If I were to just type that United are playing badly some United lifelong supporter is going to barge in whose father was a United fan, whose grandfather was a United fan, whose great grandfather was a United fan and tell you that the stats show that Ten Hag has scored more points than SAF or Klopp or Mourinho or whoever. When I see such people and there are millions of them worldwide and especially in the UK I automatically wonder if you have to be low IQ to be a football fan. You don’t need stats to tell you that United are terrible. If you have eyes you can see that they are scrapping through and not heading in the right direction. On the other hand if you can understand football you could have figured out that Chelsea on the other hand for all their defeats are headed in the right direction. They might be down in the points table but there is a plan that is slowly working at Chelsea. If you just give it time they will be in the reckoning sooner or later. How is something as basic as this not evident to people.
I think the statistics tell that story as well, you just have to dive deeper. I think that nowadays most people have a functional illiteracy to math and statistics : they know the words but misunderstand the meaning. A lot of people know how points ranking is or xG, but they can’t tell you what the story behind it is.
You start with how is it that people have so little understanding of football and proceed to slander Ten Hag and his style of football without looking at the current situation he’s in? He is not the best, he make questionable subs sometimes and can’t manage to hold a lead. He also hasn’t recruited well. But… You haven’t factored in the major injury crisis ongoing at the club since the start of the season and the problems with players and the SJR changes. No club as big as Man United should give the manager complete power on signing players. He’s not an expert in scouting, recruitment or statistics. Just because the owners make big money signings doesn’t mean they are the right signings. Plus EtH wanted De Jong, Antony, Kane, Kim Min Jae, Frimpong, Gakpo, Mount and Rabiot. He only got two of them and they were arguably the least important ones on the list.
United haven’t played the same squad two gameweeks in a row for more than a year. We have had major injuries to Shaw, Malacia, Varane, Lisandro, Mainoo, Amad, Wan Bissaka, Mount, Casemiro and several other players like Evans, Maguire, Hojlund, Eriksen, Amrabaat.
He also has had to deal with CR7, Antony, Sancho and Greenwood situations.
Add all that to the media pressure and the overall pressure that comes from being Man United boss, every little detail is scrutinised and covered.
Pochettino didn’t have to deal with all this. He has stable and supportive owners who have signed a shitload of talented young players and he has time. If Chelsea placed 17th he wouldn’t be sacked.
Most of the Man United fans including me will back EtH till the end especially after he led us to a trophy and 3rd on the back of one of our worst seasons in PL era.
You talk about IQs and then proceed to make a biased and absolute dogshit take on Man United. How is something as basic as this not evident to you? Maybe it’s your IQ.
United has had awful injuries and had quite a lot of awful VAR decisions. The only one that has gone our way has been the wolves one. We have been unlucky both on the field and off the field (not unlucky but there’s been a lot of distractions from football thanks to behaviour of the players: sancho, Anthony, greenwood, rashford brother, on-going sale process, etc).
Football is mostly subjective. You’re entitled to your opinion, I’m entitled to mine.
Isn’t that more a case of people not understanding how to interpret statistics properly?
You don’t have to be observant and attentive to follow stats. Most of these people who have watched football their whole lives still have no qualitative idea of what is going on, so they use the scoreline and other numbers as a cheat sheet.
That’s how you get lazy takes like “X Manager outclassed Y Manager” after every surprise or result, or “X Player played well” because he scored or assisted.
Bc copium, some ppl supports the team no matter what, everything is good in their eyes and also you have to remember some ppl decided to side with ETH last year and because of that they are not willing to accept that eth is shit and their decision to back the was incorrect
Football is the most popular sport worldwide, 1.5 BILLION people watched the 2022 World Cup final live. The vast majority of those people don’t watch full games. There are millions of casual fans out there that only watch some finals here and there and their only engagement with football is through Tiktok clips and the EA Sports FC game.
The answer to many stupid takes of modern “fans” is that most people don’t actually bother to actually watch and understand the game anymore. Which fans do you believe support ETH, or think that Emi Martinez is the best goalkeeper in the world? People who watch EPL weekly? Or just casual fans that only watched the WC KO stage and only saw that Manchester United play in the UCL, so they must be a good team? Do you think journalists vote for Ballon d’Or based on who was actually the best throughout the season? Or it just who the casuals think it is? Because yeah, as someone who watches hundreds of games per season, the 2023 winner wouldn’t even be in my top 5. But ask a casual who only watched the WC and doesn’t watch football daily and you’ll see what I mean.
Ten Hag just has some cult following him that defends anything he does. It happens.
Just thank the internet for that.
Saw someone on twitter day Xavi and Iniesta were not that great because they hardly had any goals or assists 🙃
Because the vast majority of fans never played a game of competitive football in their lives, they have no real life experience or understanding of the game. Therefore they rely on what’s available to them, and that’s stats. Close thread
It’s not that people don’t understand the stats, it’s that they want to use them to back up their preconceived position.
There’s plenty of United fans who think that because Ferguson was successful and given time, every manager needs a minimum of 5 years and a billion pounds before they can be judged
They aren’t backing ten hag because of the stats, they’re posting the stats to back up their position which isn’t based on logic or facts, but just a feeling
I honestly hate this modern culture of understanding football through statistics. They are important, when put in context, if course, but I see so many dumb people saying “X is better than Y because his scoring and assist numbers are better”, this is just dumb.
I honestly think most of these People are either casuals who think they know a lot about the sport, or they’ve never played football in any way
The majority of people are not observers, but followers. It becomes clearer when talking to the average Twitter football ‘expert’.
People lack analytical skills and being right by being backed by stats despite disregarding reality is definitely a problem but the easiest way out.
Big united fan, never been tougher to see their current situation. We are more on a path to mid table than being a contender again. The fact that people can’t seem to see it because you beat Burnley or Southampton 1-0 pisses me off.
If someone actually thinks that ronaldo is better than messi, i dont rate their opinion on football since they dont understand the game and cant accept obvious truths