Should we revert back to counter attacking football or do we throw another season?

VidaRed

Unimaginative FC
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
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The core of the starting xi cannot play the way ten hag wants no matter the amount of coaching. Our players only got 2nd position under ole because he played to there strengths which is sitting back and counter attacking, this is where mcfred, rashford, bruno, shaw and maguire are most comfortable at.

When ole changed it around the players couldn't adapt and got found out, then rangnick had a go and failed aswell. Ten hag will also go through the grinder if he persists with these lot because our players lack the quality and physicality and also the technical ability when pressed to retain possession and play progressive controlling football.

Either go back to what suits our players or risk losing out on top 4 again and then'll it will get even harder to attract the right players next summer.
 
ETH is not going to play football which is completely against his philosophy. There’s more chance of him walking out.
 
Take a deep breath, sit down, grab a beer and chill out.

It's been one game.
 
Nah, we try to coach players to play the way ETH wants. The ones that cant/wont do it will be out the door next summer.
 
Its not about the coaching, its the formation. The formation and the position of the players is very important in a game. This is why Real Madrid won against Liverpool as they used a different formation to counter Liverpool's flank based threat, despite Liverpool's superior coaching.

The Brighton game happened because of a wrong formation. It will be different the next game so lets relax.
 
Not saying its similar but when Pep took over Barcelona their first two matches was a loss and a draw with the team looking all over the place, then they settled into the tactics. Now I'm no way saying that by December we are going to be on a 10 game winning streak but that its way too early to talk about changing tactics, the sample size is too small. We saw in the second half that EtH made some adjustments and the team played a bit better.

End of the day we are what we are and where we are. It's EtH's first game, he hasn't got 100s to spend, we are not a well oiled machined, we know this. Whether we end up with de jong or not, if our goal is to build this club in the image of EtH, the same way pool commited to Klopps image, city and barca to Peps then we will need to be patient with EtH and his tactics. He will need time to adjust tactics, see who he can trust etc. The same way klopp had to adjust, same with Pep.Yeah it means we might not get champions league, but if by the end of the season we are seeing an EtH team developing, evolving and starting to shine through, then that for me will be success. I doubt we will or were expecting to see everything fixed or even close to fixed right away.
 
No!

Let's finally pick a vision, a strategy and STICK WITH IT. Ten Hag has a clear and obvious way of playing football, a philosophy if you will. The club had to be aware of that before appointing him. Expecting him to completely change his style to squeeze out just a little bit more of our miserable mishmash of a squad would be entirely pointless. It would take us nowhere.
 
I don't think it's hard what the club need to do here, in fact it's super simple.

Listen to the manager on the problem positions and profile of player he wants. Take this to the recruitment team who use scouts and data to find 5 potential fits, give to the manager and let him pick.

Why does our club insist on making this seem more difficult than it has to be?
 
Sure, let's bring one of Moyes/Ole back too while we are here and continue playing like rich Stoke City because it was very successful before.
 
Its not up to us to play on counter attacks or not, sure against big and better teams but bottom and middle level clubs aint stupid, how you gonna counter attack them when they give you a ball knowing that you have no idea what to do with it, while also there is bigger pressure on us to take over a role of a ball dominating team.
 
No, I really feel we should give our youths a try. Results will be bad in the short term but having a quick fix and thinking everything is alright.
 
Obviously this is not black or white, but IMO with the current squad Ten Hag will need to find a compromise and adjust a lot, I actually see this as quite a challenge. We can bring de Jong but it will not change that players like Rashford and Bruno are not suited to possession game. The rest I think can be coached.
A lot will depend on who we bring in midfield. If we go for pure DM then I don't see us playing possession based football. Still, giving more protection to back 4 should be the priority now.

On the other hand, if you don't have a player who can do the "holding/deep lying playmaker", you adjust the shape and don't force this to happen regardless if that's your football philosophy or not.
 
GloryHunter07 said:
Nah, we try to coach players to play the way ETH wants. The ones that cant/wont do it will be out the door next summer.
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That is what we said last season. Yet here we are with the same players who flopped massively.

Siorac said:
No!

Let's finally pick a vision, a strategy and STICK WITH IT. Ten Hag has a clear and obvious way of playing football, a philosophy if you will. The club had to be aware of that before appointing him. Expecting him to completely change his style to squeeze out just a little bit more of our miserable mishmash of a squad would be entirely pointless. It would take us nowhere.
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The club allowed rangnick to be thrown the bus by not signing anyone in the winter window when it was clear as day we needed new signings. Roll over the summer window and the club has not signed anyone in central midfield who would suit ten hag's style, we don't have any strikers and our full backs are mid table quality at best. The club is essentially praying ten hag can polish turd!
 
