Yeah right. Absolute bollocks from the United PR machine
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?
Hell of a coincidence how many of them just happen to have a previous link to Ten Hag then. I find it impossible to believe that the club was interested in spending £85m on Antony without the manager pushing for it.
I'll give you an example. Real Madrid had a serious injury crisis in 20/21.
In the 2nd half of the season, we lost Ramos (only played 3 matches of league+CL football after matchday 20), Carvajal (only played 4 matches of league+CL football after matchday 18), Ferland Mendy (missed the last 8 league games), and Varane (missed 6 of the last 10 league games). Those are serious problems to the 'starting back four', same as with United right now.
The club's league record in the 2nd half of the season was 13W5D1L. It was actually better than in the first half of the season (13W3D3L).
And it's not because of an amazing squad. Washed players, flops, random academy boys, and reconverted wingers had to pitch in.
Of course, it had consequences: the club didn't win anything that season and the makeshift defense was no match for Chelsea. But it doesn't mean you lose every other game. It should mostly matter at the top level, against City or something.
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It's not even good PR, they had a team of scouts who thought Antony for £80m was a good signing? It makes them sound more stupid.
Not sure whether ETH has to go back to some basic setup of last season, what we're doing currently is not generating much, some kind of hybrid transition that just isn't functioning.
If we've changed to more turnovers what happens is we have to go against defences already set. Even the best teams don't get much from turnovers so it seems a huge flaw in trying to utilize our key players in this manner. We don't have enough creation and craft to play through teams, our guys need that space to run into and break.
Last night and in other games, the opposition is running at our defence, we're on the back foot and they slot it home from wherever. We're very deceptible to the breaks and can't find a way through at the other end, our attackers are on zero.
We need to counter more instead of trying to force turnovers, draw teams out. That will leave space for Rashford to attack 1-2 players instead 3-5 currently, same for Hojlund who is very quick also and will create space for Bruno to pass into. I would also hope for a Amrabat/Case two behind Bruno, and swap Bruno for Eriksen. Eriksen has also shown to be good at sitting deeper with Case against lesser teams.
Rashford coupled with Hojlund should be a very fearsome attack with pace in behind but we're squandering it as teams just block us and break freely. We had many chances go begging last season that Hojlund can pounce on but they're not there.
If we've changed to more turnovers what happens is we have to go against defences already set. Even the best teams don't get much from turnovers so it seems a huge flaw in trying to utilize our key players in this manner. We don't have enough creation and craft to play through teams, our guys need that space to run into and break.
Last night and in other games, the opposition is running at our defence, we're on the back foot and they slot it home from wherever. We're very deceptible to the breaks and can't find a way through at the other end, our attackers are on zero.
We need to counter more instead of trying to force turnovers, draw teams out. That will leave space for Rashford to attack 1-2 players instead 3-5 currently, same for Hojlund who is very quick also and will create space for Bruno to pass into. I would also hope for a Amrabat/Case two behind Bruno, and swap Bruno for Eriksen. Eriksen has also shown to be good at sitting deeper with Case against lesser teams.
Rashford coupled with Hojlund should be a very fearsome attack with pace in behind but we're squandering it as teams just block us and break freely. We had many chances go begging last season that Hojlund can pounce on but they're not there.
I miss Ole
My first thought is that it's a sign we might sack him soon. Probably to reassure the players that they are wanted after he's gone.
The tour was a disaster. Way too many games. Playing all over America, plus Scotland, Ireland, Norway and at home.
I am unimpressed by their need for plenty of downtime. It's a training camp not a fecking holiday.
Yeah I noticed the Onana going direct as well. But he still want us to actively going to dominate and attack while we can't move the ball fast enough to create anything. I don't blame him for the courage and idea. But with the current state of our squad like very slow CBs, Casemiro turning crap etc. it's simply better to just sit deep and counter imo.
It was a fecking disaster the previous season with Ronaldo, Ole and Rangnick. Most wrote off last season before it even started. I understand some fans might have very short memory so imo you should have a look in this very thread and you'd see I think.
There will always be some excuse. Next Hojlund or someone will be injured and the narrative will be 'what do you expect with no striker apart from a lazy Martial' or some other such. If your whole team completely falls apart because of 3-5 injuries then you aren't a top coach, period.
