Turn it around to what extent? If we throw around big money then we might get top 4 again within the next 2 seasons. But I think we need to be looking over our shoulder just as much as thinking about catching those coins because I can see certain trends m teams improving and even overtaking us if they do. The likes of Villa and Spurs, with further good investment, could also cement their places ahead of us.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) was joined by comedian Ali Woods to look back at the best and worst moments of a rollercoaster season with the annual United Hour Awards.
Has Ten Hag been sacked yet? We're not sure and we hope not, but it's looking more likely as the days pass.
Who should replace him and why is it taking so long to make a decision?
Like Rangnick did you mean? Interims don’t always work. Rangnick came in December and had plenty of time to get us into the top 4. You really think an interim would have got us top 4 with less than 10 games to play. I don’t think so.
We played vile football and deserved nothing in most of the games thanks to Ten Hag's tactics, but still managed to drop 8 points to goals conceded in the 88th to 90+10th minute since February. Those points and a better performance against i.e. Bournemouth and we could be 3 points behind Villa with a game in hand.
The Bundesliga is very possible. Bayern have a bigger budget than everyone else and a better squad than everyone bar Leverkusen. They probably still shade Leverkusen even now. Alonso has turned that squad into winners quickly. A squad of potential 18 months ago.
Bayern selling off most of their squad depth to fund Kane has cost them at times this season.
As for The CL, I highly doubt it.
ten Hag has a poor record in Europe:
17/18 season: Europa League Qualifying Round - 4th round exit
18/19 season: Champions League - Semi-finals
19/20 season: Champions League/Europa League - Round of 32 exit in EL
20/21 season: Champions League/Europa League - Quarter-finals of EL
21/22 season: Champions League - Round of 16 exit
22/23 season: Europa League - Quarter-finals
23/24 season: Champions League - Group stage exit
ten Hag has only made it out of The CL group stage twice. He's only reached a semi-final in Europe just once.
If you’re gonna win against giants like Juve and Real that’s not a fluke. They are perennial winners.
And that’s one more semi than you’ve ever had Aaiiyyuuoooooo - the burn is deep!
im joking
The fact he never did it again showed us it is a fluke. His Europe record is horrible. Copying from other poster you can see his incredible record by yourselfIf you’re gonna win against giants like Juve and Real that’s not a fluke. They are perennial winners.
And that’s one more semi than you’ve ever had Aaiiyyuuoooooo - the burn is deep!
im joking
17/18 season: Europa League Qualifying Round - 4th round exit
18/19 season: Champions League - Semi-finals
19/20 season: Champions League/Europa League - Round of 32 exit in EL
20/21 season: Champions League/Europa League - Quarter-finals of EL
21/22 season: Champions League - Round of 16 exit
22/23 season: Europa League - Quarter-finals
23/24 season: Champions League - Group stage exit
Di Matteo won the CL. Benitez won the CL. Tuchel won the champions league. LVG won the CL. A little known Portuguese guy called Mourinho took Porto to a CL title. This is football.
Maybe the ‘talent available to him’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
One word: Frenkie de Jong. It's like having Messi in your team.If you’re gonna win against giants like Juve and Real that’s not a fluke. They are perennial winners.
And that’s one more semi than you’ve ever had Aaiiyyuuoooooo - the burn is deep!
im joking
We're at the boom stage of the weekly ETH cycle where it's been over a week since we last played, so the big ETH fans are at their most buoyant and confident.
Monday night when we're no doubt terrible and outplayed for large periods of the game if not all the game by Palace will see us enter the bust phase.
Monday night when we're no doubt terrible and outplayed for large periods of the game if not all the game by Palace will see us enter the bust phase.
If Bayern really go in for him, I’d be shocked if he doesn’t go.
That’s not even one word. One word would be frenkiedejongitslikehavingmessiinyourteam and that’s just silly.
Ten Hag wouldnt last more than a season at Bayern, if that, but that would not be our problem.
Yep, like clockwork. We really did become RAWK.
You are welcome to be wrong.
Even with 9 games to go we had a great chance after losing to Fulham, one of the worst away teams in the PL, in pathetic fashion.
I swear you'd think Ten Hag was actually Pep with a decade of evidence of dominance in other countries with the amount of trust people are placing in him to come good
Fundamentally, there's a reason few people in most industries make decisions and most of the rest have to listen to what they're told. Just look at this forum.
