Thanks for reminding us
Erik ten Hag | Currently unemployed
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His best football came during the empty stadiums funnily enough. Players can’t handle pressure at this club… perform without a crowd on there back.
That all started under Solskjaer tbh but ETH did make it worse.
He opened that Pandora's box and the club did nothing to try and close it. There's no way he should've survived that 5-0 loss to Liverpool at home.
Losing games has become the norm and it's a very difficulty habit to fix.
How many Ole signings are still at the club? 2-3? And one of them Bruno and another Amad.
In the case of Ole how so?
Obviously very difficult to tell but I think that this is the wrong conclusion. The period where the stadiums where empty was the period where the team felt relieved to get away from Mou. Plus opposition teams took a while to notice and react to us becoming quite good at transitional football and had a go against us which was exactly how we liked it. Also I think, during this period it started that while results stayed good to very good, that performances stagnated. Not suprisingly, as more and more teams adapted to what we were good at.
Ole was miles better Ten Hag
When you consider the squad we had under Ole -
Rashford, Martial, Gwood, Pogba, Sancho, James, Maguire, bruno, Fred, Mctominnay, signing of Amad..
Was all a better squad than the one Ten Hag left us with.
If Amorim had to choose between taking over Ole's squad vs Ten Hag's squad - it would 100% be Ole's.
Such bad signings that has arguably set the club back possibly 5-10 years to become a dominant team again arguably based completely on their dutch passports.
Also giving Ten Hag an extra few months was a very poor decision that has left us with more poor signings and a early end to the season.
When you consider the squad we had under Ole -
Rashford, Martial, Gwood, Pogba, Sancho, James, Maguire, bruno, Fred, Mctominnay, signing of Amad..
Was all a better squad than the one Ten Hag left us with.
If Amorim had to choose between taking over Ole's squad vs Ten Hag's squad - it would 100% be Ole's.
Such bad signings that has arguably set the club back possibly 5-10 years to become a dominant team again arguably based completely on their dutch passports.
Also giving Ten Hag an extra few months was a very poor decision that has left us with more poor signings and a early end to the season.
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Yep, said this weeks ago a as a player you don’t recover from those defeats and playing that way week in, week out under the pressure of playing for United. It’s career ending for most players and we’re seeing that now. Whole team is shot to shit and we need major reinforcements if we’re to recover.
Worst manager of the post Ferguson era by a landslide.
Yes he amassed a domestic trophy or two but at the expense of the teams competitiveness in the league which the current manager is reaping the fruit of.
Erik truly was diabolical, when you assess his tactical competence, ability to recognize talent and lack of rotation (which surmounted in the injury crisis) he's easily the lowest of the crop between Solskjaer, LVG and Jose.
Yes he amassed a domestic trophy or two but at the expense of the teams competitiveness in the league which the current manager is reaping the fruit of.
Erik truly was diabolical, when you assess his tactical competence, ability to recognize talent and lack of rotation (which surmounted in the injury crisis) he's easily the lowest of the crop between Solskjaer, LVG and Jose.
Those were costly mistakes, many could and should have been avoided. The point, that most of them aren't there anymore, doesn't mean that no damage was done.
In the case of us doubling down on Rashford and Bruno our key players and continueing on a path with "we need to get the right players, then a functional team will emerge" instead of "how do we want to play and what kind of players should we bring in". Club and fans believed (to an extent, some fans still do) that all we need is "one or two shrewd additions" even though that completely neglects the fact how badly organised we are as a team and how little we are able to extract from collective principles. Mou was a dinosaur so it wasn't expected that he will finally get us on track but Ole(and decisionsmakers) made sure, that we stayed on thewrong tracks for even longer. Bringing in ETH was a step in the right direction at least, although obviously him being not able to implement them successfully doesn't help the case very much. Where we are right now, trying to increase the technical level all over the squad, increasing fitness, workrate, intensity, implement a working pressing organisation and finally make use of positional play, we could have been there like 5 or 6 years ago.
He was so tactically incompetent to the extent that it could only resemble diminished intelligence as an explanation.
United went the entire season with a dearth in the midfield because of the instructions given when pressing and the back-line dropping off.
It coincidentally changed when Wilcox was reported to demand a different approach which saw the team raise the bar leading to the FA cup final.
If you hire someone with little squad building experience and give them too much power over signings whilst you spend so so much money you're the moron not them.
True but it also doesn't necessarily mean that it was Ole who did the damage. Ten Hag got rid of 80% of Ole's squad.
So you are placing the majority of the responsibility for this all on Ole then?
It should be noted that the only time post Fergie that we've looked a decently consistent side and had back to back Top 4 finishes was under Ole. Ole wasn't good enough but he gets far too much shot on here. And Ten Hag wasn't a step in th right direction at all, because instead of building a team/squad with a long term goal in mind. We onc again lumped all our eggs into one basket hopign for a SAF Mk2, And gave anothr manager virtually total control over transfers in and out. And look wher that has lead us, £650m spent to turn a top 4 squad into a top 6-8 (hopefully) squad.
If only we could rewind and give Amorim the sort of backing Ten Hag got.
