Next permanent manager | Poll updated
- Thread starter Untd55
- Start date
- Status
We could probably have done with some of these reservations when there was still a discussion because I won't lie, this is a bit depressing coming from an Ajax fan.
But is it also possible you're overly focusing on his weakness and not enough on how he is able to keep you competitive despite these flaws? He must surely be doing somethings excellent to have you playing this well.
Maybe I’m alone here but I think that Melissa Reddy is feckin gorgeous
She has one of the most uniquely annoying voices I’ve ever heard. No offense to her like, but I find it so oddly grating.
My point with those vids wasn't that Blind should be anywhere near United now btw, rather that Maguire isn't a similar type of footballer at all if we're looking at Ten Hag's preferred type of player for that position.
He currently plays with Lisandro Martinez, a genuinely 5'9" centreback on Maguire's usual position
Here's his first start (I believe) for Argentina earlier this year:
(Not that it's a particularly noteworthy performance just remember seeing it at the time so knew where to find it)
I think he's a fantastic manager.
I don't think he's a good match with United whatsoever though, and think he will fail at the club.
I think in fact that of all the top 5-7 clubs of each of the top 4 leagues, United is probably the worst fit for him out of all of them.
Marcel van der Kraan is not a source worth much btw. He's just some talking head that Sky have found for some reason.
He just regurgitates cliche+speculation from what I've seen
I have to say I'm a little biased towards Poch. I used to go and watch his Espanyol a lot and I have to say I was more than impressed. When he took over they were definite relegation fodder and for the next 3 seasons he had then midtable which was no mean feat.
Yes in the end he was sacked but that was more due to a situation very similar as his Spurs stint. The club were changing stadiums, not much money for transfers and selling their best players to finance it. His Southampton stint was very impressive, taking them to their highest position in the PL.
At Spurs he had 4 great seasons which culminated in lack of decent transfers catching up with him and almost a players revolt due to many of the teams most important players fighting over contract renewals. He had so few options that he had to stick with players like Erikson who was an absolute disgrace that season. To some it may sound like excuses but there has always been extenuating circumstances on why he was sacked from different clubs which doesn't mean he was an incapable manager.
Granted his PSG stint hasn't raised his stock any higher but I think he made a big mistake going there. I don't think Pep or Klopp would of done any better trying to contend with the massive egos at the club and of course Leonardo. The only manager who i feel would have a chance would be Zidane who has a more liberal approach to football.
Poch has been my number one choice for many years now and in that nothing has changed although as I said before if ETH came in then I'd be just as excited but I do think the adoration for one manager and the disdain for the other is going well over the top.
This whole youth promotion amass is a bit of myth. Having a golden generation from your own academy is rare, and much more so with consecutive classes.
Beside TAA, who else Klopp made a mainstay in Liverpool starting line up. There was a time Pep was youth development guru during his Barcelona and Bayern time, then he went to City and turned full chequebook.
Foden is only one that is really breaking into starting line up.
That post means to portray the relation of academy pathway to first team. It doesn't count external signing like Antony, who is very young, too. There is always local lads preference, more so for club like Ajax with their prize academy. Fans will always have different opinion to professional who need certain thing from outward average players.
Back to Poch, beside Kane what other academy player that really made his name as starters? Winks is not starter, and from what I heard, many Spurs fans see him as rubbish player. The young squad Poch got during his best year at Tottenham was the result of external recruitment. He put his touch on their final development to top level, but they're mostly already first team players even at lower level, like Dele Alli, Davinson Sanchez. Poch had a bunch of young players signed and flop. The hyped English Messi, Marcus Edward never broke through with them under Poch...
Signing young players then integrating them into the team is a great skill itself, but it's not something out of the world. Even Conte can develope Bastoni, Barella, Hakimi. Pep flexed with money throughout his career for these external young player signings.
If anything that post sound assuring to me that this Pep Guardiola is my idol has some sense in him, that he wouldn't be all about vibe, and just promoting youth for the sake of it. An idealist is tolerable, but not a madman with zero sense of reality.
Last edited:
Why do you think that? Genuinely interested.
