Deserves at least an 8-year contract extension with United.

Ten Hag was pleased with the 19-year-old Willy Kambwala who partnered Harry Maguire at ­centre‑back. “When old soldiers die, new ones have to come in,” he said.

Thank you Erik, for your wisdom that keeps the holy cycle of football rolling.

Liverpool had 87 shots in three games against United this season and didn’t win any of them.

That's the mystery of ten Hag at work.

mmyeah we might suffer from ten hags mysticism in the near future. keeping stum until after that game

It's worse than that: we definitely will suffer, if Erik chooses that we do. There's nothing that can be done about it, ten Hag is football's ultimate "sovereign risk", its Shiva, both creator and destroyer.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2024/apr/07/ongoing-sense-of-shambles-at-manchester-united-is-unsustainable

“Everybody’s done it. The door looks heavy or stiff, so you give it an almighty shove, only to find the expected resistance isn’t there so you tumble through, falling flat on your face. Erik ten Hag’s genius has been to take an everyday pratfall and turn it into a philosophy.“

    FEBravo I think it's an amazing leap forward in football leadership.

    As Deleuze and Guattari might once have put it, ten Hag is the coach who "coaches by not coaching" … ten Hag's genius is the unmediated and ceaselessly mobile embodiment of the point at which tactics and instruction, those callow and inadequate representations of the footballing real, fail—a point of failure that grounds the virtual being of the "football manager" as such.

    Ten Hag's are the tactics that deterritorialise all other tactics, and indeed any false rationality that appears to enliven mechanical tacticity at all. This is a "total football" indeed, but not the fantasy of total control: instead one whose asymptote is the image of a total escape, a totally liberated footballistic desire. As the Guardian analyst puts it:

    Elite-level players are used to being put under pressure, they’re used to being closed down, they’re used to opponents pressing. Space alarms them. It makes them uneasy. It makes them think too much.

    The transgressive nomadology of ten Hag's footballing war machine is therefore unstoppable. United under ten Hag ask questions not Socratically, not like a lawyer attempting cross-examination, but rather like the character of Colombo incarnated so brilliantly by Peter Falk in the eponymous television series. The movements of his players are like a stream of casual non sequiturs that refuse meaning-making, under the schizo-flux of which the neurotic, and fundamentally criminal psychology of the opposition inevitably crumbles.

    Observe how the hapless Quansah, encountering a United attack with methods as opaque and comedic as a carnival mask, gifted the ball to the ambiguous Fernandes, and thereby sent the hosts back into the lead against the backdrop of Old Trafford's social revolt, the thin veil over which makes all the more public an alluring barbarism that nevertheless cannot yet be admitted by the technocrats of the so-called Premier League.

    The one who understands ten Hag should hardly be disturbed by the speculative threat of a reimposition of order in chaos heralded by the ominously named INEOS … the very name of its prophet and executioner, Ratcliffe or "rat cliff", a portmanteau reinscribing the established pattern of lemming-like suicide at United which now stands in a homeostatic, reciprocal self-determination, a hyperstitional co-becoming with Erik ten Hag himself, together a hypersigil whose activation of the virtual contradiction of "success" and "failure" transcends any such dour categories with declarations such as:

    "It’s very disappointing when you put yourselves three times in a winning position just before the end of the game, but then drop points"

    or

    "All three games had poor decisions and not every time the same players … what is not helping is we have 26 different shapes in the backline"

    With his "threes", ten Hag gestures to the internal absurdity of binary assessments such as "disappointment" or "drop points", and with his "26", to the inadequacy of the letters of the Roman alphabet to anything more than an oppressive and incomplete "Royal science" of football, a sport whose mutable, shapeshifting character is now laid bare.

    How can any conventional manager imagine the overcoming of such a non-configuration? It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the final defeat of Erik ten Hag.

      13 days later

      He's invented a new form of poetry … a new artistic medium altogether. Man's a rainmaker.

        Burnwinter The one who understands ten Hag should hardly be disturbed by the speculative threat of a reimposition of order in chaos heralded by the ominously named INEOS … the very name of its prophet and executioner, Ratcliffe or "rat cliff", a portmanteau reinscribing the established pattern of lemming-like suicide at United which now stands in a homeostatic, reciprocal self-determination, a hyperstitional co-becoming with Erik ten Hag himself, together a hypersigil whose activation of the virtual contradiction of "success" and "failure" transcends any such dour categories

        This said it all really. I stand by every word

        "That man … standing there … standing there in a blue suit, he is an embarrassment to this football club. An embarrassment to this football club."

