Great manager.
Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24
- Thread starter sewey89
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Firm 8 for me given the ronaldo saga and martial Sancho as main attacking options. If Antony had hit the ground running I really think we could have an extra 8-10 points right now but providing he’s not another Sancho maybe next season he’ll kick on as he just looks the type for me to really achieve that.
Yeah that's fair actually. When Ten Hag joined he was ready for battle. He was handed a silver spear - nothing too fancy but enough to fight with. Then the tip fell off and complained to Piers Morgan. Nobody could give him a new tip so he grabbed the only thing available, which was a fudge donut.
They won titles before Pep I think this pep talk is fanciful. I think there are other managers in the world who could win big trophies for them no problem at all. Us on the other hand, we’ve won with the great managers of their time and not really without them. We need massive back ground improvements for me to assist this manager.
Yeah. I've been proponent of us getting an AMC (for example, Maddison), just to alternate with Bruno if things don't go well for him in that AMC position. Bruno also has proven that he can play that no. 8 (CM) position, if EtH wants Bruno to play at any cost.
Yeah we needed a Jan splurge and we couldn’t. We need owners capable of incessant spending window after window coupled with the right recruits. So many things we haven’t been doing but a top striker sure does hide a lot of things so here’s hoping for that.
We're back on Champions League, so mission accomplished. Expecting improvements next season.
Top 4 and a cup is a decent season let’s be fair although our form at the tail end has been alarming. Lets hope next season we come back rejuvenated.
With FFP and the change of ownership a bit concerned about the summer window. We need reinforcements badly and without the proper players we’ll struggle.
The attack is atrocious bringing in a striker alone won’t change that we need much more. Either a CAM or sell Sancho and get a LW. Our current crop of players isn’t creative enough.
With FFP and the change of ownership a bit concerned about the summer window. We need reinforcements badly and without the proper players we’ll struggle.
The attack is atrocious bringing in a striker alone won’t change that we need much more. Either a CAM or sell Sancho and get a LW. Our current crop of players isn’t creative enough.
Disappointed with the reaction in here to the performances; we're at the stage now where results are the most important thing. I think that, probably from the 2-0 win against Spurs to the cup final against Newcastle, our general play was more than decent and a good sign of things to come, but even though i didn't see today's game i don't care about anything other than the result.
EtH has done well under very challenging circumstances imo-DDG not being the best keeper for his style of play, Ronaldo, his star striker, throwing a hissy fit mid season, the club virtually having no money in January, a crap attack that doesn't score enough goals, ...and yet we could realistically finish third.
One thing that gets overlooked is that despite the hammerings from Brentford, City and Liverpool, we actually have the joint third best defence in the league
. Hasn't been a great year for defending in the league to be fair but i was surprised by that. Foundations and all.
EtH has done well under very challenging circumstances imo-DDG not being the best keeper for his style of play, Ronaldo, his star striker, throwing a hissy fit mid season, the club virtually having no money in January, a crap attack that doesn't score enough goals, ...and yet we could realistically finish third.
One thing that gets overlooked is that despite the hammerings from Brentford, City and Liverpool, we actually have the joint third best defence in the league
. Hasn't been a great year for defending in the league to be fair but i was surprised by that. Foundations and all.He's done really well. We have a great manager and terrible owners
You can see what he wants to do and where we need to strengthen for it to happen. He praises Sancho because he and Antony keep the ball high up the pitch, we are able to peg teams back. Give us Kane and thus someone to play off through the middle and we will see how important and advantageous that is.
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Completely fair. I’m just pointing out our passing is very poor for me personally after 12 months together. It’s early days but if our play is similar this stage next season, this manager will have been given enough time to change that for me. He won’t get lots of new recruits so the current crop is what he’ll be working with. Sancho rashers and Antony for example might have a new striker to play with and maybe a FDJ behind them but doubtful much else…
We need a striker like a plant needs water. A shame Ronaldo had a melt down and Martial can not stay fit but all things considered, it's shaping up as a better then expected first season. You can easily see us improving a lot with just a couple of new players in.
Mmmm, donut....
Exactly, we’ve won away from home on a day when Tottenham have been battered at home, the scousers just scraped a point at Anfield and Arsenal are currently losing to Forest.