We'd be just out of the Moyes era if some of these 'opinions' were actually followed.
So a manager swap essentially? Tuchel to us and Ten Hag to them
We'll do the Alexis special. Tuchel to us for free and EtH to Bayern for 10m (to pay for Ashworth).
Oh my god imagine if he took Antony and Mount with him to Bayern
I admire the fact that you think Ten Hag would win the treble at Bayern. I feel like there are shrooms or mdma or some sort of drug involved in this, but… awesome!!
Go back to law school, buddy.
ten Hag:
39 wins
12 draws
21 losses
129 points
+16 GD
Arteta:
34 wins
16 draws
22 losses
116 points
+14 GD
Klopp:
37 wins
20 draws
15 losses
131 points
+47 GD
When you factor in that both Klopp and Arteta took over during seasons instead of from the start like ten Hag, his numbers aren't great. ten Has had almost 2 full seasons with his team for the 72 games in question.
2 full pre-seasons and €445 million spent on 16 players compared to €94 million spent by Arteta during his first two seasons on 8 players. We can stretch it to €259 million on 13 players, as 13 of the 72 games carry into Arteta's 3rd season. Klopp's spending was €87 million on 8 players during his first two seasons. We can stretch it to €176 millon on 12 players, as 4 of Klopp's 72 games carry into his 3rd season.
Tbh, Arteta actually looks better than I would have thought. He took over almost exactly halfway into a season and still managed to win The FA Cup with just 2 January loan signings who barely played anyway. He was at a bigger disadvantage than both ten Hag and Klopp.
Klopp's main issue was drawing too many games at first. He didn't lose many games. ten Hag loses too many games.
Our squad shouldn't have as many issues as it does after the money we've spent. That's price Arnold and Murtough paid for going all in on ten Hag. They backed him heavily and we haven't gotten enough value for our money.
@VP89
Arteta finished 5th his second season on 69 pts and 8 his first season on 61 pts. His first season he had a GD of +16 and +13 his second season. More importantly, you could see his tactics starting to take hold.
If anything, we’ve seen the performances go down with ETH. Progress is not linear, that is true, but 47 matches is a long downward trend.
61 pts would be an accomplishment as we are now at 54
Tadić was the main reason behind ten Hag's success in general. The guy is a cheat code in Dutch football.
119 goals and 140 assists from 295 Eredivisie games for 3 clubs.
He got a rare 10/10 L'Equipe rating for his performance vs Real away.
10 goals and 13 assists from 36 CL games for Ajax.
He was always good at Southampton, but really excelled as Ajax's main man. Still pretty good at Fenerbahçe even now.
Hope that you are right about him being prepared to wait for Utd job because have my doubts
i genuinely don't get how some people can be so giddy oddly jolly and find it all so funny as they praise and back Ten Hag. It's...a bit bizarre. It's only football blah bla blah but to find it almost funny to see people dismayed at the continued backing of him is weird.
Arteta's 2nd season was technically the 20/21 season. It was his 1st full season.
While Arsenal did finish 8th again that season, they went from 56 points to 61 points and tightened up defensively (48 goals conceded down to 39 goals conceded)
Arteta has had steady success.
Points:
8th (56 points)
8th (61 points)
5th (69 points)
2nd (84 points)
1st/2nd (83-89 points)
GD:
+8
+16
+13 (slight setback in terms of goals conceded)
+45
+60
In order for ten Hag to avoid having a worse season than 20/21 Arsenal, he needs to take at least 8 points from the final 12 points available. Arteta actually got to the semi-finals of The Europa League that season. ten Hag went out of Europe before Christmas.
Also, I believe manager of Man United and Arsenal is different. I do think that the pressure cooker that is Man United means that we need elite managers that can deliver results quickly. This is similar to Real, Barca, Bayern, PSG and Juventus. It’s the job, that’s why we pay 9m. If you don’t want that pressure, go manage West Ham…
Oh look, people are yet again having to helpfully and patiently explain why Arteta had a much better first two seasons in management, showing consistent improvement in results, than 10-year managerial veteran ETH managed in his first two seasons with us.
Erik can rebuild his management career in Germany whilst we get a guy more experienced at big clubs
I agree.
The club and some fans like to call Manchester United the biggest football club in the world. But we often don't act like it.
