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?
More leaks to the press 
We can’t really have a sensible discussion about what the club should do until we answer the question “What is Manchester United?”
That sounds like twaddle I know.
What I’m getting at is this:
Some people talk as if we are in the same position as Real Madrid or Bayern or Man City. If those clubs had an “underperforming” manager they would sack him. But they are at the very top of the heap and have been for a long time. They have squads full of the very top players in the world. We aren’t in the same bracket as them and the job is different - it is a major rebuild from a position of shiteness.
And some people talk about us as if we are Brighton or Spurs or Aston Villa where “playing some good stuff” and getting into Europe earns you a biscuit. We are not in the same bracket as them. Success here is to win the league nearly every year. Doing a good job here is turning us back into that winning machine we remember.
So if we accept that we are shit and accept that we have to go all the way from there to winning every year then we have to accept that it is a massive and very complicated job. It won’t be quick and it won’t be linear. Sometimes you have to get worse before you get better.
Nobody is saying EtH is anything like SAF but it is worth remembering that SAF very much made us worse before making us better. The point of mentioning that is that you can’t recognise underlying improvement just by watching the matches. The overhaul required is much deeper than that and it is not rational to look at a few micro mistakes (which EtH does make) and extrapolate that he is not being effective in his overall task (this is not to beat Brighton in year 2 but to win the league in year 4 or 5 and then keep winning it).
In any case, our general practice of sacking managers before they can properly overhaul the club has yielded zero, as anyone can see.
City were blessed in that Their rich owners consistently sort to create an institutionalised structure at the club that would breed long term success. Their success remember did not only start with Txiki nor the Qataris. It can be traced back to Thaskin who actively sort to sell to people similar in ision to his and with deeper resources. They had a merticulous 5 year plan and systematically improved the custodians of the plan. Improving the club from the roots up. From the Cooks to noe Soriano, Txiki and Guardiola. Unless City owners are suddenly struck with confusion and quit recruiting staff that push forward the plan. Which are the fundemental mistakes first Liverpool then us have done after dominating domestic football. They are more likely to emulate the longevity of a Bayern, easily. Even without neccesarily bring as dominant as they are now. A lot of mistakes would have to occur for them to fall into the doldrums Liverpool and now us got hit with.
Okay. You're right.
You have a shite manager. Maybe you're a mediocre player yourself. But for sure, the manager has hardly played a blinder with his strategies and team selections all season. You are sitting 7 points behind fecking Villa. You are now forced by the same manager to listen to mockery from City fans (something you're quite used to by now). You don't expect any new ideas from the manager in the future either and he has accepted that he won't be able to replicate the style of the only successful team on his CV.
So obviously, you can't wait to run through a brick wall for this manager the next time you get on the field.
I get it now, sorry.
Amen
I don't know. All of them?
Do you think someone tells Pep or Klopp who to get in the transfers and how to play? Do they have a "philosophy" in Spurs?
That would be a good threat just to force Sancho to pack his bags to the Saudi in January.
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Is this supposed to be a defense for ETH?
If he can only play in a particular way, only with particular players, and when these players are injured he is completely lost and doesn't know what to do... then he is not a good manager.
Excuses. Team was shit this season with Martinez playing.
Clutching at straws at this point.
I actually think Moyes would have done alright in the transfer market that summer. He'd have signed Kroos for one. LVGs transfer business was appalling.
I cant understand why people are still defending this guy, he is clearly out of his depth and out of ideas.
After 18 months he has given no gameplan, no identity, and made us a bigger laughing stock than we were when he arrived.
The team selection, tactics, and subs on Sunday are simply indefensibile and until he goes we are going nowhere.
After 18 months he has given no gameplan, no identity, and made us a bigger laughing stock than we were when he arrived.
The team selection, tactics, and subs on Sunday are simply indefensibile and until he goes we are going nowhere.
