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Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
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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?
Well there is a Midfielder waiting for his move to us since June so is that not a opportunity unless the Amrabat links are rubbish.
They weren't rubbish, he was on top of a list of who would replace Scott McTominay if he would leave. But he ain't leaving by current terms.
We have only one good GK, defence made of glass, midfield without proper 8 and fecking McTominay as first sub to come on and only one real ST whose injury means our whole attacking plan goes out of the window.
I like ETH but the amount of shit he's been feeding media is unbeliavable.
Sometimes with the way ETH speaks you have to wonder if he is on the Glazers' payroll
I think that's a bit harsh and an overreaction. The team (as a team) pressed the best I can remember against Wolves, where do you think that came from compared to what it was like before he arrived?
I really can't understand all this negativity towards him.
Hojlund
He's saying what he can say whilst keeping the heat off himself. However, judging his answers and his demeanor in the press conference, I think it's clear to see he's not happy.
I mean he is technically.
Well he is on their payroll.
I don't think he's has the stomach for open revolt. Not that that is the right course of action any way.
He's made signings so part of him has to be satisfied.
Thought the same but don't know what people expect.
Personality
How about identifying and solving our weaknesses rather than create new ones? Like playing with two small framed 10s in midfield or Bruno on the wing. It couldn’t have been more obvious that we needed an all rounded 6/8 with strong defensive capabilities to help fix our away game problem, it has very little to do with personality.Yeah agree. You can see he was even fed up about talking about Harry Maguire. He doesn't rate Maguire at all. Just has to be nice about it.
Højlund
woosh
I was really happy overall with his first season here. However, I feel he's going to be under quite a-bit of pressure this season. We're yet to really see the fluid/cohesive football he had Ajax playing, on any kind of regular basis, which is a worry.
We had a spell after the WC where we were playing some really nice football. But, that petered out and we reverted to far less convincing performances. He does have a knack of grinding out wins even when we don't play well, but I feel that'll eventually catch up with us.
I still have faith in him despite some acting utterly insane after the Wolves game. I'm not going to lie though; this is the first time during his tenure that my confidence has dipped. It's not as a result of the Wolves game; more a combination of seeing those kinds of performances once too often, and his summer transfers having question marks over them. I'm still slightly baffled as to what direction he wants to take our midfield/frontline, and I fear they'll be his downfalls.
For me, he's still far and away the best appointment we've made post-Fergie, but there's certainly question marks as to whether he's the man to take us back to the top. A good performance where we play cohesive football tomorrow will certainly alleviate some of my concerns, but right now, I'm not overly confident.
We had a spell after the WC where we were playing some really nice football. But, that petered out and we reverted to far less convincing performances. He does have a knack of grinding out wins even when we don't play well, but I feel that'll eventually catch up with us.
I still have faith in him despite some acting utterly insane after the Wolves game. I'm not going to lie though; this is the first time during his tenure that my confidence has dipped. It's not as a result of the Wolves game; more a combination of seeing those kinds of performances once too often, and his summer transfers having question marks over them. I'm still slightly baffled as to what direction he wants to take our midfield/frontline, and I fear they'll be his downfalls.
For me, he's still far and away the best appointment we've made post-Fergie, but there's certainly question marks as to whether he's the man to take us back to the top. A good performance where we play cohesive football tomorrow will certainly alleviate some of my concerns, but right now, I'm not overly confident.
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Underrated post, and you've hit the nail on the head. I think this goes way back to Fergie's days, to be honest.
The pressing is not effective (yet). To be honest, it's difficult to call 2 players running randomly "pressing". It's just two players running. I think our pressing was more effective when Fred was playing midfield and Wout was pressing from the top + Bruno running around. What I've seen on Monday was Wolves playing through our pressing without much issue. Maybe they are very good at this, I don't know. But our pressing isn't on accepteable level yet.
