Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Agree. Otherwise the cycle will just continue (scrape points playing poorly —> everyone starts thinking we are back and ETH is the messiah—> We regress to the mean and get embarrassed by a few teams where variance doesn’t fall our way)
Is that what we've been doing? Proactive attacking football?
Agree completely. The “pressure” everyone always talks about mainly comes from the media, because most fans are VERY patient with both players and managers (too patient in my opinion) and the club/Glazers have been. as you’ve said, satisfied with mediocrity as long as you manage to scrape Top 4. We are easily the least cutthroat club in the world for managers and players.
Who knows.
But I think it's quite clear this squad is a mismatched mess of players who are all suited to different styles. Too many players who are just too slow, are not technically good enough and lack any sort of intensity in anything they do around the pitch.
A keeper who can play short, 2 or 3 defenders who can, the majority can't. A midfield that lacks legs and technical ability by and large don't/can't/won't control possession. Has probably 1 player who's only 18 that has any level of composure. A forward line where you have 2 young lads learning on the job, an 80m player who offers a sum total of feck all, a perma crock, a couple of young lads and the highest paid player at the club who shows up if he feels like it. That's not to mention the two wasters who are out on loan.
Coming into this summer you could argue that Utd need 7 or 8 players and 3 or 4 of those need to be starting quality now or in a year. People don't like hearing or seeing it, but this squad is a mess and it does need gutting and rebuilding. It's going to take another 2 to 3 years and there are some tought decisions to be made over a few players.
"You know, you know".
Jesus, that was a brutal embargoed press conference. I mean, part of me was happy that questions were asked but it felt unusually aggressive by some of the press, quite rude at times.
Quite a remarkable exchange between Ducker and ETH beginning at 6:53 . ETH clearly uncomfortable having to explain his summer transfer logic.
This published shortly after - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...jlund-injury-man-utd-injury-problems-ten-hag/
This published shortly after - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...jlund-injury-man-utd-injury-problems-ten-hag/
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This is how I read it, however, I do think if he gets us top 4 I’d be surprised if he wasn’t given the start of next season to impress.
If he doesn’t get top 4 it will be very interesting to see what we do.
I understand what ETH think in the summer, we will have 3 striker : hoijlund, martial and greenwood, so just use the budget to buy 1 striker and mc, thats it.
Those are some of the most nervous hehs ive seen in quite awhile
Ducker out of line here. I think ETH politely defended himself and Ducker continued to antagonize him.
How is he out of line? I wish managers are grilled more like this.
The question he asked was legitimate, going into a season with a teenager as your most workable striker is not smart.
It's not just on Ten hag, it goes to show the incompetence at our club.
It also calls into question the Mount transfer, we haven't missed him since his injury but we now don't have a serviceable striker.
I will be glad when this manager doesn't control our transfer business ever again
You are football manager heh. It’s easy heh. When you money heh…..FFP heh heh.
Ten Hag to English translation : Feck off
It was a legit question, but he didn’t need to monopolize the rest of the time with argumentative follow ups belaboring the initial point.
That was uncalled for. These journos are attacking ETH like he and he alone made those decisions.
I think the journo doubled down because ten hag got defensive and called the guy naive.
Going into a season counting on Martial is more naive.
Our summer decisions are indefensible but unfortunately ten hag is the only one they get to grill
Likewise, ETH is known to hold the opinion that the team play better when Martial is available. He has said this numerous times in previous interviews. So losing Martial would’ve meant having to buy another striker, of which there weren’t many United quality ones to choose from given FFP. He almost certainly also went into last summer believing Greenwood would be available to him this season, which further factored into his logic of buying only Hojlund.
To count on Martial who played 28 games the season before wasn't smart.
It would still leave us with 2 young strikers, there was a need for an experienced serviceable striker. Even a loan would have been better
Yeah it’s ridiculous. Does anyone really think that wanted to rely on Martial this season?
It came across to me that Ducker was pressing him to get a juicy nugget like “we tried to sell Martial but nobody wanted him” - which is quite possibly the case given Martial being a high earner came up in the exchange.
If that is the case it’s not ETH’s fault anyway. The people above him failed to or were incapable to strike a deal to replace Martial with someone more reliable. It’s not ETH’s fault that we gave Martial a stupid contract those years ago too.
Hopefully with new people making decisions we won’t struggle with such incompetence.
He asked a legit question and ETH answered it. He said he had Martial and Rashford, so 3 striker options. That's a fair response. Ducker ignored it and continued with the same question.
so whats the value then of having sent of hugill on loan in Jan? he would be a good option off the bench if (most probably) rashford does nothing for us. hugill had a great pre-season, we're giving shots to the youth team, he has more than a specious claim on a subs spot.
Who is buying Martial last summer and how much are they paying?
Who can you bring in that is good enough, affordable and willing to share playing time with a new £80m striker?
