Isn't it a little early? Top 4 is yet to be secured and the worst hammering may still be pending.
What are your expectations for Ten Hag's first season?
- Thread starter sullydnl
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Isn't it a little early? Top 4 is yet to be secured and the worst hammering may still be pending.
Sure, I can see why that one point may have folks still worried - I think it's more or less in the bag with 2 home games.
Don't think anything any United side will produce will be worse than losing 7-0 at Anfield to a Liverpool side who were supposedly in free fall before our game.
And even if we got battered in the final, surely getting there is proof that EtH has done well.
He has met expectations for me at this stage.
As a fan coming into this season I wanted a title challenge or a cup and top 4. Either one is a good season and won’t call it any more than it is.
Come next season I expect the same with an added bonus of seeing his philosophy taking better shape in the team.
As a fan coming into this season I wanted a title challenge or a cup and top 4. Either one is a good season and won’t call it any more than it is.
Come next season I expect the same with an added bonus of seeing his philosophy taking better shape in the team.
I think he has done a decent job, maybe, just the minimum. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt due to the deficiencies in GK, midfield and attack. However, I think he holds some blame for not being able to sort it out and get a better tune out of the players. The hammerings are a red flag as well, but I also expected more from our play. Lesser teams have looked more cohesive and structured, while many times this season, we have looked in our usual state of disarray. Next season I expect a lot more control and purpose in our play.
The one thing I am disappointed about is the lack of progress in our attacking football. We've had some good matches this season (spurs at home, barca etc) but overall I still find us an incredibly dull team to watch. Lool at how Brighton, Newcastle or Arsenal play! Fast, fluid football with lots of goals. That's how I want us to play!
Nailed it, good and bad
. Cup performances surpassed my expectations and make the season a success. FA Cup win to add would be fantastic. Style hampered by ridiculous fixture congestion, but also I predicted it would take time for that to be more evident too.What’s wrong with wanting a title challenge from the club I support?
To further underline the point, here is a thread predicting where we'd finish this season.
61.6% predicting we'd finish outside the top four, 80.1% predicting we wouldn't finish better than fourth.
Important to be realistic... Unrealistic expectations set yourself up for failure, disappointment and they're pretty toxic in general and not helpful if you are nowhere close to realistically achieving that.
Depends on who we sign, we could see one next season, but I wouldn't expect one. This season was no chance.
Can't believe he didn't do this. Sack him.
Nothing. I want Amanda Seyfried naked in my bed for my next birthday. Clearly I'm joking but you were serious which made it funnier.
Already passed expectations. Top 4 and a cup in first season
If it weren't for a world cup in the middle of the season, I think we're winning the Europa League this season too. He's done exceptionally well. Don't care about freak results they happen.
What signings make it a realistic expectation?
At some point we were in a favourable position and that for me is a position of challenging. It got derailed by various factors but it does not change the fact we challenged(competed). As a fan I expect it from us every season and circumstances beyond us can put pay to it but to be in such positions is why I am optimistic in my support at the start of every season.
A new signing cannot dictate that expectation but our status as a football club.
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The thrashings by City and Liverpool are hard to take, but both freak results looking at the chances created. For me, the same matches last year were actually worse..
Most impressive part for me has been how he has managed the dressing room. Laid down the law, dealt with the big egos in the best possible way and seemingly gotten big buy-in from the team. How he dealt with the Ronaldo situation showed man management we haven't seen since Fergie. Very encouraging! Compared to Mourinho (got the discipline right, but no energy, enthuisiasm and buy-in) and Ole (lots of love and enthusiasm but no discipline) he seems to be striking the right balance.
Expect we will have the same problems with fatigue/fixture congestion next season, so instilling tactical ideas during pre-season and hopefully having a better squad will be important for next years success.
Most impressive part for me has been how he has managed the dressing room. Laid down the law, dealt with the big egos in the best possible way and seemingly gotten big buy-in from the team. How he dealt with the Ronaldo situation showed man management we haven't seen since Fergie. Very encouraging! Compared to Mourinho (got the discipline right, but no energy, enthuisiasm and buy-in) and Ole (lots of love and enthusiasm but no discipline) he seems to be striking the right balance.
Expect we will have the same problems with fatigue/fixture congestion next season, so instilling tactical ideas during pre-season and hopefully having a better squad will be important for next years success.
