After two years and four months in charge, Manchester United have sacked Erik Ten Hag following their 2-1 defeat to West Ham. Despite delivering two trophies to Old Trafford, the Duthcman's time at the helm was repeatedly blighted with catastrophic defeats, and he leaves the club as the manager with the with the 2nd worst win percentage in the Premier League.
Adam Clery examines his entire reign, and looks at why the club - finally - decided enough was enough.
Adam Clery examines his entire reign, and looks at why the club - finally - decided enough was enough.
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00:00Hi, I'm Adam Cleary.
00:06You may remember me from such 442 YouTube videos as
00:09Why Eric Ten Haag's Man United isn't working yet
00:12Why Man United's problems are even worse than you think
00:14Why Man United are their own worst enemy
00:16Why Ten Haag's Man United can't defend
00:19Why Man United's biggest problem is Eric Ten Haag
00:21How Crystal Palace just destroyed Man United
00:24How Liverpool just destroyed Man United
00:26And why Man United got destroyed by Tottenham
00:29And...
00:33Yeah...
00:36So what went wrong with all of this then?
00:38Because this is pretty much how you're going to remember
00:40that Ten Haag-Man United side
00:42None of the new signings have really done enough yet this season
00:44to sort of be in that collective consciousness
00:47And these were the players that did the bulk of
00:50whatever the hell you want to call last season
00:52Well, the very short answer is there are a lot of things
00:55going on with this team and the setup and the individuals
00:58and the approach and none of them ever really were
01:02You would get the occasional purple patch
01:03the nice little seedlings poking their heads above the soil
01:06but then another football team would come along
01:09nobody even particularly spectacular
01:11we're talking Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Tottenham, Brentford, Sevilla
01:15teams like that and they would just dump a lorry load
01:19of steaming fertiliser back on the top of it
01:22And the fact as well that when reaching into the depths of my mind
01:25to try and think about Ten Haag's worst moments as Man United manager
01:29I didn't even immediately think of them getting beat 7-0 by Liverpool
01:34says...
01:35Well, it says something
01:36So yes, fundamentally this was Ten Haag's Man United
01:39You may have other players in your head that you remember more vividly
01:42Like technically, Jonny Evans actually started more games than Martinez
01:45in the back four so we probably should have him in there
01:48which again in of itself is quite telling
01:51But this lot, this rabble
01:53There is just from back to front no consistent identity
01:57There is talent, talent in abundance
01:59some of the best players in the Premier League on their day
02:02but as a collective unit the ideas Ten Haag tried to bring to them
02:07never ever stuck
02:08And I'll just take you through it from back to front to show you what I mean
02:12Andre Onana, that was his choice for goalkeeper
02:14he'd worked with him before
02:16you saw David De Gea's tweet when the announcement was made
02:20he wanted his own man and he went and got him
02:22Now of all the goalkeepers in the world, why do you buy Andre Onana?
02:27Arguably the best in possession goalkeeper
02:30the best goalkeeper with a ball at his feet besides me in the world
02:33But what Onana was famed for at both Ajax under Ten Haag and Inter Milan
02:38was when you are playing with very good possession
02:41you are dominating the opposition and the whole team pushes right up
02:45you've got a goalkeeper who'll do two things
02:47One, he will sweep up this entire area all by himself
02:50reducing the risk of balls going over the top and teams breaking in behind
02:54but more importantly, he is another option with the ball
02:58when you are recycling possession
02:59And I'm going to show you his heat map from his last season Inter Milan
03:02right, notice how much of this is outside of his box
03:06how freely he was coming into his own half
03:09into the sort of centre of the pitch
03:10occasionally even the opposition half to get on the ball and be another option
03:15And even if you only watched that Champions League final against Man City
03:18you'll have seen this, like they had no qualms whatsoever
03:22about giving him the ball as a playmaking member of that defence
03:26not just as a circulation option, not just to pass it from left to right
03:30Inter Milan would quite happily sit off when they couldn't find a way through
03:34allow the ball to go back to Onana
03:36and with the space that then created in behind
03:39allow him to pick players out, like he was a useful weapon
03:42And now, let's see Andre Onana's heat map from last season at Manchester United
03:48That's weird, isn't it?
03:49Andre Onana is suddenly not able to push up behind a really advanced back four
03:54Why do you think that is?
