There'd have been less pressure on him to perform if he'd have cost £25m or even the £40m the club originally baulked at.
The club panicked, paid over the odds, and put way too much pressure on him.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
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The club panicked, paid over the odds, and put way too much pressure on him.
You are watching him take the piss out of eredivisie defenders and wondering why it's different.
100% I agree.
I know both of these things, what my original point and reply to was that I don't think ETH should take blame purely just for being interested in him because he saw a good player. Take the blame for the stupid pursuit and the final amount paid for sure, but I think the intentions were good at first because he looked a good player.
Why’s he loaning out our youth players? Should be playing them instead of the donkeys that are currently playing.
Almost as crazy as Martinez being in 70 percentile when it comes to aerial duels in Holland, to bottom 11 percentile in England.
It is like EPL is significantly stronger than the Eredivisie and shopping so heavily in that league was not a great idea.
Is this actually true?
Agree. It took Fergie 6 years to win the league but then he created a dynasty. How do we know that it won’t be the same for EtH? And if he doesn’t win it, how do we know that if we give him even more time he won’t build an even stronger dynasty?
I say we need to give him a lifetime contract. It is the only way that we can know for sure if he will be able to turn it around. Considering that EtH/manager turning it around must be the most important thing when it comes to Man United, I do not see a flaw in my logic.
Agree. He'll figure out English football eventually if we just give him time.
Is this the guy that released a book and gave it to all the players after then won the league?
He replaced some of those players with even worse ones, such as Onana, so the idea that he's just been left a bunch of disgruntled players after spending £400m doesn't exactly wash. He also allegedly and temporarily fell out with Varane which left him on the bench for Harry fecking Maguire at times, so I'm not sure he's exactly helping himself even if he's inherited some shite.
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Most of the league is League One level. He should be taking the piss out of them, he’s a Brazil national team regular.
At what point does that happen? Before or after we’re relegated?
Its bad but its not nearly that bad!
I'd say after we're relegated.
I do not see a future where this man leads us to trophies. We can stick with him until the end of the season sure but it's just delaying the inevitable.
Nah he's the guy who released a book after they nearly won the league but didn't
Onana has been sound recently, at least in the league, apart from the issue with free kicks that may or may not get a touch before going in. That's one for the goalkeeping /set piece coaches but is definitely solvable. He wasn't the first target last summer either.
It's quite obvious that Ineos are comfortable with Varane leaving if he doesn't accept a lower salary. As good as he is, he hasn't been able to play 2 games a week effectively, which means constant chopping and changing. It's vital that centre half pairings are settled from game to game. Maguires form has been good.
If some of you were in charge of companies you'd run them into the ground. Let a manager try to improve us? Standards truly gone through the floor.
But what if his players get injuries so his system completely falls apart again? We could truly never know what he's capable of.
The standards went through the door the minute Fergie left mate.
I can understand elements of this but a good structure won't elucidate an average manager to achieve great things. When United line up against Arsenal, City or Liverpool it's not a game of structure against structure, the coaches would have no plausibility with recieving credit for results, it's the efficiency of one team against another which is propelled by managerial competence.
It's due to naivety and shortsightedness. I think it's beneficial to a desire longer term approach with a manager beyond the short term but while the club can have all the right intention the manager needs to become reputable and build enough of a foundation that the idea of them being successful is a projection as opposed to a prediction.
My question is are United projecting a successful future with the manager or is it a prediction? Businesses make projections, it's done where there is telling evidence of something that is present, which in turn allows them to capitalise on in the future. After 19 months It's wishful thinking to assume Erik will have United challenging at any point because we cannot fathom how it will be achieved. Klopp / Pep can move abroad and we know what they bring to the table through coaching, tactical instruction and philosophy. Erik to his own discredit has even removed this basis of reasoning from consideration because he's abandoned what we could make as an assumption given his time at Ajax.
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A bad structure has been significant factor in all our managers and squads and players under performing. Teams play poor when confidence is low and that can happen when a squad knows it doesn’t have the quality to meet its goals, regardlsss of coach or manager. It works both ways. I can’t believe that anybody at this stage can still think that it’s simply every manager we have had and player we bought who were the problem.
Picking out individual games is redundant. Didn’t Ole have a good record against City, that made zero difference in the scheme of things. Regardless , looking at specifics like games against top 6 is pointless as the bigger issue is that we have never been close in 11 years to challenging for a title or winning the CL.
You want consistency of everything at the club and that includes departments and people of excellence at all levels. The manager should be supported and indeed improved within that structure of excellence. Some of you want a manager to compensate for the club’s dysfunctional which is short sighted and probably the reason why so many of you hyper focus on the managerial position.
United are more likely to find a manager who can do better then what we have had for 10 years , with a complete restructuring of how its run , then it is to find some golden goose manager to fix or work around all the dysfunction.
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Not exactly sure of your point. We know the structure is broken, though over last few years it hasn't stopped quite a few muppets defending Murtough, Arnold and others. But also a decent coach can elevate things above the rubbish we are now seeing. It is not about trophies or results, again some people cant see past that. We look awful on the pitch, utterly disjointed and directionless. We were really poor quite a bit of second half of last season, without injuries. At least with Spurs you can see exactly what the manager wants, and even in defeat they have generally played well and created plenty of chances. We play badly, create few chances and lose. The really worrying thing about ETH is his arrogance, refusing to speak to Rangnick (Pep always wanted to learn from everyone) and then signings such dross. Weghorst, Antony, Amrabat. Most of the others not much better. He knew Antony inside out and yet was desperate for them. It was extensively reported ETH wanted final say on transfers, so he may well have overriden even a good structure. He flip flops, one minute McT and Maguire are out the door, the next they are first names on the sheet. Its an incredibly tough job but he's all over the place
To be fair, alot of that post is your subjective interpretation of events. So many of you state things as fact that we simply don’t know for sure.
Simple question. Do you think injuries , fatigue from last seasons schedule (that killed Liverpool last season), issues with Sancho, Anthony greenwood, striker issues , club sale issues, do you honestly think these have zero affect on the squad harmony and confidence of the team?
The question is how much is fair to factor these in and it’s not an easy one. Some of you talk like coaching a team is simply done on a park and then the players play a game.
I manage an under 13s boy team and I can tell you there are dramas/issues no coaching can over come. There is no comparable club or manager we can be compared to because there’s no club with as many issues as I’ve highlighted , going on ALL at the same time. I feel ETH has been desperately unlucky and some of you don’t give him any leeway for the sh*te he’s taken over and been thrust into. If he just had to coach the team, you would all be correct, but his entire time at United has been riddled with dramas.
I’m not saying ETH is good enough or will be able to recover, I’m saying there’s an awful lot of things going on at the club that make it difficult to objectively judge him. Results and performance aren’t definitely down to bad coaching. But I get that results are what you are judged on so can’t fault people doubting him or INEOS deciding to replace him.
Meh I don't think so. If you watch some of his "Antony vs..." videos, it's the same Antony that plays for us.
That is THE problem. We got what we paid for.
Edit: see What makes you think it's a "totally different player"?
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YouTube highlights can make any player look good.
Why is Anthony getting a harder time than Sancho ?
We paid similar amounts for the players, more was expected from Sancho and we’ve arguably gotten less from him than Anthony.
Anthony had a very traumatic drama at start of season and he seems to of gotten through it and was straight back to work. How is it ok for Sancho to take last season off and not bother this season cause he doesn’t like the manager?
Anthony’s at least showed up to work, a low bar but still more than Sancho and yet there’s an awful lot of hate for him. Just weird…
We paid similar amounts for the players, more was expected from Sancho and we’ve arguably gotten less from him than Anthony.
Anthony had a very traumatic drama at start of season and he seems to of gotten through it and was straight back to work. How is it ok for Sancho to take last season off and not bother this season cause he doesn’t like the manager?
Anthony’s at least showed up to work, a low bar but still more than Sancho and yet there’s an awful lot of hate for him. Just weird…
Antony is a symbol of EHT era, that's why. The truth is Antony should have never been brought here for that money, I feel for him because it's not his fault. He's a very limited footballer who would be a good 15m backup 3rd choice right winger.
Sancho is a wanker who was willing to waste his career here because of some childish behaviour and conflict with the gaffer. It's totally on Sancho and I have no sympathy for him.
Two different situations.
Two different situations but arguably Sancho is worse in many ways. Most of the anger towards Anthony, that’s directed at Anthony , is not really his fault.
Sanchos problems are mostly or entirely his fault and yet Anthony is the goto Fallguy, it’s bollox to be fair.
Fully agreed, I just explained my view on the question you asked.
Ah ok. Fair enough.
In my opinion every criticism towards Antony should be automatically forwarded to Ten Hag. We got exactly the same player that played for Ajax, nothing more, nothing less.