        Truly the infidels will never be redeemed.

        Clrnc

        It is not an embarrassment. It is a huge achievement.

        Ten Hag sees the truth of the situation as usual. History cares only for what, and not how. That's why ten Hag has dispensed with shopworn clichés like "motivating" or "instructing" his team—or even demanding they exert themselves physically. There's an economy to it all: he knows you can't win at six-dimensional chess using three-dimensional thinking.

        Ten Hag seizes the opportunity to vibrate between the poles of orthodox and paradox, rather than clinging to one or the other. So the football played by his United is a beautiful resonant music, but only if you've got the ears to hear. To those who lack the necessary organs, only a murky fractal noise is heard: but this is a cacophony which resolves in the instant to a trumpet call of infinite victory.

          Burnwinter Ten Hag seizes the opportunity to vibrate between the poles of orthodox and paradox, rather than clinging to one or the other. So the football played by his United is a beautiful resonant music, but only if you've got the ears to hear. To those who lack the necessary organs, only a murky fractal noise is heard: but this is a cacophony which resolves in the instant to a trumpet call of infinite victory.

          🤣🤣

          7 days later

          “We are one of the most dynamic and entertaining teams in the league at this moment. We are creating loads of chances by playing good football. It was unnecessary to lose control. We repaired this at half-time and the second half was much better.”

          “The great Manchester United team, we forget they were also built. I have seen I think in 2004-05 they also didn’t play that great football. They were building, and it takes time.”

          8 days later

          It is clear and it is obvious. This is underperforming.

          We are all tested in life. As Erik encodes for the faithful, there was no problem with his work preparing United to face the Eagles. The result amounted to a cosmic error which omniscient God, that most unreliable and underperforming video assistant referee, cruelly failed to overturn.

          Let’s take a break from appreciating ETH, and rather savor the same things he would..

          Haha loving this guy for banter even more, was happy with today's result because he believed they gave us a hell of game despite losing 😂

          ten hag is ten hag in. I am as well.

          What did he say after today?

            1-0 is good for us. Hopefully, he's back on the sideline next year. Love this gaffer

            HomeSteak What did he say after today?

            I don't know, but the commentary team said he barked "I hope you win the league" loudly at Arteta on the touchline.

            That's the mystery of ten Hag. When the final whistle blows the mind games are only beginning. Did he only let you win?

            When the final whistle blows the mind games are only beginning.

            That's brilliant.

            JazzG my favourite thing is the way he tries to confide in Jesus, who in turn tries to disassociate himself from Anthony.

              Don Pacifico He's probably telling him, he can't be seen talking to him in public.

              Antony supposedly has his own personal photographer who goes to every game just to take pictures of him. He was the guy who gave him the sonic teddy bear in the last game. I remember when he scored against us and his cocky celebration, I had a feeling then this guy was all talk and didn't have anything to back it up.

              We rightly get slated for Pepe signing but this guy cost as much and has been FAR worse then Pepe.

              I wonder if that is just based on insider info or just his experiences as a player? He added it was partly down to the FA cup and Euros coming up and players not wanting to get injured. You speak to most players and throughout their career they've played through pain and injuries, they see it as part and parcel of being a footballer whereas I wonder if fans have the impression that players are always completely fit with nothing wrong.

              Remember Daniel Sturridge being a player who supposedly could never play with injuries much to the frustration of many at Liverpool. Any little thing and they felt he'd pull out of the game. I remember even reading they thought it might be something mental. Remember Holding talking about White playing with a serious Hamstring injury against Newcastle away a couple years back because we were short.

                JazzG a lot of things will matter. What is the team playing for? What is the players’ relationship with the manager? What is the manager’s standing? White and Jesus are playing with injuries. But circumstances are very different

                Qwiss yeah, there was a game in Auxerre he played with injections and was absolutely unbeatable - of course Wrighty came up with a worldie up the other end and we won the day.

                What makes it funnier is it’s while he’s praising them for their backing 😆

                Every time I see this I think it can’t be real: