Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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You want evidence that win % is a better stat to evaluate a managers time over a long period over goal difference?

Here's some evidence - points are decided on how much a manager wins, not just how many goals they score in total.
Maybe we really should clarify first what we are evaluating, because I think there is a difference between you two.

To evaluate how well a manager has done, clearly actual winning stats etc are the straightforward think to look at. But that's something you need to praise (or the opposite) him when he is gone. While in the job you need to predict the future and ask yourself how likely it is that on current performance the next games will be won. And to me it's clear that a team that wins three matches by clear two or three goals, draws one and loses one unluckily is more likely to win the next match than a team that gets the same number of points but gets its ass whopped in the loss and has to ride its luck for two of the three wins (EtH is closer to the latter theoretical example)
 
:lol: We’re finally here we’re finally at the point where we have to explain why a win is handy.
I don't understand the point @Leftback99 is trying to make fully. I respect and agree with his view that GD is not healthy but I think it's clear that having 50% of your defenders healthy, coupled with being obligated to play youth as a front 3 would be a bigger driving factor than who is in the managerial hot seat.

However if his point is GD is a bigger stat than overall points then its a bit bollocks.

We've had 64 PL games since Ten Hag joined and rank 4th behind Liverpool Arsenal and City. Which is about right.
 
I haven’t watched a single press conference or post match interview he’s done for about a year. He’s got to be the most bland and predictable manager for interviews we’ve had in the post Fergie era. Did think his UWS interview was good though

I also dislike that he’s so accepting of it when we get piss poor referee decisions against us. It gives the impression he lacks passion. All the best managers will call it out

I have also stopped watching his interviews. Same happened with Ole and Jose.
 
Variance over 98 games is unlikely to be a huge factor here (and I say this especially considering we’ve lost games we could have won without having been so injury plagued). Essentially it’s hard to argue against this by suggesting it’s all luck or that luck has played a significant role.

1.95 ppG
61.22% Win
In role 1 year 7 months 24 days

Klopp

Over his first 2 seasons:
Games/W/D/L/GF:GA/Pts/Ppg
Combined: 99/50/18/21/186:113/178pts/1.79ppG
50.5% Win

These are managers entering sub optimal sporting structures and developing them in their first few seasons and this is their output.

Let’s just look at his PL record then:
57% win (including this injury plagued season) which is still better than Klopp and Arteta for their first 2 seasons too?

There are surely many managers, not just Ten Hag, who outperformed Jurgen Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool. But that wouldn't be because of the manager. It would be because Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool weren't anything special. Many of these managers would have failed overall.
 
I think in a single game of football, this might be the one where ETH did the most things I totally disagreed with over 90 odd minutes.

I genuinely don't think he got one "big call"... or even "medium call" correct.
 
For the comedy duo @VP89 and @BenitoSTARR . Yes I'm well aware that the team with the most points wins the league (not sure why you're rambling on about win % which in the end just correlates to points).

This came from me saying that GD over a season is a better indicator of future perfomance than points (or win % if you really want). I provided an article to back up my claim, you dismissed it. Back it up.
 
There are surely many managers, not just Ten Hag, who outperformed Jurgen Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool. But that wouldn't be because of the manager. It would be because Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool weren't anything special. Many of these managers would have failed overall.
That's a misconception though. Considering the quality of the team he inherited (a team that just lost Suarez, Sterling and Gerrard in recent year), his first seasons at Liverpool were actually very good. Weeks after taking over he got convincing wins at Etihad and Stamford, he then took them to Europa League final (abysmal second half against EL experts Sevilla though), then got them into top 4 in his first full season and into CL final in their first CL appearance under him (whilst against making it to top 4).

They were constantly competitive even against the big boys, in 2016-17 they did not lose a single game to a top 4 side - their downfall was poor performances against lesser teams (lost to Burnley, Swansea, Hull, Palace that year) which are much easier to fix than being consistently inept against any half decent team.

ETH's first two years are not comparable to Klopp's first two years at all. With Klopp you could clearly see where they were headed, and not even the most keen ETH admirers will have the same feeling with him.
 
So you’re arguing that his wins aren’t as valid?

If we’re not really drawing games doesn’t that suggest he’s trying for the 3 points more than avoiding losing 1?

May I be selective about his losses then?

I don’t disagree that XG and goal difference give you a good idea but the best? I’d say winning 57% of your PL games to date is a good measure too?

