I don't know how he is going to do it because the Glazers certainly wont give him the necessary funds but he does need another midfielder, if we lose Eriksen or Case for a few weeks we are done for the season.
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?
Exactly, its not been easy for Ten Hag.
Losing the first 2 games was a big blow, then he had to almost go back to Ole ball for Arsenal and Liverpool games, sit back and hit them on the counter. That was necessary for points rather than anything.
People also forget the games against Southampton and Leicester where we didn't play well at all considering those 2 teams league position and scrapped 1-0 wins.
The reason I see this so different to Ole, you can see the process. He went from lets get points, get confidence and slowly implement his style.
I feel he has implemented probably 40% of his style on this team, alot of work still needs to be done. We do not dominate the games enough, in terms of pinning teams back in their own half.
Its good progress, I want to see where Ten Hag can take us.
Imagine that this team isn't even close to its full potential and we're doing so well right now.
The man is a bloody genius doing the results he's doing with this squad.
The man is a bloody genius doing the results he's doing with this squad.
Hell of a start for him all things considered. I expect a dip in the next few weeks and we will see how he manages that. He is easy to have faith in though.
Crazy stuff altogether! He's clearly a top class manager who was going to need time to fix the mess that he inherited. He's actually doing better than I expected, and long may it continue.
Still can’t believe that a few on here were almost writing him off after a difficult start.
I agree with the caution part but all Solsjkajer had in his arsenal were Man United platitudes, references to the past and trying to mimic the past. On the other hand, Ten Hag is his own man (OGS was a bit iffy about parking in the manager's car space) and is instilling a style of play that is more likely to be successful that whatever OGS was trying to instil into his team.
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Never once heard him say he needs bloody 3 years to implement his style of play.
Solskjaer did have periods where he did well, even after the initial bounce, but we never looked this fluent under him in the way we control games. We've kept 8 clean sheets in the league already this season and the way operate with and without the ball is a level above. The spine of the team Ten Hag has created is so much stronger.
We can still get better and that's the exciting part. I can see some parallels between Ten Hag and Klopp at Liverpool when he first started getting things right. Ten Hag has implemented his changes faster and you can see his stamp on the team already. If he's given the resources to mould this team as he sees fit, I can see us challenging for the league next season.
Ole best football is his first 15 games
Let that sink for a while.
Let that sink for a while.
What do you say in english the thing he does with his mouth when he looks serious?
Touching cloth with nowhere to go.What do you say in english the thing he does with his mouth when he looks serious?
I don't think it's a similar scenario at all though, Solskjaer started on fire and petered out whereas ten Hag started off with lots of issues and has slowly ironed them out.
I really don't think he's missed a beat. Got everything right (first two games aside but he was taking over a shit show).
Very promising so far. Hopefully we can look back on that 4-0 Brentford defeat as one of those watershed moments. We look not too far of an attacking team akin to the 2006-2008 period, when we played REALLY good football. 2-3 more players and some more time together and we’ll be there I think.
He has successfully revitalised Rashford who in my opinion stagnated in terms of development under Mourinho and Solskjaer. Dalot suddenly looks like £20m well spent. Casemiro and Martinez have been sensations. Eriksen has been one of the best freebies we’ve ever picked up. Garnacho has been eased in nicely. He’s done a lot of things right that looked horrible to deal with, namely the handling of Ronaldo and I don’t think he gives a shit that he went to Piers Morgan. If anything, he’s probably glad he did because they then had a good excuse to cull him.
I get a sense of deja vu of 2015/16 Klopp at Liverpool, where it’ll mostly be promising and exciting, but hitting some annoying bumps along the way like they did. Losing to Villa away before the World Cup being a good example.
He has successfully revitalised Rashford who in my opinion stagnated in terms of development under Mourinho and Solskjaer. Dalot suddenly looks like £20m well spent. Casemiro and Martinez have been sensations. Eriksen has been one of the best freebies we’ve ever picked up. Garnacho has been eased in nicely. He’s done a lot of things right that looked horrible to deal with, namely the handling of Ronaldo and I don’t think he gives a shit that he went to Piers Morgan. If anything, he’s probably glad he did because they then had a good excuse to cull him.
