Have anyone noticed that ,Mou, Ole and ETH had the same 'melting' point ie the moment they said that this squad needed a radical change in terms of personnel. Mou asked for a radical change (including getting rid of the likes of Shaw and Martial). He was poorly backed in the transfer market and he ended up kicked out. Ole had plans to switch from the counter attacking team he built/inherited into a more modern team. The club failed to bring Bellingham and Haaland in, he ended up with 2 players he didn't want (VDB and Ronaldo) and a winger he barely played (Sancho) and he was on the way out. ETH seem to have pushed for some radical changes as well and once again he was let down by the recruitment team as they failed to get rid of the players he wanted or/and to bring in the player he needed. Rangnick spoke of an open heart surgery in public and wasn't even given the luxury of a honey moon period, something all other managers were given.
Erik ten Hag - Manchester United manager
- Thread starter sewey89
- Start date
This has clearly been the biggest issue at the club for the last 5 years or more. They are nowhere near proactive enough in getting rid of players who aren't up to the job. It is easier to bury heads in the sand hope a new coach fixes things though.
Exactly. I remember Woodward saying that we can only handle 3-4 signings every year. I came on this very forum and said this is 'United's no 1 problem' because we won't be able to get rid off the deadwood with that policy on board
Onana was single-handedly responsible for us bombing our champions league campaign. He has been terrible so far.
Mount has been terrible by virtue of not being available for the whole campaign due to injury and he has been woeful for the limited time he has been available.
Malacia has been poor while he was available. Hence he was dropped as soon as shaw was fit.
The less said about weghorst and amrabat the better. To imagine we let go of sabitzer to bring in amrabat and also paid £8.5m loan fee. We cannot call it a stop gap.
For the few trotting out the "Let him waste another year working under a new structure and dragging the club further backwards" line there is but one question you need to answer - Why?
Same people seem to think it might work because he'll get kindly 'encouraged' away from making transfer decisions by the new people above him and that he'll just accept that. The same guy who made a huge deal about having total control of transfers before and after getting the job.
Same people seem to think it might work because he'll get kindly 'encouraged' away from making transfer decisions by the new people above him and that he'll just accept that. The same guy who made a huge deal about having total control of transfers before and after getting the job.
Problem is that despite winning the league SAF (testament to how good he was) did this with a squad which was on the decline, this decline increased at pace following his leaving, this exposed issues papered over by SAF for years, that being the lack of a quality CDM and right winger.
Apart from Moyes who was basically on a hiding to nothing as next in after SAF, every manager has enjoyed a degree of success followed by an immediate decline, I think it is far too simplistic to attribute their failures to the same underlying issues of a poorly run club.
Irrespective of the failing of the structure surely we cannot just ignore everything that ETH has done badly this season! that includes failing to cover off injuries/weak positions with poor cover, or failing to play with any sort of midfield, that is not down to the ownership, to be so tactically naïve makes me convinced that giving him any more time or budget would be another example of the club being run poorly, if anything I would say of all our Managers post SAF ETH is the one least impacted by the poor structure.
3-4 signings per year is fine, if you're squad is already in a healthy position and those signings are mostly to improve depth, competition and maybe with an eye to improving the starting 11.
What's never going to work is 3-4 signings per year when your squad is a mess and you're looking for top potential players at 70-80m and wages of 200-300k a week. While at the same time trying to offload players who are already on way too much money that nobody wants to buy.
Mount has been terrible for the limited time that he has been available. Also we can call a signing woeful if he is unavailable through injury for the whole season especially considering he would have been available for free this season.
Onana is doing what is expected of him and nothing more and that too recently. He was single-handedly responsible for the disastrous champions league campaign. Not to mention the numerous goals he has chucked in the league.
We chased amrabat for the majority of the window and then we went and paid £8.5m loan fee to get him here and he has been woeful.
Yeah hopefully we appoint someone who is more open to working within their recruitment structure
We're not talking about judging anyone for not winning the CL or a title though. If we were sacking managers for that as PSG or bayern do then i'd agree with you.
If we're talking about early progression and proving you deserve the time to oversee the clear out then it's simply back to making the most of what you've got. You don't get the full clear out up front.
None of the managers since Fergie have done that for more than a single season. In the seasons they were sacked none had shown signs of deserving another season to build on progress.