We need to build a new squad regardless of the manager. Unless you think we’re the finished article now?

Wins are perfectly valid, points gained so far great. But XG and GD even last season suggested it may not be sustainable, and it has proven this season to be the case.

On results alone we outperformed Liverpool last season and in win percentage, but we were worse on XG and GD than them and low and behold this season we are being outperformed handsomely by them.

Last season we over performed on results against performances. This season we are about where we should be.

ETH hasn't taken us forward in his two seasons, better results last season but that seems like an anomaly, performance wise we are similar to 21/22, we are different to 21/22 but in terms of performances and results very similar.
 
I always think to the first 3 seasons of Sir Alex with fans holding up fergie out banners especially the famous “3 years of excuses and we’re still crap, tara fergie” banner.

I’m not for one second saying ETH is Ferguson, not many are BUT we would never of known how good a manager he was if we’d of judged him on his first few seasons, infact the total opposite. And that’s without social media and fan channels like today’s game. Imagine switching your phone on and seeing all the different YouTube channels ripping you to pieces, being a manager in today’s era is really, really tough. Especially when the chips are down. Thats without even mentioning the fact you now have city being mega rich and set up to win.

I’m not even saying he is the right man. The next fergie or busby, I just can’t help but feel this is a really really tough job, I’d actually go as far to say it’s the toughest job in world football.. and most managers would really struggle here with the players/club the way they are. It’s run so so badly. I know I’m in the minority here but I don’t mind most of ETHs signings, he’s been pretty unlucky with injuries and issues outside of his control. He also hasn’t got his first pick most of the time.

. I’d like him to get longer with world class support because I truly believe he is a better manager than what we’re seeing. I know he is. Ajax were brilliant under him. They played some really good stuff. It’s amazing what a difference a club with infrastructure around it can do to a manager. Also looking at arteta it’s amazing what more time and support does for a manager.

I also don’t want to see a fair few of these players play for another manager. I’m firmly in the camp that I’d like them sold first. Then evaluate.
 
For the comedy duo @VP89 and @BenitoSTARR . Yes I'm well aware that the team with the most points wins the league (not sure why you're rambling on about win % which in the end just correlates to points).

This came from me saying that GD over a season is a better indicator of future perfomance than points (or win % if you really want). I provided an article to back up my claim, you dismissed it. Back it up.
So your point is actually more about what is a strong leading indicator?
I am generally OK with this sentiment as long as it's not used in isolation. As previously addressed, you've ignored the context around our GD this season.
 
Couldn't give a feck about win percentages unless we were in the title race, doing alright in the CL or the cups, the football is atrocious to watch. Hate watching games to see us get played off the park, I only do it because I support the team.

He might have a decent win percentage but we're miles off the champions league places, out of the champions league after what should have been a relatively straightforward group stage and went out of the league cup early. Nothing in the performances suggest we will get anywhere near the FA Cup either so the win percentage means nothing, zero improvement on last year in any department. That would suggest the loss percentage is catching up rapidly.

I feel as though I'm watching Crystal Palace, the difference being we get more wins because we have better players.

I can accept that significant injuries will stop a team performing as well as they might otherwise, that's only natural. It's not an excuse for getting absolutely bossed on and off the ball other than for short periods in nearly every game, by any level of opposition though.
 
You can't explain away an entire season of disappointing results and performances using the injury excuse. We conceded 17 shots to Burton Albion! We just lost at home to Fulham who were missing Palhina, Jiminez, Willian, and Cairney. We lost 3 nil at home to Bournemouth. Even when we win (Luton, Wolves) it's unconvincing. It's not nearly good enough.
 
I don't understand the point @Leftback99 is trying to make fully. I respect and agree with his view that GD is not healthy but I think it's clear that having 50% of your defenders healthy, coupled with being obligated to play youth as a front 3 would be a bigger driving factor than who is in the managerial hot seat.

However if his point is GD is a bigger stat than overall points then its a bit bollocks.

We've had 64 PL games since Ten Hag joined and rank 4th behind Liverpool Arsenal and City. Which is about right.
I also agree that GD and xG will be a factor but if he’s denying points are too then it’s a disingenuous position he’s taking.

As you say he’s ignoring context which is as anyone from a statistical background knows incredibly naive.

