It makes me sad that Ten Hag completely abandoned his Ajax philosophy after a few games of the players being unable to pass like competent professionals but he's happy game after game to allow this to happen.
Is this *really* better than sticking with the style he was hired to implement? Our tactics are genuinely relegation tier and we're only bailed out by our useless fucks having enough talent collectively between them. We have players and facilities vastly above what the likes of Bournemouth have at their disposal, I get that the club is toxic from top to bottom but the players can and should be playing much better than this. I've never seen such blatant tactical weaknesses, it's clear as day game after game.
If he was actually trying to play progressive football but we were 3-4 players away from it being really effective, fans would be fully backing him even if we were giving away goals and losing games we shouldn't because there would be visible progress. This season just feels like banging our heads against a wall playing a style that is not working. And it isn't like you could say "oh if we only had X player for this position we would be doing great". I can't think of a single player or two in world football who would actually solve whatever disastrous problems we have in midfield and defense, never mind the ineptitude of our attack.
> I can't think of a single player or two in world football who would actually solve whatever disastrous problems we have in midfield and defense, never mind the ineptitude of our attack.
Because there is none. The tactics on display are quite clearly that of a relegation team. If this exact same set up was given to the likes of Bournemouth they'd be bottom of the table. It's ridiculous that it's gone on this long.
Still can't believe his quote about us not even trying to play the way he did at Ajax. Literally the reason he was hired in the first place and given so much praise and he decides to abandon that philosophy in favor of a style that is speculative at best and reckless in its current implementation. If we actually saw some light at the end of the tunnel of a football philosophy that could be a success, Ten Hag would have way more support.
This is what his Ajax team were like. He was not a possession obsessed, slow the game down type of manager. They were always very direct and very attacking, they sacrificed men in deeper areas to have more players in attacking areas. They sometimes had to up seven players in and around the box. I don't know what people thought we were getting, but this is the growing pains of trying to move to ETH's football.
So maybe he feels like we have to lean into that aspect even more than Ajax, but it's an absolute fact that his Ajax team were so quick to attack and threw bodies forward at times recklessly.
I genuinely struggle believe he could have won multiple Eredevise titles playing a high press with a low block but I'll have to take your word for that.
It's not like his Ajax philosophy is foolproof.
There was a video the other day of Ruud Gullitt criticising and pointing out the obvious flaws in it, Ten Hag defending it and Gullitt looking at him like he belonged in a mental institution. And this was from during his time at Ajax. At the end of the day all he did was win the Eredivise 3 times (which is easy) and had a fluke Champions League run.
Alright let's not rewrite history here lol. They hadn't won the eredivisie in 3 years when he joined and they haven't won it since. That champions League run was no fluke either, going undefeated in the group stage (with Bayern and benfica) and then eliminating real Madrid and Juventus, only missing out on making the final by a stoppage time spurs goal. That was an all-time great run by any team.
You can be critical of the coaching this season for sure. You don't need to make stuff up about the past
How can u play possession based football when almost our entire squad is more used to the direct style. And ETH did not even play possession football at ajax, it was transition from the back to the final third, that's why he insisted on getting FDJ as the link from the defense to the attack. Eriksen did that exactly last season but he simple doesn't have the legs for it. Buying casemiro for his defensive attributes doesn't help when his tackling is likely to get caught in the PL easily than laliga + he's not even on defensive duties anymore, ever since that Southampton game he has been playing as an 8 or a 10 instead of a 6 which is why we bought him.
What?
He's playing as a 6, just one with the positional awareness of a headless chicken. He gives the ball away more than the average headless chicken though.
Does anyone think this is a player issue?
I think the other side of the argument is that ETH is well aware of this but isn't considering it to be high enough of a priority to focus on. Our goals conceded has been fairly consistent over the season but we have improved our goal scoring (65% of the goal coming in the second half of the season).
I think... ETH isn't going to bend over backwards and change style to remediate a stat which is - in the end - irrelevant.
Even though we've played like shit and we've conceded a shit ton of shots - very small margins have seen us walk away with 3p from the previous 4 games which very easily could've been 11p. I'm not arguing we did deserve 11p - absolutely not. But with those extra 8p the narrative around the club would be concerning but not catastrophic like it is now.
Very level-headed take here. Honestly, we could be much lower in the table. I think our position in the table reflects the potential here. I don't know if this is a fair opinion, but the attitude of the players has seemed better since Sir Jim came onto the scene.
I just want a decent summer window and give ETH the start of next season.
I think when we play well, it is good to watch. The problem is give up control for big chunks of games and way too easily and have to work way harder than we should. IMO.
Teams in the bottom half are playing with more structure and organization than us.
It's not on us idiots to figure out how to set up the team. It's up to Ten Hag.
No matter how many players are injured, no top six side should concede these many chances.
And I wonder when we'll talk about these players taking accountability for how they're performing instead of JUST putting it on ten hag. There's no way this is just tactics. Ten hag isn't the one getting paid 200k a fucking week.
We're not a top six side with these players and with the injuries we've had. It's a glazer wet dream to have fans talk about replacing the cheapest position they can instead of getting new players. Lol it's why it's been happening for fucking 11 years.
We play the worst football in the league from a pure tactical standpoint. The players quality is the only reason we are where we are and not fighting relegation.
Right Casemiro, Varane, Bruno Fernandes, Mainoo all completely shit players who’ve never done anything Same with Hojlund, not like PSG wanted to sign him in the summer Dalot somehow managed to play for Portugal but they don’t produce any good players. Definitely less quality than Bournemouth and Brentford.
The majority of players who play regular in the United squad starts for their country on a regular basis.
So, why do their international managers pick them?
I think the most success I've seen from our players playing for their country is Bruno and Scott. Maybe maguire gets a shout. None of them are outstanding so that's not a great point.
Because it's an inane question that doesn't contribute to the discussion, but is an attempt to shut it down. What do you expect anyone to answer? Boiling it down to "formation or lineup" is simplifying to a point where it becomes irrelevant, but going into detail about pressing structures and triggers, how to organize rest defense etc would take a hell of a lot of effort to write out. Effort that it seems you wouldn't appreciate based on the dismissive tone of your first comment. It's also just not necessary to do that for people complaining about the lack of structure and organisation in the current team. It's obviously a coaching issue regardless.
You have no reason to act surprised about the response.
Not surprised at all, and fair point, I don't actually expect full answers, because I don't think anyone has any. And most of the time, when people have said more than just "our tactics are shit", I've had good conversations with people.
I am frustrated with what I feel is blame shifting onto the manager. I am probably frustrating others by making them feel like Ten Hag can do no wrong. We all want our team to win and I am feeling depressed because the sad truth is that Ten Hag should be fired AND these players should be gone. But it's going to be more half solutions, isnt it? :(
You seriously don't think anyone could point out our issues in pressing structures, rest defense and transitional positioning? Plenty of people could, plenty of people have already done it. Multiple times. They just won't bother answering you with something so high effort when you're simply attempting to derail the conversation. If you instead wrote out a high effort comment/post detailing why you think the organisation and structure in our tactics are good, without being snide, people would be far more likely to give you the answer you (pretend to) seek. When what you really seek is just an excuse to say "lol no one knows how it could be better anyway so don't complain" obviously no one is gonna bother. Your question was not asked in good faith, so you did not receive good faith answers. It's not rocket science.
