Yeah being outplayed for pretty much the majority of the season should be a huge red flag
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
-
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?
By your logic, ETH and Ole only managed United.
I don't follow the logic that you are applying. Are you judging ETH work at United while including his job outside of United?
Two managers with a similar story arch it looks like. Without INEOS the next manager would have followed the same pattern.
I was responding to an overall comparison between the two that was conveniently narrowed down to suit the poster's argument.
Yes and the convenient narrowing is that previous jobs aren't taken into account, at least that's how it reads?
I didn't watch his Molde team at all, so couldn't tell you. Though Ten Hag has shown an ability to coach a more progessive oriented game before and it's fallen apart when moving these players in that direction. Rangnick also highlighted that the players weren't physically capable enough when he was at the club. I'm sure we could find reasons to write off all three, but my fear is that the next manager will come in and the cycle will continue - we will go solid and counter attack again and qualify for the champions league. The players will get their 25% wage drop back, the manager will try to change the style to have more control of games in the future and it will fall apart again.
The hope is obviously that the new regime will help fix the underlying issues at the club, but I don't see it being an overly quick fix no matter who the manager is.
It's not like Liverpool couldn't have won that match. For most of the 90 minutes they were the better team and likely should have won. Antony's late equalizer was against the run of play for the entire second half.
It will not be a quick fix for sure. Which is why the idea of giving ETH another year or two under new structure doesn't really make sense. If he can't get anything out of this bunch of players, bring in someone who can and build from there.
I see, I have a few points about this. First ETH initial style is transition football that's what he was doing before Ajax, at Ajax he adapted to the club's requirement which makes it obvious that there was no certainty that he would take that anywhere else, the other thing is that he hasn't made any special effort to play a more "progressive" game even if we imagine that it was his intention at the beginning of last season, that attempt didn't last more than a month which doesn't indicate a particular appetite for it in the first place.
Regarding Rangnick comment it's important to remember to things, first teams have physical conditioning plans that start during preseason and are tailored for a particular style and particular outputs, Rangnick has one style which is a fairly aggressive version of gegenpress that is nearly impossible to adopt quickly during the season for tactical reasons but primarily due to the completely different type of conditioning that it requires and needs to planned months ahead, you also need to rotate players at a higher rate unless you want to kill them and Ole had the habit to not rotate and run players into the ground.
There are definitely spells in games when we are on the front foot and pressing well - usually at the start of games, the first half hour against Liverpool being a good example. But the mental fragility of the team means that once something goes wrong the whole thing tends to fall apart. The mental fragility has been there for a long time now. Whether he adapted to Ajax or not, he has shown that he can do it, no?
It seemed to me from his comments that Rangnick's assessment was that the players didn't have the capacity to reach the physical levels required to consistently play that style. I may be misinterpreting though, of course. He seemed to think major surgery was required on the squad to get us going in the right direction again. Something I agree with either way.
Whether it is the current manager, or someone else, it is vital that a huge portion of the playing staff are moved on.
Last edited:
Aye, then our opponents adapt and start to take control like Mayweather.
They certainly were not. They had an utterly dominant period for about 35 minutes (40th minute through to the 75th minute), but before and after that we were the slightly better team.
That game could easily have gone either way. They could have run away with it during that 35 minutes of domination, or we could have put a couple more in the back of the net on either side of that period.
I thought I was responding to a different post I guess.
Point is, it’s hard to assess the players when they are being managed by managers who are inadequate.
It was a retort to our easy cup win last season. And, we were better first half for sure and then fairly shite second half. I would definitely blame the manager for not winning it.
I love that Ole's lows gets dismissed. There was a-lot of well below average spells. Both are/were nowhere near good enough, yes.
They don’t get dismissed though. ETH has just been worse at its worst.
They most certainly do get dismissed. I'm assuming post-PSG right up until Bruno came in, was as bad as anything we've seen under ETH.
Yes but there's been 3 windows since where it could have been addressed. After Martinez's bad injury last year and how we struggled in his absence, a back-up of a similar profile would have been an idea last summer or even this winter.
Poorly worded on my part, I meant ''a manager'' hypothetically.[/QUOTE]
Outside of the away win to Everton and the home win over West Ham. Have we looked decent in or controlled any other games?
That's true for every team that is around 50% of possession which is the majority of decent transition teams. Regarding Rangnick's comment unless the players have medical conditions that prevent them to focus on HIIT which is highly unlikely for any of them let alone most of them. The ability to physically play that style is entirely based on the quality of the conditioning work, the only thing is that as I said it's something that requires planning is initially extremely tiring, require rest period, and takes months.
To be clear, teams that have a style built around more frequent/longer sprint phases do not train like a team that has a style built around ball possession and shorter/less frequent sprints. And Rangnick's style is at one of the extreme end of intensity.
How many times this season have we seen leaks from the dressing room that the players aren't happy with how intense the training has been though? Do they just not want to put in the conditioning work to get to the required levels then do you think?
[/QUOTE]
It was, but the club refused to pay Maguire's exit fee. During the winter transfer windows there were no funds given to address anything long term.
Yes and my point is that in context of the league, which is showing all other sides apart from 3 of the best in the world are also conceding a fair amount, that it’s actually surprisingly ok.
If other sides in a similar position to us were remarkably better then I’d take you point but I don’t think our current squad is (in its injury plagued state) far superior to that of Spurs or Villa. Fully fit and firing maybe.
