Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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I know age doesn't really matter regarding management but I had Tuchel (50) older than ETH (54).
 
Yeah, I never understood the overhyping of Martinez. He is okay, a Heinze-like CB who can do a good job in a title winning team as a deputy but not good enough to be a starter. As I said would he fifth-sixth choice at City, a team we should aspire to. He has some very good attributes (being vocal, passing) but also some serious weaknesses (aerial duels, being weak and slow and drinkable). The way how Caf was acting last year it was like he is the second coming of Baresi, when I though he was just an ok CB, for whom we overpaid significantly and won’t be a starter of a title-winning team.
He’s a solid player and compared to our other acquisitions he’s miles better than any of them but I agree that he’s not absolutely world class and that his reputation has really taken a significant leap during his absence (as we tend to do often with players who are out injured).

He definitely helps us a lot in the buildup though and his absence can be felt. I agree that he would be great as a backup or a squad option but I don’t think in 3-4 years when we have the new manager he will still be untouchable.
 
Injuries don't explain the midfield set up, they actually make it even more insane. So you haven't been able to put out a settled back 4 all season and choose a midfield set up that invariably leaves them massively exposed with the midfield getting pulled everywhere in a impossible job trying to cover the space Ten Hags set up leaves?

And this is a defense of Ten Hag?
 
We should target a young manager around 40 to start new project which will be implemented in the next 4-6 years. If successful, the manager can continue on for many years with the team and himself reaching their prime, and keep evolving.
 
I actually do think he is better than Gabriel and Ake (not Dias though)Top 6 is not a movement of goal posts since PL XI do not distinguish between rcb and lcb when picking the XI

Hes been injured for a year last season he was one of the best cbs in the PL
He's not but you're welcome to your opinion, I won't :rolleyes: at it as if it was nonsensical like you did - even though others agreed with me.

In a team to actually play a game (which you know is what I meant) he wouldn't make the 3rd XI at LCB if you asked the majority of PL watchers. The Caf overrates him.
 
I’m reading some incredibly insane stuff on here. Fergie would have struggled to get top 4 due to injuries? We had an insane number of injuries in 2009/10 season where we had to play Carrick and Fletcher as centre backs for a while and we still did fairly well. It’s ridiculous to think good managers can’t be able to adapt to extenuating circumstances and do what’s best for the team.
 
I don't agree. It's whether you are willing and able to offer the characteristics that bring success. I don't tolerate my continued inability to date Dua Lipa but it has little bearing on how I actually spend my friday night. The Glazers have spend 20 years filling their pockets rather than seeking success and that will not be easy to fix.
And yet we’ve spent more than anybody so that really doesn’t make sense does it? I’d agree if we’d been asset stripped but we’ve invested more in the playing squad than we’ve ever done in the history of our existence. The Glazers have been very hands off but the people they placed in charge have tolerated and accepted mediocracy because they knew they were lucky to even be where they ended up, and they weren’t about to flag that they were out of their depth.
 
Heading towards our lowest ever PL points total and lowest ever PL position in the table.

Season has been a complete and utter fecking shambles and it would be ludicrous if ETH isn't sacked.
 
Potential to finish 8th. Sobering for all the wrong reasons.

Absolutely disgraceful if there is no European football next season
 
I don’t think we need to use terms like infant to describe a section of fans fed up with this season
This is of course true but also begs the question.The reality is that we don't know if ETH is good enough to succeed at a well organised top club because he has only ever operated in England in a badly failing dysfunctional top club. You might argue we need a manager suitable to that environment but no such person exists because it is an impossible task. My hunch, and it is only that, is that he is good enough coach if he has the right club structure supporting him. That latter is the hard bit, not sacking the guy on the bench to appease the infant like screaming of the fans for goals and wins right now.
Ironically only an infant needs to see an specific scenario play out under specific conditions before knowing whether that person is up for it. Fortunately we pay millions of dollars to professionals who's job is to analyze the facts and data to make these decisions so we don't have to waste another year and hundreds of millions just to see if "ETH is good enough".
 
Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Since our last open and destructive performance, ETH has gone from being behind in this vote to being ahead, and Martinez has gone from been a good defender to one of the best in the league whilst not playing. I’m sure clarity will be restored tomorrow night after we gift Palace 25+ attempts on our goal.

For the ETH fans who think he needs another season - what defining element of United’s performances this last two seasons will you miss when he’s sacked?
 
I’m reading some incredibly insane stuff on here. Fergie would have struggled to get top 4 due to injuries? We had an insane number of injuries in 2009/10 season where we had to play Carrick and Fletcher as centre backs for a while and we still did fairly well. It’s ridiculous to think good managers can’t be able to adapt to extenuating circumstances and do what’s best for the team.
Forget Ferguson, Eddie Howe is going to have Newcastle finish above us and they’ve been dealing with as bad an injury crisis if not worse.
 