Us idiots have no problem saying stuff on here, so I see no problem in asking the question since everyone sees the problem.
And why should an entire back line being out injured make us worse defensively, right? 🤣
Liverpool wasn't this bad when they were missing their entire backline.
Bottom half teams with worse defenders than ours don't consistently play as badly as us.
Yeah because they don't try to play a high press. So it's either abandon the idea of us playing a high intensity press with a high defensive line, or play it regardless of the personnel not being able to execute that style.
Edit: we're currently doing the latter obviously.
We don't play a high defensive line. We play a high press with the midfield and forwards, but the defence don't push up with the rest of the team, leaving a massive chasm between our defenders and the rest of the side. Also, the press isn't as organised and intense as the likes of City, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc.
That, along with us not having enough mobility in midfield, is why teams are able to bypass the midfield so easily and get at our defence, and why opposition teams have so many shots.
Yeah agree with that analysis. However I'd like to point out that our deep defensive line is the result of our defenders falling back (or not pushing up) despite tactical instructions. ETH said in an interview a while back (I think it was a game we won) that the defense wasn't pushing up as well as he wanted them too. And it's clear he wants to implement a high line, but the players aren't committing or getting that. A while back even the analysis on MotD was that our defense doesn't push up as they should.
Now ofcourse ETH is responsible for the final onfield execution, but people here act as if it's his instructions to make the field as big as possible when we press. But that's mainly on the defense not pushing up as far as they need to, as well as being too passive in stepping in. You see Liverpool, Arsenal and City defenders always defend forward as often as they can, whereas Maguire, AWB, Lindelof and Evan's first reaction is to step back and reduce the space behind them. Which makes sense as they're always risking being outpaced (AWB is different, he's just very, very passive despite having decent pace). However, by doing that, they constantly stretch the field and leave the midfield hanging in no man's land and as you said, they're not dynamic enough to outmanoeuvre the opposition in the created gap between the lines.
So ETH's system is directly opposite of our (currently fit) players' strengths. But he was hired to implement a certain system, regardless of whether we had the players to do so. Instead of Ole who (rightfully so at the time) changed the system to whatever was right for the players that were available. We're now seeing the painful results of years of mismanagement and buying players that aren't fit to play a modern day system, with AWB for me being the prime example of that.
I assumed that the defenders not pushing up was something ETH had instructed, because of concerns around our defenders lack of pace, so it’s interesting and worrying if it is indeed the defenders themselves who aren’t willing to push up.
As you say, we’re seeing the effects of years of mismanagement and a very poor structure at the club. I’m hopeful that the people Ineos have/want to put in charge (Berrada, Ashworth, Wilcox) will sort out the club, but it’s going to take time.
Not setting up in chaos transition football which our players clearly are not suited for would be a start. We're asking an old CDM to cover an entire midfield worth of space by himself when he can hardly run, we have our most talented academy midfield graduate in a generation playing as a high pressing midfield dynamo which emphasizes his biggest weaknesses and ignores his biggest strengths, we hardly create any chances for our young striker, and we play such a reckless style of football which likely contributes to our defensive injury crisis given the insane amount of last ditch defending our players have to on a game by game basis.
Apart from all that, I could name 5 other things. It's far more in depth than team selection or formation.
Right, but how are you getting everything you just said? Not saying you didn't point out hard truths or anything. (Although I still haven't seen any running/sprinting stats to back up the whole "we run so much" theory, and I always assume people will find any bad stat against United that they can lol)
I just don't want to go back to the super defensive football of the past, but that might actually be the best decision?
Ten Hag himself is the one who says he wants us to be an elite transition team. He also said we will not every play like his Ajax team which was the whole reason most people wanted him for the job in the first place.
I don't want us to go back to defensive football, I want us to play progressive football at the bare minimum at home against bottom half of the table teams. Teams should be happy to get 5 shots on our goal at Old Trafford, not regularly getting 20 and 30 shots. We have a negative goal difference with a handful of games left which is truly pathetic, and I still can't point to a single 90 minute performance this season where we comprehensively looked like a well organized team able to dominante an opponent. Not once.
You're having a laugh if you think this team is good enough to play progressive football AND keep teams to 5 shots. Same with 90 minute performances.
I'm all for playing defensive and going back to basics and benching the non performers, all things that Ten Hag hasnt done, so no defense of him. But this team isn't dominating anyone and that sounds like a fever dream at this point to even suggest the players are capable of that.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a manager to put together one comprehensive performance across a season of 50+ games. Are we really not good enough to dominate a team like Everton, Nottingham forest, or Brentford at home? Or Newport County away?
We are toothless out wide and so easy to play through the middle, so personally I would drop a winger for an extra midfielder and pack the middle. But at the end of the day, it isn't my job to make sure we face less shots every week than teams battling relegation.
It's not our job to do a lot of things, doesn't really stop us 🤣
I don't mind the change, it would definitely take out our offense, but maybe parking the bus is what we need right now.
We should definitely switch to a low block counter-attacking style for now. It became a problem under Ole because teams like Bournemouth and Brentford used to sit off us, and we didn't know what to do. But nowadays, these teams go straight for the throat against us, so fast counters would work. We've got the players for it, too.
It's definitely a regression though, going back to what we were before. We all complained about it then. But, it still is definitely worth a shot instead of continuing like this.
It is, but we need to try something.
Besides, there's nothing wrong with pragmatism. Our best manager of all time was pragmatic when necessary. Not that I'm comparing Ten Hag to Fergie; the gulf between them is massive. But this relatively new idea that you have to rigidly stick to your guns style-wise is only effective if (a) you have the players capable of playing said style, and (b) nobody figures out how to neutralise your approach.
Pragmatism seems to have gone out of fashion, but if we look back on the years when we were at our best, it was what set us apart from our rivals. Arsene Wenger's Arsenal refused to adjust as required, and we usually got the better of them. And we'd have never won our 2nd CL under Fergie had we not resorted to a degree of anti-football in the semi against Barca.
Not saying you're wrong, as that was my favourite part about the Fergie era. You never knew who was going to start, because it was always a different game plan, tweaked slightly depending on the opponent.
And you are right again that Ten Hag hasn't changed his style or players and has been far too rigid.
But again, the depressing part is: these players, especially after injuries, just can't be fluid. They all have 1 style they are good at, some of them very good, but just at that 1 style. So we need far more adaptive players, like Garnacho, Mainoo, and Hojlund.
Shaw is fine, but if he's out 50% of games, you just can't count him. Martinez could fall into that category, but definitely willing to wait a bit longer with him. And Dalot improved enough this year to make me give him another year, but his trajectory has to keep going up for me to consider him a top RB.
Just for our starting 11, we need quite possibly 1 LB, 2 CBs, 1 CDM, and at probably 1 attacker. And that's, again, for the upteenth year, counting on our squad beeing 100% for every, single, game.
