Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager

[Sarni]

Just to add to the Martinez discussion, I also think he’s brilliant but I think it’s still a case of ETH’s shortsightedness with players he worked with.

He’s really good on the ball, tenacious and brave but he still limits how good our defence can be because of his physical qualities. He’s not the biggest, strongest or fastest defender and that is a must in the PL. He’s a good enough player that we can still have a solid defence but a manager more familiar with the PL doesn’t make him his key addition in a 2 man CB partnership.

Arteta wanted him for a completely different role to play alongside Saliba and Gabriel. That way you maintain the physical qualities at the back and also have Licha’s ability on the ball.

I have zero trust or faith in ETH that he knows how to build a team to win the PL. It’s frustrating because I think he’s a really good coach but I think team building is a weakness of his and while we have the jokers in the Glazers and Arnold/Murtough I fear we’ll continue to make decisions that get us further away from the league.

I fully agree.

I think ETH could be a great coach if coupled with a competent DOF who can handle squad building and transfers. He clearly has the tactical knowledge and attitude to have us challenging. He's not a manager we should be giving full authority to, there are no managers in modern football that should have us and our desire to have another Sir Alex Ferguson type of personality who can oversee all aspects of a football club is inevitably holding us back.

 

[dutchred]

I fully agree.

I think ETH could be a great coach if coupled with a competent DOF who can handle squad building and transfers. He clearly has the tactical knowledge and attitude to have us challenging. He's not a manager we should be giving full authority to, there are no managers in modern football that should have us and our desire to have another Sir Alex Ferguson type of personality who can oversee all aspects of a football club is inevitably holding us back.

He had Overmars at Ajax, who was brilliant. Just look at what he's done at Antwerp

 

[lsd]

He has gotten everything he wanted this
window so there's no more excuses.

Hopefully we will see better performances on the pitch now and actually look like a proper team

 

[Yakuza_devils]

It's no surprise that most our signings are not seen to be a success. Before ETH signed for us, many Ajax fans already warned us that he needs to work with a competent DOF.

ETH is not good at signings players and Ajax signings was mostly by Overmars. Herein lies the problem, most of our signings are clearly influenced by ETH rather than our DOF.

 

[dutchred]

He has some nice choices now. Two from Amrabat, Casemiro and Mainoo plue one from Bruno and Mason.
Also has Gore and Mejbri to choose for the cup Games

 

[Oranges038]

No it's been reported that he has influence of course but we have more of a transfer committee which consists of ten Hag, Murtough, Fletcher, Andy O'Boyle, Steve Brown and Hargreaves. McClaren and van der Gaag have also been involved in discussions on targets.

Yeah, but he's come into a new club, that needs a lot of new players. Now I know he's spent big on a few players. And I am fine with that for the most part, those players have replaced underperformers and are all brought in to be starters. The question will always be around value for money, especially for the likes of Antony and Mount if they don't start to perform better in attacking sequences. For me Martinez, Casemiro, Eriksen and to a lesser extent Malacia have done what they've been brought in to do. Onana I think will do the same. Hojlund as well.

But he's still financially restrained in terms of adding depth and quality in depth. Short term he needs reinforcements, because the squad has long been low on quality technical footballers and long term he needs players that are in tune with his requirements. So to me it makes sense now to target players he knows will work how he wants. So long as there are long term targets and solutions being put in place in the background. Whether or not the structure is in place to ensure that happens is another thing altogether.

I think we all just need to have more patience.

Building a team capable of competing successfully over a sustained period normally takes 2-3 years. This is the time it takes to weed out players not good enough and get players in and have everyone in tune with how they are playing, building relationships and understanding around the pitch.

 

[Gavinb33]

It's no surprise that most our signings are not seen to be a success. Before ETH signed for us, many Ajax fans already warned us that he needs to work with a competent DOF.

ETH is not good at signings players and Ajax signings was mostly by Overmars. Herein lies the problem, most of our signings are clearly influenced by ETH rather than our DOF.

What do you mean by our signings not seen as a success, Casemiro and Martinez have been excellent signings, Malacia for a back up FB has been fine, the only one you could make an argument for not being a success is Antony but even then its too early to entirely write off a player after one season and 3 games.

