‘Disgraceful’ Man Utd were served ‘justice’ as ‘delusional’ Ten Hag needs sacking
Man Utd were a “disgrace” against Fulham and “got exactly what they deserved” after a number of “bad performances”, according to Gabby Agbonlahor.
The Red Devils have been in good form in recent weeks with six wins from their last seven matches before Fulham’s 2-1 victory at Old Trafford on Saturday.
Man Utd had not been totally convincing in some of those victories and Agbonlahor was clearly pleased to see the Red Devils drop points.
Agbonlahor said on talkSPORT: “Today was justice.
“United have been getting away with bad performances and still somehow winning games, but today they got exactly what they deserved.
READ MORE: Ten Hag finally exposed as ‘a fraud’ and Man Utd have been ‘lucky’ to have the Glazers as owners
“Manchester United today were a disgrace to that football club.”
Speaking after the match, Man Utd boss Erik ten Hag insisted that his side “deserved” to beat Fulham, he told talkSPORT: “We fought ourselves back into the game and we get a draw, and at that point, I think we deserved to win the game.
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“Then in one loose moment, we lose the game. Of course, we are very disappointed about this, but we also have to move on, and we will do.”
But Agbonlahor’s fellow pundit Jamie O’Hara was not having any of it with the former Tottenham midfielder insisting that Ten Hag’s comments were “delusional”.
O’Hara added: “Have you ever heard someone more delusional? When a manager is delusional like Ten Hag is sounding now, it is time to move him on.
“Come out and be honest, your team were dreadful. Every player through the whole 90 minutes.
“Eighth home defeat this season. ‘The team showed character to grab the equaliser.’ You winding me up?”
In another interview, Ten Hag continued: “After these two months I can’t go with that approach. We have gone lately very good but now we have some setbacks.
“Today we could have won this game. We should have won this game as the team showed great character.
“We had two slow starts in both halves, definitely. It was a big loss to lose Casemiro (to injury), we lost some stability in the team and conceded a goal that is very avoidable, but then fought back in the game.
“I have to credit the team – they showed great character. We went for the win but by the end we let them slip away.
“But after one defeat you have to see the bigger picture and the bigger picture looks very good.
“We have to catch up in certain positions and get the injuries back, then we will be more in balance and also strengthen the squad in the transfer windows.
“You see there are many good players coming up and real high potential players, so definitely we are going in the right direction. When we have the players available, we have a very good team.”
Ranking every big league Quadruple as Liverpool eye their own slice of history
Liverpool are about to reach the first key moment in the outlandish but bold bid to give Jurgen Klopp an absurd four-trophy send-off. It would be an extraordinary effort, and ahead of the Carabao Cup final against Chelsea – who are less bobbins than a few weeks ago but still quite bobbins – find themselves sat improbably yet undeniably atop the Premier League and less surprisingly well placed in both the FA Cup and Europa League.
They absolutely could win any of them, or any combination thereof. It logically cannot therefore be entirely ruled out that they win all four of the bastards.
But there are two issues here. First and most obviously, they are almost certainly not going to do a quadruple. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. Quadruples – proper ones – pretty much never happen.
Yet that brings us to point two. Liverpool’s wouldn’t even be The Quadruple, substituting as it does the Champions League for the Europa League. But if Liverpool were to somehow overcome the enormous odds and add Europa, FA Cup and Premier League success to a likely Carabao win then it would certainly be A Quadruple, containing as it does four actual proper tournaments that carry a degree of prestige and require a proper amount of winning. There’s no ‘Super’ Cup or Community Shield one-game-and-win-a-trophy shortcuts in play here.
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Which then set us to thinking: which is the best Quadruple that has actually happened? We’ve allowed all manner of bullsh*t pots into this, but we have limited ourselves to Europe’s top five leagues for our own sanity.
Unfortunately, that does mean no place for Celtic, whose 1966/67 Quintuple contains all the proper ingredients (European Cup, league title, Scottish Cup, Scottish League Cup) as well as a Glasgow Cup which, given the nature of Scottish fitba, is at least as good as a League Cup probably. But if we included them, we’d have gone down a long, arduous yet inevitable road that leads directly to Linfield’s 1961/62 Septuple and madness. So we haven’t. Soz.
11) Copa del Rey, Supercopa de Espana, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup (Barcelona 2011/12)
A Quadruple containing neither European nor domestic league glory? F*** all the way off, you cheeky scamps. You’re trying to pull a fast one here and I’ll not have it. Quadruple? Notruple more like.
10) La Liga, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, Supercopa de Espana (Barcelona 2009/10)
This was Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona at the peak of their powers and an indisputably great side, no doubt about that. They don’t need a Quadruple to prove it. Which is just as well, because this is still firmly in tinpot territory. We’ll give you La Liga, obviously, especially after losing just once all season and still only edging out Real Madrid by three points in an epic tussle. But the rule that any cup containing the word ‘Super’ is bobbins is immutable and in play twice here.
