The Guardian - Manchester United to sack Erik ten Hag after the FA Cup Final

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What about all the others I mentioned?

Emery is the only one there that is debatable, but I include him because Arteta is the one people always point to so it's only fair. The Arsenal board obviously felt otherwise, and based on how things have gone under Arteta they appear to have got it right.

Will all managers be successful if given time? If not, how do you judge which ones to give time to and which ones not?
That's easy. You base it on a cup run from 5 years ago when he was at another club.
 
But where does it end? Are we going to ban anyone who dares publish something we don't like? Or if their timing doesn't suit us?

The media have their job to do and unless they really do something wrong, we shouldn't try to be North Korea.

Sure why not? Being banned from our media room is a relatively small action from us.

If the news turns out to be false, we should be looking at litigation.

The article for me is too vague to be done in good faith. It has one line of certainty in 'have decided to sack ETH after the cup final' But what does that mean? 1 hour after? 1 day after? 1 week after? 1 year after? The rest of the article then goes on to say how crap ETH has been, which everyone knows.

So for me it's more speculation than truth.
 
I can't speak to the timing of the leak or the truth or falsehood of the rumor itself, but even "Mark Goldbridge" (not his real name) -- king of the panic and rage merchants -- would have to acknowledge that INEOS would have been derelict in their duty to not have given the manager situation serious consideration by now.
 
I choose to believe it was already handled privately. The INEOS gang strike me as being professional and demanding. I’m positive that they had a conversation with him.

I'd hope so, but reports don't really back that up. Either way, the leaks aren't professional and demanding, so it doesn't bode well.
 
There is only 2 options. Its either a leak or a 50/50 guess by the papers. Remember when 'sources' told everyone Qatar will be buying the club? Even 'in the know' Rio knew it was Qatar.
If i had to put money on it, how the season has gone then you would guess he would be sacked. Pity these clever newspapers dont say The new manager/head coach will start 1 June and it will be ...
 
Yeah, because it is all Onana's fault. What the feck is with this kind of thinking?

Where has all the patience for new player gone? Came into new league, dysfunctional team and injury plagued defense. Do we ignore all that? Do we ignore the simple fact how confidence can change the player a lot. We ignore all that and go the childish FIFA way. Ok.

What the actual feck are you on about?

I never mentioned Onana.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
 
If he does get the sack I don't think ten Hag can complain much as our performances would've gotten him the sack 3-6 months ago at some other clubs, despite injuries. Antony signing, 7-0 at Liverpool, finishing 4th in CL group with 4 losses, 0-3 vs Bournemouth, 3-3 vs Coventry, 14 losses in PL this season, -1 goal difference. Some of those stats are really poor. Think we've had most injuries but Newcastle and Chelsea weren't far behind us in that regard, however at least they created much and had a decent goal difference. Ten Hag would surely stay if that was the case with our team.
 
I think its unprofessional for The Guardian to release such an article with very little details on their very eye-catching headline.

if they have a solid source for the story there's nothing particularly unprofessional about it from a journalistic stand-point
 
If it's a reaction to how the season have been, then i don't really agree with the decision. If it's a result of them simply fancying someone entirely different for their project, then i have no problems with the decision.
 
if they have a solid source for the story there's nothing particularly unprofessional about it from a journalistic stand-point

There's nothing particularly unprofessional about not letting certain people in the media room either though. It's been done before at this club and will be done again.

Solid source or not, the article is written to vaguely to be sure that the writer is certain of his news.
 
Probably thought about it, like in Minority Report. Geko's good, real good.

I actually think Onanas did pretty well this season. Considering he's had about 2000 shots blasted at him anyway.

:lol:
 
Sure why not? Being banned from our media room is a relatively small action from us.

It is, but why do that? There's is such a thing as freedom of the press. We shouldn't expect to have control of it.

The article for me is too vague to be done in good faith. It has one line of certainty in 'have decided to sack ETH after the cup final' But what does that mean? 1 hour after? 1 day after? 1 week after? 1 year after? The rest of the article then goes on to say how crap ETH has been, which everyone knows.

