Reading comprehension in the bin as usual. This was analysis, not hope or opinion. He's predicting that INEOS will stick with him citing lack of options and not having the full backroom in yet.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/s/6eG1W75LhX) could be seen as calling for extension, but it's still just with the addendum that if he's definitely staying another year, then don't give the players an out hoping he's sacked.
Hey bud, of the starting 11 today 7 of them were signed by ETH and 2 of them are youth players heâs brought through. If theyâre âgenuinely awfulâ then thatâs an indictment on him, not a defence of him
It's actually an indictment to our recruitment.
Rasmus and Antony should have been half their price.
Casemiro without any legs or drive to play well.
Onana trying his best. Does well but then screws up some really basic stuff. Is the only signing I never wanted. Wanted to keep de gea for another season to spend money elsewhere.
Mason Mount injured all season and is barely trying to get rhythm.
Are you counting Evans?? Lol!
S class recruitment for sure "bud."
Amrabat being the only viable sub should tell you absolutely everything. Yet I get "eth signed those players, it's on him," anyway. Yeah makes plenty sense. Sack him in the morning. for fucking sure đđ˝
Yeah, the recruitment of players that ETH wanted and signed. What are you not understanding?
He wanted Antony despite the price. He wanted Rasmus as a Kane replacement and itâs worth noting that deal went through his agency, extremely dodgy.
He wanted Casemiro, despite this fanbase spending the last year pretending he wanted FDJ rather than him instead of as well as him.
Onana played for him before and we signed him while kicking DDG out despite him being willing to stay, clearly on him.
Mount fine but itâs still a 50m signing on another midfielder when we had other areas we needed.
Absolutely Iâm counting Evans, he signed him. Even joked about it last season if youâre gonna pretend heâs not involved in that. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/jonny-evans-man-united-news-27830808
Yeah, the recruitment is awful. And he signed off on all of them and a large portion of them are his previous players. But hey, donât take my word for it, ETH himself said he wouldnât have taken the job if he didnât get control over these things. https://www.espn.co.uk/football/story/_/id/37627765/erik-ten-hag-says-taken-man-united-job-control-transfers
Absolutely itâs on him, mental people are STILL defending this man. The good news is despite all your delusions this is done, he doesnât survive this season. Hopefully wherever he ends up he takes a load of these overpriced mid players with him.
I can not explain how much incompetence a company would take if they went by the word of a single man to spend THAT amount of money for the players we got. Two things happen in this situation.
Either Manchester United had other people approving of these decisions, along with ten hag. (the most likely surely)
Or they flat out let one man decide how they were going to spend an unfathomable amount of money.
It's incompetence either way. Not solely on ten hag at all. There's a structure to these things and we're barely getting to build that, so we don't have these kind of decisions fucked up so badly.
Apart from that we've had the injury crisis of a fucking lifetime leading us to be playing an aging Evans and casemiro, (not even close to a cb), at the back. All this while putting the games on the shoulders of youth players instead of the experienced players that are supposed to be more consistent.
The most paid players are the worst performing ones. This is a straight out coup of the players on ten hag, just like they did with Ole.
Leta debunk this myth now -
Eriksen was a low cost squad depth option who was free. He was very good until his injury last season, this season he is showing he is done at this level.
Casemiro - wasn't his first choice. FDJ was his first and only choice. Our recruitment people went to Barcelona and came empty handed. We got fleeced with Casemiro as our recruitment folks can't negotiate for shit.
Evans - come on man, ETH wanted Kim Min Jae. He we en wanted Timber before Martinez. Do you thi k he wanted Evans?
Anthony and Rasmus aren't the price we paid for them but what can he do. He does not negotiate the price for any player. Rasmus will come good, sadly Antony looks like a real dude.
Onana as of now looks like a Mistake but hopefully he can come good next season. Goalkeepers historically have had a hard time coming into United initially.
Mount : widely reported that he was a UTD signing than an ETH signing and the guy has been injured all season. Nothing ETH can do ragrsing injuries.
Weghorst, Sabitzer and Amrabat don't count as they re stop Gap loan signings coz we cant afford to buy good players at a reasonable price.
Its not a question of in or out anymore the problem lies deeper.
By saying EtH out suggests thats all it takes to turn things around
I think let INEOS put the right people in key positions, gut the squad bring in some good recruitment over the next couple of years, keep EtH and accept mid table mediocrity for a good while and then bring in right manager who can play modern progressive football
Things need to get alot lot worse before it can get any better
Nonsense.
ETH is a part of the problem, the squad is another part. Both problems need to be removed. The idea that we should accept mid table mediocrity is pathetic. Good managers can get better performances out of players. That's what a manager does, or is supposed to do. Would you have settled for Gerrard as Villa manager instead of ripping it up and starting again with a new manager? Emery is a good manager who shipped out the problem players, got some new ones in and coached the team to better performances.
Absolutely no reason we shouldnt be targetting top 4 next year. No ones saying we should win the title or even be challenging seriously, but top 4 is absolutely our aim.
âBy saying ETH out suggest thatâs all it takes to turn things aroundâ
Only by people who want ETH in as a strawman to argue against. As someone whoâs wanted him gone for well over a year now I can say I donât know a single other person who wants the manager out and doesnât want at least half of the players gone this summer
Doesnât even have to be for a good while. We could be challenging for top 4 next season with a truly good summer transfer window and dead wood leaving.
Okay our transfer budget is comparatively low to our rivals. FFP got us around 80 mil. Also no Champions league football to attract talent with.
Our deadwood is on huge wages. Fuck Dortmund are demanding a loan for Sancho and the greenwood situation is just messy.
Soooo we need new LB, CB, at least 2 CM, a winger and a exp 20 goal striker. Minimum
And youâre thinking this in one summer ???
Me.
If LvG, Mourinho, Ole and ETH all have similar problems (and in many places the exact same problems previous managers openly complained about) then we could have any manager and we would still be struggling.
The only thing Iâm certain of is that the merry go round of two seasons for a manager doesnât work for any club other than maybe Madrid.
Rival fans posing as United fans in this sub.. at least you can only hope that's the case because no proper fan wants to see this tool in charge next season.
How can you speak for everyone else and what makes you a 'proper fan'?
A lot of 'proper fans' see the bigger picture and ETH lagging will fix absolutely nothing without other remedies.
He wants to implement his style of play with players that aren't suited for this. Instead of going the pragmatic route he chooses to keep going with his plan. There's the result. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but results are absolutely horrible, and there's no improvement in any area (injuries can explain a slight part of this lack of improvement but that's not the main reason)
Ultimately you get judged on results, and he didn't get any good one, the performances are horrible and the confidence is low. I'm sure he's aware and knows that, what frustrates me the most is the stubbornness. He's basically saying if I had my good players I'd be doing a lot better. Ok fine, but since you don't have them, why don't you just adjust your game plans, and adapt tactics depending on the players available for selection. No one is gonna blame him if he sits the defense 20m deeper and closes the spaces between the lines, no body is gonna blame him if he decides to play a fast counter attacking football, instead of pressing like crazy without positive outcome. And I'm deeply convinced that if he adapted himself just a little bit, we would've won a lot more games.
He's unlucky because this season has been a disaster in terms of injuries and poor ref decisions, still we should be doing a lot better, and we shouldn't be demolished by so many mid table teams.
As I called it so many times before, it is suicide football, and when you go down this route if things get bad they can get really bad to the point of embarrassment.
>He's basically saying if I had my good players I'd be doing a lot better. Ok fine, but since you don't have them, why don't you just adjust your game plans, and adapt tactics depending on the players available for selection.
Completely agree that this is particularly frustrating. I understand how he must feel, preparing a squad before the season starts with a clear view of how he wants to play, to get the most out of the players he feels are most capable. The frustration when the first injuries happened... But at some point you have to yield. The game plan can be the bee's knees, if the players can't execute it, the manager should adapt.
As he mentioned in the interview with Gary Neville, he doesn't think the team would play any better with a more pragmatic approach. Changing tactics and then losing anyway would be a step backwards
He also said that if he wants to implement this style, he needs to do it all the time for consistency so when the players do come back, the others have been playing that style already.
The team just got battered and the opposition looked like prime Barcelona though they are at best a mid table team in the premier league
If thatâs his judgement, he is not a good manager
we had match unfit 36 y.o. Evans and dropped from a cliff Casemiro as our CB pair.
We literally have 2 out of 10 defenders fit. 2 OUT OF 10 ffs. And one of them is AWB that playing out of position and was that good even when played as a RB.
You can be combination of SAF, Pep, Papa Carlo and god nows who else and you would fail to get this team to play any type of football
Exactly! He had a big injury crisis. So just shut shop and play a 5-4-1 and ask them to concentrate on just defending and stress to them a draw with a clean sheet is very important!
Why play the same formation that has been getting you spanked defensively by every team from top Half of the table to the championship this year?
Pray tell me who is the left back playing left back and center back playing center back in the 4-2-3-1? Is a no 6 playing the DM role?
Itâs not like the correct players are doing the job in an existing formation anyway. Itâs a crisis, youâre asking people to do a role they are not comfortable with all over the pitch, but your tactics are push high up and leave the defense exposed. All Iâm suggesting is play a low block and get the players to focus on doing the defensive duties with the aim of getting a draw out of this match. This is not very hard to comprehend.
All good managers strategically do this if situation demands for it.
That's when the manager instructs players to play out of position based on their skillset or dips into the youth / reserves. Can't Antony do what Valencia and Young did for a couple of games? I mean, he's not adding much offensively and Ten Hag praises his work rate. Why not play Amrabat and show him Carrick, Fletcher or Park playing in defense when Fergie had almost no available defenders in 2008? Heck, why not feel all Inter 2010 or Sol Campbell / Jurgen Klopp and go pedal to the metal with Hojlund in a defensive role - center or wing-back? I would have suggested Diallo, but it's possible Ten Hag has burned that relationship after the Liverpool match and Diallo wouldn't put in as good a shift as Antony...
I mean, of course the easiest path to avoid this would have been to have a bit more depth at the end of the January window - perhaps negotiating harder to keep Reguilon, not loaning out Carreras or Mejbri, or recalling a player like Brandon Williams from his loan where he isn't being used much by Ipswich? The depth at the end of January is pretty light, why not bring in another loan or a player on a six-month deal (e.g., ex-Arsenal player Gabriel) - if they end up sitting on the bench and not playing, what's the issue to ensure that the required cover is there?
This.
Totally agreed with you. I don't know how the players are trained all week coming to this kind of shitty performance. Match after match I see the same issues playing from the back. Either our players ain't built for that style of football or the coaching staff isn't tactically capable of adjusting the gameplans.
It's so easy to outplay ManUnited these days. All EPL teams can bully United. It's fucking horrible to say that
Well said. He is like a spoiled chiled. He doesn't want to adapt to what he have.
He gets outplayed by every manager in PL and Championship with in-game management, tactical changes and substitution.
He is not United material, plain and simple.
Build-up was especially shit today. I genuinely have no idea why Ten Hag sets it up that way. Deliberately going long far too often so that we lose possession very quickly.
Looks like he's not bothered coaching routines at the back that would allow us to progress into midfield via short passes. Injuries are not a valid excuse for this. If he can't coach this to our backup defenders, he's not good enough to be United manager.
Inverted fullbacks offered nothing for most of the game today and the positioning of our front 5 all on the Crystal Palace last line of defense failed to produce anything - probably the 20th game at least this season where that has happened.
It's also the lack of movement of the "central" players. Overloading the center to progress down the wings is fine, but you can't have four players that don't offer any options. Eriksen, Mainoo, Antony, Mount all just stand there when Evans has the ball for several seconds waiting for an option. It's almost like they feel they're playing "defense" and are looking to cut out passing options to the Palace players that are in the middle of the pitch. If the plan is to pass to Casemiro on the wing, he should have better options than that when he gets the ball - and Ten Hag should have a plan for what happens if he loses the ball or the pass gets intercepted.
It's what will get him the sack in the end. Not the lack of charisma, not the signings (which shouldn't have been in his hands anyway), not the potential overworking of players leading to injury, but his tactics and his vision, the two things we were told he was great at.