Why would you be desperate to bring in a guy who was instrumental in handing a new contract to somebody that he knew was suspected of sexual harassment? He sounds very sus to me.
The reason Suarez is in my name is because I made this account to advocate for what a great buy Suarez would be for United
So maybe you should trust me
You seem to be the only person on the planet with this opinion so I’m cool with it
Her voice is a bit annoying. I thought this before I knew she was a Liverpool fan
She’s well fit though.
Or just the only one out of like 5 Ajax fans on a United forum?
LvG agrees with me, so there's 1 other at least
I don’t think ten Hag should be under any obligation to use youth. The youth player in question needs to be undeniable. Not like Van Gaal throwing Borthwick Jackson in.
Ten Hag would never throw in a Pedri or Gavi at Barca though, and that is an issue
Basically that's my point. He would never throw in a 17 year old Pedri or 17 year old Gavi, yet the second they've played half a season elsewhere he would desperately want to sign them.
Which means that he overlooks players that would themselves represent a (relative to quality/club, etc.) similar (enough) level impact if he gave them trust and occasional starts in favour of other players who have gained that experience elsewhere.
See also buying Mohammed Daramy for €12m+ this summer just because he happens to start for Copenhagen in Denmark, yet then giving him one start, in the cup vs Amateurs, and then never a single minute again since.
When instead you could have given some minutes to an Unuvar, Axel-Dongen, Hansen, or Rasmussen
Ajax youth academy being shit must be the reason
How about both games versus us. Or the entirety of his spell at Atletico?
Yeah she is
That's very wrong.
Poch was lucky that during his time, he only lost Kyle Walker, while enjoying many of his starter peak. They reached a point then they're underpaid for their performance worth. Then Poch created an issue when he publicly sounded like he's done with them around the time of CL final, and ready to leave any minutes. Having a manager that ready to leave, of course, some of them would understandably be better to look for new challenge when they're looking at their career final big contracts.
Ten Hag might not see it, but United’s youth set up should be structured that he receives reports on players who can come in and do a job.
However, let’s not forget that, denying youth or misspending money is secondary to delivering a winning team. Ten Hag has done exactly that at Ajax and I doubt many will complain if he were to produce the same at United.
I agree completely, particularly at a club like United who aren't dependent on it for the survival/growth of the club. And if there's one thing that Ten Hag has shown is that he can build a winning machine season on season.
But, in that regard I think the big issue for him will be connecting with the dressing room. Ten Hag literally has 0 gravitas in a dressing room like United's. He doesn't have the reputation, the language, the experience, the culture, etc. for any of the players at the club to take him as seriously as would be needed for him to have any effect on the performance.
That's why, again, I feel he should go to Germany first, or to a club at which it's 100% clear that the club is backing him over the anything, the way a club like a City might if they were replacing Guardiola.
At United, players won't be convinced by him as a person, and then will once again realise that he's just another character passing through without any true security and therefore power over them
Damn, I’ve never seen anyone else oppose his appointment this emphatically, it’s been like a bit of an echo chamber recently. What makes him United so uniquely unsuited to him for you?
That just means he's not good enough then.
In his current Ajax team, Timber is 20, Gravenberch is 19, Antony is 22, he plays Schuurs regularly also 22. In fact looking at the lineups this year there's really only 3/4 players at 30 and above. Don't see how he only uses experienced players
Experience and youth are relative terms, and have different meaning in the Eredivisie than they would in the premier league
so what are you referring to in terms of experience then? because a 19/20/22 year old cannot have gained huge amounts of it?
the average age of the squad is 25, with some experience and some youth mixed in? seems a pretty standard squad to me.
For reasons I laid out here
But to be more specific, the reason I think he will fail is becaue like I said he doesn't have the gravitas, but also doesn't have the personality, to actually overthrow things and cut the dross.
His character in terms of player selection is heavily tilted towards fear rather than reward. He will always choose a guaranteed 7/10 performance now over a potential 9/10 player by the end of the season/ a year from now.