ETH could use a break as well from the genuinely incredible stress that any United manager goes through, but unfortunately for him that's not possible any time soon.
For all you who would sack him today, which is understandable, I'd really like to know who you would realistically believe we could bring in to do the job starting tomorrow.
For all you who would sack him today, which is understandable, I'd really like to know who you would realistically believe we could bring in to do the job starting tomorrow.
I don't know why anyone would scoff at Unai Emery. Better CV than Ten Hag, proven winner - with major trophies under his belt - his team plays really good football, averaging close to 65% possession at home - and even at Arsenal where things went pear-shaped, he still was an Europa runner-up there.
even this season when they lost badly to Newcastle, Sir Alex Ferguson said they were the team that impressed him the most - and all the bozos were like "???"
"To be honest with you, I watched Aston Villa and I can't believe the scoreline," Ferguson told USA Network NBC Sports before Manchester United’s clash with Wolves.
"Honestly Aston Villa played fantastic football and just lost to bad goals.
"Newcastle are going to be very difficult to beat, in their own ground in particular, and their manager has done a great job there. It's a surprising game, football. You can play teams off the pitch and not score - that's what Aston Villa did."
Villa is a headache for anyone to play.
even this season when they lost badly to Newcastle, Sir Alex Ferguson said they were the team that impressed him the most - and all the bozos were like "???"
"To be honest with you, I watched Aston Villa and I can't believe the scoreline," Ferguson told USA Network NBC Sports before Manchester United’s clash with Wolves.
"Honestly Aston Villa played fantastic football and just lost to bad goals.
"Newcastle are going to be very difficult to beat, in their own ground in particular, and their manager has done a great job there. It's a surprising game, football. You can play teams off the pitch and not score - that's what Aston Villa did."
Villa is a headache for anyone to play.
Unai failed at Arsenal when they had the exact same problem as United.
Player's power, club has no direction. If he couldn't fix it there, he wouldn't fix it here
Unai's ulter failure was the reason Arsenal decided to stick with Arteta to begin with.
Treble winner Hansi Flick could be a decent shout. I know he didn't flatter himself as manager of Germany, but he did a fantastic job for Bayern Munich even by their standards.
the funniest thing about this clip trying to show us in a positive way is just how many times we turned the ball over with a shitty pass only to luck out that for some reason the man city player would just screw it up right away. We literally lost the ball like 5 times in that short amount of clip with pretty basic bad passes that only thru pure luck did we get the ball back
Probably sounds like music to these players.
This is a manager that week in week out trusts players that let him down.
Your post is childish nonsense. You've no idea what they are at on the training ground.
The players need to motivate themselves to play for a team like United and take the money they are being paid.
It feels like a linguistic game.
For example, nobody really says Valverde's tactical approach "heavily depended on" a playmaker-goalscorer central figure. They just said he was carried by Messi!
References to Arteta and even Edu miss the point. Arsenal developed a (nascent) winning culture that they were so committed to, they actually paid nine players just to go away. Özil and Aubameyang were the highest profile names, but more important was getting rid of Mkhitaryan, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolsinac and Willian. A terrible business decision, yes, but it made in service of cutting out the dross and developing a tight-knit squad of players with a commitment to winning (and Cedric).
Manchester United did this with Ronaldo but, for some reason, haven't had the minerals to do even take a lower fee and top up the wages of Harry Maguire, let alone just pay him off. (Not to make him a lightning rod, he's alright - but once you decide someone doesn't fit your team you can't just walk it back and pretend they do. You should have made a football decision and taken the financial hit).
For Jadon Sancho, read £72m Nicolas Pepe. Neither transfer worked out, but while one has gone, the other is still there. While I won't pretend to understand who's in the right and who's in the wrong in that situation, it's definitely not helping Manchester United.