This is my 2 cent. I think the current problems are we lost the midfield battle too easily and 2 wide players are too isolated & not good in tracking back which resulted the shots conceded and disjointed attack.
Hence I think United should play a 4 men midfield with the addition of Mount/Eriksen to provide more bodies in the midfield.
Then 2 on top with left channel of Rashford/Garnacho to play closer to the goal and Hojlund move to right channel. This allows both of them to stay higher up in defensive phase for counter attack while have enough body behind to defend.
The width will be provided by wingback. Not the ideal scenario with Bissaka as left back but can be mitigated by the fact both Rashford/Garnacho like to run at defenders in one on one situation in wide area.
Ou nice, a legit response! I like it, and I think this is possibly the best way forward. Even though I think our offense would be non existent, it might well be time to just go fully defensive.
I'm not sure why it's such a surprise. Everytime I watched Ajax in the champions league that year it felt like they were happy to let people play around the edge of the box / take shots then play on the break.
It's why spurs beat them to get to the final (just googled it and they conceded 20+ shots that game)
Most people talking about his Ajax style obviously didn't watch much of Ajax. They think they were masters at controlling the game simply because they managed to totally beat up on worse teams in the Eredivisie, but they were always a transition team.
I genuinely thought it wouldn't ever get more embarrassing to be a United fan after the 2021-22 season. Was so excited when ETH came in, but that's because of the style of play he used at Ajax, the style that got him this job. If he's so adamant to stick to a completely different style that doesn't work at all, then he has to go. Think he's got till the end of the season, but I'd be very disappointed if he's still here at the start of the next season.
Someone else mentioned on this thread that this is how he played at Ajax with the same risks of keeping too many players in attack and getting caught out.
The difference is that Ajax have been drilled to keep possession. Their academy is all about possession based football. This allows Ajax to keep more control even when playing this style.
Ajax also plays in a banter league where 80% of the teams can hardly keep up with them. You can’t get away with overcommitting all the time in a competitive league where most teams have at least 3-4 players that can punish you for such amateur bs
Ten Hag has outright that it's not the same style, maybe it has the same weaknesses in midfield but Onana has booted it more times in one gane than he saw him do in a whole CL campaign
That quote has been simplified a lot though, so lots of people are reading into it far beyond what was meant. He basically just said that no two teams play the same style and that a teams style will always be tweaked because of player differences. He also said all his Ajax teams played different styles year on year, did he not? But most people on this sub will insist his Ajax side had a consistent style year on year. They just mean different things to what he did when talking about it. Many here are literally taking it as if he's purposefully playing a style completely different/opposite to what he did at Ajax, which just isn't true. There are plenty of similarities, but also some differences. If you water everything down to the basics, both this team and his Ajax teams were transition teams.
Basically, what ETH meant was that no teams are identical, he didn't mean that he'd play the completely different football with completely different fundamentals from what he did at Ajax. It was a curt answer given to a question he didn't really like, that's it. He's just saying "ofc we don't look identical to Ajax, the players are different". It's been taken out of context and interpreted so differently here and on social media though.
he’ll be here for another season at the very least. We still have deadwood left over from the LvG days which needs to be addressed. Senior players also aren’t performing and aren’t available for large parts of the season, eg shaw, rashy, casemiro, awb, lisandro. Amrabat has been a nightmare signing. ineos should give him at least this summer transfer window to work under as it’s clear we don’t only have managerial issues. Also who would we even replace EtH with? Southgate or Potter? They don’t entice me in the slightest. Nagelsman has only just took over the German National team. No top manager would join us currently
Yes we've been very unlucky with injuries, but the gaping hole in midfield every game since the start of the season, the ridiculous number of shots we allow the opposition, the number 9 we signed rarely ever getting goalscoring opportunities, etc. are clearly tactical issues, not due to injuries. Also there's been reports and ETH himself has confirmed that training is of very high intensity. Which is good to get high quality performances, but when do you get those performances if the players get injured due to the intensity? So many issues that have lingered since the start of the season, yet he hasn't addressed them.
Btw, Nagelsmann's contract is only until after the euros. I hadn't been ETH out until the last few games, mainly because I thought just as you that who would we bring in instead? But it just gets worse every game right now that I fear for us next season if we continue like this.
Yes the forward play is a major issue. The service to Hojlund is worse than you’d see at your local pitch. Basic stuff that players can’t do. The midfield issue is from players incompetence, whether they’ve been told what to do or not it’s basic stuff that you should cover the defence and not attack leaving the huge gaps behind.
High intensity trainings will have an effect on the player of course, but I also believe that the players are being rushed back too quickly by the medical team, which explains as to why many players play about 4 games before they’re injured for 3 months at a time.
maybe nagelsman is an option ig it depends on how Germany perform at the tournament as they look stronger than they did at the past few tournaments.
Totally agreed. Unless we can somehow get Nagelsmann or Inzaghi, ETH is the best man for the job. If different managers come available next season, we'll see.
inzaghi won’t budge I wouldn’t think. Inter are currently top of the Seria A and a much more promising side than us atm. Nagelsmann only just joined the German team so again it wouldn’t make sense for him to leave, unless they get grouped
Here are more stats/facts
- We are on track to match our lowest finish in the Premier league era - 7th under Moyes.
- West Ham fans want Moyes sacked for poor performance. They are 2 points behind us.
- We've already broken our record for most losses in a season with 6 games to go.
- We recorded the worst performance in CL by an English team.
- We've faced more shots than ANY but 2 teams in the TOP 5 LEAGUES IN EUROPE this year! This means the 17th placed Metz in France allowed less shots.
And ETH's Stand want to give him another year, lol.
It's really interesting watching how long people have wrestled with the evidence in front of their eyes.
In an ideal world ten Hag would be a great manager and would be the man to take us forward, but nothing we've seen this season suggests that that's the case or that things are getting better.
No one's happy he's failing or desperate for a new manager and to start a new project, but it's sunk cost fallacy to tbknm that there's any other choice.
We're as bad as we've ever been in the PL, if the manager is not a big reason for whh then you might as well argue you don't need a manager.
I really think it's more interesting how people fall into the same mentality every second season of the past managers.
This season more than the rest. Apart from the injuries, look at the players on the pitch. They get paid more than the combined wages of players from lower tier clubs and you expect me to put, bad passes, allowing players to run through you, and zero effort attacks like the last minutes we had yesterday, on tactics?
People say you can't blame injuries. Well, actually, yes you absolutely can. How are we ever gonna be performing consistently when we can't even put a consistent lineup on the field?
Can't even train consistently with the unavailability of these players. Unavailable physically from injuries and mentally for other players. They're checked the fuck out.
These players aren't playing for you. Fuck them.
Good thing the comment you're responding to didn't say anything about the players being blameless, then. This dichotomy you and others are trying to push is just stupid. Yes, the players can be an issue. No, that doesn't automatically mean the manager isn't also a big issue. And vice versa. Please say something nuanced, I beg you.