So for me it's more speculation than truth.

Maybe it is speculation. If he stays, we'll know it was false. If he's sacked, we won't know.

I certainly don't expect a journalist to know exactly when someone is going to be sacked. I'm not even sure the club would know right now when they are going to do that. It's obvious United remain tight lipped here, so I don't know how much information you expected the reporter to get. The only thing that really matters is whether ETH stays or goes. The rest isn't important.
 
There's nothing particularly unprofessional about not letting certain people in the media room either though. It's been done before at this club and will be done again.

that's quite different to banning anyone who dares publish something we don't like, though
 
Ye this is stupid. Same thing happened with LVG. reports a week before the final was coming out and he even brought them up in one of his press conferences. If we was gonna let him go at the end of the season or after the final we should have at least let him know and let everyone know like West Ham did with Moyes. There’s always the case where if he wins the final do they give him another year.

This is entirely not true. The BBC reported that we had met with Mourinho in December prior to the FA Cup final.
 
It is, but why do that? There's is such a thing as freedom of the press. We shouldn't expect to have control of it.



Maybe it is speculation. If he stays, we'll know it was false. If he's sacked, we won't know.

I certainly don't expect a journalist to know exactly when someone is going to be sacked. I'm not even sure the club would know right now when they are going to do that. It's obvious United remain tight lipped here, so I don't know how much information you expected the reporter to get. The only thing that really matters is whether ETH stays or goes. The rest isn't important.

Speculating that ETH will leave the club within the next year is not exactly ground-breaking journalism. I think about 80% of us expect that to happen.

Nothing wrong with speculative articles either, but why then release it the day before the cup final? That is what is biting me. You can speculate anytime after and we would all agree.
 
Has all this come about because of the speculation a day ago from Sky?
Or is it the same rumour, being regurgitated by one or the other.
 
Yet more fecking ineptitude by Tory Boy.

A whole squad of players that’s thrown manager after manager under the bus, being given an excuse to not win a cup final.

Radcliffe will be more damaging to this football club than the Glazers if he keeps his hand on the tiller.

Man alive. Even LvG’s horrendous sacking was handled more professionally.

It’s not JUST a results business. Liverpool may shout ‘This means more’ and Barca may scream ‘More than a club’, and Catalans/Scousers are a wonderful breed apart in their respective countries.

But there were three clubs in Europe that didn’t need to say shit. United. Bayern. Real. They just had their shit together, through good times and bad.

Post Fergie/Gill, United have dropped out of that triptych. The LvG sacking was awful. Correct, but awfully handled. He was a modern day great of the game, loved the club and didn’t deserve the exit he got.

But this shit with ten Hag? Banter club stuff. Really shoddy management. He’s not on Louis’ level. He hasn’t hit the standards needed. If they want to replace him, all good. It’s their money.

But having this story drop BEFORE a match against our city rivals, on this half injured squad, while we try to stop them winning back to back doubles, and creep closer to our FA Cup haul?… garbage behaviour.

I hope we win for him, and I hope he gives the new ownership team both barrels as he leaves with a winners medal around his neck.

I do expect better from a manager, and the manager carries the can, it’s fine to fire him… but after all the glad handing from Tory Jim, professing to be a fan… nope. He’s a rich twat that doesn’t understand the essence of the club at all. With the staff cuts, cancellation of the end of season party after the women’s teams success, the discontinuation of staff/family FA Cup perks introduced by Sir Matt… Nah mate.
 
Ratcliffe, in his first big interview talked about judging progress based not just on results, but on trajectory. Ineos accept (in their words) that it’s a process that will take more than one year, so if the trajectory is right, then progress will be judged accordingly. So I don’t think this is just about results, far from it.

By just about every available metric our trajectory with ETH has been going in the wrong direction for nearly 18 months. We’ve gotten consistently worse, not better. And even if you mitigate for injuries, you can see that we aren’t even doing the basics right, and we haven’t progressed towards developing an actual game plan on the pitch.