With the amount of games we’ve played and the squad issues Ten Hag has had to deal with I think we’re finishing as well as can be expected, with a cup final still to play as well.
I mean not really, before it was “he can be our main man” but I’m not advocating for that. Either way I’d only want him staying if he can regain his legs. The current state of him is a player that looks like he knows he’ll do his hamstring/back/ankle/anything if he breaks into any sort of sprint. Looks nothing like the preseason version. If he’s like this forever then bin him off
Impossible to not be anything but thrilled with our performance this season given:
- the inherited line up
- the Ronaldo situation
- and extremely competitive league, where there are very few easy games
A trophy and top 4 was not something I was prepared for. Add another title somehow and it will have been a stunning bit of managing…
- the inherited line up
- the Ronaldo situation
- and extremely competitive league, where there are very few easy games
A trophy and top 4 was not something I was prepared for. Add another title somehow and it will have been a stunning bit of managing…
Don't forget the Maguire situation.. it's not easy to manage a squad where the experienced captain is demoted to a 4th choice CB. Has had to deal with a ton of issues this season. Crazy fixture congestion for a squad not prepared for it, not having time to actually train properly all season, having bottom half level players to pick from for cf... Getting top 4 comfortably and our cup success is a phenomenal outcome.
I think the reason for that, is he hasn't been able to coach the style of play given 2 games a week and players being injured. We saw some lovely stuff before the World Cup - and I'm sure that timing is no coincidence. The training focus has been on the next game, for obvious reasons. And to be honest, it was more important he got us back winning again (and for his own longevity). If he gets the squad he wants, and some time, I think we'll see some big changes in our play next season.
Don't forget the injuries and suspensions from January onwards (Casemiro's seven games for things other players have got away with, Eriksen, Garnacho, Licha+Varane at the same time forcing Shaw to CB).
And the ridiculous ownership situation. Even if it didn't distract, it certainly meant we couldn't push the boat out in January when we needed to.
I feel players get far too long here when it’s clear there are lots more talented players out there who we would be better off having in our squad. I think if a player isn’t proven after 3 full seasons here for example it’s time to move them on. Martial has had double that? We over pay to get them in as we are usually borderline desperate and then we can’t move them on. Accepting lower standards like we do from many in the squad sends out poor messages to what’s acceptable and so the issue continues. I mean Phil jones on the payroll for what seems like my entire adult life is laughable for me but That’s just my personal take.
Fully agree.
Imagine how much better our results had been had the stingy feckers agreed to pay £10m more to get Felix for the season instead of WW.
Well, seeing this being the 2nd time it gets mentioned, maybe this is down to me being German and therefor a little closer to German football. I can tell that RR has a pretty good reputation. Certainly most of it isn't down to him being a superstar manager but his career isn't something to look down on. Managementwise ETH has achieved more but it was Ajax in the Eredivisie so... career wise, lets see. Still think, his input in terms of recruitment could have been of use to us. But times are gone.
Oh no, not you again. So I am a RR lover just because I answer on a bunch of posts with one mentioning RR. Alright. Lets not do it again. And I joined during Oles time here, so get your facts straight.I completely agree, although Martial is a weird case in this instance. He was one of the best young players in the world his first season here, then dealt with Jose trying to bin him off, then resurged as a striker with Ole culminating in being our best player in 19/20 before becoming perma crocked in the years after.
But yes in general the club is far too accepting of mediocrity
It's not just that the club is far too accepting of mediocrity but we've gone through managers in three-year cycles which means that by the time that third season's up there's a new guy in through the door at which point it might be hard selling half the squad with a new manager coming through the door.
(Which is kind of the problem with not having a DoF, which we were painfully late in getting)
This is a team that was built to play counterattacking football under Oli. Ten Hag has had to adapt to them because as was obvious at the beginning of the season, they can't play the pass and move style at all.
It's kind of hard to instill a bunch of training ground drills when you play a game every 3.5 games for six months running. Compare that to Brentford and Brighton who have followed a game with recovery + five days of training before the next game.
We were still in 3 cup competitions and with an outside shot of a title challenge at the time as well.