Ten hag has blown it and it's not because of the playing staff, injuries or his transfer dealings, it's because he's not been able to get the most out of available playing staff.
Does anyone understand why he abandoned his own philosophy to play a more direct one as he suggest? Every other manager before him have tried to play there own philosophy. Surely we hired him to play the way he did at Ajax? Doesn’t matter if he has the players to play that way or not. You should at least stick to your philosophy and slowly bring in players to play that way. Also train current players to play that way. Took pep a couple of seasons to get rid of players and sign players but I’m sure he still tried to play his way no matter who he had…
I agree
I am also uncomfortable with the CEO stating how limited the club is on the transfer market. Its basically gives players a card blanche to drop their form to just above the bottom 5 players at the club
I don't disagree about Ten Hag, but when Klopp can finish 8th, 4th, 4th and Arteta 8th, 8th, 5th, while literally using that time to clear out the squad and mount a title challenge, your assertion that: "Managers don't get to clear out the full playing staff" isn't exactly true.
I'd expect any incoming manager to make use of at least some of the squad, but the reality is that whoever follows Ten Hag is going to need to time to oversee a clear out, and that will likely include some of our more recent, expensive signings.
Nobody is suggesting we absolve ETH or any other manager of all blame. When a club consistently spends poorly as United and needs squad rebuilds after every manager, you really shouldnt be looking at managers. Managers can only do what the club allows and if the club has no identifiable football structure that anybody can make sense of, its reasonable to ask why does every manager fail miserably relative to the money being spent.
Mount hasnt played. Imagine Evra/Vidic got injured shortly after joining, theyd be written off for the first 6 months they had with us. Mount cannot be classed a bad signing for anything other then fitness reasons as we dont know what he could or might do.
Onana has improved, like Evra and Vidic mentioned above. Hes not had a settled defence or team on frong of him all season. Hes made mistakes alright and nobody to blame but him. But its hard for new United keepers to settle into United at the best of time (Even DDG had a tough couple of years in a far better team). 50 million (prob less then half the fee youd expect to pay for the worlds best) for a keeper who played well in his teams journey to a CL final does not look like bad money spent, so at the moment I would say Onanas signing is closer to neutral then being bad.
Amrabat is a loan signing, FFS, what is wrong with some of you. Id rather 8.5 million on him then 85 million on Sancho. In comparison to every other signing United has made since 2013, Amrabat is not a disaster, just not a very good player. As others have said, why United managers keep having to do with players who are not good enough is a bigger issue then these players being signed.
I think some of you think United was like man city before ETH joined and we had been making mostly good transfers and had a really balanced squad. We have been a mess with transfers, becasue the club is consistently a mess with transfers.
And your post implied that given full budgetary freedom, ETH would have the good judgment not to prioritize a player like Amrabat; however, as we’ve seen with Antony, ETH’s judgement can be dodgy, even in seemingly optimal circumstances.
I agree that the transfer policy and other things have impact, but playing a system that clearly does not work in attack and particularly defence match after match has nothing to do with that and comes down to the manager alone, he may not have had the options he wanted but playing kamikaze football without a midfield is just bad management, a good manager would use ALL they players he has to the best possible affect (including youth) not simply stick blindly to a formation and tactic which he does not have the players to execute.
I would say that LVG, Mourinho and even Moyes and Ole could have lasted longer, had more success but this current guy pure shite on a stick, I have never seen such tactical ineptitude from any manager at any club, in my memory, would rather have Jesse Marsch in that baldy-mc-nayclue!
The argument of not keeping sacking managers is very valid, there are other issues to address which will hamper any manager until rectified, but that should not be a reason to now keep ETH, who has broken more records with Utd than anyone since SAF, only problem is they are all negative ones
, fixing the structure problems and keeping ETH will be just another mistake, like fixing a leaking pipe but leaving the dripping tapYou’re comparing apples and oranges.
So at the end of Klopps fourth season….they had different players. Yeah you’d expect that.
We are just over half way into Ten Hags second season. He’s not going to be able to clear everyone out in such a short space of time. The same way Klopp didn’t in the 16/17 season. But you know what did happen in that season? Liverpool had developed a style of play under Klopp. They had a direction.