The club were quite ruthless with both Moyes and LvG. It's been a circus act since Mourinho's 2nd season concluded.
How a club of this size ended up with Solskjaer as manager for almost 3 years and are now potentially accepting a top 6/7 finish as good enough for another chance, I'll never know.
Our record in Europe is pretty meh for a club of our size. Not enough pressure is placed on managers to deliver on that front. Most fans were happy with the bread and butter (PL title) during Fergie's reign. It's disappointing that for all of his success, we don't have a period of dominance in Europe like Real, Milan, Liverpool, Bayern, Barcelona and even Ajax have had. 3 European Cups and just 5 major European trophies overall. It's the one thing Liverpool have over us. But anyway, I'm getting off topic now. Haha.
Regarding the bolded, that is only the case if:
a) The plan will work.
b) The plan will allow him to implement the style that INEOS wants.
c) He's capable of implementing that plan throughout the squad.
d) He's capable of adjusting the plan as we go.
Every manager has a plan. It means nothing unless all four of the above points are true. Giving a manager who isn't good enough the players he needs just wastes more time, allows bad habits to get ingrained (we had a bunch of talented young players that Mourinho and Ole didn't develop correctly, and I'm worried about the same happening to our current youngsters), and wastes more money through lack of success (prizemoney, television money, sponsorships and potentially transfer fees if those players aren't right for the next manager).
Strange, as there's nothing happening on the field that lends itself to that conclusion. What we're actually seeing is the exact opposite - him making the same mistakes time after time after time this season. There's basically nothing different now than what there was at the beginning of the season.
Unless you think he has to wait until the season is over, watch all our games back again to then see where he went wrong and make changes for the future.
The single most costly thing that can happen is us miss out on CL qualification again next season. It far outweighs sacking ETH and bringing in a new manager. So it boils down to whether a new manager makes it more likely that we qualify for the CL.
That's because a significant chunk of RedCafe users are just bandwagoners, not real fans of this club. A real fan would take into consideration all the factors leading to a result instead of jumping at the manager's throat without much thought.
Personally I was against signing Ten Hag, but you can't deny he's had a freak injury-ridded season that even the likes of SAF would've had trouble competing for top 4. Having watched his interview with Neville, I thought he was right about most things he said and his so called "excuses" by people in this thread were completely valid.
All in all, while I don't know if Ten Hag is the right manager going forward I believe giving him another season to prove himself with the right structure behind him would indeed be the right choice from INEOS.
He had more than half a seasons headstart Ten Hag in the process. I also disagree re. The tactics point, he was generally seen as a manager out of his depth for a club like Arsenal even in year 2.5 and the majority of fans wanted him out.
My biggest issue is that I don't see any good to come out of this style of play this season. I see two possible options:
If it's #2, I could understand sticking to it this season if it was something that would benefit our players in the future as they got used to this style. But closing that space in the middle will change so much across the entire team, what we're seeing now is basically pointless. It'd make much more sense to push the defence up now even if individual players aren't particularly suited to it, and wear the mistakes this season with the knowledge that the team as a whole will be better for it in the long term. Klopp's early days at Liverpool are an obvious example where you could see the good stuff right from the beginning and felt it would improve as time wore on, even though there were definite teething issues.
I look at our players and think to myself, how many players are actually getting any benefit or experience that will stand them in good stead in future seasons, more than they would if we played more similarly to how we did last season?
Attackers? No. They are the ones least impacted by this playstyle, but our inability to control anything means they are getting less service, less build-up and having to rely on scraps. I don't see any benefit at all.
Midfielders? No. If the plan is to close up all that space in the future, what benefits do they get from spending this entire season getting overrun? All it's doing is making it significantly more difficult for them. You could say that Mainoo/McTominay/Mount are getting used to playing higher up like we want them in the future, but the overrun middle of the park holds far more negatives than that very small benefit.
Central defenders? No. Most will probably have to be sold, so there's no future benefit. And for any that do remain, the fact we are getting so overrun and having the opposition constantly running at them in huge space doesn't do any good and will be completely different than what will happen if the plan is to push up higher in the future.
Fullbacks? This is the one position that I can see some benefit for the future. Dalot and even AWB are getting used to inverting and helping out in more central areas. Of course if that's how we want to use our fullbacks then AWB isn't going to be good enough, so it's really just about Dalot.
