As a scout on this forum, I would strongly advice you to tone down the arrogance and condescension. It doesn't make for good conversation.
UPDATED!!! United vs Top 6 - An Injury/Availability Analysis - Still Happy With 6th?
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Thanks for sharing this, top work.
BenitoSTARR among the best and most informed threads posted on here.
Those stats and figures speak for themselves. To have any type of a reasonable successful season you need to have a solid defence with little chopping and changing going on. United never had that this season and currently on their 13th different centre back pairing?
Even Klopp's Liverpool a few seasons ago struggled badly when they were injury hit defensively.
Those stats and figures speak for themselves. To have any type of a reasonable successful season you need to have a solid defence with little chopping and changing going on. United never had that this season and currently on their 13th different centre back pairing?
Even Klopp's Liverpool a few seasons ago struggled badly when they were injury hit defensively.
Not really. What most people did not expect is that we play like Sunderland and get our asses handed to us most of the time since February last year.
That has to be the best post of the year.
Wonderful effort and detail and thought.
Wonderful effort and detail and thought.
hopefully with INEOS now in charge they'll be looking for a solution to the injury first and foremost before thinking of replacing the manager. Something is not right. And no matter how many quality players we have if theyre always injured we're fecked.
Such insightful post. Well done very good read
Nothing worse than ive been called directly several times allready on this forum.
But i guess im a "newb".
Right.
Feel free to remove my account, im not looking for an echo chamber.
Btw, wouldnt condescending be if i said they didnt understand?
Wich i didnt.
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Red Rocket - Good Summary of Issues in Context
Thanks for the appreciation towards my post in the other thread @BenitoSTARR and @moses ! I'm glad you quoted me here because this is the first time I saw this thread - Love how you presented your stats in the OP, always wondered how we compared against the field in terms of injuries this season. I feel like the current team position is where we are due to a number of reasons:
1. Injuries
@Laurencio makes a good case here as well to add to yours, in that simply looking at pick rate is not enough. As you've rightly pointed out though imo, missing Shaw, Case and Licha (Automatic starters) have still hurt us big time this season - huge players for us last season that lifted our team. I would make a safe bet that (out of the very high impact players for each top 6 team) only KDB has missed an equivalent/greater amount of games to these 3 players?
2. Squad depth (Lack of)
As @711 pointed out - City (And I would add Liverpool and Arsenal to a lesser extent to this list) just have similar profiles of players to just step in and keep the train on the tracks when key players drop out for some periods. Mentally as well, all their squad players as well as starters are ready to fight for every point - while 2-3 different players seemed to let us down every match. Having a squad of similarly talented players means managing fatigue and injuries is also easier with them.
3. Transfer policy (or lack of) + Player power
As @Valencia Shin Crosses states, we have had problems with signing players of a high technical quality and in identifying the right profiles of players. All the coaches at United from Moyes to Ten Hag have made bad signings (In fairness even SAF did). Imo, while the coach too should take blame for it (especially in the case of Antony and Case for me with ETH), United have always had this 'hybrid' coaching role (Jose talked a bit about this in Rio's podcast yesterday, and said this especially made his job hard), which is only now getting revamped under INEOS. Even ETH said yesterday, how important it is to have good people around you at a huge club like United. This way of doing things has been going on for 10+ years now, and the reasons we have problems in point 1 and 2 now is our repeated inability/unwillingness to fix point 3. Case in point being how RVP was our oldest signing of the Gill era, whereas post Gill we have signed many players over 30 on crazy wages. Changing the manager won't necessarily fix the problem, we need to change the way we work with our manager, whether it's Ange, De Zerbi or ETH. For this summer's transfers to be effective, we needed to have implemented a structure last season - Just shows how behind we are, when we haven't been doing this for 10 years.
While I agree with you Valencia, that Pep is able to coach this elite passing game to his players better than others, you still need great passers of the ball to build the passing team you want - his players needed to begin with a base level (Which he's elevated). But if he started with a Rashford or an older Ibra or a Balotelli for example he'd struggle to play that passing game, it's difficult to get your tactics working in a team with players that are just not suited to it. We can talk about being ruthless, but even Jose who is usually one of the most ruthless of all, wasn't able to get rid of a few players he didn't rate at United. The coach has to be ruthless, but the structure around the coach (that usually outlasts the coach) also has to be ruthless, which then puts the fear of god into these players - doesn't matter how talented you / the media think you are, if you think you are bigger than Man United you won't be part of Man United, because we have a conveyor belt full of talent waiting to stick a knife in your back and replace you, whether you're a player or a manager or a staff member.
