It’s the impact of Europe
Roberto De Zerbi
- Thread starter Bastian
- Start date
Not much gets made of it because it doesn't suit agendas
This is why I voted Brexit
I think people expect them not to be shit after how much good press they’ve been getting.
This run of 16 results includes getting thumped 6-1 by you, 4-0 by Luton and drawing with the bottom 3 clubs. It's not like they've played teams consistently they shouldn't be winning against, they've had poor results against sides they should really be beating.
Wonder what he thinks of the Football Gods now, eh?
This thread gives me 2022 ETH thread vibes.
To be fair they've been missing Solly March for all of this bad run who started this season on fire and Mitoma has been out recently and also has been much quieter than last season when fit. And they have been doing well in the Europa League after a ropey start, but no wonder they've had some fatigue after. So it still could he a successful season for them if they can continue their cup runs, it's not like they're in any danger of being dragged into a relegation battle.
Bit baffling the lack of starts Evan Ferguson is getting though, probably would've started more for us this season!
Bit baffling the lack of starts Evan Ferguson is getting though, probably would've started more for us this season!
I feel burned. I hope Ten Hag proves people wrong, but I got swept up by the Ten Hag bandwagon and he was my choice because everything about him sounded so right.
This guy, or indeed any future United manager candidate (or appointment), will be treated with a dose of healthy scepticism on my part from now on.
Actually, Brighton/De Zerbri have handled Ferguson really well.
He has an ongoing patellar tendon issue that can't be resolved by surgery, apparently. It flares up and swells. His minutes are being monitored to help with that.
It's refreshing not to see a club/manager run a young player into the ground. Look at Pedri at Barcelona. Bellingham has a lot of miles on the clock already at 20. I don't think he'll age well. He'll likely peak young and be finished before the age of 30. Rooney and Fabregas were done by their late 20's. Peaked young.
It's funny that injuries are used as an excuse for their rancid form. When we had a tonne of players out and anyone used the injury excuse in the ETH thread, they were attacked.
Disclaimer: The injury excuse was overused for ETH and I want him gone.
Disclaimer: The injury excuse was overused for ETH and I want him gone.
Injuries, losing good players in the summer and European football can be used to explain a 3 point drop. But to drop from 3rd to 9th after spending a fortune is a bit harder to defend, even with injuries.
Then again I wouldn't sack either of them. Not even Ten Hag, although he's definitely walking on a tightrope nowadays. He needs to prove that the injuries was the problem.
Not really.
United are a much bigger club and should be able to deal with injuries better than the likes of Brighton. We added players to the squad this summer, while Brighton lost their two best midfielders.
And, unlike us, they have been missing attackers. The majority of our attackers have been fit and available this season.
Enciso has missed 29 games
March has missed 21 games
Lamptey has missed 20 games
Fati has missed 13 games
Welbeck has missed 12 games
Mitoma has missed 7 games
Adingra has missed 6 games
There's no excuse for how impotent United have been in attack. Brighton can be criticised for the defensive side of their game. They would have turned some of those draws into wins had they had more attackers available in certain games. City rarely keep clean sheets either, but outscore the opposition more often than not. Brighton are similar.
Wow, I just assumed that most of their injuries were in defence/midfield. It's wild that they have had all those injuries in attack and still have scored 14 more goals than us.
Or Potter at Brighton vibes, or Emery until a couple of games ago, the caf needs a new darling and it looks like it's Xabi Alonso
One club spent £400m. I think excuses go out the window when you spend that much money but still blame injuries
You can't sell your best players all the time and be consistent. For small clubs there is thin line between good season end getting relegated.
I remmeber wank fest about Brighton and how we should aspire to be like them.
I remmeber wank fest about Brighton and how we should aspire to be like them.
Yeah, the thing is, I want ETH gone. But, excuses are excuses....
