I’ve seen many fans and pundits make this claim. Do you think Manchester United players aren’t playing as well as they can in hope to get Ten Hag sacked. I’ve seen this argument used against Rashford as people since he’s got his new contract he’s just content to get his money and play as well.
Though Hoijund has claimed the players all back Ten Hag still https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/09/erik-ten-hag-manchester-united-squad-backing-rasmus-hojlund
No. They were up 2-0 last night and playing comfortably before the red. A lot of the players looked happy and determined as well. So much is being made about Man United and ETH, people just forget they’ve had problems with injuries, there have been controversies about players outside of football, the club decided to give Evans a longer contract when he was initially only brought in for pre season because Maguire couldn’t decide if he wanted to leave or not.
Does anyone remember how bad Liverpool were a couple seasons ago when they had their own injury crisis? There was a period they lost 6 out of 7 games and 5 of those losses came at home and everyone was just using the excuse of oh there are injuries in the team it’s difficult.
But when it’s Man United, who finished 3rd last year with this manager, won a cup with this manager and reached another cup final with this manager, all of a sudden it’s the manager who is wrong?
I know Klopp had more achieved, distinct style of play, good recruitment system, won the league and champions league. But I still think ETH deserves the same treatment. There were some awful moments last season they took some hammerings, I picked reaching the FA Cup final as a highlight but of course losing it wasn’t great but there was enough in that season to suggest he had done a good job.
Everyone says oh sack the manager but what do they actually think that will achieve?
I get so frustrated that so many fans try to mitigate the effect that an injury crisis can have on a team unless it’s their team, maybe it’s because I’m a Liverpool fan and we seem to get really unlucky where our injuries just concentrate in a certain area of the field instead of spreading out evenly, this was particularly the case a few seasons ago with the defence and last season with the mid field.
I might be enjoying the torrid form that United is in but I find the level of mockery directed towards ETH to be pretty excessive with how badly decimated their defence has been, especially considering that it left them without their entire first choice back four for a while.
Well you hit the nail on the head. It’s just a lack of empathy with other fans or the desire to mock rivals supersedes empathy.
ETH isn’t the joke Reddit has claimed, or the media for that matter, but so much context will always go missing. Saliba is constantly referred to as one of the best CB in the world and the best of his age, yet his absence the entire final run of the season is ignored in the bottle narrative. Nvm Tomiyasu and others injured as well.
Same with everyone shutting on Liverpool last year but you’ll notice as soon as players were coming back from injury it was their usual deadly selves.
And now it’s Man United. Martinez is top five defenders in the league, he’s gone, the entire starting back line questionable. Of course they’ll struggle. But it won’t stop the mocking and to be fair, it hasn’t stopped me from giving my cousins and mates a hard time about their form.
You forget that when other teams have a long term injury crisis it’s an unlucky season for them but when United have 16 first team players injured we are expected to still be a top team
I can tell you that we didn’t get that courtesy, the number of people saying that Liverpool was finished or Klopp had been found out in 20/21 when we lost most of our defence and much of our midfield was baffling, it was as if they couldn’t comprehend that losing half our midfield and having to use our 5th and 6th choice center back options for a large amount of the season was not going to let us be competitive.
Nobody was asking for Klopp’s head though. ETH is on the brink of being sacked
That could be due to a number of factors, first of all Klopp had a huge amount of good will from the Liverpool fans built up which ETH hasn’t had the time to do yet. ETH also has a habit of making some fairly strange decisions both in game and in the starting 11 even for positions that don’t have bay injury worries which provides ammunition for anyone who doesn’t want him, he also seems to struggle a bit with man management which for a team that has so many divas in it can cause issues. Regardless of that I think that anyone who wants him sacked is making a rash decision.
I do remember this to be fair. I think it was more fans than media though. Not LFC fans but opposition fans. I mean I’m sure we could pull up old clips from around this time from the likes of Sky and re-educate ourselves on how it truly went down, but I don’t recall Klopp getting anywhere near the kind of treatment ETH is getting.
And like I outlined in my comment I am aware Klopp had a few good seasons under his belt at Liverpool to fall back on so naturally people would have more faith in him to turn it around. But I also think that ETH is just an easy target having been at the club for one season prior to this one.
I will also admit that I do believe there are things ETH could do better, but Man United right now is a tough gig for anyone. If United are still this bad when/if they resolve their injury and off field issues then only then will I even think about putting a large amount of blame on the manager.
I mean he was even called out last week or whenever it was for being disappointed in Rashford for going out partying after losing the derby when this is the same kind of thing the Holy Lord himself, can’t do no wrong, Sir Alex Ferguson would have probably beat the shit out of Rashford for lol. But no, then it would be praised. There’s an awful agenda against ETH and it comes from very little
I should have specified that I was more referring to fans, the media was not too hard on Klopp but I think that a lot of that can be attributed to the level of support behind Klopp from the Liverpool fan base, if there isn’t a push for him to go from the fans then the clicks aren’t there for articles calling for his sacking, ETH on the other hand has a divided fan base and that drives views towards any pundit that wants him out.