• 6 hours ago
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.
Transcript
00:00So what went wrong with all of this then?
00:02Because this is pretty much how you're going to remember that 10-hog Man Utd side.
00:06None of the new signings have really done enough yet this season to sort of be in that collective consciousness
00:11and these were the players that did the bulk of whatever the hell you want to call last season.
00:16Well, the very short answer is there are a lot of things going on with this team
00:20and the set-up and the individuals and the approach and none of them ever really were.
00:26You would get the occasional purple patch, the nice little seedlings poking their heads above the soil
00:30but then another football team would come along, nobody even particularly spectacular
00:35we're talking Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Tottenham, Brentford, Sevilla, teams like that
00:40and they would just dump a lorry load of steaming fertiliser back on the top of it.
00:46And the fact as well that when reaching into the depths of my mind
00:49to try and think about 10-hog's worst moments as Man Utd manager
00:54I didn't even immediately think of them getting beat 7-0 by Liverpool says...
00:59Well, it says something.
01:01So yes, fundamentally this was 10-hog's Man Utd.
01:03You may have other players in your head that you remember more vividly
01:06like technically Johnny Evans actually started more games than Martinez in the back four
01:10so we probably should have him in there which again in of itself is quite telling
01:15but this lot, this rabble, there is just from back to front no consistent identity.
01:21There is talent, talent in abundance, some of the best players in the Premier League on their day
01:26but as a collective unit, the ideas 10-hog tried to bring to them never ever stuck.
01:33And I'll just take you through it from back to front to show you what I mean, right?
01:36Andre Onana, that was his choice for goalkeeper, he'd worked with him before
01:40you saw David De Gea's tweet when the announcement was made
01:44he wanted his own man and he went and got him.
01:46Now of all the goalkeepers in the world, why do you buy Andre Onana?
01:51Arguably the best in possession goalkeeper, the best goalkeeper with a ball at his feet
01:56besides me in the world.
01:58But what Onana was famed for at both Ajax, under 10-hog and Inter Milan
02:02was when you are playing with very good possession, you are dominating the opposition
02:07and the whole team pushes right up, you've got a goalkeeper who'll do two things.
02:11One, he will sweep up this entire area all by himself, reducing the risk of balls going over the top
02:17and teams breaking in behind, but more importantly, he is another option with the ball
02:22when you are recycling possession.
02:23And I'm going to show you his heat map from his last season at Inter Milan, right?
02:27Notice how much of this is outside of his box, how freely he was coming into his own half
02:33into the sort of centre of the pitch, occasionally even the opposition half
02:37to get on the ball and be another option.
02:39And even if you only watched that Champions League final against Man City, you'll have seen this
02:44like they had no qualms whatsoever about giving him the ball as a playmaking member of that defence
02:50not just as a circulation option, not just to pass it from left to right.
02:54Inter Milan would quite happily sit off when they couldn't find a way through
02:59allow the ball to go back to Onana and with the space that then created in behind
03:03allow him to pick players out, like he was a useful weapon.
03:07And now, let's see Andre Onana's heat map from last season at Manchester United.
03:12That's weird, isn't it?
03:13Andre Onana is suddenly not able to push up behind a really advanced back four.
03:18Why do you think that is?
03:19Well, it is because of the quite frankly insane disconnect Ten Hag had
03:25between Man United as an attacking model and as a defensive one.
03:28Like you would almost always set them up in this 4-2-3-1
03:31but how that would morph in possession is you'd have Casemiro usually sit in front of the defence
03:37Dalot, usually at left back, would push all the way up into the attacking thing
03:40then No. 8 would go and join there, Fernandes would go join the centre-forward
03:43you'd basically have this quite flat, quite unflexible six up front
03:48one midfielder behind them
03:50then the defence would sort of, not even very well, shuffle across into a three.
03:54This wasn't like a fever dream or something.
03:55The reason he wanted to do it was because he kept saying he wanted to make Man United
03:59the best transitional team in world football, in words to that effect.
04:04Basically, he wanted lots of high turnovers, he wanted to be really aggressive
04:07he wanted to be hounding teams in their own half to get the ball, turn it over and score goals.
04:12And, fair play, we can all do maths.
04:14The more players you commit to that endeavour, theoretically, the better you will be at doing it.
04:20But it does leave you a little light in behind.
04:22And so, if your press is not that intense or that well-structured
04:25or you get played through or just over the top
04:27these four players here have an awful lot of work to do to stop massive counter-attacks.
