I don't believe any manager could succeed under the current circumstances. Too much nonsense going on at the club and I really believe it's hurting our on field performances now. Something has looked off with us since pre season. It's hard to put my finger on it tbh but we all know it comes from the top. So no I wouldn't sack ten Hag, he's a good manager and I still think he can turn us around if given the right tools and foundation.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
This isn't on Ten Hag. The set up at the club is an embarrassment.
I really don’t think we can underestimate the impact the Greenwood/Antony/Sancho issues will have had on the team. A lot of these players have formed very close friendships with each other, and having accusations of such a nature flying around is bound to have a profound effect on the accused and their friends and loved ones.
The manager having personal issues with a player like Sancho and practically calling him out for being lazy and/or inadequate is also going to have ripple effects.
The negativity surrounding these issues in the press will also contribute to low morale. Do we really think that dressing room can have any kind of high morale considering what’s going on? I’ve not even touched on the vast amount of injuries and ongoing “sale” of the club.
It’s got to be rough in there at the moment. The job is almost impossible right now.
The manager having personal issues with a player like Sancho and practically calling him out for being lazy and/or inadequate is also going to have ripple effects.
The negativity surrounding these issues in the press will also contribute to low morale. Do we really think that dressing room can have any kind of high morale considering what’s going on? I’ve not even touched on the vast amount of injuries and ongoing “sale” of the club.
It’s got to be rough in there at the moment. The job is almost impossible right now.
Sigh. Do you remember how we did in the initial few games under Ole? I am not saying Ange is no better than Ole. I am saying give it some time before you judge, whether you think they/whoever is good or bad.
The disappointing thing for me is I don't see a significant improvement from the coaching front. It is better than what we had under Ole but it's more of a marginal improvement than the considerable impact we expected when he joined.
We all thought we'd be a passing team and this hasn't happened yet. The players who were weak in possession and playing in tight areas are no better at it than before he joined. AWB and Dalot are the only ones and I'd argue they just returned to the levels they showed before they lost their way.
I'm going to see how we look by half way through the season and if there's no real improvement, I think it will be safe to say he's not that great of a coach and not as good as we all thought.
We all thought we'd be a passing team and this hasn't happened yet. The players who were weak in possession and playing in tight areas are no better at it than before he joined. AWB and Dalot are the only ones and I'd argue they just returned to the levels they showed before they lost their way.
I'm going to see how we look by half way through the season and if there's no real improvement, I think it will be safe to say he's not that great of a coach and not as good as we all thought.
Greenwood was a problem for 2 years, so hardly something unknown or unlucky, it was a problem before EtH joined.
Antony, ok, something unexpected, but he has been here for only a year, so hardly someone with much connections to the other player.
Sancho was a self-indicted wound, there was absolutely no reason to critique him in public (imagine Murtough saying to media that 'EtH is being a bit lazy in preparing the team'), even if it was true (which probably is, to be fair). And even then, it is a non-story, he was instantly binned, it was not like the club sided with Sancho on this.
The club has sided with EtH on everything, be it Ronaldo, Maguire and Sancho (on the first two, I think it was the right decision).
I don’t even know where to start with this car crash of a post. Good god.
I thought I was actually quoting another poster
The manager doesn't put the valuation on players.
I was waiting for you to name drop mount. It's reflective of the idiotic supporters who want to preevaluate transfers before they barely play two games for us. We are in a world where top players often take months to bed in, and then we have whinging idiotic posts that want refuse to give a new system and new signings time. It's really fecking hilarious how bad some of our support really is.
Come on bro, the keeper does that at the last 30s during a set piece, that's about as desperate as it can get. Playing Bruno there makes absolutely no fecking sense whatsoever, a purely idiotic decision. If the game was lost, just sub him then. How is he supposed to affect the game from the backline ?
Good positive post, love it.
I don’t think you can throw all the blame on our lack of vision as a club for eth failing to play good football, spurs are not exactly long term visionaries and were a bit all over the place this summer and yet ange has implemented exciting attacking football within his first game and every game has been the same since.
I don't disagree with people questioning ETH right now. But you have to wait for a proper team to play a run of games before judging ETH is a poor coach, we play no better than Ole etc.