Just no. We bought ETH in, we have to play possession football. There’s no other way, we just need more time.
 
I'd rather be relegated. Time to finally join the 21st century in terms of our football.
 
VidaRed said:
The club allowed rangnick to be thrown the bus by not signing anyone in the winter window when it was clear as day we needed new signings. Roll over the summer window and the club has not signed anyone in central midfield who would suit ten hag's style, we don't have any strikers and our full backs are mid table quality at best. The club is essentially praying ten hag can polish turd!
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Yes but that's exactly my point: reverting to counter-attacking football is nothing but an attempt at polishing turd. It won't take us anywhere as long as the core issues aren't addressed, the most obvious of which is the dreadful recruitment.
 
Siorac said:
Yes but that's exactly my point: reverting to counter-attacking football is nothing but an attempt at polishing turd. It won't take us anywhere as long as the core issues aren't addressed, the most obvious of which is the dreadful recruitment.
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But that can't be addressed now, so why waste another season ?

Recruitment should have been on the agenda this window but ten hag wanted to assess the players for himself and gave them a clean slate. Since this window is nearly over we can't do anything until next summer so why shouldn't we try to play to the strengths of the current players this season ? They will be replaced anyways next summer, might aswell qualify for CL.
 
BluesJr said:
I'd rather be relegated. Time to finally join the 21st century in terms of our football.
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We're in relegation form. Do you want ten hag to be sacked because the board fecked up ?

The board isn't going to blame itself if shit hits the fan, they'll go for the easiest option which is to fire the manager.
 
VidaRed said:
But that can't be addressed now, so why waste another season ?

Recruitment should have been on the agenda this window but ten hag wanted to assess the players for himself and gave them a clean slate. Since this window is nearly over we can't do anything until next summer so why shouldn't we try to play to the strengths of the current players this season ? They will be replaced anyways next summer, might aswell qualify for CL.
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Introducing a completely new style of play after this season would mean wasting next season as well as this one. We won't replace all our players - those who remain should at least be familiar with the manager's preferred way of playing.
 
VidaRed said:
But that can't be addressed now, so why waste another season ?

Recruitment should have been on the agenda this window but ten hag wanted to assess the players for himself and gave them a clean slate. Since this window is nearly over we can't do anything until next summer so why shouldn't we try to play to the strengths of the current players this season ? They will be replaced anyways next summer, might aswell qualify for CL.
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When the occasion is there, we will do so anyways. But I don't accept that our players shouldn't be sufficient for more possession based approach. I mean, Teams like Swansea do it, many other teams in our league are comfortable in possession also not having awesome technical players at the disposal. We just need to improve the players. Teach them where to be and when. THis will be difficult and it will need time but that was a given fact even before the transfer window. You don't just buy a new style of play. I am sure, Ten Haag isn't trying to install prime TikiTaka anyways. We will be fine doing it, heck LVG played heavy possession football after just one summer.
We just have to invest time and potentially, we also have to take a risk of not getting the best results this year. We are a work in progress, we can't just expect to compete while switching things on such a high level. Thats one of the reasons why I am shocked how many are asking for Garner, Iqbal and Garnacho to be introduced - I get it, young players need to play to develope, but we have so much going right now, should we really add another objective to the already long (and very challenging) list?
 
VidaRed said:
Either go back to what suits our players or risk losing out on top 4 again and then'll it will get even harder to attract the right players next summer.
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Play the counterattack and you risk top 4 as well.
 
Siorac said:
No!

Let's finally pick a vision, a strategy and STICK WITH IT. Ten Hag has a clear and obvious way of playing football, a philosophy if you will. The club had to be aware of that before appointing him. Expecting him to completely change his style to squeeze out just a little bit more of our miserable mishmash of a squad would be entirely pointless. It would take us nowhere.
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I agree with this.

We need to decide what we want to do and where we want to go. And, even if it all goes Pete Tong, even if we decide Ten Hag is not the guy, we have to stick with it. We have to go and find another coach from that Cruyff school of thinking, be it Luis Enrique or whoever, and keep going with the approach.