Or maybe your line of thought is just cowardly and too scared of the team failing to achieve the high standards befitting.
And there is also a difference between ambition and expectation. My ambition on behalf of United would always be to challenge for top honours. My expectation is that we'll be out of the title-race before New Year.
There are no signings that make a serious title challenge next season an expectation IMO. A hope is our limit still. Even if we handpicked a whole new squad, we would need a long bed in period, coaching time to make a team, not a group of new individuals.
The situation where I can see us challenge for the title is:
Transfer wise I think our squad needs a GK that suits the system, a top CF (elite player), a press resistant midfielder who can move with the ball, and then depth for Casemiro. We also need luck in terms of fixture congestion and injuries. So if we get out of FA Cup and League Cup early, have luck with injuries and get a run of form in the league with the signings above, I can see us push City close to the end and the squad overturn surpass the time needed for extra coaching that we need. Unfortunately, it's not a realistic transfer window, especially given as we are just like 3 weeks away from the transfer window opening and we have no idea who our owners will be, when they will change, and when and how that will impact our transfer business. Can we even do any transfers if they enter the buy/sale phase? When can we spend money? How much money do we have to spend?
Arsenal had 3 years of Arteta, excellent recruitment for a few years, dropped every competition early, and will still finish 10 points behind City.
If you read the first half of this thread, he’s clearly met or even exceeded expectations. The big defeat to Liverpool is the only thing really not in his favour.
Worth noting the thread had been opened on August 1, long before we signed Casemiro (and Antony). And I imagine loads of people voted after the disastrous opening two games which further skews the results. Spending 150m afterwards probably changed the expectations somewhat.
agreed. you can kind of let the other three points slide a little, as they’re not really important, but that is non-negotiable.
I don’t think this Arsenal team is better than ours and they had a good run this season. This bunch of players should have an 80pts season in them, catering for -/+3 and that is challenging tally.
Being there about and expecting to win the lot are different in my opinion, I’m not thinking go out and win the lot.
All I expect at start of each season is beat middle to bottom clubs and compete against the top quarter clubs, that should expectedly put us in a challenging position.
You can only have Expectations in this matter.
Ambition is the responsibility of the club.
You can’t be ambitious on behalf of but you can expect them to be ambitious. And I don’t understand how ambition that doesn’t require my direct input works.
What I’ve seen from this club, is finishing 5th gets the manager sacked irrespective of the playing squad and that’s our bottom level. So I’d find it very strange in me to accept starting the season with expectations of scrapping past our bottom level.
Newcastle don't really play attacking football, but they do have a few players who can produce a bit of magic. Their season has been built on a really solid defence, they've only conceded 1 more than City.
United don't really have any kind of real ST to call on which has really hindered our attacking output. Even Brighton have 3 central ST for their other attackers to play off of! We've also been let down by Sancho and Antony not producing much output. Antony I can overlook given its his first season in England. Sancho's form is worrying though...
The teams you mentioned also had their managers in place before the start of this season, except Brighton, but because of the way their club is structured RDZ was able to come in and quickly build on top of what Potter had been working on with their recruitment for years.
I've seen enough this season to see that EtH can get us playing good attacking football. There was a period before the WC and the fatigue/injuries really started to hammer home where we were really starting to click.
I'm hopeful that will become more of the norm next season, after a few more key signings and another pre-season to coach his ideas.
There have been positive moments around February or even March. The aspects that concern me is the stubbornness with Weghorst and during the fixture congestion, Ten Hag did not rotate.
In a balanced point of view, this time is his first season in the Premier League and he would have learnt how gruelling this league is. He would have also been blindsided by Martial's preseason performances. We need to get this point required for the champions league and then see what happens with the ownership saga as we need them gone?
I feel that Ten Hag needs a system behind him in terms of scouting, football director, decent CEOs etc.. Then you do not have situations like De Jong and then paying €100 million for Anthony. Until then we will not be consistent in challenging.
In a balanced point of view, this time is his first season in the Premier League and he would have learnt how gruelling this league is. He would have also been blindsided by Martial's preseason performances. We need to get this point required for the champions league and then see what happens with the ownership saga as we need them gone?