The problem is that people want to look at these things in black and white. No matter how you dress it up, doing well in Eredivisie with a stacked team isn't an amazing achievement. He came in to an Ajax team on the up, where the right people were already in place and the previous coach had pushed them far, including 2nd in the league and a EL final. On a side note, Peter Bosz is now managing PSV and they play very good football, unbeaten in the league and have only conceded 8 all season...perhaps he was the guy we should have got
Ajax's downfall coincides with them being pillaged by us and other clubs, losing Overmars and VDS and some poor spending as a result, along with ETH.But back to my point, ETH's achievements at Ajax put him into a 'potential to be good' bracket for me, not in conversations about whether he's as good as Pep, Klopp etc. That is proven by being consistently good at the top level and doing it at numerous clubs. Challenging and winning the very top honours.
For me De Zerbi goes into that same bracket, because he doesn't have the resources of ETH's Ajax team or some of the bigger PL teams, he's in a tougher league at a club that sells it's best players. It appears the summer sales, in addition to their injury crisis, have been a step too far for them, and it isn't like he has the talent to call on like we do when we have injuries. But until recently he had them playing very good football and still has them in a respectable league position. We'll see how the rest of their season goes and whether he can find a way to turn it around. It will be disappointing if he doesn't because he could have been an option to replace ETH if he kept it up, and it is a good thing that we have plenty of options.
Their form isn't even that bad, before yesterday they were just drawing league games was their problem. Their underlying numbers are good. Their only losses have been against top sides in the past few months, and very infrequent. They've done well in the cups.
Small clubs can't handle multiple competitions really. League form will always suffer.
3 wins in 16 is pretty shite as is a 4 nil defeat to Luton. Their football also isn't particularly great at the moment. I still think he's a very promising coach, though.
Drawing games is shite too.
I’d take Sully March at United
They also had something like 3 or 4 losses in their previous 16 league games or so, all to big teams, all by pretty much just a goal (apart from this game and vs Villa). Context is needed. They aren't a team who is expected to be competing for CL spots, they don't have a squad for it especially not with multiple competitions. The way to evaluate him is see the play style impact he's had, and see how they overperform across competitions relative to what they have. See how they play when they are fit and fresh, see how they hit their objectives.
Some inconsistent runs of form are to be expected and I wouldn't really hold it against him or them... Kind of comes with the territory of being a club like Brighton with the squad they have.
Well made points. I also think it’s good to have a pool of promising coaches to pick from if you are a team trying to turn things around and get relevant again. If anything, us going with past-zenith coaches like Van Gaal and Mourinho, and going for Ole and Moyes as potentials, pointed to a dearth in new and exciting coaches at the time. Ten Hag was the first time really we went for really qualified potential, ie a coach with a top CV in terms of results at various lower level and one of the leading figures in presenting modern (post Guardiola/Klopp) tactical approaches. As you well point out, potential depends on a host of factors to come to fruitition, and it remains to be seen wether Ten Hag will be able to get everything into gear again at United or not. IMO he’s undoubtedly the most thought through managerial appointment here since 1986, even though the set up he entered wasn’t. Things are now pointing towards a sound process from the top down, but it may take both a few years and a few managerial appointments for the new set up to get things clicking again. Glazer’s have cost this club deeply, even if I actually still believe things upstair have moved in the right direction - albeit too slowly and too late - since Woodward announced his stepping down.The problem is that people want to look at these things in black and white. No matter how you dress it up, doing well in Eredivisie with a stacked team isn't an amazing achievement. He came in to an Ajax team on the up, where the right people were already in place and the previous coach had pushed them far, including 2nd in the league and a EL final. On a side note, Peter Bosz is now managing PSV and they play very good football, unbeaten in the league and have only conceded 8 all season...perhaps he was the guy we should have got
But back to my point, ETH's achievements at Ajax put him into a 'potential to be good' bracket for me, not in conversations about whether he's as good as Pep, Klopp etc. That is proven by being consistently good at the top level and doing it at numerous clubs. Challenging and winning the very top honours.
For me De Zerbi goes into that same bracket, because he doesn't have the resources of ETH's Ajax team or some of the bigger PL teams, he's in a tougher league at a club that sells it's best players. It appears the summer sales, in addition to their injury crisis, have been a step too far for them, and it isn't like he has the talent to call on like we do when we have injuries. But until recently he had them playing very good football and still has them in a respectable league position. We'll see how the rest of their season goes and whether he can find a way to turn it around. It will be disappointing if he doesn't because he could have been an option to replace ETH if he kept it up, and it is a good thing that we have plenty of options.