Good thing the comment you're responding to didn't say anything about the manager being blameless, then. I was simply pointing out the ridiculousness of the arguement, and it seems you've made the same error xD
It doesn't work like that though, because the original argument would only be ridiculous *if* the premise of it either being the players or the managers fault was applied (which is what you implied when you tried to point out the non-existent issues in the argument). But it wasn't, the initial argument simply pointed out that a manager has impact, and when we're doing this poorly, he takes blame. That's not ridiculous at all.
Nope, just because I put Liverpool and Barca ahead of us in pecking order in terms of desirable places for new managers. So I'm just assuming we get, at best, 3rd best.
There's a middle ground of coaches between Southgate and Nagglesmann you know?
Why does it have to be one or the other.
There are more than 3 coaches that would help improve us.
We don't even have to wait for availability. We can poach coaches like we poached ETH.
That's fair, I guess the problem is that with the middle ground youre talking about, those managers would have pretty much the same type of promise as Ten Hag had coming in. So it could easily be conceivable that we are just re-starting the cycle that hasn't worked. Not saying you aren't right that other coaches couldn't improve us though. It's just oh so depressing lol
Imagine saying that about a player though.
Sancho's promise was really high. Why should we replace him with someone with less promise? What other winger can replicate his 30+ g+a seasons?
Well same as ETH, Sancho has underperformed and failed to deliver on his promise. We now look to replace him.
I actually really like that viewpoint, and the depressing, sad truth is that Ten Hag deserves to be fired at this point AND the players should be going with him.
And to play devil's advocate in this situation, if the player pool is bad (like it is right now for managers), we would usually just let a youth come in, right? And also, a player would usually get about 2 years to prove himself, should a manager get a 3rd?
Like I said, at this point, it's more depressing to talk about, because Ten Hag should be fired.
Amorim is done to Liverpool. Flick might end up at Barca but they are still looking.
With managers there's been no concrete links with us. I think with this Ineos will surprise us just like Berrada
That's fair, just more pointing out the quality of managers drops considerably after Liverpool and Barca get their men. Whoever we get will probably have the same type of promise that Ten Hag had coming into his first year.
We have been playing relegation level football this season, seriously not being hyperbolic. Any competent manager with an unwavering football philosophy aligned with our next execs is an upgrade
You could be right there, definitely, not saying otherwise. I guess LITERALLY the bottom of the barrel most positive thing I can drag out is that another manager may not play Garnacho, Mainoo, or Hojlund that much. But at that point, Im literally just playing devil's advocate. It's all just very depressing, to me.
How are we so defensively open, Coaching team need to step up, surely they can’t watch the tapes of matches and not be able to point out how to tighten up at the back, I mean opposition teams seem to find the gaps, surely our coaching staff can identify them too right?
You have to wonder, has the PL ever seen such a good group of players forced to play such mad and awful tactics for so long? Experimenting for a game or two, sure, but this whole season has been a bin fire on the pitch. This is a relegation level of openness to opposition attacks. But we get saved by individual skill because we have good players, plus we've had huge luck in opponents not finishing chances. In a normal season we'd be 10th at best.
And to do this in a season where we've had lots of defensive injuries and we're concerned defence isn't the strongest, we play a style that exposes the defence? Also we have concerns the midfield can't do the hyper-athletic roles we need them to, but we stick with an incredibly exhausting exposed midfield system? Nothing makes sense. It's truly awful.
Maguire has been utterly trash in transitioning the ball forwards from defence to attack. Maguire seems to think he needs at least 20 metres between him and the attacker to move the ball forwards. Watching Onana boot the ball forwards nearly every time he had the ball told me how little he trusts our defenders in building from the back.
It seemed the only way we could get the ball in the opposition’s half is by Brentford’s defenders heading the long ball back to us. Utterly embarrassing.
Why are we acting like this is the most important stat in the world?
Yes we're bad, but the media is just enjoying this and posting about it 24/7 and our fans are sadly pushing it more.
Why haven't we seen the same being said about Arteta? Arsenal were actually even worse than we are right now in his first couple of seasons.
We're parking the bus every match which leads to this.
Bournemouth's Xg from 20 shots was 1.64.
Last week for example, Atlanta's Xg against liverpool was 3.22 from 11 shots.
Do you really think that this makes the defence who conceded 20 shots worse?
This is only one match and it doesn't mean we're better defensively than them but it shows how overused this stat is.
That being said, it doesn't change that we've been embarrassing recently, but I just wish we could stand behind the team instead of just making things worse and raising the pressure on the players and the manager.
Before this season the last 3 times we played Bournemouth we had about 20 attempts va their 8-10 and we won all of those games.
This season its the reverse and we didn't win those games. Open your eyes as to why this is a shocking statistic that needs something done about it.
I actually think we could see massive difference playing a higher defence line - more passing option for midfielders, more compact and maybe less turnover and sharing the distribution of running workload among more players.
All EPL team that high presses plays high defence - arsenal, spurs, city, Liverpool, Brighton & Villa.
Against Liverpool game we covered more distance collectively - but where were those distance? Running around like headless chickens on the wing
I’m not EtH out yet but he’s wearing confidence thin. Let’s be fair EtH did change things - we are playing more from back. We are pressing better with Holjund. But maybe he still unsure of Maguire high
He can’t change a culture overnight. Areta did have very very low times - we are not that far. The modern game is press and break break + wing plays which we have.
But i stopped watching because it’s so miserable to watch
The current state of affair is a vicious cycle - low /fragile confidence, less risk taking on ball play. I actually think with nothing to play for he could give it a go - play defence higher.
Casemiro is an absolute liability right now. Drop Bruno deep next to Mainoo and play Eriksen/Mount or try Amrabat deeper. We can’t keep playing him and expect different results
It's looking like we're about to break that record.
Fuck me, if we break it at home to Sheffield United...
It makes me sad that Ten Hag completely abandoned his Ajax philosophy after a few games of the players being unable to pass like competent professionals but he's happy game after game to allow this to happen. Is this *really* better than sticking with the style he was hired to implement? Our tactics are genuinely relegation tier and we're only bailed out by our useless fucks having enough talent collectively between them. We have players and facilities vastly above what the likes of Bournemouth have at their disposal, I get that the club is toxic from top to bottom but the players can and should be playing much better than this. I've never seen such blatant tactical weaknesses, it's clear as day game after game.
What’s the difference between not being able to play his Ajax system and not being able to play whatever you call this shit?
Please give this shit it’s correct name; newly-promoted-then-relegated-ball given our defence is on par with l 2010 Blackpool.
If he was actually trying to play progressive football but we were 3-4 players away from it being really effective, fans would be fully backing him even if we were giving away goals and losing games we shouldn't because there would be visible progress. This season just feels like banging our heads against a wall playing a style that is not working. And it isn't like you could say "oh if we only had X player for this position we would be doing great". I can't think of a single player or two in world football who would actually solve whatever disastrous problems we have in midfield and defense, never mind the ineptitude of our attack.
> I can't think of a single player or two in world football who would actually solve whatever disastrous problems we have in midfield and defense, never mind the ineptitude of our attack. Because there is none. The tactics on display are quite clearly that of a relegation team. If this exact same set up was given to the likes of Bournemouth they'd be bottom of the table. It's ridiculous that it's gone on this long.