I get a sense of deja vu of 2015/16 Klopp at Liverpool, where it’ll mostly be promising and exciting, but hitting some annoying bumps along the way like they did. Losing to Villa away before the World Cup being a good example.
Something he said in the Post-match vs Bournemouth was on the money: attack and defence were disconnected, like 2 different teams. A clear attribute of the team since he came has been that we defend as a team and attack as a team, making us very hard to play through.
Last night though, after going 2-0 up, Bournemouth was cutting through us with the sort of nail biting regularity that we'd become accustomed to in recent history, and this was mostly due to the attackers not putting as much intensity in their defensive work as they've done prior to this game
Last night though, after going 2-0 up, Bournemouth was cutting through us with the sort of nail biting regularity that we'd become accustomed to in recent history, and this was mostly due to the attackers not putting as much intensity in their defensive work as they've done prior to this game
One thing I am loving most about him is the work he is putting on the training ground with players we thought would be worthless to us in any modern style. I love the way he has rejuvinated Rashford, Dalot, Shaw and to a lesser extent the likes of Fred and AWB. You just know that if Martial fails with him then he has no hope at this level.
With LVG and Mourinho you would have a my way or the highway approach to players and the former in particular is still the reason we no longer have any squad depth to talk about after gutting the squad in 2015/16. I know its seven years ago but still you'd think that the decisions made then on valuable assets like Evans, Hernandez, Nani etc have ensured that we are always playing catch up in team building - the fact that we wasted nearly half a billion on duds since then only compounds the issue.
Where I feel Ten Hag will help us a lot is in his patience to work with and on out of favor players and eventually get something out of them. The three games AWB has played, for example, have been a crucial contribution to the season. So its either we will salvage a good squad player or his confidence will return such that he will earn us a decent fee in the transfer market. We didn't see enough of this in previous regimes.
With LVG and Mourinho you would have a my way or the highway approach to players and the former in particular is still the reason we no longer have any squad depth to talk about after gutting the squad in 2015/16. I know its seven years ago but still you'd think that the decisions made then on valuable assets like Evans, Hernandez, Nani etc have ensured that we are always playing catch up in team building - the fact that we wasted nearly half a billion on duds since then only compounds the issue.
Where I feel Ten Hag will help us a lot is in his patience to work with and on out of favor players and eventually get something out of them. The three games AWB has played, for example, have been a crucial contribution to the season. So its either we will salvage a good squad player or his confidence will return such that he will earn us a decent fee in the transfer market. We didn't see enough of this in previous regimes.
Plus Brentford have gone on to prove they're no slouches anyway
Frown/Clenched JawWhat do you say in english the thing he does with his mouth when he looks serious?
We're nowhere near that level. 2008 we had the best attack and team in Europe. Take an inform rashford out of this attack and it looks pretty blunt at the minute. Back then we had Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez all capable of stepping up and delivering. It's possibly the best United team of the modern era.
This was probably the second best United in history. Below only when we had Chalrton, Best and Law. The current United are playing good football. But it's not one of the best teams in the world.
Unless I'm missing something we only played about 20 minutes yesterday with the Eriksen/Casemiro/Fernandes midfield? VDB was in that 3 in the first half instead of Fernandes and Fred came on for Eriksen after 65 minutes or so.
Comparing Ole's start to ETH's is just silly. Ole's start was followed by a terrible ending of the season where he bottled everything after getting us into a good position.
ETH has been already better, and the team keeps getting better.
ETH has been already better, and the team keeps getting better.
So the starts can’t be compared because we know how one ended, even though we don’t know how the other ends?
How does that work??
I guess you are right, but Bruno sticked to the right only for a while, he played a roaming role as usual (left to right through the game). van de Beek occupied the central spot so that forced Bruno wide.
I think van de Beek should be playing deeper on the right of midfield 3 rather than centrally behind striker, but that formation requires a wide forward which we don't have at the moment (Elanga is clearly not favored there anymore, and Rashford is kind of awkward there).