So agree with you on waiting till halfway thru.
I am actually very interested in seeing how he fixes our current midfield situation.
It’s not really clever to say sack the manager after five poor games (if we’re going to generalise let’s say that). Five poor games (two of which we won), under the circumstances, is not the shock some people want it to be.
Look more closely and there are signs that we’re going to get it together before too long. He could get sacked before that and then you can say “told yer”. Is that what you want?
I never said the manager does place a valuation on players, I said the manager gets a final say on the transfer at the agreed fee. You're talking like there was no other option in the market than to pay £90m for Antony, Ten Hag signed off on that transfer at that valuation. Would you, as the manager of Manchester United finalise a £90m transfer for Antony, or a £50m transfer for Mount? Go on justify it, I can't wait for you to try to spin this one.
Yes you're right. Mason Mount, Chelsea regular for 4 seasons needs 6 months to bed in to a new league, learn a new language, learn how to play in a position he's played for years etc, have you heard the amount of excuses you're coming out with? The rest of your post is just laughable really: no valid argument, just excuses, resorting to insults, talk of bad 'support'. It's a full house on the bullshit bingo.
I don't want him to get sacked but I'm willing to bet he goes this season, and part of the reason for that is that I don't believe he'll get to spend the money needed to fix the rest of the squad, which I think is about £500m in the current climate. The current model we employ requires managers bringing in their own players and basically dumping the ones they don't like. Most managers don't get that luxury, they're told to work with what they've got and you'll get a couple of new players in the summer.
My point is that if you feel even slightly uncomfortable about giving Ten Hag another £400m over the next two seasons then we might as well sack him today because we aren't going to change the structure, as the current structure protects the dickheads who shouldn't have jobs at the club. They will never expose themselves to being accountable when they can let the manager take all the flak.
This is the core problem though - owners who don't care enough to fix costly long term dysfunctionality. We are still buying sticking plaster players while the real class acts go or stay elsewhere. A huge well run club attracts world class talent. A huge badly run club does not.
I’ll never ask for him to be sacked at any stage this season but I will say it is not looking good.
Realistically, this season, we should have 5 losses from 5 games as wolves battered us and we got away with it against forest who went 2-0 up against us. This is after 12 months in charge.
For me this is absolute alarm bells and feels like Jose’s third season and Ole’s final months. The last couple of games we haven’t actually played badly but the tactics and in game management has been extremely poor.
On top of this, we just don’t look like we know *how* to win a game of football, and because of this reason alone, I fear it is is just a matter of time before he will be sacked. A 5th place finish or below will confirm this but I honestly can’t see us getting top 4 this season.
It is a shame as I think he is a very good manager under the right conditions. For example I think he would thrive at City or Real Madrid.
Maybe the glazers will leave him out there to rot and take the brunt of the media abuse as per usual and then in 2 years if we have new owners, Ten Hag will be able to thrive.
The other issue is if we sack him, who do we replace him with? Will they be allowed to build their own team as ten hag had done and if so, how long will they get to show their worth? People are saying De Zerbi, but I’m convinced this would just be another “very good manager in the wrong environment” type situation.
I want him to stay and be a success, and sticking with him would be my preferred option, but I’m struggling to see how we move forward as a team and a club.
Realistically, this season, we should have 5 losses from 5 games as wolves battered us and we got away with it against forest who went 2-0 up against us. This is after 12 months in charge.
For me this is absolute alarm bells and feels like Jose’s third season and Ole’s final months. The last couple of games we haven’t actually played badly but the tactics and in game management has been extremely poor.
On top of this, we just don’t look like we know *how* to win a game of football, and because of this reason alone, I fear it is is just a matter of time before he will be sacked. A 5th place finish or below will confirm this but I honestly can’t see us getting top 4 this season.
It is a shame as I think he is a very good manager under the right conditions. For example I think he would thrive at City or Real Madrid.
Maybe the glazers will leave him out there to rot and take the brunt of the media abuse as per usual and then in 2 years if we have new owners, Ten Hag will be able to thrive.