If we have the 4th best behind those sides that makes complete sense and we shouldn’t currently be expecting way higher.
There are surely many managers, not just Ten Hag, who outperformed Jurgen Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool. But that wouldn't be because of the manager. It would be because Klopp's first two seasons at Liverpool weren't anything special. Many of these managers would have failed overall.
Please name any managers who have managed to do that. I know Pep has and I know Erik Ten Hag has too. But please name these numerous managers who have bettered this stat?

So why were his two seasons not special if he wasn’t a special manger? Surely he should be able to do better regardless of squad or structure around him?

How could a massively inferior manager outperform him over a similar period?
For the comedy duo @VP89 and @BenitoSTARR . Yes I'm well aware that the team with the most points wins the league (not sure why you're rambling on about win % which in the end just correlates to points).

This came from me saying that GD over a season is a better indicator of future perfomance than points (or win % if you really want). I provided an article to back up my claim, you dismissed it. Back it up.
Back up that winning more points over a 98 game period or even just over their PL tenures isn’t a sign of success?

I agree with you that GD will help too. But you’re dismissing something that strongly contradicts your narrative and shows Ten Hag in a very positive light. I wonder why?

Whereas we are acknowledging that the GD isn’t as good as some may want it to be but also acknowledging a factor in this will have been this seasons injury plagued campaign in defence and our young attack.

Or do we expect a club that has had:

Ronaldo
Martial
Weghorst
Højlund

To have been banging them in?
 
I'd like to asses him after having a good amount of players available. He's had that over the last couple of gameweeks, and except for Fulham, it has been better but also the opponents have been relatively weak. Our bench is a big worry though.

The squad lacks quality competition for everyone to perform better. Our style of players is still a bit all over the place too.
 
So why were his two seasons not special if he wasn’t a special manger? Surely he should be able to do better regardless of squad or structure around him?
As has been mentioned before Klopp struggled a bit getting consistent results in the league against smaller teams, but got most of the big matches right (which includes reaching the EL and CL final). That gave early hope that he will be able to iron out the obvious issues (and he did by amazing PL runs after that initial seasons). EtH has got similar results in the league, but very few good results and performances against big teams and instead a lot of wins against the minnows of the league, and those quite often only due to individual quality of some players. This is a huge red flag for me as it indicates that the team isn't able to go head to head against top teams, and if that doesn't change you are extremely unlikely to win anything (an extremely lucky draw in the FA or Carabao Cup obviously can help as we have seen, but nonetheless that doesn't help for PL/CL/EL).
 
I hate that I'm jealous of both Liverpool and City for having managers with character, even though they're both weirdos. Even Arsenal's manager makes you feel something one way or another. We have a monotonous robot in charge unfortunately.

I think what I hate the most is when Liverpool played Chelsea yesterday, they were barely hanging by the ropes at the end of the second half - they should have lost. Then comes extra time, and they go all out, guns blazing and are the much better team. That ability to change the morale of the team and their belief in winning is quite rare. Ferguson had it, Klopp has it and Guardiola has it - heck, Solskjær ac
We still need time to build a squad capable of better football and dealing with injuries and yet despite this he’s still managing a 60% win rate and a higher average ppG than all PL managers other than Guardiola I believe over their first 2 seasons.

So if his ideas were so unsustainable we’d not have over that period so much success.

Now please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think Klopp or Arteta had the same injuries we’ve had in their early seasons. They also I believe had a sporting structure in place?

Or at very least their successful sporting structure was put in place during their first season? Liverpool had Edwards early in the 2015/16 season and Arteta had Edu as technical and now sporting director.

Ten Hag is not responsible for the price we pay for a footballer he does not negotiate the fee or salary so let’s not blame him for something he can’t control.

Over his entire United career we’ve lost 27.5% of games. Find me any manager that loses less than that across their first 2 seasons please?

Klopp’s Liverpool is exactly that. It’s an 8 yr 4 month and 4 day project.

We beat Luton away. Liverpool and Klopp drew. What’s your point by referencing a result we bettered? We took 6 points from them. Pool took 4?

You are again only responding using stats as if that is the whole truth. It is only part of it.

With Klopp, Guardiola and Arteta, it was obvious from the get-go where they wanted to go, what brand of football they wanted to play etc.

ETH's football is terrible. There is almost no joy in watching United play. The wins we have are mostly one goal differences, and even in matches where we win comfortably in terms of goals, such as Everton, the results mask a very uneven match. Everton could easily have scored three goals that match if not for terrible finishing - so we got lucky, even against Everton... Our record against the top teams is atrocious - shouldn't you expand on that in your analysis?