Newcastle manager must be the 2nd coming of SAF. Arteta too. I still feel we have better players than 2 of the teams above us
Difference being that at this point, Solskjaer’s results were taking a turn for the worse (to the dismay of those saying that we should’ve waited until the end of the season), whereas we’re clearly on an upward trajectory with EtH thanks to the things he has done with the team (in terms of coherent tactics, recruitment matching those tactics, technical improvement and squad management).
For that in itself, we cant compare it.
But Ole's team was never getting better and better, they started great and fell off.
The team was going absolutely nowhere until a long time later when Bruno arrived and Greenwood/Rashford/Martial were hitting form.
ETH had a rough start but has really been building this team, implementing his style and discipline and the team is gradually improving.
This doesn’t make an ounce of sense. Of course you can compare two managers records after a set amount of games.
Given that our next two premier league games are against City and Arsenal. I won't be surprised if people are calling for him to go in two weeks and everything he's done is invalidated
I think 2008 is our best team of the Premier league years, but the 99 team will get the plaudits due to the treble. I think 2008 just edges it from them though.
This manager has some kind of magic touch. Simon Jordan calls it "alchemy", and he's right in the sense that the absolute elite, winning managers have something that the also rans that may be very good do not, and it's hard to quantify exactly what it is. They seem to rearrange the pieces around them in the precise way, sometimes the only possible way that average managers would miss.
The vast majority of decisions he makes in game work, his decisions off the pitch definitely have worked, and suddenly a bunch of misfits look like a team. He's only done it at Ajax, perhaps, but so far in his career he is a winner with no evidence to the contrary and the early signs couldn't be much stronger.
If we keep improving this squad there are good chances with this guy in charge.
The vast majority of decisions he makes in game work, his decisions off the pitch definitely have worked, and suddenly a bunch of misfits look like a team. He's only done it at Ajax, perhaps, but so far in his career he is a winner with no evidence to the contrary and the early signs couldn't be much stronger.
If we keep improving this squad there are good chances with this guy in charge.
It isnt just about the record, it is about the underlying, the progress and where the club is heading to.
No one can take Ole's records away from him, but despite his record he should have never been given a permanent contract whereas ETH's record is evidence of the good work he's started, which is even progressing.
Forget about the results and points, his style of play a few months into his tenure have been excellent. It's night and day compared to previous managers. Everyone can see that he is building a "football team" with modern attacking football.
His post match was a lot about squad depth and keeping the players fit with so many games coming up....we have two cup matches coming up where we need to use as many players as possible especially in the micky mouse cup against charlton simply due to the massive league match with City coming off those two cup games
this is really going to test ETH and his prioritization of what does he want to challenge in his first year
this is really going to test ETH and his prioritization of what does he want to challenge in his first year
We had our best OGS run at the start of his tenure when everyone and the players thought he was there for the vibes.
And EtH is still coming on top and the direction of travel is the opposite of OGS.
The difference is night and day but that doesn't help those who do not want to see it.
Yeah absolutely! I’m most impressed with how he’s dealt with, and continuous to deal with the culture at the club - which was possibly the biggest issue by far, in a commendable way. Let alone his ability as a football coach/tactician.
Strangely enough, behind-the-scene culture and on-field football are two sides of the same coin. One can feed or destroy the other. I think ETH has been brilliant at balancing the two, which probably has been a monumental task given where we were last season. Long may it continue.
Incredible what a real manager can do for the club. Looks to be our savior from the under qualified (Moyes, OGS, RR) and past it (LVG and Jose) period.
His management of huge personalities down to young ones like Garnacho is just mint. Seems like he is the perfect fit for United. Thank FECK we didn't get Poch!
His management of huge personalities down to young ones like Garnacho is just mint. Seems like he is the perfect fit for United. Thank FECK we didn't get Poch!
Yeah he definitely won't get another midfielder until the summer,still hopeful of a CF even if it's a cheap deal (Thuram) or purely loan (Depay/Morata)
Yep, agreed, it’s next to impossible to achieve the one without the other.