I think I'm in group 4. Injuries and the poor club structure have a big impact and any manager will have struggled to some extent. We could have done a lot better if the manager had compromised more than he did, but that would have come at the unacceptable price of backsliding on the core mission of insisting that we try to play a certain way. Even if we fail miserably.

I'm therefore willing to overlook just how incredibly bad things have been this season to some extent. Where I think ETH is culpable is in over training players and bringing them back from injury too soon when he needed to keep them fit given how thin the quality in the squad is. But this is also most likely a reflection of a heavy pre-season tour, bad medical, poor training facilities and too many old or fragile players for a high intensity game, none of which ETH can control. Sure you can say let's not play high intensity. But then what? There are ten teams in the EPL who will trash you a whole different way. Ultimately it comes down to the idea that we have to build things in a certain way and in a certain order to achieve the ultimate objective of being competitive.
See, this comes back to a post I made earlier today. Insisting on playing a certain way only works if either that is the specific way he wants us to play in the future (if so, I highly doubt it can work no matter what players we have), or if it's at least a similar style which allows our players to develop and get used to a way that will benefit us in the future (in which case I feel like Dalot is the only player in the entire squad that this is working for).

If I were watching us this season and thinking that we're developing good patterns of play and habits that will be good for us in the future, I'd accept where we are even if the individual results had all been the same. But it's the opposite; I'm watching us play and thinking we're wasting a year of development as almost nothing we're doing should have any relevancy going forward. A high intensity playstyle still needs to be done in an intelligent way where the entire team works in unison (in fact it's more reliant on everything being set up properly than a low intensity style), whereas we seem to be doing it in just about the most stupid way possible where every part of the team is doing their own thing.
 
Heading towards our lowest ever PL points total and lowest ever PL position in the table.

Season has been a complete and utter fecking shambles and it would be ludicrous if ETH isn't sacked.

As usual, we're so hesistant to get things done. Bayern, Liverpool and Barcelona have all announced what they'll be doing next season.

Maybe ten Hag and the board already know, and everything has been discussed behind closed doors. If that's the case, then it's fine. If not, then we need to make something happen, as we should really be prepping for next season.
 
When ETH was hired, the contract term is three years as I remember. It’s not difficult to see why he insists to play the way this season.
The grand plan of the project is three-year timespan. Steady the ship in the first year, make the transition to the envisioned system in second year, and start challenging major titles in the 3rd year.
Unfortunately, the two transfer windows have proved both short-termism and money wasting in great scale. Combined with injury issues, the second year is completely off track. The grand plan fails already.
 
And yet we’ve spent more than anybody so that really doesn’t make sense does it? I’d agree if we’d been asset stripped but we’ve invested more in the playing squad than we’ve ever done in the history of our existence. The Glazers have been very hands off but the people they placed in charge have tolerated and accepted mediocracy because they knew they were lucky to even be where they ended up, and they weren’t about to flag that they were out of their depth.

The amount spent is not the point. It is how it was spent, pursuing short term results and marketing success, with accountants in charge. Let's sign old Ronaldo because he sells shirts. Let's make Ole manager because he'll do as he's told. Let's aim for fourth place every season because it has the best return on investment. Of course that leads to long term failure. How could it not?

Ironically only an infant needs to see an specific scenario play out under specific conditions before knowing whether that person is up for it. Fortunately we pay millions of dollars to professionals who's job is to analyze the facts and data to make these decisions so we don't have to waste another year and hundreds of millions just to see if "ETH is good enough".

We have paid millions of dollars to professionals who aren't up to it and who created the exact environment in which ETH is struggling. You may have noticed that Ratcliffe has sacked every single one of them. That must tell you something?
 
When ETH was hired, the contract term is three years as I remember. It’s not difficult to see why he insists to play the way this season.
The grand plan of the project is three-year timespan. Steady the ship in the first year, make the transition to the envisioned system in second year, and start challenging major titles in the 3rd year.
Unfortunately, the two transfer windows have proved both short-termism and money wasting in great scale. Combined with injury issues, the second year is completely off track. The grand plan fails already.

The weird part is we also went for a style that seems completely contrary to the style we all hoped he might bring here. We have turned into a kick and rush team straight from the 80s. I get that rebuilds take time but as you said our transfers seemed to be so contrary to what we actually wanted to achieve. We were looking for a player to carry the ball through midfield and break a press like de Jong and we got Casemiro, Amrabat and Mount who aren't that type of player. Mainoo these days looks like he is the closest to that role but for all his talent he clearly isn't quite up there with the best yet. As a result we now have to lump the ball forward, because we have no reliable way to bring the ball out of midfield. How much of these transfers is on EtH I don't know, but I know if Ineos can't fix the way we identify targets we will remain fecked for the foreseeable future.
 
Wonder what the mood will be from the away reds tomorrow at Selhurst Park. Can imagine if the Chelsee game continues as is, plus yesterday's Newcastle result the pack of Wolves in the media will be baying for blood.