The ones from this season is to early to tell being that have been 3 games and not all of them have played in them

 

[devips]

This man doesn't know football better than us cafterds. He has never won PL or CL. He is bald. He speaks a peculiar English. Also, he is bald.

Sack him.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

It's no surprise that most our signings are not seen to be a success. Before ETH signed for us, many Ajax fans already warned us that he needs to work with a competent DOF.

ETH is not good at signings players and Ajax signings was mostly by Overmars. Herein lies the problem, most of our signings are clearly influenced by ETH rather than our DOF.

What? The only signings we can really judge so far are the ones from last year. Martinez has been brilliant, Eriksen on a free was a good signing, Malacia is fine as back up and has room to develop, Casemiro was one of our best players last season and Antony we over paid for but I believe he's a good player and will improve.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

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[Wheato]

In just over a year, it is safe to say they we have done a fair bit to change this squad.

Permanently left the club in the last 12 months (25 players)

Mata
Matic
Pogba
Lingard
Garner
Jones
Savage
Zidane
De Gea
Elanga
Fred
Henderson
Tuanzebe
Mengi
Telles
Hardley
Galbraith
Laird
Bernard
Bishop
Kovar
Emeran
Wellens
Norkett
Mastny

Incomings

Martinez
Antony
Casemiro
Erikson
Onana
Hojlund
Mount
Amrabat
Bayindir
Reguilon

 

[UDontMessWith24]

Wait, you are removing matches where we conceded quite a few to prove a point that we didn’t concede many?

Is this a rhetorical question or do you not understand the concept of a statistical outlier?

 

[UDontMessWith24]

Depends on your expectations. Do you want to be in (upper) midtable? Then the occasional defensive disaster can be tolerated, as long as the rest of the season looks like it did defensively. Do you want to be challenging for the title? Then you must iron out those matches, then it is irrelevant how many decent defensive performances you had.

The post I was responding to had nothing to do with any of that.

 

[Revan]

Is this a rhetorical question or do you not understand the concept of a statistical outlier?

No, never heard about them, I do not speak stats to understand such fancy terms.

But let’s pretend that I have heard about them, in which universe something counts as a statistical outlier if it is 8% of the dataset?

 

[ShinjiNinja26]

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The “heh” never gets old.

 

[stefan92]

The post I was responding to had nothing to do with any of that.

Well you called some games statistical outliers and my response was about that you can't have that many statistical outliers if you want to win the PL

 

[UDontMessWith24]

No, never heard about them, I do not speak stats to understand such fancy terms.

But let’s pretend that I have heard about them, in which universe something counts as a statistical outlier if it is 8% of the dataset?

Of 43 goals conceded, 17 came in 3 games, leaving 26 for the remaining 35. This is objectively speaking a statistical outlier. Debate someone else.

 

[Pronewbie]

The “heh” never gets old.

The only thing better than a heh is a hehehehehe

 

[UDontMessWith24]

Well you called some games statistical outliers and my response was about that you can't have that many statistical outliers if you want to win the PL

Yes I've been watching football for 30 years I understand that but thank you for the valuable insight. My response was to someone that said our defense performed poorly last season.

 

[Rightnr]

Of 43 goals conceded, 17 came in 3 games, leaving 26 for the remaining 35. This is objectively speaking a statistical outlier. Debate someone else.

You are chatting absolute bollocks.

 

[UDontMessWith24]

You are chatting absolute bollocks.

Which part of this isn’t true?

 

[stefan92]

Yes I've been watching football for 30 years I understand that but thank you for the valuable insight. My response was to someone that said our defense performed poorly last season.

Well it certainly didn't perform absolutely stellar either.

 

[Revan]

Of 43 goals conceded, 17 came in 3 games, leaving 26 for the remaining 35. This is objectively speaking a statistical outlier. Debate someone else.

No, objectively is not. It is not even outside of 2 standard deviations zone assuming a normal distribution. One of those matches was against our biggest rival, where we actually lost 5-0 and 4-0 the season before that. The other is against our second biggest rival. We also got battered against Newcastle and Villa and could have easily been another tennis score.