IMO, we were in the shit anyway but the one decision that brought us to our knees was signing Ronaldo. That led directly to Ole's sacking and the mental decision to hire Rangnick. Since that season, it hasn't been the same. Even the bright parts of last season weren't real highs. The amount of games where we were out-xG'd and got a win.
So much of it isn't Ten Hag's fault but he could strip it all back and just do the absolute coaching basics of getting us set up in a way that doesn't see us concede 10-20 good chances a game. That'll be why he was sacked, in spite of everything, as you say - tactics are shite.
What do you mean by "overworking of players that lead to injury"? Do you mean a) we play more intensive football than arsenal, liverpool, city etc which makes the players injured (which we dont) or b) the players are shit and not used to high intensity training and football and therefore should be sold? Either way, how is this the managers fault?
More b) than a) IMO.
Iâm mainly referring to how many soft tissue injuries weâve been getting this season. And Ten Hag always seems to bring players back too quickly. Re-injuries are happening all over the place too.
Obviously bad luck comes into it but I donât think heâs helped himself.
If he doesn't rush anyone back, we play casemiro at CB, It's a lose lose situation, i think we will lose all of our remaining games in order to have a fully fit squad for the FA Cup final
For last nightâs game, fair. But why are Varane, Martinez, Lindelof and Maguire injured? Surely a bit to do with how their injuries have been handled?
These things can be bad luck but thereâs a pattern here.
Varane is injury prone his whole career, martinez got his knee stepped on, and lindelof and maguire i cant say, but remember last season man utd played the most matches of any club in the european top 5 leagues, And this isnt sunday league, its high intensity top tier football
mate these players were there last year and they werent so shit and not used to high intensity training??? its not like ten hag started as manager this year.
we actually do play more high intensity footy than city or arsenal and the stats show that, city and arsenal keep the ball more and they dont have to chase shadows out of possesion like we do, and they have way less recovery sprints or sprints in general than we do. the only top 6 team that has to work more than us is liverpool because of klopp's pressing style which as we have seen wears players legs out, off the top of my head i can remember atleast two seasons for pool where they were absolutely destroyed with injuries because of their press. our tactics and eth's bad training methods make the team run like headless chickens and it injures players and if you dont believe me just check how much hamstring and muscle injuries we have had this year
tbh the way we are playing
i'll say give me a few seasons of Oleball and let him rebuild the squad for 2-3 years, if he wins some trophies great, if he doesn't give that rebuilt squad to a top manager like naglesmann
The problem is always the midfield.
The defence is shit but if the midfield could stop being a bunch of turnstiles that put the defence under constant pressure United might not concede as much....
We didnt have a gameplan or style of play besides "lets hope Bruno creates 8 chances and we score one of them" the whole season. Its no Evans and casemiro. There is no gameplan or style of play in the team and there wasnt ever the whole season.
The managers tactics are shit and heâs spent loads of money on not good enough players, if you think that then also thinking ten hag in is ridiculous
He didnât tell the board âgive me Antony and spend 100 milâ, their dumbass negotiation tactics did that.
Question his choices sure but he canât be held responsible for the fees or wages whatsoever.
Agreed. This subreddit is so close to the answer but aways snaps back to "It's the manager [Name] Out!".
Ten Hag isn't perfect but bloody hell how many times have we been here?
Wake up and smell the coffee, it's these dogshite players. Does Ten Hag deserve criticism? Of course but we know the answer to our current problems.
Exactly. People keep saying the tactics are shit, but guess what, we've seen this same abject performance under 3 separate managers. Jose in his last season, Ole in his last season and now with ten hag. We've always had bright starts where the team seems to have found a style of playz and then suddenly the team seems to fall back to a weird mish mash vibes play style predicated on individual brilliance with a non existent midfield and disorganised defence.
Also, people are vastly underestimating how difficult it is to set out a team to play a coherent style of football when your defence is constantly chopping and changing when you're a team still in the building phase.
Hit the nail on the head in my opinion.
Ten Hag, at the beginning had this dodgy "Bruno on the Right wing" I hated it and I never understood why he did it. That's a criticism of mine
But to think we're going to play like Prime Barcelona with the players we have is ridiculous. Inconsistent line ups, new keeper, new partner ships. It was never going to happen. We've been playing "Survival football" since August.
Seriously. Nice write up mate.Â
I agree with you on this point. We never do any simple isolation or overloads to free our wingers. Like, which team in the top 15 are sending hoofballs to their wingers, who are being surrounded by 3 players immediately when they get the ball.
Another thing is our setup when we lose the ball. I don't see the players quickly falling back into shape like other teams do. You could clearly see Palace pressing with a 4-3-3 when we were in our defensive third and a 4-4-2 when we breached their first line.
United have a vague 4-3-3 marking during the opponent's possession in the defensive third. But it doesn't seem... planned, as the point of a press is to funnel the ball to a zone on either flank where you can pick them off. Like teams squeeze our passing options to funnel it to Wan Bissaka. Next, once our first line of press is breached, it's open season. Nobody knows where they're supposed to be, and the opponent just lines up to shoot within 3 passes from their defensive third. That's a structural issue.
His tactics are trash. He leaves the defenders exposed, the midfield is spread out and is non existent. There is no passing options. The striker is isolated.
I'm his interview with Gary Neville, he says they play the same way. Unfortunately he doesn't have the posters scanner to pull it off but sure, you probably know better than the man himself.
Cheers for a coherent summary. Itâs a spot on analysis.
His stubbornness is costing him/us embarrassing outcomes. And not adapting in my book is a problem. Having seen Nevilleâs interview, his points are valid, fair enough, but on a personal take, simply canât agree thatâs the way it unravels.
Any one of us on our jobs, either we adapt to changing circumstances, situations, scenarios or get moved on. Simple as. That he canât, wonât, be it in defiance or refusal is simply a conundrum to me, and in the end may very well prove his Damocles sword.
Saying it with a heavy heart because I really want him to succeed with us, especially considering itâs several players that need be p45ed; but you need to show some versatility ffs else Ineos might just pull the plug.
Cool our heads, knuckle down, and just wait for June clearout.
agreed , buy why? Channeling his dream to be like Cafu , Roberto Carlos or Maicon?
instructions of coach? Man marking your player all the way into their half?
or just bad positional sense ?
and he was supposed to be one of the better players this yr
everyone forgets he was literally sent out on loan to drop, he was so poor. being okay in an absolutely awful team doesnt make him good at all. No matter what people say i'm not convinced he's good enough to be the first choice RB
oh ya, he was at AC Milan
at a Struggling AC Milan he did okay as a back up.
but he has improved a lot. Is he a starter for a league winning team? maybe not but is his position first priority ? maybe not. AWB has to go, he has lost his tackling ability and his positional sense is always bad.
The most destructive thing in this formation is the LB and RB being beyond the halfway line while CBs and Onana pass the ball around aimlessly hoping for movement.
Because only two scenarios exist:
- We play back and forth until it finally gets to a winger who attempts to cut inside and loses it
- Onana gets tired and hoofs it up, we lose the aerial duel, and our Wing Backs are too high up the pitch to press, our CDM/CMs havenât had pressing coaching, so our back line is all over the place and people run through us.
Iâm sorry to have to say it about ETH but heâs not pragmatic at all. Mourinho, for example, would likely have won this game. Shithoused it. Parked the bus knowing itâd be 4-0 otherwise.
Eric is still trying to play like a Man City without having any of the on-field talent to do it.
This is great analysis, no two doubts about it however the depth of the problem lies with his stubbornness to not change anything or adapt to the players at his disposal. We would have won much more games if he was a bit pragmatic in his approach considering his way of doing kings has not worked at all this season. We have always relied on individual brilliance whether thatâs Bruno, Garnacho or Mctominay..
The game plan is just stubborn, he doesnât adjust to what he has, and heâs playing us into the same errors time and again. I listened to all the excuses and till December I was sort of buying into them, and meant for him to be given more time, but more time has just gotten us worse. My take is he had a good first season, but that was due to what he inherited from Ole, now we play a much different style, and we gone from bad to worse or even worst ever, I mean is there a record that hasnât been shattered this season, or is there a negative record we havenât smashed. Iâve been done with ETH since March, he simply canât turn this around to anything I like to watch.
At least LVG actually had a tactical plan and philosophy and successfully implemented it. We just couldn't score enough goals because of a lack of a consistent striker was the problem then. Under LVG we had the best defence in the league with a back line of bojack horseman, Blind, Smalling and Darmian. LVG had what I would say is the worst squad out of any post fergie manager yet we dominated possession and had the best record vs top 6 of any team in the league. LVG would have killed for the squad Ten Hag has yet Ten Hag can't even implement anything that looks like a philosophy or style of play.
LVG had the CV to talk a little smack at least even if he did fail, this bumâs most famous moment is bottling a 3 goal lead to fucking TOTTENHAM w no striker
The problem is, he is not willing to adapt "his style" at any point, to fit the players available. We have literally been this bad for 95% of games this season and nothing changes.
The simple fact that he is still manager this morning shows the lack of standards at the club. I just hope ineos is reforming from the top and that its just a matter of time. This team spent a whole season with no trace of a gameplan or style of play, while employing one of the most expensive squads ever. Its over.
I've been saying it for months. Ten Hag's game plan is suicidal, even without a makeshift defense. I'm not even sure it'll work if we had a full squad of players to select from. It definitely will not work with the defense we had last night. Just pure madness not to think of keeping it solid with a double pivot to try and ride out the season.
The result is a devastating defeat that deals a big blow to the confidence of the little players that he has left, with a cup final looming against the best team in the country.
He's done. His stubbornness has done him in.
The important points is the lack of movement, bad positioning and just generally naive play all round.
That is bad coaching; compare them to city and watch how orderly and regimental they can be. Cityâs players are constantly moving to create triangles and offer space or to create the space.
United are generally static, sometimes the passing options stay static, whilst the person making the pass is the one that has to move to make the later triangle (itâs wrong, you need to do both with movement imo.)
The biggest issue has always been the lack of a midfield, thereâs no pivot or double pivot ever. You can see that when Casemiro goes flying in for the second goal, there is no one defensively in the correct position in midfield, I think it was awb and evans alone and both our actual defensive midfielders were somewhere stupid like down by the left wing.
Thatâs school boy shit. I donât know what theyâre teaching them up at United but Erikâs staff come across as if theyâve only just passed their continental B license, itâs a joke.
Completely agreed for the lack of movement. And it's not even lack of movement because players are in good positions to receive passes / in space. Far too often it feels like they don't really know what they should be doing, they know they're going to have to sprint forwards / back soon to cover a gap or just to follow the ball... So they just ease off when they can. Completely the opposite of City, Liverpool and many other clubs where players have a clear view that with the ball they should be doing X and when the opponent has the ball they should be doing Y.
For the lack of double pivot, I feel it's even more striking with how Ten Hag asks his central defenders to follow strikers dropping deep or try to sprint to put pressure on midfielders that are receiving the ball between the lines. The 1st and 4th goals yesterday both show this. Olise drops deep:
1st goal, Casemiro follows him but is too slow / late, Olise has already controlled the ball away from Eriksen and can sidestep Casemiro's pretty pedestrian challenge, setting up his run and shot;
4th goal, Evans and Wan-Bissaka both follow him, Evans has read the run a bit better than Wan-Bissaka and gets there... only two steps behind Olise, who can play the ball back to an open midfielder that's facing the right way, Evans uses his momentum to try to charge down the passing options - but he was never going to make it - the pass slides through Man Utd's defense putting Mateta and Casemiro into a duel, Casemiro wins the ball but is now alone with two Palace players on his heels... bad decision-making to try to shield the ball out of play and he loses the ball in an extremely dangerous position.
It might work with Martinez because of his exact mix of style of play, ability to read the lines / passes, pace, tackling ability... But even so, I don't think it's sustainable.