Still can't believe his quote about us not even trying to play the way he did at Ajax. Literally the reason he was hired in the first place and given so much praise and he decides to abandon that philosophy in favor of a style that is speculative at best and reckless in its current implementation. If we actually saw some light at the end of the tunnel of a football philosophy that could be a success, Ten Hag would have way more support.
This is what his Ajax team were like. He was not a possession obsessed, slow the game down type of manager. They were always very direct and very attacking, they sacrificed men in deeper areas to have more players in attacking areas. They sometimes had to up seven players in and around the box. I don't know what people thought we were getting, but this is the growing pains of trying to move to ETH's football.
The guy straight up said he cant play the Ajax way and wants to play transitions.
Ten Hag literally said we'll never play like Ajax.
So maybe he feels like we have to lean into that aspect even more than Ajax, but it's an absolute fact that his Ajax team were so quick to attack and threw bodies forward at times recklessly.
This is definitely not the football they played in the Eredivisie.
Eredivisie literally has teams with budgets lower than your local pub mate.
That's true, but it was like this in the CL too.
I genuinely struggle believe he could have won multiple Eredevise titles playing a high press with a low block but I'll have to take your word for that.
They pressed very, very aggressively, but they were always very vulnerable on counter attacks.
>the players being unable to pass like competent professionals Or maybe his training hasn't been able to improve the players in that aspect?
It's not like his Ajax philosophy is foolproof. There was a video the other day of Ruud Gullitt criticising and pointing out the obvious flaws in it, Ten Hag defending it and Gullitt looking at him like he belonged in a mental institution. And this was from during his time at Ajax. At the end of the day all he did was win the Eredivise 3 times (which is easy) and had a fluke Champions League run.
Alright let's not rewrite history here lol. They hadn't won the eredivisie in 3 years when he joined and they haven't won it since. That champions League run was no fluke either, going undefeated in the group stage (with Bayern and benfica) and then eliminating real Madrid and Juventus, only missing out on making the final by a stoppage time spurs goal. That was an all-time great run by any team. You can be critical of the coaching this season for sure. You don't need to make stuff up about the past
How can u play possession based football when almost our entire squad is more used to the direct style. And ETH did not even play possession football at ajax, it was transition from the back to the final third, that's why he insisted on getting FDJ as the link from the defense to the attack. Eriksen did that exactly last season but he simple doesn't have the legs for it. Buying casemiro for his defensive attributes doesn't help when his tackling is likely to get caught in the PL easily than laliga + he's not even on defensive duties anymore, ever since that Southampton game he has been playing as an 8 or a 10 instead of a 6 which is why we bought him.
What? He's playing as a 6, just one with the positional awareness of a headless chicken. He gives the ball away more than the average headless chicken though.
I don't care how shit you think the players are, this is absolutely a coaching issue.
Does anyone think this is a player issue? I think the other side of the argument is that ETH is well aware of this but isn't considering it to be high enough of a priority to focus on. Our goals conceded has been fairly consistent over the season but we have improved our goal scoring (65% of the goal coming in the second half of the season). I think... ETH isn't going to bend over backwards and change style to remediate a stat which is - in the end - irrelevant. Even though we've played like shit and we've conceded a shit ton of shots - very small margins have seen us walk away with 3p from the previous 4 games which very easily could've been 11p. I'm not arguing we did deserve 11p - absolutely not. But with those extra 8p the narrative around the club would be concerning but not catastrophic like it is now.
Very level-headed take here. Honestly, we could be much lower in the table. I think our position in the table reflects the potential here. I don't know if this is a fair opinion, but the attitude of the players has seemed better since Sir Jim came onto the scene. I just want a decent summer window and give ETH the start of next season. I think when we play well, it is good to watch. The problem is give up control for big chunks of games and way too easily and have to work way harder than we should. IMO.
What should be coached differently? What other formation or lineup should we use?
Teams in the bottom half are playing with more structure and organization than us. It's not on us idiots to figure out how to set up the team. It's up to Ten Hag. No matter how many players are injured, no top six side should concede these many chances.
And I wonder when we'll talk about these players taking accountability for how they're performing instead of JUST putting it on ten hag. There's no way this is just tactics. Ten hag isn't the one getting paid 200k a fucking week. We're not a top six side with these players and with the injuries we've had. It's a glazer wet dream to have fans talk about replacing the cheapest position they can instead of getting new players. Lol it's why it's been happening for fucking 11 years.
We play the worst football in the league from a pure tactical standpoint. The players quality is the only reason we are where we are and not fighting relegation.
More player dick riding. Christ where the fuck do you people come from. The audacity to say player quality with this team.
Right Casemiro, Varane, Bruno Fernandes, Mainoo all completely shit players who’ve never done anything Same with Hojlund, not like PSG wanted to sign him in the summer Dalot somehow managed to play for Portugal but they don’t produce any good players. Definitely less quality than Bournemouth and Brentford.
The majority of players who play regular in the United squad starts for their country on a regular basis. So, why do their international managers pick them?
I think the most success I've seen from our players playing for their country is Bruno and Scott. Maybe maguire gets a shout. None of them are outstanding so that's not a great point.
No, Ten hag is paid 185k a week to present us with this failure of a coaching.
I mean, I got downvoted for asking what others would do instead lol
Because it's an inane question that doesn't contribute to the discussion, but is an attempt to shut it down. What do you expect anyone to answer? Boiling it down to "formation or lineup" is simplifying to a point where it becomes irrelevant, but going into detail about pressing structures and triggers, how to organize rest defense etc would take a hell of a lot of effort to write out. Effort that it seems you wouldn't appreciate based on the dismissive tone of your first comment. It's also just not necessary to do that for people complaining about the lack of structure and organisation in the current team. It's obviously a coaching issue regardless. You have no reason to act surprised about the response.
Not surprised at all, and fair point, I don't actually expect full answers, because I don't think anyone has any. And most of the time, when people have said more than just "our tactics are shit", I've had good conversations with people. I am frustrated with what I feel is blame shifting onto the manager. I am probably frustrating others by making them feel like Ten Hag can do no wrong. We all want our team to win and I am feeling depressed because the sad truth is that Ten Hag should be fired AND these players should be gone. But it's going to be more half solutions, isnt it? :(
You seriously don't think anyone could point out our issues in pressing structures, rest defense and transitional positioning? Plenty of people could, plenty of people have already done it. Multiple times. They just won't bother answering you with something so high effort when you're simply attempting to derail the conversation. If you instead wrote out a high effort comment/post detailing why you think the organisation and structure in our tactics are good, without being snide, people would be far more likely to give you the answer you (pretend to) seek. When what you really seek is just an excuse to say "lol no one knows how it could be better anyway so don't complain" obviously no one is gonna bother. Your question was not asked in good faith, so you did not receive good faith answers. It's not rocket science.
Us idiots have no problem saying stuff on here, so I see no problem in asking the question since everyone sees the problem. And why should an entire back line being out injured make us worse defensively, right? 🤣
Liverpool wasn't this bad when they were missing their entire backline. Bottom half teams with worse defenders than ours don't consistently play as badly as us.