The other issue is if we sack him, who do we replace him with? Will they be allowed to build their own team as ten hag had done and if so, how long will they get to show their worth? People are saying De Zerbi, but I’m convinced this would just be another “very good manager in the wrong environment” type situation.
I want him to stay and be a success, and sticking with him would be my preferred option, but I’m struggling to see how we move forward as a team and a club.
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Bar the Munich game he has a fairly easy run of games to get it right. He keeps talking about the plan in games but there doesn't seem to be a Plan B when we are under the cosh.
This is from the McTominay thread but it's more relevant here. It would be nice to actually discuss tactics here instead of arguing with knee jerk reactions about results and non-descript criticisms.
Out of possession, with Brighton playing from the back, he had Hojlund and Rashford play narrowly with Bruno in between slightly further back to take away the middle of the pitch. The midfield three played a bit wider behind them. I think the goal here was to force Brighton into playing out to the side, then sealing them tone side of the pitch clamping down and stealing the ball. This largely worked, as Brighton struggled to move the ball through the pitch for most of the match and we generated a lot of attacks from stealing the ball and counterattacking. The problem was Rashford and Hojlund didn't do much with their opportunities and Brighton got 3 easy goals out of the 4 or 5 opportunities they created because the midfielders didn't track Brighton's midfield runners into the box.
So yeah, IMO there was a tactic there and the players broadly executed it. The problem is with the problem seems to be with workrate and individual skill and decisionmaking. The workrate thing is probably difficult to fix without alternate players to compete with the starters and the skill and decisionmaking is going to involve players getting reps and learning through mistakes.
If this is still happening in February it could be worth questioning the manager but there are still a number of players who've had this exact problem of workrate and decision making with Mourinho, Ole and Rangnick, so I'm not sure that a different manager is going to make the difference there.
Looking forward it would be interesting to see this tactic with Amrabat and Mount in place of Eriksen and McTominay. It worked against Brighton but they don't have world beaters on the flanks. Using this against Bayern with their world class fullbacks would probably look like a track meet, but I don't know what other options there are.
I think ETH changed the tactics here for 2 reasons. The first is that he's probably reacted to our midfield getting outnumbered and easily played through, and the second is that with Antony and Sancho were unavailable to play at RW and Mount, Amrabat and Mainoo unavailable to play in midfield. He doesn't trust Pellistri to start at RW and he didn't want to play the usual 4-1-2-3 tactics with Bruno at RW because that would leave McTominay and Eriksen as the lone central midfielders (which we can all agree would have been an obvious disaster).
Out of possession, with Brighton playing from the back, he had Hojlund and Rashford play narrowly with Bruno in between slightly further back to take away the middle of the pitch. The midfield three played a bit wider behind them. I think the goal here was to force Brighton into playing out to the side, then sealing them tone side of the pitch clamping down and stealing the ball. This largely worked, as Brighton struggled to move the ball through the pitch for most of the match and we generated a lot of attacks from stealing the ball and counterattacking. The problem was Rashford and Hojlund didn't do much with their opportunities and Brighton got 3 easy goals out of the 4 or 5 opportunities they created because the midfielders didn't track Brighton's midfield runners into the box.
So yeah, IMO there was a tactic there and the players broadly executed it. The problem is with the problem seems to be with workrate and individual skill and decisionmaking. The workrate thing is probably difficult to fix without alternate players to compete with the starters and the skill and decisionmaking is going to involve players getting reps and learning through mistakes.
If this is still happening in February it could be worth questioning the manager but there are still a number of players who've had this exact problem of workrate and decision making with Mourinho, Ole and Rangnick, so I'm not sure that a different manager is going to make the difference there.
Looking forward it would be interesting to see this tactic with Amrabat and Mount in place of Eriksen and McTominay. It worked against Brighton but they don't have world beaters on the flanks. Using this against Bayern with their world class fullbacks would probably look like a track meet, but I don't know what other options there are.
But Sancho is the scapegoat. Are we allowed more than one?
Nope. You don’t need time to make changes it’s been proven time and time again. It’s the consistency that takes time and the quality etc, but actual changes shouldn’t take long at all. Ten Hag has already failed it’ll just take some of you longer to see it.
