Yeah I am hopeful if we can sell Casemiro and one other that we will look to bring in some mobile players. Ideally these players also have quality on the ball as well.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
We aren’t saying ALL blame. We are saying some blame.
You are saying, “this is the hand he was dealt, that’s not his fault.” No, he had every opportunity to veto Antony, Weghorst, Hojlund, Martinez, Mount, Onana, Malacia, Casemiro, Reguilon, Amrabaat. He did not. As such, and because we look worse than we did last season, he deserves some criticism. He thought those players would improve us. For the most part, they have not.
If you want me to extend the argument like you have, let’s assume he vetoed potentially GOOD transfer additions that were raised by the club scouting group. That makes it even worse. I don’t believe we can criticize him for this because we don’t know who was proposed, but it’s possible he turned down top players…
Every and virtually none are two different things. Virtually none of the players we’ve bought since Moyes brought in Fellaini have worked out as well as we had expected.
You could say Bruno, but the case against Bruno is not weak. Onana has been brilliant over the last month, but his first six months were a horror show. I actually thought Ander Herrera performed brilliantly for us, but I’m in the minority on that take. Sanchez, Pogba, Lukaku, Antony…the list of flops is not short. The list of brilliant finds in the transfer market is virtually nonexistent.
We’ve been buying players to flog merchandise and generate social media activity, not to build a title challenger. Liverpool and City have been building squads to win titles, merchandise and social media be damned. Massive difference in the philosophy of these clubs over the last decade and our stupidity needs to come to an end. Hopefully Sir Jim is the right man ti throw the Glazers and their greed overboard.
That is so true. There hasnt been a plan for trophies since Fergie and the leeches inherited him. That why we all have to pin our hopes on Ineos now, but this could be a while.
It would be a difficult argument to make to say Klopp inherited a better team than ten Hag did.
That Varane nonsense showed that Ten Hag seems willing to freeze players out to the detriment of the teams success for his own petty ego issues. Surely no coincidence that Varane getting left out for a long stretch came right after Varanes rumoured private criticism of Ten Hag.
Similar to last season when he kept shuffling the team around to shoehorn a player he pushed to sign in Weghorst, into the team at no10 (a position he never played before or since) because he was failing badly upfront.
So because Ten Hag over performed in his first season, he’s getting punished in his second? I disagree on the squad quality. We literally have a mismatch of 4 different squads all of which lack in quality.
Ange has done a decent job in year one at spurs. Importantly though, spurs have been good signings in the last few seasons and those players have been at a decent price. Utds hierarchy haven’t managed that.
He inherited a team that was an inch from winning the league title. They may have had less glamorous names but they were far more of a team.
Liverpool came second that season on the back of the form of Sterling, Suarez and Sturridge. By the time Klopp took over Sterling and Suarez were gone and Sturridge was a busted flush.
I have to agree. So many contortions are made to defend ETH. One of the early warning signs was Ajax fans saying he had his favourites. Weghorst was probably the least technically capable player since Bebe, but a former ETH player (one of many). He offered zero goal threat and as you say was then played as some kind of midfield target man, yet one who couldn't actually win a header. ETH played him ahead of Elanga, who had his limitations but has shown he can score, assist and be a handful in the PL, something Weghorst could not do. Then Varane benched, again for some weird tactical decision, but then back in. Several journos have commented he simply doesn't know his best team or how he wants to play, as shown when McT and Maguire went from for sale and almost leaving to starters. its Mr flip flop.
It should be remembered that Varane played like shit in a few games around that period too, especially in the CL where he was probably the worst player on the field for some of them. He started the season well, got injured (again) then for the next couple of months the players that were playing ahead of him were generally performing better than Varane was when he was on the field. Plus he also missed a couple of other games through another small injury or illness.
Now obviously an argument could be made that if he'd been given a couple of games to get going he could have started playing well again, or perhaps that part of the reason he was struggling was because of a supposed rift with ETH. But even when he did break back into the starting line-up (after the Liverpool game where he was great) he was quite shaky for a while.
We probably won't know for sure exactly what happened there, but I do think people go overboard about it. It's not like Varane was performing at a level that was forcing his way back in.
Fair points, but who exactly was playing well? Antony was stinking the place out for ages before he was dropped. Rashford is awful much of the time. Amongst the goals McT has delivered numerous invisible performances. The list goes on.
So he inherited a tonne of money to use on his own side and bring in his own players. Ten Hag has inherited star players that are ill suited to his preferred style like Rashford.