04:33And what you need, right, to do that effectively
04:36is this player here to be incredibly mobile and brilliant at reading the game
04:40and excellent in the tackle, like a proper, just sort of, athletic genius unit.
04:45And these three to be full of pace.
04:48But what tended to happen in reality was that this player
04:50ended up either being Kobe Meunier or Christian Eriksen, two brilliant technical players
04:55but who are also quite physically slight.
04:57Or, Casemiro, an excellent defensive prospect
05:00but about as nimble across the ground as a portable toilet.
05:03And then, to exacerbate matters, word of the day apps paying for itself
05:07you had no pace, really, in these defenders.
05:11Now, last season this was most commonly Johnny Evans, Harry Maguire and Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
05:15Now, Evans and Maguire, perfectly solid, capable defenders
05:18but no real pace to them whatsoever.
05:20And while Wan-Bissaka was much quicker
05:22if you're a unit, you're only as fast as your slowest players.
05:25And Ten Hag did understandably constantly point to the amount of injuries they had at the back
05:29and that we couldn't get his preferred players in for a regular stretch.
05:32But Martínez and Varane are not quicker by orders of magnitude
05:37and even when they did play, what is about to happen next kept happening.
05:41Man United, so many times last season, were blighted by the following curse.
05:46Because of the lack of pace in these defenders and the risk of a turnover
05:50they would actually drop loads, loads deeper than they really should.
05:54Of course, forcing Onana back into his own box.
05:56You see, that point has now come full circle.
05:58And what that meant was that whoever this was
06:00be it Casemiro or Maneu or Christian Eriksen
06:03became the footballing equivalent of Jon Snow in the mud facing down the Boltons.
06:09Almost every single week last season you saw something like this
06:12where Man United's press either wasn't good enough
06:15or they just got played through or played over the top of
06:17and teams could break into this huge amount of space here
06:21with three or four players quite easily navigating around whoever this was.
06:26Like, just to go back to that Game of Thrones analogy, right?
06:28Can you imagine if that scene, instead of Jon Snow suddenly having his own cavalry
06:33charge up behind him, he turns around and what he actually sees
06:36are Jonny Evans and Harry Maguire running back to their own goal.
06:40And Man United just conceded so, so, so many goals from these exact scenarios
06:45especially quite late on in games
06:47where players would bring on attacking substitutes who had fresh legs
06:51and they would end up running at this defensive unit
06:54who A, didn't have a lot of pace to begin with
06:57and B, had played 90 minutes and he just never seemed to learn from that.
07:01And what you have here I think really well sums up Eric ten Haag's time at Manchester United
07:05because it's just an enormous clash of footballing ideologies within the same team.
07:11If you go back to last season's numbers, when it comes to high turnovers
07:14and these pressures that he was desperate for his team to do
07:17Man United were really good at them.
07:18Like, their numbers were comparable with Liverpool and Tottenham
07:22the high-pressing kings of English football.
07:25That was an effective thing that worked.
07:27But then you go deep, deep, deep into the battles of Opta
07:29and you look at the average positioning of their defensive line
07:33compared to other teams around the Premier League
07:35and it was pretty much sandwiched between Burnley and Luton.
07:39And this was clearly something they looked to address this summer
07:41like Lenny Yoro should be a massive fix for this
07:44De Ligt's obviously slightly better in these situations than a lot of other players
07:48but do they look much better for having made these changes?
07:51I've not even seen Yoro really in a Man United shirt.
07:55No.
07:55And you will undoubtedly have seen this stat or something like it
08:00over the last few months
08:01when it comes to the amount of chances they allowed their opponents to have
08:04which I think is a really good measure of the control you have of games.
08:08Like, your attempts on goal, yeah, okay, that's kind of useful
08:11but you might just be springing counter-attacks, it might all be a bit frenetic.
08:14And possession, yeah, that is a good indicator
08:17but teams do have possession for possession's sake.
08:19What everybody's trying to do ultimately, stop the opposition doing anything.
08:23So, it's, yeah.
08:25In terms of the amount of chances Manchester United playing this way last season
08:28were allowing their opponents to have, they were second bottom in the league.
08:33They conceded only 11 chances less
08:37than possibly one of the worst Premier League teams we've ever seen, Sheffield United
08:41and 369 more than Manchester City.
08:46And if you were sitting there quite understandably thinking like
08:48how can you be that far down the table for chances conceded and not somehow get relegated?