A well run outfit with serious owners would have capitalised on that momentum and tried to turn a potentially good season into a great one. Instead we bought in two bodies on loan, to cover injured players, and completely ignored the holes in the squad that still existed.
It really isn't any wonder that we've run out of steam.
What he needs to do now is what we failed to do under Woodward - shift a large number of players on, with transfer fees for as many as possible, to help fund purchases.
We have had a bloated squad which is also far too threadbare (paradoxically enough) all season.
Compared to where we were a year ago, this year has been a big achievement.
We have had a bloated squad which is also far too threadbare (paradoxically enough) all season.
Compared to where we were a year ago, this year has been a big achievement.
Won't someone please think of the dividends?!
It's still hovering around those areas for me but a cup final win against City when nobody gives us a chance would probably even take it up to a 9. People seem to be ignoring more of the positives such as
- Bouncing back from two awful opening defeats with some really strong performances/results. Don't think many of us would have predicted top 4 back then.
- Recovering from the Ronaldo controversy, which was handled brilliantly
- Varane, Shaw, Martinez, Bruno, Rashford, Casemiro all having strong seasons and months of consistent form
- from the 2-0 win against Spurs to the cup final was the most positive i've been about United for many years, most positive i've seen this place too.
- Beating Barca, City, Liverpool and Arsenal
- 3rd best defence in the league, statistically.
- Garnacho
Bad points
- attack is shite, and we're actually probably going to finish the league campaign with less goals than our worst ever PL season last year
- Performances have gone flat since the cup final
- away form
- the massacres against City, Brentford and Liverpool
- Dreadful EL exit
The problem here is that for some of these players (e.g., Sancho), the book value write-down would exceed the transfer fee we'd get, so selling them would actually make our FFP situation worse.
Our constraint this summer is FFP, not cash flow.
Yeah it is primarily FFP, but I think we can easily shift 15 players or so, (in various ways) many with fees, who are not in Sancho's position, to at least ensure we have more than 100m available for purchases. McTominay is a good example with a low(ish) wage where I think a fee could exceed the write down (happy to be corrected by others with more knowledge)!
Looking like a good, potentially very good, first season but we need to improve dramatically on the ball. I’ll give him Weghorst this year but a player of that type should be nowhere near the squad from the end of this season.
Yep, I definitely think that is something that a lot of people underestimate. With two games a week almost every week this season, we've had very little time for true training sessions.
I actually thought the first 30-40 minutes today showed a fair bit more interplay and control than what we normally play with. Not sure if it was due to us having more time to actually train properly now that we finally had a full week available, whether it was due to just having more time to recover in general, or whether it was Bournemouth just sitting off us more than most teams. Or possibly a combination of two or three of those options.
On the one hand it would almost have been better to go out of one or two of the cups early to get that time to train (would probably have ensured we finished a comfortable third in the league as well), but on the other hand we won one of those cups and are in the final of a second.
£75Million Sancho, 86 million Antony, boy wonder Rashford, boy wonder Garnacho, Bruno, Martial ( 27 apps) elanga (previous manager also had to use him),
As comparison Jesus only played 31 apps, so Arsenal had to use a Nketiah as their main and mounted a title challenge.
A really weird season. As at January it seemed unanimous that he was the one. But since then he has given big LVG vibes.
That isn't to say LVG was bad but he just never got to grips with what was needed to win the league. The summer targets and decisions with squad memebers will tell us a lot about if EtH has learnt anything from this season.
By getting top 4 he has achieved his target and with a cup you could say he's surpassed expectations. From next season though the demands will be greater, we'll need to see our team passing improve considerably and get closer to to mounting a PL challenge.
Very good first season but the jury is still out for me.
That isn't to say LVG was bad but he just never got to grips with what was needed to win the league. The summer targets and decisions with squad memebers will tell us a lot about if EtH has learnt anything from this season.
By getting top 4 he has achieved his target and with a cup you could say he's surpassed expectations. From next season though the demands will be greater, we'll need to see our team passing improve considerably and get closer to to mounting a PL challenge.
Very good first season but the jury is still out for me.
yep…it’s a pretty large list of obstacles this year…stunning
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