Bayern messed up their squad for this season so badly that they will probably arrive without any experienced defenders. Even 3rd tier Saarbrücken did beat them yesterday in the cup where it actually mattered for Bayern to win. If you can't beat that second string of Bayern at home when they don't care about a win you shouldn't play in the PL and not even bother try to compete in the Championship.
I feel like I have to withhold judgement until this team has played together (fully fit) for a run of games:
Onana
AWB/Dalot Varane Martinez Shaw
Casemiro Amrabat Bruno
Antony Hojlund Rashford
…but it’s telling that I can’t find a place for Mount in the best 11 (a circumstance of the other mishmash of midfielders at the club) - and I suspect ETH is finding the same problem. Best solution I can see is Mount right side in place of Antony.
Onana
AWB/Dalot Varane Martinez Shaw
Casemiro Amrabat Bruno
Antony Hojlund Rashford
…but it’s telling that I can’t find a place for Mount in the best 11 (a circumstance of the other mishmash of midfielders at the club) - and I suspect ETH is finding the same problem. Best solution I can see is Mount right side in place of Antony.
I guess the next few games will say a lot but, christ, he's lost the plot and it started in the summer with the signings. His signings have been shit overall. If he needs the exact same players. that he had in Ajax to play quality football and take teams to glory, then he shouldn't be managing any big teams.
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This account has had everything spot on so far. Very worrying if true. Varane is the definition of professional.
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I would back him IF the club was prepared to let him gut the squad like Arteta at Arsenal. The problem is he only had two big earners to deal with in Aubameyang & Ozil whereas it's most of the squad here. Doesn’t help our owners are so obsessed with egotistical shirt sellers either.
It was a decent season but calling it a miracle is just ludicrous. League position and winning the Carling cup is good but we also got battered 7-0 by our biggest rivals in one of the most humiliating defeats of all time and our other rivals won every trophy that matters. It just feels like a windup or something to call it a miracle. Ranieri winning the PL with Leicester is a miracle. That's the bar set to class as a miracle.
I don't think reddit is representative of the fanbase. Those idiots still think Ole was the greatest manager ever. Any dissenting opinions there get downvoted to oblivion so it's much more of an echo chamber than the Caf.
ETH did a solid job last season. Very good wins v Barca and showed great resilience to come back from the bad start and beat Liverpool and Arsenal.
But we also took some historic beatings to City and Liverpool as well as really poor games v Newcastle and Villa away. Fell apart when we had the game won V Sevilla and got trounces in the return leg - i think this is when the rot started as we only just held onto top 4 in the end.
We also have to consider that Chelsea, Liverpool and Spurs had huge down years.
Sure, they were on the radar - we have dozens of scouts all over the world, so that's not surprising. That doesn't mean we were interested in them or had any intention of signing them though.
Varane story means its almost over for ETH. You cant replace entire squad. Its just easier to sack manager. Unless ofcourse if we are ready to throw this season
Well given we apparently looked at 500 right backs before signing awb it's possible we just have everyone in Europe on our radar
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That’s desperation it isn’t good management. Good management would be sticking to your core ideas and never changing.
Everything must be seen with context imo. It's actually fecking rare for the caf to be able to agree on something. And most posters agreed that what he did was a true miracle back then. You can have look in this very thread around that time and you'd see I think.
The issue isn’t coaching anymore then the issue isn’t coaching when a premier league winning teams play turns to sh*t a few months into their next season. We’ve seen a few coaches get sacked after winning leagues, they didn’t lose the capacity to coach a team over the summer.
The issues for ETH (plenty not his fault, some are) are many but the players confidence is basically non existent and they look like they have lead in their boots. No United team/manager has been able to arrest a death spiral since SAF, it’s always the same inevitable collapse.
That’s not absolving the manager of responsibility but I’m not sure ETH could coach these lads to make beans on toast at the moment. It’s not all completely down to the players either (although I’m less sympathetic to them).
I think when you join Brighton or spurs, a player has a certain expectation. You ain’t gonna be winning leagues and challanging for CL and if by some miracle you do, there’s zero pressure on you to succeed. If you go through a bad patch, it’s kind of a shrugged shoulder type response, again you have time to recover without too much pressure.
