Exclusive Column
Mark Goldbridge has hit back at the ‘obsession’ for Erik ten Hag to be sacked and insists there is a bigger problem at Manchester United that needs to be solved.
The Red Devils superfan and YouTube host joined talkSPORT to give us his take on the latest news from Old Trafford.
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And he has responded to the growing calls for the Premier League giants to wield the axe after another dreadful season - including from some talkSPORT pundits - here's what he had to say.
I find the whole Ten Hag conversation really confusing. It’s almost like somebody has put something in the water.
There’s this obsession with sacking him, and yet you look at Chelsea and there’s nothing really being said about Mauricio Pochettino, who isn't in the FA Cup anymore, who’s just been battered by Arsenal, they’ve spent £1billion and they’re terrible!
Does Ten Hag need to win the FA Cup to avoid being sacked? Absolutely not!
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We’re playing Man City who are probably going to win the title again this season, which would make it six of the last seven seasons, they’re the best team in the world, they’re a juggernaut.
You can’t say United need to beat a juggernaut for the manager to keep his job, that’s ridiculous. It’s been a very disappointing season for Manchester United.
We’ve had a major takeover, we’ve had numerous off-field problems, we’ve had the biggest injury record in our history and I think we just need this summer and this new structure to take hold.
It will cost money to sack Ten Hag, and we’ve sacked managers so many times over the last ten years.
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I think it’s very clear when you’re 3-0 up against Coventry with 30 minutes to go and you make a couple of subs, quite rightly because you’ve got a game on Wednesday, and it ends up being 3-3, that’s on the players for not feeling that out.
I think around the Man United fanbase there’s a real acceptance that the major problem at the club is the players, so replacing the manager and not replacing the players is going to be problematic.
Mark Goldbridge believes Jurgen Klopp knows the Premier League title race is over for Liverpool, but the North London derby will be pivotal for Arsenal to stop the 'juggernaut' of Manchester City
I think yes I understand some people want Ten Hag to be sacked, but there’s no manager that is going to change Manchester United, it needs a massive overhaul and it needs to start with the playing staff.
So I disagree. They may well sack Ten Hag because they’ve got these new owners, but that’s not the path I would go down.
FA Cup non-celebrations
I don't subscribe to the view that it was embarrassing, how we won that game, and that beating Coventry on penalties was one of the lowest points.
You even had some fans saying they wished we lost because Coventry deserved it more - I don't get that. It wasn’t a surprise to me that it ended like that.
Coventry beat Wolves to get to the semis and they were almost promoted to the Premier League last year - they’re a decent team, and Man United are rubbish! We weren’t robbing kids of their sweets, it’s a game of football!
It’s like something has changed in football, and certainly around the United fanbase, where people are very miserable about winning games of football.
We had it against Brentford at Old Trafford back in the autumn when we were losing 1-0, we got two goals and people were like, ‘I’m not celebrating that, it’s rubbish’.
What do you think Lincoln City fans do, what do you think Sheffield Wednesday fans do? Do you think they refuse to celebrate winning games because they don’t play like a prime Pep [Guardiola] team?
Man United have been bad for ten years, this ‘Man United way’ needs to be earned. Look at the way Arsenal play, look at the way Liverpool play - you’ve got to earn it!
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I enjoyed that Coventry result, because it’s the relief that we’ve won and, ultimately, I just want my team to win.
Yes I want them to play well, but we seem to have lost the joy of winning a game of football because we’re so obsessed with how we’re playing football.
There are huge problems for Man United and it’s been a horrible season, so I take joy in the ‘little’ wins knowing that we’ve got Arsenal in a couple of weeks, and also Crystal Palace who are playing well, and with the way we’re playing at the moment anyone can give us a game.
There are more losses to come, so I’m going to enjoy the wins at the moment, because that’s surely what supporting your club is all about.
Get behind Antony
The Antony thing… he shouldn't do that. I think we can all agree that he shouldn't do that.
But, again, it’s celebration police, isn’t it? He shouldn’t do it and I think he knows he shouldn't have done it, but he just overreacted in the moment and he gets absolutely slated for it.
I just think Man United fans should be behind him, we've all seen the likes of Antonio Rudiger doing it for Chelsea and Real Madrid.
The Rasmus [Hojlund] celebration on his own was just embarrassment from the players not to run and celebrate a game they should have won in normal time, so I sort of get that.
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And Ten Hag calling out the media, I think this was aimed at the Man United media, not the wider UK media, because he’s had a really rough ride, there’s been a lot of stuff that has been said.
One of the journalists even said, ‘sack him now’, during the game - that’s just an agenda, it’s not journalism.
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If you’re going to write that, then I think the manager has got every right to call that embarrassing. So there’s a bit of a subplot to that.
When he says the media is embarrassing, people might be thinking he means talkSPORT or the BBC, but I think Ten Hag was honing in on a few United journalists who have very much stabbed him in the back publicly.