So where a Peter Bosz in his one season at Ajax brutally told players like Bazoer and El Ghazi that they weren't good enough (even though Bazoer represented a lot of value before that point), and was willing to put massive faith in 18 year old Dolberg (despite having brought in Traore on loan from Chelsea for the striker position), 19 year old Onana (depsite having brought in Tim Krul on loan), and 17 year old De Ligt. This lead to a difficult first half of the season, which ended up costing us the league by like 2 points in the end, despite a fantastic second half of the season and a Europa League final reached with this incredibly young core, which then developed (also thanks to Keizer taking the crazy risk of putting Frenkie de Jong into the first team at centreback the months after Bosz' departure) into the core that Ten Hag reached the CL semifinal on (together with the purchases of Blind/Tadic in his first summer at the club), and which resulted in Ajax' biggest ever financial windfall (the CL money + the €150m De Ligt+De Jong money). Also Vd Beek got starts towards the end of that season under Bosz, including in pivotal knockout EL games
Ten Hag on the other hand won't cut out any dross (not even from the bench) and won't risk any youngsters in that same way, and so it's impossible to build towards a future in which you don't continue to rely on this same set of players, and as a result you end up desperately holding onto them when offers come in for them, until eventually you're stuck with players whose value has diminished, whose contracts are running out, and a bunch of youth players whose development has stalled/hasn't been given a chance, or who have had to leave the club and immediately shine elsewhere (see Noa Lang immediately being player of the season (basically) in Belgium despite not even making our bench under Ten Hag, and Botman winning the league in France with Lille immediately after being sold, though in his case we had Martinez and Blind for his position so I get selling him for that money at the time)
And United need someone with the sway or at least character to ruthlessly cut through the rot that's been running through the squad this past years, but Ten Hag, being so overly cautious in this regard, would never be the man to do this even if he had that sort of influence/freedom within the club
I think it’s naive to suggests that is how ten Hag would operate at United just because he’s done so at Ajax.
Totally different clubs and needs.
I thought they were excellent against us - in particular the game at OT. I think winning the league last season being 2nd in most goals scored and 1st in goals against speaks for itself.
Last edited:
an average age of 25 is very high for Ajax standards.
The Ajax that made it to the EL final had an average age of like 20 at times, with De Ligt/Kluivert (17), Sanchez/VdBeek/Neres(20), and only a single player (Schöne, who was 30) over the age of 25, and sometimes Viergever and Veltman in that 25-28 range
Judging by this we’re hiring the baldest of frauds.
Exactly, if anything at Ajax he needs to rely on youth more because it's genuinely the lifeblood of the club, and exactly where you'll find the massive upside that you're unlikely to get off the market in our price range.
At United he has the financial resources to never have to take any risks on players.
Especially if he doesn't feel completely secure in his job, which how could he ever at United, there's no way he doesn't fall back every single time on the "reliable".
But Ajax rely way more on promoting and developing youth. I have no idea myself and have to believe others who know more about ETH, but this particular aspect certainly sounds concerning
Do 'Fantastic' managers fail as badly as this lad is predicting?
Your points about Ten Hag being bit conservative in using youth and relying on Experience may have merit as you are the one who follows Ajax but what exactly was Overmars doing if every decision from who to buy and whom to sell leading to a bloated squad was made by Ten Hag , was Overmars role was as redundant as you are suggesting here . What about the great structure of Ajax we keep on hearing here was it built on sand or what because way you have described Ten Hag tenure with Ajax it sounds eerily similar to Solskjaer without the good football and trophies .
he's also has had the best results at Ajax in the champions league for a long long time. I'm not saying they were doing it wrong before, but his approach of mixing rather than just playing a bunch of kids seems to have got you playing to a much higher level?
Her eyebrows are rather scaryMaybe I’m alone here but I think that Melissa Reddy is feckin gorgeous
It did, but the point is that he happened to have that core available to him at that time.
And again, like I said he's been able to turn Ajax into a winning machine season on season, and like I said he is a fantastic manager in that regard.
But if you believe that United has a rotten element to its squad at the moment, then he probably isn't the right manager to cut through that and change things, particularly not if that involves taking risks rather than bringing in experienced top class players, or at least players he knows he can trust over what's currently available
- Status