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Ayahuasca said:
There is always a decision to be made and winning the FA Cup could be the spanner in the works.

I don't think it's enough for him to keep the job, but I'm also not convinced that his sacking has already been decided behind the scenes as they are still appointing people above him.
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I'm almost certain he is already gone. FA cup or not. He won a trophy last season, spend silly money and we have gone backwards in every way. The defensive issues can only give you so much leeway and I think hes spent that twice over.
 
fez said:
I'm almost certain he is already gone. FA cup or not. He won a trophy last season, spend silly money and we have gone backwards in every way. The defensive issues can only give you so much leeway and I think hes spent that twice over.
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In addition to that, new owners often like to bring in their own man. INEOS are cleaning house in every other area, the manager is just a bit further down the list.
 
It makes sense to give him a year under a new structure. Nobody out there that is available is a better option than he was when we hired him. Couple that with the fact Liverpool, Bayern, Barca, AC Milan and probably Chelsea are all looking for new managers this summer and it's suicide to throw us into that meatgrinder unless we want someone nobody else wants like Potter. Who do people want? Tuchel? Potter? Southgate? Are these really better options?
 
Steedie said:
ETH running United then, yeah? You don't half spout some nonsense some times
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Didn't answer any of the questions. I'll educate you as you seem to have no idea. We've got a temporary CEO right now who is our chief legal counsel. We have no football director (he's leaving). You want that guy deciding on whether we should get rid of a manager and hire a new one when he won't be in that position in 3 months?

You used to be a good poster but it's like your kid has taken over your account or something, you just sport twitter lines and avoid explaining anything.
 
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Shamikebab said:
It makes sense to give him a year under a new structure. Nobody out there that is available is a better option than he was when we hired him.
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Thats how every club hires though. You get the best guy available when you need/want a new manager and if he doesn't work out, you do it again. Myself, like almost every United fans had sky high hopes for Ten Hag but its hard to argue he is doing anything other than a poor job right now. Perhaps if he had his first choice defence all season we wouldn't be having this discussion and we would be talking about what players we need to think about competing or taking the next steps. Unfortunately you can quickly lose years (as we know) when you aren't decisive and stick with managers who are not delivering.

I agree that there isn't an obvious candidate sitting out there but I'm sure there are options they will be looking at.
 
It just screams to me of Chelsea sacking Tuchel and getting Potter. Sure he was a new flavour of the month and the new regime wanted their own man but it was an absolute disaster. Change is not always the right option, especially when we know the whole structure outside the manager has been actively incompetent and is being ripped up. We're going to like right mugs if we fire ETH and he goes to Barca or Bayern and goes straight back to the top while we hire another dud.
 
Shamikebab said:
Didn't answer any of the questions. I'll educate you as you seem to have no idea. We've got a temporary CEO right now who is our chief legal counsel. We have no football director (he's leaving). You want that guy deciding on whether we should get rid of a manager and hire a new one when he won't be in that position in 3 months?

You used to be a good poster but it's like your kid has taken over your account or something, you just sport twitter lines and avoid explaining anything.
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I was simply suggesting we sack him, which doesn't require that structure in place yet. Have one of the existing coaches come in as a caretaker manager for the remainder of the season, then hire at the end of the season. Wilcox has started, Ashworth may as well be working for us, you'd be naïve to think he isn't giving input somehow unofficially, Omar Berrada is starting in the summer, so again...

Keeping a manager on for the sake of it, because there's no-one else, is mad. The fact is, he isn't good enough, so giving him a year with a proper structure does nothing, as it's not like he hasn't had 2 years to showcase what he can do, he's often been left wanting tactically and has made a number of bizarre decisions during games that has cost us. I definitely agree with you with regards to it being a bad time to look for a manager, with other clubs in the market as well who would definitely be preferred to than us, however, my point still stands that that is not a good enough reason to keep ETH in. I really do not see how a director of football, CEO and technical director all suddenly make ETH a better manager. Yes it will massively help in his recruitment, but it's not going to help his tactical ability and man management which seems questionable as well
 
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Steedie said:
I really do not see how a director of football, CEO and technical director all suddenly make ETH a better manager. Yes it will massively help in his recruitment, but it's not going to help his tactical ability and man management which seems questionable as well
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So you want the owner to sack him? And then you somehow think one of the coaches we have is a better manager than ETH? Who? His assistant is the only one remotely close and he'd probably leave with him. Steve Mclaren? That the guy you want?

You'd think seeing the utter collapse of Chelsea (not to mention Ajax after ETH, Overmars and VdS left)would have made people realise that the structure of a football club is quite important.

How is his man management questionable?
 
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Shami, you are asking lots of questions but ignoring the fact we are watching performances that are so dire, they are scarcely believable.

It's clear that nothing is working, debating the fine details is just a waste of time. I think a decision can be made without the entire football structure in place.

Maybe ETH himself wants to go? He'd probably prefer to be back at Ajax.
 
Robbo said:
Shami, you are asking lots of questions but ignoring the fact we are watching performances that are so dire, they are scarcely believable.

It's clear that nothing is working, debating the fine details is just a waste of time. I think a decision can be made without the entire football structure in place.

Maybe ETH himself wants to go? He'd probably prefer to be back at Ajax.
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I'm not ignoring it at all, I've mentioned it many times on here. We've been in this exact place multiple times before with different managers and hiring a new one has never fixed anything. We've just spent more money and returned to the exact same place. Now we're actually seeing some actual change in the place where anyone with half a brain cell knows we need changes and people don't seem to have the patience to see if it makes a difference? It's just baffling to me. Everyone always wants the quick fix even if they have no idea who they want next, they just want a new toy. Not a single person here calling for his head has come up with a single option to replace him, let alone a temp to hire for the rest of the season that would be better than him (well Steedie wants some unnamed coach)

Every time we sack a manager people talk about giving the new guy time to fix the squad and the culture and then within a few years they want him fired for not having fixed it immediately. Would you have wanted him fired last year if we'd had this season last season?
 
