Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

Status
Not open for further replies.


Ronaldo
Sancho
Now Varane.

What's going on?? :nervous:



Back to the Ole approach. feck these players.

The players who want to be treated like babies can feck off.
There is a culture of coasting at this club. If it is not tackled here, we will never recover.
 
By the end, he'll just have Martinez, Antony, Malacia and couple of other he signed left who he hasn't fallen out with.

Can't wait this nightmare to end. Will probably go down as the worst manager since Sir Alex; even worse than Moyes. Currently we have the worst squad since Sir Alex retired, play the worst football, score the least amount of goals and are on a path to nowhere. I dread the 10 remaining games this year. Out of the CL and probably lying in the bottom half of the table if this clown remains.

What a load of absolute shite
 
I see people are fine he's alienating most of the squad one after another.

Hope you stay fine with this when these players he alienated get his arse out of the club soon.

The club isn't going to sell all these players they invested money and time in for a manager whose best achievement so far has been winning a league cup.
 
By the end, he'll just have Martinez, Antony, Malacia and couple of other he signed left who he hasn't fallen out with.

Can't wait this nightmare to end. Will probably go down as the worst manager since Sir Alex; even worse than Moyes. Currently we have the worst squad since Sir Alex retired, play the worst football, score the least amount of goals and are on a path to nowhere. I dread the 10 remaining games this year. Out of the CL and probably lying in the bottom half of the table if this clown remains.

Just fyi for future reference using that term like that means that SAF was a terrible manager.
 
I see people are fine he's alienating most of the squad one after another.

Hope you stay fine with this when these players he alienated get his arse out of the club soon.

The club isn't going to sell all these players they invested money and time in for a manager whose best achievement so far has been winning a league cup.
Not sure what is going on here, did Varane ever have a history of making a fuss, not that I know. I can understand him being unhappy when dropped for Evans, especially when we lose badly and ETH talks as if we did well. Varane another poorish signing but he is a World Cup winner. This is bizarre, feels like ETH struggling under the pressure.
 
By the end, he'll just have Martinez, Antony, Malacia and couple of other he signed left who he hasn't fallen out with.

Can't wait this nightmare to end. Will probably go down as the worst manager since Sir Alex; even worse than Moyes. Currently we have the worst squad since Sir Alex retired, play the worst football, score the least amount of goals and are on a path to nowhere. I dread the 10 remaining games this year. Out of the CL and probably lying in the bottom half of the table if this clown remains.
:lol: fecking hell. It's hardly a nightmare.
 
I see people are fine he's alienating most of the squad one after another.

Hope you stay fine with this when these players he alienated get his arse out of the club soon.

The club isn't going to sell all these players they invested money and time in for a manager whose best achievement so far has been winning a league cup.
In isolation, I have no problem with someone moving on players like Sancho, who are refusing to do what is necessary to meet any kind of professional standards. The problems arise when you start picking fights with multiple Champions League/World Cup winners because you don't like the way they play the ball out from the back, when the reality is, it's your job to coach that. And to do all this in the middle of a season when we have very few good options at the back as it is all just a bit stupid for the sake of asserting dominance.

I have no problem with Casemiro and Varane going, they're over paid and not that good, but who are we going to replace them with in January and god forbid Ten Hag gets to decide.
 
Not sure what is going on here, did Varane ever have a history of making a fuss, not that I know. I can understand him being unhappy when dropped for Evans, especially when we lose badly and ETH talks as if we did well. Varane another poorish signing but he is a World Cup winner. This is bizarre, feels like ETH struggling under the pressure.
There's apparently been a disagreement between the manager and Varane. Ten Hag has questioned Varane's ability to play the ball out from the back, claiming that it was because he plays it square so much, he gifted the game to City in the 3-0 loss. Varane obviously didn't like that, so here we are, another impasse with another player.
 
Can't really fault him for taking on the players and trying to raise standards but the Varane one feels a bit like shooting yourself in the foot.