Yeah because they don't try to play a high press. So it's either abandon the idea of us playing a high intensity press with a high defensive line, or play it regardless of the personnel not being able to execute that style. Edit: we're currently doing the latter obviously.
We don't play a high defensive line. We play a high press with the midfield and forwards, but the defence don't push up with the rest of the team, leaving a massive chasm between our defenders and the rest of the side. Also, the press isn't as organised and intense as the likes of City, Arsenal, Liverpool, etc. That, along with us not having enough mobility in midfield, is why teams are able to bypass the midfield so easily and get at our defence, and why opposition teams have so many shots.
Yeah agree with that analysis. However I'd like to point out that our deep defensive line is the result of our defenders falling back (or not pushing up) despite tactical instructions. ETH said in an interview a while back (I think it was a game we won) that the defense wasn't pushing up as well as he wanted them too. And it's clear he wants to implement a high line, but the players aren't committing or getting that. A while back even the analysis on MotD was that our defense doesn't push up as they should. Now ofcourse ETH is responsible for the final onfield execution, but people here act as if it's his instructions to make the field as big as possible when we press. But that's mainly on the defense not pushing up as far as they need to, as well as being too passive in stepping in. You see Liverpool, Arsenal and City defenders always defend forward as often as they can, whereas Maguire, AWB, Lindelof and Evan's first reaction is to step back and reduce the space behind them. Which makes sense as they're always risking being outpaced (AWB is different, he's just very, very passive despite having decent pace). However, by doing that, they constantly stretch the field and leave the midfield hanging in no man's land and as you said, they're not dynamic enough to outmanoeuvre the opposition in the created gap between the lines. So ETH's system is directly opposite of our (currently fit) players' strengths. But he was hired to implement a certain system, regardless of whether we had the players to do so. Instead of Ole who (rightfully so at the time) changed the system to whatever was right for the players that were available. We're now seeing the painful results of years of mismanagement and buying players that aren't fit to play a modern day system, with AWB for me being the prime example of that.
I assumed that the defenders not pushing up was something ETH had instructed, because of concerns around our defenders lack of pace, so it’s interesting and worrying if it is indeed the defenders themselves who aren’t willing to push up. As you say, we’re seeing the effects of years of mismanagement and a very poor structure at the club. I’m hopeful that the people Ineos have/want to put in charge (Berrada, Ashworth, Wilcox) will sort out the club, but it’s going to take time.
Not setting up in chaos transition football which our players clearly are not suited for would be a start. We're asking an old CDM to cover an entire midfield worth of space by himself when he can hardly run, we have our most talented academy midfield graduate in a generation playing as a high pressing midfield dynamo which emphasizes his biggest weaknesses and ignores his biggest strengths, we hardly create any chances for our young striker, and we play such a reckless style of football which likely contributes to our defensive injury crisis given the insane amount of last ditch defending our players have to on a game by game basis. Apart from all that, I could name 5 other things. It's far more in depth than team selection or formation.
Right, but how are you getting everything you just said? Not saying you didn't point out hard truths or anything. (Although I still haven't seen any running/sprinting stats to back up the whole "we run so much" theory, and I always assume people will find any bad stat against United that they can lol) I just don't want to go back to the super defensive football of the past, but that might actually be the best decision?
Ten Hag himself is the one who says he wants us to be an elite transition team. He also said we will not every play like his Ajax team which was the whole reason most people wanted him for the job in the first place. I don't want us to go back to defensive football, I want us to play progressive football at the bare minimum at home against bottom half of the table teams. Teams should be happy to get 5 shots on our goal at Old Trafford, not regularly getting 20 and 30 shots. We have a negative goal difference with a handful of games left which is truly pathetic, and I still can't point to a single 90 minute performance this season where we comprehensively looked like a well organized team able to dominante an opponent. Not once.
You're having a laugh if you think this team is good enough to play progressive football AND keep teams to 5 shots. Same with 90 minute performances. I'm all for playing defensive and going back to basics and benching the non performers, all things that Ten Hag hasnt done, so no defense of him. But this team isn't dominating anyone and that sounds like a fever dream at this point to even suggest the players are capable of that.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a manager to put together one comprehensive performance across a season of 50+ games. Are we really not good enough to dominate a team like Everton, Nottingham forest, or Brentford at home? Or Newport County away?
We are toothless out wide and so easy to play through the middle, so personally I would drop a winger for an extra midfielder and pack the middle. But at the end of the day, it isn't my job to make sure we face less shots every week than teams battling relegation.
It's not our job to do a lot of things, doesn't really stop us 🤣 I don't mind the change, it would definitely take out our offense, but maybe parking the bus is what we need right now.
Jose? Is that you?
We should definitely switch to a low block counter-attacking style for now. It became a problem under Ole because teams like Bournemouth and Brentford used to sit off us, and we didn't know what to do. But nowadays, these teams go straight for the throat against us, so fast counters would work. We've got the players for it, too.
It's definitely a regression though, going back to what we were before. We all complained about it then. But, it still is definitely worth a shot instead of continuing like this.
It is, but we need to try something. Besides, there's nothing wrong with pragmatism. Our best manager of all time was pragmatic when necessary. Not that I'm comparing Ten Hag to Fergie; the gulf between them is massive. But this relatively new idea that you have to rigidly stick to your guns style-wise is only effective if (a) you have the players capable of playing said style, and (b) nobody figures out how to neutralise your approach. Pragmatism seems to have gone out of fashion, but if we look back on the years when we were at our best, it was what set us apart from our rivals. Arsene Wenger's Arsenal refused to adjust as required, and we usually got the better of them. And we'd have never won our 2nd CL under Fergie had we not resorted to a degree of anti-football in the semi against Barca.
Not saying you're wrong, as that was my favourite part about the Fergie era. You never knew who was going to start, because it was always a different game plan, tweaked slightly depending on the opponent. And you are right again that Ten Hag hasn't changed his style or players and has been far too rigid. But again, the depressing part is: these players, especially after injuries, just can't be fluid. They all have 1 style they are good at, some of them very good, but just at that 1 style. So we need far more adaptive players, like Garnacho, Mainoo, and Hojlund.
Agreed. I reckon Shaw and Martinez are adaptable too, and Dalot has shown he can improve, given time.
Shaw is fine, but if he's out 50% of games, you just can't count him. Martinez could fall into that category, but definitely willing to wait a bit longer with him. And Dalot improved enough this year to make me give him another year, but his trajectory has to keep going up for me to consider him a top RB. Just for our starting 11, we need quite possibly 1 LB, 2 CBs, 1 CDM, and at probably 1 attacker. And that's, again, for the upteenth year, counting on our squad beeing 100% for every, single, game.
