I’ll be stunned if he ever recovers the situation. Feels like the writing is on the wall. The clubs problems go much deeper though and you get the impression no manager would be able to overcome this.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
It's not impossible for him to hang on. LVG survived two months of horrendous results and lasted to the end of the season; Ole could have easily been sacked a few times after some bad runs in his first full season. He has to find solutions quickly though and injured players like Shaw and Martinez have to get back for the second half of the season.
Yeah I still cannot comprehend how LVG survived that absolutely shocking December 2015. We lost at home to Norwich along with defeats at Bournemouth & Stoke
The transfer activity is make or break. Though I don't really want Ten Hag to be sacked, he knows he has wasted the transfer funds. In contrast, Sir Alex overcame so many obstacles that sometimes I refer to him as Ser Alex, or Tyrion Lannister. Comparing Ser Alec to Ten Hag is a joke. Ten Hag being a future success, having that potential, is a belief not based on anything real.
He has bought players that can do it though. Many people have complained about his signings because they played for him at Ajax. Onana, Martinez, Antony, Eriksen, Mount all fit this style. I think it boils down to whether the club is willing to ditch Bruno and possibly Rashford. With both of them starting, it seems like we can only play one way.
Lack of options back then, maybe. Although our club being stupid went onto appoint a manager who was complete opposite to LVG in terms of philosophy. Always felt we should have gone for someone like Poch back then.
The biggest issue is that people expect a playing style. Everyone thought he had a style of play, as seen with Ajax, and are bemused as to why we are not seeing this at Man Utd?
Luckily (or unlucky) we were put out of misery with answer: Ten Hag is building a counter attacking side. Previously he did say he wanted his team to be best counter attacking team in the world.
The issue is that we don’t have players who can play possession football or be able to string a couple passes for counter attacking football consistently. He is literally trying to play like Ole and Mourinho, but worse. But the fans thought he was at Man Utd for a different reason.
Luckily (or unlucky) we were put out of misery with answer: Ten Hag is building a counter attacking side. Previously he did say he wanted his team to be best counter attacking team in the world.
The issue is that we don’t have players who can play possession football or be able to string a couple passes for counter attacking football consistently. He is literally trying to play like Ole and Mourinho, but worse. But the fans thought he was at Man Utd for a different reason.
Don't understand why Murtough went for him if this was his plan after all.
He IS the one!
It’s true the scousers will beat us but that won’t change by sacking the manager.
I came close, not going to lie
I dont particularly want us to sack another manager but its clear he is losing it, may already be too late. Doesnt know what to do at this point and that must be equally clear to the players. His refusal to drop Bruno and Rashford must be very dispiriting to other players, as is his refusal to give youth a chance
This is it. What is he trying to do , he clearly doesnt know and is overwhelmed. I doubt anything happens though until we get more clarity on ownership. Arnold and Murtough know they will be sacked so no incentive to do anything
I promise you it’s not that hard. We had Ralf Ragnick pointing out the bleeding obvious now fans are doing logarithms again.
2-3 transfer window restructure. Find a concept..believe in it from head to toe and deliver it.
Also we can help the club out. The premier league requires aggressive strong players with technical ability which is suitable for a club our size.
I’m sure right now you can list 5 players which fit that category.
Snappy but simplistic. Sacking the manager will flush the long term planning down the drain and would be unlikely to yield anything substantial in the short term.
If we continue sacking managers before their work bears fruit we’re going to see the same result from the last ten years - a little improvement at first but not enough to lift our prospects of challenging the top teams, then a dip when the inevitable tough period comes, then sack the manager, then start again.
So, really, sacking the manager IS continuing to do the same thing. It doesn’t work.
Fück off
My conclusion has been that I think we've hired the wrong managers because either they're not up to the job or the timing was wrong. I put Jose in the latter. I feel like he's a difficult character and if you give him the right environment then you'll get the best Jose. If you put him into a negative, toxic environment then you'll get the Jose we saw. If you compare the guy we had to the one at Chelsea and Real fire the most part, it could be two different people.
But regardless of all that, the guy knows football. He's probably the best footballing mind we've had at the club since SAF. That's why I trusted him and why fans should have listened, even if he was doing a bad job. He wanted to go to war with some of the players that continued to plague us for years after he left, some till today.
All I'll say is that it works for every other club. If you think the likes of Real, Barca, Bayern are wrong and should give failing managers more years, then fair enough.
