Time to remove the rose-tinted glasses

AndersB

Full Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
734
It's been clear for a while now, at least to me, that our performances have been judged overly positively because of faith in Amorim, and all the negativity around ETH. Don't get me wrong, I like him, and I think he will likely do well, but there has been quite a lot of rationalization of poor performances, a lot of "I see what he's trying to do here", when in reality we have not been performing well.

For example, the loss against Arsenal, if the exact same match were replicated with ETH as manager, he would be slaughtered for it. And don't even get me started on Forest at home.

Reality is that we have already suffered two really embarrassing home defeats, have lost to Arsenal without putting up much of a fight, and barely scraped wins against Bodø Glimt and Plzen. Wins against Everton and City were great of course, but reality is things have not clicked yet, and we have a long way to go.

Let's start viewing things a but more soberly, because, as is well known, idealization is easily exchanged with devaluation
 
You'll get your wish because there's huge backlash now (i.e. a more critical appraisal).

If he's supported, I think he'll be great for us. But as you say, there's a lot of work to be done. The squad is average. Loads of players don't suit his system, nor the demands of the league. We're carrying players who are being paid a Messi-like wage offering nothing. And we've got quite a number of injury prone players.

First order of business is sort out defending set pieces and take Bruno off corners. Also, never field a midfield without a defensively solid player there.
 
A whole load of crap. Our performances have improved, the data is there.

Unfortunately there have been plenty of mistakes as well. We will improve, I am certain of that once we get some time to actually train.
 
Amorim was never going to turn this group of players into a top club.

He shouldn't even be on the clock until next season, after he has had a summer of transfer business.
 
AndersB said:
It's been clear for a while now, at least to me, that our performances have been judged overly positively because of faith in Amorim, and all the negativity around ETH. Don't get me wrong, I like him, and I think he will likely do well, but there has been quite a lot of rationalization of poor performances, a lot of "I see what he's trying to do here", when in reality we have not been performing well.

For example, the loss against Arsenal, if the exact same match were replicated with ETH as manager, he would be slaughtered for it. And don't even get me started on Forest at home.

Reality is that we have already suffered two really embarrassing home defeats, have lost to Arsenal without putting up much of a fight, and barely scraped wins against Bodø Glimt and Plzen. Wins against Everton and City were great of course, but reality is things have not clicked yet, and we have a long way to go.

Let's start viewing things a but more soberly, because, as is well known, idealization is easily exchanged with devaluation
Click to expand...
I think his honey moon is over now and fans will judge him in a more balanced way

his challenge is to improve the players we already have, and if he fails at that he will get moved on. nobody can claim this squad should be 13th or whatever we are.
 
AndersB said:
It's been clear for a while now, at least to me, that our performances have been judged overly positively because of faith in Amorim, and all the negativity around ETH. Don't get me wrong, I like him, and I think he will likely do well, but there has been quite a lot of rationalization of poor performances, a lot of "I see what he's trying to do here", when in reality we have not been performing well.

For example, the loss against Arsenal, if the exact same match were replicated with ETH as manager, he would be slaughtered for it. And don't even get me started on Forest at home.

Reality is that we have already suffered two really embarrassing home defeats, have lost to Arsenal without putting up much of a fight, and barely scraped wins against Bodø Glimt and Plzen. Wins against Everton and City were great of course, but reality is things have not clicked yet, and we have a long way to go.

Let's start viewing things a but more soberly, because, as is well known, idealization is easily exchanged with devaluation
Click to expand...
Who has said otherwise?

If people can't understand that there is more context to performances than just a scoreline then I don't have anything to discuss anyways with them. Much of the optimism so far is based on our increasing control of games, not surrendering nearly as much from open play, and clear structure throughout the game. It's also quite obvious that half of this squad is bottom table quality.
 
I hope people on here saying we shouldn't give up on top 4 as we're X amount of points behind 4th will now chime down, as this squad will heavily prevent us getting anywhere near top 4, bottom 4 is more likely.
 
Amorim inherited a very average squad. He needs time to build his own team.
 
There is always a limit on what the manager can and can't do.

If the players don't change much between managerial appointments the outcome after a slight bounce will more times than not stay the same.

The current group is somewhere between 5th and 10th.

Which is where they will finish. Bournemouth are having a good season and have beat better teams than United this year.
 
To be fair a few were saying the players are rubbish under EtH but the caf kept shutting that down and were so obsessed with EtH sacking - don't get me wrong he needed a sacking because of the players he bought and the style he was playing, but a lot were just narrow minded regarding the players at the club.

Now we get a new manager and suddenly all views on the caf is the players are rubbish.....