To say we should give him more time, because of the structure he had to work under, or the injuries or off field drama he’s had to deal with, would fly in the face of all credible evidence. To give him that chance, you’d have to delve deeply beyond the surface to see that there were underlying KPI’s showing we were improving. For it to be possible to uncover evidence of progress made even if it wasn’t apparent in results or the high level data. But there just isn’t. The only thing we’ve improved upon, statistically, is the amount of running we do, and how often we trigger a press and win the ball high up the pitch. But that has to be put in the context of us operating a high press with a medium to low block, meaning that when that press is broken (often) we are like lambs to the slaughter. A phenomenon that has been evident all season, to even the most half-witted armchair fan, and about which ETH has seemingly done nothing.

If we want to progress as a club and find our way back to the top, we have to make hard decisions. And despite this being a hard one, it’s not a difficult one. There is little other than blind hope, or traditionalist nostalgia about patience, to base a positive decision on keeping Ten Hag at the club, and neither of those should be the basis for any sort of rational decision making. I don’t wish ETH ill, and hope he is more successful elsewhere, but I cannot see any logical and informed pathway towards keeping him on board. The decision seems painfully simple to me. Unfortunately, I also have the sense that those arguing against his sacking are doing so out of a more emotive, than rational, decision making perspective, citing a lot of subjective mitigating factors and employing whataboutism in industrial quantities.

I would even venture to say that as one of his biggest conditions for coming here in the first place was control over recruitment, that even if the metrics existed to indicate he is taking us in the right direction (they don’t), his position will be so undermined by the new structure, that it almost makes his position untenable anyway, And again, even if we could find any evidence of a positive trajectory over the last year or more, you simply cannot - as a new owner - show any weakness in the face of our worst league campaign in the PL era, and our worst since 1990 (34 years!). You simply have to draw a line under it, be ruthless (it’s not even a ruthless decision, just a sensible one), and revolutionise the club. There is simply no other elite club in world football that wouldn’t have sacked Ten Hag already, after a historically bad season. We are the outlier. And not in a noble, “better than the rest” sense, but in an apathetic, incompetent way. Thankfully, hopefully, Ineos is bringing the curtain down on what has been a shambolic and embarrassing decade.

Finally, I’ll make very little commentary on the timing of the decision. Or more aptly put, the timing of the release of the decision. When one operates in the public forum, there is rarely a good time to do it. We also don’t know how the publication of the decision came about. Was it intentional? Was it a leak from an aggrieved party? Maybe one of the coaching or executive staff on the way out? I don’t think we know. So it’s folly to paint with broad strokes. I would venture that I would be surprised if ETH hadn’t been informed some time ago, not least since our courting of other managers has become so public.

It seems a bit ridiculous to go into the final with the notion that one game could save his job, or end it, when that’s the last basis on which Ineos will make the decision. So whether by accident or design, it’s better to rip the bandaid off, and I think it’s fine to go into the final having clarity. I am sure the fans will give him a nice send off now.

At the end of the day, the decision makers are stewards of the club, not of the manager, and if the announcement needed to be made now, for reasons behind the scenes that we are not aware of - for the good of the club - then I can get behind that. The manager market is hotly contested this summer and what matters moving forwards is that we can make the appointment we want and need to do. ETH will get a hefty pay off. I can’t see this affecting the result of the game at all, because I am sure that the players will have had clarity in this some time ago.

Given how tight lipped Ineos were prior to the Berrada and Wilcox appointments, it would suggest to me that this was leaked by someone, rather than released. At this point we are talking to other managers, their agents etc., and in that chain somewhere, someone has likely talked too much. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Ratcliffe and co are highly annoyed the story has come out now, because it doesn’t really fit their modus operandi. Obviously, however, some people on here are highly upset, and we are going to see their righteous indignation in full force; but ultimately they are upset that he’s being sacked. We can just expect that we are going to see a ton of outrage for anything that comes into view over the coming days, weeks and months. It is a decision that will be brought up, regardless of relevance, as a stick to beat then with the next time something goes wrong.