I do agree that the footballing continuity planning needs addressing, but I don't think that means continuing with a manager that looks quite clearly out of their depth.
No, the thesis is, Ten Hag was among the best if, not the best candidates to take charge at the time as he ticked virtually every box we wanted. If he is going to have a struggling period, any of the available managers will feasibly have a struggling period too.
In fact, before managers were even touted post Rangnick there was a constant theme among the media, fan and journalist opinion that whatever rebuild we go for isn't going to be easy. There will be highs, lows, mistakes made and lessons learned alongside what we hope is tangible improvement over time. It's not going to be constantly linear, there will be ups and downs.
My point is simple - a struggle is inevitable in righting our wrongs and in our case it's more protracted because of the incompetence of the people above any manager in charge here.
So unless you have a Pep or a Klopp or an Ancelotti available, what makes you think some other bloke will come in and do a better job than Ten Hag has so far? For that to be the case you need to have confidence beyond a reasonable degree of doubt, otherwise it's a suicidal punt taking a giant stride back.
Most of the fans wanted him and on here as well.
84% wanted him on here.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/next-permanent-manager-poll-updated.458681/page-143#post-28107858
Isn't this all very 'ta-ra Fergie, three years of excuses'?
The desire to sack the manager is not invalid. I just don’t agree with it. But I would say that comparing us to those top clubs at the moment is mad. More helpful to compare us to Arsenal and we see a different policy there and a good outcome.
He also bough Antony for 100m euros, or that didn't happen now? This summer he also opted to get Mount before a second forward? Who's fault is that?
What if we lose against Newcastle? How many games will he get after that?
Fair question.
Our policy over the last ten years is to sack the manager when we fail our minimum season objectives or when we fall into a run of poor performances and results that become an embarrassment to “our great club who should always win”.
The question is, will we change our policy for EtH based on his work behind the scenes (which we have no idea what that is, by the way)? It’s going to be interesting. (Preferably we turn a corner and we don’t have to find out but that looks a long way off just now.)
Which of the managers that we sacked, succeeded elsewhere or would have succeeded here with more time? And why would Ten Hag be different?
It’s far more plausible that we’ll have a new manager bounce (happened every time) if we sack him, than Ten Hag salvaging something from this mess. The longer he stays the more toxic things will get and the lower we’ll sink. That’s the most probable scenario here.
Bang on. These are our problems precisely.
Arsenal have been mentioned so many times because it is virtually the only example in the last 20 years of a club persisting with struggling manager and eventually succeeding and even then it has been explained many times over how different Arteta’s struggles were to what is happening at United now.
It’d be fine to keep him if there was a clear, visible plan, but you basically have the manager admitting there’s hardly any (spouting nonsense about how he cannot play his football because DNA and he has no players) and being reactive to what is happening in a rather hasty and disjointed manner. You have the manager spending £55m on a player, touting him as a complete midfielder and then ditching him about five games in because it doesn’t work. It’s not like we are trying to apply a certain brand of football or playing youth and struggling, we are patching things up as we go and none of this seems to work.
There’s no long term development from continuously playing old, failing players in pretty much the same system they’ve played for years that relies on chaos and individual brilliance carrying us through games.
The Athletic Football Podcast had a good piece on this yesterday and they all basically agreed that watching United today you have no idea what we are trying to do. There’s zero chance this leads to anything positive.
As I mentioned yesterday, this is Villas Boas/De Boer situation all over again. A manager with some success at a dominant team in a smaller league that just doesn’t have the tools to succeed at this level. We can keep him, give him another £250m or £500m to sign players of his choice as some of you want and it will still be dire. No business operates like this let alone a sports club where the impact on results is so significant.
1.5 years and £400m later we are basically in the same place we were at the start of ETH’s tenure, playing the same brand of football and getting similar results. Most of his signings are either out of the team, will soon need to be replaced or are just not contributing anything positive, none of the players he had here when he joined have really visibly improved, virtually no young players have been integrated properly into the first team. Assuming that all of this changes with more time is based on hope rather than evidence.
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Agreed
Good post.
Out of all of them the closest could be Mourinho, given he propelled us to 80 plus points before we gave up on him.
But I think ten hag is closest because he's more current to the style required and he ticks the right boxes.
If you're after a series of new manager bounces that fulfil nothing as a supporter than that's your perogative. I'm saying that's not the way we will rebuild successfully, regardless of who is at the helm.
