we have no security.
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The amount of chances we just don’t put away is scandalous really, I feel a bit sorry for him, sometimes it’s harder to miss but we find a way, I’m sure he’s not coaching that..
Rashfords form was helping Ole look much better than he was, if we had him firing again the pressure would be nowhere near as intense, and Bruno has now randomly decided that he can’t pass, create or shoot.. it’s a tough time for the team really, we’re desperate for someone in front of goal to find form
 
He’s giving us bald lads a bad name at this point. Unacceptable.
 
Big Ben Foster said:
Hand-waving away last season as the result of freak injuries whilst simultaneously praising ETH for improvement in performances since last season is having your cake and eating it too.
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It’s the same sort of stupid logic that we heard last winter, and then when you prompt people with “what would make you turn against him?” It just ends up being them needing to see a full season of poor performance and results (and then often they kick the can down the road again and cite another excuse as to why Ten Hag has been unlucky, or worse they write love letters asking INEOS to keep him)
 
Oscar Bonavena said:
Can ETH backers outline what they think his greatest strengths are.
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Isn’t that obvious ? He is keeping his job while playing sh*t football and having sh*t results for mot then 18 months. The guy is effectively Harry Potter. Never seen such a good illusionist.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Ok, we bet? If ETH stay until qualification is over, I think we’ll go through. You don’t.

What does the winner get?
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Put in context, we're the bookies and pundits joint favourites to win the entire competition. But if ETH stays long enough, form and eyes tell us we'll finish mid-table at best, and we'll lose in the playoff or ro16 game to another Copenhagen or Galatasaray-level side.

That's what happens when you back a loser.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
Why are you so vulgar? It’s literally an entire seasons stats plus this seasons.
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Because I’m quite sick of people living in denial at this point, or worse being accepting of going toe to toe with average Dutch league sides or mid table PL teams.

It’s fine, keep backing him and then raise your hand up months from now and admit defeat if that’s what you wish to do. But I’m not going to pretend to take any data set seriously that involves only a month of matches, especially because in spite of it there are still clear issues with how he approaches games and managing them during the 90 minutes.

I’m quite tired of being a comedy club for a decade plus now, slightly improving performances while still getting poor results in a 3rd year of management, while he’s been backed better than any manager we’ve had post SAF, isn’t good enough
 
HookedOnAPhelan said:
Not saying he shouldn't be sacked, but man, so many people on here are going to be so disappointed when we sack Ten Hag and are still shit.
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So you're saying everyone should just resign themselves to the idea that we'll be shit regardless of who the manager is and just abandon all hope of United ever being a force again?

That's the spirit.
 
HookedOnAPhelan said:
Not saying he shouldn't be sacked, but man, so many people on here are going to be so disappointed when we sack Ten Hag and are still shit.
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Just try and imagine if you can, all the many thousands of Liverpool fans thinking/saying this exact same shite, when Rodgers was up for the sack.
 
A goal difference of + 1 after 57 league games since the Carabao Cup win, this manager makes me sick
 
JJ12 said:
Who would you replace him with, RVN? And try and persuade Tuchel or someone else?
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Who cares ? Players don’t respond or believe to his poor management. Just someone fresh. The tea lady will get better results actually.
I don’t think it’s hard to improve from 8th in the league and 0 goal difference.
This argument make him look like a good manager. There are plenty who will do a better job with this squad. It’s not like we are looking for someone who will stay 25 years. Supporters need to stop with the SAF syndrome.
 
Teja said:
For what it's worth, I voted to back him after the Liverpool game. My reasoning there was we should've sacked him in the summer for Tuchel but given we decided to stick, sacking him after 3 games makes no sense and Hake / RvN as interims will probably do worse than him.

I'm wavering now but just left it on keep mostly due to inertia but also a couple of different factors:

1. The data is not that bad, pretty high up the table in xG, npXG, chance creation, xGA etc.

2. Sample size is too small, I'll probably wait until the second international break and get some more games in before flipping the vote. Yes, the previous two seasons count as sample sizes but the picture is still hazy. Obviously not good enough last season but has the injury excuse and he managed a pretty decent first season with a worse squad and more chaos (Ronaldo, Greenwood sagas) than we have now. If we match his first season's points total that's good enough for me and should be doable.
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Some of you guys are funny man. You want him gone after 50 games of shite but then back him after 3 more games because it isn’t enough? but after 7 games he can get to feck. Then judging him on every stat except points, wins and goals scored. My friend, let’s sit down and have a chat about this sport called football and what separates good teams from bad ones.
 
Stadjer said:
Well he is not wrong about that. The team clearly is not a finished product and a work in process. He is atleast partly to blame for that though, the work he is doing on the team isnt really developing as fast as we would hope.
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It’s a work in progress because he’s making every player worse.
 
big_jeffstar said:
The amount of chances we just don’t put away is scandalous really, I feel a bit sorry for him, sometimes it’s harder to miss but we find a way, I’m sure he’s not coaching that..
Rashfords form was helping Ole look much better than he was, if we had him firing again the pressure would be nowhere near as intense, and Bruno has now randomly decided that he can’t pass, create or shoot.. it’s a tough time for the team really, we’re desperate for someone in front of goal to find form
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Rashford actually had great form in ETH's first season for the initial 5 months or so. 25 goals in 41 games, he scored 31% of our goals up until the 7-0 Liverpool result. After that he's scored 16 in 72 games. That incidently was ETH's best run of form too. Since that 7-0 Liverpool broke the club, we've been goddamn awful since other than the FA Cup win.
 
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