Me of course
Erik ten Hag | 2024/25
- Thread starter Cheimoon
- Start date
its hard to see how can he last, nothing much has changed.
One of the things I get anxious about is our inability to hold the ball and slow down, its one post to another nonstop. Surely this much be tiring and will eventually results in injury.
One of the things I get anxious about is our inability to hold the ball and slow down, its one post to another nonstop. Surely this much be tiring and will eventually results in injury.
If Garnacho's shot was just a bit higher and Amad takes a touch instead of trying to hit it on the volley would you still have posted this?
Just waiting patiently for the inevitable
If you're referring to Slot, Ten Hag didn't beat him regularly, their record is equal, two wins each.
It's relevant to the overall question of ETH's competence as manager of Manchester United.
It's extremely relevant. If you wish to forget all of Ten Hag's poor performance upto this point and treat this as though he is a brand new appointment then that is absurd.
Every aspect of judging this season will of course include the context of it being his 3rd season. That isn't even an anti Ten Hag perspective it is simply the only logical way to look at it.
Our next 10 league games are pretty brutal. Southampton and Brentford are the only straightforward fixtures you would think. 2 wins out of our next 10 is a real possibility, and he won't come back from that.
He basically found that Ole's squad wasn't built on technical quality with the ball. Logic would have told him that this was one of the major reasons Ole failed here, and so should try take us down a different path. Instead of aiming to improve us so we're able to keep possession of a football, he basically abandoned it in favour of playing hot potato football, handing out contracts left and right to turnover machines who love nothing more than giving the ball away.
And many fans on here lapped it up because "the United way" or something.
Ole's team would have passed the ball around our current team at will and probably scored a hat full.
I was Ole out, but I’d take his football 10/10 over this shit. ETH is not the man to take us forward.
I was Ole out for the right person. He had gotten us 3rd, 2nd, a Europa League final and also had us scoring a good amount of goals. I also have very little doubt that if we kept him when he went we would have dropped our backline a bit deeper again and got top 4.
I had realised he was not the man to challenge Pep and Klopp but even at the time I felt getting rid of him only to get the wrong person would just set us back further.
(Anyone who loves Ten Hag I couldn't care less about your predictable message of "Pfft we won the FA Cup") But Ole made FAR better Man Utd teams with less investment.
Got me excited to watch us on the weekend with Rashford, Pogba, Martial, De Gea, Maguire, Lindelof, Wan Bissaka, Fred, McTominay. And with all that got us above Liverpool, Arsenal ect.
Not sure how this is an improvement personally.
As far as I see it kids at Ajax learn to play a brand of football from a young age that eventually translates to what is expected of them for the first team if they are lucky enough to make it. Barcelona do this too. I hope that one day our academy will run like this too, but that's hard to do if you don't have a clear footballing identity.
Some serious rose-tinted copium going on with these Ole posts.
His football was terrible. Could not negotiate a low-block and had the fallow McFred on speed-dial. Best signing was Cavani. Improved nobody.
Never ought been our full-time manager. Never. Man’s a bona fide United icon. Still never.
The football was better than the majority played under Ten Hag.
Your last paragraph makes no sense.
No it would have given Ten Hag a bit of breathing space but I would have been pointing out that every United game for the past 2 years is nervy, end to end and decided by a couple of key moments. Win or lose there's only ever 1 goal in it
Watching Chelsea smash 6 past Wolves or Spurs win 4-0 fills me with all kinds of envy. Why can't that ever be us? Week in week out United games are always heart in mouth from start to finish. For once I want to be bored watching us cruise to an easy win.
Pretty much perfectly sums up the last 6 years.
The best compliment I pay to EtH is he has made us a resolute, formidable cup side. Solskjaer failed in every competition he managed.
The opposition knew how to play him and most matches under him were excruciatingly predictable. EtH is better. not by any great distance, but much more practical.
Also, the last paragraph makes perfect sense.
Solskjaer should never have been our full-time manager, despite his deserved legend status at the club from his playing days.
He signed Bruno didn't he? Although Cavani is probably our best striker signing post Fergie
People keep talking about him overachieving in his first season, but the football wasn't good. Want proof? Go and read the end of season/ expectations thread for the following season where a common theme was wanting to see better football.
In his first season other big teams also shit the bed, we took a huge point lead until the final stages of the season, and still we had some rough patches that made it a bit closer.
Another thing with this idea of us overachieving is that we actually finished from 2nd to 4th a number of times in the few years preceding him. We finished 2nd and 3rd and 2 of the 3 seasons leading up to his "overachieving" season, and he was allowed to add a number of players, for £250m worth of fees, to that squad. I don't call that overachieving, especially when the likes of Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea were absolute trash. A good first season yes, but after that summer of madness when we signed all those players, everyone was feeling optimistic.
In his first season other big teams also shit the bed, we took a huge point lead until the final stages of the season, and still we had some rough patches that made it a bit closer.
Another thing with this idea of us overachieving is that we actually finished from 2nd to 4th a number of times in the few years preceding him. We finished 2nd and 3rd and 2 of the 3 seasons leading up to his "overachieving" season, and he was allowed to add a number of players, for £250m worth of fees, to that squad. I don't call that overachieving, especially when the likes of Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea were absolute trash. A good first season yes, but after that summer of madness when we signed all those players, everyone was feeling optimistic.
The difference between hoijlund and success is a manager that wants to play football, our wingers are constantly passing backwards not taking on the defenders and getting the ball into the box, take amad yesterday the 1 time he drove at the defence he got a goal, every other time he passed backwards that’s the system, Antony simply doesn’t have the pace and physical attributes to be a winger in this league.
Nah one made us a good football team the other hasn't. It's incredibly simply. Not even considering one having far more support.
