Hojlund was on the club list, alongside Kolo Muani (who isn't really a 9) and Goncalo Ramos. Ten hag also wanted Kane anyway, as anyone would.
Was Ten Hag’s "Man Utd will never play like Ajax" his Ole "Trophies are for ego’s" moment?
- Thread starter The Oracle
- Start date
What am I missing here? I thought pretty much everyone agreed we overperformed last season. I certainly didn't expect us to finish 3rd and I remember the predictions at the start of the 22/23 season most people had us outside the top four. Some after the Brighton and Brentford games had us finishing mid table at best.
You can argue whatever you like but the Spurs squad, even with Kane, was well off United’s. A fair assessment is that we probably had (and still have) the fourth best squad behind City, Liverpool and Arsenal and even Arsenal is questionable. So, with Liverpool underachieving, we performed to par.
Edit - that’s not to say that ETH didn’t do a good job last season. After the Rangnick mess and with the Ronaldo issues, holding it together and getting the team playing well again was a significant achievement.
That's people being overly pessimistic. United obviously weren't as bad 58 points the season before.
There's often examples of teams who improve significantly after a terrible season:
Newcastle went from fighting relegation to 4th place very quickly.
Chelsea's 15/16 season a was disaster. They finished 10th with just 50 points. Then Conte comes in and they set a then record tally of 93 points.
Barcelona's 07/08 season was mediocre by their standards. No trophies and a 3rd place finish with just 67 points. Pep comes in and they win a treble instantly after a clear-out. Their season started with just 1 point from their opening 2 La Liga games and defeat in one of their two CL qualifiers vs Wisla Krakow.
As much as I liked his appointment, I’m inclined to agree that it is. Because when managers don’t talk much or clearly enough about the their footballing philosophy then you tend to cling to their past successes / teams for hope as to what they are looking to create here. However, with our signings this summer and Ten Hag’s comment, it’s become evident that he’s given up on trying to imbibe the values his Ajax had with an aim to try and build an improved version of the United team he inherited. Which imo is the wrong approach and these comments act as a confirmation of that mistake.
Well statistically we did I believe, scored more goals than expected.
Never mind who was on that list. Firstly, Romano revealed that Holjund switched to a bigger agency to represent him back in March of last season, ahead of the interest shown in him by several big clubs. It's something that has become standard procedure nowadays for talented young players on the verge of a big money move. Secondly, and perhaps more important, is that Kees Vos (the man in question) has been a known quantity at United for more than a decade. In fact, he was one of the main people involved in RvP's transfer back in 2012, acting as a mediator and serving United's interests in the matter. Later on, he facilitated LvG's appointment because Woodward and co couldn't get feck all done. The recent leaks painting him as some evil figure with too much influence is the classic finger pointing you often see at failing organizations.
Half of his statement was false, just not the half the Caf chooses to focus on. We overperformed last season, thus most xPTS models had United convincingly outside the top-four. Not just marginally, we're talking about a 7–9 points differential by the end of the season. He was right about that. The problem is, we're not underperforming now. We're not even doing as well as we should be... Thus far, we're still overperforming by 6–8 points. And that's shockingly bad.
Thats quite interesting. I don't know how common it was to be honest.
He has been our "Dutch connection" for quite some time. I'm not arguing that he hasn't benefitted from his relationship with the club, but football agents are a necessary evil in this fully commercialized environment. United, over the years, have gone to bed with Raiola, Mendes and any other agent who could get them what they want. It's the nature of their job that makes them look like arseholes in the eyes of the fans. What generated gossip in the yellow pages is that ETH's son was hired as an analyst at SEG agency. But that's more a father using his connections to land a job for his kid than a conspiracy theory.
He said that?
Yep. He is officially imploding now. I think he's looking for a payoff now. It would explain a lot of the reason the players aren't playing for them if the whisper mill around the club is he is toast in Feb.
It's like the six months of RR with no fecker playing for him cos they knew he was gone in the summer.
Saying we overperformed by finishing top 3 and League Cup win is no different than Mourinho saying 2nd with Man United was one of his biggest achievements.
Let's imagine it's true. It's stupid to say that in public.
Like who?
We spent an entire summer transfer window chasing a player that ETH wanted, but he didn't want to come here and made that very clear. But ETH insisted. Casemiro was probably the only player where the board went "here you go", and he was not a player he wanted but he was/is definitely a player he needs.
He wanted Martinez, we got him.
He wanted Antony, we overpaid and got him.
He wanted Eriksen, we got him.
He wanted Malacia, we got him.
He wanted Onana, we overpaid and got him.
He wanted Mount, we overpaid and got him.
He wanted Amrabat, we got him.
We were never going to get Kane cos the club, in this instance, did the right thing and just refused to deal with Levy. So we've had to settle for Højlund, who ETH wanted, but who we overpaid for.
