I’ve seen many fans and pundits make this claim. Do you think Manchester United players aren’t playing as well as they can in hope to get Ten Hag sacked. I’ve seen this argument used against Rashford as people since he’s got his new contract he’s just content to get his money and play as well.
Though Hoijund has claimed the players all back Ten Hag still https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/09/erik-ten-hag-manchester-united-squad-backing-rasmus-hojlund
I get so frustrated that so many fans try to mitigate the effect that an injury crisis can have on a team unless it’s their team, maybe it’s because I’m a Liverpool fan and we seem to get really unlucky where our injuries just concentrate in a certain area of the field instead of spreading out evenly, this was particularly the case a few seasons ago with the defence and last season with the mid field.
I might be enjoying the torrid form that United is in but I find the level of mockery directed towards ETH to be pretty excessive with how badly decimated their defence has been, especially considering that it left them without their entire first choice back four for a while.
Well you hit the nail on the head. It’s just a lack of empathy with other fans or the desire to mock rivals supersedes empathy.
ETH isn’t the joke Reddit has claimed, or the media for that matter, but so much context will always go missing. Saliba is constantly referred to as one of the best CB in the world and the best of his age, yet his absence the entire final run of the season is ignored in the bottle narrative. Nvm Tomiyasu and others injured as well.
Same with everyone shutting on Liverpool last year but you’ll notice as soon as players were coming back from injury it was their usual deadly selves.
And now it’s Man United. Martinez is top five defenders in the league, he’s gone, the entire starting back line questionable. Of course they’ll struggle. But it won’t stop the mocking and to be fair, it hasn’t stopped me from giving my cousins and mates a hard time about their form.