If ETH thought he will unlock some potential in Antony, the joke is on him as (as he coached him for 2 years).
Sancho is another story, just a waste of talent.
That's why he is paid millions to specifically provide leadership in each of these issues so that they don't affect performances on the pitch. If you look at all the issues you will find that it's only the club sale that he had no influence over but it shouldn't affect grown men who have the security of multiple year contracts.
On the striker issue, ETH had the power to nix the Mount and Hoijlund deals the moment they got out of hand. Murtough is an incompetent buffoon but surely he briefed ETH on the developments in each deal and ETH should have pulled the plug the moment both deals went above the £50m mark because the extra £30m spent on those plus the £50m spent on Onana, whose signing wasn't necessary because we had a deal agreed with DDG, would have resulted in £80m being spent elsewhere.
He wasn't willing to be flexible on recruitment and it turns out three of the players he went big on were expensive mistakes. Hoijlund is not a £70m player, Mount isn't a CM worth buying for £60m and Antony should be a £30m player. He can't then moan about striker issues when he effectively wasted £200m on players we are going to have to upgrade on the moment he leaves.
The fatigue issue is down to his naivety. What did he think was going to happen to his key players of they were playing a match every 3 days for five months? Once we were firmly in control of top 4 did he need to go hard for the Europa? Threads were started here regarding this issue by posters who are mostly amateurs but we are supposed to believe that he didn't see or receive advice on this?
He’s paid millions to coach and manage the team. He’s a tracksuit manager. All the other things that he has to navigate (including transfers) , that Klopp and peo don’t, are down to our clubs dysfunction.
You say Murtagh is a Buffoon yet think that shouldn’t affect the kind of support ETH got from him. United over spend on players, that’s not an ETH thing, that’s a United thing. I’m not going into individual players signed because none of us know for sure the exact nature of why certain players were signed. We know they were signed, we know ETH said he wanted them (like all United managers say about every transfer), we know uniteds transfer policy has been a mess for a decade but we don’t know how we ended up getting ETH signings over potential alternatives.
Top manager’s don’t rotate their best squads. They build up momentum. They adapt to their circumstances and sometimes changing teams is not feasible. We don’t have a massive squad so he hasn’t got world class alternatives, this has been part of the problem , so rotating could of meant no league cup , fa cup final or even that great win against Barca.
So I wil ask again, why was it ok for Klopps pool to get a free pass due to fatigue/injuries and the same doesn’t apply to United? Klopp getting success makes no difference, either his squad injuries and fatigue explained their fall off or it didn’t.
It was an ETH precondition that he would have control over transfers, he insisted on it and you can't now absolve him of any blame over incomings because things have gone wrong. He is the one directing transfer policy at United and has even insisted on maintaining that power in the INEOS era.
Klopp has more credit the bank than the League Cup and he has never lost half of his opening 20 matches. That's not a fall off, it's a fecking disaster.
Knowing you don't have a big squad and going all out for three cups is naivety. The PL is our bread and butter and he should have sacrificed the Europa League the moment we were third in the league and focused on the PL. I'd rather have a fresh squad than risk burning out my key players for momentum's sake.
Not wrong but it was also nowhere near this level of fall. We all roasted Mourinho when he finished 2nd with still our highest point tally since SAF left, because everybody thought we should be challenging for the title. When ETH was appointed standards were low but now they are rock bottom. People acting like we're some kind of experiment project instead of the biggest club in England and one of the biggest in the world. We shouldn't be "letting" anybody "try to improve" us. This goes for everyone, the manager, the players. We cannot afford to give any underperforming personell that much time based on blind faith just to see what happens. I saw in the Antony thread yesterday people suggesting we convert him to a fullback or loan him to a weaker club to see if he gets better. We seem unable to just let things so.
United didn’t need to agree to it, why do you think they did? Was it because it suited the club because we have been a mess in transfers for years? Regardless, You speak like we have been great at transfers , we are a mess whoever is signing players.
Klopp having credit in the bank doesn’t address the question. Either it was fatigue and injuries or not. If it’s good enough excuse for Klopp then it’s good enough for ETH, you don’t get to select what suits your point of view cause it suits your point of view.
And nobody knew how the World Cup might impact things so you have that edyea
If ETH had sacrificed all the cups for league and finished well off 1st, which was always going to happen, it wouldn’t have gone down well. Winning the cup was not a bad thing, especially when you factor our previous season.
Its nice for you to have your fantastical ideas retrospectively on how last season should of gone