Then we have signings - ETH has repeatedly said he wants control over signings - even with Ratfliffe he insists on having control. I am sure that he is aware of the cost of players before putting pen to paper, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to him that they spunked 80m on Antony - still he sanctioned it. It depleted the war chest. He signed Mount for 60m - I cannot believe that he is unaware how that would affect the rest of his spending. Again, ETH sanctions signings. He has spent a lot of money - it's just not wisely spent apart from Martinez and hopefully Højlund.
 
As has been mentioned before Klopp struggled a bit getting consistent results in the league against smaller teams, but got most of the big matches right (which includes reaching the EL and CL final). That gave early hope that he will be able to iron out the obvious issues (and he did by amazing PL runs after that initial seasons). EtH has got similar results in the league, but very few good results and performances against big teams and instead a lot of wins against the minnows of the league, and those quite often only due to individual quality of some players. This is a huge red flag for me as it indicates that the team isn't able to go head to head against top teams, and if that doesn't change you are extremely unlikely to win anything (an extremely lucky draw in the FA or Carabao Cup obviously can help as we have seen, but nonetheless that doesn't help for PL/CL/EL).

Very well explained - thus far, ETH is the equivalent to Lukaku as a striker - in the PL, stat padding against lesser teams but struggles against the better sides.
 
As has been mentioned before Klopp struggled a bit getting consistent results in the league against smaller teams, but got most of the big matches right (which includes reaching the EL and CL final). That gave early hope that he will be able to iron out the obvious issues (and he did by amazing PL runs after that initial seasons). EtH has got similar results in the league, but very few good results and performances against big teams and instead a lot of wins against the minnows of the league, and those quite often only due to individual quality of some players. This is a huge red flag for me as it indicates that the team isn't able to go head to head against top teams, and if that doesn't change you are extremely unlikely to win anything (an extremely lucky draw in the FA or Carabao Cup obviously can help as we have seen, but nonetheless that doesn't help for PL/CL/EL).
I can understand your point and hopefully you can mine. Ten Hag is overall doing very well to keep these standards just as Klopp and Arteta were in different ways. The difference being they’ve had time now to have a squad built for them.

I think that comes down to our squad and personnel and relative standing compared to City, current Liverpool and Arsenal. I’d also argue Klopp arrived where the only majorly dominant side was City now we have 3 big clubs to compete with which goes some way to explaining how we may find it hard to beat better ran clubs, with managers who have been in their roles for longer.

Solskjaer had a very good record against Guardiola for example but I wouldn’t keep him just because of that.
 
A team with Marcus Rashford as automatic starter is going nowhere, even if God is manager.

It's an absolute MUST to clear squad for the next manager, or he's fecked.
 
I can understand your point and hopefully you can mine. Ten Hag is overall doing very well to keep these standards just as Klopp and Arteta were in different ways. The difference being they’ve had time now to have a squad built for them.

I think that comes down to our squad and personnel and relative standing compared to City, current Liverpool and Arsenal. I’d also argue Klopp arrived where the only majorly dominant side was City now we have 3 big clubs to compete with which goes some way to explaining how we may find it hard to beat better ran clubs, with managers who have been in their roles for longer.

Solskjaer had a very good record against Guardiola for example but I wouldn’t keep him just because of that.
If we just look at the PL I actually tend to agree with you. If we look at the top four now, they have 60, 59, 58 and 52 points now. In 16/17 it was 63, 53, 52 and 50 (Liverpool had 49 as 5th). However it's wrong that City was the dominant side when Klopp arrived - that 63 points was actually Chelsea, City was third at the time and it stayed this way until the end (Tottenham stayed second, Liverpool as we all know got fourth). City actually only started to dominate in his third season, and in his fourth he was on par with them.

Solskjaer was very good in getting "underdog results" against top teams, that was helpful, but did never develop into a style that was dominant enough to get consistent results against everyone. I still bemoan that he signed Ronaldo instead of focusing to build towards a more dominant side, I was really curious how that would have evolved.
 
Been pretty much on the fence (in or out) for a long while now but it’s time he has to go. Maybe see out the season and line up a replacement for him in the summer.