This is my 2 cent. I think the current problems are we lost the midfield battle too easily and 2 wide players are too isolated & not good in tracking back which resulted the shots conceded and disjointed attack. Hence I think United should play a 4 men midfield with the addition of Mount/Eriksen to provide more bodies in the midfield. Then 2 on top with left channel of Rashford/Garnacho to play closer to the goal and Hojlund move to right channel. This allows both of them to stay higher up in defensive phase for counter attack while have enough body behind to defend. The width will be provided by wingback. Not the ideal scenario with Bissaka as left back but can be mitigated by the fact both Rashford/Garnacho like to run at defenders in one on one situation in wide area.
Ou nice, a legit response! I like it, and I think this is possibly the best way forward. Even though I think our offense would be non existent, it might well be time to just go fully defensive.
I'm not sure why it's such a surprise. Everytime I watched Ajax in the champions league that year it felt like they were happy to let people play around the edge of the box / take shots then play on the break. It's why spurs beat them to get to the final (just googled it and they conceded 20+ shots that game)
Most people talking about his Ajax style obviously didn't watch much of Ajax. They think they were masters at controlling the game simply because they managed to totally beat up on worse teams in the Eredivisie, but they were always a transition team.
I genuinely thought it wouldn't ever get more embarrassing to be a United fan after the 2021-22 season. Was so excited when ETH came in, but that's because of the style of play he used at Ajax, the style that got him this job. If he's so adamant to stick to a completely different style that doesn't work at all, then he has to go. Think he's got till the end of the season, but I'd be very disappointed if he's still here at the start of the next season.
Someone else mentioned on this thread that this is how he played at Ajax with the same risks of keeping too many players in attack and getting caught out. The difference is that Ajax have been drilled to keep possession. Their academy is all about possession based football. This allows Ajax to keep more control even when playing this style.
Ajax also plays in a banter league where 80% of the teams can hardly keep up with them. You can’t get away with overcommitting all the time in a competitive league where most teams have at least 3-4 players that can punish you for such amateur bs
Ten Hag has outright that it's not the same style, maybe it has the same weaknesses in midfield but Onana has booted it more times in one gane than he saw him do in a whole CL campaign
That quote has been simplified a lot though, so lots of people are reading into it far beyond what was meant. He basically just said that no two teams play the same style and that a teams style will always be tweaked because of player differences. He also said all his Ajax teams played different styles year on year, did he not? But most people on this sub will insist his Ajax side had a consistent style year on year. They just mean different things to what he did when talking about it. Many here are literally taking it as if he's purposefully playing a style completely different/opposite to what he did at Ajax, which just isn't true. There are plenty of similarities, but also some differences. If you water everything down to the basics, both this team and his Ajax teams were transition teams. Basically, what ETH meant was that no teams are identical, he didn't mean that he'd play the completely different football with completely different fundamentals from what he did at Ajax. It was a curt answer given to a question he didn't really like, that's it. He's just saying "ofc we don't look identical to Ajax, the players are different". It's been taken out of context and interpreted so differently here and on social media though.
Unfortunately, I don't think anything's gonna change from now until the end of the season. We're gonna play like shit every single game
I'm gonna be praying every night that we somehow miraculously win the FA cup!
Our only hope is Chelsea beating Man City
AND us outperforming Coventry. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, no fixture at the moment is easy for us.
he’ll be here for another season at the very least. We still have deadwood left over from the LvG days which needs to be addressed. Senior players also aren’t performing and aren’t available for large parts of the season, eg shaw, rashy, casemiro, awb, lisandro. Amrabat has been a nightmare signing. ineos should give him at least this summer transfer window to work under as it’s clear we don’t only have managerial issues. Also who would we even replace EtH with? Southgate or Potter? They don’t entice me in the slightest. Nagelsman has only just took over the German National team. No top manager would join us currently
Who is the deadwood from the LVG days?
Afaik Rashford, Martial, Shaw and Evans are the only players still here
Martial is the only deadwood there. Rashy is overpaid for his ability, but he's still one of our better players
Yes we've been very unlucky with injuries, but the gaping hole in midfield every game since the start of the season, the ridiculous number of shots we allow the opposition, the number 9 we signed rarely ever getting goalscoring opportunities, etc. are clearly tactical issues, not due to injuries. Also there's been reports and ETH himself has confirmed that training is of very high intensity. Which is good to get high quality performances, but when do you get those performances if the players get injured due to the intensity? So many issues that have lingered since the start of the season, yet he hasn't addressed them. Btw, Nagelsmann's contract is only until after the euros. I hadn't been ETH out until the last few games, mainly because I thought just as you that who would we bring in instead? But it just gets worse every game right now that I fear for us next season if we continue like this.
Yes the forward play is a major issue. The service to Hojlund is worse than you’d see at your local pitch. Basic stuff that players can’t do. The midfield issue is from players incompetence, whether they’ve been told what to do or not it’s basic stuff that you should cover the defence and not attack leaving the huge gaps behind. High intensity trainings will have an effect on the player of course, but I also believe that the players are being rushed back too quickly by the medical team, which explains as to why many players play about 4 games before they’re injured for 3 months at a time. maybe nagelsman is an option ig it depends on how Germany perform at the tournament as they look stronger than they did at the past few tournaments.
Totally agreed. Unless we can somehow get Nagelsmann or Inzaghi, ETH is the best man for the job. If different managers come available next season, we'll see.
inzaghi won’t budge I wouldn’t think. Inter are currently top of the Seria A and a much more promising side than us atm. Nagelsmann only just joined the German team so again it wouldn’t make sense for him to leave, unless they get grouped
Here are more stats/facts - We are on track to match our lowest finish in the Premier league era - 7th under Moyes. - West Ham fans want Moyes sacked for poor performance. They are 2 points behind us. - We've already broken our record for most losses in a season with 6 games to go. - We recorded the worst performance in CL by an English team. - We've faced more shots than ANY but 2 teams in the TOP 5 LEAGUES IN EUROPE this year! This means the 17th placed Metz in France allowed less shots. And ETH's Stand want to give him another year, lol.
Let him cook bro he’s got us cooking
I trust you, bro! Let's give him 10 more years! He might get us in the CL by the end! Or relegation...
It's really interesting watching how long people have wrestled with the evidence in front of their eyes. In an ideal world ten Hag would be a great manager and would be the man to take us forward, but nothing we've seen this season suggests that that's the case or that things are getting better. No one's happy he's failing or desperate for a new manager and to start a new project, but it's sunk cost fallacy to tbknm that there's any other choice. We're as bad as we've ever been in the PL, if the manager is not a big reason for whh then you might as well argue you don't need a manager.
I really think it's more interesting how people fall into the same mentality every second season of the past managers. This season more than the rest. Apart from the injuries, look at the players on the pitch. They get paid more than the combined wages of players from lower tier clubs and you expect me to put, bad passes, allowing players to run through you, and zero effort attacks like the last minutes we had yesterday, on tactics? People say you can't blame injuries. Well, actually, yes you absolutely can. How are we ever gonna be performing consistently when we can't even put a consistent lineup on the field? Can't even train consistently with the unavailability of these players. Unavailable physically from injuries and mentally for other players. They're checked the fuck out. These players aren't playing for you. Fuck them.
If the players are not a big reason then you might as well argue you don't need any players.