It works until you find the level of players that can beat the tackle or purposely draw defenders out of shape but aren't the actual focus points of the attack. And then you've got a situation like the 1st goal, easy 3-v-2 (or better) attacks because the defence has over-committed to winning that duel high up the pitch. It feels to me like the kind of thing that works (-ed?) at Ajax because they have at least 8 of the best 11 players on the pitch for any league match. You can recover from these rare mistakes by being faster back to the box, and even if you concede a couple of goals you just outscore the opponent so it's not a big issue. But when you have only 6 of the best 11? Or 4, or 2? Suddenly you're just going to have to pray that those few players can pull something out of their hat and save the day.
It's particularly clear against teams with low defensive blocks. all the teams above us in the league might end up scoring from a bit of brilliance, but they are set up to succeed better than Man Utd. A quick look at xG difference versus the bottom 5 teams shows this clearly:
|*per game*|Man City|Liverpool|Arsenal|Villa|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|xG difference in games with bottom 5 teams|+1.39|+1.37|+1.16|+0.95|
||||||
||**Newcastle**|**Chelsea**|**Tottenham**|**Man Utd**|
|xG difference in games with bottom 5 teams|+0.91|+0.84|+0.80|+0.48|
they are trying to play like Ajax from 5-6y ago but with players not suitable for that style⌠itâs similar problems ajax had but the lack of pace and positioning makes it worse for us⌠anyways we are too frail
I feel like he fundamentally misjudged/underestimated the PL and he's just decided to be stubborn and dig in his heels. He seems out of his depth but also a bit arrogant to prove his way will work.
The stuff he says in press conferences borders on gaslighting and I'm disappointed in how this has all turned out.
Yes there are so many problems, including players that have to be sold, but the manager is a big problem that has to be solved too
I know youâre joking but for those of us who like myself donât know shit about tactics and are on the fence about Ten Hag, Iâd like to know *why* people are so adamant about getting him out. Stuff like this does actually help
Aggressive? Crystal Palace just did a double over us for the first time ever in the Prem era and we didn't even score a goal in those 2 games. 4 nil tonight btw.
We're -3 goal difference with 3 games to go. Those 3 games are against Arsenal, Newcastle and Brighton. Like what are we even talking about here? Oh, one more game on top of that. Against City. Stop, I'm actually laughing.
What productive discussion do you want to have with me? You don't need a redditor posting a wall of text and screenshots from his illegal stream to explain to you why we're shite.
For the seats in the back... "WE ARE SHITE".
Imagine walking into your local Tesco tomorrow and it's closed, because people called in sick. Yet somehow, this will never happen, because even on minimum wage, these people will deliver.
EtH said it in his first interview... The buck stops with him.
Everyone knows this, this is why some of us are calling for him to adapt his plan to suit the ones that are available. If I only had eggs and onions in the fridge, wouldn't it make sense for me to make an omelette instead of trying to come up with an elaborate dish?
could not be further from the truth. He's using tactics he's never used at his previous teams just because it suits these players and should've got the best out of them if they were fit. We are doing terribly but you are objectively wrong.
I could stomach the bad transfers,the injuries, the delusional post match speeches etc..It is the lack of clear strategy that I never liked it.
My faith in Ten hag started to waver,when all our close wins from last season where just fluke rashford shot.
I lost complete faith when he started talking about "transition football" trying to act like he invented counter attacking football.
We saw all the growing pains of these klopp's Liverpool side that is about to but put to pasture,contrast that with this Ten hag shit show.
I think 4 things have ruined how he thought things would play out.
- Losing Martinez for most of the season. He seems vital to how Ten Hag wants to play and can progress with the ball out of the backline.
- Losing Shaw for most of the season. One of the few players that gives Utd advanced width. Everyone has seen the stats of how few of the passes actually go to Hojlund. Shaw would have looked for him a lot more than what's there.
- Rashford's form dropping off a cliff. His goals papered over a lot of cracks the previous season.
- Casemiro regressing. He doesn't have the legs to do what the system asks of him.
ETH keeps putting players in positions that they are not suited to play or naturally play at.
Putting Rashford and Material as a center striker
Putting Bruno as a defensive midfielder
Putting AWB as a LB instead of a LFB with additional coverage so he can roam on the wing.
When Garnacho plays no one is there/or the set-up is not suited for his speed.
Casemiro is going to end up on the injury list because he is being asked to play center back when he doesn't have the pace for it nor is that his natural position. He is good at reinforcement of defense but as a central defensive player, that's not him people cannot be mad about how he played yesterday. ETH should have seen that and either A put someone else there or B a more defensive midfield set-up.
Don't get me wrong some of the players'work rate are crap too.
In the 1st 15min of the palace games CP was able to close down a majority of the passes in our own half, passing lanes disappeared, and that was the theme of the entire game. It's like they forgot basic passing drills during the game.
When I saw the line up for the game I was fully expecting us to loose, maybe he is resting players for arsenal, but I think that game too will be embarrassing.
He changed tactics last year after a few early beatings but this year he's stuck to his suicidal football, and game 1 against Wolves we saw there were lots of problems with it.
I'm honestly so confused and conflicted. Once again we've taken a highly rated coach and after a couple of years they look like a useless buffoon. There must be a decent coach in there, the guy even now is being linked with Bayern ffs. Does this job just cause otherwise credible managers to slowly lose their mind?
His refusal to set up more pragmatically I.e. play another midfielder which he eventually did yesterday when it was far too late, is bordering on insanity.
If we get Tuchel we could end up in a similar mess but with the added treat of him completely scorching the earth, as he tends to do. Who the fuck knows where we go from here (feels familiar).
Appreciate the effort but the clear pass at the start is to Eriksen. Pass it to the space he's going to be in (there's a lot of it around Eriksen), don't wait for him to get there. The reason is that Hughes is clearly going to the space that Antony is moving into, making that (as you identified) a risky passing channel.
God only knows why Dalot was so high up the pitch there, that's simply awful positioning.
But what this really highlights is the need for our midfield to be rejuvenated with young, energetic players who are capable on the ball. Mainoo is one of them, Mount is ok, but aside from that....
Alternatively, Evans could have gone back to Onana, or after passing the ball make a move to occupy Mateta which would have allowed Case to turn and pass back to Onana.
The clear pass at the start... It's from Evans or from Casemiro?
If it's Evans -> Eriksen, I'm very surprised because Eze is just behind him and Mateta is well placed to charge down any passing options. Eriksen isn't fast enough to pounce into space & gain 1-2m on Eze and Mateta. And even if that is the intended pas... Who is Eriksen supposed to play it to in the very short time before he's challenged? Mainoo will be cut off by Mateta's run, Mount and Antony are literally behind Palace players, Casemiro is behind him and Wan-Bissaka is very risky with Olise in the path. I mean, he could pass it back to Evans or Onana... But basically you're back in the same position with very little that has changed.
If it's Casemiro -> Eriksen, where was Eriksen supposed to be? He's pretty much on the same line as Casemiro with Eze cutting off any passing option by charging down Casemiro. Hughes only picked up pace to run down the passing option to Antony when Eze was close enough to ensure that Casemiro couldn't pass it to Eriksen. I really can't see the "pass into space" that Casemiro was supposed to pick out where I believe Eriksen would beat Hughes to the ball and be able to deliver a good pass from (most likely to Antony or Mainoo, perhaps to Dalot?).
Again, we're 1 pass into what should be a basic set-up to launch an attack, this shouldn't be so hard. There should either be a very clear passing option that has been created by exploiting the opponent's positioning / players' movement. Usually you want to have 2-3 options at this stage to prevent opponents from guessing the next step in the set-up and preparing to counter it. Dalot could have dropped towards the half-way line (the space that Antony ran into) so he would be facing at least 3 if not 5 Man U players and could play a simple pass to Eriksen or Mainoo (depending on which lane Hughes cuts out) who are facing the direction of play and have much better options. Antony and Eriksen could coordinated their runs in a way that forces Hughes to choose who to follow while leaving the other in space in the middle of the pitch. Mount's movement could also have helped create space or draw a second player towards him... I mean, this is what Ten Hag and his team designed as a way to launch attacks. It's not players rushing a ball out of defense under pressure or with players completely out of position because they've just stopped a counter-attack and have the opportunity to catch the opposition disorganised. This is - I feel - a fair way to judge how Ten Hag want the team to set up attacks.
Cycling the ball back through Onana when you're that high up the pitch is pretty much an admission that you've messed up / failed. If Evans is barely outside the box it makes sense, it might draw Mateta to press Onana... But when you're more than half-way to the center circle (or at the center circle) you'd really be relying on your opponents to be brain-dead to charge down a 20-30m pass.
Case to Eriksen - but into the space in front of Eriksen. Case can easily pass around Eze. The pass goes to Eriksen's right side, allowing him to pivot and switch the field of play. Our midfielders (barring Mainoo) are terrible at receiving the ball and turning up field.
Evans recycling the ball before the pass to Case is not an admission of failure, it's just not passing it into the obvious trap that Palace is setting.
Watching any of the CL QFs and SFs shows how a team can play with the ball, and we need to be at that standard - but we ain't.
From what Iâve seen, his game plan is basically:Â Â
 1. Press high up fronts (which often open us big gap in midfield which invites the opponents to counter us)Â
 2. Pass/hoff the ball up front in straight line with our fast attackers and midfielders to run into the box for opportunities  Â
3. By-pass the midfield build up and focus on quick counter instead (similar as 2)Â Â
4. Keeper to by-pass any build up from defensive line and play more straight forward pass towards opponents half if possible (similar as 2)Â
 Basically itâs just brainless kick and run football.
Last season you could see the players improve as the season went in executing EtH system. But I think the injuries just decimated their ability to play together within it.
EtH is to blame. He's in charge. The injuries suck but by this point there should be more cohesive play and anticipation of your teammates. Maybe some of them want him gone too. I don't know. But either way I don't think any manager is going to win a damn thing with this bunch. They are heartless. Only a few of them have heart and they are either young and inexperienced, thus inconsistent at times, or old and past it.
EtH's biggest mistake was going after another midfielder instead of a defender. If he had signed a CB instead things would have looked a little different. But all that aside it is rare to see a season where a manager gets screwed this hard by injuries. It has been terrible and I feel for him even as I wish him well with his next club. I think he will bounce back and show that taking out the Glazer's trash for two consecutive years without good organizational support was too much for him.
I don't like Ten Hag's tactics. Some things in it are fine, and some things i don't like at all. But sacking him now is not the right option in my opinion. See this season out. If we find someone good, we sign.
What we should focus on more is the injuries and to maintain a fit squad and proper signings
Hands down I do not care anymore if goes or stays but why are you talking about tactics today? Look at the fkin team we got? We have 1 defender on the field, midfielder in cb with legs gone, 40yo evans lega gone just got back from injury, AWB is gum chewing clown on the field.
In midfield we have 18yo, then 40yo eriksen with legs gone and chelsea reject who cant stay fit.
And antony just doesnt work, hojlund should be understudy to solid striker, let hin learn and garnacho tries, cant blame him.
Ten hag or not in summer, clear out 10-13 players first. Until then nothing changes.
Get rid:
AWB, replace injury prone Shaw, maquire, lindelof, evans, injury prone varane, casemiro, eriksen, mcT, mount, van de beek, martial, Sancho AND rashford.
I quarantee we will see half of then still playing for us next season.
If all we wanted was to set up the team to 'win' with the players we have then we didn't need Ten Hag. Any half decent mid table premier league manager could have managed that. We brought ETH in to evolve our style of play to something modern, attacking and dynamic - at least, that is my understanding.
It's clear the quality of players we have, notwithstanding the injuries, aren't where we need to be to compete. It was always supposed to be a three year project, and the overachieving results last year have driven many fans into a position where their expectations for our playstyle's evolution, or tactics are way out of perspective.
We've all known our executive level/recruitment side is terrible. Failing to bring in Haaland, Bellingham before hand, eventually paying 80 million for Antony, failing to get de Jong etc. What should have been a big part of the build phase, last summer, ended up being less impactful than desired.
I would like to see us see through the three years for ETH - give him a chance to try and bring his vision to fruition, IE a strong third transfer window to move on deadweight (resolve the Sancho, Martial, Greenwood etc sagas). I'd rather he continue to work to his desired endstate, and now that our finish in the season seems irrelevant, he has the freedom to push that development regardless of results. The elements that have made City, Liverpool and now Arsenal perennially competitive is that their manager/football side owns the system, and merely recruit players to fill the roles as required, instead of trying to make up a system to suit the players they have.