Rashford, Martial, Eriksen, Donny, Mctom, Shaw, Maguire, Varane, Lindelof, Evans, Amrabat. 11 players should be sold in the summer. And there’s arguments for more than that. Crazy.
 
If we just look at the PL I actually tend to agree with you. If we look at the top four now, they have 60, 59, 58 and 52 points now. In 16/17 it was 63, 53, 52 and 50 (Liverpool had 49 as 5th). However it's wrong that City was the dominant side when Klopp arrived - that 63 points was actually Chelsea, City was third at the time and it stayed this way until the end (Tottenham stayed second, Liverpool as we all know got fourth). City actually only started to dominate in his third season, and in his fourth he was on par with them.

Solskjaer was very good in getting "underdog results" against top teams, that was helpful, but did never develop into a style that was dominant enough to get consistent results against everyone. I still bemoan that he signed Ronaldo instead of focusing to build towards a more dominant side, I was really curious how that would have evolved.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ll change my view to one more dominant side (not necessarily City) but weaker competition for those top spots.

Ronaldo was a commercial signing. It undermined our longer term development for the equivalent of social media exposure.

Good Lord we’ve been awfully ran.
 
This week is pretty important for him.

A result against City is the only way he keeps his job I think.
If they trash us, which is likely to happen, he is as good as gone.
Shouldn't have let Fulham beat us. If we had beaten them, he might have survived a loss against City. But now he most definitely won't.
 
A result against City is the only way he keeps his job I think.
If they trash us, which is likely to happen, he is as good as gone.
Shouldn't have let Fulham beat us. If we had beaten them, he might have survived a loss against City. But now he most definitely won't.

I don't think even his most devoted fans expect a result against City. Anything below 4-0 is going to be considered a success. He won't be judgjed on that game even if it's an 8-0.
 
After this weekend's results, I just feel that the writing is on the wall.
I still believe that he might have been the right man, so I'll lay the blame squarely at the feet of the players for their prima donna attitude, once again, yet another decent manager thrown under the bus, by players that can't be arsed to put in a proper shift.
 
I'm just fed up of us being played off the park by basically every team we play. It's shocking.

This. Every week is a chaotic mess.

I understand he can't play ajax football here, but we hired him as a manager who could bring about structure and control. Injuries or not he has completely failed in this regard.
 
Back up that winning more points over a 98 game period or even just over their PL tenures isn’t a sign of success?

I agree with you that GD will help too. But you’re dismissing something that strongly contradicts your narrative and shows Ten Hag in a very positive light. I wonder why?

Whereas we are acknowledging that the GD isn’t as good as some may want it to be but also acknowledging a factor in this will have been this seasons injury plagued campaign in defence and our young attack.

Or do we expect a club that has had:

Ronaldo
Martial
Weghorst
Højlund

To have been banging them in?
You don't get points for most cup games.

I'm not dismissing anything. I'm simply saying that goal difference is a better indicator of our underlying performance than points on the board.
 
His tactics aside (which have been absolutely dreadful to say the least) he's the worst head of recruitment we've ever had. Absolutely shocking in the transfer business.

He's sold promising young players for almost nothing and bought a whole bucketload of players who either don't fit English football, his own damn 'system' or are simply not good enough.

This man wasted a couple hundred million and made us lose some useful young squad players like Elanga, Mengi, Brandon Williams etc. for pretty much nothing.

I can forgive him for his clueless tactics (he's simply out of his depth), but I will never forget his transfer business.

I hope the first thing Dan Ashworth and Omar Berrada do is try to get rid of Antony, Onana, Casemiro, Mount and Varane.
 
This. Every week is a chaotic mess.

I understand he can't play ajax football here, but we hired him as a manager who could bring about structure and control. Injuries or not he has completely failed in this regard.

Indeed. There's nothing, every week is absolute chaos with the other team battering us, from watching the game to seeing the endless numbers of stats against us (GD, goals scored, shots faced etc).
 
You don't get points for most cup games.

I'm not dismissing anything. I'm simply saying that goal difference is a better indicator of our underlying performance than points on the board.
Do you expect a club with:
Ronaldo
Weghorst
Martial
Højlund

To have done significantly better in attack?

Do you expect a defence with no LB and without its best CB to perform much better?

Could the above be other indicators or reasons why our performances in those two metrics haven’t been much better?
 
His tactics aside (which have been absolutely dreadful to say the least) he's the worst head of recruitment we've ever had. Absolutely shocking in the transfer business.