In ETH, every team has injuries etc buy feck me that shan't excuse pure stubbornness on his part with his preferred players

Genuinely don't think an FA Cup win (huge upset if it happens) will save his job. Nor should iy
 
Injuries & quite a few bad refereeing/VAR decisions have played their part this season, but Ten Hag’s selections and in game substitutions have cost us as much.
Personally, I’d prefer to see a new manager take over right now but I think he’s going to get another season under the Ratcliffe regime to see if he can put things back on track.
None of the names we’ve been linked with excite me anyway.
 
Potential to finish 8th. Sobering for all the wrong reasons.

Absolutely disgraceful if there is no European football next season
We are 8th now. And in the last 2 weeks of the season.

It’s really bad. If they finish the season having not qualified for any European football I would be taking extreme and fast action from the evening of May 25th if I were INEOS. Not just on Erik
 
8th at the moment, but very hard to see us getting above that. A horrendous season that should never be excused.
 
The weird part is we also went for a style that seems completely contrary to the style we all hoped he might bring here. We have turned into a kick and rush team straight from the 80s. I get that rebuilds take time but as you said our transfers seemed to be so contrary to what we actually wanted to achieve. We were looking for a player to carry the ball through midfield and break a press like de Jong and we got Casemiro, Amrabat and Mount who aren't that type of player. Mainoo these days looks like he is the closest to that role but for all his talent he clearly isn't quite up there with the best yet. As a result we now have to lump the ball forward, because we have no reliable way to bring the ball out of midfield. How much of these transfers is on EtH I don't know, but I know if Ineos can't fix the way we identify targets we will remain fecked for the foreseeable future.
Completely agree. I remember I said here a few months ago, “the question now is how to make this system work?”. It’s a puzzle. It seems to me we should push a CB up during the build up phase. Our transfers doesn’t target that but waste huge amount of budget on other positions. If those budgets can be used more efficiently, we can have both depth and quality added. We signed Amrabat but don’t really use him. The details of the plan seems lack of thought. Judgements in many aspects are profoundly failures.
 
Heading towards our lowest ever PL points total and lowest ever PL position in the table.

Season has been a complete and utter fecking shambles and it would be ludicrous if ETH isn't sacked.

Our fans have zero standards. And funnily they have the audacity to compare this nobody to our greatest manager ever.
 
Sitting in 8th and it was very predictable by January just by watching us play that the league table would soon catch up with performances.
 
Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Since our last open and destructive performance, ETH has gone from being behind in this vote to being ahead, and Martinez has gone from been a good defender to one of the best in the league whilst not playing. I’m sure clarity will be restored tomorrow night after we gift Palace 25+ attempts on our goal.

For the ETH fans who think he needs another season - what defining element of United’s performances this last two seasons will you miss when he’s sacked?
I'm not necessarily EtH in but I do appreciate that this season, not last, he's trying to get us to play a more pro active, pressing game.

Unfortunately, we have slow centre backs that won't push up high, thus leaving the gaps in midfield and lazy Rashford types that ruin the press.

I would rather see a Coach try (but fail) to implement a modern play style than have another coach resort to mid/low block counter attack style like we've seen under Jose, Ole and EtH first season.

We need to progress our play as a club. EtH may not be the guy to do that but at least he's trying to move away from the outdated style we have endured for many years.
 
The good news is I don't think anyone else will catch us.

Can't see us getting back above Chelsea or Newcastle though. Completely unacceptable.
 
United is a awful mismanagement where the CEO was driving commercial activities instead of on-field performance. The owners only cares about how much dividend they are withdraw from this club. Hopefully, Ineos can shake things up with the right people on board. ETH is one of the worst manager that we have in the last 10 years. He is lucky to win the league Cup last season but I am under no illusion that we can beat City. If City loses the league, they will be so pissed off that they will trash us by 3 or 4 goals regardless who Erik puts on the field. I am just waiting for the season with new people onboard and hopefully, we are on our way back to the top.
 
Potential to finish 8th. Sobering for all the wrong reasons.

Absolutely disgraceful if there is no European football next season
Not really. Better no European football than the Thursday night rubbish which would derail our top 4 challenge. ETH should have been sacked by now. Ineos make me uncomfortable and Ratcliffe is so out of touch with his Stadium of the North rubbish to be funded by tax payers. Whole club is a shambles , worse I've ever seen and I've been supporting since 1977.
 
As usual, we're so hesistant to get things done. Bayern, Liverpool and Barcelona have all announced what they'll be doing next season.

Maybe ten Hag and the board already know, and everything has been discussed behind closed doors. If that's the case, then it's fine. If not, then we need to make something happen, as we should really be prepping for next season.
Had the likes of Bayern had a season like this, they'd be on their 3rd manager
 
The good news for ETH fans is that he now only has to guide us to 7th next season for them to be able to crow about us "progressing".
 
Had the likes of Bayern had a season like this, they'd be on their 3rd manager

Madrid would be on their 5th manager.

Us, we are still deciding whether to give him next season hoping he might turn it around.
 
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