Erik ten Hag | 2024/25

[DutchSerb]

Whatever you think about tenHag I think those questions are disrespectful. Do you think they would ask other teams manager that? Club should just stop talking to media.

Media loves when we lose. Simple.

It is, but it is also the truth. Instead of getting all defensive, tell us where you went wrong tactically. We would love to hear it. I don't care that you won two cups, we finished 8th, play the most bizarre brand of football, finished 15th in the form table out of the last 15 games and on top of that seemingly unable to take control of the game even when Liverpool are 0-3 up and don't even give a feck anymore.

The question is disrespectful as hell but a little humility would suit him at this moment. Instead he doubles down. Not even a 'no comment'. At least protect your players who have to endure your shitshow of a "system". I'm sorry but his response is laughable and arguably worse than the shit question itself.

 

[RDCR07]

It's both. But he can't say the players aren't performing in the press conference can he? That's putting the players under the bus and would damage whatever little confidence they have in themselves. On the other hand, he's also too prideful to admit the flaws in his system and so we get responses like that.

This coddling of our players hasn’t gotten us anywhere. See Slot called out a couple of players in the post match interview. He also called out Quansah after game 1. No one is asking ETH to slag off players but this treatment of saying they did well when clearly they didn’t, if not we wouldn’t have lost 0-3, is a bit too much. And we all know what happens if this bloody ego plays a part. You need to be adaptable in today’s game if you want to make it. You play to your teams strength and mold a formation/system that suits them.

 

[RDCR07]

Would they have asked same question to other managers when they lose games?

Which big team loses like us and ended their league in 8th? Barca? Madrid? Bayern? PSG? Juventus? Arsenal? City? Pool?

 

[FrankDrebin]

He's not the best manager but I have to remind myself that our players are shit. Quality of the squad is not top 6 level.

JFC, he signed the majority of them.

 

[Thom Merrilin]

The de Jong example is funny because what actually happened was the ten hag appeared sure he would want to come to play under him but in reality he had no interest in it. Not sure how that was the clubs fault

I could be off about this but I thought the issue was that he had a contract dispute with Barca who didn't want to pay him off, not that he had no interest in playing for us?

Anyways, the club tried to sign him and didn't, whatever the reasons that's a failure. To then switch the profile of midfielder and sign Cas instead suggests a lack of direction which comes down on Murtoughs shoulders in my view.

 

[FootyGirl88]

Which big team loses like us and ended their league in 8th? Barca? Madrid? Bayern? PSG? Juventus? Arsenal? City? Pool?

??

 

[UnofficialDevil]

Being criticised is one thing. Being asked disrespectful questions is different. You know that reporter was only out for reaction.

What was disrespectful about that question? The reporter asked, "After two years of seeing the same mistakes, maybe it's also a coaching problem and not just the players" Eric asked what mistakes? Journo told him exactly what we have all been seeing and ETH lost it, "I feel sorry for you". Man is a coward with a massive ego, too big for his boots.

 

[90 + 5min]

They would if a manager had the same record.

He's not being asked these questions in a vacuum

They have been. Even worse. We know that name Manchester United sell.

It is, but it is also the truth. Instead of getting all defensive, tell us where you went wrong tactically. We would love to hear it. I don't care that you won two cups, we finished 8th, play the most bizarre brand of football, finished 15th in the form table out of the last 15 games and on top of that seemingly unable to take control of the game even when Liverpool are 0-3 up and don't even give a feck anymore.

The question is disrespectful as hell but a little humility would suit him at this moment. Instead he doubles down. Not even a 'no comment'. At least protect your players who have to endure your shitshow of a "system". I'm sorry but his response is laughable and arguably worse than the shit question itself.

He is wrong in answering the way he did. Clearly under pressure so close to final whistle. Emotions still high. I would have thought it was better if he walked out of there without saying a word. But still, dissrespectful journalist wanting reaction and he got.

 

[crackers0seven]

30mins into today's game was enough for me. No plan, pathetic. Had ball at back with onana,casemiro,martinez and eventually de ligt booted it forward to vvd.. 1minute of possession and our result was a rugby punt. 24months in enough is enough, Bournemouth play better football than us, coaching is key. P45 eh

 

[sugar_kane]

It was a big, call taking off Casemiro at half time and while it was the right one his gamble didn’t pay off and icame across as quite desperate.

I can see it cause a rift in the dressing room (especially going off Bruno’s post match comments)

It’s all well and good hauling off someone having such a terrible game but Casemiro is clearly a big influence in that dressing room and we need to be able to rely on him this season.

 

[RedStarUnited]

He's not the best manager but I have to remind myself that our players are shit. Quality of the squad is not top 6 level.