He's sold promising young players for almost nothing and bought a whole bucketload of players who either don't fit English football, his own damn 'system' or are simply not good enough.

This man wasted a couple hundred million and made us lose some useful young squad players like Elanga, Mengi, Brandon Williams etc. for pretty much nothing.

I can forgive him for his clueless tactics (he's simply out of his depth), but I will never forget his transfer business.

I hope the first thing Dan Ashworth and Omar Berrada do is try to get rid of Antony, Onana, Casemiro, Mount and Varane.

It's whole Onana, DDG situation all over again. Just because he seems to have fecked up the replacement doesn't mean DDG was good enough. Just as him wasting money on Antony doesn't make the players you name any better. Even if they were superstars in waiting, they'll stink the place out under him anyway. So I understand moving them on.
 
Another defeat and another team stating how their plan worked, detailing how exactly they were to beat us at home.
ETH has no plan and is the easiest manager to set up against. Changing playing staff isn’t going to change his failing approach.
Needs to go now if we want European football in any form next season.
It is unprecedented the amount of teams that have played us this season and have matter of factly stated how they went about dismantling us, and it is said with such clarity that there is no doubt whatsoever we've been turned over by superior tactics, planning and execution, often with players far, far inferior and less regarded than our own.

Post-game it should always be a strong topic of conversation; the word embarrassing has been misused on the Internet for as long as I can remember, but when supposed inferior coaches and players are able to state with such certitude how they have found themselves winning against you, it's a disgrace and an embarrassment.

Ole got absolutely pilloried for the final run that led to his sacking, with the likes of Troy Deeney declaring, in this same great detail, how and why they beat us, yet we're seeing it so often now, it barely warrants discussion amongst the fanbase.

It's one thing to lose games once in a while, it's a wholly different thing when teams play against you with conviction and certainty of purpose because they feel they have you sussed and have a collective, tactical goal to hammer home. Lesser teams than yourself should never have such overwhelming collective confidence in making you crack, or in outright out-strategising you. Sure, they may win on the crest of a wave and in-game flow, but their first priority should be staying in the game and the second, avoiding a demoralising tonking. Look at how teams approach those in the top 4 and even the collective shock they have when they get anything out of those games and contrast it to us. Manchester United are viewed as a team they can play and have genuine hope against, and with how often our dire midfield set up is strolled through compared to other sides, you can see where that well of belief and conviction or sense of purpose teams have when they play us comes from.

I don't even wish to cite the halcyon days of Fergie, where teams absolutely feared a pasting from us, rather, you can look to even LVG, Mourinho and even Ole (before the wheels came off) and see that standards and expectations are rock bottom now.

Under LVG, for as boring and staid as the football could have been called, teams getting the ball of us or having any concerted period of time with it was utterly exasperating and demoralising for them. He might have bored our fans to death, but he also absolutely crushed the spirit of the opposition, particularly fodder.

Mourinho and his rubbish, bruiser boy football made games about attrition and hardship, putting opposing teams through the grinder (oo err); it took genuine quality and superiority to beat us then.

Ole's teams were basic but without a smirk, one of the best counter-attacking teams in Europe, let alone the league. You could know exactly what we set out to do in Ole's first two seasons and still not be able to stop it. We carried a clear and apparent threat and there was little to be done to stop it.

Fast forward to now? We aren't good at anything. The vaunted pressing data that stops only at the initial press but omits the fallout and yawning chasms in midfield it causes counts for nothing - if your biggest so-called strength is an inlet to your biggest weaknesses, it is categorically not a strength. We cannot defend set pieces; we are dire at attacking set pieces; we do not control games and we do not have an overabundance of supplying the frontline, further, we rely on individual brilliance at a higher rate than Ole did, something Ole was absolutely dragged through the coals for.

Not one of the managers post-Fergie has been good enough or complete, but this is par with Moyes for zero discernible strengths and an abundance of weaknesses.

Ten Hag was quite infamous for vastly overplaying his first xi at Ajax, so much so it was the biggest warning Ajax supporters gave us. What seems to have happened here is that in the absence of a strongest xi, the manager is lost at sea - if everything is not functioning to the wire with optimum efficiency, he doesn't know what to do and cannot use viable workarounds, which sees us doggedly sticking to 'the plan' because without it, at it's optimal best, there's nothing. It's such a letdown.