Sadly Amorim is going to have to work with alot of the rubbish he bought, because Erik was allowed to bleed us dry, and left behind nothing to sell.
I can also imgine Erik sat there now with a wry smile on his face thinking everyone seeing Amorim struggling somehow vindicates him aswell.
Sadly Amorim is going to have to work with alot of the rubbish he bought, because Erik was allowed to bleed us dry, and left behind nothing to sell.
I can also imgine Erik sat there now with a wry smile on his face thinking everyone seeing Amorim struggling somehow vindicates him aswell.
But the consequences of those mistakes are still there. Not just opportunity costs but also high wages for players who are still here. I haven't said it was only Ole who did damage but he is certainly one of them. And he has been backed quite a bit only to end up with a grandtotal of nothing, not even some promising talents. I exclude Amad here because during Ole he never was part of the 1st team. Not a criticism towards Ole, the guy was very young, but I also don't think, he should be lauded for something he cannot be criticised for.
No. The majority of the responsibility is on the decision makers who made his deal permanent prematurely and then extended even though it was kinda obvious, that he reached his peak after 5 month and any hope he'd be able to get us to the next level was just that: hope. Because there was nothing to suggest, that he would be up for the challenge.
The guy itself only took the opportunity that was presented with him, no issue with that. Criticism only towards the decisionmakers and large chunks of the fanbase who sipped up the opportunity of our very own Pep-storyline and all the feel good atmosphere even though it became more and more obvious, that enthusiasm and hope had turned to blind faith pretty quickly.
Not the first time, this gets brought up and at this point, it is a agree to disagree situation but during all his time, I never felt we'd be on the up as a team. We never really challenged for anything of note and while we delivered a few professional performances and a few more good results, we choked when it mattered. Yes, Ole was able to stabilize results on a fairly good level and yes, he got too much and some unfair criticism around here but he never looked able to update Manchester United OS and he also got a crazy amount of shallow praise.
Agreed. The way we did it was wrong. But ETH, in terms of how he was perceived as a coach, was the best option at the time and a rather safe bet in terms of being able to finally update our style of play and implement some principles that all our rivals employ for ages while we wasted time with "need the right characters and then we will figure it out".
No question though, handing the responsibility over to him to the extent as it happen, was clearly a mistake.
The squad has many more players that should work in a 2024-football side than it had before and as I said, when you know the numbers for ETH so well, you surely know them for Oles time. No doubt, recruitment has been well shit throughout time and ETH is at fault for the outcome as much as Ole.
Yep. All the signs were there and no Cup win should have kept him in the job.
Keeping him is one thing but the fact that we gave him another £200m to spend is what compounds the already horrendous mistake.
Fortunately more than half of that was spent on Ugarte, Yoro and Mazraoui who are all good and will play a role under Amorim. De Ligt isn’t that bad either so it’s only Zirkzee that was really a bad signing and we should still be able to recoup most of the money as he wasn’t particularly expensive.
Did we give him that money? By all accounts he didn't want Ugarte, which would explain why Ugarte has turned out to be a good signing
I thought, it had been somewhat established that was kept ETH in the job was mostly the inavailability of some successor that was deemed sufficient. Now don't get me wrong, I also thought if there was doubt over him, then the FA cup shouldn't have been changing things but at the same time - if you have no Plan B, there isn't much point to just jump out of Plan A. Thats actionism and something, that isn't considered very smart.
Agreed, I've actually been really happy with all our summer signings though.
Considering we replaced him with a manager that was available at that time, I think we can put this notion to bed. We kept him because we believed he was going to turn it around.
That is/was the biggest mistake by far.
So much so that Amorim is now fecked in the market. He can't really do anything in January to improve the squad.
Great work, United. Good job. Idiots.
Didn't INEOS approve the spends?
The club's summer business, and that involves the signings as well as the fact of not changing managers, is wholly on INEOS.
Ten Hag is an easy target because he's gone and rightly so, but at some point he stops being responsible. Apart from the fact that the players brought in were fine.
Ten Hag is an easy target because he's gone and rightly so, but at some point he stops being responsible. Apart from the fact that the players brought in were fine.
This is a Ten Hag thread and I don't want to drag it any further off topic. So I'll only write a brief reply.
If we're attributing blame between Erik and Ole for our current predicament, Ten Hag has to shoulder at last 80% of blame for where we currently find ourselves. He spent more money than any of his predccessors and had more control over transfers than either Jose or Ole ever did. The current squad is undoubtedly his.
Ole was never good enough to make us title contenders, but he had to work with the remnants of the LVG and Jose squads, he made his own recruitment mistakes also of course. Despite that he made us a solid top 4 side, no other manager has been able to do that post SAF. And I suspect if we hadn't pushed to sign Sancho/Ronaldo and tried to change the style of play back in 2021 in an effort to challenge for the title. I suspect things wouldn't have went tits up so dramatically and we'd have finished top 4 that year as well.
Which players didn't Ole want? Just so I understand the transfer point a bit better.
Thing is, Ole said on the Overlap, the club didn't sign a single player he also didn't sign off on.