On the bolded part, most improvement came from buying better players - especially in terms of "pressing". It actually looks like the main criteria for selecting players - Mount, Antony, Hojlund, Weghorst. One of those players is proven EPL quality. One failed miserably in EPL, and there are big concerns about the other 2.
I said last season in latter stages that I am slightly disappointed with the brand of football we play, which basically was more and more "vertical" since we won the Cup. However this wasn't a big concern as there were multiple factors and it was a successful season in the end.
Since the preseason I don't see what he is trying to achieve. He's the manager so deserves some trust. But still, watching this team on the pitch I question what is the idea to move the ball from defence to attack apart from playing very risky pass by CB/Casemiro. Don't you think this worry is justified?
Well with FFP and Glazers, this is the only way he can talk.
Who's the DM/Casemiro cover Erik?
What is he supposed to say. Demoralise his squad also the managers who have moaned about signings are now ex-managers.
We have only one good GK, defence made of glass, midfield without proper 8 and fecking McTominay as first sub to come on and only one real ST whose injury means our whole attacking plan goes out of the window.
I like ETH but the amount of shit he's been feeding media is unbeliavable.
You don't need a ton of goalkeepers, defence is perfectly fine fitness wise, Varane is prone but Maguire and Lindelof are good cover, Eriksen comes on in mid before McTominay and now hojlund/martial as 2 strikers.
We have only one good GK, defence made of glass, midfield without proper 8 and fecking McTominay as first sub to come on and only one real ST whose injury means our whole attacking plan goes out of the window.
I like ETH but the amount of shit he's been feeding media is unbeliavable.
yeah dont get any of the criticism for what EtH says. pretty much what he has to say, and has been the case for most of his time here. He generally knows how to say the right thing without being condescending. Clearly if players cant be sold at some point we will have to try and make do with them, so saying oh well so and so sucks and we hope to get them replaced doesnt help anyone. But at same time as we saw in the ronaldo situation he isnt afraid to make a point. Even with "keeping maguire" we see he has stripped him of captaincy, relegated him away from starting lineup, and generally just uses him in last couple of minutes if we want to try and bunker down (which even then maguire looks shakey as always)
Unless he's sold, Mctominay...
Honestly it's like these people have never had a job before in their life. Guess they preferred it when we had Mourinho and Rangnick.
If only he would shit his pants as loudly and publicly as you do, we wouldn't be in this mess!
We have only one good GK, defence made of glass, midfield without proper 8 and fecking McTominay as first sub to come on and only one real ST whose injury means our whole attacking plan goes out of the window.
I like ETH but the amount of shit he's been feeding media is unbeliavable.
Exactly. Nothing he can do about
Sure cause none of the incumbent squad members improved under him right
Kobbie Mainoo.
Those aren't good quotes in the slightest. Why wait for opportunity in the market ? The club should have a good year on targets on the premise of last season that have been scouted, even potential young players that have attributes that can be integrated into the first team. The due diligence is how you create the opportunity not wait for it. Better to be proactive than reactive in most circumstances. FFP is also a cause and effect basis so its not an excuse. Last summers spending crucially impacting this summers budget, there was reports from journalists around the club that this would be the case it was predictable. What's exposing the club this summer however is poor business. Highest league NET spend that is evident the failure to release players when they still withhold some value.
Did you read the comment you quoted? I'll assist you on this one:Sure cause none of the incumbent squad members improved under him right
Although ten Hag has clearly identified it as his position, think he will have a fair bit to learn positionally/tactically if he is to be a DM long term. Perhaps he can be more of a De Jong? He has been played in more of an advanced role for the youths. However, the kid is special. Really talented. Just hope he can avoid any injuries that would derail him. Massive fan.
Try to be more objective, listening him speaking about Maguire as some God given talent who can still have future here is bleak and easy to read through. For all the talk that he's hard on players, he comes across as soft in some cases.