There are a million other questions about practicalities of what Ducker is saying that do make it naive, without insider info about options and availability of transfer targets that were willing to join for the sums paid for so called lower priority positions (which itself is subjective)
The squad balance is all over the place and clearing deadwood is hard due to how much we pay and how poorly people are performing, it's going to take years to fix and there will be gaps in the squad until it does (if it does)
You have to question our transfer strategy. Always maintained even back in August that our transfer window last summer was a poor one. Signing another striker was a must but we didn't and to make it worse we sent alvaro on loan and then did not keep reguilon when we knew malacia was not going to play and shaw is shaw.
Not to mention Martial is on 250k/wk, which wasn't something most clubs would be interested in given his injury record and general and diminishing returns in recent years.
Yeah, Ducker was engaging in pub talk. Pretty embarrassing for him to be honest and can see why he lost his head when called out.
How was the question of out line?
He asked him why he signed Mount for £60m and chose to rely on Martial as a CF and Ten Hag answered because Martial is on a high salary. It's a valid question and he's acting like he had no other option other than to waste money on players that weren't needed.
He asked him why he signed Mount for £60m and chose to rely on Martial as a CF and Ten Hag answered because Martial is on a high salary. It's a valid question and he's acting like he had no other option other than to waste money on players that weren't needed.
He did say ‘tried’ to do to be fair. Now it’s about him showing he can coach it.Is that what we've been doing? Proactive attacking football?
Although they won’t bring in players he doesn’t want, they also won’t agree on some of the players he wants so it works both ways.
Please lord don't let that guy have influence on another transfer window for us. Not even a single player
That’s why we’re bringing in people and having a new structure. We’re getting the best people around to sort this mess out. Ratcliffe said himself it won’t just happen straight away. There’s a 3 year plan.
The first question is fine to ask (although bit shit to imply it’s purely down to Ten Hag).
The follow up from Ducker is just really poor.
The follow up from Ducker is just really poor.
Ducker also didnt like being called naive but also hes trying to tell Ten Hag how to squad plan with zero experience himself managing even a Sunday League team let alone a club the size of United.
So naive is being polite.
So naive is being polite.
I posted a thread about this months ago and not many were in agreement with it. But truth be told, this sqaud is 2-3 years from challenging for big trophies and being at the stage where minor adjustments to the squad (1-3 players per year) are required to maintain that level.
You have to look at this current group and decide what each player can offer now and what they will be capable of offering 3-4 years down the line and build with succession in mind. I think @Adnan pointed out to me before that Brentford have a recruitment process where the squad has 16 positions and each of those positions require players of different profiles. So two of them might be a centre forward or a right winger but the two players should offer something different to allow you to adjust your approach game to game or within a single game.
When I posted this thread I counted 10 players that are there now that might still be worth something in that timeframe. Could be less now if I were to do it again.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-3-year-rebuilding-process.480045/page-6
He should be facing big scrutiny for the Mason Mount transfer if it was purely his decision. One of the most stupid and baffling transfers in recent memory and that's saying something.
It was good to hear some genuinely interesting questions being asked instead of the usual inane 'how important is it to win' nonsense
Questions around the summer recruitment are fair enough and it was good to hear ETH talk about them
There was certainly some barbs in the wording though, asking the question is one thing but I don't think a journo should be framing it as a definite mistake and essentially arguing with the answer because it goes against what they've already decided. Maybe ETH shouldn't have lead with 'so you're a manager are you' but the sentiment is fine, the idea these guys are better equipped than an actual football manager is laughable and they shouldn't be trying to dismiss him, he gave them a pretty in depth answer in the end. These are shit peddlers pretending to be paxman
Be interesting to see if ETH does throw a ban around, I'm not sure there's enough reason to really but there's no doubt saf would've but clearly he was all powerful whereas ETH isn't
The 'big money disappointment' line about Antony would've had saf spitting, surprised ETH let them get away with that one
Questions around the summer recruitment are fair enough and it was good to hear ETH talk about them
There was certainly some barbs in the wording though, asking the question is one thing but I don't think a journo should be framing it as a definite mistake and essentially arguing with the answer because it goes against what they've already decided. Maybe ETH shouldn't have lead with 'so you're a manager are you' but the sentiment is fine, the idea these guys are better equipped than an actual football manager is laughable and they shouldn't be trying to dismiss him, he gave them a pretty in depth answer in the end. These are shit peddlers pretending to be paxman
Be interesting to see if ETH does throw a ban around, I'm not sure there's enough reason to really but there's no doubt saf would've but clearly he was all powerful whereas ETH isn't
The 'big money disappointment' line about Antony would've had saf spitting, surprised ETH let them get away with that one
I think this is what most of folks defending Ten Hag have been saying, a lot of his detractors on here have no alternative suggestions beyond throwing managers at the problem.
Put a better support structure in place, set the manager up to succeed rather than to fail, and put some succession planning in place for managers who will fit the style and culture we're putting in place. That way if ETH doesn't work out, we won't be throwing away the good stuff he's done and starting again from scratch.
Agree. I don't necessarily disagree with some of the things being said but his tone was definitely off. I'm surprised a press officer didn't step in at any point because the way Ducker was speaking was extremely disrespectful and he didn't deserve the amount of time he got.