Coward of a manager. That’s why I always respected Van Gaal. A brave manager who wanted to implement his own football but fans won’t have it. Given it was boring given some of his signings were crap but you see now it’s not an easy fix. To change the style at this club is like squeezing the blood out of a stone but the guy was hell bent on changing it and implementing his own. How I wish now we should have given him more time in hindsight. We need a manager like him who’s strong and confident not the ones like this guy or Ole.
I'm going off-topic, but I still blame that 5-3 loss against Leicester for really messing things up. We looked great in the first half of that game and the football from the likes of Van Persie and Di Maria was awesome. I always thought that we just needed a few more key signings and we could have got somewhere with what he was trying to do. We made lots of scattergun style signings and there were too many misses. Not only that, but we ended up becoming too cautious and less keen to commit forwards, possibly because we were in fear of getting done like that again as we had been caught against Leicester.
I could see what Van Gaal was trying to do. I don't understand what Ten Hag is trying to do and it seems that he is less and less sure himself with the more games we play. It's actually getting to the point where we're just digging further into that hole. It's not getting results. I expect many fans were expecting a loss against City, but what we were looking for is a reason or reasons to think that we could go on to win the next game or the game after that. E.g. our chance creation would be better, or our pressing would lead to opportunities further up the pitch. But we didn't really see anything in that game. Nothing that makes me think things are going to change any time soon.
I feel that maybe this is where he needs stronger characters around him to navigate situations like this. Or, he needs to be a stronger character himself. He isn't big enough to drop players this season. But, he dropped Rashford last season for being late, so he can do it. He's just gradually become more cowardly...for some reason. I don't get it.