A statistical outlier was our 1-6 against City with Fergie. Those results were literally happening every 100 games or so, essentially outside of 3 standard deviations. Getting hammered several times per season is not a statistical outlier. It just shows that under pressure, when away, we crumble.

 

[OleGunnar20]

He has limited knowledge of players outside Eredivisie because he'd never had to worry about it. He had been focused on coaching prior to coming here and we should have prepared a list of players to buy for him with clear, comprehensive intel on what they are like before he came over.

There is nothing wrong with brining your former players in. Slight issue is approving a £85m deal for Antony when you should have been aware of his limitations, but Martinez/Onana were decent transfers and we had the right idea about De Jong.

Sure. If your former player is the best man for the job then perfect - a known quantity with a preexisting relationship. Can't fault that.

That we'll innevitably runs dry however as very few of his former players will be good enough to take us where we need to go. We need a proper scouting and transfer system suitable for a club our size.

If Brighton can do it I'm sure we can figure it out.

 

[CM]

Of 43 goals conceded, 17 came in 3 games, leaving 26 for the remaining 35. This is objectively speaking a statistical outlier. Debate someone else.

The acceptance of our standards falling through the floor is quite unbelievable. How can you dismiss conceding 17 goals in 3 games as an outlier? That shouldn't be a normal occurence for any self respecting team, never mind one with ambitions to compete at the top level.

 

[UDontMessWith24]

The acceptance of our standards falling through the floor is quite unbelievable. How can you dismiss conceding 17 goals in 3 games as an outlier? That shouldn't be a normal occurence for any self respecting team, never mind one with ambitions to compete at the top level.

Enlighten me, where did I say conceding 17 in 3 is acceptable?

 

[CM]

Enlighten me, where did I say conceding 17 in 3 is acceptable?

It feels like an excuse to call it an outlier when you concede in high volume on three separate occasions. Maybe I've misinterpreted that part.

 

[UDontMessWith24]

It feels like an excuse to call it an outlier when you concede in high volume on three separate occasions. Maybe I've misinterpreted that part.

Everyone has misinterpreted. It’s not ok for any reason, but the reason for those defeats had nothing to do with tactics or the quality of the players. The fact that we only conceded 26 in the rest of the matches is more indicative of the tactics and player quality. Those 3 defeats were more due to weak mentality.

 

[RedOrange]

No, objectively is not. It is not even outside of 2 standard deviations zone assuming a normal distribution. One of those matches was against our biggest rival, where we actually lost 5-0 and 4-0 the season before that. The other is against our second biggest rival. We also got battered against Newcastle and Villa and could have easily been another tennis score.

A statistical outlier was our 1-6 against City with Fergie. Those results were literally happening every 100 games or so, essentially outside of 3 standard deviations. Getting hammered several times per season is not a statistical outlier. It just shows that under pressure, when away, we crumble.

Would you be willing to show your work on these?

 

[Tom Van Persie]

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[ColvaleGoa]

He has gotten everything he wanted this
window so there's no more excuses.

Hopefully we will see better performances on the pitch now and actually look like a proper team

Kim MinJae, Kane.....?

 

[lsd]

Kim MinJae, Kane.....?

He wanted Hojlund stop listening to the media. Kane was never an option.

 

[croadyman]

Kim MinJae, Kane.....?

Well first one I reckon was down to him wanting a starting spot and Maguire not leaving. We clearly tried to sign Kane but he never gave us encouragement so moved on. Think that was because he just didn't see us as an attractive prospect unfortunately.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

He wanted Hojlund stop listening to the media. Kane was never an option.

He definitely wanted rid of Maguire and if that happened he would definitely have had to sign a top centre back to replace him. Whoever that might be. So he definitely didn’t get “everything he wanted”.

I’d be almost certain he wanted to sell/upgrade Martial too. He’d be mad not to, if it was possible.

