Another coach would just tighten up the midfield but do we really want to just do enough to get 4th? The truth is we still need a lot more to challenge.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
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Blaming INEOS for the time it took to sort out the minority purchase of the club is so absolutely ridiculous and misinformed.
Fair enough, and yes our squad building has been atrocious and while Ten Hag is the man who has built the current squad he can't take all the blame as it's an ongoing issue that in my opinion stems from giving the manager too much power over transfers.
Imagine if people applied these standards to other businesses.
I'm not a fan of sacking ETH. One thing I don't understand though is after many many games it is clear that we need more help in the midfield and teams routinely waltz through us. If that is clear, why do we persist with the 3 up front? Why not drop one of the 2 wingers and add an extra man in the midfield. Lets be honest, we're a counter-attacking team, that is our strength. Why not play to it?
- 27 different back 4 lineups - how can you possibly have patterns or consistency?
- We’re playing without a LB, when we all know last season at our best our outlet was Martinez and Shaw - down the left.
- A new goalkeeper, who our ever changing defence are unsure of. Sometimes I swear they are playing deeper than they should to protect Onana, Whilst our forwards and mids push up, leaving the huge gaps in the middle we are seeing.
- Casemiro isn’t the same player he was last season for whatever reason. He isn’t in the right spaces to break up attacks, and can get back fast enough to help out.
- We have no Fred tearing about fighting fires. He was very good at this and we have missed it this year. Bruno is trying, but he doesn’t have Fred’s tenacity and this is also pulling him out of position.
- McT is playing further forward. Kobbie likes to/is instructed to push up. We are effectively playing without a 6/DM.
- The spine of our team is kids. On Saturday right up the middle you had Kambwala, Mainoo, Hojlund. They are going to make mistakes, it’s just part of their learning curve.
- The players who aren’t injured are clearly knackered. We are petering out like we did last season.
I think that makes sense of the situation, but I’m not sure how you combat those issues in the situation we find ourselves currently. This squad is what it is - we are a developing team and key pieces need replacing. There is no easy fix or quick tactical change that could make a drastic improvement.
I agree mate, my only point was this squad is capable of finishing in a higher position than it's shown this season. It's not on the same level as City's squad or even Arsenals right now.
Sack INEOS Sell Club
No, but more than one striker would help.
This post deserves another bump. Brilliant analysis and bang on.
Which players are medicore is very subjective. You can't have 24 World Class players, every squad even title winning squads need squad players who are good enough to come in and do a job while not actually being good enough to be first choice. Selling 20-25+ players and bringing the same in over a 2-3 year period is something this club has tried twice now. The first time under LVG it was a spectacular failure and hobbled his predecessors for years with Solskjaer only clearing out the last of the shit he bought in 2020-2021. We've embarked on a similar gutting of the squad over the last 2 years and all indications are it isn't going any better this time around.
Personally I'd like to see a manager get more out of the players we currently have, while upgrading on them in a more organic way.
How much is a handful?
Absolutely or at least a coach that isn't a stubborn idealogue as Ten Hag seems to be. I could understand persevering with this madness up until Xmas but once we got embarrassed in the CL. Surely at that point he must realized this football just isn't working and should changed things up to salvage something from the season and save his job.
But alas despite all logic he kept playing the same way and here we are.
It’s even more ridiculous when the current Head Coaches at Villa and Spurs have shown it doesn’t take 5 years to get players to compete on a football pitch.
Indeed but is finishing 8th-9th and losing a lot of CL/Sponsorship money and not being able to offer CL football to potential targets conducive to challenging?
Still backing the manager is one thing, but some of the excuses are ridiculous
How many people thought this at the start of the season though? I feel not many. Good managers make their team perform better than sum of its parts. There is no doubt for me plenty of Spurs and Villa players look very good due to the system and roles they play in.
If we really have a worse XI than the likes of Spurs and Villa, then anybody who has had any say in the massive spending spree of the last two years should be sacked no questions asked.
Yup I'm getting shouted at now.
I also got shouted at when I had concerns about Hag in May 2023. I said it would be bad if the form from the League Cup final continues until the end of the year. It has done plus a further 4 months.
I know it's online so it's hard to judge my emotion, I'm only showing a little concern rather an all out hate agenda vs INEOS. My true concern will be August if things have continues to dither and plod along with the same excuses in play. Excuse FC is what United have been the past 10 years. INEOS was supposed to come in and take ownership. fecking do that then instead of just dither along. Make your mark on United. Or are you just another Glazer front man. Sir Jim Glazer.