I'd say Kim Min Jae is legitimately the only one that "got away" but _still_, he had no back ups, aside from Johnny Evans.
He needs to work with what he has, he also needs to draw on the talent pool from the rest of the club if things are that bad with injuries.
The fact that he can't implement "his style" with EXACTLY the players he wants is quite damning for him as a football coach/manager.
You are correct.
The betting markets had us finishing 6th at the start of the season. The majority of media predictions had us finishing outside the top four. And the Redcafe thread asking where we would finish saw 61.6% predicting we'd finish outside the top four, with 80.1% predicting we wouldn't finish better than fourth.
Instead we finished 3rd while also winning a domestic trophy. We very clearly overperformed last season.
And beyond that, though I'm not sure it's what ETH meant, we overperformed on our underlying stats too. So in every sense last season was an overperformance.
Some posters are currently just looking for sticks to beat ETH with, even when he says things that are demonstrably true.
Basically this.
Yup.
There's a hell of a-lot to criticise him for, but last season he done relatively well and better than the vast majority expected.
I actually don't mind the "over-performing" comment but the stuff about United DNA and having to play direct was my first big doubt about him and my heart sank when i heard about it. We saw for years Ole building a team that was lethal on transitions but absolutely useless at so many other things and we wanted a change from that; getting a manger who could get the team to play more progressive football seemed a great idea, even if he had to completely gut the team.
Aside from LVG, every fecking manager has always ended up harping on about United DNA and expectations of playing/doing things a certain way when it's obvious the club needs fresh ideas and someone with the courage to implement that. Klopp had nothing to with Liverpool's history and Pep had nothing to do with City's but they came in and did their own thing. I hoped EtH would do the same for us.
Aside from LVG, every fecking manager has always ended up harping on about United DNA and expectations of playing/doing things a certain way when it's obvious the club needs fresh ideas and someone with the courage to implement that. Klopp had nothing to with Liverpool's history and Pep had nothing to do with City's but they came in and did their own thing. I hoped EtH would do the same for us.
I think this is one of the mistakes we frequently make, superficial judgements. We dont hire the person who was responsible for the success, we hire the one who benefitted most from it. We do the same with players.
I found that comment about playing with United DNA disheartening as well. Ive wondered whether people at the club have sold him this philosophy of play thats essentially based on the football that we played in the 90's.
It's a shame that we keep hiring managers that cling on to the idea that we have to be a team based on fast attacking transitions because of the success we achieved under our best managers, and yet ignore the other qualities that underpinned our best teams, like mental resilience, determination, a refusal to accept a drop in standards etc.
I don’t remember there was any reliable source linked us with Antony and I remember we wanted Nunez (striker).
Of course there was. There already numerous reports linking him to us back in June last year, even before the summer transfer window opened.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...news/antony-transfer-news-man-united-24316316
Athletic mentioned in ten Hag first season, he wanted left centre back, midfielder in the mould of Frenkie de Jong, and a striker. We got a left centre back, but we got Casemiro due to panic buy after 2 losses who is nowhere near midfielder in the mould of Frenkie de Jong. We were targeting Nunez because ten Hag wanted striker but instead he got a winger Antony due to panic buy after 2 losses. From this alone, how do you expect ten Hag to say we can play the Ajax way? Clearly, there is lack organisation in the united sporting director and recruitment department from day 1 when ten Hag took in charged.
Who is Liam wood? Reliable?
People shouldn't care about what the managers say. They have to speak before and after every game, so they are bound to say some stupid things.
I don't know which source you would regard as reliable, and how many sources you needed to be convinced that we are indeed interested. In fact there has been plenty of sources reporting our interest as early as June last year, which I am surprised you missed them all. The most "tier 1" source one could find is probably fromm Romano:
I still do not understand the hate bon*r some of our fans had for Ole. We had 2 decent seasons under him, where for me at least we played the best football under SAF (especially his 2nd full season) and then he struggled in the 3rd season and got rightfully sacked. I don't see the big tragedy here.
Everything he said in the above quote is correct. I would much rather finish 2nd playing decent stuff than finish 7th and win a Carabao Cup.
The way last season's Carabao Cup win has been built up ( where we beat a 2nd string Villa, Burnley, Charlton, Forest and Newcastle, so really only 1 decent side) you would think it was some monumental achievement. All that this club needs a trophy to kickstart a comeback has been shown to be absolute nonsense this season. There have been countless examples of teams winning cups and then doing nothing on the back of it. Leicester won the FA Cup and got relegated 2 years later. The barometer for a team's improvement is league position.
The aim for a club of Man Utd's stature should be to be the best in the country and trophies will follow as a consequence. City aren't a great team because they won trophies. They win trophies because they are a great team.