03:55Well, it is because of the quite frankly insane disconnect
03:59Ten Hag had between Man United as an attacking model and as a defensive one
04:04Like you would almost always set them up in this 4-2-3-1
04:07but how that would morph in possession is you'd have Casemiro
04:10usually sit in front of the defence
04:13Dalot, usually at left back, would push all the way up into the attacking thing
04:16the number eight would go and join there
04:17Fernandes would go join the centre forward
04:19You'd basically have this quite flat, quite unflexible six up front
04:24one midfielder behind them
04:25then the defence would sort of, not even very well, shuffle across into a three
04:29This wasn't like a fever dream or something
04:31The reason he wanted to do it was because he kept saying he wanted to make Man United
04:35the best transitional team in world football, or words to that effect
04:40Basically, he wanted lots of high turnovers, he wanted to be really aggressive
04:43he wanted to be hounding teams in their own half to get the ball, turn it over and score goals
04:48And, fair play, we can all do maths
04:50The more players you commit to that endeavour, theoretically, the better you will be at doing it
04:55But it does leave you a little light in behind
04:58And so, if your press is not that intense or that well structured
05:01or you get played through or just over the top
05:03these four players here have an awful lot of work to do to stop massive counter-attacks
05:09And what you need, right, to do that effectively
05:12is this player here to be incredibly mobile and brilliant at reading the game
05:16and excellent in the tackle, like a proper, just sort of athletic genius unit
05:21and these three to be full of pace
05:23But what tended to happen in reality was that this player
05:26ended up either being Kovemanu or Christian Eriksen, two brilliant technical players
05:30but who are also quite physically slight
05:32or Casemiro, an excellent defensive prospect
05:36but about as nimble across the ground as a portable toilet
05:39And then, to exacerbate matters, word of the day, APS paying for itself
05:43you had no pace, really, in these defenders
05:46Now, last season, this was most commonly Johnny Evans, Harry Maguire and Aaron Wan-Bissaka
05:51Now, Evans and Maguire, perfectly solid, capable defenders
05:54but no real pace to them whatsoever
05:56And while Wan-Bissaka was much quicker, if you're a unit, you're only as fast as your slowest players
06:01And Ten Hag did, understandably, constantly point to the amount of injuries they had at the back
06:05and that we couldn't get his preferred players in for a regular stretch
06:08But Martinez and Varane are not quicker by orders of magnitude
06:13and even when they did play, what is about to happen next kept happening
06:17Man United, so many times last season, were blighted by the following curse
06:22Because of the lack of pace in these defenders and the risk of a turnover
06:25they would actually drop loads, loads deeper than they really should
06:29of course, forcing Onana back into his own block
06:32You see, that point has now come full circle
06:34And what that meant, was that whoever this was, be it Casemiro or Mainu or Christian Eriksen
06:39became the footballing equivalent of Jon Snow in the mud, facing down the Boltons
06:45Almost every single week last season, you saw something like this
06:48where Man United's press either wasn't good enough or they just got played through or played over the top of
06:53and teams could break into this huge amount of space here
06:57with three or four players quite easily navigating around whoever this was
07:01Like, just to go back to that Game of Thrones analogy, right?
07:04Can you imagine if that scene, instead of Jon Snow suddenly having his own cavalry charge up behind him
07:09he turns around and what he actually sees are Jonny Evans and Harry Maguire running back to their own goal
07:16And Man United just conceded so, so, so many goals from these exact scenarios
07:21especially quite late on in games, where players would bring on attacking substitutes who had fresh legs
07:27and they would end up running at this defensive unit who, A, didn't have a lot of pace to begin with
07:32and B, had played 90 minutes and he just never seemed to learn from that
07:37And what you have here, I think really well sums up Eriksen Harg's time at Manchester United
07:41because it's just an enormous clash of footballing ideologies within the same team
07:47If you go back to last season's numbers, when it comes to high turnovers and these pressures that he was desperate for his team to do
07:52Man United were really good at them, like their numbers were comparable with Liverpool and Tottenham
07:57the high-pressing kings of English football
08:01That was an effective thing that worked
08:03But then you go deep, deep, deep into the battles of Opta and you look at the average positioning of their defensive line
08:08compared to other teams around the Premier League
08:11and it was pretty much sandwiched between Burnley and Luton
08:15And this was clearly something they looked to address this summer
08:17like Lenny Yoro should be a massive fix for this
08:20De Ligt's obviously slightly better in these situations than a lot of other players
08:24but do they look much better for having made these changes?