Another issue is the kind of mental profiles of the players we target - We seem to attract a few negative personalities here and there, coupled with the lack of a footballing structure which ensures that bad players outlast bad managers (Honestly in hindsight, I wouldn't even call Jose that bad, enjoyed Ole ball as well for what it's worth), we just get stuck with a bunch of semi-talented prima-donnas who only show up on the pitch when they need new contracts. Part of it is the players, but a larger part of it is how the club just goes along with it - quite rudderless in that sense.
Honestly for me personally, ETH is one of our lesser problems right now because the coach should just be a cog in this machine - I'm more concerned about the structure we put in place to get our transfers right (and their vision around style of play / player profiles) without getting fleeced constantly in the future, what we do with our 1B of debt, and how we build a squad that can play commanding possession football while navigating FFP after a failed decade, when we need about 10 players in the squad to even think of adopting a possession based style.
On a side note, if you feel that we play without any tactics under ETH like I used to think - I'd recommend this YT channel called Scarlet Report, he highlighted quite a few things I didn't pick up when I watched games in real time.
Really nice post, and i agree to everything besides the bolded part.
ETH is the man in charge and as the Manager the man with most influence to change things directly, over time, with both tactics, economy and transfers.
Thats just not a cog in the machine, or i could have done the job.
I havent seen anything yet that makes me think ETH will be the man that takes this team to the next lvl.
Why would anybody just asume he will transfer this kind of chaos fotball, to anything that will make us compete at the highest lvl. I mean, its there to see every week?
No progress, just random stuff happening, and bad fotball for the most part.
And i do feel the manager will have the last word in most transfer situations, wich again shapes the squad and our expectations of it.
I feel ETH have made a continious series of transfers that has really just made it even more difficult going forward. If this is the result of him alone or a team around him im not sure, but i do know it will stop our progress the next couple years dead in the tracks.
And that wasnt what we needed or asked for when we appointed ETH.
Feel free to disagree.
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If I had the power I’d promote you right now.
We definitely over achieved last season whilst our rivals (Chelsea, Liverpool, Spurs) underachieved. I’m not sure how anyone can dispute that.
This argument is really dense and boring to be honest.
Chelsea have spent over a billion in the last 12 months and have a steady flow of academy players. City are under investigation for a number of irregularities (as are Chelsea). There’s plenty of factors a play with a number of different teams.
The most obtuse aspect of the money angle is Ten Hag has been at United for one full season. He’s had two transfers windows both of which have been restricted somewhat due to FFP. He should have had four windows but the club has had to ditch both Januarys due to mismanaged financials.
Secondly, do people really thing this is Ten Hag’s squad after one season and two windows? When you compare 9/10 years of Klopp and Pep, 5 years of Arteta? These clubs have assembled squads with consistent management, and recruitment, over a prolonged period and have undergone the open heart surgery Rangnick advised United needed. This hasn’t happened at United yet but fortunately INEOS look like they know what’s needed and are making positive moves quickly.
Chelsea has fast tracked their reboot, spent over a billion and burnt through two coaches over the past 12 months. They sit firmly behind United and look in absolute disarray after being widely held as the team with the best set up and structure for many years. They are a shambles.
It’s all good and well saying ‘Ten Hag has had 380m’, ‘United have one of the most expensive squads’ but without the actual context it’s a really stupid angle.
As @Laurencio has pointed out most of the players available this season haven’t been Ten Hag signings and have been at the club for several years already.
As @BenitoSTARR has pointed out other squads are understandably more capable of absorbing injuries as they have managers and recruitment set ups which are well established and have contributed to complete overhauls of what they inherited.
Am I saying Ten Hag has been perfect? Absolutely not. He’s made mistakes and there are legitimate concerns about play style and the acquisition of Antony and Mount.
To totally ignore the actual data and context here though is beyond naive and reeks of an agenda in my opinion, as does the lazy money argument when the bulk of the squad have been at the club before Ten Hag and those signed during his tenure have come through a dysfunctional recruitment set up which is now finally getting attention.