08:54Well, first off, individual quality, you'll still score plenty of goals
08:58you'll restrict those chances as best you can with much, much better players
09:02but also, and this one's ironic
09:04I've seen a couple of people using Man United's current XG stats
09:08as sort of why it's slightly harsh he's lost his job.
09:11Like, they should have scored about five or six more goals already this season than they have
09:15and if they had got those, maybe they kept him in a job.
09:17That Dallo chance certainly comes to mind.
09:20Do you know who was the worst for that last season?
09:23If you are one of the many people who care about XG
09:26Manchester United's opponent last season underperformed by 12 goals.
09:33The quality of the chances they created against them versus the actual number of goals scored
09:36Manchester United could realistically have expected to concede another 12
09:41which if they had, would have put them just above Burnley last season
09:46in terms of the number of goals conceded.
09:47And if you remember what happened to Burnley, they got relegated.
09:51So yes, that's why they were just a complete mess defensively last season
09:54but the problems in attack were also existing.
09:57So I already mentioned when it came to the number of high turnovers
10:00Manchester United were actually very effective at that under Eric Tenhaal
10:03comparable to Liverpool and Tottenham who were undeniably regarded as being very, very good at it.
10:08But when you take that number of high turnovers
10:11and you look at how they ranked for that last season
10:13and you look at the number of goals they scored from high turnovers last season
10:17I don't know if I'm going to have time today to find a womp womp noise on YouTube.
10:21So if I haven't, womp womp.
10:24And I was actually thinking about this all morning
10:26like how can you explain the disconnect between how good you are at turning the ball over
10:29and how bad you are at scoring from those turnovers?
10:32And the best conclusion I can draw, right, is it's purely instructional.
10:36Man United play this banana system with these six players all in good proximity to the goal
10:40and trying to win the ball back.
10:41And as a result, simply by presence of numbers, they were doing that quite a lot.
10:46But such is the lack of suitability for these players to play that kind of system
10:51and more importantly, the way they were set up to then go and do it
10:54that it did not materialise into anything worth a button.
10:59Just going to pop them back into the 4-2-3-1, right
11:02so you can see what some of these little issues were, right.
11:04Anthony, he's a good example.
11:05Let's start there.
11:06They spent £100 million on him, Tenhaal worked with him at Ajax.
11:09And what was he before he was a living meme and a joke and a tiny, tiny little baby man?
11:15He was a right-sided attacking midfielder who was left-footed
11:19and wants to come into this area here so he can shoot and cross and do stuff.
11:23Now, Football Tactics 101 says if you have an inverted winger, as he was,
11:27then what you need is a full-back to make these overlapping runs
11:30to A, give you an option in this space, but more importantly, to pull defenders away
11:34so they don't just double up on him when he goes into the centre.
11:36But how did Tenhaal set Bayern United up last season?
11:39Well, this was usually Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who was instructed to be part of a back three
11:44because they were actually moving Diogo Dalot up on the other side.
11:47There is no overlap here, so he now cannot do that.
11:50He has to stay wide, where he's no good.
11:53Then, of course, on the other side, you've got Marcus Rashford, who starts wide
11:55but wants to be moving into the centre in a similar but different way to Anthony.
11:59But you've got Dalot there now, who's right-footed, who is only effective
12:04if he can then come back inside himself and cross or play balls in.
12:08So now you've got two players who want to be in the same area.
12:11And even when that didn't happen, Marcus Rashford wants to be sort of moving
12:14into the centre-forward position from this area.
12:17But you've gone and spent loads of money on Rasmus Heuland, who is not a false nine.
12:21He drops out of that position and creates space.
12:23He wants to be on the shoulder of the last defender.
12:25He's exactly where Rashford wants to be.
12:28But then, OK, you might say we've got this proper centre-forward.
12:31Now these three are just going to have to get over it.
12:33He wants to be getting on the end of crosses.
12:35He wants to be finishing off these moves.
12:37So we have to get to the byline and put crosses in.
12:40But you've got a left-footer here.
12:42You've got a striker here and a right-footed full-back here.
12:46And your other full-backs all the way back here.
12:49So Man United hardly put any crosses in last season.
12:52They did not create the sort of chances that a player like Heuland needs.
12:57And I could stand here for an hour just talking about all the various
13:01small little contradictions and inconsistencies
13:04that 10 Hog physically put in to this Manchester United team.
13:08And I mean, they scored plenty of goals still, like they still had a threat.