08:27I've not even seen Yoro really in a Man United shirt
08:31No
08:31And you will undoubtedly have seen this stat or something like it over the last few months
08:37when it comes to the amount of chances they allowed their opponents to have
08:40which I think is a really good measure of the control you have of games
08:44Like your attempts on goal, yeah, okay, that's kind of useful
08:47but you might just be springing counter-attacks, it might all be a bit frenetic
08:50and possession, yeah, that is a good indicator
08:52but teams do have possession for possession's sake
08:55What everybody's trying to do ultimately, stop the opposition doing anything
08:59so it's, yeah
09:00In terms of the amount of chances Manchester United, playing this way last season
09:04were allowing their opponents to have, they were second bottom in the league
09:09They conceded only 11 chances less than possibly one of the worst Premier League teams
09:15we've ever seen, Sheffield United
09:17and 369 more than Manchester City
09:22And if you were sitting there quite understandably thinking like
09:24how can you be that far down the table for chances conceded and not somehow get relegated?
09:29Well, first off, individual quality, you'll still score plenty of goals
09:34you'll restrict those chances as best you can with much, much better players
09:37but also, and this one's ironic
09:40I've seen a couple of people using Man Utd's current XG stats
09:44as sort of why it's slightly harsh he's lost his job
09:47Like they should have scored about five or six more goals already this season than they have
09:51and if they had got those, maybe they kept him in a job
09:53that Dallo chance certainly comes to mind
09:56Do you know who was the worst for that last season?
09:59If you are one of the many people who care about XG
10:02Manchester United's opponent last season underperformed by 12 goals
10:09The quality of the chances they created against them versus the actual number of goals scored
10:12Manchester United could realistically have expected to concede another 12
10:17which if they had, would have put them just above Burnley last season
10:22in terms of the number of goals conceded
10:23and if you remember what happened to Burnley, they got relegated
10:27So yes, that's why they were just a complete mess defensively last season
10:30but the problems in attack were also existing
10:33So I already mentioned when it came to the number of high turnovers
10:36Manchester United were actually very effective at that under Eric Tenhaal
10:39comparable to Liverpool and Tottenham who were undeniably regarded as being very, very good at it
10:44but when you take that number of high turnovers
10:47and you look at how they ranked for that last season
10:49then you look at the number of goals they scored from high turnovers last season
10:53I don't know if I'm going to have time today to find a womp womp noise on YouTube
10:57so if I haven't, womp womp
11:00and I was actually thinking about this all morning
11:01like how can you explain the disconnect between how good you are at turning the ball over
11:05and how bad you are at scoring from those turnovers
11:07and the best conclusion I can draw, right, is it's purely instructional
11:12Man United play this banana system with these six players all in good proximity to the goal
11:16and trying to win the ball back and as a result, simply by presence of numbers
11:21they were doing that quite a lot
11:22but such is the lack of suitability for these players to play that kind of system
11:26and more importantly, the way they were set up to then go and do it
11:30that it did not materialise into anything worth a button
11:35Just going to pop them back into the 4-2-3-1, right
11:37so you can see what some of these little issues were
11:40Right, Anthony, he's a good example
11:41Let's start there, they spent £100m on him, Tenhaal worked with him at Ajax
11:45and what was he before he was a living meme and a joke and a tiny, tiny little baby man
11:50he was a right-sided attacking midfielder who was left-footed
11:55and wants to come into this area here so he can shoot and cross and do stuff
11:58Now, Football Tactics 101 says if you have an inverted winger, as he was
12:02then what you need is a full-back to make these overlapping runs
12:06to, A, give you an option in this space, but more importantly, to pull defenders away
12:10so they don't just double up on him when he goes into the centre
12:12But how did Tenhaal set Man United up last season?
12:15Well, this was usually Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who was instructed to be part of a back three
12:20because they were actually moving Diogo Dalot up on the other side
12:23There is no overlap here, so he now cannot do that, he has to stay wide, where he's no good
12:28Then, of course, on the other side, you've got Marcus Rashford, who starts wide
12:31but wants to be moving into the centre in a similar but different way to Anthony
12:35But you've got Dalot there now, who's right-footed, who is only effective
12:39if he can then come back inside himself and cross or play balls in
12:44so now you've got two players who want to be in the same area
12:47And even when that didn't happen, Marcus Rashford wants to be sort of moving into the centre-forward position
12:52from this area, but you've gone and spent loads of money on Rasmus Hoyland
12:55who is not a false nine, who drops out of that position and creates space
12:59He wants to be on the shoulder of the last defender, he's exactly where Rashford wants to be
13:04But then, OK, you might say we've got this proper centre-forward
13:06now these three are just going to have to get over it
13:09He wants to be getting on the end of crosses, he wants to be finishing off these moves
13:13so we have to get to the by-line and put crosses in
13:15But you've got a left-footer here, you've got a striker here
13:20and a right-footed full-back here, and your other full-backs all the way back here
13:25So Man United hardly put any crosses in last season
13:28They did not create the sort of chances that a player like Hoyland needs
13:33And I could stand here for an hour just talking about all the various small little contradictions
13:38and inconsistencies that Ten Hag physically put in to this Manchester United team
13:44And I mean, they scored plenty of goals still, like they still had a threat
13:48but that's more to do with the individual quality of the players involved
13:52You so rarely saw them score a goal, it felt like a really well-practised passing move
13:57I'm just going to finish with the biggest problem of all, right
13:59because you may remember, if you're a Man United fan, that throbbing, drumming
14:03I don't know if they're words, 4-0 they got at Brentford right after Ten Hag had taken the job, right?