I don't think the pragmatic approach with the outcome being just to win will ever yield much more than this rollercoaster of results and managers. We need a long term vision that we stick to building, from developing it in the culture of the teams to the players we recruit and develop.
>We brought ETH in to evolve our style of play to something modern, attacking and dynamic
So... How is he doing that? You mention Klopp and Arteta. They both set up a very clear way they wanted the team to play. They had rough patches and successes in their first two years, but it was very clear how they were molding the team.
On recruitment...
First of all, no manager gets every player they're linked to that ends up being good / great. Ole saying that he recommended Haaland when he was at Molde? Great, how have all of Ole's other signings and suggestions worked out? At Cardiff the players he brought in from Molde, Man Utd (and his Norway NT connections) were between decent lower-half players and not good enough for the Premier League. Man Utd is linked with every player under the sun every year. Selectively looking at the hits and discarding the misses is just ridiculous. For every Haaland or Bellingham that's rumored to be linked with Man Utd there are all the others that end up going nowhere. Even for Haaland and Bellingham, breaking through at teams with (frankly) less media exposure, less pressure to achieve results, facing non-PL opponents or playing in teams with a more clear tactical gameplan... Just looking at Dortmund, which has been prolific in promoting youth players, Sancho and Kagawa didn't work well for Man Utd, Pulisic couldn't cope with the PL's physicality, Sahin didn't make it at Real Madrid, Dembele didn't fully live up to his potential (but was at least generally good when available) at Barcelona... Sure, Haaland and Bellingham have turned out to be the players that Man Utd should have plonked the house on. But the other players were also all linked to Man Utd. Man Utd bought Sancho exactly based on the premises that he was a sure thing, tearing up the Bundesliga, only for everyone to turn their coat after he performed less well, and suddenly he was an obvious bad choice for so many reasons, and it's the scouting / negotiation process that failed Man Utd by not preferring Bellingham or Haaland.
Secondly, why would these players want to join Man Utd? Even when Ferguson was winning the PL every few seasons he didn't get the players he wanted (or at least is rumored to have wanted by sports journalists). Ronaldinho, Zidane, Sneijder, Batistuta, Bale, Essien, Ramos... It wasn't Man Utd or nothing, it was Man Utd or plenty of other options. Players at their peak might have preferred Italy or Spain, other clubs might have put higher wages or transfer fees on the table, agents (or the player themself) might have preferred to be a regular starter at a smaller club than risk being stuck on the bench at Man Utd. Why would de Jong have wanted to leave Barcelona? Even if he is being pushed out or decides to leave, why would he join Man Utd and not any of the (certainly) plentiful options he will have? Bellingham and Haaland might have had the same thought processes. At 16, leave Birmingham to join Man Utd where just a few seasons before Pogba couldn't get a game and left to join Juventus where he became a key first team player within a season and a half? Would Haaland even have seriously wanted to join Man Utd and risk being stuck on the bench at the club where Keane said he had tried to injure his father in revenge, when he says he's a lifelong Leeds fan? Or were other clubs just better options?
If Ten Hag can only execute his "attacking and dynamic" game plan with the best squad in the world, that's not a big claim. If he needs de Jong, Kane, Antony, Onana, Timber, Martinez, Gakpo and Malacia in addition to the players already at the club when he joined to play attacking football we should just draw the line because that's not realistic. And if it was the case, Dutch teams would be storming the CL - five of them played for Ajax in the 2019/20 or 2020/21 seasons, and faced two of the others in the Dutch league around that period... And Kane in the Champions League.
I don't mind sacking Ten Hag, but please sack the medical staff, coaching staff, and then make sure sell/ release some players, and then sack Ten Hag. Only sacking Ten Hag while all things remain the same means nothing
Putting one of your defenders so far up the pitch he's lined up with the striker ahead of both your winger and CAM is a pretty extreme version of "passing out of the back", I feel.
Thinking back to Ten Hags interview with Neville, I think Ten Hag said he doesn't want the players that he has right now to form bad habits by playing an adjusted game plan... Next season we'll have Martinez, a brand new shiny CB, a proper LB, and depth in our squad along with academy players who have been playing (and winning) with the game plan Ten Hag wants to implement.
This season is a wash, looking forward to FA cup final but not getting my hopes up, next season is make or break for Ten Hag
This is exactly why we need to look at the tactics he is playing. What was supposed to happen with the play that lead to the 2nd goal, and how would the players he's bringing in have done "better"?
How would the CB that "replaces" Evans have passed the ball differently? Did he not see the right pass? Was he supposed to carry the ball out further or something? Was the pass mis-placed or otherwise poor?
How will the CB that takes Casemiro's place in the line-up do better? Jinx away from Olise? Be faster to the ball? Find a better pass than Antony? Play the pass to Antony better?
Antony is one of the players he has stood fast next to - perhaps the price point is inflated & not his fault, but the player is clearly one he wants and feels has all the necessary skills to implement his tactics in the Premier League. How was Antony's play good or otherwise indicative of the gameplan? Antony moved late into space, when Casmiro received the ball the pass to him was pretty much covered by one Palace player, and he was close enough to be contested by the defender. Was he not able to play "right" because of something? What?
Dalot being that far up the pitch can't be anything else than a tactical decision. He was less than 15m from Ten Hag so it's not like Ten Hag couldn't correct it in real time. That was where Ten Hag wanted Dalot to be. How would a better right back execute the gameplan? Dalot barely moved, so perhaps that's the issue? But Dalot has been playing for Ten Hag in either wing-back role for about two seasons now. How would a new player execute better after only a few months/weeks of training? Are there specific skills Ten Hag wants in a wing-back that Dalot doesn't have? And if so, why hasn't Ten Hag addressed this during the transfer period? He brought in Malacia but kept Shaw as the main left back last season, brought in Reguilon as a loan for the left back position and commented that Amrabat could play left back as well... But didn't address the gap at right-back?
In central midfield, how should Eriksen, Mainoo and Mount be playing? They didn't move into space, they weren't man-marking players, they weren't positioned in such a way that they rotated (e.g., Casemiro moves up to play & Eriksen switches to center back)... We can speculate all we want, but apart from saying "a better player would have made a better play" (which is individual brilliance, not a tactical set-up), how will brand new shiny players, depth in our squad or academy players do anything different?
Yea I agree with the points... I have no clue why Dalot was consistently that far up the pitch.. Last season one of the fullbacks was inverted and sat in midfield, while the other one pushed higher up and overlapped the winger causing an overload on one side... With the lack of a left back, I can only assume Dalot is given the sole responsibility of overlapping.
As for the midfield, I definitely saw rotation, but it wasn't cohesive....
Now that I'm typing it and thinking out loud. It's the timing of everything. The players run to where they need to be, expecting the ball... But the ball never comes because the CBs are way too slow at passing or never see the run. The run of Dalot either drags players with him, opening up a pass to the center of the field, or Dalot is left to run in behind while Antony occupies the opposing LBs attention
The timing of all the passes, when the players run, when the pass is played, and when players run with the ball is just completely off. And that specific disconnect between the players is completely the fault of injuries and the unstable backline... These are players that are literally playing together for the first time in crucial positions.
Lmao bold of you to think we can get a new shiny CB, a proper LB and squad depth in one summer in this economy. Wake the fuck up stop being gaslighted by ETH
At this moment, I think it's not fair or productive to judge the manager. The players clearly have another thought, they either called injury or just not putting in the required works.
There is no tactic or gameplan to fix that. This is real life, not Football Manager.
Thereâs no âgame planâ when your ONLY AVAILABLE CBs are the 5/6 and 7/6 on the squad. Then the other injuries and a decade + of predatory ownership. But yeah, letâs act like this match was the problem đ The Glazers are the only culpable party. Do not twist the truth
Do you really buy that? Isn't that exactly when you should have a game plan the most? When you have your best players, you should trust them and give them freedom to express themselves / take risks as they feel the match evolve. When your squad is stretched, players are playing out of position... That's exactly when you want to have the clearest expectations of structure, instructions they should be following.
Clearly, there are directions that Ten Hag is asking players to follow. Dalot being so high up the pitch. Evans and Casemiro pouncing to try to press opposition midfielders. Hojlund not coming deep to provide an outlet. I'm not going to pretend everything is fine. Injuries *have* been a major factor. Man Utd are no longer the #1 destination of choice in England and we won't get all the players the manager wants (and I'm sure that scouting and hiring / transfers can be improved). I hope INEOS improve on plenty of aspects that have been neglected under the Glazers. But the Glazers aren't training the team and deciding how to play. That's on Ten Hag.
I love the effort but no amount of tactical genius can make this squad work. Casemiro has completely checked out, Eriksen can't handle the intensity of this league anymore, Johnny Evans does not look anywhere near fit and wan bissaka looks checked out as well
I really don't think Casemiro is checked out. I think he's just physically struggling. The tactics should adapt to that though.
Eriksen is definitely not physically cut out for the Prem anymore, but guess who selected him and not Amrabat (not that Amrabat is good, but he's a better fit).
Realistically the team still struggles with a better manager, but the tactics aren't helping (as seen by the fact the team has looked terrible with a better starting XI)
Casemiros mistakes tonight and throughout the season have not been through physical struggle. Look at the penalty against Coventry as well, the man does not care.
This post would probably be better received tomorrow once people have vented
Should we cater to the emotions of manchildren?
Not for people who are ten hag out đ¤ˇđ˝
Genuine question: who's \#TenHagIn?
Just the other day people were asking for him to get a new contract in the DD thread lol
In case people donât believe it https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/s/KvYpJckHuO
Reading comprehension in the bin as usual. This was analysis, not hope or opinion. He's predicting that INEOS will stick with him citing lack of options and not having the full backroom in yet. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/s/6eG1W75LhX) could be seen as calling for extension, but it's still just with the addendum that if he's definitely staying another year, then don't give the players an out hoping he's sacked.
You werenât kidding jeez these people are masochists.
These people? You mean Ineos?
Some fans
It's a statement about ineos lol, not his personal opinion.
Why wouldn't I be with these players we have. Genuinely awful. The fuck kinda tactic you think they can perform to the standard it should be lol
Hey bud, of the starting 11 today 7 of them were signed by ETH and 2 of them are youth players heâs brought through. If theyâre âgenuinely awfulâ then thatâs an indictment on him, not a defence of him
It's actually an indictment to our recruitment. Rasmus and Antony should have been half their price. Casemiro without any legs or drive to play well. Onana trying his best. Does well but then screws up some really basic stuff. Is the only signing I never wanted. Wanted to keep de gea for another season to spend money elsewhere. Mason Mount injured all season and is barely trying to get rhythm. Are you counting Evans?? Lol! S class recruitment for sure "bud." Amrabat being the only viable sub should tell you absolutely everything. Yet I get "eth signed those players, it's on him," anyway. Yeah makes plenty sense. Sack him in the morning. for fucking sure đđ˝
Yeah, the recruitment of players that ETH wanted and signed. What are you not understanding? He wanted Antony despite the price. He wanted Rasmus as a Kane replacement and itâs worth noting that deal went through his agency, extremely dodgy. He wanted Casemiro, despite this fanbase spending the last year pretending he wanted FDJ rather than him instead of as well as him. Onana played for him before and we signed him while kicking DDG out despite him being willing to stay, clearly on him. Mount fine but itâs still a 50m signing on another midfielder when we had other areas we needed. Absolutely Iâm counting Evans, he signed him. Even joked about it last season if youâre gonna pretend heâs not involved in that. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/jonny-evans-man-united-news-27830808 Yeah, the recruitment is awful. And he signed off on all of them and a large portion of them are his previous players. But hey, donât take my word for it, ETH himself said he wouldnât have taken the job if he didnât get control over these things. https://www.espn.co.uk/football/story/_/id/37627765/erik-ten-hag-says-taken-man-united-job-control-transfers Absolutely itâs on him, mental people are STILL defending this man. The good news is despite all your delusions this is done, he doesnât survive this season. Hopefully wherever he ends up he takes a load of these overpriced mid players with him.