I'm certain that the players make a manager/coach, you can bring whatever manager/coach you want if your team ain't filled with good players in all positions...the managers job will be impossible.
 
My biggest issue with Ten Hag was that he created an absolutely terrible squad for the money spent.

Apart from the complete lack of quality up front it's a squad that gets bullied physically every game.

No manager was ever going to overcome that in the short term.

You are only as good as your players.
 
Game state plays a part but various underlying stats (Xg etc) says otherwise.

Poor finishing, set piece defending and brain farts defensively have been our main issues.
 
In the grand scheme of things, does this season matter? We're in the bottom half. We're not getting relegated. We're not qualifying for Europe. After 11 of abysmal management and terrible performances, it can't really get much worse. Therefore why not allow Amorim to do what he's clearly set out to achieve, and that is implementing his system without compromise. Perhaps it'll actually yield positive results in time, instead of giving in and changing back to some generic formation to appease the shite players who we'll only be replacing in the next year or two anyway. As he said himself, we'd only end up back here in a years time
 
My rose tinted glasses are very much still on.

Matches like today are littered with individual mistakes.

Same vs Spurs
Same vs Forest
Onana vs Plzen
 
DevilRed said:
You should be able to not lose at home against forest and bournemouth though.

Thats unexcusable.
Click to expand...
Forest are 3rd in the table. Bournemouth are 5th. Manchester United are 13th. The arrogance some United fans have about the club's standing is cringeworthy. They are both better teams than this current United side, which is mid-table dross.
 
100 said:
My rose tinted glasses are very much still on.

Matches like today are littered with individual mistakes.

Same vs Spurs
Same vs Forest
Onana vs Plzen
Click to expand...
How to deal with that though
 
Ghirahim said:
Amorim inherited a very average squad. He needs time to build his own team.
Click to expand...

Spot on. If he had started next season we would still be a poor outfit. The fact he has taken an ETH team that even ETH couldn't get a tune out of more times than not and hasn't been able to gain results says more about our recruitment than our manager.

He has a system that will pay dividends I'm certain when we get the right players in and any of the current crop who can adapt and improve begin to show that. Until then we have to accept that losing to Forest and Bournemouth at home is expected because they are better than us. The league doesn't lie.
 
Changing system mid way in the season was always going to be tough let alone when the squad we've got is not particularly gifted with athleticism and football IQ. Eredivisie XI was tried and tested. We nearly lost Amad because of it and it loaded us with hobbits in defense that keep being beaten in set pieces. Amorim will need time
 
DevilRed said:
You should be able to not lose at home against forest and bournemouth though.

Thats unexcusable.
Click to expand...
As a team they're better than us, we tend to look at individuals and think we're better than others. As a collective our team is pretty much what the table alludes to 13th...

Reality check - we've fallen that low over the years. Our striker position for example is abysmal and many teams have better strikers.
 
Ghirahim said:
Amorim inherited a very average squad. He needs time to build his own team.
Click to expand...
Sell Malacia and Shaw ... get alvaro back..
Sell Maguire,Lindelof, Martinez.. get 2 solid defenders..
Sell zirkezee .. rashford .. get somebody who works hard ..
And buy a backup for Ugarte
 
I mean, the stats back up everything we're saying. We're consistently creating more than our opponents. Something we haven't done in a very long time, and Amorim’s doing it with no pre season, no signings, and coming into a volcano that was mid eruption.

It feels like how Arteta and Klopp started to me. Once they got their players in, they kicked on. I expect Amorim to do the same as of now.
 
There will be more of these days ahead for the remainder of the season. Unless a miracle happens in January with signings that magically transform us, forget top 4. Europa League is probably the only way we get Champions League football.

I wish fans would stop bitching about the damn formation though. We've been shite with the 4-2-3-1 (or slight variations on it) for so many years and now we are actually creating some chances in games with this formation. Do we have the players ideally suited for it? No. But we're working on making it work and it'll take time.
 
Fooza said:
As a team they're better than us, we tend to look at individuals and think we're better than others. As a collective our team is pretty much what the table alludes to 13th...
Click to expand...

Its the job of the manager to create a team out of these individuals who are better though.

I mean, thats really the whole point.

Not for him to change the entire first eleven to only then see results.

Other big clubs do it all the time. Case in point chelse this year.
 
Personally I think the coach has shown that he’s got something about him, there is clear progress just not seeing the results as yet. They will come. But there are quite a few in the squad who ideally aren’t next season
 
Yagami said:
I mean, the stats back up everything we're saying. We're consistently creating more than our opponents. Something we haven't done in a very long time, and Amorim’s doing it with no pre season, no signings, and coming into a volcano that was mid eruption.