There were glimpses of quality with some ETH team moments. Our death spiral has happened For numerous reasons, fatigue from last season, injuries (to even players joining), off field dramas to players, off field drama with ownership and basically every single thing that could go wrong has.
This has left ETH in a position where he basically can make no mistakes. Every single decision he makes that doesn’t work out is ruthlessly punished and as the team loses more and more , it can get to the point where there’s possibly nothing he can do.
In terms of discipline that I see people bring up. You can’t drop every player from the squad. But not but that, when you are firefighting in such an extreme case like this , you have to prioritise and that may mean lowering other levels.
It does feel like it’s nearly an untenable position. I don’t want him sacked but it’s looking more and more likely. I don’t think sacking him solved anything long term because a manager “getting more from this team” is not good enough for me.
Even if we lost the next 5 games, I wouldn’t want him sacked. This club isn’t comparable with other well run clubs because we aren’t well run. Managers are human shields to the owners and many people subscribe to the narrative that there is some Hail Mary manager who can make all the sh*tshow at the club work. There’s more of a chance of us winning the CL with ETH this season.
So fans can wish for a new manager, but deep down they know we will be most likely in the exact same discussion in 18-36 months. I’d rather ETH stays and even if we really started losing everything, that it forced the glazers into drastic action to f**k right off. Finishing 17th and the glazers gone would be a super outcome this season.
Do you think La primera is as strong as the EPL? Isn’t this part of the problem , that you just can’t get away with vulnerability’s in the EPL that teams get found out in EPL.
How many EPL winners over the last 15 years struggled to even make top 4 the next season versus Madrid or Barca in La primera? Madrid only need beat or surpass Barca who have had their own problems.
Madrid can also afford expensive flops and it doesn’t really affect them much. Uniteds flops don’t just start playing poorly but the entire squad falls apart.
A significant issue for United is the room for mistakes. There just is none right now and everything is being punished ruthlessly. In Spain Real Madrid are probably coming up against a decent amount of championship level teams that they wouldn’t meet in England. That means you aren’t as exposed when you lose first team players.
Lastly, Madrid have proven pedigree in how it’s run. Even a Madrid team that has an awful season usually finishes in the top 4 of the league. And usually Madrid has a champions league or league title within 2-3 years.
At United players join and within a few months they see how broken the club is and they don’t see any hope of improvemenus. They watch their managers drown and get a bit of a bounce when the new one comes in. They don’t leave because they can’t get anywhere near the same amount of money anywhere else so United is stuck with players nobody wants.
Lastly , Real Madrid presidents are held accountable for their lack of success. Real Madrid don’t put a Woodward like person in charge. Real Madrid isn’t setup to generate revenue first and then throw a few quid to the team that should hopefully keep it there or thereabouts.
I think alot of players, particularly top quality ones who sign for United, understand the difference between playing a club setup to succeed versus a club setup to do just enough and they become despondent at the club (not the manager).
Then the fans get angry at the players/managers , who can’t really say what they want to say, and then they sort of lose the energy to try ( for some this is an unconscious thing, not an intentional one).
You can’t single out injuries in isolation. How long since Real Madrid won a top trophy? Have the last 10 years of Madrid signings all mostly failed? How slow are Madrid to move on unwanted players? Would they extend contracts on a martial or Phil Jones for as long as United? How many Madrid managers have had to make do with an Ighalo or Weghorst level player leading their frontline? Would they keep a president like Woodward on for a decade when it’s clear they don’t low what they are doing? How many sex abuse scandals have they had this season? What happens to players who mouth off about managers ? How quickly do real move on difficult players? Can real get decent return on sales to help spend more? Is Real Madrids stadium in bits? Is their training complex not as good as rivals ? Is their fanbase Constantly divided and singing about the owners leaving? Does Real Madrid hierarchy prioritise commercial interests over football ?
I’m sure there’s more,but an injury issue is only one issue. One issue and another and another and another, eventually compounds the problems to the point where it’s much much harder for everybody to perform at peak levels.
When I read or hear “how will fixing stadium help the team play better football?” I just feel that this person either doesn’t want to or doesn’t get the bigger picture. 1% or improvements in all areas is more then 1% improvement and you keep doing that you give yourself a better chance of success.
United throwing another couple of hundred million at this squad is a money pit solution. It’s like trying to build the roof of a house as the foundation is crumbling.
