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

United showing tonight what they have threatened all season, the quality and potential that is there in the squad when they play together as a team.

Maybe not.

Definitely feels like everyone has downed tools since the partial takeover was announced.

The effect on the team was never even considered by the Glazers.

Great fun for rival fans but this crisis club Manchester United thing had gone on long enough before Ineos arrived this is just a continuation. Ten Hag must have known he was fvcked once the new arrivals started happening at the top level. You can't be preparing for future success and be planning to keep a manager who can't get the basics right.

I'm fully expecting United to finish in the bottom half of the table at this stage, this is the worst we've been post Ferguson, and we've had some abysmal lows in that time.

Palace have been excellent, the scoreline flatters Utd.

Wonder if Van Tall Cemetery still reckons he should get another season? The level of delusion from Utd fans for this fellah was wild altogether

Munich apparently sniffing round ETH if/when he gets the sack. The man must have a great agent

Each team is next to the number of their currant points. In brackets after each is their potential max points total, and their goal difference.

Great table, fierce handy to see after each round of games.

Any reason why?

There's a few.

1 - up until now ETH had been working with the absolute shambles of a football structure the Glaziers had installed at the club. People in positions that had no business being in those roles and that was reflected in the performances on and off the pitch.
We have been going into summer transfer windows with a "we'll wait and see what comes up" approach that has seen us flither money away like there is no tomorrow.

Other teams have identified their summer targets and have backup plans if they can't get their main target to be able to move to another player with a similar profile to get that squad position filled and thus creating a stronger team overall. And a cohesive team that complements each other player profile.

Until that part is sorted. It won't matter what man is in the dugout - he is on a hiding to nothing.

ETH had this structure at Ajax and it worked but we signed him and didn't offer this structure and then expected something different

2 - the options being mentioned to replace ETH make little to no sense if we are looking to build something longer-term. Southgate, Potter, Tuchel so on… None of them in any shape look like the correct man for the job. We would be resetting the clock for the sake of it and then back at a similar place again in 18 months time.

The manager market looks very poor at the moment. There isn't a man sitting there I would be screaming yes he is the one to lead the change.

3- The main issue at the club is (and has been for years before ETH) the playing staff. We reward bang average with bumper new deals. We have a squad that was built on the ideas of 3 different managers who share very little in common philosophy wise. We have a mismatch of players who can't play together because their profiles suit different setups.
The best example of this in the squad is our 1st choice CB vs our 2nd choice CB. Martinez vs Maguire.
One is small so less effective in the air but excellent on the ball. Press resistant. Allows the team to sit further up the pitch and compress the space between midfield and defence.
The other is good in the air but slow. Not press resistant, drops the defensive line as he cannot cover the space in behind and helps create a lot of space between midfield and defence.

The team falls apart once there are a few injuries or players out of form as we have nothing close to the level of squad overall needed.
We seen last year ETH played a lot of the same players each week and the team done well for a period of time. Tailed off at the end of the season but there were signs there with the correct personnel that he could build something. Top 4 and a cup coming off the back of our worst every PL points tally is progress.

We got to the summer and once again had no actual plan. Signed some lads who we could. Ran into an injury crisis and the team fell apart.

It could be prime Fergie in the dugout - that squad of players aren't getting the club back to the top.

The only players in the squad we have to keep are Hojlund, Garnacho, Mainoo, Martinez and maybe Onana (but I would want him replaced eventually). Everyone else needs an upgrade or to be replaced now. That isn't going to happen overnight.

Now on ETH - he has made mistakes, massive mistakes. He could have changed things tactically more to grind out results perhaps to get over the line more this season. His record in the transfer market is shaky at best.

BUT, He needs support that he would get at every other top club in Europe. Utd need to come into the modern era. Once we have that side sorted we can start to judge the manager.

I don't know if ETH will turn it around or if he is the right man long-term. But I do feel we seen enough last season when he had the player profiles on the pitch that we can build something with the correct support around him.

Edit -
What I do know for certain is hitting reset every 18-24 months on the manager and allowing the players a "fresh slate" again under a new setup 100% does not work.
It resets the clock and fails to ignore the root cause of the issue so we are destined to once again end up back here.

But…. EtH demanded, contractually, control over transfers.