Varane hasn't been great while he's been here, he's a fairly meh signing but he's no doubt our best CB when he's playing well. To pick a fight with him because you don't believe he can play the ball out from the back in a way you want him to is a bit silly. Varane wasn't the reason we lost to City so to pull him up on his ball playing ability after the game is bizarre. If you don't fancy him them move him on in the summer instead of causing a divide in the team in the middle of the season.

If a player can't play the style of football required then you get rid, pretty simple team building, Pep falls out with players every season with more consistent players than Varane.

Shooting his nose of to spite his face.... Not exactly set the world alight has he this season.

We all know he wanted Maguire out but the finances didn't work now he is playing him over Varane, nobody batted an eyelid when he stripped Maguire of the captaincy, but he has grafted and earnt his spot back.

If Varane wants the Saudi money let him go and bring in a replacement most likely Todibo and move on and save a fortune on wages.
 
Exactly.

Fergie had to do it with the drinking culture, now it's not a drinking culture, but a culture where just doing the bare minimum is seen as being acceptable and good enough.

It's not, weed them out and raise the standards.

Our issue is we have created a culture of player power. This stems from the structure of the club.

The players know they can outlast the manager. Because they've done it before, they know exactly what to do. Performances drop - they can't or don't want to implement the managers ideas and start briefing their friends in the press, stir up discontent about the manager losing the players confidence.

Because of the way the club's (lack of structure) setup it means when we get rid of a manager, we essentially have to buy an entire new team of players to fit the managers ethos - we don't recruit for a style of play that the club wants to play in either the manager or the players. Because we offer these insane contracts and reward players quickly we end up with unsellable assets and instead if of it taking a couple of transfer windows to create a team in the shape of the manager, it takes us 3 seasons. Which is the lifespan of the manager usually, and then they're gone and we have to start again with recruitment, which takes another....well you get it. We're in a constant state of flux and the only consistent are the players we can't get rid of and who know how to get rid of the manager for the cycle to start again.
 
SAF is considered as the Don of man management. Yet many forget that even he struggled with dealing with stars heading towards the late stages of their career such as Keane, Ruud and Ince. Players at that age have nothing to prove thus the hunger is somehow gone, they usually at (or heading towards) their last paycheck, they know their body inside out and they are in no mood to pick an injury that might cripple them for the rest of their life. Things are even worse now with the Saudis throwing silly money on players to play in their circus. Why should someone like Varane risk an injury in the EPL when he can play semi professional football in Saudi Arabia were he would probably earn twice the money?

United really need to sort recruitment.
 
The players who want to be treated like babies can feck off.
There is a culture of coasting at this club. If it is not tackled here, we will never recover.
Exactly. It’s not as if he’s playing well and is being kept out, a man who was in worse position than he is in Maguire is doing it.
You’re an injury prone, underperforming 31 year old. Sorry for ruining your retirement plans
 
In isolation, I have no problem with someone moving on players like Sancho, who are refusing to do what is necessary to meet any kind of professional standards. The problems arise when you start picking fights with multiple Champions League/World Cup winners because you don't like the way they play the ball out from the back, when the reality is, it's your job to coach that. And to do all this in the middle of a season when we have very few good options at the back as it is all just a bit stupid for the sake of asserting dominance.
There's no issue whatsoever with him falling out with Ronaldo and Sancho. In both cases it was the players who started the issue in the first place, and then they both reacted incredibly badly to a relatively small amount of criticism or not getting their own way.

As for Varane, he started the season well but people forget his form had already dropped off and he'd been struggling with injury before he dropped down the pecking order. Since then, based on their respective performances Varane hasn't deserved to get back into the starting line-up. So if there has been a falling out I put that mostly on Varane. Either he can't handle the fact that his own inconsistency (both in availability and form) saw him get dropped, or there have been other reports saying that he had already decided he wanted to leave for Saudi and that is why ETH gave precedence to others who wanted to be here (and who were playing better). In either case I can't really blame ETH for it.
 
In isolation, I have no problem with someone moving on players like Sancho, who are refusing to do what is necessary to meet any kind of professional standards. The problems arise when you start picking fights with multiple Champions League/World Cup winners because you don't like the way they play the ball out from the back, when the reality is, it's your job to coach that. And to do all this in the middle of a season when we have very few good options at the back as it is all just a bit stupid for the sake of asserting dominance.