If he'd said it was a form thing, or that Maguire and Evans were a settled pair, or even made up something about Varane not being fully fit yet, it'd have been fine, but he made sure everyone knew that it was because Varane couldn't play on the left side.
Even that was fine with me, right up until he started playing Varane on the left side, while Jonny Evans, the player who was keeping him out of the team on the left side, played on the right.
How is a guy who's scored the most goals under Ten Hag not suited to his style?
The same Rashford who bagged 30 goals for ETH last season?
If he didn't do that, our season would have been disastrous.
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As opposed to ETH inheriting busted flushed Ronaldo willing to undermine him entirely in a very public spat, inheriting a gk problem that’s always been hard to fix (harder when your entire defence doesn’t get to play regularly), basically got nothing from our marquee midfielder Pogba , an explosive forward he couldn’t play due to a scandal, a world record centre back being booed by his own fans , multiple players clearly not good enough but unsalable, a club for sale and clubs decade of sh*t soending finally starting to cause issues. Other then that , ETH has had it easy.
Man, can you imagine how many goals he would have scored if he was suited to his style?
Sounds to me like the issue is Ten Hag then. We should bring in a manager that's suited to Rashford's style if he's THAT good.
He has had problems to deal with.
But if you compare the squads of Klopp taking over and ETH taking over, it's not even close which squad has more quality.
I can’t really be arsed to explain it as it’s another long post. TDLR he’s a counterattacking player incapable of contributing in the press of build up phases.
I mean the excuses still being made for ETH are mind-boggling at this point.
I guess some people truly think he's that good of a manager, but this attachment to him is just odd.
I could understand it with Ole since he's a club legend and with Jose, because of his CV.
ETH has zero goodwill to be backed to the heavens by certain posters.
Which In hindsight would probably have benefitted us more. By over performing last season he’s got no leeway this season and now players like Rashford will probably end up hanging around like a bad smell again.
if that led to an ETH sacking, I agree.
But I'm pretty sure Rashford's time at the club is almost up either way.
Can you just stop with this boring lazy narrative? I like the man but don’t particularly have an attachment to him. My posts over the last few pages set out why I feel we would be better to retain him and ship the problem players rather than go all over again on the same merry go round. Just because you don’t understand that doesn’t make it incorrect and a reason to come up with your fan fiction.
Ah yes because the best thing for Manchester Utd to is to keep sacking manager after manager. That will definitely work.
Great, but he scored 30 goals last season and now you're saying he's not suited to the style Ten Hag wants to play. So I'm assuming you would rather we replaced him? And with whom shall we replace him that can play in Ten Hag's system and score 30 goals a season? And how much does this player cost?
You'll quickly see that the players we need to make Ten Hag's system work simply don't exist and if they do, they're out of our spending capabilities. So we can keep going down this road of flogging the current players we have because they're not good enough to play this system or just find a manager that can actually get players like Rashford and Bruno scoring goals for fun.
What's cheaper and easier? You know the answer.
It's not an either/or situation though. We can do both.
I didn't mean you specifically.
But certain posters absolving him of any blame(and there have been a few) whatsoever are attached to the idea of him being manager no matter what.
Last season we started from a low bar after the season before. I find it odd that people use this weird argument that without a certain player we would do worse. How would United of done without RVN when we were going through a rough patch in 00s ? He bailed us out alot during that period. I’d say you take peak ronaldo goals out if United or Salah from pool and they’d have very different seasons.
A manager using the talents of a player (like Rashford last season or even McT on some level this season) is good management when you are trying to make what you have work.
Rashfords form falling off a cliff , along with having no striker for large parts of the season is a big reason we’ve struggled so bad.
There are things ETH could do better and has done wrong but some of appear to only be able to interpret everything he does as automatically negative.
I know this may shock some of you but ETH is aware of all our issues. He has more data than all of us. While he may not subscribe to all the twitter sh*t many of you copy in here, I’m confident that he has all the data at his disposal.
What if the manager was shit though? Do they deserve sacking or in this scenario is every single manager we've hired a world class manager?
When a manager underperforms as drastically as ETH has this season, then yes, he should be sacked.
Also every single manager we have sacked should have been sacked sooner. And no sacking we made was a poor decision. The fact that every single manager we have sacked amounted to essentially nothing post-United is proof of that. Even Ole(who said he had job offers) likely won't get a job at a top club again. Jose was sacked at Spurs and then Roma. Van Gaal took up the Holland NT and never coached a club again. Moyes had to settle at West Ham. The managers weren't the only problem, but none of them were good enough.
