General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

Its a results business, your only as good as your last 10 games. It's his 2nd season, shouldn't there be an improvement not decline? If you could see some idea of what he was trying to do, you'd hang tight but its worse by the week. You don't get time at this level without showing something.

I put a cheeky €1 bet on Fulham to beat United at the weekend. No one will be surprised at that given not just how poor United are but their truly awful away form.

Then that brings us to Luton at home. Goldbridge outright dismissed the idea that United could drop points. I guess he feels they aren't THAT bad. Yet.

But honestly the way things are going I could see United losing both games, losing the Luton one would surely mean the sack for Erik. A humiliation too far.

I also find it funny that history is repeating. Liverpool last won the league in 1990 before their barren spell. After a few poor seasons they decided, "Let's get back to what worked before" and appointed Roy Evans as he was from the boot room.

This didn't work, the game had moved on. I feel United did the exact same when they appointed Ole, "let's get back to Sir Alex"

Liverpool had their "Spice Boys" FA Cup final with the white suits. I always felt like that was a sliding doors moment. I can still remember how utterly gutted I was when United won that with the late Cantona goal.

Of course we didn't have the same media/online coverage of players attitudes and behaviour that we have now. But there is a rotten player cutlture attitude at United now too. You could definitely say Pogba and Jlingtz were Spice Boys mark 2. But you also have Rashford's long term moppiness, Bruno's awful attitude for a captian, Sancho on strike etc which I belive are all far worse than Liverpool had in the mid 1990s.

I just remembered in the early 90's you had the infamous onfield, hands-on bust up between Grobbellaar and McManaman which showed you had bad things had gotten behind the scenes.

Liverpool realised they had to get with the times and looked to the continent and Gerard Houllier to improve things. United still haven't done that, they don't have a DOF and still have the old skool manager the boss of everything structure.

United still haven't fallen as far as Liverpool did, finishing 8th in the PL a few years. But I was skimming through the PL seasons for Liverpool on wiki, and with hindsight the summer of 1999 was the start of the turnaround transfer/personnel wise. They signed Hyppia, Henchoz and Hamann amongst others. Had the FA cup, League Cup and UEFA cup treble then in spring 2001.

I don't think we can say the signings of summer 2022 or 2023 are the start of the United turnaround. Possibly Hoiland might be a Hyppia type signing at these very early stages.

But the fact that United haven't made the "big picture" sturctural changes to get with the times yet means they probably have a lot further to fall.

Wouldn’t it be absolutely brilliant to see Keane going in to coach them for the rest of the season! And Amazon to do an All Or Nothing at the same time.

it would be great because Keane is a sh*te manager

LMAO. Ya, I hear ya! Thankfully I learned a fair few years ago that I will never make money from gambling, so I just do €1 bets now for the buzz.

I'm turning into the 2 ould duffers from Trading Places.

Given the talk on United's problems I think the below table shows one of the major issues in that thier attackers have been very poor this season.

One goal in the league so far this season scored by the attacker's. That is a shocking stat.

The telegraph is reporting tonight that some Man Utd players are unhappy at his treatment of Maguire & Sancho.

Damned if you & damned if you don't. Whatever way you look at it, whether he was right to publicly shame both Maguire and Sancho, which I'm sure he was trying to get a better standard into the squad/training with, but the players didn't like being challenged and this is what it has resulted in now. Again. Player power wins out.

All these leaks and Man Utd having to give the public backing to him. It always ends up way.

Yeah I actually forgot about that,don't a few of them have the same agent. But that is the Glazers fault of course

Who are the toxic players?

Pogba was a problem, Ronaldo was a problem. The manager hasn't got a tune out of the 10 players he's brought in. Antony? Who approved that, he's one of the worst wingers I've seen nevermind he cost 100m

Exactly,he has brought in these players,nobody knows including himself what kind of style or formation he wants to play. And now that results have been very poor at the start of the season,its suddenly the Glazers fault again. They gave him 450 million to spend in three transfers windows so Ten Hag should have no excuses and should at the very least be a top 4 team(which they still might if he miraculously turns it around)

Well there's something major wrong there and it's been like that for a long time now.

You have a coach who did an incredible job with Ajax. Four consecutive Eredivisie titles, he leaves and they finished fourth and now are down the bottom of the table.

He comes to United and they start to look promising and now are sliding. Ajax got better and better under him.

He's on the hot seat now but I don't think it's his fault. There's something very wrong there and I don't think it's the players causing it. They might be a sympton with their performances affected by what's going on.

Theres a lot of non-football people at United and I suspect the problem lies there.

i stand by it !

Bar Mason Mount I would say yes he did decide who he wanted to sign,and maybe he did want Mount. Onana,Martinez,Amrabat,Anthony and Hoijlund are his players.

Who would be in the ears of players talking to them about money and what exactly would they be saying that means the players won't perform on the field?

I reckon you are the only one guessing around here,so all the utd players are too busy attending charity events and making money to put in an effort on the field?

And this is the reason Utd are so poor this season? I presume the players didn't attend any charity events last season? Between this and the socks been too tight on the players legs I must say the excuses are becoming more far fetched by the day.

There are a lot of rival fans with some seriously surface level takes on Utd and then trying to pass them off as a "I told you so" when the club is struggling.

A vast majority of Utd fans know/knew the squad as a whole isn't good enough and that is being laid bare with the injuries.