 

[RedOrange]

No, objectively is not. It is not even outside of 2 standard deviations zone assuming a normal distribution. One of those matches was against our biggest rival, where we actually lost 5-0 and 4-0 the season before that. The other is against our second biggest rival. We also got battered against Newcastle and Villa and could have easily been another tennis score.

A statistical outlier was our 1-6 against City with Fergie. Those results were literally happening every 100 games or so, essentially outside of 3 standard deviations. Getting hammered several times per season is not a statistical outlier. It just shows that under pressure, when away, we crumble.

Would you be willing to show your work on these?

I got bored so I'll do it.

The frequency chart of goals allowed per match is below. If we're assuming a half-normal distribution, the mean is ~1.13, and the sample standard deviation is ~1.63. 6 goals against is (6 - 1.13)/1.63 = 2.98 standard deviations from the mean, 7 goals against is (7 - 1)/1.63 = 3.68 standard deviations from the mean. Roughly 99.7% of a normally distributed population is contained within 3 standard deviations.

Anyways that's all moot because if you knew anything about statistics you wouldn't have assumed a half-normal distribution (actually, you said just normal), you would have used a Poisson distribution, which is obvious to anyone who managed to make it 2 months into an introductory statistics course.

There's no formal definition of an outlier, so it doesn't make any sense to say "objectively they were not outliers". Your problem is that 17 clean sheets and 12 1-goal against matches is a very good defensive record, but that conflicts with your preferred narrative that the manager is an idiot and caused the team to leak goals last season, so you have to come up with some reason that the 3 matches where the team allowed more than 3 goals outweigh the 29 where they allowed less than 2, which is why you pretended to know anything about statistics and made up some numbers.

Goals	Frequency
0​	17​
1​	12​
2​	4​
3​	2​
4​	1​
5​	0​
6​	1​
7​	1​

 

[Leftback99]

I got bored so I'll do it.

The frequency chart of goals allowed per match is below. If we're assuming a half-normal distribution, the mean is ~1.13, and the sample standard deviation is ~1.63. 6 goals against is (6 - 1.13)/1.63 = 2.98 standard deviations from the mean, 7 goals against is (7 - 1)/1.63 = 3.68 standard deviations from the mean. Roughly 99.7% of a normally distributed population is contained within 3 standard deviations.

Anyways that's all moot because if you knew anything about statistics you wouldn't have assumed a half-normal distribution (actually, you said just normal), you would have used a Poisson distribution, which is obvious to anyone who managed to make it 2 months into an introductory statistics course.

There's no formal definition of an outlier, so it doesn't make any sense to say "objectively they were not outliers". Your problem is that 17 clean sheets and 12 1-goal against matches is a very good defensive record, but that conflicts with your preferred narrative that the manager is an idiot and caused the team to leak goals last season, so you have to come up with some reason that the 3 matches where the team allowed more than 3 goals outweigh the 29 where they allowed less than 2, which is why you pretended to know anything about statistics and made up some numbers.

Goals	Frequency
0​	17​
1​	12​
2​	4​
3​	2​
4​	1​
5​	0​
6​	1​
7​	1​

Wasn't this about how good Martinez is defensively though. He only started 9 of the 17 clean sheets and all of the 3+ games. He did however start most of the harder games.

 

[JuriM]

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[mitchmouse]

No he does not, we need to get better. Stop handing these managers an open checkbook to go out and pick who the feck they know. Get a structure in place that builds a squad and adds to that squad based on facts and data not who I worked with last time.

not much point getting players in that the manager doesn't want... but you then seem to agree with me that his acquisitions haven't been great... feck knows why we went for a spurs reject defender

 

[mitchmouse]

So players who haven't worked include someone who's played, what, 2 games, and a player who's never played for us at all...?

and why haven't they played for us? are they too good? If you mean Rasmus, not Malacia, I wasn't talking about him. but if you want to pretend that our purchases, go ahead - just don't drag me into those delusions. Meanwhile, tell me what you think Mount adds...

 

[JJ12]

not much point getting players in that the manager doesn't want... but you then seem to agree with me that his acquisitions haven't been great... feck knows why we went for a spurs reject defender

It’s a head scratcher unless you are aware of the context..