I agree you don't, but one Onana injury and our idea of playing out of the back goes out of the window. While Lindelof can do the job, neither him or especially Maguire are up to level we aspire and Maguire staying is criminal for the squad. Eriksen looks shot, hope I'm wrong, hopefully Mainoo makes most of the chances and seeing McTominay hiding from the play while puffing and huffing makes my blood boil. Up front we can rely only on Hojlund who is player in the making, not finished article, Martial is past tense while other options such as Rashford only take away from his game which makes us even less of an attacking threat.
Being nice won't take him anywhere. Put some pressure on players who aren't required quality such as Maguire, McTominay, Martial. Betting his future on the players who've shown over the years they're not on the level we need won't take him far I'm afraid.
Just after one game which we eventually won
I can't think of a single club that has 2 ball playing GKs. The GK is undoubtedly the first choice at any club with a backup for basically emergency purposes only. It's also rare for a GK to get injured. It happens but, not often enough to be worried about it.
They expect the manager to do what they do in FIFA on easy mode or last year's FM with the in-game editor, foreknowledge of all the best wonderkids and a plug and play engine-breaking tactic someone else came up with. Buy top wonderkids for bargain bin prices, have all of the transfers pan out immediately and challenge for the title from matchweek 1, as if that's at all easy or even possible in reality. There is literally nothing anyone could realistically do to run this club without these people pissing and shitting the bed about it 24/7. Any player who isn't world class immediately is shite, and if they cost more than they would have 20 years ago it's a bad purchase. If we don't buy the specific player they personally decided we needed from scouting youtube compilations, it's a terrible purchase and the player is shite unless he scores a goal every match.
The Glazers basically deal with managers the way most fans want them to: first year top 4, title challenge thereafter or you're sacked even if the squad is mediocre, even if you're also expected to completely change the play style. At the same time everyone wonders why every manager makes desperate purchases, spending the entire transfer budget every year even on transfers which are terrible value. The answer is that because you get sacked at the first sign of trouble, every point in the league is life and death. There is no point waiting until a later window for a better value purchase or selling a player a little bit early for a bigger budget in the next window, because if you lose a few matches that you would have won instead of spending way too much money on a stopgap solution, you still get sacked and the next manager gets to spend that money instead.
The "We need a DoF" crowd are also clueless, and you can tell from the way they talk about it. They're furious with every player purchased if there's even a hint of the manager having a say in it. The would prefer that we lock the manager in a sensory deprivation chamber during the transfer windows and only buy players he doesn't want. They also ignore that United have had DoF's for a while, Woodward and Murtough. A DoF is just a management structure, it's no guarantee of success, DoF's can make mistakes and be incompetent just like managers can, and they will also act in their own short term interests if you give them an incentive to do so.
Even with all this in mind, EtH and Murtough's transfers haven't been skewed to the short term. Casemiro and Eriksen are older but all the other transfers in are younger players. A few of them have failed to hit the ground running but still have a chance to improve. I think Mount is a pretty shrewd signing for a role that, if we didn't already need with Eriksen slowing down so much, we would have needed next season and for which we would have had to pay a lot more. Too many people here have decided that we have to play with 2 holding midfielders despite no other top teams doing it, and it's still an option anyways when Mainoo recovers from his injury. Onana already looks very good, and we got him for a relative bargain (look at what Kepa and Alisson went for, and they were purchased years ago). I'm glad we didn't get tied up in the Caicedo bidding war and I can almost guarantee the wages and term that Caicedo gets for Chelsea along with that ridiculous fee would have been the subject of intense ridicule had United paid it, even from the posters here who are so convinced we needed to buy him.
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Yes, also ball playing keepers are in high demand, so it's not easy to just get one to be your backup because there are likely several other clubs ready to offer them a starting spot.
City and Arsenal. But that's credit to City for getting such a good 2nd GK but even they are having a hard time holding on to him. And Arsenal have a unique situation where there may not be a clear no.1
So yeah usually you are right
The poor cnut must be praying for a takeover to get done. Don't know how much more of the Glazers he'll be able to stomach.