I've made my thoughts known already, but I think this is the beginning of the end for him. We won't sack him yet because we insist on waiting till the team and the fans are in the absolute gutter before we do that.
But right now I am fully convinced he's not a top level manager, tactician or man manager. He has faced Brighton numerous times and has yet to lay a glove on them tactically. Today we set up to play into their hands completely. Narrow press where we only commit a few players, easy avenue out, full backs all over the place. This is something a good tactician doesn't let happen. And his signings are all dubious for me. Basically he's just not it.
People are saying 'well we've tried so many managers, what's going to change?' Well today you had it slapping you in the face. De Zerbi changed their football from day one into what he wanted, and it is effective. They had a shoestring team out today and it was there for anybody with eyes to see. The perfect example of a manager upholding his end of the bargain and drilling, coaching, setting up a team to be effective. Better than the sum of the parts.
So my overall opinion is simply that we've just hired wrong continously. We've not managed to find somebody to click with the players that can put out 11 players minimum that are well coached in an effective/ attractive style of play.
And I hate to say it but many of our fans were sold a dud with ETH. They didn't do their homework. He is not what you thought he was and, actually, his football is fecking dire to watch. He's nowhere near Klopp and Pep, probably nowhere near managers a level below them or even more. He's made a name for himself in a one team league where the lower placed teams are dreadful.
If it were me I'd try somebody else and try to revive this team. Even if we have to keep churning managers then so be it. The absolute worst thing to do is to stick by something that's failing. I saw it coming with Ole and faced the same arguments by his acolytes. There's just no chance we'll ever hang with the top clubs with ETH.
I don't think we're at the point of no return yet, we shouldn't sack him because of bad results in the middle of an injury crisis, 5 games in. Who would you suggest we replace him with right this minute?
As long as we stay within touching distance of top 4 we don't need to panic, there's still a chance we get Amrabat in the team and Hojlund starts scoring and our form picks up.
The exceptions to that will be if there's a player revolt against him. Moyes, LVG, Mourinho and Ole all faced dressing room backlash which ultimately resulted in horrendous results/performances. The moment that becomes apparent we need to consider making a change. We need to keep a close eye and ear to that dressing room to ensure the players are still actually putting in the effort or they're actively trying to get him sacked.
What I would say, if we genuinely had the best squad in the world, I'm sure some of the managers we've had could have been a success here. So in that sense, the recruitment is theoretically the major issue, because we've had some credentialed managers here who likely could have won the league with a squad full of world class players.
However the manager has to take responsibility for
1. Not making the most out of what we have, even if it's not the best squad in the world. If we're getting outplayed regularly by inferior teams it means we've got major coaching/tactical issues.
2. He must take a significant portion of the blame for the poor signings and squad building. Signing players past their peak, without the right physical profile, without the right technical profile - managers at minimum have a veto on signings put forward to them, and in some cases they're actively pushing for players they've selected themselves.
I'd completely forgotten Amrabat was only a loan, the state of us.