14:09Well, these are Man United's average positions for that afternoon
14:13I can't see them, but I'm pretty willing to bet they kind of line up with that 3-1-6 shape we talked earlier
14:20that was mad and didn't work and they never had the personnel for
14:23Now, you may have to use your imagination here ever so slightly
14:25but this is Christian Eriksen on his lonesome in the middle
14:28You can imagine how well that was going to go against a very mobile Brentford side
14:32These three defenders, there's clearly more defensive focus for them and more attacking focus for this one
14:37and everyone else, just a bit of a mess further up the pitch
14:41just to sort of show you that there's six of them all doing that job
14:44Right, we got it, we've seen it, we locked that one in
14:47This is Man United's average position map from the West Ham United game
14:51Ten Hag's last match in charge
14:53and it's slightly different, but the principles are all still here
14:56like Mazraoui's now part of the back three, Diallo's pushing up into the attacking line
15:00Casemiro's all on his lonesome right in the middle
15:03and all of their slots, that's their job
15:06high press, win the ball, do the Ten Hag stuff
15:09There are well over two years and £630 million between those two games
15:16and it's just the same problem, the same total lack of identity
15:20the same conflicting ideologies all manifesting in the same team at the same time
15:25Like, Ten Hag is clearly an intelligent guy and a talented manager
15:31and you wouldn't have done what he'd done before Man United were these things not true
15:35but it just categorically has not worked at this club, possibly at this level
15:41maybe just in this league
15:43and in two years, he never ever fixed that
15:46So yes, there you go, that's why Eric Ten Hag failed quite spectacularly
15:51and expensively at Manchester United
15:53and knowing my luck this week, they will have appointed Ruben Amoron
15:57the second I get out of that studio
16:01Oh well, I will obviously be doing a video on that at some point
16:04but these take a whole day to film and edit
16:08and them doing this yesterday afternoon when I was knee deep in Arsenal and Liverpool
16:13that serves me right for all the times I've called them
16:17Anyway though, far more important than whatever I've got to say
16:20Are you a Manchester United fan? How do you feel about this?
16:24The comment section is down below, I will be in there wading through stuff
16:28I would love to know if this feels like it's been long overdue
16:31Is it a relief? Is it kind of unfair?
16:33Because they have been better this season even if the results haven't necessarily been
16:38I would love to know your thoughts, your feelings
16:40any lyrics, verse, poetry you have deep in your heart
16:43Let's share it, let's get it out there
16:44Usual quick attempts to sell you stuff before I go
16:46The limited edition, very limited, there's only a few left
16:49442 30th anniversary shirt made by Admiral, who are legends just like us
16:53That's available from the website, there will be a link in the description for that
16:57It is £44.20, I got told off for just guessing £42
17:01It's gone up in the time since I made the last video in my heart
17:04And the 30th anniversary issue of the magazine is beautiful
17:08I think it's the best thing we've ever made
17:09It's about the history of 442, but also it's still a football magazine
17:13So if you don't care that we had a birthday, there's still loads of stuff in there
17:16You can get me across all the social media, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y
17:19As ever, you know the rules, if you think you're too good for the comment section
17:22Just message me there, on X, on Instagram, I don't mind
17:26Nothing else really goes on in my life
17:27You can get the 442, their socials are in the corner of the video as well
17:30Please do subscribe to the channel, because we need subscribers
17:34Because it proves to everybody, my colleagues and my enemies
17:37That we are growing, and that makes me happy
17:41Until next time though, I can't believe I'm making this video in October 2024
17:48As opposed to literally any other month last season
17:52But that's the way it goes, goodbye to you
17:56And if you're watching, Eric, goodbye also
18:00It's been...
18:03It's been...