Honest question: would you be willing to stick with him for the next 3 seasons, assuming we perform just as we have this season, if you know at the end of these 3 years he will finally have his squad?
I would unironically be curious to see how Big Sam would do for a few games with this side until May. Most of the pleasure right now is morbid, car-crash stuff, with the expectation that the cup final will be a 4-0 cruise to City (3 early goals, cruise control, United running around, and a piece de resistance in the 88 minute) and no European qualification, so it'd be fascinating at least to see how he'd deal with the defensive mess and currently horrible shape whenever possession is turned over etc
I will certainly have some admiration for our ability to just ignore reality.
The thing is I think most of us are patient enough that if we saw any positivity we could understand the need to persist. A pain before the gain kind of situation makes sense when you consider just how differently we've been coached for years.
Yeah definitely for me. Normal practice is to wait until the pressure from the media / fans becomes untenable and then a drubbing and then sack. So if we follow that pattern it's a 5-0 loss against Arsenal and then we sack him.
That's an incredibly weak argument for keeping him. It's barely worked at all, and the very few examples we have in the "worked" column were still very "headless chicken".
Well I would sack/reposition whoever negotiated these deals (which they've done), they overspent on every transfer target and that's not a managerial problem.
For me the max I'd give him is the start of next season. I would expect any manager to align with better structure and owners and see an immediate improvement in our play stylistically and in results.
City fans will be wanting us to get an interim before we play Arsenal.
Respect? No.
Again, how we are playing now is not how he actually wants the style to be executed. This is a circular argument.
Exactly. There's some logic to seeing what your backups can do, even if you don't foresee them having a long-term future, but we've been providing a patched up defense absolutely no midfield cover, then wondering why we've got massive gaps that are constantly exploited by our opposition (no matter how objectively crap they are).
No it won't but it could change the stuff happening on the pitch week to week. We've been a joke all season, with a manager who keeps making the same selections, in the same stupid system that clearly doesn't work. And repeating it over and over again in the blind hope that it will somehow start working.
How exactly do you reset the culture by making it clear complete failure and zero standards from management is tolerated? Counter intuitive...
Again, why do you think that signing players he does not necessarily want is suddenly going to turn him into a good manager? Especially considering that the players he wanted, actually players he coached in the past are some of the worst culprits (Onana, Antony, Amrabat).
There is no evidence or insinuation that he had any output or pushback or even an overlay of better candidates when these players were signed. Athletic even reported he was initially hesitant to go to Ajax for Antony. Managers need to be supported from this, because their scope is very limited in understanding player recruitment. This is why Pep/Klopp have very limited input on transfers.
He wants us to play a certain way but he knows he doesn't have the players for it. But he thinks changing the style will cost even more points in the long run.
His interview was nonsense, if he can't coach a plan B then he's no business being in a job this big. A manager with sense changes things up mid-season to save his job and try to salvage the clubs season.
Not really!
I’ll ask again, if we are not playing how he wants then why duck is he setting us up so open instead of being more pragmatic with the players we have. It’s suicide and meaningless if this isn’t how he wants his style
It's circular because your argument is contradictory. "This isn't how he wants us to play, also he won't change how we play because this how he wants us to play."
The problem is not incompetence, the problem is just giving up, going through the motions without intensity and not giving your 100%. I don't have a problem with McTominay not playing like prime Zidane / a guy like Fred loosing the ball due to a terrible pass, but I do have a problem with Rashford's half arsed attempts at pressing or Sancho downing tools because the manager dared to criticize him a tiny bit.
Thanks. I think this is basically the worst thing we could do now, ie keep him with a view of sacking him next year. We should not be expecting big improvement next season because if the reason we are keeping him is that we genuinely trust him to have this grand, long term plan, then seeing how we have failed to show any real progression so far we should by no means be expecting things to improve that dramatically after Summer, in particular with FFP constraints making it virtually impossible to make significant changes to the squad and buy him the players he needs.
You didn’t really answer he question. He wants to play a certain way yes. But the poster said how we are playing is not that way. So why the feck play so open if it’s not how he wants to play anyway. I think this is his style but the players are not good enough for it. We will forever be a wide open run players to death style with him, no matter what players he has
It's been answered.
There's literally nothing contradictory about what I said. I agreed ages ago he was too stubborn and it would probably be what gets him sacked.
Ten Hag, or any coach we sign for next season will implement the style he's told by the people above him. If they want a possession based Ajax approach they'd do that, but whoever it is will need the players for it first.
If that were true then that probably makes Ten Hag look worse, you don't persevere with somthing that clearly isn't working for 10 months. You have to manage the situation, make the best with what's available to you and change things up, it's literally in the job title.
Yeah, no argument from me there. I've said dozens of times that he's been too stubborn and his unwillingness to adapt is frustrating
Why he didn't say No then? He has a veto power after all. You probably think he is intelligent. He has coached Antony in the past and knows how he plays. His intelligence, albeit limited, might have made him understand that it is better to save 80m that he could spend next season.
We have McClaren on the staff already who have worked as an actual manager, so give him the rest of the season - it can only be an improvement.
FFS
. If you don't laugh, you just have to cry.I'm not sure it will make much of a difference. Considering we'll have to have to change the squad significantly if people are going to buy into his philosophy and the Euros are on, pre-season will likely have little impact. I only see him staying because there's not really an alternative worth pursuing currently. I think that will change if Tuchel is a real option though.
Stubborn is definitely one way to describe it. But he's basically tanked a season and almost certainly got himself sacked. So I would say it's more stupid than stubborn.Yeah, no argument from me there. I've said dozens of times that he's been too stubborn and his unwillingness to adapt is frustrating
Antony was a target that the club unanimously landed on. I think the problem here is more the club's failure to put down a single right winger and say "no mate, you're getting this guy". If Klopp can suggest Brandt over Salah and still be a top coach, I think the likes of Ten Hag can make a feck-up with Antony in the boardroom too. The problem is our support was so shite we actually went ahead with experimenting with that for a fee 3x more than his supposed worth.
No, I'm claiming that we didn't actually trust our own scouts with targets to challenge his own with. We did worse than that and sacked the global scouts when he joined.
I don't think you know what we're debating anymore. I agree most of our shortlisted players are known to Ten Hag. I'm asking why this ever was the case. Why is it a club like Manchester United are so heavily reliant on the manager to propose targets of his own?
Not that I am batting for ETH to continue, but why change your mind? There is no real advantage in sacking him vs sacking him later. I mean we are 8th and at worst will finish 10th. Both sackable results.
The irony is we have players out on loan who seem more suited to his 'style' than ones we've kept. Sancho, Van de Beek and Hannibal would all cope better than Casemiro or Eriksen are.