Mate Jack Grealish needed a full season before he added value to City. You really think bedding in is just down to climatising to a new league and language? The ignorance you have is outstanding.
And big feck we over spent on Antony. Is that the same as wasting 400m? No, so quit the hyperbole and actually support the team. Don't class players as failures from 2 games just because you're trying to shoe horn a non existing point.
Keep for time being. Guy hasn’t had a settled team or club since he arrived. Everything has gone against him.
Agreed. Just don't like this idea that "it's not the manager because we've tried that before".
Honestly it's as dumb as the dimwits pushing for Ole because we tried an established manager before and it didn't work
Such flawed thinking that always holds this club back.
I'd like to know why Erik, who was brave enough to drop Ronaldo and Maguire when he came into the club, and show everyone who's boss, is all of a sudden too shit scared to sub Rashford off even when he's massively underperforming and not even giving a fraction of the minimum effort normally expected of a United player.
Salah has produced a hell of a lot more for Liverpool over a much longer time span that Rashford has for us, yet Klopp's not afraid to haul him off if he's not playing well and let him throw a little hissy fit as he's walking off.
Rashford badly needs a dose of the same medicine.
Salah has produced a hell of a lot more for Liverpool over a much longer time span that Rashford has for us, yet Klopp's not afraid to haul him off if he's not playing well and let him throw a little hissy fit as he's walking off.
Rashford badly needs a dose of the same medicine.
Haha fair enough, for what it's worth I agree that SAF comparisons aren't helpful.
Ajax's system under ETH and the weak Dutch league were both very different to United under Ole and the superior PL, yet we hired ETH which worked well last season. Were you opposed to hiring ETH?Humiliated
If you can't make your point without ridiculous hyperbole then it isn't a very good point.
As for the rest, you've still offered no evidence beyond Brighton beating us yesterday. It's such shallow thinking.
The United job is not the same as the Brighton job, it's a completely different world. Even if both teams were in exactly the same situation, with the exact same team, players, and structure when ETH and DZ took over (they weren't, we were a complete mess), the pressure in the United is orders of magnitude higher than at Brighton.
Of course it is very different to manage United or Brighton for the reasons you mention. You seem to believe that de Zerbi can only be successful under a few set of conditions, whereas I think he is a top young manager who can adopt and be successful at OT. I don't think there is a tailor made manager ideally suited to our chaos. You need to be very pragmatic and slowly adapt the team to your longterm tactics.
Agree
Maybe he is not too scared. Maybe the manager understands Rashford is his best chance of a goal at the moment
Rashford is viewed as undroppable by the board and most of the supporters. All it takes is him pulling a Sancho and the manager is out, no matter who it is. Dropping him for any reason other than some sort of automatic infraction like being late to practice will tighten the noose around the manager's neck, even a brand new one.
That being said while his effort at pressing and tracking back leaves a lot to be desired I think if we get Amrabat and Mount on the pitch together, his lack of work rate off the ball might be less of an issue.
Exactly. The idea of dropping Rashford right now is fanciful. We can’t afford to do that, because even at his most greedy, he’s one of our few hopes right now.
Okay, I get you now.
Well I think I’d just as well let EtH spend it and finish the job than give it to some other guy who might not want the players we just bought.
Because Rashford doing something brilliant seems to be the only way we are able to score. He is essentially our only attacking threat.
EtH benched Rashford, who was playing very well, for being 1 minute late last season.
Has De Zerbi ever been a DOF or a Chief Scout before? I don't think he has. Because for some absurd reason, every United manager is also expected to fulfill those two roles.
Yeah, that’s right. But once Hojlund is up to speed, it looks like Rashford will be defending his place against a very keen, very exciting and somewhat productive Garnacho. If he doesn’t buck his ideas up he will find himself on the bench (some of the time at least). When everyone is fit, we are starting to get proper competition in quite a few key positions.
My bad, really! Moment of madness
Ten Hag changed the way we play from his very first game in charge. That resulted in some heavy defeats so he tightened things up. Ragnick did the same thing with his 4222. Both managers reverted to a 4231 that we've played for years
I think the issue is we don't have the players for the system Ten Hag wants to play. Either that or the system will never work but I don't believe that.