13:12But that's more to do with the individual quality of the players involved.
13:16You so rarely saw them score a goal.
13:18It felt like a really well-practised passing move.
13:21I'm just going to finish with the biggest problem of all, right?
13:23Because you may remember, if you're a Man United fan, that throbbing, drumming,
13:28I don't know if they're words for Neil, they got at Brentford
13:31right after 10 Hog taking the job, right?
13:33Well, these are Man United's average positions for that afternoon.
13:38I can't see them, but I'm pretty willing to bet they kind of line up
13:41with that 3-1-6 shape we talked earlier.
13:45That was mad and didn't work and they never had the personnel for.
13:47Now you may have to use your imagination here ever so slightly,
13:50but this is Christian Eriksen on his lonesome in the middle.
13:52You can imagine how well that was going to go against a very mobile Brentford side.
13:56These three defenders, there's clearly more defensive focus for them
13:59and more attacking focus for this one.
14:02And everyone else, just a bit of a mess further up the pitch
14:05to sort of show you the six of them all doing that job.
14:08Right, we got it, we've seen it, we locked that one in.
14:11This is Man United's average position map from the West Ham United game.
14:1510 Hog's last match in charge.
14:17And it's slightly different, but the principles are all still here.
14:20Like Maserau, he's now part of the back three.
14:22Diallo's pushing up into the attacking line.
14:24And Casemiro's all on his lonesome right in the middle.
14:27In all of their slots, that's their job.
14:30High press, win the ball, do the 10 Hog stuff.
14:33They're on well over two years and £630 million between those two games.
14:40And it's just the same problem, the same total lack of identity,
14:44the same conflicting ideologies all manifesting in the same team at the same time.
14:50Like, 10 Hog is clearly an intelligent guy and a talented manager.
14:55And you wouldn't have done what he'd done before Man United
14:57were these things not true.
14:59But it just categorically has not worked at this club,
15:04possibly at this level, maybe just in this league.
15:07And in two years, he never, ever fixed that.
15:11So yes, there you go.
15:12That's why Eric 10 Hog failed quite spectacularly
15:15and expensively at Manchester United.
15:17And knowing my luck this week,
15:19they will have appointed Ruben Amoron the second I get out of that studio.
15:25Oh, well, I will obviously be doing a video on that at some point.
15:28But these take a whole day to, like, film and edit.
15:32And then doing this yesterday afternoon when I was knee deep in Arsenal and Liverpool,
15:38that serves me right for all the times I've called him.
15:41Anyway, though, far more important than whatever I've got to say,
15:44are you a Manchester United fan?
15:46How do you feel about this?
15:49The comment section is down below.
15:50I will be in there sort of wading through stuff.
15:53I would love to know if this feels like it's been long overdue.
15:55Is it a relief?
15:56Is it kind of unfair?
15:57Because they have been better this season,
16:00even if the results haven't necessarily been.
16:02I would love to know your thoughts, your feelings,
16:04any lyrics, verse, poetry you have deep in your heart.
16:07Let's share it. Let's get it out there.
16:09Usual quick attempts to sell you stuff before I go.
16:11The limited edition, very limited, there's only a few left,
16:13442 30th anniversary shirt made by Admiral, who are legends just like us.
16:17That's available from the website.
16:19There will be a link in the description for that.
16:21It is £44.20.
16:23I got told off for just guessing £42.
16:25It's gone up in the time since I made the last video in my heart.
16:29And the 30th anniversary issue of the magazine is beautiful.
16:32I think it's the best thing we've ever made.
16:33It's about the history of 442, but also still a football magazine.
16:37So if you don't care that we had a birthday,
16:39there's still loads of stuff in there.
16:41You can get me across all the social media at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, as ever.
16:44You know the rules.
16:45If you think you're too good for the comment section,
16:46just message me there on X on Instagram.
16:49I don't mind.
16:50Nothing else really goes on in my life.
16:51You can get 442.
16:53Their socials are in the corner of the video as well.
16:54Please do subscribe to the channel because we need subscribers
16:58because it proves to everybody, my colleagues and my enemies,
17:01that we are growing and that makes me happy.
17:05Until next time, though,
17:07I can't believe I'm making this video in October 2024
17:12as opposed to literally any other month last season.
17:16But that's the way it goes.
17:19Goodbye to you.
17:21And if you're watching, Eric, goodbye also.
17:24It's been...
17:27It's been...

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