I think ignoring wider league context is silly. We all play the same sides so one season you can compare within to other sides. Comparing across seasons I think is harder.
I wasn’t the person who only made a post about defence. You were. So if you wanted to discuss goal difference you could have opened with that.
For what it’s worth I agree. Our goals and goals conceded won’t long term be conducive to sporting excellence, it does need sorting but we’re not realistically going to do so when we have so many rotations.
It’s a sobering fact but it’s reality.
It's usually a buying club that pays that.
Even so if Maguire had to stay because the club couldn't shift him on. We still the best part of £200m on players last summer, if Martinez or a player of his profile is so vital to Ten Hags system working then some of that money should have been allocated towards another CB as a priority.
First those leaks have to be actual leaks and not one of the made up stories that the press (MEN) publish based on a post on the caf or reddit. And there is a fine line between high intensity and recklessness, it's not a good idea to train at a high intensity all season long because it is going to provoke stress and fatigue injuries, it will also affect the ability to repeat efforts when it matters, essentially during games, late in games or late during the season. Rest is part of training, managing fatigue and adapting intensity during the course of the season is also important.
As a basic example teams that intend to play deep into the season will generally build a conditioning program that is meant to see them peak around the final third of the season which is done by lighter conditioning at first and then you crank up in the middle first and then go down again in order to not empty the tanks; you build your fitness during the course of the season and do some maintenance at the end.
Now outside of some exceptions players aren't lazy and they aren't dumb either, they know and feel the risks of improper physical training, it creates fatigue which can't be avoided, it creates injuries and form irregularity.
So you're saying a DOF is going to fix the gaps in our midfield? Perhaps our new technical director will stop the 33 shots we concede on our goal per game? Maybe our new sporting director will manage the substitutions better?
Every single club on the planet has players they couldn't sell and have to play but for some reason ours are League 2 quality because it just couldn't be the manager now could it? Nah, the issue is definitely our leading goalscoring midfielder McTomminay with his 11 goals and 4 assists this season. If he would have been sold in the summer we'd be tearing up the league and Champions League. What a bastard he is...
The same players he had the 'great' season with (generous, it was 8 months max) are the same players + more of 'his players' he had last season. It's almost like he's making them worse the longer he spends with them.
Injuries are a valid excuse, but only if we were playing some form of recognisable style of football and it was clear he was trying to implement something.
We have had so many consistent leaks out of the dressing room for the last couple of years that I don't think it's right to just write them off. Funnily they do tend to up their levels when they have their wages docked through missing out on the champions league.
Your write up of how things should work isn't something I am going to disagree with, but you need the players to do their bit as well as the management staff. Regardless of who the manager is next season, we aren't getting anywhere until the whole club is pointed in the right direction. Something I don't think is possible with a lot of these players still being at the club.
You're oversimplifying things. We bought Onana who replaced De Gea's place in the squad, Hoijland replaced Weghorst/Ronaldo's spot at striker, and Mount replaced Fred. It was mentioned over and over during the summer by multiple media sources that we were in a sell to buy situation, so where exactly was there funds available to replace Maguire without him being sold?
8 months in a 10 month season with a month off for the World Cup. That's not generous, that's the season. Every single club on the planet does not have "players they couldn't sell", as you'll find when you look at City, Liverpool and Arsenal's squads. The DOF isn't the one that's supposed to fix anything overnight, but the club structure will now be one of an actual football club versus a money front, so the lethargic lifeless garbage we saw against Brentford from the players will not be the accepted standard, even if there is a managerial change which there probably will be. There was a recognizable style of football when the players actually show up for a match, and if you think the manager is instructing them to casually stroll around without the ball both in and out of posessison and go half arsed into duals then you either can't or don't want to recognize what's actually going on.
Last edited:
That was my point. 8 months if we're being generous, 6 if we're calling it what it is.
“had a great debut season which shows what he can achieve”
United fans are so unserious. If that’s the reasoning then we shouldn’t have sacked a lot of the other bums we sacked
United fans are so unserious. If that’s the reasoning then we shouldn’t have sacked a lot of the other bums we sacked
I'm not sure how Ole's lows are any better anyway. Getting beat 0-5 at Old Trafford to Pool is surely as low as it gets. I'd argue even more so than the 7-0 away from home, at least it was at Anfield.
With all the players that apparently aren't good enough now...
Spurs 6-1 at Old Trafford etc. But those results are conveniently glossed over. Genuinely from post-PSG to Bruno's arrival was absolutely hideous stuff. Both aren't good enough and both had shocking lows. Excusing one is bizarre.
Who tends to up their level when their wages are docked? And if that assertion was correct, don't you think that those people would up their level in order to not have their wages reduced?
And who are these players that prevent the club from pointing in the right direction? This season the obvious issue is tactical and it was obvious in preseason, it's a boneheaded setup that would only work if players had teleportation devices. Unless the players are somehow not following the coach instructions while also following a very specific set of instructions, which I would assume they made up themselves, game after game since preseason, I suspect that they are doing their bit the way the coaching staff instructed it.
Bruno bailed Ole out on multiple occasions. Including a goal at Brighton that happened after the final whistle...
Jesus, I'd almost erased that one from my mind. I maintain that heavy defeats on the road are never as bad as heavy defeats on home turf and those two results alone probably should have been the end of him the evening they occured.
Nobody other than Moyes was sacked after their first season. Interesting logic though.