Manchester United did this with Ronaldo but, for some reason, haven't had the minerals to do even take a lower fee and top up the wages of Harry Maguire, let alone just pay him off. (Not to make him a lightning rod, he's alright - but once you decide someone doesn't fit your team you can't just walk it back and pretend they do. You should have made a football decision and taken the financial hit).
For Jadon Sancho, read £72m Nicolas Pepe. Neither transfer worked out, but while one has gone, the other is still there. While I won't pretend to understand who's in the right and who's in the wrong in that situation, it's definitely not helping Manchester United.
Yeah a bit like that TIFO video which is trying to make excuses for him as well
I hope he can turn it around, but we need results as well as performances - these dogfights with the likes of Sheffield United, FC Copenhagen - and injury time heroics against Brentford are not going to cut it forever.
That would only happen with an awful November similar to that December under LVG. They are supposed to be rotating players so that might give Utd a lifeline to get a win.
It all hinges on the competence of the DoF to do this. You could trust Edu but I don't trust Murtough / United at all to pull off this clean slate policy. We've gone through about 4 of these rebuilds right now and even if they get rid of Maguire / McTominay now, it isn't clear the new players brought in will do any better. We've also written off quite a few players before and they turned their careers around successfully under new management (Shaw, AwB, Lindelof, Rashford etc.). Sancho's hoping for the same thing right now. Note that the prevailing narrative under Ole was that Lindelof was holding Maguire back and if we paired him with a different profile, he'll shine. Narratives change quickly in football.
We already are looking at a point where the players that the current manager signed (Casemiro, Antony, Mount) are considered not good enough. Maybe give it another manager merry go-round where we replace EtH with Emery / De Zerbi / whoever and we'll add Varane (too injury prone) / Martinez (not physical enough) to the list.
Ultimately we need a competent DoF in charge. Have a vision for where we're going as a club and which players are considered good enough / not. Someone with a steady hand that isn't influenced by outrage on places like AFTV / Gary Neville. Someone with experience but not one that has cut their teeth in the 90s / 00s football way of doing things (this bit I'm a bit flexible on).
Do we want high intensity, counter attacking football? Why did we sign Ten Hag when he hasn't done that at Ajax? Okay, you signed Ten Hag to play a certain way, why are we giving him Casemiro and Mount instead of guys like Rodri and FdJ?
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sacking him will change nothing.
Not buying that tweet, I doubt City celebrates that loudly for a relatively meaningless game against a mid table team.
Fair enough. Thanks!
What I would say now that even I, an ardent ETH defender, is that club management should be now in the process of vetting names like Flick in the event the downward spiral intensifies and sacking ETH becomes a necessity.
I just hope that this process of vetting names is gonna be done by a new recruitment committee. This cannot happen under the current ones or we will just be continuing the cycle of last decade
Er, no?
Klopp vetoed the signing of Salah but it was pushed through by Michael Edwards and co. Do you seriously think Klopp and Pep are doing it alone? Despite there being scores of shite having been written about the likes of Txiki Bergiristain and the aforementioned Michael Edwards? City in particular were extremely well run before Pep and will likely fair much better when he eventually leaves than we did when Fergie left. Christ, it's not rocket science.
I don't share the exact views of what the tweet says, it was more to show the clip. Ten Hag's been very poor and has made some terrible decisions this season there is no question about that. What I won't have though is that we were poorly coached last season - that we didn't know what type of football we wanted to play last season.
He is definitely responsible for our poor form this season - but everything is multifactorial. Part of the reason (again, not absolving Ten Hag of blame) we have been so poor this season is that when certain players are out - their replacements are a completely different type of player and it means we have to change the system accordingly.
There are too many players in our squad that are too dissimilar. The reason Pep can rotate so much is actually a lot of their players can slot in and play the position similarly to each other so their system stays constant. For example, if they need retention Grealish, Bernardo, and Kovacic can all provide this.
Just look to last season when Martinez was out, we were fine because Shaw played the CB role similarly. And this season when Varane is out we have to drop our line because no one else who was fit was able to provide his pace and organisation.