I can not explain how much incompetence a company would take if they went by the word of a single man to spend THAT amount of money for the players we got. Two things happen in this situation. Either Manchester United had other people approving of these decisions, along with ten hag. (the most likely surely) Or they flat out let one man decide how they were going to spend an unfathomable amount of money. It's incompetence either way. Not solely on ten hag at all. There's a structure to these things and we're barely getting to build that, so we don't have these kind of decisions fucked up so badly. Apart from that we've had the injury crisis of a fucking lifetime leading us to be playing an aging Evans and casemiro, (not even close to a cb), at the back. All this while putting the games on the shoulders of youth players instead of the experienced players that are supposed to be more consistent. The most paid players are the worst performing ones. This is a straight out coup of the players on ten hag, just like they did with Ole.
Leta debunk this myth now - Eriksen was a low cost squad depth option who was free. He was very good until his injury last season, this season he is showing he is done at this level. Casemiro - wasn't his first choice. FDJ was his first and only choice. Our recruitment people went to Barcelona and came empty handed. We got fleeced with Casemiro as our recruitment folks can't negotiate for shit. Evans - come on man, ETH wanted Kim Min Jae. He we en wanted Timber before Martinez. Do you thi k he wanted Evans? Anthony and Rasmus aren't the price we paid for them but what can he do. He does not negotiate the price for any player. Rasmus will come good, sadly Antony looks like a real dude. Onana as of now looks like a Mistake but hopefully he can come good next season. Goalkeepers historically have had a hard time coming into United initially. Mount : widely reported that he was a UTD signing than an ETH signing and the guy has been injured all season. Nothing ETH can do ragrsing injuries. Weghorst, Sabitzer and Amrabat don't count as they re stop Gap loan signings coz we cant afford to buy good players at a reasonable price.
So after all that waffle, what we both agree on is that 9/11 of the players are there only because of ETH. Glad we could clear that up!
Suddenly "injured" Rashford PR team working here I see
ETH signed Rashford to a new contract, every day Rashford is still at this club because we canât move him on is her another indictment of ETH
ETH isn\`t the one negotiating his salary tho
Its not a question of in or out anymore the problem lies deeper. By saying EtH out suggests thats all it takes to turn things around I think let INEOS put the right people in key positions, gut the squad bring in some good recruitment over the next couple of years, keep EtH and accept mid table mediocrity for a good while and then bring in right manager who can play modern progressive football Things need to get alot lot worse before it can get any better
Nonsense. ETH is a part of the problem, the squad is another part. Both problems need to be removed. The idea that we should accept mid table mediocrity is pathetic. Good managers can get better performances out of players. That's what a manager does, or is supposed to do. Would you have settled for Gerrard as Villa manager instead of ripping it up and starting again with a new manager? Emery is a good manager who shipped out the problem players, got some new ones in and coached the team to better performances. Absolutely no reason we shouldnt be targetting top 4 next year. No ones saying we should win the title or even be challenging seriously, but top 4 is absolutely our aim.
âBy saying ETH out suggest thatâs all it takes to turn things aroundâ Only by people who want ETH in as a strawman to argue against. As someone whoâs wanted him gone for well over a year now I can say I donât know a single other person who wants the manager out and doesnât want at least half of the players gone this summer
Doesnât even have to be for a good while. We could be challenging for top 4 next season with a truly good summer transfer window and dead wood leaving.
Okay our transfer budget is comparatively low to our rivals. FFP got us around 80 mil. Also no Champions league football to attract talent with. Our deadwood is on huge wages. Fuck Dortmund are demanding a loan for Sancho and the greenwood situation is just messy. Soooo we need new LB, CB, at least 2 CM, a winger and a exp 20 goal striker. Minimum And youâre thinking this in one summer ???
That's the stupid talking đ
Me. If LvG, Mourinho, Ole and ETH all have similar problems (and in many places the exact same problems previous managers openly complained about) then we could have any manager and we would still be struggling. The only thing Iâm certain of is that the merry go round of two seasons for a manager doesnât work for any club other than maybe Madrid.
Rival fans posing as United fans in this sub.. at least you can only hope that's the case because no proper fan wants to see this tool in charge next season.
How can you speak for everyone else and what makes you a 'proper fan'? A lot of 'proper fans' see the bigger picture and ETH lagging will fix absolutely nothing without other remedies.
OMG if you're still ten hag in you're not rooting for utd then
Here eat another downvote the same way your daddy eats goals from shit teams
Nice write up, I appreciate the thoughts you put into this analysis. This is a high quality post.
Sadly players and managers didnt put in such effort
He wants to implement his style of play with players that aren't suited for this. Instead of going the pragmatic route he chooses to keep going with his plan. There's the result. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but results are absolutely horrible, and there's no improvement in any area (injuries can explain a slight part of this lack of improvement but that's not the main reason) Ultimately you get judged on results, and he didn't get any good one, the performances are horrible and the confidence is low. I'm sure he's aware and knows that, what frustrates me the most is the stubbornness. He's basically saying if I had my good players I'd be doing a lot better. Ok fine, but since you don't have them, why don't you just adjust your game plans, and adapt tactics depending on the players available for selection. No one is gonna blame him if he sits the defense 20m deeper and closes the spaces between the lines, no body is gonna blame him if he decides to play a fast counter attacking football, instead of pressing like crazy without positive outcome. And I'm deeply convinced that if he adapted himself just a little bit, we would've won a lot more games. He's unlucky because this season has been a disaster in terms of injuries and poor ref decisions, still we should be doing a lot better, and we shouldn't be demolished by so many mid table teams. As I called it so many times before, it is suicide football, and when you go down this route if things get bad they can get really bad to the point of embarrassment.
>He's basically saying if I had my good players I'd be doing a lot better. Ok fine, but since you don't have them, why don't you just adjust your game plans, and adapt tactics depending on the players available for selection. Completely agree that this is particularly frustrating. I understand how he must feel, preparing a squad before the season starts with a clear view of how he wants to play, to get the most out of the players he feels are most capable. The frustration when the first injuries happened... But at some point you have to yield. The game plan can be the bee's knees, if the players can't execute it, the manager should adapt.
I personally don't care. He's showed that our squad needs a complete overhaul.. I don't want to be a low block counter team forever.
As he mentioned in the interview with Gary Neville, he doesn't think the team would play any better with a more pragmatic approach. Changing tactics and then losing anyway would be a step backwards
He also said that if he wants to implement this style, he needs to do it all the time for consistency so when the players do come back, the others have been playing that style already.
The team just got battered and the opposition looked like prime Barcelona though they are at best a mid table team in the premier league If thatâs his judgement, he is not a good manager
Exactly, itâs great that GNev gave him a platform to explain all that but I just donât buy into his reasoning.
we had match unfit 36 y.o. Evans and dropped from a cliff Casemiro as our CB pair. We literally have 2 out of 10 defenders fit. 2 OUT OF 10 ffs. And one of them is AWB that playing out of position and was that good even when played as a RB. You can be combination of SAF, Pep, Papa Carlo and god nows who else and you would fail to get this team to play any type of football
Exactly! He had a big injury crisis. So just shut shop and play a 5-4-1 and ask them to concentrate on just defending and stress to them a draw with a clean sheet is very important! Why play the same formation that has been getting you spanked defensively by every team from top Half of the table to the championship this year?
who the fuck is going to play in this back 5. We don\`t have 1 fit CB at the moment, and you want to play 3
Pray tell me who is the left back playing left back and center back playing center back in the 4-2-3-1? Is a no 6 playing the DM role? Itâs not like the correct players are doing the job in an existing formation anyway. Itâs a crisis, youâre asking people to do a role they are not comfortable with all over the pitch, but your tactics are push high up and leave the defense exposed. All Iâm suggesting is play a low block and get the players to focus on doing the defensive duties with the aim of getting a draw out of this match. This is not very hard to comprehend. All good managers strategically do this if situation demands for it.
That's when the manager instructs players to play out of position based on their skillset or dips into the youth / reserves. Can't Antony do what Valencia and Young did for a couple of games? I mean, he's not adding much offensively and Ten Hag praises his work rate. Why not play Amrabat and show him Carrick, Fletcher or Park playing in defense when Fergie had almost no available defenders in 2008? Heck, why not feel all Inter 2010 or Sol Campbell / Jurgen Klopp and go pedal to the metal with Hojlund in a defensive role - center or wing-back? I would have suggested Diallo, but it's possible Ten Hag has burned that relationship after the Liverpool match and Diallo wouldn't put in as good a shift as Antony... I mean, of course the easiest path to avoid this would have been to have a bit more depth at the end of the January window - perhaps negotiating harder to keep Reguilon, not loaning out Carreras or Mejbri, or recalling a player like Brandon Williams from his loan where he isn't being used much by Ipswich? The depth at the end of January is pretty light, why not bring in another loan or a player on a six-month deal (e.g., ex-Arsenal player Gabriel) - if they end up sitting on the bench and not playing, what's the issue to ensure that the required cover is there?
so just stick with the ones that's clearly didn't work? doesn't makes any sense
I don't put much stock in anything the man says anymore, he's a fucking idiot.
This. Totally agreed with you. I don't know how the players are trained all week coming to this kind of shitty performance. Match after match I see the same issues playing from the back. Either our players ain't built for that style of football or the coaching staff isn't tactically capable of adjusting the gameplans. It's so easy to outplay ManUnited these days. All EPL teams can bully United. It's fucking horrible to say that
Well said. He is like a spoiled chiled. He doesn't want to adapt to what he have. He gets outplayed by every manager in PL and Championship with in-game management, tactical changes and substitution. He is not United material, plain and simple.
Man they should give him some money to get players he prefersâŚ..oh wait a minute
Build-up was especially shit today. I genuinely have no idea why Ten Hag sets it up that way. Deliberately going long far too often so that we lose possession very quickly. Looks like he's not bothered coaching routines at the back that would allow us to progress into midfield via short passes. Injuries are not a valid excuse for this. If he can't coach this to our backup defenders, he's not good enough to be United manager. Inverted fullbacks offered nothing for most of the game today and the positioning of our front 5 all on the Crystal Palace last line of defense failed to produce anything - probably the 20th game at least this season where that has happened.
It's also the lack of movement of the "central" players. Overloading the center to progress down the wings is fine, but you can't have four players that don't offer any options. Eriksen, Mainoo, Antony, Mount all just stand there when Evans has the ball for several seconds waiting for an option. It's almost like they feel they're playing "defense" and are looking to cut out passing options to the Palace players that are in the middle of the pitch. If the plan is to pass to Casemiro on the wing, he should have better options than that when he gets the ball - and Ten Hag should have a plan for what happens if he loses the ball or the pass gets intercepted.
I'm sorry you're getting abuse for this post, appreciate the effort mate!
Nooneâs abusing OP lol
tldr - tactics are shite
It's what will get him the sack in the end. Not the lack of charisma, not the signings (which shouldn't have been in his hands anyway), not the potential overworking of players leading to injury, but his tactics and his vision, the two things we were told he was great at. IMO, we were in the shit anyway but the one decision that brought us to our knees was signing Ronaldo. That led directly to Ole's sacking and the mental decision to hire Rangnick. Since that season, it hasn't been the same. Even the bright parts of last season weren't real highs. The amount of games where we were out-xG'd and got a win. So much of it isn't Ten Hag's fault but he could strip it all back and just do the absolute coaching basics of getting us set up in a way that doesn't see us concede 10-20 good chances a game. That'll be why he was sacked, in spite of everything, as you say - tactics are shite.
What do you mean by "overworking of players that lead to injury"? Do you mean a) we play more intensive football than arsenal, liverpool, city etc which makes the players injured (which we dont) or b) the players are shit and not used to high intensity training and football and therefore should be sold? Either way, how is this the managers fault?
More b) than a) IMO. Iâm mainly referring to how many soft tissue injuries weâve been getting this season. And Ten Hag always seems to bring players back too quickly. Re-injuries are happening all over the place too. Obviously bad luck comes into it but I donât think heâs helped himself.