This is how modern football is. A lot of clubs siphon through managers. If you stumble into an all-time manager, then that's ideal and you can keep him for a while. But those are exceptions and not the norm.
Sure we can bring in a manager who can get more out this current team. But I assure you we won’t win the league doing that. This squad isn’t capable of winning the league no matter who you put in charge. I’d t rather we take a longer approach and build a team actually capable of challenging consistently and that involves shipping our current ‘best’ star players.
In my opinion we don’t need to replace Rashford with 30 goals, we need to replace him with a player that makes us a better team, which won’t be that hard seeing as Rashford is a liability aside from goals. We could replace him with a better player who scores 10 goals if that improves the unit and allows others to score more.
That squad nearly won the league. Our one never came close. Even if he sold players he still had a squad that nearly won the league. ETH inherited a squad that was awful and finished 6th. You can’t confidently say it was stronger on any barometer other then what you want to think
Of course at some stage you have to take a view. Many have taken them view of Ten Hag and that’s fair enough I’ll be honest I’ve wavered myself at times this season. I’m just wanting what’s best for Man Utd and personally I think there are greater upsides of trying one more year with Ten Hag because at least then we can shift more of the problem players. We both know what happens if he leaves, the new manager joins and they take a view on the existing squad. Rashford, Sancho etc get another year to impress thus wasting another season.
Mate, this might come as a massive shock to you hearing this for the first time but we aren't going to win the league under Ten Hag.
And that's great, lets take someone who's capable of scoring 30 goals out of the team and replace him with someone who can pass sideways better and link-up more? So who gets the goals then? Hojlund has to score 60? Bruno and Antony have to chip in with 25 each?
I don't think anyone in here is suggesting we're going to win the league if we replace the manager. People are suggesting the manager is shite and should be replaced with a better manager who has more of a clue as to what he's doing while allowing him and the new team around him to replace the players that need replacing.
Ten Hag will get another season, I'm sure of that. Does he deserve it? No way.
It's not the manager you need to worry about, it's the Dan Ashworth and the rest of the guys coming in who will decide what happens to the squad. I'm sure the manager will have a voice but he won't be making recruitment decisions moving forward. So it doesn't matter if our manager is Ten Hag or Dyche next season, they won't get the players they 'want' anyway.
No it didn't, because they were missing Suarez and Sterling. You can't ignore the fact they lost 2 of their 3 best attackers during their title challenge. It's not the same squad.
This is their starting XI for Klopp's 1st game
Also if we're going to use your logic, ETH inherited a squad that finished 2nd 2 seasons prior and had way more money to inject into it + didn't lose any of the top performers that helped us finish 2nd.
Under new management, we don't know that.
The next manager hired likely won't have the final say in that. Also, we have a lot of players out of contract this summer and next summer.
The next manager will likely deal with a rebuilt squad.
Klopp's inherited squad was missing Gerrard (who had gone to shit anyway), Suarez and Sterling from the title-challenging team. It had also recently gained Firmino and Milner, who might not have been the most glamorous, but they had attributes that were perfectly suited to what he wanted out of his players (chiefly, being incredibly hard workers).
Ten Hag's was missing Pogba, Cavani and Greenwood, who were all fairly large contributors to the side that finished second for Ole. Two of the previous major signings prior to Ten Hag were Sancho and Ronaldo, who have both had to be ejected from the club.
It's a weird comparison as it's something that's quite hard to judge, and I think another thing that falls under the "any shit to fling at Ten Hag" category.
We all knew the squad was full of players that were not suited to a more progressive style of football and/or not actually good enough for a team with our ambitions. It was attempting precisely that tactical shift that cost Ole his job and saw Rangnick look so inept.
Ah if you keep extending out the rules you will find the answers you want. 2 years previous United didn’t nearly win the league, they were a distant second.No it didn't, because they were missing Suarez and Sterling. You can't ignore the fact they lost 2 of their 3 best attackers during their title challenge. It's not the same squad.
This is their starting XI for Klopp's 1st game
Also if we're going to use your logic, ETH inherited a squad that finished 2nd 2 seasons prior and had way more money to inject into it + didn't lose any of the top performers that helped us finish 2nd.
But even at that , Cavani got 11 goals. Ronaldo came in and got most our goals. Both those players were gone for ETH who was offered a Weghorst level alternative and he made it work.
Pogba played 21 games the season we finished second. He played none for ETH.
Whatever way you try to twist this, ETH was not inheriting a better squad or club structure.