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Agreed
You have made 112 posts and your user profile has 4 notes from staff. Just be less abrasive. And it's not about an echo chamber, but it's a forum for discussion not a boxing ring.
Also we don't need your permission to remove your account.
If you enjoy posting here try to tone it down.
You are right the argument is boring. But lets have a few more facts. One of the reason we have had 2 January blanks is the amount we spent on ETH's targets, especially Antony and Mount, there is £145m plus wages on two players who are not good enough. Antony had already been ruled out by our scouts, while Mount had one stand out season with Chelsea, was already on the down and beginning to suffer injuries, and Chelsea were v happy to see him go. Plus noone still knows where he is meant to fit into the team. ETH also wasted most of his summer on a pointless and obsessive pursuit of FDJ, which we all knew was going nowhere. A common feature here is his obsession with signing former players or those who played against him in the Dutch league. So while our recruitment is awful, ETH has in many ways made it even worse. He has also at times chosen not to play the players he signed.
What improvements are available?
As a long term account holder I feel I should be entitled to a full range of perks
Again, stupid argument.
Ten Hag doesn’t agree fees or wages. You know this.
You can argue that Antony doesn’t look good enough and we are all struggling to see where Mount fits, but in terms of finances that’s nothing to do with the coach and sits firmly with the dysfunctional recruitment set up. A set up that if run correctly would be taking this whole process away from Ten Hag, in terms of identifying players, and presenting him options which suit our financial picture and squad building strategy.
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I think you’re being overly harsh on Mount.
I can appreciate Antony’s effort and defensive contribution, and he does help us sustain attacks, I do think we need a bit more from our RW. He’s not enough of a creative or goal threat on top of the above. Ten Hag isn’t responsible for the price we paid or the wages though that comes down to our negotiating team. But I’d also argue plenty of other clubs make poor transfers and realise a player isn’t quite working for them. The difference is they have the structure to not overpay in the first place so replacing isn’t as big an issue.
Mount hasn’t just had one stand out season at Chelsea that’s disingenuous to say he won their player of the year award two years on the bounce 20/21 and 21/22 seasons so again that’s objectively not true if we’re wanting to deal in facts.
Chelsea were happy to see him go? Prove it please. From all reports I’ve seen the opposite is true.
Again did ETH waste the window or did our negotiation team? Going for a world class ball playing CM as a target is sensible for the technical level that our midfield is/was sorely lacking. It’s a big reason why Mount was signed he can play on the back foot and is very good at finding space and linking.
Every manger chooses not to use players they/the club has signed for them. I’m not sure that is a point really worth making.
What improvements are available?
As a long term account holder I feel I should be entitled to a full range of perks
Damn autocorrect.That said, in my opinion there is one obvious improvement regarding your account, but as we tend to do things by consensus, you're safe.
First team "Ten Hag's" players:
Onana, Hojlund, Antony, Casemiro, Evans, Eriksen, Amrabat, Martinez, Mount - 9.
"Non Ten Hag's players" - Bruno, Dalot, Rashford, McTominay, Maguire, Lindelof, Shaw, Varane, AWB, Martial - 10.
6 out of those 10 (Bruno, Dalot, Rashford, McTominay, Shaw and Varane) are key players and realistically any other manager would only get rid of McTominay, the rest would still be core of the team.
Mainoo and Garnacho are from academy, not sure where to they fall, probably to "ETH players" bin as well.
The only players that we can really label as "ETH did not want" are Maguire, Martial and maybe AWB - only Maguire plays an important role this season.
ETH made a decision to sell Fred and Elanga.
Can we NOT call it Ten Hag squad at this point?
Apparently ETH needs 5 years, another £400m and perfect conditions, no injuries, including global warming making Old Trafford drier and warmer. Then we can judge, maybe.
That said, in my opinion there is one obvious improvement regarding your account, but as we tend to do things by consensus, you're safe.
And what would that be…?
Reaching including two loan deals that we have been forced in to due to financials and injury…
Disingenuous.
In any sense over 50% of the squad isn’t from the Ten Hag era. So unsure of your point?
Again Ten Hag doesn’t control monies and such decisions. But you know that.
@Gordon Godot I can see you are continuing to contribute no meaningful discussion.
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fecking hell Evans is a “Ten Hag” player.
