CasaStreets
Full Member
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?
First of all, the things that were good about him when he was at Ajax, when we recruited him, and during his first season didn't suddenly disappear just because you forgot about them.
But I understand your question and I'll go for it. Despite my more pro-EtH arguments in the two threads, I'm actually on the fence about EtH and voted to get rid of him in the poll. But, playing Devil's Advocate, here are 3 reasons I'm on the fence and think keeping him may be smart:
(1) We are completely overhauling the club structure, overhauling recruitment, and (hopefully) making significant squad change this summer. Those are three big moving pieces. While recruitment decision-making authority will (and should) move away from EtH, having a manager who has actually seen these players' strengths and weaknesses in the PL is an important input. In the worst-case scenario, a new manager coming in might ask to have a full season with our existing players.
(2) Regardless of the fact that the pressing tactics have been less effective this season, the team is definitely learning the style of play. We are currently 5th in Opp 3rd tackles, but just have a much lower tackle success rate in our press than the top pressing teams (Pool, Arsenal, Spurs). I hate to individualize this, but much of that is down to Rashford's very poor pressing, which gets even worse when Hojlund is out and Rashford has to lead the press. And the fact our press is leaving a gap between midfield and defense is largely a recruitment problem - we need a faster/more athletic CB and CDM to compress the space. If Casemiro were playing at last season's level and Martinez were fit, I'm not even sure this would be an issue.
(3) His performance last season was at least decent - and even quite good when our starting midfield 3 were available. We can all acknowledge our injuries this season have been exceptional and impacted several of our most influential players. We also acknowledge the drop in quality from our first 11 to our bench is significantly larger than most of our top 4 rivals. So why can't we acknowledge that injuries are a valid reason for him to underperform this season vs last?
I'm posting this everywhere I can but I keep coming back to my belief that 80-90% of our problems are because of the players and maybe 10-20% because of the manager. I think EtH is just the most convenient target because it's much harder to accept that 9 of our starting 11 aren't the right players to play elite football and it's much more convenient to believe that changing just 1 person (manager) is the difference. It's not.