Part of this is definitely Ten Hag's fault though. We've had so many injuries because we played far too many games with little rotation last year. The gaps between our front 5 and back 5 when pressing is way too big. Our press is disorganised (compared to last year). He wants direct transitional football but signed Antony who passes back every counter. The balance of our midfield is wrong.
There are many things wrong this season from Ten Hag, but it's definitely been exacerbated by our club's poor structure. Our recruitment team is awful. Last season he wanted Timber and couldn't get him. It's our club's job to then find someone who is similar to him to play a similar role in the team - instead, we waited till Martinez called Ten Hag up to say I want to join and signed Martinez instead. Ten Hag wanted FDJ who provides who controls the play, is press resistant and can carry the ball well - when it turned out we couldn't sign him, we decided to get no one and then panic buy Casemiro after poor results (who is a completely different type of player). He wanted Antony for 60m, which was too much, but instead of finding another player of similar profile at a cheaper price we dithered and paid 90m at the end of the window. Not even Pep is given complete control of transfers, he wanted Maguire, Fred, Sanchez, Van Dijk and Rice off the top of my head and got none of them but they didn't suffer because City were smart enough to find alternatives that fit the system.
That's fair enough, I have to defer to actual United fans about these things! I know nothing about Murtough's competence or otherwise. I think, as well, United don't have the unmitigated dreck that was the late Wenger-era squad (a cursory glance at e.g. Mustafi's post-Arsenal career shows you what a state we were in). I do just sympathise with Ten Hag a little bit - he's not been unsupported by any means, but he hasn't had the absolute unconditional buy-in to his vision that Arteta did after his FA Cup win (ETH won a domestic trophy too, of course). That spoke of a management team on the same page and willing to make tough decisions to pursue their vision; not something that can be said of United.
I think it's too soon to pass judgement on Ange-ball. Let's wait until the end of the season atleast.
For Pep / Klopp, yes, they don't do the job around identifying players. They are just one voice on the transfer committee but they're important in terms of describing the profile of the player they want. For instance, City wanted a left winger who was good in 1:1 situations. They missed that profile after Sterling left. Foden isn't that player and Grealish briefly was but they found Doku to fill that gap now. I think Pep's role is to identify the need for a player like Doku. The recruitment org's role is to find a fit that aligns directionally (age profile, budgets, prioritizing the profile needs appropriately etc.).
Yeah Salah is a prime example of the recruitment team knowing best,whether Mitchell or someone of that ilk would be allowed such power here is debatable
This, I completely agree with this post. We need to be ruthless. We have to set an ambitious plan, objectives and goals, a set of requirements (for on and off the field), and based on that determine who can be a part of it. If that means we have to take a financial hit on some players so be it, we would just have to replace them with a less expensive player then what we could have optimally hoped for - but at least a player that actually meets the requirements and with potential and determination to improve. And we have to stick with that plan! Feck it if that means a couple of subpar seasons, it's for the greater long term rebuild and success, and will be worth it in the end. No more wobbling around back and forth from Moyes, LVG, Mourinho, OGS and now ETH, with no coherent plan that ties it all together. I hate to say it but we should look at Arsenal as a blueprint on how to bounce back from celebrating 4th places to being contenders again!
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I also think it helps that in Edu you have that proper Sporting Director in place we desperately need. As I don't know your owners personally are they aimed at on pitch success because ours definitely aren't and haven't been since May 2005
I agree. I had high hopes for Ten Hag but his latest choices has left me baffled and I have started to feel that he sadly isnt up for the task. But I'd rather the board takes time to find the next manager than knee jerk into a(nother) bad appointment.
Nothing will happen until Sir Jim comes in or the Glazers by some miracle leaves though.
That’s not a great argument for keeping him at all.
Doubt it's even an argument for "keeping him" per se; it's more of an educated guess after 10 years of mediocrity under the current club structure.