It feels like how Arteta and Klopp started to me. Once they got their players in, they kicked on. I expect Amorim to do the same as of now.
Click to expand...

Exactly, expecting us to just magically improve when we are not even getting time to train is a bit mental.
 
Only criticism I have of Amorim so far is that set pieces seem a bit worse.
Pretty sure we ditched our old set piece coach who was meant to be highly rated for Amorim's guy.
So far, not looking pretty but maybe I'm being a bit harsh as he hasn't had much time on the training pitch.
 
I largely wrote off this season when we decided to stick with ETH in the summer, and more explicity so when we reached the point where he had to be fired after a few months.

And it's not like these early struggles weren't flagged. The manager's literal words were that there'd be "pain" and "we are going to suffer for a long period" as we adapted. When the manager says these things, you should expect bad results.

So it is what it is. I don't particularly think there are any rose-tinted glasses to remove, we're just in a bad place and will continue to be so for a while even if underlying issues are improving.
 
Yagami said:
I mean, the stats back up everything we're saying. We're consistently creating more than our opponents. Something we haven't done in a very long time, and Amorim’s doing it with no pre season, no signings, and coming into a volcano that was mid eruption.

It feels like how Arteta and Klopp started to me. Once they got their players in, they kicked on. I expect Amorim to do the same as of now.
Click to expand...
I'm usually very pessimistic but this exactly how I feel at the minute. We're creating chances and not conceding many chances from open play, to me that suggests the system is working but it's the players who are hampering it.
 
Crashoutcassius said:
I think his honey moon is over now and fans will judge him in a more balanced way

his challenge is to improve the players we already have, and if he fails at that he will get moved on. nobody can claim this squad should be 13th or whatever we are.
Click to expand...

Where’s the evidence they should be much higher than that? Because I’m not seeing it.
 
My main issue so far is the constant changing of the team. We beat Everton 4-0 (who incidentally have conceded 2 goals in the 9 league matches either side of that match so this was actually a very strong result) and ended it looking high on confidence, on an unbeaten 7 game run.

Did we stick with the same team or with the two players who scored the 4 goals in that match? No, we immediately dropped both of them for the next match which we lost. Did we bring them back in for the next one? No, we didn’t do that either and again lost. That dissipated all the confidence we’d built up.

Now, it’s possible that results would have worked out exactly the same but we simply don’t know. You have to try and build on results. As it is, we’ve destroyed the confidence of the players who played well in that match and the confidence of our other players, who were out of form to begin with.
 
DevilRed said:
Its the job of the manager to create a team out of these individuals who are better though.

I mean, thats really the whole point.

Not for him to change the entire first eleven to only then see results.

Other big clubs do it all the time. Case in point chelse this year.
Click to expand...
Chelsea have bought far better better players and have so many options in all positions

Our team is worse than you think, and sure amorim can make individuals play better but to make the collective play better is impossible. We're just that bad in the most basic things and that's because it's been rotten for years
 
AndersB said:
It's been clear for a while now, at least to me, that our performances have been judged overly positively because of faith in Amorim, and all the negativity around ETH. Don't get me wrong, I like him, and I think he will likely do well, but there has been quite a lot of rationalization of poor performances, a lot of "I see what he's trying to do here", when in reality we have not been performing well.

For example, the loss against Arsenal, if the exact same match were replicated with ETH as manager, he would be slaughtered for it. And don't even get me started on Forest at home.

Reality is that we have already suffered two really embarrassing home defeats, have lost to Arsenal without putting up much of a fight, and barely scraped wins against Bodø Glimt and Plzen. Wins against Everton and City were great of course, but reality is things have not clicked yet, and we have a long way to go.

Let's start viewing things a but more soberly, because, as is well known, idealization is easily exchanged with devaluation
Click to expand...
ETH had 5 windows and 500 million spent. Amorim hasn't spent a dime yet. He gets a pass in the league this season. We need to do well in the Europa though.
 
Amorim is the man for the job we sadly just need to be patience whilst we build him a side to suit the formation
 
Todd said:
Amorim was never going to turn this group of players into a top club.

He shouldn't even be on the clock until next season, after he has had a summer of transfer business.
Click to expand...
Disagree on the bolded.

He has to make them work somehow, we won't know he can do anything with better players until he makes something out of this shit bunch, he has too, it's kinda unfair but he has to, we can't go on spending another 500m to build him a team and then once he fails we will give the new manager another 500m, it has to end here.

For me, he has to hey this group to top 6 at least, most of this group were there when EtH got to 3rd, yes they collapsed last season and in terrible run this season but we won't know how good Amorim is until he makes something happen with this bunch
 
You must log in or register to reply here.