J.K. Rowling has a new book coming out:
Harry Potter and the Audacity of This Post
Do you expect Ten Hag to replace the core of the team (Varane, Dalot, Shaw, Rashford, Bruno, McTominay*) anytime soon? Do you think until they are replaced we can use the "it's not Ten Hag's team" excuse?
I believe not, because they are good players that ANY manager would build the team around - this is also what Ten Hag has been doing, just not very efficiently so far. So yes, this is Ten Hag's team.
You can't spend 150m on Antony and Mount and they moan about not having money for priority signings - I don't think ETH is the only one to blame, but surely he takes majority of the blame here. The money excuse isn't really there for Ten Hag. You could make a case he shouldn't be in charge of transfers, but you can't complain about the club not providing the budget.
We don't play Football Manager on cheat codes. If you spend money on players which are not priority signings (RW/#10), you can't really moan about not having money for Centre Back. A result of that is Jonny Evans (who is doing quite nicely tbh) - a consequence of Ten Hag choices.
Do you think he was promised infinite budget when coming here?
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He’s a 5th choice emergency signing who was only supposed to be training with us until we got all our injuries.
You aren’t being at all reasonable if arguing he’s a Ten Hag signing.
Since when has RW not been a priority?
No but do you think he was promised Jonny Evans as one of his signings to implement his style of play?
What? I never said this, I am arguing that we have Evans because there was no money left in the bank. We did have a money for 3x overpaid right winger and 3rd #10 in the club though. So I feel this "it's not ETH squad" is an excuse, just very weak.
I don't mind Evans as 5th choice CB, but you have to consider he's 4th Centre Back that prevents ETH from implementing his "style" (added to Varane, Maguire, and Lindelof). If you can't play football without elite on the ball centreback and left back, maybe you prioritise them as signing instead of going for another #10 (especially since apparently Mainoo was key element in ETH plan this season, as this thread also suggests). This is all consequence of other choices.
Right Winger was not a priority signing, we already had Sancho, Pellistri, even Bruno, maybe Garnacho + Amad close. It was managers decision to go big for RW, and it was definitely ETH decision to go for Antony. Again, it has serious consequences, and it makes this "he wasn't backed in the transfer window" excuse weak as well.
Waste of time trying to get a fair and reasonable discussion here with some.
I shall bow out.
I shall bow out.
100% Ten Hag players:
Onana, Eriksen, Amrabat (loan) Weghorst (loan), Martinez, Mount, Antony, Malacia.
Total: 6+1 including Amrabat this year
What about Casemiro?
But this is IMO wrong way of looking at it. If a manager comes in he will want to keep the core of the team and then replace the weakest parts.
Rashford, Shaw, Dalot, Bruno and Varane are players that no manager would be willing to move - so do we really want to use them as an excuse that "this is not ETH team"?
McTominay was not bought by ETH but seems like he didn't want to let him go, so which category he falls under?
Casemiro doesn't feel like a true Ten Hag signing.
We were chasing De Jong (would have been a true Ten Hag signing) the whole summer, the competition already started, the fans were getting frustrated by the back-to-back losses in the PL and the lack of new midfielders. The board probably informed Ten Hag that acquiring de Jong now would be very difficult, but Casemiro at least was available. Ten Hag caved in because he was already under pressure after losing the first two games and the summer transfer window would close after a week.
I get what you're saying, but the next level for me is to put any manager (Not just ETH) into a system where someone like Dan Ashworth and a network of scouts / football officers identify a play style that works for this league, hire the manager who can play that style (or go with the existing manager if they can play that style), identify the positions that we need to strengthen, put forward 4 or 5 well researched candidates for each position that the manager is happy with (X player name doesn't matter, he just needs to have the attributes that complement the team), and go out and negotiate for those players without breaking the bank. I believe before we look at new managers, we should look at setting up the environment where managers can succeed at United.
ETH came to this team that finished 8th in the PL and had to reset the culture at this club in a number of ways, in addition to taking responsibility in bringing players in - The fact that he came into this shower of shite and got us a very respectable 3rd by playing a bit more controlled style of football than Ole is enough to see his merits. He's struggled a lot this season, and will continue to for the rest of it, but I would like to see what he's capable of in a more supportive/stable environment - If he's not good enough in that sort of environment, then by all means we should go out and get someone else, without sacrificing the style of play/philosophy/players we've been building under the previous manager.