The conceptualisation of the "modern manager" is someone who is eclectic with contingencies for most things and a clever counter plan prepared in advance should the initial one be breached - you certainly should not hear of opposing players and managers stating how easy it was to do their thing against them. The biggest surprise and letdown of ten Hag's tenure for me is that he has been the antithesis of modernisation, entrenched and unadaptible as he is. By now, there is only Moyes who it might be argue has been more outcoached than ten Hag. Never in my life did I think I'd ever say that about an appointment I was so eager for.

It's like Black Mirror episode by now. You don't need to look beyond the pitch to see this is not and will not be the guy.
 
Gary Neville having worked with Ashworth seems to believe that he’ll give him a year to see what ETH is about whilst he works on building the platform for managers to succeed. If after that year he doesn’t think ETH is the one then he’ll be gone.

What resources are you talking about by the way?

Maybe he will, although Ashworth may not be in post for a year anyway. Ratcliffe doesn't seem to me like a man who will delay on making key decisions. My opinion is the team will need to show more on the pitch to get backing from him than it's showing now. If the executive appointments are exciting, there'll be top managers who would want the job.

The resources I refer to is the investment in the squad he's had. Whatever the issues with the footballing structure of the club, he can't say he hasn't been backed to bring in his own players.
 
After Ten Hag was announced we got rid of our head scouts & were put up for sale. We were also surprised with some negative sponsorship deals and the PL's outlook to our covid losses wasn't as generous as we expected, which led to tighter funds, and in turn less flexible decision making on transfer targets. However, the point I am making is that for a veto structure to work, there needs to be more than one school of thought in the room to bounce ideas off.

By all accounts, the reputable deep dives into our summer suggested we didn't really give proper alternatives or transfer targets for Ten Hag to consider outside of his own men (bar of course, Gakpo over Antony which I agree Ten Hag should not have pushed for the latter on). It was well reported too for example that the alternatives for Hojlund on the table by our scouts/DoF was Kolo Muani and Goncalo Ramos. It was Ten Hag who pushed for Hojlund over those. Murtough also panicked over Mount and overpaid just becuase he was scared Liverpool or Arsenal would make a move.

Generally speaking, it's not exactly a good structure because any manager (not just ETH) should be challenged with viable alternatives when you are trying to adopt a veto structure. I think Ten Hag was assuming a better organized support when aligning his transfers to what the club has. But I would also imagine he was pretty surprised when he saw how bad our set up was after he joined. This is the case with almost every manager before him too.

I don't disagree with a lot of that but the situation was what it was and he chose the players, few of whom are good enough. That underlines a significant misjudgement on his part as to the level of players needed and/or an uncertainty of what he's trying to to in terms of a system.

Putting all of that aside, the question nobody ever seems to be able to answer is what exactly is he doing that suggests that if transfer strategy is improved? What does anyone see that suggests he's going to take us forward?

Tactically we are too easy to play against, consistently overran by inferior sides and frankly, I don't accept that another manager or another approach wouldn't get more out of this squad.
 
So why were his two seasons not special if he wasn’t a special manger? Surely he should be able to do better regardless of squad or structure around him?
How could a massively inferior manager outperform him over a similar period?

Before Klopp took over, Liverpool were not very good. In the five years before his arrival, their average league position was 6th. Their average points tally was 63, average goals scored was 66, conceded was 45, GD was +21.

Klopp took over Liverpool in October, and in that first season, league results were in line with the previous five seasons: 60 points, 63 goals scored, 50 goals conceded, +13 GD (you'll have to ignore the fact that these are full season numbers; I'm not calculating this shit). In his second season, results were clearly better than in the previous years: 76 points, 78 goals scored, 42 goals conceded, +36 GD. You can see a substantial improvement in Liverpool's fortunes even though the actual results are, objectively, "nothing special" (because 8th and 4th isn't anything special with or without context).

The problem is what happens if we do this comparison with United. In the five years before Ten Hag took over, United had an average league finish of 4th, average point tally of 69, 66 goals scored and 44 conceded, GD of +22. Last season United finished 3rd, with 75 points, scoring 58 goals and conceding 43. These numbers are fairly close to the average, with the point tally being better (by 6) but the attack being worse (by 8). The current season is worse under pretty much every metric and brings Ten Hag's performance to basically in line with the pre-Ten Hag era.

That's the major difference between the two.
 
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