Ten Hag has already signed eight permanent new players.
Thats like saying because Klopp wanted Brandt over Salah he would have fecked up every input in signings.
All manager have flops. The structure is there to protect them from making mistakes. If we had a full budget then we would need to have a proper shortlist on the table. If Amrabat was what the club landed on, there's a major scouting problem.
Melissa Reddy is always the voice of reason.
https://www.skysports.com/football/...manchester-united-stick-or-twist-with-manager
https://www.skysports.com/football/...manchester-united-stick-or-twist-with-manager
Very simple: He didn't. He even made Ajax a little more direct than they were before. He was never wed to that "purist" Ajax philosophy as many on here seem to believe, but always had a certain influence of transition football.
Frankly with Antony's output we could play with 10men every week and Save ourselves loads of monies
Im not even focused on ETH, once the structure is fixed I’d expect everything else to fall into place. If ETH being moved on is part of that, then so be it.I agree that the transfer policy and other things have impact, but playing a system that clearly does not work in attack and particularly defence match after match has nothing to do with that and comes down to the manager alone, he may not have had the options he wanted but playing kamikaze football without a midfield is just bad management, a good manager would use ALL they players he has to the best possible affect (including youth) not simply stick blindly to a formation and tactic which he does not have the players to execute.
I would say that LVG, Mourinho and even Moyes and Ole could have lasted longer, had more success but this current guy pure shite on a stick, I have never seen such tactical ineptitude from any manager at any club, in my memory, would rather have Jesse Marsch in that baldy-mc-nayclue!
The argument of not keeping sacking managers is very valid, there are other issues to address which will hamper any manager until rectified, but that should not be a reason to now keep ETH, who has broken more records with Utd than anyone since SAF, only problem is they are all negative ones
Well, no. It was at the start of Klopp's fourth season, which was only his third full season, and his third summer window, which would be the equivalent of our matchday squads barely containing pre-Ten Hag players next season.
Ten Hag's in his second season and has made eight permanent signings, but one of them is a backup goalkeeper, another a backup left-back (who's been injured all season) and this season the free-transfer back-up centre-back has played over twice as many games as the starting centre-back he bought, and Scott McTominay has played three times as many games as the new midfielder. That's over half of them accounted for already, and they're either not expected to play regularly and are, or if they are expected to play regularly, they've been largely unavailable. This is clearly very different to having 10 signings regularly in your starting line-up and matchday squad, so I suppose you are at least correct that it is "apples and oranges" in that regard.
No one is actually arguing that he should have been able to turn the squad over in a single summer, that's something you have made up. However, it's literally just a fact that we're going to need to have a fairly major clear out if we're going to get back to the top.
I should also point out that I think we should have a new manager next season, precisely because of our lack of obvious, effective style. The point remains though that you're just deluding yourself if you think the next guy is going to do much better when he's regularly having to play the players we've relied on this season.
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His Ajax team played beautiful football. Even dominating Madrid away.
Yes, but Ajax played possession football because that's what Ajax do, no matter who manages them. He did the right thing in adapting to that style, but still there is little indication that what he currently does at United is much different from his own philosophy.
Are you saying we mistakenly thought his philosophy was playing sexy Dutch football?
In a way. I think you overestimated how much he wants to follow his own philosophy (and mistakenly thought it would be "sexy Dutch football") and underestimated his pragmatism and willingness to work with the philosophy he already found in place ("the United way").
That does surprise me, most United fans loved the way his Ajax played prompting them to salivate over idea of him coaching United. He's very pragmatic at United but I thought that was due to personnel.
I have no idea which direction we go in. Everything we've tried has turned to utter shit.
I think this is the main thing. Why do some people actually want to keep him?
Forget if you think its fair or not. As a club with a new co-owner, what does Ten Haag bring that would make us keep him?
I mean you could probably have signed dozens. We sold one that performed better for us that same summer.
So just because a couple of signings made over a decade ago by the greatest manager this club has seen were not very good the first six months we should show patience with all signings?? What gives you the confidence to say that ETH has even 1/10th the acumen that SAF had.
Regarding amrabat, it was only a loan signing because of FFP. The manager so wanted him and drove this pursuit. Hence why we paid so much of money as a loan fee. It isn’t a non significant fee when we could have used the money elsewhere.
