I am intrigued.
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?
He can't even scream. The poor lad got blamed for two things he never does.
YesFoden?
Crazy innit.Wait, what? Did you just give Ten Hag credit for Rashford’s season last year and absolve him of blame for his poor season this year?
And that was because the team properly executed Ten Hag’s tactics last year (4-2-3-1) but not this year (4-3-3)? So Rashford is just a passenger of destiny, he has no responsibility for his performances. But also, Ten Hag has no accountability for the performances in his 4-3-3 this year because the team is not/refuses to execute the way it was designed.
‘For fecks sake, it is a ****.
It’s a bit backwards, it’s as if they expect elite athletes to be super human.
Elite athletes or not if you’re ran into the ground, you’re ran into the ground and out of energy. Injuries are going to occur. They’re only human after all.
In English, we can blame him means he is accountable. Our tactics from last year to this formation wise haven't changed too much and now a days those formations in particular are two sides of the same coin, so I haven't the slightest clue what you're on about there either. It's not a ****, it's just posters that know more football than you.Wait, what? Did you just give Ten Hag credit for Rashford’s season last year and absolve him of blame for his poor season this year?
And that was because the team properly executed Ten Hag’s tactics last year (4-2-3-1) but not this year (4-3-3)? So Rashford is just a passenger of destiny, he has no responsibility for his performances. But also, Ten Hag has no accountability for the performances in his 4-3-3 this year because the team is not/refuses to execute the way it was designed.
‘For fecks sake, it is a ****.
Rashford thrived last season because a system that relies on quick passes between the lines allowed him more space to be isolated on the wing as well as allowing our midfielders time to look up and see his runs cutting in between the full backs and the center backs. Because we played with more energy overall we won the ball back more frequently to keep him more engaged in the match, and while he drifted here and there without the ball, he was definitely more proactive in his movement, and that makes a big difference as defenders know they need to be aware of him at all times when he's engaged in the match. Because we put more pressure on the ball collectively and defended higher up the pitch (staple of most progressive systems) he didn't have to constantly sprint up and down the pitch. The tactical requirements haven't changed, it's still a system that relies on proactive movement without the ball and defending higher up the pitch by not only harassing the opposing player with the ball, but working to cut off passing lanes. What we've seen a lot of this season is some pressure on the ball without working to cut off passing lanes, and that's down to the collective work rate. Rashford isn't a player that's going to stay engaged when the collective energy of the team is low, and because we haven't been winning the ball back in midfield with as much frequency, he's had far less opportunities to go at defenses that are scrambling to get back into shape, and when our players are not proactive without the ball, there's less quick passes between the lines making our midfielders a lot easier to mark.Crazy innit.
I've said it here multiple times in plain English. The manager is responsible for the players work rate and he'll get sacked if he can't get them to pick it up. It's not a ****, it's nuanced thought and understanding of football innit.
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We’ve never seen anything as bad as 7-0 yo Liverpool. Never
The last two matches under Ole against Liverpool could have ended worse than 7-0 as we didn’t turn up at all. The first half of the 7-0 was a fairly even match in which we created chances.
This has been reported heavily since last season. We don't train a system and when we do train it's intense running drills to improve conditioning. Yet people are conveniently ignoring the fact Ten Hag has said this multiple times and instead want to bang on about how unlucky we've been with injuries that's he's causing!
They didn’t. This did. Full stop.
Lewis Dunk saying how they played well tonight restricting Brentford to no shots on goal. This is all we need to inform us how utterly useless ETH is with his set up and application to PL football. We are a laughing stock on a weekly basis.
A severely depleted Brighton kept them to 5 shots and about 30% possession. Give ETH that Brighton team tonight and he'd get them relegated, I can almost guarantee it.So now we’re narrowing it down to the score because that suits our argument. The 7-0 was just one of a plethora of examples that clearly show the issues with this squad are more intangible than technical.
It’s fecking rediculous he is still our manager. I’m still amazed so many on here support him still when we look at the sides he puts out (still very good) and play so utterly shit. This comment for Dunk alone should get him sacked, let alone the horse shit he has served up for so long.
Ole's worst run got him deservedly sacked but it was never as consistently bad as the football Ten Hag has served up this season.