Shamikebab said:
I'm not ignoring it at all, I've mentioned it many times on here. We've been in this exact place multiple times before with different managers and hiring a new one has never fixed anything. We've just spent more money and returned to the exact same place. Now we're actually seeing some actual change in the place where anyone with half a brain cell knows we need changes and people don't seem to have the patience to see if it makes a difference? It's just baffling to me. Everyone always wants the quick fix even if they have no idea who they want next, they just want a new toy. Not a single person here calling for his head has come up with a single option to replace him, let alone a temp to hire for the rest of the season that would be better than him (well Steedie wants some unnamed coach)

Every time we sack a manager people talk about giving the new guy time to fix the squad and the culture and then within a few years they want him fired for not having fixed it immediately. Would you have wanted him fired last year if we'd had this season last season?
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I totally get that and agree that just firing managers is not the answer, but the manager has to do his part and show there is something being worked towards. There is no sign of that here.

ETH is failing, what big changes are going to be made in the summer that will suddenly allow him to turn everything around? We aren't going to sign 10 new players.

In terms of firing him now, we're too close to the end of the season for it to matter, although I think you could make a legitimate argument some sort of caretaker manager would give us a better chance in the FA Cup Final.

I think we have a very different view of how he's performed this season, I don't accept the injury problems as a valid excuse for the garbage being churned out every single week. If it was Rangnick and not ETH in post, would you be advocating he gets another season under the new structure? I'm not so sure.
 
I'd advocate for any manager that has had the number of injuries we've had to get leeway. For some reason this only happens to other clubs. People will at the same time say our recruitment is abysmal but then also blame the manager for struggling with our squad depth :confused:

Be honest at the start of the summer if I'd told you that ETH was going to have Johnny Evans as one of his main defenders, no left back for 90% of the season and 1 striker for over half the season, would you have expected top 4? Evans has been our best CB this season! What manager is doing well with that?
 
Shamikebab said:
Be honest at the start of the summer if I'd told you that ETH was going to have Johnny Evans as one of his main defenders, no left back for 90% of the season and 1 striker for over half the season, would you have expected top 4? Evans has been our best CB this season! What manager is doing well with that?
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The issue isn't entirely our league position, its how we are there and the fact that we are damn lucky to be there. We have scraped far too many games that we didn't deserve to even draw let alone win. We are shocking from front to back most of the time. You can have injuries and get some leeway when you show glimpses of your fundamental quality as a team but you don't get that leeway when you look abject 8/10 games.

Even when Newcastle had a horrendous injury issue they still weren't entirely crap to watch. You could see what they were doing and how they wanted to play even if they weren't quite able to do it to the level they wanted.
 
Shamikebab said:
But did we not show that quality last season? Are you arguing last season was dreadful and we were lucky to get anywhere as well?
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No we didn't show that quality much last season either but that was his first season and fundamentally he achieved the required league position and won a trophy. Hes now had nearly 2 seasons, spent over £400m since he arrived and we are looking awful.

What part of the job do you think he is doing well currently?
 
fez said:
No we didn't show that quality much last season either but that was his first season and fundamentally he achieved the required league position and won a trophy. Hes now had nearly 2 seasons, spent over £400m since he arrived and we are looking awful.

What part of the job do you think he is doing well currently?
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The money spent is irrelevant, that is down to the appalling structure who have all been fired. You have to assume that the recruitment will be better under a new structure so that is not a reason to change managers.

What do I think he's doing well? I think he's handled the player power issue really well, Ronaldo being a toxic **** was almost perfectly handled, he gave him enough rope to hang himself by and he took it. Sancho likewise, he made it clear all he had to do was apologise and he'd be back in the squad and that was after him giving him months off in the middle of a season to get better. Sancho refused so it was made entirely clear how much the club meant to him, now all but the most dumb Utd fans realise Sancho was in the wrong. He's had minor disciplinary issues with Rashford and Garnacho who have both apologised and got on with their job. Getting player power under control is a huge aspect of the job and ETH is doing it really well.

I think he's integrated youth well, I'd like to see Amad get more chances but Garnacho and Mainoo are both flourishing under him and have become key parts of the squad. Kambwala looks bright too.

I think most of his transfer targets have been good to excellent (only Antony and Amrabat stand out as misfires but no manager gets them all right) He's been unlucky with injuries to key signings like Martinez and Mount for most of this season. I think he did well to stick with Onana and resist urges to drop him (and I'll admit I got this one completely wrong) He had a shaky start but has completely turned it around and been very good in 2024. We're spending too much money on individual targets but ETH isn't doing the negotiating and it's clear the old structure wasn't suggesting good alternatives at all so hopefully this will be better under Ashworth/Wilcox etc.
 
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I think those points are fair, but none of it relates to performances on the pitch, and that's where the main issues are.

If we assume he's done the man management part well, then it makes the on-pitch stuff look even worse.

We had one good spell last season, I think it was end of January to March sort of time, where we looked a proper team. Since then we added some players he wanted, and have taken a huge step backwards.

I have a feeling Ashworth & co are going to want Potter...
 
What scenario does ten hag warrant a contract extension at the end of next season seeing as some of you are advocating that he's given until his current one ends?
 
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