The Mailbox discusses how similar Ten Hag and Guardiola actually are. Also: Firmino, De Jong, Ronaldo, Lionesses and the Championship.
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Ten Hag’s approach
Agree with Andy D on the need for patience and understanding with regards United results this season. I too expect at least a few batterings whilst Ten Hag slowly changes the team and agree that this doesn’t mean the process is flawed. However from what I’ve read the comment of ETH playing a similar style to Pep is a little wide of the mark.
There’s a great article on the ‘Umir Talks’ blog regarding this very comparison. Some of the tactical stuff is a bit dense for me but he basically posits there are two extremes of tactical thinking, player as the most important (think Ancelotti) vs system as the most important (think Sarri). He suggests ETH is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes whilst Pep is more toward the Sarri end. In other words ETH is more willing to change his system to fit the players whereas Pep is more inclined to use players out of their natural position to suit the system.
ETH has definitely been influenced by Pep having worked with him at Bayern for a number of years, though I think its fair to say Pep has had a generational effect on the game as a whole so there won’t be many younger managers who haven’t been influenced by him to some degree. Yet I think the greater tactical flexibility of ETH will suit United more having come off years of player orientated Ole ball and with players like Bruno in the team who seems to be the antithesis to positional discipline. It also goes someway to explaining his apparent obsession with the De Jong transfer, focusing on a key player that allows him to use his preferred system.
Not that I think any of this will help smooth the bumps United will almost certainly encounter this season but it does offer a little reassurance as I believe more pragmatism and less pandering would surely be beneficial for this squad.
Dave, Manchester
Reluctant Red Devils
As a Man Utd fan the ongoing De Jong saga is a particularly frustrating episode, though maybe not for the reasons you might expect. Over the last couple of summers, Man Utd have repeatedly dragged out transfers because of an initial reluctance to pay the money the selling club wanted – we saw this for Sancho and Maguire. This time, the protracted saga is being drawn out by the simple fact that De Jong doesn’t want to sign…
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