Interesting, so its not the coaching but the players? From Todays lineup, only Dalot, Rashford and Bruno were players he either didn't buy or promote (Mainoo). The bench had only Maguire that he wasnt involved in bringing in.

So whos fault is it that we don't have a squad good enough for top 6?

 

[The Irish Connection]

Three strikes and you’re out. That’s 3 hammerings from our biggest rivals in two years.
He has to go.
Even if we have to let Ruud take over until Christmas and look for the best candidate then for January.
I don’t see Ugarte making a huge difference while we’re in possession.

 

[DutchSerb]

I could be off about this but I thought the issue was that he had a contract dispute with Barca who didn't want to pay him off, not that he had no interest in playing for us?

Anyways, the club tried to sign him and didn't, whatever the reasons that's a failure. To then switch the profile of midfielder and sign Cas instead suggests a lack of direction which comes down on Murtoughs shoulders in my view.

Barca was/is his dream club so he wanted to stay. He said this many times.

 

[RDCR07]

??

You don’t think they are better than us? They finished 2nd years twice in a row and will definitely be involved in the title flight this year as well. Thats progress. Thats what we hoped it would be under ETH. But we are somehow regressing every year. If by some miracle we finish the season with him convinced we won’t be in the top half of the table.

 

[Judas]

It was a big, call taking off Casemiro at half time and while it was the right one his gamble didn’t pay off and icame across as quite desperate.

I can see it cause a rift in the dressing room (especially going off Bruno’s post match comments)

It’s all well and good hauling off someone having such a terrible game but Casemiro is clearly a big influence in that dressing room and we need to be able to rely on him this season.

What did he say?

 

[DownRiver]

Honestly, I am positive for his exist happening soon:

1) Ten Hag fans who wanted him to stay on based on the final have already deserted him. So there will be zero push back if we are 6th or lower by Christmas and there are calls to be sacked

2) Our leadership will make a decision if things are not up to par to mitigate any damage.

I hope they are working on Alonso to come in next year.

 

[stevoc]

I just hope that the fans from now on, analyze the future managers critically than to just blindly "trust the process" or keep giving excuses.

They won't, large parts of the United fanbase have a cult of manager problem that stems from Fergie being so successful for so long.

 

[90 + 5min]

What was disrespectful about that question? The reporter asked, "After two years of seeing the same mistakes, maybe it's also a coaching problem and not just the players" Eric asked what mistakes? Journo told him exactly what we have all been seeing and ETH lost it, "I feel sorry for you". Man is a coward with a massive ego, too big for his boots.

So why don’t they ask Arteta same questions if it is his coachning that have contributed to Arsenal winning pretty much nothing with him as manager?
They can bring up anything against any manager if they want. Did any journalist ask Tottenham manager if he is fault for their lost game today?

 

[BabySinclair]

Either he is clueless or stubborn or actually both.

4-2-3-1 and his style of football doesn't work.

Try out 3-5-2 or something else!!!!

What have they done in pre-season???

And i see again a massive fitness problem with the squad......we are looking tired after 70 minutes.

 

[saik]

This coddling of our players hasn’t gotten us anywhere. See Slot called out a couple of players in the post match interview. He also called out Quansah after game 1. No one is asking ETH to slag off players but this treatment of saying they did well when clearly they didn’t, if not we wouldn’t have lost 0-3, is a bit too much. And we all know what happens if this bloody ego plays a part. You need to be adaptable in today’s game if you want to make it. You play to your teams strength and mold a formation/system that suits them.

The players are already underperforming. We've already seen that this season with individual mistakes directly contributing to 3 goals atleast and the numerous missed chances. Not sure calling them out is going to help with their brittle confidence.

I'm not completely absolving ETH of the blame here but the players also should take responsibility. I can give the young players a pass but our senior players have been letting us down too.

Bruno seems to have been inspired by Rashford after signing his new contract. And we've all seen Casemiros performance today. They need to be helping Mainoo, Garnacho, Amad but too often it's the other way around.

 

[Thom Merrilin]

Barca was/is his dream club so he wanted to stay. He said this many times.

You might be right, you have a source?

 

[Teja]

It was a big, call taking off Casemiro at half time and while it was the right one his gamble didn’t pay off and icame across as quite desperate.

I can see it cause a rift in the dressing room (especially going off Bruno’s post match comments)

It’s all well and good hauling off someone having such a terrible game but Casemiro is clearly a big influence in that dressing room and we need to be able to rely on him this season.

Bruno is an idiot, Casemiro should never play for us again just based off of that performance. He is rightfully being made the scapegoat and I hope it forces him to find a new club.

I'd start Ugarte / Collyer and drop Casemiro going forward.

If he pulled that while playing for Madrid, the mob would've chased him out of the city.