Antony was his call.
Onana was his call.
Amrabat was his call.
Martinez was his call.
He wanted Kane but is it any coincidence that Hojlund joined the SEG agency before signing for United?
I'd say Mount was as much a club signing, but EtH 100% signed off on it, cause if he didn't he would not have been signed. I reckon the same for Casemiro.
Malacia was his call.

Antony was called out, prior to signing, as a massive gamble based on needing to add a lot to his game. has been reported that the United scouting dept. rated him as a 20-30million player.

EtH, rightly or wrongly (wrongly imo…..) had ultimate authority over transfers, so the buck stops with him for the players we signed. Even after the INEOS deal went through EtH made a point, in press conferences, of stating he knows what is in his contract (regarding control over transfers). He doesn't want to give that up despite being rubbish at it.

As for Antony being deployed as a winger and not a wide forward… if only the manager who had him at Ajax was the guy at United… like c'mon.

EtH isn't to blame for having no capable centre backs available, but Onana, Mount, Casemiro, Eriksen, Hojlund, Antony and Garnacho are all his men and they looked lost and incapable of doing basic tasks yesterday. He has to take blame for that. For all that last season showed some signs of progression, we still shipped a series of heavy embarrassing defeats and things haven't improved this year. The club can't let him go into next season with less than a year on his contract and the sword of damocles hanging over his head.

What is it with Brazilian players going off the boil post 30? Casameiro another one by the looks who’s cooked.

Early in the season Martinez was played and the injury he got last season recurred and he ended up needing surgery, metatarsal iirc. He was out for several months then nearly first game back he got milled in a tackle and has been out since.

The metatarsal is a notorious injury for being relatively light but has a long recovery period. ETH can be blamed for alot but he has no case to answer on this one imo.

And i know Eriksens injury last season was due to a bad tackle, but I will always wonder why he was starting yet another game, at home to Reading, in the cup. His lack of squad utilization, throughout his time, has been terrible and part of the problem.

I don't see why the one year left thing is a negative at all.

I'd leave him there and clear out as many players as possible over the next season. Next season is transitional no matter what happens, so why not let him stay and take the hit for the some of the dirty work needed.

As noted, its not like there is any great candidate waiting in the wings. And a nice side effect is that the players don't get to sack yet another manager.

If he does well next season then grand, negotiate a new contract. If he doesn't, then off he goes with no big pay off to worry about. By then there may be a better candidate lined up and a lot of the necessary groundwork firmly in place for the real rebuild to begin.

Sacking him now in the hope that a miracle happens next season would be somewhat delusional to my mind, may as well let him have the final year.

Some people are talking Martinez like he’s VVD or Rio. He played when Utd lost 7-0 to Liverpool. He’s a losss when you have to play Evans or Varane. But he wouldn’t get into any of the top teams back lines.

Well he is available now. I'm sure you'd be estastic to have him back at Man Utd ☺️

What does that even mean? Sure VVD started in a game where Liverpool shipped 7 goals to Aston Villa 😂😂

Fully fit Martinez starts for all the top 6 except maybe Arsenal.

That’s probably the only time he’s taken a hammering playing for Liverpool. Martinez has taken several and he’s hardly played in half the games over the last two years. Like, he’s grand. But people are talking about him being some sort of Baresi type figure. He doesn’t get into the Arsenal, Liverpool or City teams. If you want to extend it to the top 6, that’s up to you. I was talking about the top teams as in the best teams in the league. But if you want to call Spurs a top team, I can’t reason with you!!

It's ok to say you didn't watch much of him last season or only seen him in a handful of games etc..

Anyone who's watched him regularly would struggle to hold that opinion.

City start Ake all the time - he's better than Ake by some distance. Stones and Dias on form though would be difficult to argue granted.

Liverpool - he partners VVD. He's better than all Liverpools other CB. Konate is good and I know that's the one pool fans will argue for. Yeah… No.

Arsenal - hard to argue he'd split up Saliba and Gabriel. They've been the best paring in the league.

Walks into the rest of the leagues teams

The only question around him is how he comes back from these injuries. If he's the same player after so long out.

He wouldn’t get in ahead of Romero or VdV at Tottenham either, bad and all as they are

Martinez does not get the kudos he deserves from rival fans because he plays for United and he's not over 6 foot but he is intrinsic to how United play under ETH. It's no coincidence that his absence from the team at the end of last season and for most of this one correlates with poor performances. I'm sure people will say that no one player should effect a team so much but those same people saw first hand how having a pivotal player missing disrupts everything ie VVD when he did his cruciate.