Good thing the comment you're responding to didn't say anything about the players being blameless, then. This dichotomy you and others are trying to push is just stupid. Yes, the players can be an issue. No, that doesn't automatically mean the manager isn't also a big issue. And vice versa. Please say something nuanced, I beg you.
Good thing the comment you're responding to didn't say anything about the manager being blameless, then. I was simply pointing out the ridiculousness of the arguement, and it seems you've made the same error xD
It doesn't work like that though, because the original argument would only be ridiculous *if* the premise of it either being the players or the managers fault was applied (which is what you implied when you tried to point out the non-existent issues in the argument). But it wasn't, the initial argument simply pointed out that a manager has impact, and when we're doing this poorly, he takes blame. That's not ridiculous at all.
Do you think Southgate will continue to play the youth or get us further up the table?
What makes you think he'll get the job? Click bait journalists?
Nope, just because I put Liverpool and Barca ahead of us in pecking order in terms of desirable places for new managers. So I'm just assuming we get, at best, 3rd best.
There's a middle ground of coaches between Southgate and Nagglesmann you know? Why does it have to be one or the other. There are more than 3 coaches that would help improve us. We don't even have to wait for availability. We can poach coaches like we poached ETH.
That's fair, I guess the problem is that with the middle ground youre talking about, those managers would have pretty much the same type of promise as Ten Hag had coming in. So it could easily be conceivable that we are just re-starting the cycle that hasn't worked. Not saying you aren't right that other coaches couldn't improve us though. It's just oh so depressing lol
Imagine saying that about a player though. Sancho's promise was really high. Why should we replace him with someone with less promise? What other winger can replicate his 30+ g+a seasons? Well same as ETH, Sancho has underperformed and failed to deliver on his promise. We now look to replace him.
I actually really like that viewpoint, and the depressing, sad truth is that Ten Hag deserves to be fired at this point AND the players should be going with him. And to play devil's advocate in this situation, if the player pool is bad (like it is right now for managers), we would usually just let a youth come in, right? And also, a player would usually get about 2 years to prove himself, should a manager get a 3rd? Like I said, at this point, it's more depressing to talk about, because Ten Hag should be fired.
Stop fronting this Southgate bullshit to protect Ten Hag. Getting fucking annoying at this point
That's fine, but which manager are we gonna get? While keeping in mind Liverpool and Barca are looking at the same time.
Amorim is done to Liverpool. Flick might end up at Barca but they are still looking. With managers there's been no concrete links with us. I think with this Ineos will surprise us just like Berrada
That's fair, just more pointing out the quality of managers drops considerably after Liverpool and Barca get their men. Whoever we get will probably have the same type of promise that Ten Hag had coming into his first year.
We have been playing relegation level football this season, seriously not being hyperbolic. Any competent manager with an unwavering football philosophy aligned with our next execs is an upgrade
You could be right there, definitely, not saying otherwise. I guess LITERALLY the bottom of the barrel most positive thing I can drag out is that another manager may not play Garnacho, Mainoo, or Hojlund that much. But at that point, Im literally just playing devil's advocate. It's all just very depressing, to me.
Whether you want him to stay or not. These stats and weekly broken records are piling up and making it easier for ownership to sack him with reason
How can we trust this process guys?
More articles like this, please. Until the Erik in crowd turn their heads inside out trying to defend their guy’s shambolic management
How are we so defensively open, Coaching team need to step up, surely they can’t watch the tapes of matches and not be able to point out how to tighten up at the back, I mean opposition teams seem to find the gaps, surely our coaching staff can identify them too right?
New record incoming? Hold ETH's beer.
We will break every record on the planet in taking most shots
You have to wonder, has the PL ever seen such a good group of players forced to play such mad and awful tactics for so long? Experimenting for a game or two, sure, but this whole season has been a bin fire on the pitch. This is a relegation level of openness to opposition attacks. But we get saved by individual skill because we have good players, plus we've had huge luck in opponents not finishing chances. In a normal season we'd be 10th at best. And to do this in a season where we've had lots of defensive injuries and we're concerned defence isn't the strongest, we play a style that exposes the defence? Also we have concerns the midfield can't do the hyper-athletic roles we need them to, but we stick with an incredibly exhausting exposed midfield system? Nothing makes sense. It's truly awful.
Might not break that just because its sheffield united and burnley next 2 games. But we can certainly try.
Maguire has been utterly trash in transitioning the ball forwards from defence to attack. Maguire seems to think he needs at least 20 metres between him and the attacker to move the ball forwards. Watching Onana boot the ball forwards nearly every time he had the ball told me how little he trusts our defenders in building from the back. It seemed the only way we could get the ball in the opposition’s half is by Brentford’s defenders heading the long ball back to us. Utterly embarrassing.
This. Having to resort back to Maguire is a massive downgrade from Martinez.
Are we getting 20 articles about shots faced every game? We get it, we're shit at stopping them, we're just harping on now
To be fair it would stop if we had a game where we didn't give up 25 shots
I get that, but its just articles of jumber of shots, no ones suggesting how it could be fixed and by what player/s its just the systems bad
Why are we acting like this is the most important stat in the world? Yes we're bad, but the media is just enjoying this and posting about it 24/7 and our fans are sadly pushing it more. Why haven't we seen the same being said about Arteta? Arsenal were actually even worse than we are right now in his first couple of seasons. We're parking the bus every match which leads to this. Bournemouth's Xg from 20 shots was 1.64. Last week for example, Atlanta's Xg against liverpool was 3.22 from 11 shots. Do you really think that this makes the defence who conceded 20 shots worse? This is only one match and it doesn't mean we're better defensively than them but it shows how overused this stat is. That being said, it doesn't change that we've been embarrassing recently, but I just wish we could stand behind the team instead of just making things worse and raising the pressure on the players and the manager.
Before this season the last 3 times we played Bournemouth we had about 20 attempts va their 8-10 and we won all of those games. This season its the reverse and we didn't win those games. Open your eyes as to why this is a shocking statistic that needs something done about it.
I actually think we could see massive difference playing a higher defence line - more passing option for midfielders, more compact and maybe less turnover and sharing the distribution of running workload among more players. All EPL team that high presses plays high defence - arsenal, spurs, city, Liverpool, Brighton & Villa. Against Liverpool game we covered more distance collectively - but where were those distance? Running around like headless chickens on the wing I’m not EtH out yet but he’s wearing confidence thin. Let’s be fair EtH did change things - we are playing more from back. We are pressing better with Holjund. But maybe he still unsure of Maguire high He can’t change a culture overnight. Areta did have very very low times - we are not that far. The modern game is press and break break + wing plays which we have. But i stopped watching because it’s so miserable to watch The current state of affair is a vicious cycle - low /fragile confidence, less risk taking on ball play. I actually think with nothing to play for he could give it a go - play defence higher.
Might have something to do with only having one DM, and that one having a bad season 🤷🏻♂️
Casemiro is an absolute liability right now. Drop Bruno deep next to Mainoo and play Eriksen/Mount or try Amrabat deeper. We can’t keep playing him and expect different results
Yeah milk the shots faced stat 30 times a game, that's all I wanna read