I feel that Ten Hag needs a system behind him in terms of scouting, football director, decent CEOs etc.. Then you do not have situations like De Jong and then paying €100 million for Anthony. Until then we will not be consistent in challenging.
Again, Arsenal had a lot more coaching time and had a unique set of circumstances that helped them be in a title challenge (one where again, they'll finish 10 points behind). Arsenal made the least lineup changes by a distance in the league, which was enabled by tossing aside every cup. You can't do that when you're in the Champions League. Being in more cups makes a title challenge unrealistic. A Manchester United manager simply cannot toss aside cups, especially as you cite Arsenal, yet they'll finish 10 points off anyway despite tossing all cups just to focus on the league. That's only worth it if you win the thing.
Been waiting for this bump all season!
Absolutely agree that ETH has done fantastically well given where we were 12 months ago.
Not very optimistic for the summer though…
I want to win the lottery, this thread was about expectations though…
it's a marathon, not a sprint.
You make it sound like losing cup games was a deliberate decision. Wasn’t Arsenal’s cup early cup exits just a combination of rotating their squad (no more than we usually do) and getting tougher draws than we got?
If he secures CL football than he has met my expectations for his first season in charge having spent £200m.
However he needs to get his away form sorted for next season.
However he needs to get his away form sorted for next season.
He's exceeded my expectations - hammerings by Liverpool and City aside - and it looks like we finally have a really good manager at the helm.
So naturally the club are probably going to do everything they can this summer to feck him over.
One hag.
So naturally the club are probably going to do everything they can this summer to feck him over.
One hag.
As it stands I'm very happy with what he's achieved - I'm sure all of us would have taken top 4 and one domestic trophy. A 7.5/10 season for me. If he manages to do the impossible and win the FA cup too while stopping City's treble, then it goes up to a 9/10 season for me.
They did do pretty big rotations (this year we didn't do big ones unless we really could afford it), sure combined with tougher cup draw but they still rotated Odegaard, Saliba, Ramsdale, Zinchenko and Martinelli for City away in the FA Cup 4th round. Rotated Saka and Odegaard among some others for the home game vs Sporting and big rotations in the group stage. Full 2nd 11 basically vs Brighton in league Cup 3rd round.
It's out of your control who you draw, but I think rotating your main players for all cup games regularly pretty much says that you aren't arsed about it. You might want to win, but the message it sends to the squad is it's not a priority, focus might drop etc. It's part of the reason why I think Pochettino's mentality/lack of respect in cup competitions was the biggest reason why he failed to win anything.
Fergie did it all the time too though. The Carling Cup was always basically our reserve team cup and only ever picked a strongest possible team in the later stages of the FA Cup. Pep did something similar this year, didn’t he?
In a way, you could argue that all the title winning teams over the years were prepared to rotate heavily in cup competitions. Because that’s what you have to do.
Again my Expectation.
A Title Challenge or Top4 and a Trophy. This was not unrealistic because we got to two finals with a trophy already in the bag, top 4 nearly secured. Where was I wrong?
Going forward my expectations remains the same for Manchester United be it next season or the season after. A league title is just an added bonus but it never wakes me up every Saturday till late April.
We agree on Arsenal and after 3 years of rebuilding, they are given a bye to sacrifice competitions in a quest to challenge. Like you mentioned United will always be expected to keep at it to a point. These are the standards that set my expectations and not what or how others are doing it. I will not lower my expectations to mirror lesser clubs.
This is why you’ll never hear me blame players for a lack of success or call for a manager to get sacked because they should all know the expectations. ETH has said it himself all season and play to win every game. If we fail at it this season(which did not happen), we will go again next season with the same expectations.
This was a successful season with the usual hiccups in football, players not delivering as expected, injuries, congestion, suspensions and bad patches. These are all expected every season and won’t change but I’ll always expect us to navigate with a competent manager(ETH) because at Manchester United players and coaches historically had to deal with this, whilst deliver some level of success.
Get a grip.
True, but also depends on which competition. Being in the CL doesn't give you that luxury unless your squad is loaded.
Also I think you earn the right to do that really... If you're a proven title challenger, year after year, you win trophies regularly, sure. If you haven't won a trophy in ages, aren't going to seriously compete for the title anyway, then by no means should cups be ignored. Makes the league harder, but you go from it IMO.