I'm pretty sure the story is that when he joined the squad he couldn't get them onboard to his tactical ideas, and there was doubt, but when it clicked we inevitably saw the kind of football that resulted in his CL run.
If it's true that they played the footbal they were always going to play, then the above couldn't possibly have happened since there would be no squad adaptation required. He'd just be plug and play and the players would continue as they were, but that wasn't what happened. The squad had to adapt to his game. It wasn't already being played that way.
Since that summer when I asked the question “which left footed RW that was available and willing to sign for us was better?” Nobody has given me a convincing answer.
If Antony really was the only one available then we play Sancho, Elanga or Pellistri, simple. We don't pay a fortune to downgrade.
Also gives clubs a chance to ask for more money and potential players a chance to look for more than they are worth.
What I will say is that Utd absolutely need to do similar to what Arsenal have done the last few years, boot out the overpaid wasters and focus on bringing in young talented players who can grow into a team and peak together.
No, I’m saying it’s idiotic to judge Mount, your comments on Ferguson have no relevance. The point was about judging a player after only a couple of games.
If United had a proper football infrastructure, it would buy better, sell better, pay less, have a stronger squad and wouldn’t need this sort of signings. FFP is an issue because the club has pissed away it’s advtabge over a decade not because of the transfers under ETH.
It's worth pointing out that since the League Cup win we've played a total of 41 PL Games. We've won 22, drawn 4 and lost 15. We've scored 54 goals in those 41 games and conceded 54. It's been over a year now since the League Cup final. We've had a year of crap football. That's enough time to pass for me to know that things aren't suddenly going to improve, i'm sure some of you will argue that a 54% win rate is pretty decent and yet we've also lost 37% of those games.
Do you know how many of those 22 League wins we've won by more than a 1 goal margin? 6 games (listed below):
How many have we lost by more than a 1 goal margin? 9 games (listed below):
So in a years worth of football consisting of 41 league games, we've only managed to win convincingly (by a 2 goal or more margin) in 15% of our games. This is a results business, our form is diabolical and has been for a long, long time now.
EDIT:
Before anyone claims we've done better in the cups. We've managed almost identical win/loss ratios. Won 10 in 19 (53% win rate) and lost 7 in 19 (37% loss rate).
Do you know how many of those 22 League wins we've won by more than a 1 goal margin? 6 games (listed below):
| Date | Leg | Opponent (Pos in PL.) | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat Apr 8, 2023 | H | Everton (16.) | 2:0 |
| Sun Apr 16, 2023 | A | Nottm Forest (18.) | 0:2 |
| Sat May 13, 2023 | H | Wolves (13.) | 2:0 |
| Thu May 25, 2023 | H | Chelsea (11.) | 4:1 |
| Sun Nov 26, 2023 | A | Everton (19.) | 0:3 |
| Sun Feb 4, 2024 | H | West Ham (6.) | 3:0 |
How many have we lost by more than a 1 goal margin? 9 games (listed below):
| Date | Leg | Opponent (Pos in PL). | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun Mar 5, 2023 | A | Liverpool (7.) | 7:0 |
| Sun Apr 2, 2023 | A | Newcastle (3.) | 2:0 |
| Sat Aug 19, 2023 | A | Tottenham (8.) | 2:0 |
| Sun Sep 3, 2023 | A | Arsenal (5.) | 3:1 |
| Sat Sep 16, 2023 | H | Brighton (6.) | 1:3 |
| Sun Oct 29, 2023 | H | Man City (2.) | 0:3 |
| Sat Dec 9, 2023 | H | Bournemouth (15.) | 0:3 |
| Sat Dec 23, 2023 | A | West Ham (8.) | 2:0 |
| Sun Mar 3, 2024 | A | Man City (2.) | 3:1 |
So in a years worth of football consisting of 41 league games, we've only managed to win convincingly (by a 2 goal or more margin) in 15% of our games. This is a results business, our form is diabolical and has been for a long, long time now.
EDIT:
Before anyone claims we've done better in the cups. We've managed almost identical win/loss ratios. Won 10 in 19 (53% win rate) and lost 7 in 19 (37% loss rate).
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Nobody. And I mean nobody would have been happy with that.
And largely the CAF was happy with the signing but not the fee.