Where was that resolution in the Europa League or this year's league cup or when we decided to throw it away against Championship side?
He has a very strange way of playing football, I must say. And boring for viewers as well. Havent seen his previous sides people say they were good, so why us??
I’m totally with you mate.
Unfortunately, he is not a manager for big teams. He is perfect for mid-level teams and can upset large teams in the cup.
700 mil spent in 3 years and ETH is still finding his feet. Maybe if we give him a couple of more his Ajax players he will probably learn that you can't isolate your strikers of wingers like that. I think another billion would do that trick.
Hopefully we are both wrong and something suddenly clicks.
He really didn't. The mood might have been a little different, his off-hands-approach provided a few moments of brilliance but it wasn't going anywhere. Granted, I would have hoped, that with ETH, the changes would be more significant and fast. Maybe he isn't it. Doesn't mean Ole was somehow less of a mis-appointment. His time at the club was a waste of time.
Results don't necessarily mean good football. I find it suprising that this lesson hasn't been learned until now. Oles "good results" made sure we haven't made any deeper rooted changes. ETHs first season with the good results was also hyped up when it was mostly Ole ball continued with a better playing out from the back. Last season we at least started to apply some semirecent methods. You can look my posts up, I am the least of an ETH fan but there was always going to be some pain, years of bad decisions aren't rectified with simple spending. Especially if there wasn't even a real plan behind it.
The new managers in the league once again shown him up. His football is not good, it will never get us to where we want to be, but we have to fail again this season for you all to see.
Ole ball has never left as our best strategy. Ole was just much, much better at it. Ten Hag no matter how much he has tried has always failed horrendously when trying to move away from it then reverted back.
Ole did well because he realised the limitations of himself as a manager and also the squad he had.
It's the same reason he never would have touched Pep or Klopp. Ten Hag I think is equally limited at the top, top level but doesn't accept it as much so we have to suffer more miserable attempts to do something he just isn't capable of.
Ole was not the top class manager Utd need but he provided far more enjoyment week to week whilst waiting than Ten Hag who also isn't the manager we need. Imo of course.
That's the thing, people are underestimating how low the bar is now. We would occasionally batter a Leeds or whoever it might be and played some electric football in transition. Add that to consistent champions league football and it's bloody better than this.
If someone chooses the FA Cup (cause that's all they have) over it then fair enough but for me I'd rather have an excitement to watch us each week until we found a manager who could properly challenge.
The worst thing about watching us these days is how utterly boring we are.
I can handle the results being now what we want, but usually United games are that thing I will mentally circle for the week ahead and genuinely look forward to.
This current version of United suck all the fun out of watching football. I genuinely only ever lost interest for a while under LvG, but EtH is in danger of bringing us there too.
I can handle the results being now what we want, but usually United games are that thing I will mentally circle for the week ahead and genuinely look forward to.
This current version of United suck all the fun out of watching football. I genuinely only ever lost interest for a while under LvG, but EtH is in danger of bringing us there too.
It really is nuts. All this spending to have a team that scored 57 goals in the league last season and isn’t looking much better in attack this either either. Maybe we’ll score 65 - yaay.
I really don’t know what coaching ETH has been doing for over two years. Our pressing - definitely, we’ve started this campaign pressing extremely well so I’ll give him that - but on the ball we look so mediocre and a team shouldn’t look so listless in attack in a managers third season.
United are pressing better, though. I know it was ''by the skin f our teeth'', beating Fulham. The football is far from perfect, but it's been far from perfect since Fergie left. There hasn't been one amazing United team since he left. We are so far behind of the 'best' teams. Its shocking that I actually just posted ''we had 4 games in a row where we weren't bad''. We have to accept we fell so far behind that 4 ''not horrible'' performances is an improvement.
A man who engineered zero goal difference for the first time in decades, is not only given a transfer kitty, has backing of the board and many CAF people will question the legitimacy of your support if you question ETH. Tbf, i don't question his coaching, i am denying its existence. This legendary man who worked with Antony in ajax for years one day decided "wow this one footed man will revamp old trafford as such, i must have that foot here even it will cost 80 millions"
How much of this pressing improvement is down to starting a 4 man midfield and the intensity of Mount and how much is it to us becoming a better pressing team?
From what I see, the better pressing is due to us clogging the middle of park with 2 central and 2 attacking midfielders. The trade-off is that we look more toothless in attack and are sacrificing someone who should be there as a goal scorer (whether Rasmus or Zizkzee). Also, we started to look like we looked like last season as soon as Mount went off and it gave Brighton more spaces to exploit.
I wouldn't mind this formation in a couple of big games as we as we won't be anything other than an underdog under ETH but it being used against Fulham or a Brighton team with Milner in the midfield didn't impress me at all.
Brilliant post. 117 games managed.
I’d also like to add, Technical Director, Jason ‘Game Model’ Wilcox will also have a lot to answer for if we don’t see improvements in on the ball attacking patterns and off the ball defensive structure.
"At least we competed well and almost earned a draw against a Brighton"
Surprised neither of you got the sarcasm but then that's because there are genuine ETH cultists here I suppose.
All previous managers pre-ETH have had an ensalada of a squad. ETH has had the most help in getting in the players he has been comfortable with than any other manager prior to him.
Even last season, he was more blessed than any manager prior. This season is 100% ETH's squad. If he cant do it this season, then he has been an utter fraud. 100%
Even last season, he was more blessed than any manager prior. This season is 100% ETH's squad. If he cant do it this season, then he has been an utter fraud. 100%
Careful, people will school you in how the top folks in United doesnt communicate so Ten Hag had no way of knowing what the price would be for Antony. None. Kept in the dark.