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I said it multiple times, Ten Hag cultists overrated last season a lot.
Considering top 4 and League Cup as a miracle is shambolic if anything.
Something needs to change. But what? His options seem limited and it is difficult to figure out what is he trying to do or what he wants to change. Is he waiting until more players come back from injuries? Is that the plan?
He clearly wanted Mount to play with #8s... we invested 55m on him and are we dropped that idea just after 3 bad games where the whole team struggled?
There are a lof of things that make no sense, and ETH is not brining any clarity with his decisions.
I really wanted him. I still think he is the right guy for the job. The real issue is the quality of some of the players here. They got more than 4 coaches sacked in a very similar patern in the last few years! Sacking another one will not change anything after the honeymoon period. Also, except Case, any of the other players we have signed complement our theoretical best two players. From a DOF point of view, it makes no sense.
Hope we see some movement in our Football Operations structure. I think that is the most urgent thing we need to address.
He clearly wanted Mount to play with #8s... we invested 55m on him and are we dropped that idea just after 3 bad games where the whole team struggled?
There are a lof of things that make no sense, and ETH is not brining any clarity with his decisions.
I really wanted him. I still think he is the right guy for the job. The real issue is the quality of some of the players here. They got more than 4 coaches sacked in a very similar patern in the last few years! Sacking another one will not change anything after the honeymoon period. Also, except Case, any of the other players we have signed complement our theoretical best two players. From a DOF point of view, it makes no sense.
Hope we see some movement in our Football Operations structure. I think that is the most urgent thing we need to address.
Yes they can.
People suggesting that achieving Top 4 isn't a real achievement. It is when you sign middling players on loan because your club is skint
Nah there were plenty who weren't drinking the kool aid so to speak. It was a good season, I think the most I ever praised it was as potentially very good (before the FA cup final) and there were a number of nagging doubts too. The problem was every new manager has to automatically be thought of as the best thing since sliced bread and any reasonable concerns get shouted down, until of course we face an undeniable situation like this. I was rooting for ETH to get the job and was delighted when he was hired. But you should still always try to analyze objectively. Painting 3rd place finishes as miracles is doing no favours whatsoever. If ETH does get sacked and the next guy comes in and gets us to 3rd it still wouldn't be a miracle. It would be a good job.
And anti ETH people downplaying it a lot. We should simply agree to disagree I think.
So the Glazers over in America potentially selling a stake affects say Garnacho training his hardest and giving his best on matchday? I don't buy it. It's only an excuse because we're losing. Day to day at the training ground won't look any different to last season.
That's not how I remember it. In fact, I remember a lot of discord in the back half of last season when the wheels came off after the League Cup win. From the "title challenge" that lasted about a week to the 7-0 at Anfield to Wout Weghorst's continued presence in the team and the limp surrender in the Europa League quarter-final, there were plenty of complaints and cracks beginning to appear. I certainly don't recall any talk of "miracles" from March onwards. More like desperation to somehow crawl over the line and get top four, in the expectation that the squad would be further overhauled in the summer and this season would go much better.
As per posters here, ETH is responsible for everything. For transfer money and salaries and contract extensions.
The questions of coaching, questions of player selection etc are all secondary to the question 'why has ETH switched to this 1 midfielder system'.
How much of our hideous football and inability to create chances or keep the other team scoring 3+ goals every game is a consequence of playing with 5 players pressed up in the final 3rd all the time.
It was obviously not working in the pre season games. It obviously didnt work against Wolves. It hasnt looked good for a single minute this season other than against Palace, when we scored 2 early goals and changed to a more conservative set up.
How much of our hideous football and inability to create chances or keep the other team scoring 3+ goals every game is a consequence of playing with 5 players pressed up in the final 3rd all the time.
It was obviously not working in the pre season games. It obviously didnt work against Wolves. It hasnt looked good for a single minute this season other than against Palace, when we scored 2 early goals and changed to a more conservative set up.
Again I said check this very thread around that time and you'd see.
Tbh I didn't even really like ETH at first, had some doubt and thought he would be sacked pretty soon after the first games. But he has convinced me as the season went on.
This one is personal because for the longest time many were already raising alarm on the massive red flag that was our recruitment. Unimaginative Eredivise recruitment going unchecked. Fools at the top just allowing it because they themselves had no qualifications for the job.