What is undercommunicated IMO is how seldom we see couches being successful over several years over several clubs. The idea that coaches are of such and such quality and we need to pick the good one and not the bad one is based on a fallacy that the quality of a coach manager is personal and stable to any remote degree. People like Ferguson, Guardiola and Klopp are anomalies, and to get them you need a bit of clairvoiance, a bit of luck and a bit of not having Ed Woodward leading a football operation). Seeing as I don’t believe in the first and you can’t control the second, I think we are getting in the right direction regarding the last at least. But to tell who will be the coach to take United beyond what Mou, Solskjær and Ten Hag have done so far, I think is more guesswork than qualified opinion from the likes of us here.
I think this is being overlooked - it's a lot easier to play the football he wants to play when the team has had a week off before every match.
They sold 3 first team players out of which Sanchez already lost his place to Steele last season so really they lost 2 first team players in Caicedo and MacAllister. They've already invested the majority of what they received into buying Pedro, Baleba, Igor, Verbruggen for close to 100m. It's not like they spent pennies this season.The problem is that people want to look at these things in black and white. No matter how you dress it up, doing well in Eredivisie with a stacked team isn't an amazing achievement. He came in to an Ajax team on the up, where the right people were already in place and the previous coach had pushed them far, including 2nd in the league and a EL final. On a side note, Peter Bosz is now managing PSV and they play very good football, unbeaten in the league and have only conceded 8 all season...perhaps he was the guy we should have got
But back to my point, ETH's achievements at Ajax put him into a 'potential to be good' bracket for me, not in conversations about whether he's as good as Pep, Klopp etc. That is proven by being consistently good at the top level and doing it at numerous clubs. Challenging and winning the very top honours.
For me De Zerbi goes into that same bracket, because he doesn't have the resources of ETH's Ajax team or some of the bigger PL teams, he's in a tougher league at a club that sells it's best players. It appears the summer sales, in addition to their injury crisis, have been a step too far for them, and it isn't like he has the talent to call on like we do when we have injuries. But until recently he had them playing very good football and still has them in a respectable league position. We'll see how the rest of their season goes and whether he can find a way to turn it around. It will be disappointing if he doesn't because he could have been an option to replace ETH if he kept it up, and it is a good thing that we have plenty of options.
Also, De Zerbi looks like he can't set up a defence even if his life depended on it. They've conceded 37 goals in the league and only kept a clean sheet twice. If Bosz is unbeaten and only conceded 8 goals all season then yea he is an option to have a punt on. Just as De Zerbi is a punt. I haven't seen anything from De Zerbi that suggests he can get to Klopp or Pep's level. He is getting very overrated here.
I don't hold it against them. I generally enjoy watching them play but they've been fairly shite recently.
That is the case with every manager out there. Whoever we get comes with risks, and whoever we get, we get with the assumption/hope that they'll adapt to United and the level required here so they step up as well.
Searching for a manager who will be the best manager of his generation is a flawed way to go about it right from the start.
My bad, I misunderstood the other post and thought that in his view De Zerbi can reach Pep/Klopp's level. I'd rather see ETH under the right setup as he has shown at Ajax that with a good setup he can win trophies. Unless Brighton go a really good run from now and until the end of this season, I really don't see him as an improvement over ETH.
Everyone can win trophies with Ajax... De Zerbi has shown more in the prem than Ten Hag has. The process to hire ten hag wasn't bad, he hasn't adapted to the premier league and man united though. I'm extremely comfortable with hiring managers using the same logic as ten hag (but with a better structure). The manager is responsible to coach the team he has, first and foremost. That's what their main evaluation should be based on. You never know how a manager will do at United or in the prem until they are here. De Zerbi has done well and would have reasons to be hopeful. You'd hope he would adapt. Ten Hag had plenty of reasons to be optimistic. However, he hasn't adapted, and hasn't found an answer to other managers adjusting to quickly make his style completely ineffective.