We can't just keep lurching from one approach to the other. As you say, all that leads to is a mishmash squad that nobody can do anything with.

As Man Utd we have to decide: We want to be a high possession, high pressing team. And from there make all our decisions based on that objective.
 
Another 'ETH's football' thread. Too early to say what that even is. It is whatever he does, not what he says it is. He should have been looking to sideline some of the players mentioned in the OP if he was so committed to one type. It would also reflect in the transfer market, but the names I appear to be hearing now are not conducive either.
 
Are we still happy sticking to the high line with these lot ?

Our players cannot play this way.
 
And how are we going to change if we don't start implementing a new style? This season was actually thrown when we decided last January to not invest in 1-2 players. Better to finish 12th with a new style for 2023-2024 rather than going to the same old shit and finish 6th.
 
Depends on whether our American rats start spending some serious serious money. With that crap we have right now it will he hard to play any proper football
 
VidaRed said:
Are we still happy sticking to the high line with these lot ?

Our players cannot play this way.
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The problem is I'm not sure this squad is able to play counter-attacking football anymore.
 
Change the players who can't play a high line/possession based style.

On occasion, use a counter attacking style when needed due to injuries, opposition.
 
Apart from how good our defense looked like, I wouldn't say this was "unexpected" what we did to Liverpool. Bruno instinctive passing to release an attacker and Rashford being effective when given acres of space is something we can always count on.​
The biggest positive for me is how good we looked in transition, Martinez, Malacia, Eriksen and Casemiro surely will improve us even more.​
 
Don't think this is much of a discussion since most teams don't let you play counter attacking football. If they did then ole would have won the league and mourinho might have set points records. Most games will be like Brentford, where the onus is on united to use the ball.

Southampton will be exactly like that so will be instructive as to whether we have improved in those situation or not.
 
This strategy will only work against Liverpool and City. The rest of the league will sit deep and we need to break them down.
 
Think it was a bit different. The first 30 minutes weren't counter attacking at all until we transitioned into countering them after that which was absolutely the right strategy. Went a bit too far the other way with possession after that and we'll improve in time, but of course Casemiro will make a massive difference.
 
I don't think we played real counter attacking football. We tried to play on the front foot as much as we can. Just because DeGea kicked it upfield doesn't mean we only played counterattack. It's not very easy to play possession based football with some of the players we have.
 
What an odd thread. Been a lot of these threads lately. @VidaRed so what are you suggesting? We hire a new coach who is known to be a very good tactical and technical coach and we hope he abandons his style of play and the way he builds his team just because we were shit in our first few games? If thats the case then why bother sacking Ole and hiring ETH? This stuff takes time and he needs that time and his players in to get us to play the way he wants us to play and guess what there's a good chance we have a stinker against Southampton on Saturday because that's how rebuilds go.

Just be patient and let him do his thing. I'm more worried about getting the Glazers out than how we play right now.
 
Foxbatt said:
I don't think we played real counter attacking football. We tried to play on the front foot as much as we can. Just because DeGea kicked it upfield doesn't mean we only played counterattack. It's not very easy to play possession based football with some of the players we have.
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Pretty much. We'll only ever play good possession football against good team when we have the personnel and unfortunately we aren't quite covered on that front. As long as DeGea remains unable to be composed at the back and find passes to his fullbacks or midfielders when they're reasonably open, we'll always struggle to keep possession because he can't recycle the ball and pass it to a United player but instead just hoofs it back to the opposition.

Then aside for DeGea you have players all over the midfield and front line who can't keep possession either, especially under any sort of pressure. In attack only Martial and Sancho can be relied to keep the ball when it get to them and not instantly lose it a second after touching it. In midfield everyone there just loses the ball with the biggest culprit being Bruno. Fred, Scott are similar. The backline is looking better with the introduction of Martinez and Malacia, so at least there they're all comfortable on the ball with varying degrees.
 
Counter-attacking football works against opponents who press and keep a high line, but it doesn't work as a core team philosophy because the whole concept falls apart the moment the opposition doesn't actually presents you with opportunities to counter-attack. It's something you can resort to in games where you know it'll work, but it can never be the go-to approach. It would be wildly incompetent for a manager of any club with real ambitions to fully form the squad into a counter-attacking team. That team would lose anytime anyone sits deep against them.
 
Having counter attacking as one of the many tools to punish your opponent is one thing but counter attacking being your only tool is what we've seen from Ole and some of the other managers. Being unable to break a deep block.
 
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