I have no problem with Casemiro and Varane going, they're over paid and not that good, but who are we going to replace them with in January and god forbid Ten Hag gets to decide.

Who fecking cares what they won in the past if their current form is trash and they are hardly available due to being constantly injured. No one should have their place secure just based on previous endeavours, no one.

He is free to go to Saudis and show them his shiny trophies of the past.
 
If a player can't play the style of football required then you get rid, pretty simple team building, Pep falls out with players every season with more consistent players than Varane.

A common criticism of Guardiola here at the Caf is that he's only able to do this kind of thing because of City's enormous financial resources, which are likely not even following PL rules.
 


Ronaldo
Sancho
Now Varane.

What's going on?? :nervous:



Back to the Ole approach. feck these players.

All signings from the mollycoddled regime - Ronaldo and Varane were superb players but neither should have been signed. Sancho is such a weird one but it's clear we didn't really dive into his background/attitude given the volume of stories that have come out from Dortmund since.

Got to let ETH purge the team, even if he then gets sacked later on, all this pressure/criticism will be on him so he either gets through it and succeeds or goes, and a new manager has the luxury of not having to manage these big egos whose fitness/attitudes aren't good enough.
 
We should feck Varane off this window as its our last chance at getting a fee for the french eric bailly.
 
There's no issue whatsoever with him falling out with Ronaldo and Sancho. In both cases it was the players who started the issue in the first place, and then they both reacted incredibly badly to a relatively small amount of criticism or not getting their own way.

As for Varane, he started the season well but people forget his form had already dropped off and he'd been struggling with injury before he dropped down the pecking order. Since then, based on their respective performances Varane hasn't deserved to get back into the starting line-up. So if there has been a falling out I put that mostly on Varane. Either he can't handle the fact that his own inconsistency (both in availability and form) saw him get dropped, or there have been other reports saying that he had already decided he wanted to leave for Saudi and that is why ETH gave precedence to others who wanted to be here (and who were playing better). In either case I can't really blame ETH for it.
I mostly agree with you, but the Varane thing still feels weird due to EtH claiming tactical reasons for using Evans instead of Varane. I don't think we would have this discussion now if he had referred to Varane not being fully fit again or wanting to be careful with him due to his recent injury or something about those lines.

I feel like that would have lead to much less discussion and Varane would have accepted that easily. But claiming he can't play a tactical role that Evans can seems to have been the reason for conflict here. The worrying thing about this is that it's similar to the Sancho thing. Probably EtH was right in his decision to drop Sancho, and he definitely has the right after Sancho's response, but in both cases we seem to have a player who disagrees with the managers view of his performances and/or skills.
 
If a player can't play the style of football required then you get rid, pretty simple team building, Pep falls out with players every season with more consistent players than Varane.

Shooting his nose of to spite his face.... Not exactly set the world alight has he this season.

We all know he wanted Maguire out but the finances didn't work now he is playing him over Varane, nobody batted an eyelid when he stripped Maguire of the captaincy, but he has grafted and earnt his spot back.

If Varane wants the Saudi money let him go and bring in a replacement most likely Todibo and move on and save a fortune on wages.
I love it when people use Pep as a counter argument when City have flouted every FFP rule in the book.
 
Who fecking cares what they won in the past if their current form is trash and they are hardly available due to being constantly injured. No one should have their place secure just based on previous endeavours, no one.

He is free to go to Saudis and show them his shiny trophies of the past.
Everyone's current form is trash, are they trash players? Absolutely not. I'm not bothered if Varane leaves or not, but it's stupid to pick a fight with your best CB in the middle of the season because he played the ball square to AWB too many times in a game we we're totally dominated in anyway, which leaves us in a position where your 36 year old back CB is now first choice 3 times a week.
 
Everyone's current form is trash, are they trash players? Absolutely not. I'm not bothered if Varane leaves or not, but it's stupid to pick a fight with your best CB in the middle of the season because he played the ball square to AWB too many times in a game we we're totally dominated in anyway, which leaves us in a position where your 36 year old back CB is now first choice 3 times a week.