There's no need to abandon the thought process that led to us getting Ten Hag in the first place, but it's important to be firm on how Ten Hag has done with what he should be judged on (coaching). Fair enough if you don't think he's had enough time to implement his system. It's not always black and white and the same amount of time as others implementing their systems faster. I think he's implemented his system, and it just isn't good for this league, and he's had plenty of time to adapt it but hasn't. That leads me to effectively lose all hope in him. Would love to be wrong and see something that points to him being capable of turning it around and coaching a system that can dominate games in this league. Until I see that, I'm going to advocate changing him for someone else who has shown promising signs, but of course also has risks.
Might be a bit more comparable if de Zerbi had pissed £400m away too and then complained about an injury crisis.
Not sure de Zerbi is the guy, but then I doubt anyone could be worse than EtH.
I really like how Brighton play but I worry he’s a one trick pony or too dogmatic
So it sounds like Ten Hag might be fine if he wasn't making sole decisions on transfer? Cool, let's keep him then.
Ajax has struggled since ETH left though. Ofcourse, as the other poster mentioned there are a lot more reasons for their struggle but its not as easy for everyone to win with Ajax apparently. ETH has had to deal with a lot of off the field issues that makes me have some hope that performances will improve once he has a settled structure around him.
Last season he had come in and did a good job, this season not so much. If we look at each game individually there have been lots of games where we have been let down due to the greed of our wide players or individual brainfarts in defence or just plain bad luck with VAR. I'm not absolving ETH of all the blame here but if we do go ahead and sack him, I don't think De Zerbi is the answer.
Our players very clearly disrespected Rangnick apparently because he hasn't won any trophies, they also don't care much about ETH now who has actually won some trophies, what makes people think they will give it their all for De Zerbi?
i mean for me there is literally no manager out there who i would want to see come in and be working with this group of players. Regardless of who is managing there needs to be a HEAVY clean out of this squad, and i do mean heavy. I do think there should be a new manager as well, but as for most of these players im done with them.
Rangnick was disrespected because he was an interim manager who burnt bridges at every turn while the motivation of competing for any competition was entirely gone. There was no other reason than that... It wasn't due to who he was or a lack of trophies. Ten Hag is losing respect not because of who he is or isn't, that has never played a part here and doesn't now.
The players all try to carry out the instructions of the manager. They lose hope over time when the instructions are failing. When the instructions cause issues, or get taken advantage of by lesser players quite often, then players will naturally lose hope and belief. It's up to the manager to convince the players that his system is the right one, that it can work, and he has to be able to coach the players to play that system. The system itself has to actually work as well. We play in the premier league, no other competition has this level of competitiveness and managerial quality where you really need to prove your worth as a manager. Ultimately, your ideas just might not work even if you have full buy in from your squad because other managers might have better ideas. We're unlikely to have a squad that is the best in the league like we used to. It's unlikely from anyone. You can be in the top tier, but there will always be a few clubs that have squads at the top tier, and multiple other clubs with elite level resources and very good squads all the same. So the manager has to prove their worth with coaching.
Also with Ajax, I don't want to downplay ten hag. He did a great job. But managers like De Boer won multiple titles in a row too, and was horrendous in the Prem. It's a different league, the managers need to adapt. They aren't able to just use the same system, and if they do, it tends to not work. So the question is always can they adapt, how well do they adapt. There isn't much history of dutch league managers adapting well to the premier league.
Don't you think sometimes instructions fail because players fail to carry it out? Or do you think ETH specifically instructs Garnacho and Rashford to shoot at every opportunity they can and never pass to Hojlund? Players do need to take some responsibility with them, not everything is on the manager. If Garnacho would have crossed to Hojlund when we were 2-0 up against Newport that game wouldn't have become that nervy in the 2nd half. Or Rashford just plainly refusing to carry out his defensive duties in lot of the games.
I have seen enough in our good performances this season that there is a semblance of good system. That is why I want to see him under a fully functioning setup(take away transfer responsibility away from him, get a DOF and let ETH stick just to coaching without all the off field distractions) with all our injured players back. I don't think we have played the same starting lineup twice in a row this season. Constans chopping due to injuries also doesn't help.
Luckily Brighton are an extremely well run club and De Zerbi likely didn't have to sign anyone, as it was done for him by competent people.
ETH pissed money up the wall, but he never should have had that kind of control over transfers.