Even in the 'pre Bruno' spell under Ole, statistically we were one of the better sides in the league, just lacked quality attackers. The last game before Bruno being a 0-2 loss to Burnley where we had 24 shots to their 5 and 73% possession.
Even in the 'pre Bruno' spell under Ole, statistically we were one of the better sides in the league, just lacked quality attackers. The last game before Bruno being a 0-2 loss to Burnley where we had 24 shots to their 5 and 73% possession.
According to this thread we must have loaned Martinez to Brighton. The injury is a cover up.
No im saying that the lows under ETH have been lower than Oles lows.
and I put that mostly down to being stubborn about the midfield system. When you get to 4-0 down against Liverpool you should try and save face but he didn’t, he stuck with it
btw I’m not hugely ETH out or in. But he shouldn’t be protected from criticism, and rightly so. The football is by and large huge and only pure luck has us where we are. Teams with more clinical finishing would have buried us this season
And those defeats did not come almost immediately after winning a cup, while in form, positivity abound. They came when Ole was already limping on 1 leg.
That 7-0 is effectively what ended Ten Hag at United. That's the collapses patient zero. It all went downhill from there.
Ignoring the end result, I'm not sure there was a worse performance than our recent one vs Brentford post-SAF. It was that bad. There were bad performances under Moyes, LVG, Jose and Ole too obviously. But Brentford dominated us to such an extent, you'd probably think we were a side from league 1 playing title contenders. It was deplorable in every aspect.
And then no matter what, ETH did oversee our worst result in modern history. I honestly think he should have been sacked then. Hindsight is 20-20, but losing 7-0 to Liverpool was just unacceptable. He didn't have any goodwill to survive that kind of result. And since then, we have been a calamity in results and performances.
And then no matter what, ETH did oversee our worst result in modern history. I honestly think he should have been sacked then. Hindsight is 20-20, but losing 7-0 to Liverpool was just unacceptable. He didn't have any goodwill to survive that kind of result. And since then, we have been a calamity in results and performances.
Ole's issues were always a general lack of repeatable structure. Both building from the back (we didn't have a clue how so it ended up being "give it to Pogba and hope he does something worldly"), and going forward it was quite off the cuff. Ten Hag's different in that his issues are that his actual coaching and methods of structure fecking suck. It's quite clear what we are trying to do in each phase (as opposed to Ole where you wondered what we even did pre match apart from working on counters), but what we are trying to do now is so clearly ineffective and suicidal which might honestly be worse than a coach that doesn't have a clear structure, because in this instance there's is a complete unwillingness to adapt or worse an acceptance with the current style. Any decent manager you'd think could see that pressing ultra high with 5, going man for man in the middle, and sitting the back line deep both isn't well suited to our squad and also hasn't worked almost the entire year. Yet we persist game after game with it, and then wonder why we continuously see the same results (regardless of who is fit or injured) in the general run of play. On top of that, assuming this style is pretty close to what Ten Hag envisioned for how he wished to play, we didn't buy at ALL well for that level of physical robustness that a team would need for this style. For what we do to even come close to being consistently effective we'd need a squad full of athletic runners all over the place to go toe to toe with anyone in the league for PnP. Instead a large majority of our transfers have been closer to the opposite, with only Hojlund and Mount fitting that description.
It all adds up to a complete lack of confidence in the manager to identify his own issues and to rectify them, because he's shown 0 willingness or acceptance of them so far and doesn't seem even really think there are core issues at hand with himself apart from having "poor injury luck" and bad luck in matches.
Which is why it's so maddening that many just shrug their shoulders and blame injuries. I've seen many Championship sides put up better performances than that yet we have an entire squad full of players that would walk into the Championship and start at almost every position even today. The fact that it's deemed acceptable just because Martinez or Shaw is fecking hurt is laughable.
We are now sitting 14th in xPts. That's not a typo. 14th in xPTs. The last time I checked before, we were 12th. So, we are regressing even more with our performances.
Our xGD is also negative. I've been saying this, but we have been incredibly lucky to be sitting in 6th. Our performances are so bad, that forget being worthy of top 4, it's not even been worthy of a top-half finish.
I truly don't understand the defense he's getting from a few posters. He has no previous goodwill at the club. No long-term ties to the club. He doesn't even have a proven top 5 league pedigree of challenging for a title. People who bring up last season as a sign he's a great manager are relying on a 2-3 month spell where we played decent/good football. And they're ignoring the longer length of period where we've not played well and suffered heavy defeats galore. It's truly mind-boggling at this point.