Right now, it’s a chance for so many people to neatly wrap up all their agendas (anti-Ratcliffe, anti-certain players, anti-Ineos, pro-Qatar, pro-Ten Hag, political partisanship, socio-economic injustices and perspectives etc etc) into a messy package of mouth frothing vitriol, and let the powers that be have it. Because it’s a protest not just against the decision, or its timing, but much of what the owners stand for. It’s to be expected, but ultimately doesn’t amount to much other than white noise.
 
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that's quite different to banning anyone who dares publish something we don't like, though

The only reason anybody bans the media is because they publish something you don't like, or at the wrong time without permission.

I'm not sure there are other reasons....
 
You've rated Onana all season, of course you wouldn't care about standards

Yeah, because it is all Onana's fault. What the feck is with this kind of thinking?

Where has all the patience for new player gone? Came into new league, dysfunctional team and injury plagued defense. Do we ignore all that? Do we ignore the simple fact how confidence can change the player a lot. We ignore all that and go the childish FIFA way. Ok.
 
One minute, Bruno pleas with the fan to get behind the team for Wembley.

Next minute, ETH is getting sacked after the game lolz.

We're a joke club now.
 
Club management?

The club cannot prevent articles going out for christ sakes

They can absolutely prevent leaks that dictate those articles. Liverpool were able to break the news of Klopp's retirement themselves, through an official announcement, whereas we've had it leaked that Ten Hag was going without any idea as to who is taking over. If the Scousers can be professional we should be able to too.
 
One minute, Bruno pleas with the fan to get behind the team for Wembley.

Next minute, ETH is getting sacked after the game lolz.

We're a joke club now.

Did you...want him to keep his job? We need to be ruthless. So many on here cry for us to be more like Madrid, yet when we actually do so (officially we haven't anyway) you get posts like this :lol:
 
The only reason anybody bans the media is because they publish something you don't like, or at the wrong time without permission.

I'm not sure there are other reasons....

this isn't the same thing and please don't respond again it's getting painful
 
that's quite different to banning anyone who dares publish something we don't like, though

Nah. A journo is only as good as his sources.

A well ran club would see a journo get that info, call the club, be asked not to print anything, in exchange for an exclusive when the club is ready to announce. Even if someone else broke the leaked news, the value of getting full details later is way more valuable.

We’re a shower. If we can’t control comms, you take control by banning people that don’t act in a way you want. Then they’ll fall in line.
 
I'm losing faith with this club the way it handles things including leaks. To start spreading this news before the biggest game of the season is so disrespectful towards Ten Hag, I thought we would have learnt from the LVG saga. ETH deserves a lot more respect than this. I hope he orchestrates a hell of a team performance and wins the cup and gives a big middle finger to the upper management.
 
Did you...want him to keep his job? We need to be ruthless. So many on here cry for us to be more like Madrid, yet when we actually do so (officially we haven't anyway) you get posts like this :lol:
it's truly baffling to me. Although I have been so convinced for such a long time now that he'll get the sack after the season that I'm probably just surprised that some people still expected him stay.

With a completely new setup (Ineos, Berrada, Ashworth, Wilcox), I think ETH would have needed a really good season to stick. Usually with these kinds of shakeups, you see the new bosses install "their" guy, unless the incumbent kills it ... with the season ETH has had, surely the writing has been on the wall for him. So I'm honestly baffled that some people seem to be angry or even surprised by this.

I concede that the timing is bad. But again, I think the FA Cup final will always complicate this, as it did with van Gaal back then. Brighton and Chelsea chasing some of the same targets doesn't help, either.
 
Nah. A journo is only as good as his sources.

A well ran club would see a journo get that info, call the club, be asked not to print anything, in exchange for an exclusive when the club is ready to announce. Even if someone else broke the leaked news, the value of getting full details later is way more valuable.

We’re a shower. If we can’t control comms, you take control by banning people that don’t act in a way you want. Then they’ll fall in line.

I think you responded to the wrong post?

either that or you haven't read the context
 
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