Based on his time at Ajax, of which he said we will never achieve. He's not even trying it based on how this season is going.
I see nothing "current" from the style Ten Hag employs here. He said himself that he doesn't plan to make us play like Ajax. We're playing hoofball, as bad as the lows during Ole's reign.
I'm not after a series of new manage bounces. I'm after a manager who knows what he's doing and only failing that, I'm looking for new manager bounces. Ten Hag has not got me convinced in the slightest that he knows what he is doing. The transfers, the tactics, the starting line-ups, the subs, the quality of football... they all scream "clueless" and "desperate". You're saying we will not rebuild successfully if we don't persist with a manager. I say entrusting managers to "rebuild" is a fool's hope and that there is nothing more harmful than persisting with a bad manager who is failing to even get the basics right and is losing the dressing room.
Are you really telling me you're willing to entrust ETH with even more money and another couple of years based on what you've seen the last 8 months, since the Carabao final? Because so far, all I've seen from him is that new manager bounce in the first half of last season. Since February onwards it's just getting worse and worse. Our GD in the league is only +2 since Feb this year. We've been a midtable club coasting on a good 5 months from Sept to Feb last season.
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Excellent points Klopp should be the only relative example for a manager at United to make incremental improvements. The rhetoric that sacking underperforming managers is wrong is interesting given the prospective careers of the managers that were sacked their continuation at other clubs didn't exactly prove the decision wrong of a termination and dismissal.
The only manager I feel interpersonally that was sacked prematurely was LVG who to this date was the most successful at imposing a style that the club could persist with the issue was the team was toothless in that approach but it's better than the disjointedness of what ETH is currently proposing and his recent quotes are the evidence of why this team looks so poor outside of a 20 minute window in the first half.
Amen.
See the video in post #56615 in this thread. If you can’t stomach the whole thing, watch the last 4-5 minutes or so.
The motivation to sack seems to come from a deluded idea that we are at the same level as Real, Barca, Bayern - we should be but we aren’t, we are very far below them. The approach here has to be different at the moment. If we ever do get back to being a top force with a coherent, deep squad, good structures etc, then yes, managers who don’t achieve rapid results should be sacked but to expect it now is unrealistic.
Arsenal seemed to realise that. We realised it all those years ago with SAF. The policy has to fit the present status and long-term aims of the club. We are almost unique in that way. We have to be a tier 1 serial winning club but we are nowhere near that. So there has to be a long-term plan to transition to success (as it has to be defined for us) from where we are.
It is an unpalatable truth, I know.
It's inevitable that you have to sack His Stubbornness at some point, but I always feel like messing up LVG's succession was the biggest mistake in manager appointments that United made post SAF. I'll always like to compare what happened at Bayern - they were a struggling team not really better than United at the time of LVG's signing, got a structure and promoted a bunch of youth players (just like he did at United) and then had to move on at some point. And they did so by signing Heynckes who respected and kept the work LVG did and just carefully adjusted some things (essentially incorporating elements of Dortmund's counter-pressing approach and therefore allowing a bit more direct style). That won them the treble and later also ensured smooth transition to Pep taking over.
United would have needed their own version of Heynckes after LVG, but instead they just dismantled what LVG prepared the ground for and the team is suffering to this day. This was United's best chance to build towards a style the fans hope(d) EtH would bring it and it was wasted.
Probably worth posting this here from reddit. It kind of explains ETH's comments and debunks that ETH has "given up" trying to play like Ajax.
Where were these issues at Ajax? Right after the derby game, I had a chance to chat with
@htomufc
in his space. H asked "Was Ten Hag like this at Ajax too?"
My answer: Yes, he was. ETH would often ask the team to go long or play very direct to the CF when short build up wasn't working or the key build up player of the team (FDJ, Blind etc) would be out. Him wanting his CFs to be target men + poacher + linker 9s (like Haller), his GKs (like Onana) to be short + long ball experts and generally every player to be well-rounded and capable of switching between extreme plans based on the opponent, form & gamestate, was always true. It worked because: 1.
The switch to pragmatic schemes happened lesser because Ajax ran into trouble lesser. They were the best team in the league & usually had key players fit 2.
Ajax had a brilliant crop of players. FDJ, De Ligt, Tadic in his first team were elite players. Licha, Timber, Blind, Haller later too. A high quality team of problem-solvers who possessed elite in-possession traits to find answers on their own 3. The Ajax school produced well-rounded players who could play 3-4 positions each. That was/is the academy focus. With technical & physical well-roundedness across the team, ETH's sudden flexible plans & position shifts suffered much smaller drop-offs.