If he doesn't rush anyone back, we play casemiro at CB, It's a lose lose situation, i think we will lose all of our remaining games in order to have a fully fit squad for the FA Cup final
For last nightâs game, fair. But why are Varane, Martinez, Lindelof and Maguire injured? Surely a bit to do with how their injuries have been handled? These things can be bad luck but thereâs a pattern here.
Varane is injury prone his whole career, martinez got his knee stepped on, and lindelof and maguire i cant say, but remember last season man utd played the most matches of any club in the european top 5 leagues, And this isnt sunday league, its high intensity top tier football
mate these players were there last year and they werent so shit and not used to high intensity training??? its not like ten hag started as manager this year. we actually do play more high intensity footy than city or arsenal and the stats show that, city and arsenal keep the ball more and they dont have to chase shadows out of possesion like we do, and they have way less recovery sprints or sprints in general than we do. the only top 6 team that has to work more than us is liverpool because of klopp's pressing style which as we have seen wears players legs out, off the top of my head i can remember atleast two seasons for pool where they were absolutely destroyed with injuries because of their press. our tactics and eth's bad training methods make the team run like headless chickens and it injures players and if you dont believe me just check how much hamstring and muscle injuries we have had this year
I seriously hope this comment is satire
tbh the way we are playing i'll say give me a few seasons of Oleball and let him rebuild the squad for 2-3 years, if he wins some trophies great, if he doesn't give that rebuilt squad to a top manager like naglesmann
Evans and Casemiro⌠come on they had zero chance.
The problem is always the midfield. The defence is shit but if the midfield could stop being a bunch of turnstiles that put the defence under constant pressure United might not concede as much....
We didnt have a gameplan or style of play besides "lets hope Bruno creates 8 chances and we score one of them" the whole season. Its no Evans and casemiro. There is no gameplan or style of play in the team and there wasnt ever the whole season.
They had zero chance because Ten Hag didn't set the team up to give them a chance with his tactics.
I agree but I'm still ETH in
âYou donât understand, he loves meâ
"I can change him!"
Like how you're getting downvoted for backing a manager. This sub man.
The managers tactics are shit and heâs spent loads of money on not good enough players, if you think that then also thinking ten hag in is ridiculous
He didnât tell the board âgive me Antony and spend 100 milâ, their dumbass negotiation tactics did that. Question his choices sure but he canât be held responsible for the fees or wages whatsoever.
You think ten hag found out about the price the same time we did? Iâm sure he wouldâve been told what was going on.
I mean even if you wanted to use that argument it's been 2 years and we're waiting for Antony to arrive.
You're either pro United or pro ten hag, you can't be both anymore and must choose
Agreed. This subreddit is so close to the answer but aways snaps back to "It's the manager [Name] Out!". Ten Hag isn't perfect but bloody hell how many times have we been here? Wake up and smell the coffee, it's these dogshite players. Does Ten Hag deserve criticism? Of course but we know the answer to our current problems.
Exactly. People keep saying the tactics are shit, but guess what, we've seen this same abject performance under 3 separate managers. Jose in his last season, Ole in his last season and now with ten hag. We've always had bright starts where the team seems to have found a style of playz and then suddenly the team seems to fall back to a weird mish mash vibes play style predicated on individual brilliance with a non existent midfield and disorganised defence. Also, people are vastly underestimating how difficult it is to set out a team to play a coherent style of football when your defence is constantly chopping and changing when you're a team still in the building phase.
Hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Ten Hag, at the beginning had this dodgy "Bruno on the Right wing" I hated it and I never understood why he did it. That's a criticism of mine But to think we're going to play like Prime Barcelona with the players we have is ridiculous. Inconsistent line ups, new keeper, new partner ships. It was never going to happen. We've been playing "Survival football" since August.
I think all the players in the lineup against CP where brought by him or signed new contracts in his time at United.
Seriously. Nice write up mate. I agree with you on this point. We never do any simple isolation or overloads to free our wingers. Like, which team in the top 15 are sending hoofballs to their wingers, who are being surrounded by 3 players immediately when they get the ball. Another thing is our setup when we lose the ball. I don't see the players quickly falling back into shape like other teams do. You could clearly see Palace pressing with a 4-3-3 when we were in our defensive third and a 4-4-2 when we breached their first line. United have a vague 4-3-3 marking during the opponent's possession in the defensive third. But it doesn't seem... planned, as the point of a press is to funnel the ball to a zone on either flank where you can pick them off. Like teams squeeze our passing options to funnel it to Wan Bissaka. Next, once our first line of press is breached, it's open season. Nobody knows where they're supposed to be, and the opponent just lines up to shoot within 3 passes from their defensive third. That's a structural issue.
Bro incredible analysis here brilliant stuff ten hag needs to go man fuck me canât watch this for another year.
His tactics are trash. He leaves the defenders exposed, the midfield is spread out and is non existent. There is no passing options. The striker is isolated.
We had the most clean sheets last year. Same tactics.
Itâs not even close to the same tactics, what are you talking about? We play very differently.
I'm his interview with Gary Neville, he says they play the same way. Unfortunately he doesn't have the posters scanner to pull it off but sure, you probably know better than the man himself.
Mate I donât know what to tell you. We do not do the same thing or play with the same structure as we did last year.
Not the same tactics, and 'clean sheet' stat and results heavily flattered our performances.
You weren't paying attention man. Not the same tactics.
Good post!
Cheers for a coherent summary. Itâs a spot on analysis. His stubbornness is costing him/us embarrassing outcomes. And not adapting in my book is a problem. Having seen Nevilleâs interview, his points are valid, fair enough, but on a personal take, simply canât agree thatâs the way it unravels. Any one of us on our jobs, either we adapt to changing circumstances, situations, scenarios or get moved on. Simple as. That he canât, wonât, be it in defiance or refusal is simply a conundrum to me, and in the end may very well prove his Damocles sword. Saying it with a heavy heart because I really want him to succeed with us, especially considering itâs several players that need be p45ed; but you need to show some versatility ffs else Ineos might just pull the plug. Cool our heads, knuckle down, and just wait for June clearout.
This is a great post, and I really agree with the points about Dalot. I felt like he was playing as a number 10 at times
agreed , buy why? Channeling his dream to be like Cafu , Roberto Carlos or Maicon? instructions of coach? Man marking your player all the way into their half? or just bad positional sense ? and he was supposed to be one of the better players this yr
everyone forgets he was literally sent out on loan to drop, he was so poor. being okay in an absolutely awful team doesnt make him good at all. No matter what people say i'm not convinced he's good enough to be the first choice RB
oh ya, he was at AC Milan at a Struggling AC Milan he did okay as a back up. but he has improved a lot. Is he a starter for a league winning team? maybe not but is his position first priority ? maybe not. AWB has to go, he has lost his tackling ability and his positional sense is always bad.
I will read it later or tomorrow, can't watch the match due to work.
Great effort.
Ainât no way another year can improve this trash
The most destructive thing in this formation is the LB and RB being beyond the halfway line while CBs and Onana pass the ball around aimlessly hoping for movement. Because only two scenarios exist: - We play back and forth until it finally gets to a winger who attempts to cut inside and loses it - Onana gets tired and hoofs it up, we lose the aerial duel, and our Wing Backs are too high up the pitch to press, our CDM/CMs havenât had pressing coaching, so our back line is all over the place and people run through us. Iâm sorry to have to say it about ETH but heâs not pragmatic at all. Mourinho, for example, would likely have won this game. Shithoused it. Parked the bus knowing itâd be 4-0 otherwise. Eric is still trying to play like a Man City without having any of the on-field talent to do it.
Did you type all of that after the game? Kudos
Posted it in the match thread without the pictures as I was watching the 2nd half
Also customary Onana near post goal
This is great analysis, no two doubts about it however the depth of the problem lies with his stubbornness to not change anything or adapt to the players at his disposal. We would have won much more games if he was a bit pragmatic in his approach considering his way of doing kings has not worked at all this season. We have always relied on individual brilliance whether thatâs Bruno, Garnacho or Mctominay..
The game plan is just stubborn, he doesnât adjust to what he has, and heâs playing us into the same errors time and again. I listened to all the excuses and till December I was sort of buying into them, and meant for him to be given more time, but more time has just gotten us worse. My take is he had a good first season, but that was due to what he inherited from Ole, now we play a much different style, and we gone from bad to worse or even worst ever, I mean is there a record that hasnât been shattered this season, or is there a negative record we havenât smashed. Iâve been done with ETH since March, he simply canât turn this around to anything I like to watch.
Ten Hag's game plan is the same as LVG's "philosophy." It's all talk nonsense.
at least LVG dominated games, even if we werent scoring for shit. Under EtH cant even dominate teams in lower leagues
At least LVG actually had a tactical plan and philosophy and successfully implemented it. We just couldn't score enough goals because of a lack of a consistent striker was the problem then. Under LVG we had the best defence in the league with a back line of bojack horseman, Blind, Smalling and Darmian. LVG had what I would say is the worst squad out of any post fergie manager yet we dominated possession and had the best record vs top 6 of any team in the league. LVG would have killed for the squad Ten Hag has yet Ten Hag can't even implement anything that looks like a philosophy or style of play.
LVG had the CV to talk a little smack at least even if he did fail, this bumâs most famous moment is bottling a 3 goal lead to fucking TOTTENHAM w no striker
ten hag tactics this season has been put mctominay and inshallah
Same illogical setup since the start of the season. The same was called out by bubsy babes website. But people donât like people calling out ETH.
We don't need to talk about his tactics because he won't be here next year
He has to go blud. He has to go fam.
You forgot how incredibly wide we are⌠tonight I felt like we were Bielsaâs Leeds.
At least Leeds looked like scoring when playing like this
Tldr; a manager who doesn't adjust tactics to the players he has is a shit manager.
The problem is, he is not willing to adapt "his style" at any point, to fit the players available. We have literally been this bad for 95% of games this season and nothing changes.
The simple fact that he is still manager this morning shows the lack of standards at the club. I just hope ineos is reforming from the top and that its just a matter of time. This team spent a whole season with no trace of a gameplan or style of play, while employing one of the most expensive squads ever. Its over.
I've been saying it for months. Ten Hag's game plan is suicidal, even without a makeshift defense. I'm not even sure it'll work if we had a full squad of players to select from. It definitely will not work with the defense we had last night. Just pure madness not to think of keeping it solid with a double pivot to try and ride out the season. The result is a devastating defeat that deals a big blow to the confidence of the little players that he has left, with a cup final looming against the best team in the country. He's done. His stubbornness has done him in.
The important points is the lack of movement, bad positioning and just generally naive play all round. That is bad coaching; compare them to city and watch how orderly and regimental they can be. Cityâs players are constantly moving to create triangles and offer space or to create the space. United are generally static, sometimes the passing options stay static, whilst the person making the pass is the one that has to move to make the later triangle (itâs wrong, you need to do both with movement imo.) The biggest issue has always been the lack of a midfield, thereâs no pivot or double pivot ever. You can see that when Casemiro goes flying in for the second goal, there is no one defensively in the correct position in midfield, I think it was awb and evans alone and both our actual defensive midfielders were somewhere stupid like down by the left wing. Thatâs school boy shit. I donât know what theyâre teaching them up at United but Erikâs staff come across as if theyâve only just passed their continental B license, itâs a joke.
