Erik ten Hag interview with AD.nl | " [Last season] was by far the toughest season I have ever experienced as a coach"

AaronRedDevil said:
I think ETH had the toughest managerial run I've ever seen. His first season had non stop drama with Ronaldo and the Greenwood situation, losing 2 great attackers and left had zero backups. Then last season had an insane amount of injuries and the Sancho conflict. (Coulda done better with that i admit). He's fighting for his fecking life at this point :lol:. I've actually never seen this kind of thing in the years of watching football.
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Sancho conflict, Antony rape allegation, Rashford tantrums
 
Mickson said:
An interesting interview. I agree with many things he says. However, one thing I struggle with is how he blames injuries, players, medical stuff etc. What about his tactics? He needs to take a lot of responsibility for what happened last season.
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You didnt read it properly. He is not blaming the injuries, he is blaming lack of options at his disposal due to long ass contracts and FPP restrictions.
 
CM said:
And I told you why for Mason Mount. I can't be arsed to find all the tweets but the Mount transfer thread is still there from last summer if you want to go and find them. That signing was 100% Ten Hag led.

Casemiro could have been both but Ten Hag was more than happy to go along with it either way. I don't know whether he's entirely responsible for that one or not, but as my original post stated, he's still complicit.
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You actually didn't say why for Mason Mount. You pointed to a website from man utd and said "he wasn't forced to sign him".

Thats not the same as saying ten hag personally pushed for him. Again in the same athletic article, it was reported Mount was a target in agreement with club and coach, and Murtough was desperate for him, to the extent he payed 15m more despite being told his ceiling for a budget was 42m.
 
AaronRedDevil said:
I think ETH had the toughest managerial run I've ever seen. His first season had non stop drama with Ronaldo and the Greenwood situation, losing 2 great attackers and left had zero backups. Then last season had an insane amount of injuries and the Sancho conflict. (Coulda done better with that i admit). He's fighting for his fecking life at this point :lol:. I've actually never seen this kind of thing in the years of watching football.
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Not to mention the Antony allegations, the takeover saga, or the 28 different back fours.
 
VP89 said:
You actually didn't say why for Mason Mount. You pointed to a website from man utd and said "he wasn't forced to sign him".

Thats not the same as saying ten hag personally pushed for him. Again in the same athletic article, it was reported Mount was a target in agreement with club and coach, and Murtough was desperate for him, to the extent he payed 15m more despite being told his ceiling for a budget was 42m.
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CM said:
The Mount one - pretty much every media report last summer was about how Ten Hag viewed Mount as the key in how he wanted to shape his midfield, and was also why we kept going back in at a stupid price. This report on the United website are hardly the words of a man having that signing forced on him.
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Come on man, please learn to read. These kinds of back and forths are extremely boring.

I actually don't really care anymore :lol: These interactions are draining.
 
CM said:
Come on man, please learn to read. These kinds of back and forths are extremely boring.

I actually don't really care anymore :lol: These interactions are draining.
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Yes you gave no actual links to suggest he was a personal ten hag wish, and seem to cherry pick club PR (which also don't suggest this) and ignore others, right after I gave the Athletic deep dive to show otherwise.

And then rather ironically, you assumed I need to learn how to read.
 
VP89 said:
Yes you gave no actual links to suggest he was a personal ten hag wish, and seem to cherry pick club PR (which also don't suggest this) and ignore others, right after I gave the Athletic deep dive to show otherwise.

And then rather ironically, you assumed I need to learn how to read.
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You're boring. I'm putting you on ignore.
 
BaguetteBoy said:


Is this at the back of these interview. Shocking these lot allowed to have a platform to talk utter shite
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Then don't share their nonsense. You're literally helping them get a bigger platform.

On the ETH interview itself, I find it interesting he says Ragnick was absolutely right and how he basically throws the old regime under the bus a bit. Ultimately he will be judged on the performances on the field and like he rightly says his main job is to get the formation and tactics correct. All the nice talk about winning and culture will mean feck all if the results on the pitch are like last season.
 
Desert Eagle said:
Then don't share their nonsense. You're literally helping them get a bigger platform.

On the ETH interview itself, I find it interesting he says Ragnick was absolutely right and how he basically throws the old regime under the bus a bit. Ultimately he will be judged on the performances on the field and like he rightly says his main job is to get the formation and tactics correct. All the nice talk about winning and culture will mean feck all if the results on the pitch are like last season.
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Done edited
 
BaguetteBoy said:
Done edited
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Nice one. I've been guilty of it myself sometimes, you get so annoyed you want to share the nonsense but that is literally their MO. The espns and talksports and daily mails of the world are designed to piss us off so the best thing United fans can do is to give them as little air as possible and just pretend they don't exist.
 
I'll give him a clean slate for this season but clear he really struggles to admit responsibility for anything going wrong.
 