He was never a strong plan A type. His approaches were dictated by his players. His 2 Ajax teams itself were very different.
And many of the issues like not having a great rest defence structure & not having automated build-up patterns that every player could execute, were prevalent even at Ajax. We simply had no idea of knowing whether he'd improve those issues & develop a core philosophy at a rich big club or continue being player-dependent, flexible and even pragmatic when things get tough.
https://twitter.com/TheDevilsDNA/status/1719385883676475675/photo/1
Where were these issues at Ajax? Right after the derby game, I had a chance to chat with
@htomufc
in his space. H asked "Was Ten Hag like this at Ajax too?"
My answer: Yes, he was. ETH would often ask the team to go long or play very direct to the CF when short build up wasn't working or the key build up player of the team (FDJ, Blind etc) would be out. Him wanting his CFs to be target men + poacher + linker 9s (like Haller), his GKs (like Onana) to be short + long ball experts and generally every player to be well-rounded and capable of switching between extreme plans based on the opponent, form & gamestate, was always true. It worked because: 1.
The switch to pragmatic schemes happened lesser because Ajax ran into trouble lesser. They were the best team in the league & usually had key players fit 2.
Ajax had a brilliant crop of players. FDJ, De Ligt, Tadic in his first team were elite players. Licha, Timber, Blind, Haller later too. A high quality team of problem-solvers who possessed elite in-possession traits to find answers on their own 3. The Ajax school produced well-rounded players who could play 3-4 positions each. That was/is the academy focus. With technical & physical well-roundedness across the team, ETH's sudden flexible plans & position shifts suffered much smaller drop-offs.
He was never a strong plan A type. His approaches were dictated by his players. His 2 Ajax teams itself were very different.
And many of the issues like not having a great rest defence structure & not having automated build-up patterns that every player could execute, were prevalent even at Ajax. We simply had no idea of knowing whether he'd improve those issues & develop a core philosophy at a rich big club or continue being player-dependent, flexible and even pragmatic when things get tough.
https://twitter.com/TheDevilsDNA/status/1719385883676475675/photo/1
I’ve watched it (well most of it) and I don’t think it comes out with a really compelling argument supporting the quality of the job ETH has done and in many places echoes my sentiments.
I don’t think he was hired with the goal of being maybe slightly better than Ole at playing the same brand of football, nor do I think he’s capable of turning us into a different, better team.
Ultimately I think his recruitment has let him down and brought him to a point where I don’t see how this finishes well.
I do strongly agree with the concept of having a manager here that can bring long term change and would gladly support him through growing pains. If what we were seeing right now was a team full of young players who can build a foundation for the future, playing different brand of football to what we already know doesn’t work in the long run, and shrewd, well though gradual improvements to the team that can support this growth, I wouldn’t actually mind a season or two of poor results. This seasons issues are not about results as they haven’t even been that terrible, we are still relatively close to top 5.
However what we have seen for virtually entirety of this season is the same group of players, that I am absolutely certain will not improve much, putting in the same performances. We got players like Mejbri coming in, playing well and then being sent back to obscurity by McTominay and Eriksen. We have Rashford badly out of form and Garnacho getting 15 minutes a game. We got Bruno struggling and a £55m younger signing that could potentially at least try to temporarily fill in for him glued to the bench and then coming on to play in unfamiliar position. There’s very little that has happened in the last 3 months that has given me any sense of long term direction. It all screams desperation and short term fix.
I just don’t think ETH is the one to trust with the rebuild. I don’t think he has the talent, the knowledge, the tools to make it happen. I was very much in favor of appointing him and was impressed with some of the performances we were able to put together last season but he has shown to be lacking in so many areas since (it’s not just this season but also the second half of last year) that my belief in him is completely gone.
I fear the longer we persist and the more money we give him to buy his players on top of what he has already got, it just puts him us further and further behind. The signings we have made under him have set us back more than any other manager.
The romanticism of Fergie and the concept that any, literally any manager will come good if they are given plenty of time is only going to set us back further. There are managers who are worth giving time but ETH is not one of them.
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I stil can’t get over that line up on Sunday. I’m still generally mind blown days later. When he’s fired that will 100% be the moment I look back to for when he lost it.
Fault? the failures of the club over the last 10 years is a collective, United were paying over the odds for players long before EtH even arrived.