Money talks.
Probably under the previous manager.
No we don’t. They are all injured, or playing through injury. This isn’t a perfect scenario.
Also not sure why you include Liverpool in this list when they are clearly a much better team on paper, yet we beat them in the cup and drew both games in the league this season. Is that not competing?
Pros and cons for him staying:
Pros: we've had many injuries this season, Martinez and Shaw unavailable basically whole season, he won us a trophy last year, players not given up on him (?), still could win a trophy this season though it's unlikely atm.
Cons: tactics and team performances, 7th in league with 12 losses and -1 GD, finished 4th in CL group behind Copenhagen and Galatasaray.
I can see board keeping him but it's not like he's deserved it. Maybe they're yet to decide over next few weeks, though not much can change. Possibly losing to Coventry would definitely be too much.
Pros: we've had many injuries this season, Martinez and Shaw unavailable basically whole season, he won us a trophy last year, players not given up on him (?), still could win a trophy this season though it's unlikely atm.
Cons: tactics and team performances, 7th in league with 12 losses and -1 GD, finished 4th in CL group behind Copenhagen and Galatasaray.
I can see board keeping him but it's not like he's deserved it. Maybe they're yet to decide over next few weeks, though not much can change. Possibly losing to Coventry would definitely be too much.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have qualified from that group, because clearly we were in great positions in the group games and threw it away with stupid errors and individual mistakes but I think many fans underestimated these teams.
edit - I made a mistake for which I plea for forgiveness. It doesn’t need to pointed out time and again, let’s move on.
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Copenhagen went deep in the knockouts?
They were beaten, handily, by City across both legs of the first round.
Galatasaray got battered 4-1 in the Europa League play-off second leg by the same Sparta Prague team that shipped 11 against Liverpool.
Was that the first round? My bad, I thought it was the quarters. Kinda stopped paying attention after we got knocked out.
Exactly.
The blame INEOS crowd:
Sir Jim needs to act and sack the manager!!….
New manager appointed same shite results…
Why would Sir Jim be involved in the footballing decisions!!…
Sir Jim needs to act and sack the manager!!….
New manager appointed same shite results…
Why would Sir Jim be involved in the footballing decisions!!…
Mentalists in here pure mentalists - no Jassim wouldn’t have had his team in place now, he’d have faced the same issues such as gardening leave etc - the only thing upto now SJR could have done within his control his sack EtH but maybe the incoming ceo has asked for it to be held off until he arrives so they can all assess the situation together.
blaming him for the January window when we knew from the get go we had no funds and no ability to move due to FFP.
absolute nut jobs.
blaming him for the January window when we knew from the get go we had no funds and no ability to move due to FFP.
absolute nut jobs.
Also, they are no doubt the same fans that have been complaining about United not making ambitious hires and not hiring the best in class.
Get that Sheikh talk outta here
Copenhagen barely eliminated Rakow Czestochowa in qualifiers and were easily disposed of by City, and Galatasaray were destroyed by Sparta Prague in EL. They are both crap, no matter how much you try to spin it. The above sounds like a joke.
In fact losing twice to Bayern without putting up much of a fight is already a disappointment this season given their form, going 1-1-2 against Galatasaray and Copenhagen would have been disappointing for ANY team entering CL, including some small league sides, it is just pure travesty for a club of Man Utd caliber and basically unprecedented.
That I doubt. But with no one in charge yet, they will wait until summer
It's like that Eric Andre meme where he shoots Hannibal Buress
"why would Jim Ratcliffe do this?"
I was no fan of Weghorst but he got the best out of Rashford by basically doing his defensive work and made the team more balanced with him in it, he was and is never a United player but unlike the current pampered pussies he always gave 110% so for that I respect him.
People already said it but it needs to be said again. Both clubs are absolutely bad in the context of top level Football. It's shocking that you even tried to suggest otherwise, also the Turkish league is terrible and has been terrible for way more than a decade.
It's like how Spurs and Villa are suddenly considered to have an obviously better squad than us, so ETH getting 6th would be meeting expectations.
Think it’s pretty evident that when our own players can identify the issues in our team it’s the manager that is becoming the problem.
Indeed. Finishing last in that group was a complete and utter embarassment. That alone would have been enough justification for the manager to lose his job, in hindsight he should have. We might have salvaged something from this season.
It would have been a massive overreaction (given the previous season).
If he loses it now though it would be justified