Leftback99 said:
I'll give him a clean slate for this season but clear he really struggles to admit responsibility for anything going wrong.
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Yup, I don't have much patience for someone that never takes responsibility. We were diabolical last season, no more excuses. Either he turns it around and we actually become a semi competent football team again or he gets removed from the club.

There's no middle ground.
 
That was such an interesting read. So many interesting comments and background information. He doesn't hold back.
 
ETH was also responsible for some of the issues we had last year. The fa cup final showed that he could have set us up better earlier in the season yet he choose to continue with suicidal football for the whole season.
 
Really interesting interview that shines a much clearer light on what he actually is and isn't responsible for. (I'd pick out in particular that he doesn't identify potential transfer targets and has zero say over transfer costs or salaries.) It would be good if this sort of thing was discussed openly by club representatives more often, it would clear up a lot of the (often angry) back and forth in our threads.

Also striking how he doesn't seem to think he did much wrong. Surely he must think something in his approach was off last season. I would have liked for the journalists to prod a little more on that front, and discuss specific examples of terrible games and tactical issues.
 
Hammondo said:
He's right though.
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About what? I've cut some of the tweets because I don't want to de-rail this thread too much but...



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...sea-manchester-united-transfer-mateo-kovacic/
within said article:
A transfer fee is yet to be agreed by United for Mount, but Telegraph Sport revealed on Tuesday that United manager Erik ten Hag is confident he can persuade the 24-year-old to join and is pushing the club’s hierarchy to get the deal over the line.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...ansfer-news-mason-mount-chelsea-erik-ten-hag/
Another Telegraph article with a different journalist:
Mount was Erik ten Hag’s No1 target for a key midfield role with the United manager determined the club should wrap up a deal as quickly as possible.
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https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...o-join-manchester-united-from-chelsea-for-60m
United are paying £55m plus £5m in add-ons for the midfielder, who was identified as a key target by Erik ten Hag and will sign a five-year deal at Old Trafford with the option of extending it by a year.
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Unfortunately I've encountered enough of that poster's previous posts to know that he would start squabbling about some other insignificant detail even with the benefit of all of these reports from numerous journalists last summer backing up exactly what I said. All of these tweets were in the Mount transfer thread last summer as I said before. Some people just don't see what they don't want to see.

If you still don't believe Ten Hag was pushing for Mount, that's fine too.
 
Cheimoon said:
Really interesting interview that shines a much clearer light on what he actually is and isn't responsible for. (I'd pick out in particular that he doesn't identify potential transfer targets and has zero say over transfer costs or salaries.) It would be good if this sort of thing was discussed openly by club representatives more often, it would clear up a lot of the (often angry) back and forth in our threads.

Also striking how he doesn't seem to think he did much wrong. Surely he must think something in his approach was off last season. I would have liked for the journalists to prod a little more on that front, and discuss specific examples of terrible games and tactical issues.
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Felt like something changed after the Palace rout. He used to be more humble and reserved, and chose his words carefully, but since then he's been much more frank as if he has nothing to lose. I take everything he says now as aimed towards potential future employers.
 
Guy is a master at taking zero responsibility. Everyone and everything at fault but himself. Apparently he still believes Antony will come good and wasn't a mistake. Alright.
 
Rista said:
Guy is a master at taking zero responsibility. Everyone and everything at fault but himself. Apparently he still believes Antony will come good and wasn't a mistake. Alright.
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Heaven forbid the manager doesn’t publicly call one of his own players shite
 
Sounds like he believes he needs to spend enormous piles of money to get the team to play decent football. I don’t agree with that at all, and he takes zero responsibility for the the suicidal tactics.
 
Good read and follows what I’ve always thought.
Like the fact he says he always looks at himself. Also like the fact he says he has less responsibility.
 
Mickson said:
An interesting interview. I agree with many things he says. However, one thing I struggle with is how he blames injuries, players, medical stuff etc. What about his tactics? He needs to take a lot of responsibility for what happened last season.
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Similar, that was the answer I felt could do with more self awareness. More than tactics, his refusal to use his squad in his first season is a factor
 
CM said:
There is some truth in what he says but as always, there's no personal accountability for any of it. He inherited a difficult job but there are plenty of areas he has failed in too which he will never recognise in any capacity.


This point does annoy me a little bit too. It isn't just a case of historical spending that has hamstrung us. We've spent a hell of a lot of money under this manager, including squandering over £200m on players like Antony, Casemiro and Mount. Players he pushed for personally.

I get that it's a lot easier to spend money wisely when you have the correct structure in place around the manager, fair enough, but he is also complicit in pissing quite a substantial amount of money up the wall already.
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Agree. I agree with what he's said pretty much but you're right, no mention of how he may have made mistakes and he's pushed for signings that have been shocking. He does admit Antony hasn't worked out, but that's a lot of money to not work out, on a player that didn't have the profile to command anywhere near that fee to begin with (i.e. it's not the same as Kaka not working for Madrid for example).
 
