Disagree. If we had been more clinical we could have easily scored 3/4 and we didn’t concede until we tired and the subs weakened our team.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
Surely now they are in charge of the Footballing side of things that rule doesn't have to remain in place
It's not really. There's something a bit unhinged about our fanbases relationship with the managers role - I just think it might be worth studying.
We had 3 shots all game 1 worldie on target. How about if City had have been clinical with their 27 shots 8 on target? Their first goal was on 56 mins as well. If we are tired by then, then what crap training they getting?
@Withnail was right, it was a very weird post. You may want to let it go and try to forget it
LVG taught a much worse team to play possession football here. Ange did it with a Spurs team that was dreadful and had just lost their best player. There's many examples of it in the PL. And I'm not just talking about "the players we have available at the moment" as this has been an issue for longer than just this season.
Lopetegui is a manager with pedigree and I mentioned him as a potential caretaker option. He's shown in his career that he can get a team playing good football. I don't think it's fair for you to come up with every excuse in the book for Ten Hag, but then point to Potter's time at Chelsea where they were in much bigger disarray than we are/were and had somebody without a clue about football making all of their signings.
Out of interest, which managers would you consider to replace Ten Hag? You dismiss practically everyone based on some failure somewhere in their career, but I've not really seen you stick your neck out and give any names.
2 exceptions even for that era of football, even more for modern football.
So are Manchester United fans just completely out of touch with football then? Has modern football left them behind? And they're just holding their club back based on outdated ideas?
Potentially but I don't see how it's holding the club back, the fans don't make the decisions. If the people in charge are basing their decisions based on fans being nostalgic or sentimental then they're clearly incompetent, it has nothing to do with the supporters.
And after scoring easily 3/4, with a little luck, we could have scored another 3/4. City barely escaped a 0-8 loss...
It's fair to say United fans get more invested in their managers than probably any other fanbase. For reasons that are sentimental rather than rational.
Talking purely post SAF.
Talking purely post SAF.
Because fan sentiment matters. The likes of Madrid, Bayern and co have ruthless fans and they drive that culture at those clubs.
The likes of Chelsea & Man City have passive fans who go along for the ride.
We have loud, opinionated fans who constantly egg the club into making wrong decisions based on sentiment. That's the real uphill battle of this club.
If we attacked more, we'd have lost 7-0 cause ten Hag hasn't got a clue how to do it right.
Defensive football was the only way today.
I really don't think it's specifically a Man Utd fans things but more of a British culture thing and we happen to be one of the last and most British big clubs around. I remember Carragher not too long ago saying the same about Liverpool fans and how they idolise their manager like no other. I think he said something like how Liverpool fans are the only ones who would have a flag for their manager and that would be Benitez who wasn't bad there but still! British football culture is built on the cult of a larger than life personality who manages the club and staff and is fairly laissez faire when it comes to coaching and tactical work from Busby, Shankly, Paisley, Clough to Sir Alex and many others who were less successful.
The modern Chelsea and City were constructed by international people who imposed ther own culture on the club based on what they thought was working on the world stage whereas Liverpool and especially us still have a very strong British identity. If we manage to find an equivalent to Klopp, it wouldn't be a problem but that's very low percentage since managers of that calibre are a rarity for a reason. To run us in a similar manner to the big Spanish or German clubs however is really asking for a complete overhaul in the setup of the club and a change in the profile and requirement of the managerial position from manager to a head coach. It is what Liverpool look to be trying to do now Klopp is leaving and what Chelsea and City have already been doing for years.
What fanbase are you comparing us to? Because it shouldn’t be Spurs or the like. The only comparable one as far as I can tell is Arsenal. There’s no other team that has gone through a big drop in average accomplishment over the same period. This matters because it affects expectations and blame allotment. I wouldn’t call it sentimental.
What you're saying has no foundation nor does it make any sense, as again - we've already seen managers that aren't close to being the world's best, do better. "No manager would have succeeded" is not grounded in reality - it might as well be the 8th Harry Potter book. This is without mentioning that the notions of needed change in club substructure as well as managerial staff, aren't mutually exclusive. I'm yet to see a poster here "just blaming the coach".
We played far worse today than we did in that game honestly. The scoreline was absurd but in reality they scored basically every shot (thanks DDG) and we actually had chances in the first half before losing our heads late.
Today we just got embarrassed from the 20th minute on as if we were a League One side playing in the FA cup at the Etihad.
Very key point. Most of us also agree the many of the players need to be gone as well. But it's become so obvious that in a pure coaching and tactical sense that Ten Hag isn't it.
Real, Barca, Bayern, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal
The first 4 the fanbases dont even need a drop in average accomplishment to turn on their coaches.
That's just not true at all.
I don’t think it’s so obvious. We see the build up and the patterns of play—notwithstanding all the unforced errors—until we get to the final 3rd. And we’ve seen our press succeed at a high level albeit erratically due to weak links. This says to me that with the right players we’d be much more competitive.