The entire sequence on the Overlap with Ole regarding his time at United paints a great picture as to why he failed to turn us into title contenders.
The damage he did is just simply inconceivable.
He should have been sacked the second after that 7-0 disaster at Anfield.
He should have been sacked the second after that 7-0 disaster at Anfield.
The fanbase has to take some blame as well though, I thought Ten Hag should have been sacked after the FA Cup final and that became a minority opinion as the fans got swept up in a wave. There were plenty of smart people in the media pointing out that Ten Hag did a poor job and the FA Cup didn't make up for it and they were lambasted as toxic and out to get the club, even though they were stating the obvious and Ten Hag played up to that 'everyone out to get us' mentality because it kept him in the job. Ineos could have been stronger but ultimately if they sacked Ten Hag after the FA Cup final then they would have had to deal with a lot of shit from the supporters.
I never said we signed players Ole didn't want.
I'm saying 'we' ie The Club (Ole included) pushed to sign the likes of Sancho and Ronaldo thinking they would elevate us into title contention. But Ole while also trying to change the style of play that season wasn't upto the task of taking that squad to the next level.
Yeah thats fair enough. I think recruitment should be a club issue to deal with not a managerial one too. Whether its Oles reign wasting money on sancho, ronaldo, wan bissaka or Ten Hag wasting on Mount, Antony, Malacia. The problem is we don't have proper talent identification that saves managers from themselves when recruiting players.I never said we signed players Ole didn't want.
I'm saying 'we' ie The Club (Ole included) pushed to sign the likes of Sancho and Ronaldo thinking they would elevate us into title contention. But Ole while also trying to change the style of play that season wasn't upto the task of taking that squad to the next level.
This is a bit different. The complaint after Jose left was he was toxic. If you go back and look at Ole’s squad at the time he left it was far far better than what we have now it’s just that the mentality and culture had become rotten.Its the same comments after every manager gets sacked, it was Ole and Woodward last time
Ten Hag’s era has done unbelievable damage. His teams were always unbalanced and lacking energy, add in multiple shit signings and it’s a nightmare scenario for Amorim.
I don't know how people can come to this conclusion, at all.
Our attacking options were better, yes, but the squad overall was worse than what we have now. Ole just overachieved in both of his full seasons.
Pretty sure if they wanted to EtH and Amorim could set the team up to how it was in the Jose/Ole years and squeeze a top 4 finish but the problem is the team never would go beyond that. Both Ole and Jose said they wanted the team to play a little differently in their third seasons and it all fell apart. With EtH it was the second season and Amorim sounds like he's not even playing that game.
I've defended EtH during his second season with the injury crisis he had and some of the players but there's no doubt to me that his plan to be 'the best transition team in the world' was all over the place in its execution- signing players like Casemiro, Antony and then banging on about the importance of fitness with a squad that was lacking in physicality and runners. Awful plan and an awful execution of an idea.
I've defended EtH during his second season with the injury crisis he had and some of the players but there's no doubt to me that his plan to be 'the best transition team in the world' was all over the place in its execution- signing players like Casemiro, Antony and then banging on about the importance of fitness with a squad that was lacking in physicality and runners. Awful plan and an awful execution of an idea.
I wouldn’t have sacked him there and then because we’d just won the League Cup the week before. But yes, that loss was the beginning of the end and a sign of things to come.
I have to question what you were watching to come out with this.
In 21/22 we went into the season with expectations of our first ever title challenge. Whether you think the team was overrated or not in the prior seasons we added Ronaldo, Sancho and Varane.
Maguire, Shaw and Pogba had come off the back of an excellent Euros that summer. Bruno was Bruno. Fred and De Gea were also positive contributors. Add this into to the stacked attack and the only way you think the current crop is stronger is if you started supporting us after Rangnick joined.
That squad was far better but the club and dressing room was a toxic wasteland that year.
I don't think you realize how bad that team was.
De Gea, a keeper uncapable of ball-playing and progressive passing, and being awful under pressure, being our first choice keeper whilst every other rival bar Spurs were already playing with technical goalkeepers by that point. His shot-stopping abilities had dropped off by then too.
AWB plus an unready Dalot as our right-back options after not being able to buy Trippier from Atletico Madrid.
Lindelöf being a starting CB for two seasons straight for a team with top 4 aspirations. And then he gets replaced by Varane who struggles in a high line, cannot pass forward, and cannot carry the ball. Reserve options? Bailly, Jones, Tuanzebe?
Having a world class but injury prone Shaw as our mainstay LB but two mid-table level subs for him in Telles and Williams.
McFred was our first choice midfield. The bench options? A physically declined Matic and Pogba who was never disciplined enough to play in a double pivot. But he was wasted there anyways.
In the attack, we were really well stocked IMO. However, the midfield and defense wouldn't make top 8 in the current PL. Only Maguire and Shaw were elite pieces from all those players.
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The Ole/Ten Hag double team has done an absolute number on the club. A lazy, entitled, incoherent mess.
I just dont get this. Managers are scapegoated too much whether its Ole Ten hag or even prior.
Weve been dogshite in recruitment and strategy, thats the actual problem.