And that 36 year old player is currently more reliable than the big World Cup winner, so he deserves his spot ahead. If choosing players based on form is "picking a fight", then picking a fight he should always do and just weed out all the fecking moaners.
 
All signings from the mollycoddled regime - Ronaldo and Varane were superb players but neither should have been signed. Sancho is such a weird one but it's clear we didn't really dive into his background/attitude given the volume of stories that have come out from Dortmund since.

Got to let ETH purge the team, even if he then gets sacked later on, all this pressure/criticism will be on him so he either gets through it and succeeds or goes, and a new manager has the luxury of not having to manage these big egos whose fitness/attitudes aren't good enough.
I personally disagree - should be the role of the new sporting directors not ETH purging the squad on his own accord.
 
And that 36 year old player is currently more reliable than the big World Cup winner, so he deserves his spot ahead. If choosing players based on form is "picking a fight", then picking a fight he should always do and just weed out all the fecking moaners.
If you can't see why this is a very silly fight to take in the middle of the season when we're playing badly and threadbare with injury then I don't know what to say. Take the fight in the summer if you really want to, don't put yourself in a position where you're falling out with players in the middle of the season because of one game. He's picking fights for no reason and then people are making excuses for him, "We've got to play Evans because Varane's a baby" etc. That might be true, but keep your mouth shut until the end of the season and deal with it then.
 
I personally disagree - should be the role of the new sporting directors not ETH purging the squad on his own accord.
Ok but we don’t have one yet. If/when that happens I agree but almost feel the inevitable announcement of Ineos withdrawing is coming soon.
 
Insulting another member
I love it when people use Pep as a counter argument when City have flouted every FFP rule in the book.

WTF has City's FFP ignorance got to do with the point I made?

I stated that he falls out with players, he also did at Barca with Zlatan being the most high profile.

People like you shouldn't be given sharp objects in case you hurt yourself.
 
It is absolutely farcical to terminally fall out with your leading centreback (in terms of wages and trophy cabinet) in favour of the guy you stripped of captaincy and tried to get rid of a month prior, and the 36 yo you let train with you during pre season as a favour. Especially in the midst of a defensive injury crisis you probably caused by shoddy pre season fitness and conditioning work.

This is nothing like the situations with Ronaldo or Sancho. This is just a serious of contradictory decisions, that dont have a logical order, coming back to bite ETH on the face. The sign of someone who is flailing around putting noses out of joint for no reason.
 
The amount of beefs are getting a little concerning. Ronaldo and Sancho were understandable but the bust up with Varane isn’t sitting right with me.

Yeah he’s been under performing and I wouldn’t be too sad if he moves on but the amount of arguments ETH is getting into points to a lack of man management skills.
 
Our issue is we have created a culture of player power. This stems from the structure of the club.

The players know they can outlast the manager. Because they've done it before, they know exactly what to do. Performances drop - they can't or don't want to implement the managers ideas and start briefing their friends in the press, stir up discontent about the manager losing the players confidence.

Because of the way the club's (lack of structure) setup it means when we get rid of a manager, we essentially have to buy an entire new team of players to fit the managers ethos - we don't recruit for a style of play that the club wants to play in either the manager or the players. Because we offer these insane contracts and reward players quickly we end up with unsellable assets and instead if of it taking a couple of transfer windows to create a team in the shape of the manager, it takes us 3 seasons. Which is the lifespan of the manager usually, and then they're gone and we have to start again with recruitment, which takes another....well you get it. We're in a constant state of flux and the only consistent are the players we can't get rid of and who know how to get rid of the manager for the cycle to start again.

I've posted a thread on this. To me Utd are always just patching and sewing, there's no design to it.

Doesn't matter who comes into Utd, the way it is, it's going to be 3 years before they'll have a team built to challenge for trophies. Whether that's a dof who builds it with a focus in mind towards a coach who can make it work on the pitch. Or both a dof and a coach who work together to do it. This squad is miles away from competing for anything other than the a league cup or FA cup.
 