Our 1st team with everyone fit is a team good enough for top 4. The players in and around after that are far off that level. The transfer dealing at the club over the last 10 years are catching up now. The money that was there before is no longer there.

Then when you add in players like Casemiro and Varane starting the season badly because the squad is /has been so poorly assembled there is nobody who can step in and operate to any kind of acceptable level. So the club is always in this situation where a handful of injuries or loss of form means the whole team is fucked.

Look at some of the players who have started games for Utd in the last couple of weeks and ask yourself would these players get a game at any other top10 club. Some of them would do well to get games in the prem full stop.

THIS IS A FAILING OF THE GLAZERS!! THE OWENERS!! AND THOSE THEY HAVE PUT IN PLACE!

I understand the Glazers owning Man Utd is a wet dream to many as they have managed to take English football's biggest club and turn them into also rans!! You can see that in the posts in here - they want another manager sacked so the club starts the cycle over again. A pointless cycle because it will get to this same point again in 18-24 months.

The Glazers from day 1 have been out of their depth at this level but they had David Gill and SAF covering their arses on and off the field until 2013. Once they had to hire or put in place their own structure they fucked it up and never even came close to correcting that. Not sure it even comes across their minds.

The squad is bloated with players who are under talented and under motivated for the level we are trying to get to. They are then over paid for this lack of talent and as a result cannot be moved on. Which tells you everything about them - nobody else values them at the level Utd have put them on money wise.

If you go down to your local car dealer and buy a Nissan Micra off them for 150k that car isn't going to turn into a supercar magically once you take it to the track. It will still be a 1.0 litre Micra no matter what fee you give for it.

We have overpaid because nobody at the top end of the club has a clue what they are at. Now we can't move them on and as such cannot free up wages or money to bring in what the team needs.

The manager is not totally faultless over these last few weeks - he has for sure made strange calls. But I can say now with total confidence there is no manager who will come in and single handedly clear this mess up. None. Pep, Klopp, Ancelotti, Zidane whoever else you want to throw in.

Hell you could clone a 50 year old SAF and he'd still fail with this setup.

If there isn't a correct structure in place above the manager they are destined to fail - there is no other top club in Europe who is run like Utd. It is the owners responsibility to put that structure in place or hire someone who can. When they don't then the failing on the pitch ultimately sit at their door.

The results of the Glazers are very much on the pitch.

ETH has for me anyway done very good work so far but the size of the task was always going to mean it would never be a straight forward rise to the top. There will be difficult periods and there will be shite results. But I'd rather sit and wait with ETH for another 2 seasons and then take stock than sack him and start the process all over again.

We picked ETH because we believed he was the right man to take the club in the right direction - we cannot do a U turn on that at the first sign of trouble. It is only 8 months since he won us our first trophy in 6 years.

I get that the manager is pretty much set up to fail at United, but the idea that he hasn't got a strong squad is pretty mental. The coaches at the top of the league have actually improved the players at their disposal, Ten Hag doesn't seem to be doing that. Are we saying McTominay, Lindelof, Dalot etc. wouldn't be squad players at Arsenal, United, Spurs and Newcastle? They absolutely would.

Do you really believe this is how high functioning teams operate nowadays, in ANY industry? LOL, Leadership of i tell you what to do, you do what you are told, and then you are successful '??

Welcome to the 21st century man! That type of crap had limited success 50 years ago, worked up to a point when Fergie came to united, but was running out of legs by the time he left. It may be the reason why his players were almost without exception failures as managers, eg. Keano!

If this is really the mindset of United and their supporters, then no wonder they are in the mess they are in.

EtH has completed undermined his own leadership. To have total control of players you need their respect more than you need the full support of the Board, whatever that means. Pep and Klopp get the full respect from the players because of how the manage players. Look at how Pepe treated Erling Halaand at half time against Burnley. He's willing to give him a bollocking when he isn't palying well but then you see EtH talking about Rashford being undroppable despite the fact he's been awful all season. I dont know how any United player csnt look at how He's treated Bruno and Rushford this season compared to Maguire et al and not lose respect for EtH. He seems all over the place.

You do need a manager who the players believe is strong enough. To sell them. Like Pep did with Cancelo at the first whiff of trouble. Gone. All the City players know that Pep has that power. Klopp has it too. So does Arteta. Remember when Jose left Utd? He fell out with Pogba and eventually the board got rid of Jose, other factors were in play as well.

But as someone earlier pointed out, you need a sporting director. Then you might not have a load of duds, represented by the same agent as your manager, land at your club. Not necessarily saying that’s what happened Ten Hag, but it happened Wolves.

Exactly. You manage the players that is your job. You can be a hardass but you ultimately have to put your arm around a player. Having public spats with players is doing nothing to endure yourself to the rest of the squad. I'm sure he's an excellent coach, but top managers are rare because it takes a special skill set you can't learn on your uefa training course. Pep, Klopp, Fergie, Ancelloti they all have charisma, this fella has none.

I don't want to get drawn into the discussion other than to say that's a ridiculous way to measure coaching abilities, you must have looked through a lot of statistics to find something to argue your case with, there's so many variables from season to season, some years the bottom teams don't make any attempt at staying up, some years there are multiple teams there are multiple teams competing for the league, some years there are bad reffing decisions, how far clubs get in cups,so many variables that using % of the previous years points to measure how well a team is coached is just not a good way to do it.