Yeah but before each change they’ve seen their players succeed and so it’s easier to lay the blame at the manager. Not one set of our players has been successful while here and a painful few have been successful afterward. I think this was a major reason why it was so easy to turn on Moyes.
I think it stems from a bit of ego something akin to "we arent the same as those nouveau rich clubs who keep changing managers" which is fecking bullcock obviously. Clubs change managers all the time even the best of the best (Real, Bayern, Barca, etc) do it more often than not. If ETH managed like this in Real he would have been sacked thrice already.
It was 2005-06. We finished 2nd that year.
I would love know when ETH was hit with the fact he couldn't apply his Ajax tactics at Utd. Did he know before he was hired and said as much to the numpties running the club? Was it after his first week or two at the club? I do wonder.
It is ironic that he ditched his possession style and resort to "hoof and run transition football" for short term results but in the end we got no short term results at all.
his results cannot compared to likes of Klopp and Arteta's first years - both of them were trying to build a new style of play but things were not clicking yet. The "hoof and run transition football" Erik is building will bring us to nowhere.
his results cannot compared to likes of Klopp and Arteta's first years - both of them were trying to build a new style of play but things were not clicking yet. The "hoof and run transition football" Erik is building will bring us to nowhere.
Has to go
Too many? You mean 99.9999% of the time I believe.
Man City had more shots than we had possession.
They had 27 shots and we had 26% possession.
ETH comes out after the game, saying it was a good performance, fine margins.
How can our players take him seriously.
They had 27 shots and we had 26% possession.
ETH comes out after the game, saying it was a good performance, fine margins.
How can our players take him seriously.
This is what I always thought about Rashford.
Rashford's lack of worth ethic is so obviously down to him knowing that Ten Hag isn't good enough anymore.
The tactics, the lack of control, the poor transfers like Antony, Onana & Malacia. How can anyone take him seriously?
It's easy for all the fans lying down on sofa's for 90 mins to say "work hard by playing for your badge" - but these players are people with strengths and weaknesses, not robots assigned to do a job.
Last edited:
I do think that pressure and fan expectations have a big influence on how top european clubs operate. I just can't see Real holding 7 to Barcelona and the manager coming out relatively unscathed
It definitely is true. We weren't fun to watch but we were a decent possession side under Van Gaal, just we used it extremely defensively.
Hahahaha what the actual feck
The 13 mile run is going to be remembered like the Rogers letters at Liverpool, extreme cring
On the talk of the devils podcast they were taking about our injury numbers. We have played 25 different back 4 combinations in 38 matches so far. Hard to get a team to play well with that level of disruption.
I have hesitated to post this cuz I don't want to be jumped upon saying how can you want ETH to still continue etc...me posting this does not mean I want him to continue. I just recognize some of the circumstances of why he/ team is underperforming, while recognizing how he is contributing to some of our issues.
Think posters have a valid point who say him staying until end of the season could kill morale further. We might actually have a chance against scousers in FA Cup with someone else in charge but won't happen
Not even close. We were defensive, but Possession was about 55/45 in Barca favor, not like 75/25 against us as in this match. This wasn't even a good park the bus job.
I actually see the players still trying and haven't gotten to the stage of thought thru the motions.
I am actually surprised they are still playing for ETH.
Should be sacked immediately. But no, we like it better to diddle our thumbs while it all burns down. Really hoped INEOS would be proactive in this regard, but alas.. I mean when will we realize that sacking a non perfomer is done in all jobs all across the world. It's not a crime. Jesus.
City had more shots than our possession and this deluded bozo really thought we defended brilliantly. He needs to see a shrink. Either he's dumb or he's a delusional jobber
Last edited:
Forget the structure, forget the recruitments, but isn’t it a manager’s job to make a team play better than sum of its parts, otherwise what’s the point of a manager? Even Fergie never had a team full of superstars.
Isn’t it his job to give players confidence to make them play better even if they are ok players?
Or only when we have the perfect structure, the perfect squad, the perfect pitch, the perfect tea lady, the perfect fans (all of which has never happened in the history of football) then we can start to judge Eric?
How do you trust him when his own self analysis of every game is that we are progressing when in the entire season we have hardly deserved and won games.
What if his ceiling is this? After all even Frank De Boer has won more Dutch titles than him.
Who knows he may be just the Dutch Moyes. His achievement is playing Ajax football they have played since past 60 years and losing the semis of CL which plenty of other managers have done. Why should we trust him in the Ineos era?
Isn’t it his job to give players confidence to make them play better even if they are ok players?
Or only when we have the perfect structure, the perfect squad, the perfect pitch, the perfect tea lady, the perfect fans (all of which has never happened in the history of football) then we can start to judge Eric?
How do you trust him when his own self analysis of every game is that we are progressing when in the entire season we have hardly deserved and won games.
What if his ceiling is this? After all even Frank De Boer has won more Dutch titles than him.
Who knows he may be just the Dutch Moyes. His achievement is playing Ajax football they have played since past 60 years and losing the semis of CL which plenty of other managers have done. Why should we trust him in the Ineos era?