There's been plenty of managers who got their club to the CL semi-final. Heck, Jardim's work with Monaco easily eclipsed what ETH achieved with Ajax.
Our xGD is also negative. I've been saying this, but we have been incredibly lucky to be sitting in 6th. Our performances are so bad, that forget being worthy of top 4, it's not even been worthy of a top-half finish.
I truly don't understand the defense he's getting from a few posters. He has no previous goodwill at the club. No long-term ties to the club. He doesn't even have a proven top 5 league pedigree of challenging for a title. People who bring up last season as a sign he's a great manager are relying on a 2-3 month spell where we played decent/good football. And they're ignoring the longer length of period where we've not played well and suffered heavy defeats galore. It's truly mind-boggling at this point.
There's been plenty of managers who got their club to the CL semi-final. Heck, Jardim's work with Monaco easily eclipsed what ETH achieved with Ajax.
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Please just go away
Incredible. And all this in a season where the three promoted sides are all significantly poorer than usual too.
That's good news. It shows there is clearly pressure on him to deliver results.
No you cant. This season has been shit but ETH has done well every other season of his career. He might do worse than De Zerbi and De Zerbi could very well be a better coach/manager but ETH isnt a clueless manager like some pretend he is. He makes mistakes and the football has been shit for quite a while now but you dont go from one of the 'hottest' managers in Europe to a Steven Gerrard quality of manager.
Villas Boas won the treble with Porto and was labeled the next Mourinho.
My feeling is that the urgency isn't there until they feel it a little in their paypacket. It feels like most players have been coming to the club in recent years for a good salary rather than sporting success. A culture likely set by Woodward and co. when he was at the helm.
I think the mental fragility of a lot of the players means that once something goes wrong in a game then the gameplan goes out the window. It takes so little for their confidence to be rattled. Whether the tactical approach is correct or not is another matter of course. If you are comfortable with this squad starting the season at the club again next season, then fair enough. I would like to see a proper clear out that has been needed for years.
Yeah, that centredevils twitter is a pile of shite.
They could say Ten Hag has given in to sucking Jim off or giving him a rusty trombone in order to save his job and people would still believe it.
If he stays and does an Arteta, it's gonna feel good to think back about this period because the reality right now is fecking depressing.
Massive if of course.
Massive if of course.
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i knew he would come up!Villas Boas wasnt that bad. He didnt live up to the next Mourinho hype but was he that bad? Old Chelsea players didnt believe in his ideas. He seems to have done okay at Spurs with the wikipedia claim that he reached the highest amount of points but still didnt get in the CL finish. He won some in Russia.
Sure. More was expected but totally clueless would harsh. Totally clueless is a Steven Gerrard quality manager who almost relegated Aston Villa while his successor battles for CL spots with the same team. Villas Boas nor ETH would relegate current Brighton like that post claimed. Doesnt mean that is Manchester United manager material though.
No one, which makes it it odd why some think ETH deserves a third season, largely based off his first season.
The quote comes from the pre-match press conference
There's quite some middle ground between bad and miraculous.
Agreed, I just don't see how last seasons performances gives him enough credit in the bank to justify keeping him for next season, given how this season has gone. Injuries are a factor but the lack of progress in terms of performances and style of play to me is the biggest concern. We don't look like a team that is missing a killer up front or a team that needs to cut out defensive mistakes, our performances in general look flawed systematically which is a bigger concern.
All I'm disagreeing on is the reasons behind what's happening. It's a results oriented business which is why I've said 100 times he should be sacked if the results don't improve, but there's a group of posters who don't understand that what we saw against Brentford from our players doesn't meet the minimal standards required of professional football, let alone at a club like United, and it's been like that all season. The idea that players don't work without the ball because of tactics just lacks any nuanced understanding of the sport. More importantly, it's indicative of the standard that has been set at the club, and sacking the manager won't change those standards.
We don't look like a team that gives a shite. Every manager should ultimately be judged by results, and if they don't improve he'll get sacked, but the trend of this thread is posters that lack any sort of nuanced understanding with a pitchfork up their arse because they don't know their arse from their elbow and the zenith of their understanding is showing up with pitchforks at the manager's door step.