 

[NZT-One]

Issue with Ole was Carrick/McKenna ran training and Ole wanted the SAF overseer role. I also think most coaches in the PL could set us up that way and do well (without winning anything), because Mou, Ole and ETH and have all done at least 1 season using the same tactics, broadly, and Mou and ETH wins things whilst Ole came close. But we would never be more than we were and that is why there is such an issue now because we’re trying, about 10 years later than everyone else, to shift to having a 6.

100%.

Thats the thing with getting rid of him. Its pure special effects when there is no successor available. I guess, modernizing our play was always going to backfire here and there, maybe it is good when ETH is the one getting the blame for it. Even though there is a good chance that we could have Potter or Poch at the sideline and we'd be challenged with similar issues. We missed 10 years of football evolution. That isn't going to be rectified simply by having one or two good transfer windows.

 

[2mufc0]

Even when Liverpool were shite in the 90s and 00s they still put up a fight when they played us, although we still beat them most of the time the drubbings were few and far between. If ETH can't motivate the players for this fixture he truly is a lost cause.

 

[Joosep_K]

As a long-time Ten Hag supporter, I have to admit he too often makes decisions that don’t make sense. Also, I think in his interviews, he is too political with his answers and often doesn’t exactly answer the question. We might need a more ruthless, no-bullshit manager next.

 

[Gazza]

Alright, now that people have got the anger out of their systems, just want to make a few points. 1) All the realistic alternatives out there to ETH are cr@p. 2) We are 3 games into the new season. Last season was bad but he had terrible injuries. 3) I don't think any manager could do much better with this set of players. Too many of them need to go but United can't sell them because nobody else is willing to pay the crazy wages for them. That's down to the recruitment at the club and we already know that this is done nowadays by a transfer committee. It's that which needs to be looked at. How many managers have been sacked and what has changed? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result doesn't tend to work out well. Yes, ETH has a veto on players (probably) but he is not responsible for the recruitment.

Why are you pretending to be a United fan on a United forum, the day your team beat us 3-0? Or did you forget to switch accounts?

 

[saik]

It was a big, call taking off Casemiro at half time and while it was the right one his gamble didn’t pay off and icame across as quite desperate.

I can see it cause a rift in the dressing room (especially going off Bruno’s post match comments)

It’s all well and good hauling off someone having such a terrible game but Casemiro is clearly a big influence in that dressing room and we need to be able to rely on him this season.

What did Bruno say? If he had a problem with Casemiro's substitution then he's also a part of the problem considering how bad he was himself.

 

[Scorpy]

Talking about the manager getting sacked three games in is fecking grim. Then again, he should have been sacked months ago.

 

[Affirmation]

I am mostly basing it on the fact he always fall out with the management sooner or later. His an elite manager, but I want something solid.

That's fair when looking at it on the surface of things. But then again I would also argue that the regimes he had been working with were not the most stable either.

 

[TsuWave]

Nobody is suggesting that though, we're asking for more depth of thought than just "sack ETH". What happens next? If we've got a good replacement lined up then I'm on board, but if there aren't any suggestions beyond "give it Ruudy 'till the end of the season" then it's just change for the sake of change.

Do you think the Klopp name-drop just happened by accident?

Non-argument. Change is always made for the sake of change. Very much doubt anyone here has the qualifications or proximity necessary to provide substantial insight into “good replacements” we could have lined up. It’s a bad faith argument often used to frame the idea that Ten Hag would be hard to replace - that notion cannot be substantiated based on performances and results he has presided over.

We are football fans, however, and we can see managers with less resources playing decent football. We can see managers instilling styles in smaller time windows. We can see managers making smaller clubs resilient and at times competitive.

The whole “Any suggestions for a new manager then? A real name” routine is very disingenuous and see-through. The next steps in the conversation usually translate to some version of the people that want to stick with this guy trying to poke holes at whatever suggestions and “2 trophying” people to death.

Ten Hag wouldn’t be hard to replace, I’m sorry.

 

[Zumbi]

I'm saying I'm trying to treat him as a new manager since he was backed by the club in the summer but clearly you can't completely ignore the past seasons. I don't agree that we're playing the same as we did for the majority of last season. We have a new higher up structure, new coaching staff, and a largely changed squad. How can you say it's all on EtH?

At best, he was very reluctantly “backed” by the club. The club talking to other prospective managers because they felt the need to assess their options in case they did decide sack him, is not a particularly strong vote of confidence and doesn’t mean he magically starts on a clean slate.

And what the team does on the pitch is on Ten Hag. That’s his job and that’s how it works. And when we keep seeing the same problems again and again and again, irrespective of the personnel, then it’s abundantly clear there is a problem with Ten Hag. His set up and tactics have not show the requisite improvement in any area of the pitch. His job is to make the whole better than the sum of its parts, and he seems to do the opposite.