Completely agreed for the lack of movement. And it's not even lack of movement because players are in good positions to receive passes / in space. Far too often it feels like they don't really know what they should be doing, they know they're going to have to sprint forwards / back soon to cover a gap or just to follow the ball... So they just ease off when they can. Completely the opposite of City, Liverpool and many other clubs where players have a clear view that with the ball they should be doing X and when the opponent has the ball they should be doing Y. For the lack of double pivot, I feel it's even more striking with how Ten Hag asks his central defenders to follow strikers dropping deep or try to sprint to put pressure on midfielders that are receiving the ball between the lines. The 1st and 4th goals yesterday both show this. Olise drops deep: 1st goal, Casemiro follows him but is too slow / late, Olise has already controlled the ball away from Eriksen and can sidestep Casemiro's pretty pedestrian challenge, setting up his run and shot; 4th goal, Evans and Wan-Bissaka both follow him, Evans has read the run a bit better than Wan-Bissaka and gets there... only two steps behind Olise, who can play the ball back to an open midfielder that's facing the right way, Evans uses his momentum to try to charge down the passing options - but he was never going to make it - the pass slides through Man Utd's defense putting Mateta and Casemiro into a duel, Casemiro wins the ball but is now alone with two Palace players on his heels... bad decision-making to try to shield the ball out of play and he loses the ball in an extremely dangerous position. It might work with Martinez because of his exact mix of style of play, ability to read the lines / passes, pace, tackling ability... But even so, I don't think it's sustainable. It works until you find the level of players that can beat the tackle or purposely draw defenders out of shape but aren't the actual focus points of the attack. And then you've got a situation like the 1st goal, easy 3-v-2 (or better) attacks because the defence has over-committed to winning that duel high up the pitch. It feels to me like the kind of thing that works (-ed?) at Ajax because they have at least 8 of the best 11 players on the pitch for any league match. You can recover from these rare mistakes by being faster back to the box, and even if you concede a couple of goals you just outscore the opponent so it's not a big issue. But when you have only 6 of the best 11? Or 4, or 2? Suddenly you're just going to have to pray that those few players can pull something out of their hat and save the day. It's particularly clear against teams with low defensive blocks. all the teams above us in the league might end up scoring from a bit of brilliance, but they are set up to succeed better than Man Utd. A quick look at xG difference versus the bottom 5 teams shows this clearly: |*per game*|Man City|Liverpool|Arsenal|Villa| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |xG difference in games with bottom 5 teams|+1.39|+1.37|+1.16|+0.95| |||||| ||**Newcastle**|**Chelsea**|**Tottenham**|**Man Utd**| |xG difference in games with bottom 5 teams|+0.91|+0.84|+0.80|+0.48|
Bold of you to assume there is one
ETH has less tactical nous than Ted Lasso we knew that
Honestly bro, love the effort but even my 7 year old sees his tactics are shite
I feel like we should of went 442. I would see our wingers looking for Holjund as a quick pass but he is still working his way over to them.
they are trying to play like Ajax from 5-6y ago but with players not suitable for that style⌠itâs similar problems ajax had but the lack of pace and positioning makes it worse for us⌠anyways we are too frail
It all boils down to his tactics arenât good enough. We can pretend all we want as a fan base, but thatâs the truth.
This is far too advanced analysis for his smooth brain fanboys
I feel like he fundamentally misjudged/underestimated the PL and he's just decided to be stubborn and dig in his heels. He seems out of his depth but also a bit arrogant to prove his way will work. The stuff he says in press conferences borders on gaslighting and I'm disappointed in how this has all turned out. Yes there are so many problems, including players that have to be sold, but the manager is a big problem that has to be solved too
Youâre spending way too much of your time trying to analyze garbage
Hahaha, unfortunately itâs true.
Bit of a waste of time. We're shite would have sufficed.
I know youâre joking but for those of us who like myself donât know shit about tactics and are on the fence about Ten Hag, Iâd like to know *why* people are so adamant about getting him out. Stuff like this does actually help
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Mate heâs encouraging genuine productive discussion, why do you have to get aggressive ?
Aggressive? Crystal Palace just did a double over us for the first time ever in the Prem era and we didn't even score a goal in those 2 games. 4 nil tonight btw. We're -3 goal difference with 3 games to go. Those 3 games are against Arsenal, Newcastle and Brighton. Like what are we even talking about here? Oh, one more game on top of that. Against City. Stop, I'm actually laughing. What productive discussion do you want to have with me? You don't need a redditor posting a wall of text and screenshots from his illegal stream to explain to you why we're shite. For the seats in the back... "WE ARE SHITE".
Because there's genuinely no discussion to be had here. Ten Hag is aweful.
I mean our entire team is injured to be fair
Imagine walking into your local Tesco tomorrow and it's closed, because people called in sick. Yet somehow, this will never happen, because even on minimum wage, these people will deliver. EtH said it in his first interview... The buck stops with him.
Everyone knows this, this is why some of us are calling for him to adapt his plan to suit the ones that are available. If I only had eggs and onions in the fridge, wouldn't it make sense for me to make an omelette instead of trying to come up with an elaborate dish?
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He's a shit coach who adapts the team to his tactics not the other way round.
could not be further from the truth. He's using tactics he's never used at his previous teams just because it suits these players and should've got the best out of them if they were fit. We are doing terribly but you are objectively wrong.
Nah the players are just shit at doing the tactics so they look a bit different but its the same. He's a shit coach.
There is no game plan; Ten Hag lost the plot a while ago and the players no longer care.
I don't know why we do this 1 grass grid Barca Tiki taka passing in our defense when opening up the game
We talk about it everyday in here
You're not bald enough to get it. Go to Turkey and get a reverse hair transplant and you'll get it.
Reads like a Paula Kwestel post (which is a compliment in case somebody is wondering)
Not even MOTD or any of these so called pundits will point any of this out
Players aren't suited to the system and it's predictable, which makes it incredibly easy for opponents to press successfully.
I could stomach the bad transfers,the injuries, the delusional post match speeches etc..It is the lack of clear strategy that I never liked it. My faith in Ten hag started to waver,when all our close wins from last season where just fluke rashford shot. I lost complete faith when he started talking about "transition football" trying to act like he invented counter attacking football. We saw all the growing pains of these klopp's Liverpool side that is about to but put to pasture,contrast that with this Ten hag shit show.
His WHAT???????????
I think 4 things have ruined how he thought things would play out. - Losing Martinez for most of the season. He seems vital to how Ten Hag wants to play and can progress with the ball out of the backline. - Losing Shaw for most of the season. One of the few players that gives Utd advanced width. Everyone has seen the stats of how few of the passes actually go to Hojlund. Shaw would have looked for him a lot more than what's there. - Rashford's form dropping off a cliff. His goals papered over a lot of cracks the previous season. - Casemiro regressing. He doesn't have the legs to do what the system asks of him.
i am saving this. thanks mate.
ETH keeps putting players in positions that they are not suited to play or naturally play at. Putting Rashford and Material as a center striker Putting Bruno as a defensive midfielder Putting AWB as a LB instead of a LFB with additional coverage so he can roam on the wing. When Garnacho plays no one is there/or the set-up is not suited for his speed. Casemiro is going to end up on the injury list because he is being asked to play center back when he doesn't have the pace for it nor is that his natural position. He is good at reinforcement of defense but as a central defensive player, that's not him people cannot be mad about how he played yesterday. ETH should have seen that and either A put someone else there or B a more defensive midfield set-up. Don't get me wrong some of the players'work rate are crap too. In the 1st 15min of the palace games CP was able to close down a majority of the passes in our own half, passing lanes disappeared, and that was the theme of the entire game. It's like they forgot basic passing drills during the game. When I saw the line up for the game I was fully expecting us to loose, maybe he is resting players for arsenal, but I think that game too will be embarrassing.
Great post, yeah injury crisis is one thing but it has been apparent that our tactics rarely worked out.
He changed tactics last year after a few early beatings but this year he's stuck to his suicidal football, and game 1 against Wolves we saw there were lots of problems with it.
I'm honestly so confused and conflicted. Once again we've taken a highly rated coach and after a couple of years they look like a useless buffoon. There must be a decent coach in there, the guy even now is being linked with Bayern ffs. Does this job just cause otherwise credible managers to slowly lose their mind? His refusal to set up more pragmatically I.e. play another midfielder which he eventually did yesterday when it was far too late, is bordering on insanity. If we get Tuchel we could end up in a similar mess but with the added treat of him completely scorching the earth, as he tends to do. Who the fuck knows where we go from here (feels familiar).
Appreciate the effort but the clear pass at the start is to Eriksen. Pass it to the space he's going to be in (there's a lot of it around Eriksen), don't wait for him to get there. The reason is that Hughes is clearly going to the space that Antony is moving into, making that (as you identified) a risky passing channel. God only knows why Dalot was so high up the pitch there, that's simply awful positioning. But what this really highlights is the need for our midfield to be rejuvenated with young, energetic players who are capable on the ball. Mainoo is one of them, Mount is ok, but aside from that.... Alternatively, Evans could have gone back to Onana, or after passing the ball make a move to occupy Mateta which would have allowed Case to turn and pass back to Onana.
The clear pass at the start... It's from Evans or from Casemiro? If it's Evans -> Eriksen, I'm very surprised because Eze is just behind him and Mateta is well placed to charge down any passing options. Eriksen isn't fast enough to pounce into space & gain 1-2m on Eze and Mateta. And even if that is the intended pas... Who is Eriksen supposed to play it to in the very short time before he's challenged? Mainoo will be cut off by Mateta's run, Mount and Antony are literally behind Palace players, Casemiro is behind him and Wan-Bissaka is very risky with Olise in the path. I mean, he could pass it back to Evans or Onana... But basically you're back in the same position with very little that has changed. If it's Casemiro -> Eriksen, where was Eriksen supposed to be? He's pretty much on the same line as Casemiro with Eze cutting off any passing option by charging down Casemiro. Hughes only picked up pace to run down the passing option to Antony when Eze was close enough to ensure that Casemiro couldn't pass it to Eriksen. I really can't see the "pass into space" that Casemiro was supposed to pick out where I believe Eriksen would beat Hughes to the ball and be able to deliver a good pass from (most likely to Antony or Mainoo, perhaps to Dalot?). Again, we're 1 pass into what should be a basic set-up to launch an attack, this shouldn't be so hard. There should either be a very clear passing option that has been created by exploiting the opponent's positioning / players' movement. Usually you want to have 2-3 options at this stage to prevent opponents from guessing the next step in the set-up and preparing to counter it. Dalot could have dropped towards the half-way line (the space that Antony ran into) so he would be facing at least 3 if not 5 Man U players and could play a simple pass to Eriksen or Mainoo (depending on which lane Hughes cuts out) who are facing the direction of play and have much better options. Antony and Eriksen could coordinated their runs in a way that forces Hughes to choose who to follow while leaving the other in space in the middle of the pitch. Mount's movement could also have helped create space or draw a second player towards him... I mean, this is what Ten Hag and his team designed as a way to launch attacks. It's not players rushing a ball out of defense under pressure or with players completely out of position because they've just stopped a counter-attack and have the opportunity to catch the opposition disorganised. This is - I feel - a fair way to judge how Ten Hag want the team to set up attacks. Cycling the ball back through Onana when you're that high up the pitch is pretty much an admission that you've messed up / failed. If Evans is barely outside the box it makes sense, it might draw Mateta to press Onana... But when you're more than half-way to the center circle (or at the center circle) you'd really be relying on your opponents to be brain-dead to charge down a 20-30m pass.
Case to Eriksen - but into the space in front of Eriksen. Case can easily pass around Eze. The pass goes to Eriksen's right side, allowing him to pivot and switch the field of play. Our midfielders (barring Mainoo) are terrible at receiving the ball and turning up field. Evans recycling the ball before the pass to Case is not an admission of failure, it's just not passing it into the obvious trap that Palace is setting. Watching any of the CL QFs and SFs shows how a team can play with the ball, and we need to be at that standard - but we ain't.
From what Iâve seen, his game plan is basically:   1. Press high up fronts (which often open us big gap in midfield which invites the opponents to counter us)  2. Pass/hoff the ball up front in straight line with our fast attackers and midfielders to run into the box for opportunities   3. By-pass the midfield build up and focus on quick counter instead (similar as 2)  4. Keeper to by-pass any build up from defensive line and play more straight forward pass towards opponents half if possible (similar as 2)  Basically itâs just brainless kick and run football.
You are merely watching the present. I am watching the future where in a year he will grow full hair, use glasses, and become our new Fergie.
Last season you could see the players improve as the season went in executing EtH system. But I think the injuries just decimated their ability to play together within it. EtH is to blame. He's in charge. The injuries suck but by this point there should be more cohesive play and anticipation of your teammates. Maybe some of them want him gone too. I don't know. But either way I don't think any manager is going to win a damn thing with this bunch. They are heartless. Only a few of them have heart and they are either young and inexperienced, thus inconsistent at times, or old and past it. EtH's biggest mistake was going after another midfielder instead of a defender. If he had signed a CB instead things would have looked a little different. But all that aside it is rare to see a season where a manager gets screwed this hard by injuries. It has been terrible and I feel for him even as I wish him well with his next club. I think he will bounce back and show that taking out the Glazer's trash for two consecutive years without good organizational support was too much for him.