Good read. Seems buoyed by the fact that he can entrust the non-coaching side of things to Ashworth and co. No excuses now if he doesn't get a tune out of the squad this season.
 
Yes he game insight which was good, but the lack of any admissions tactically is a bit worrying for a tell-all type of interview. We didn't just lose games, we were performed terribly, in such a consistent fashion that heavily pointed to the tactics. He doesn't have a season to work things out. He's in a position that if we are still looking poor, he'll be sacked in September. He needs to understand that, and appreciate that that would be no one elses fault but his own.
 
CM said:
And I told you why for Mason Mount. I can't be arsed to find all the tweets but the Mount transfer thread is still there from last summer if you want to go and find them. That signing was 100% Ten Hag led.

Casemiro could have been both but Ten Hag was more than happy to go along with it either way. I don't know whether he's entirely responsible for that one or not, but as my original post stated, he's still complicit.
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Were you against Casemiro's signing? Because I only heard excitement from United fans at that time.

Every single signing since Fergie retired is a failure, other than Bruno. For me, it's a sign of how bad the working environment is in Carrington.

In case of Casemiro, also CR and Varane, who are coming from Real Madrid, it seems like it was such a step down, and like it or not it affect their performance. (I just saw a video that shows luxurious private rooms for RM players near their training pitch.)

United fans tend to put great emphasis on manager. On the contrary, we feel the players, no matter how good they are, should feel lucky to earn big wages and play for us. They should put their heads down, follow the instructions, and everything will fall into place. This is such an archaic view.

There are seven days in a week and matchday is only one of them. What happened before they enter the pitch is equally important.
 
Glorio said:
Similar, that was the answer I felt could do with more self awareness. More than tactics, his refusal to use his squad in his first season is a factor
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Yes, and that makes me think that he doesn't see it as a problem. He thinks the reason United came 8th is because of injuries and bad players. I have little hope for next season, even though I love our recruitment so far.
 
Mas Risky said:
Were you against Casemiro's signing? Because I only heard excitement from United fans at that time.

Every single signing since Fergie retired is a failure, other than Bruno. For me, it's a sign of how bad the working environment is in Carrington.

In case of Casemiro, also CR and Varane, who are coming from Real Madrid, it seems like it was such a step down, and like it or not it affect their performance. (I just saw a video that shows luxurious private rooms for RM players near their training pitch.)

United fans tend to put great emphasis on manager. On the contrary, we feel the players, no matter how good they are, should feel lucky to earn big wages and play for us. They should put their heads down, follow the instructions, and everything will fall into place. This is such an archaic view.

There are seven days in a week and matchday is only one of them. What happened before they enter the pitch is equally important.
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When the reports first came out at the time, I was a bit perturbed by the fee and wages for a player of his age. I accepted it because we were in a completely dire situation after only two games and a short-term solution was better than no solution at all, and we had experienced that in midfield in previous transfer windows.

The decision makers should've planned better to ensure we didn't have to resort to a desperation signing like that late in the window.

The Casemiro signing is probably one I would give Ten Hag a little bit of grace with because he clearly didn't have a good recruitment team around him and something had to change quickly, but it was still a poor decision. It was compounded by the Antony one a week later. Over £150m and who knows how many hundreds of thousands a week between them.
 
I like his honesty. But needing six transfer windows to build a good squad will kill a lot of muppets. Will somebody think of the flight tracker tracking trackers?
 
We knew the club has been in shambles and that has made the job difficult for him, but he is not one for admitting fault is he? The interviewer should have been harder in some questions because injuries are not the reason we performed like a bottom half team last season.
 
The reading comprehension on this forum leaves a lot to be desired. In this interview it's spelled out explicitly, that Ten Hag wasn't the one spending the money, and yet we've still got posters saying that he spent too much on Antony! Head in the sand level stuff.
 
He clearly says that he has looked at himself and what he needs to do to improve. It’s not wrong for him to also point at the other factors that existed last season.

As usual, the media will ignore the first part and make it sound like ETH is blaming everyone else (instead of having a frank discussion about the issues). We all agree as United fans that those issues are true - poor squad depth, lack of general winner mentality at the club, injuries, scatterbrained/ uncoordinated approach towards signings (he didn’t know price tags for the players??), etc. But if he mentions it, he’s not reflective. Which coach will come out and say in the media that my tactics were wrong? That’s losing the dressing room. He can only chance approach in future - which we will know about only once the season starts.

If we have the same openness in CM, then I would agree - he hasn’t learnt anything and it will be his time to go.
 
mu4c_20le said:
Felt like something changed after the Palace rout. He used to be more humble and reserved, and chose his words carefully, but since then he's been much more frank as if he has nothing to lose. I take everything he says now as aimed towards potential future employers.
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Maybe - but more simply, he may just have felt that he's had enough of the criticism and it was time to respond. Managers are probably told not too react to media and pundits as much as possible, but everyone has their limits.
 
He sees Sancho as left winger. That is interesting. I hoped that Sancho will get a shot at right wing.
 
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