It is absolutely farcical to terminally fall out with your leading centreback (in terms of wages and trophy cabinet) in favour of the guy you stripped of captaincy and tried to get rid of a month prior, and the 36 yo you let train with you during pre season as a favour. Especially in the midst of a defensive injury crisis you probably caused by shoddy pre season fitness and conditioning work.

This is nothing like the situations with Ronaldo or Sancho. This is just a serious of contradictory decisions, that dont have a logical order, coming back to bite ETH on the face. The sign of someone who is flailing around putting noses out of joint for no reason.
I'm not sure this is true. ETH always said Maguire can stay and fight for his place but Varane and Martinez were a good pairing and there was an offer, that we accepted, from WHUM on the table.

I thought all fans agreed that attitude was the biggest thing we need to change, if Varane isn't happy he has been dropped for Maguire (funny writing that but it's genuinely completely warranted on form) he should get his head down and work to get fit and regain his place. ETH seems a very direct guy, that's what we need, no idea how you'd blame the manager for the injury crisis though - he's not choosing the ridiculous pre season schedule, running the medical team or choosing player treatments or fitness plans.
 
Insulting another member
What a strange thing to say?

If you're going to post bollocks expect to be called out on it.

No more bollocks than you post on a regular basis.

Clearly to subtle for your level of intellect, i will leave that one with you.

Don't think to hard might hurt yourself.
 
I'm not sure this is true. ETH always said Maguire can stay and fight for his place but Varane and Martinez were a good pairing and there was an offer, that we accepted, from WHUM on the table.

I thought all fans agreed that attitude was the biggest thing we need to change, if Varane isn't happy he has been dropped for Maguire (funny writing that but it's genuinely completely warranted on form) he should get his head down and work to get fit and regain his place. ETH seems a very direct guy, that's what we need, no idea how you'd blame the manager for the injury crisis though - he's not choosing the ridiculous pre season schedule, running the medical team or choosing player treatments or fitness plans.

Obviously it's true. You dont strip the captaincy from a player you expect to keep in the squad and then later rely on as first choice :lol:

If he planned to keep Maguire in the first team set up, why take captaincy off him in the first place? He's orders of magnitude better captaincy material than Bruno if both are on the pitch.

Also ETH is clearly heavily involved in all the coaching sessions, he's the one deciding how much fitness and conditioning work to do. And it's either far too much or far too little.
 
There's benefits and drawbacks.

Selecting players on form is good for fostering meritocracy, competition, etc.

On the other hand, an excessive focus on form at the expense of overall quality is a form of short-term thinking.
 
WTF has City's FFP ignorance got to do with the point I made?

I stated that he falls out with players, he also did at Barca with Zlatan being the most high profile.

People like you shouldn't be given sharp objects in case you hurt yourself.

Guardiola brings massive success to his clubs. That's why he's forgiven when he fell out with player, as keeping him is more valuable than keeping a player, as shown several times. Ten Hag has done feck all at United to warrant this level.
 
All signings from the mollycoddled regime - Ronaldo and Varane were superb players but neither should have been signed. Sancho is such a weird one but it's clear we didn't really dive into his background/attitude given the volume of stories that have come out from Dortmund since.

Got to let ETH purge the team, even if he then gets sacked later on, all this pressure/criticism will be on him so he either gets through it and succeeds or goes, and a new manager has the luxury of not having to manage these big egos whose fitness/attitudes aren't good enough.
I won't lie and pretend it doesn't ring some alarm bells that he's fallen out with Varane who is the definition of professional.

But it's irrelevant anyway. Varane, Casemiro, De Gea and Ronaldo are all players past their peaks and they're all players who won't be here in 5 years. I see no point backing them over the manager even if I disagree with aspects of their departures.

It's also important to point out Ten Hag isn't exactly wrong. We build out from the back much better with Evans than Varane and the whole point of his game plan is to invite the press and play through it (which is Varane's biggest weakness).
 
Personally I think the boss has made a master class of a decision by taking the pressure off Harry by removing the heavy weight of being the Captain, therefore he has just got his head down and deservedly played his way back into the first team.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.