The criticism on his transfers is fair, I think Mount will have a part to play in this team (He's a ball carrying midfielder who would suit a progressive team), but I'm not a fan of Antony, and I'm not a fan of Case (I like the player but don't think he suits how we should play) - I don't think those signings are purely down to ETH, in fact what it shows is that the club only started working on transfers when he came to the club, which is honestly insanity. Contrast that with Mourinho when he came to Chelsea - They had already greenlit Robben and Cech before he came in as coach. Let's just give the guy some time for now imo, assess where we are at the end of the season, and in the meantime get our football structure / transfer team sorted out - sort out our roots before we get to the branches so to speak.
Well I feel that is true, and to be honest I feel he got quite lucky last year because of how good Casemiro was for us, but on the other hand you can't expect to get "a De Jong" for every position. We spent too much time waiting for fdj anyway, this isn't how you build a team.
I want to have a manager who can make it work with what we have (as a squad) and has a vision for the future. I don't see this in Ten Hag. To be honest, he definitely has a vision, just not a very good one imo.
Great post. I know we are moving away from the injury conversation but fans need to avoid looking at this as a binary "should ETH stay or go?" The importance of a manager grows when the structure above them is so poor, now that we are seemingly hiring intelligent football people in those positions, our squad should be run to the point were any high end manager will get us challenging for titles. I hate to put emphasis on City but they have been the benchmark for 10 years. They have challenged and won titles under Manchini, Pellegrini and Pep, of course Pep has put them on a new stratosphere but we wouldn't be falling over ourselves to hire the other two to replace ETH. The Idea is that whether or not ETH is good enough isn't really relevant anymore. If he's not we find the person who is.
I personally have no interest in seeing us replicate Cheaty‘s playstyle, since it is frankly boring, ineffective against sides that sit deep and it would take years to build a squad capable of it.
The tactics we are seeing are geared towards solving our inability the create chances from positions where the opponent has closed all the spaces and plays compact. Even Cheaty struggles to do this.
The players we are targeting certainly have the right profile for what Ten Hag is trying to do: comfortable on the ball and with strong character. To make it work the players need to be decisive and skillful.
Without Martinez and Shaw, we really did fall off a cliff playing out the back, no doubt about it. We will secure a world class cb in summer.
We are making moves also to improve the structures around the team. The problems we have will impact any manager or playstyle.
I think Ten Hag has shown last season he can set up the team tactically to win big games, but the base level to fall back on when things are hard is very low. We fall apart.
The injuries have prevented us from working on consistency and raising this base level.
Exactly, been saying this for years.
Its ironic that some people think there is some cult of manager about keeping ETH, they really dont get it. I want every United manager (regardless of quality) to have the best chance of success. That doesnt mean "400 million spent", it means that there is an actual cohesive plan at the club with the best in class in all departments working together to meet the targets.
I‘ll answer that: without Mainoo, Shaw, Martinez and Casemiro we are completely fecked at this point.
City style is ineffective against sides that sit deep - compared to what style? I don't think City fans complain about this, and just quickly looking at the result their style seems quite effective against those smaller teams that sit back.
I am interested in the bolded part as well, how do you see our style working exactly? I'd describe our style against those teams sitting deep as "push bodies forward". Sometimes work, sometimes it doesn't.
Ole has shown that as well and if I recall correctly, he had a good record against the big teams - and in those games we played very similar to Ten Hag style tbh, so there's a valid comparison. OGS didn't have the injuries as an excuse.
To be honest I think ETH got an "out of jail card" with the injuries and he seems to escape a lot of criticism because he has a "good coach" reputation which is based on Ajax doing well.
Like I said before, we do suffer from injuries but just as much as from poor coaching and poor recruitment.
Watch City‘s game against Everton. Two shots on goal, two goals. They looked stale all game and can imagine the moaning if we played like that (2015/16 start of the season: we were winning but the fans were not happy).
Our style: if all works reasonably well, we play through the opponent and create chances from skillful movement and decision making of our wingers, fb and midfielders. If the attack stalls, recycle and go again. If we lose the ball, gegenpress. If that fails, rest defence.
I agree about Ole‘s good period: he made good use of the players available. The difference with Ten Hag is the build up from the back.
Out of jail card for Ten Hag: nah, he is facing a lot of pressure and so far is dealing with it. The pressure is on, there is no out of jail card.