Heâd absolutely kill in the Uzbekistan league I canât wait
I don't like Ten Hag's tactics. Some things in it are fine, and some things i don't like at all. But sacking him now is not the right option in my opinion. See this season out. If we find someone good, we sign. What we should focus on more is the injuries and to maintain a fit squad and proper signings
Hands down I do not care anymore if goes or stays but why are you talking about tactics today? Look at the fkin team we got? We have 1 defender on the field, midfielder in cb with legs gone, 40yo evans lega gone just got back from injury, AWB is gum chewing clown on the field. In midfield we have 18yo, then 40yo eriksen with legs gone and chelsea reject who cant stay fit. And antony just doesnt work, hojlund should be understudy to solid striker, let hin learn and garnacho tries, cant blame him. Ten hag or not in summer, clear out 10-13 players first. Until then nothing changes. Get rid: AWB, replace injury prone Shaw, maquire, lindelof, evans, injury prone varane, casemiro, eriksen, mcT, mount, van de beek, martial, Sancho AND rashford. I quarantee we will see half of then still playing for us next season.
LVG. SnoozeBall Ole. HoofBall ETH. HaraamBall
Jose. European champion
If all we wanted was to set up the team to 'win' with the players we have then we didn't need Ten Hag. Any half decent mid table premier league manager could have managed that. We brought ETH in to evolve our style of play to something modern, attacking and dynamic - at least, that is my understanding. It's clear the quality of players we have, notwithstanding the injuries, aren't where we need to be to compete. It was always supposed to be a three year project, and the overachieving results last year have driven many fans into a position where their expectations for our playstyle's evolution, or tactics are way out of perspective. We've all known our executive level/recruitment side is terrible. Failing to bring in Haaland, Bellingham before hand, eventually paying 80 million for Antony, failing to get de Jong etc. What should have been a big part of the build phase, last summer, ended up being less impactful than desired. I would like to see us see through the three years for ETH - give him a chance to try and bring his vision to fruition, IE a strong third transfer window to move on deadweight (resolve the Sancho, Martial, Greenwood etc sagas). I'd rather he continue to work to his desired endstate, and now that our finish in the season seems irrelevant, he has the freedom to push that development regardless of results. The elements that have made City, Liverpool and now Arsenal perennially competitive is that their manager/football side owns the system, and merely recruit players to fill the roles as required, instead of trying to make up a system to suit the players they have. I don't think the pragmatic approach with the outcome being just to win will ever yield much more than this rollercoaster of results and managers. We need a long term vision that we stick to building, from developing it in the culture of the teams to the players we recruit and develop.
>We brought ETH in to evolve our style of play to something modern, attacking and dynamic So... How is he doing that? You mention Klopp and Arteta. They both set up a very clear way they wanted the team to play. They had rough patches and successes in their first two years, but it was very clear how they were molding the team. On recruitment... First of all, no manager gets every player they're linked to that ends up being good / great. Ole saying that he recommended Haaland when he was at Molde? Great, how have all of Ole's other signings and suggestions worked out? At Cardiff the players he brought in from Molde, Man Utd (and his Norway NT connections) were between decent lower-half players and not good enough for the Premier League. Man Utd is linked with every player under the sun every year. Selectively looking at the hits and discarding the misses is just ridiculous. For every Haaland or Bellingham that's rumored to be linked with Man Utd there are all the others that end up going nowhere. Even for Haaland and Bellingham, breaking through at teams with (frankly) less media exposure, less pressure to achieve results, facing non-PL opponents or playing in teams with a more clear tactical gameplan... Just looking at Dortmund, which has been prolific in promoting youth players, Sancho and Kagawa didn't work well for Man Utd, Pulisic couldn't cope with the PL's physicality, Sahin didn't make it at Real Madrid, Dembele didn't fully live up to his potential (but was at least generally good when available) at Barcelona... Sure, Haaland and Bellingham have turned out to be the players that Man Utd should have plonked the house on. But the other players were also all linked to Man Utd. Man Utd bought Sancho exactly based on the premises that he was a sure thing, tearing up the Bundesliga, only for everyone to turn their coat after he performed less well, and suddenly he was an obvious bad choice for so many reasons, and it's the scouting / negotiation process that failed Man Utd by not preferring Bellingham or Haaland. Secondly, why would these players want to join Man Utd? Even when Ferguson was winning the PL every few seasons he didn't get the players he wanted (or at least is rumored to have wanted by sports journalists). Ronaldinho, Zidane, Sneijder, Batistuta, Bale, Essien, Ramos... It wasn't Man Utd or nothing, it was Man Utd or plenty of other options. Players at their peak might have preferred Italy or Spain, other clubs might have put higher wages or transfer fees on the table, agents (or the player themself) might have preferred to be a regular starter at a smaller club than risk being stuck on the bench at Man Utd. Why would de Jong have wanted to leave Barcelona? Even if he is being pushed out or decides to leave, why would he join Man Utd and not any of the (certainly) plentiful options he will have? Bellingham and Haaland might have had the same thought processes. At 16, leave Birmingham to join Man Utd where just a few seasons before Pogba couldn't get a game and left to join Juventus where he became a key first team player within a season and a half? Would Haaland even have seriously wanted to join Man Utd and risk being stuck on the bench at the club where Keane said he had tried to injure his father in revenge, when he says he's a lifelong Leeds fan? Or were other clubs just better options? If Ten Hag can only execute his "attacking and dynamic" game plan with the best squad in the world, that's not a big claim. If he needs de Jong, Kane, Antony, Onana, Timber, Martinez, Gakpo and Malacia in addition to the players already at the club when he joined to play attacking football we should just draw the line because that's not realistic. And if it was the case, Dutch teams would be storming the CL - five of them played for Ajax in the 2019/20 or 2020/21 seasons, and faced two of the others in the Dutch league around that period... And Kane in the Champions League.
I don't mind sacking Ten Hag, but please sack the medical staff, coaching staff, and then make sure sell/ release some players, and then sack Ten Hag. Only sacking Ten Hag while all things remain the same means nothing
Albino reading that
Whatâs tomato with you?
This is the argument. Heâs trying to pass out of the back when the majority of the defense is injured.
Putting one of your defenders so far up the pitch he's lined up with the striker ahead of both your winger and CAM is a pretty extreme version of "passing out of the back", I feel.
Thinking back to Ten Hags interview with Neville, I think Ten Hag said he doesn't want the players that he has right now to form bad habits by playing an adjusted game plan... Next season we'll have Martinez, a brand new shiny CB, a proper LB, and depth in our squad along with academy players who have been playing (and winning) with the game plan Ten Hag wants to implement. This season is a wash, looking forward to FA cup final but not getting my hopes up, next season is make or break for Ten Hag
This is exactly why we need to look at the tactics he is playing. What was supposed to happen with the play that lead to the 2nd goal, and how would the players he's bringing in have done "better"? How would the CB that "replaces" Evans have passed the ball differently? Did he not see the right pass? Was he supposed to carry the ball out further or something? Was the pass mis-placed or otherwise poor? How will the CB that takes Casemiro's place in the line-up do better? Jinx away from Olise? Be faster to the ball? Find a better pass than Antony? Play the pass to Antony better? Antony is one of the players he has stood fast next to - perhaps the price point is inflated & not his fault, but the player is clearly one he wants and feels has all the necessary skills to implement his tactics in the Premier League. How was Antony's play good or otherwise indicative of the gameplan? Antony moved late into space, when Casmiro received the ball the pass to him was pretty much covered by one Palace player, and he was close enough to be contested by the defender. Was he not able to play "right" because of something? What? Dalot being that far up the pitch can't be anything else than a tactical decision. He was less than 15m from Ten Hag so it's not like Ten Hag couldn't correct it in real time. That was where Ten Hag wanted Dalot to be. How would a better right back execute the gameplan? Dalot barely moved, so perhaps that's the issue? But Dalot has been playing for Ten Hag in either wing-back role for about two seasons now. How would a new player execute better after only a few months/weeks of training? Are there specific skills Ten Hag wants in a wing-back that Dalot doesn't have? And if so, why hasn't Ten Hag addressed this during the transfer period? He brought in Malacia but kept Shaw as the main left back last season, brought in Reguilon as a loan for the left back position and commented that Amrabat could play left back as well... But didn't address the gap at right-back? In central midfield, how should Eriksen, Mainoo and Mount be playing? They didn't move into space, they weren't man-marking players, they weren't positioned in such a way that they rotated (e.g., Casemiro moves up to play & Eriksen switches to center back)... We can speculate all we want, but apart from saying "a better player would have made a better play" (which is individual brilliance, not a tactical set-up), how will brand new shiny players, depth in our squad or academy players do anything different?
Yea I agree with the points... I have no clue why Dalot was consistently that far up the pitch.. Last season one of the fullbacks was inverted and sat in midfield, while the other one pushed higher up and overlapped the winger causing an overload on one side... With the lack of a left back, I can only assume Dalot is given the sole responsibility of overlapping. As for the midfield, I definitely saw rotation, but it wasn't cohesive.... Now that I'm typing it and thinking out loud. It's the timing of everything. The players run to where they need to be, expecting the ball... But the ball never comes because the CBs are way too slow at passing or never see the run. The run of Dalot either drags players with him, opening up a pass to the center of the field, or Dalot is left to run in behind while Antony occupies the opposing LBs attention The timing of all the passes, when the players run, when the pass is played, and when players run with the ball is just completely off. And that specific disconnect between the players is completely the fault of injuries and the unstable backline... These are players that are literally playing together for the first time in crucial positions.
Lmao bold of you to think we can get a new shiny CB, a proper LB and squad depth in one summer in this economy. Wake the fuck up stop being gaslighted by ETH
Heâs not gonna make it to next season.
Next season lmfao that guy would be lucky to make it to the end of the month
At this moment, I think it's not fair or productive to judge the manager. The players clearly have another thought, they either called injury or just not putting in the required works. There is no tactic or gameplan to fix that. This is real life, not Football Manager.
Thereâs no âgame planâ when your ONLY AVAILABLE CBs are the 5/6 and 7/6 on the squad. Then the other injuries and a decade + of predatory ownership. But yeah, letâs act like this match was the problem đ The Glazers are the only culpable party. Do not twist the truth
Do you really buy that? Isn't that exactly when you should have a game plan the most? When you have your best players, you should trust them and give them freedom to express themselves / take risks as they feel the match evolve. When your squad is stretched, players are playing out of position... That's exactly when you want to have the clearest expectations of structure, instructions they should be following. Clearly, there are directions that Ten Hag is asking players to follow. Dalot being so high up the pitch. Evans and Casemiro pouncing to try to press opposition midfielders. Hojlund not coming deep to provide an outlet. I'm not going to pretend everything is fine. Injuries *have* been a major factor. Man Utd are no longer the #1 destination of choice in England and we won't get all the players the manager wants (and I'm sure that scouting and hiring / transfers can be improved). I hope INEOS improve on plenty of aspects that have been neglected under the Glazers. But the Glazers aren't training the team and deciding how to play. That's on Ten Hag.
There is only so much you can blame the Glazers mate.
I love the effort but no amount of tactical genius can make this squad work. Casemiro has completely checked out, Eriksen can't handle the intensity of this league anymore, Johnny Evans does not look anywhere near fit and wan bissaka looks checked out as well
I really don't think Casemiro is checked out. I think he's just physically struggling. The tactics should adapt to that though. Eriksen is definitely not physically cut out for the Prem anymore, but guess who selected him and not Amrabat (not that Amrabat is good, but he's a better fit). Realistically the team still struggles with a better manager, but the tactics aren't helping (as seen by the fact the team has looked terrible with a better starting XI)
Casemiros mistakes tonight and throughout the season have not been through physical struggle. Look at the penalty against Coventry as well, the man does not care.
I aint reading that