Keeper? Nope. Makes it harder to play the ball out when in possession, and is on the end of a ridiculous barrage of shots when out of possession.
So when I look at this season, Dalot is literally the only player in the entire squad that I see being able to use these tactics in positive development for the future. Mainoo and Garnacho are getting plenty of game time so it's positive in that sense for them, but there'd be more positives if they were playing in the same system as we used last season. Hell, that'd probably even be true for Dalot, as he was already inverting quite a bit last season and could easily have increased it anyway like he has.
- This is the planned playstyle, with the incredibly open midfield, deep lying defence and attack pushed up. ETH just thinks that better players will allow it to work.
- The plan is that with more suitable defenders, the defence will push up higher and close that space in the middle of the pitch.
If it's #2, I could understand sticking to it this season if it was something that would benefit our players in the future as they got used to this style. But closing that space in the middle will change so much across the entire team, what we're seeing now is basically pointless. It'd make much more sense to push the defence up now even if individual players aren't particularly suited to it, and wear the mistakes this season with the knowledge that the team as a whole will be better for it in the long term. Klopp's early days at Liverpool are an obvious example where you could see the good stuff right from the beginning and felt it would improve as time wore on, even though there were definite teething issues.
I look at our players and think to myself, how many players are actually getting any benefit or experience that will stand them in good stead in future seasons, more than they would if we played more similarly to how we did last season?
Attackers? No. They are the ones least impacted by this playstyle, but our inability to control anything means they are getting less service, less build-up and having to rely on scraps. I don't see any benefit at all.
Midfielders? No. If the plan is to close up all that space in the future, what benefits do they get from spending this entire season getting overrun? All it's doing is making it significantly more difficult for them. You could say that Mainoo/McTominay/Mount are getting used to playing higher up like we want them in the future, but the overrun middle of the park holds far more negatives than that very small benefit.
Central defenders? No. Most will probably have to be sold, so there's no future benefit. And for any that do remain, the fact we are getting so overrun and having the opposition constantly running at them in huge space doesn't do any good and will be completely different than what will happen if the plan is to push up higher in the future.
Fullbacks? This is the one position that I can see some benefit for the future. Dalot and even AWB are getting used to inverting and helping out in more central areas. Of course if that's how we want to use our fullbacks then AWB isn't going to be good enough, so it's really just about Dalot.
Keeper? Nope. Makes it harder to play the ball out when in possession, and is on the end of a ridiculous barrage of shots when out of possession.
So when I look at this season, Dalot is literally the only player in the entire squad that I see being able to use these tactics in positive development for the future. Mainoo and Garnacho are getting plenty of game time so it's positive in that sense for them, but there'd be more positives if they were playing in the same system as we used last season. Hell, that'd probably even be true for Dalot, as he was already inverting quite a bit last season and could easily have increased it anyway like he has.
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2015
- Messages
- 15,206
- Supports
-
The bold is revisionism.
He was widely derided in the media, social media and by his own fans as being a fraud, BTEC Pep, too obsessed with crosses and out of his depth.
April 2021 - Worst record out of Wenger and Emery. Some in media saying they played like a championship side and many fans not wanting another season.
November to December 2021 - 7 league games without a win. Again intense pressure to sack him.
What he did do throughout his tenure is that he talked about culture and had Edu to help him bring in the right players and ship out the wrong ones even bigger names like Ozil and Aubameyeng.
It’s also worth mentioning that some of the most significant improvement in certain areas came from elsewhere. They also got in a new set piece coach in 21/22 season that meant they went from 6 goals from set pieces (17th in the league) to 16 (3rd) and after this appointment didn’t concede a set piece until the following April.
Arsenal are now one of the most dominant sides from set pieces in the league.
Yes the managers are responsible for lots and lots of things and sometimes they deserve the sack. Heck from the outside I would have sacked Arteta too. But when you look at the most recent challenger to City what they did was sort the footballing structure and culture out whilst giving Arteta the players and time to create the new culture and develop a successful team.
Even now though they still haven’t won anything greater than what Ten Hag has at United.
What did you back up? You simply made a statement saying he is not top 6 cbs you backed up absolutely nothing its just your opinion
He is probably from Holland. They are sensitive about their "football stuff".
A lot of them will suport Liverpool from next season.
So you reckon League Cup and FA Cup are equal?