 

[RedStarUnited]

Even when Liverpool were shite in the 90s and 00s they still put up a fight when they played us, although we still beat them most of the time the drubbings were few and far between. If ETH can't motivate the players for this fixture he truly is a lost cause.

I always think this too, at OT with Fergy we had their number but we rarely if ever went to Anfield and tucked them in. In all of the Fergy years we only beat them by 2 goals at Anfield twice, both times 3-1 and both happened in 1997.

Since Fergy left they have done:

14/15 - 3-0
20/21 - 4-2
21/22 - 5-0
24/25 - 3-0

This is just at OT, so we are not including the 7-0.

 

[TrustInJanuzaj]

Are people not allowed to change their minds? I felt that the injuries last season were absolutely horrific and unprecedented and you only have to look at the Crystal Palace game with that line up, or the Newcastle defeat where I think we had 8 starters from the previous managers and you can try and understand why these things happen. It's not as if people were absolutely convinced EtH would be a success, they just were like 'ok, give him the benefit of the doubt, new ownership, two cup final wins and three cup finals in total, new squad being built, some good work with the young players, let's see how it goes'.

It has only been three games but I still don't like the style of play he's trying to build here, which to me is the biggest issue. I thought this would change and i don't think it will. He absolutely needed to hit the ground running to build momentum and get people on his side again but I don't see how he turns this around now. At this point, you start to wonder, what is the point?

All of the posters bringing up Ole or Jose or whatever are just point scoring. EtH is just a continuation of a problem we've had for years and one he's done very little to fix.

If you rightly could see the context of last season then it’s only right you can see it this campaign too (I.e. new signings not up to speed). I agree this Is the season to judge Ten Hag and if he doesn’t deliver he needs to go, but three games in is far too early to tell if the signings and vision have come together.

 

[DanH]

I spent last season telling myself that waiting until the third season was a fair amount of time to give someone. If I'm going to be consistent on this, there does need to be a serious uptick in performances very soon.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

If we got a new manager his quickly do people think he'd have us playing an actual, logical, style of football?

I reckon 2/3 games you'd see a pretty apparent improvement.

 

[AndySmith1990]

If you rightly could see the context of last season then it’s only right you can see it this campaign too (I.e. new signings not up to speed). I agree this Is the season to judge Ten Hag and if he doesn’t deliver he needs to go, but three games in is far too early to tell if the signings and vision have come together.

It's the same nonsense excuses made last season, and once signings and "vision" "came together", nothing improved. We finished 8th. I don't understand why you need to write off another season before accepting what's right in front of you. Theres nothing too early about judging him, he shouldn't even still be in charge.

 

[santeria13]

I'm saying I'm trying to treat him as a new manager since he was backed by the club in the summer but clearly you can't completely ignore the past seasons. I don't agree that we're playing the same as we did for the majority of last season. We have a new higher up structure, new coaching staff, and a largely changed squad. How can you say it's all on EtH?

The mental gymnastics people will go through to make themselves believe ETH isn't absolute garbage at his job is beyond me

 

[Romez]

Alright, now that people have got the anger out of their systems, just want to make a few points. 1) All the realistic alternatives out there to ETH are cr@p. 2) We are 3 games into the new season. Last season was bad but he had terrible injuries. 3) I don't think any manager could do much better with this set of players. Too many of them need to go but United can't sell them because nobody else is willing to pay the crazy wages for them. That's down to the recruitment at the club and we already know that this is done nowadays by a transfer committee. It's that which needs to be looked at. How many managers have been sacked and what has changed? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result doesn't tend to work out well. Yes, ETH has a veto on players (probably) but he is not responsible for the recruitment.

You only think there are no alternatives because you're stuck in the mindset we have to hire a big name.

Liverpool went for Slot, Brighton hired a 31 year old, Chelsea signed a manager from the Championship. Postecoglu was managing in Japan a few years ago.

There are plenty of talented managers out there who play attractive football waiting to be given a chance at a top club.

You just have to hope you have the right people in charge to scout them out.

 

[Ollie Derbyshire]

We’ve won two trophies yes but we have also played the worst football in the last 18mths as I can remember and there are no signs of it getting any better. ETH is showing he is not good enough at this level to get us into the top 4 mix let alone challenging for the title. He needs to be replaced.

 

[santeria13]

It's the same nonsense excuses made last season, and once signings and "vision" "came together", nothing improved. We finished 8th. I don't understand why you need to write off another season before accepting what's right in front of you. Theres nothing too early about judging him, he shouldn't even still be in charge.

They'll never stop. Should he somehow still be in a job at the end of the season and it's another failure, they would say something like 'he's only had one year under this new structure'.