Don't see anything that Ole said wrong and I hope ETH would stop bringing up last season as some monumental achievement. We finished 3rd, it was decent but not anything special.
This sums is up honestly, if we play like we do and have these horrible results, after 1.5 years and with all the money spent, it's quite clear something is wrong.
Just what we need. Another Ten Hag thread
I think a lot of people just go with the media or social media narratives and since Ole didn't really have a good CV prior to joining us, they could never accept him as a good manager, hence the "tactically inept, PE manager" etc. type of slander that he received, even from the media. This was obviously BS as we had a lot of great tactical performances under him.
Regarding the quotes, all he said there is that basically cup tournaments are not a good measure of where we are as a team, which is once again a true statement. Manchester United, even in this "banter era" of the last 10 years, have managed to win the 2 domestic English cups 3 times, the Europa League once (probably twice if we had Maguire available for the final) and yet we've not once had a team that can seriously challenge for the Premier League or the Champions League, which is the level ultimately everyone wants the club to be.
I agree with you regarding that we played the best football during his time at the club post-Ferguson. Even during Fergie's last few years the football was getting pretty dire, but we had the most experience, a winning mentality and several match-winners who have been there and done it. The league also wasn't as strong as it has been since around 2017 or 2018. Our 20/21 team is the strongest and most entertaining side we've had since 2013 I'd say. Even though we only finished on 74 points, don't forget that CL qualification was done by late April / early May and we fielded weaker teams in the last 4 fixtures against Leicester, Liverpool, Fulham and Wolves partly in preparation for the Europa final, where we dropped several points that we wouldn't have otherwise. We also started horribly with losses against Palace, Spurs and Arsenal before we got our shit together and started performing better. So that team was definitely good enough for at least 80 points and we should've built upon that with smart signings, instead of getting Ronaldo, but even Sancho was an unnecessary arrival in hindsight for a lot of money. I feel like what doomed him was that we were 1 year off of challenging for the PL and we messed up the transfer window, and expectations rose significantly with Ronaldo, Varane and Sancho added to the squad. Shoehorning Pogba and Ronaldo into the same 11 also meant that we had 2 passengers on the pitch when we didn't have possession. Add to that that De Gea's ball-playing abilities were even worse than under ETH...
Last edited:
I really hope we get the next appointment right and ETH is shown for the fraud he is.
Yeah I don't think those quotes are even remotely comparable. Real Madrid won 3 CL's in a row not playing like Ajax. I don't care what shape or style we play, as long as it involves entertaining football and us winning games.
Ole's quote was one of the worst in the history of all quotes.
Funnily enough it's up there with another one of the worst quotes, also by Ole, when he discarded the importance of tactics in football.
Nothing beats “we aspire to be like City” or “we’ll make it difficult for them” or Moyes saying he didn’t realise how big United were 
or he doesn’t play Kagawa because he doesn’t know anything about him. feck sake Moyes, you plank.
Though ‘football ‘eritage” is also another whopper.
Christ, did LVG say anything as moronic because other than calling Chris Smalling, Mike, I can’t remember.
or he doesn’t play Kagawa because he doesn’t know anything about him. feck sake Moyes, you plank.Though ‘football ‘eritage” is also another whopper.
Christ, did LVG say anything as moronic because other than calling Chris Smalling, Mike, I can’t remember.
By posting this tweet, you are making correction that we wanted Antony before we lost our two league games but also strengthening my argument that Antony wasn’t ten Hag first target of what he wanted to improve his attacking department. The date of the tweet is 24th June, we were linked with Nunez far before June and joined Liverpool on 13th June, which indicated that we started to show interest in Antony after we lost Nunez to Liverpool.
How did we go from wanting Nunez a striker to a winger Antony? Does it make sense to you? it’s two complete different positions and players. We went from a striker like Nunez to a winger like Antony and went from press resistant midfielder and deep-playmaker like FDJ to non press resistant midfielder and destroyer like Casemiro.
Like with Ole?
The people who do are normally grasping for extra reasons to hate the manager. When have you ever heard "Bad result but the manager came across well afterwards" from a fan?
Oh ok, I thought you mean we are interest on Antony only after seasons kick off and in final weeks after some defeats and we failed to sign our other priorities.
Anyway if we are interested in him before the summer window even started, surely he is one of ETH top summer targets, and I don’t know why this discussion is necessary.
My point was that I don’t believe Antony was in the original plan, he was targeted until we lost Nunez because there was nobody else (our our scout couldn’t give him another name). I believe ten Hag’s list were Eriksen, left centre back, midfielder in the mould of Frenkie de Jong, and a striker (I based this on the article from athletic that the manager wanted left centre back, midfielder in the mould of Frenkie de Jong, and striker)