The UEFA and Spanish Super Cups are both two-team low-wattage affairs (albeit the Spanish version is played over two legs) and not really major titles. The FIFA Club World Cup may have slightly more teams, but we all know it amounts in the end to the old Intercontinental clash between the European and South American champs. Barca started the season with six titles up for grabs, but missed out in the Copa del Rey to Sevilla in the last 16 and to Jose Mourinho’s party-pooping Inter in the Champions League semi-finals.
9) Bundesliga, DFL-Supercup, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup (Bayern Munich 2020/21)
It must be quite nice to be able to go “This is the worst Quadruple we’ve ever won”. The inherent implications can only augur well. This is the worst Quadruple Bayern Munich have ever won.
8) Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup (Bayern Munich 2013/14)
And this is the second worst. A far better one in 2012/13 opened the Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup doors, gifts that were duly accepted. In accordance with tradition, Guangzhou Evergrande were beaten en route to World Cup glory, while penalties were needed to exact a measure of revenge on Chelsea for the 2012 Champions League final in the UEFA Super Cup. But Bayern were thrashed in the Champions League semi-finals by Real Madrid and sloppily passed up the DFB-Supercup right at the start of the season with a defeat to old rivals Dortmund.
7) Premier League, FIFA Club World Cup, Football League Cup, FA Community Shield (Manchester United 2008/09)
Don’t hear as much about this as you do the 1999 Treble, do you? Even though four is definitely more than three. Can’t think why this is less venerated. Not every day you beat Gamba Osaka and Quito to land the Club World Cup. Or beat Portsmouth on penalties to win the Community Shield. You can stick That Night in Barcelona up your arse, quite frankly.
6) Ligue 1, Coupe de France, Coupe de la Ligue, Trophee des Champions (Paris St Germain 2014/15, 2015/16, 2017/18, 2019/20)
Scores bonus points I guess for the fact they’ve done this particular quadruple four times since replacing Lyon as French football’s dominant force. No arguing with the neatness of that. Very funny that it conspicuously and obviously contains no European title whatsoever, but three of the four are at least actual competitions containing multiple matches and more than two entrants.
The Trophee des Champions sounds much better than ‘Community Shield’ and less deceptively bombastic than ‘Super Cup’ but amounts to the same thing. It’s just a glorified friendly between league winners and cup winners, and PSG have won loads of the buggers. This is a Quadruple built around a Domestic Treble and therefore not too tinpot, but inevitably loses some points because farmers.
5) La Liga, Copa del Rey, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup (Barcelona 2015/16)
A Proper Domestic Double is a high-quality cornerstone of any respectable Quadruple, and Barcelona tick that box in style here, putting a three-game April wobble behind them to win their last five league games by an absurd aggregate score of 24-0 to pip Real Madrid by a point. Sevilla were beaten in extra-time for Copa del Rey glory, but alas it then goes once more into the realm of the tinpot. Athletic Bilbao offered minimal Supercopa resistance, while Guangzhou Evergrande and River Plate were sorted out with little fuss in the Club World Cup. The Champions League bid came a cropper against eventual finalists and domestic rivals Atletico Madrid in the last eight.
4) Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, Supercopa de Espana (Real Madrid 2017/18)
Yes, another Champions League for Real Madrid. Nice one, Loris Karius is crying. The rest of it: tish and fipsy. Alright, so the Supercopa was against Barcelona, but it’s still a fancy two-legged friendly. Al-Jazira and Gremio were dispatched in the Club World Cup and Manchester United in the UEFA Super Cup. Real also finished second behind actual Tottenham in the Champions League group stage, and third in La Liga. Utter frauds.
3) Premier League, FA Cup, EFL Cup, FA Community Shield (Manchester City 2018/19)
This is one of our favourite Quadruples. Because it highlights the absolute folly of it all. The whole Quadruple obsession vaguely reminds us of the razor blade wars when Gillette and Wilkinson Sword would constantly set out to one up each other by just adding blade after unnecessary blade. The Mach 3 was definitely enough, guys.
And that brings us to Manchester City’s 2018/19 season, in which their Champions League hopes collided with the unstoppable chaotic banter force of Spurs with inevitable consequences, but they did complete an unprecedented English Domestic Treble. An achievement Sir Alex Ferguson had declared impossible, rightly acknowledging the League Cup is far harder to win than the Champions League. But here’s the thing: nobody cared.
And, sure, a lot of that was because it’s City and people in general still don’t care about City the way they do United or Liverpool or even Arsenal. They still didn’t care all that much when they emulated United’s Treble last season. But it wasn’t entirely that. Quadruple obsession had rendered Trebles meh. Ludicrous as that is. Still, though. Whack in the good ol’ Community Shield, and you have a Quadruple. And with all three proper pots pocketed in a league where that had never happened before or since it remains one of the better ones. And you can’t really blame anyone for coming off second best to Spurs with Fernando Llorente in his pomp, can you?
2) La Liga, Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup (Real Madrid 2016/17)
Were it not for an extremely careless Copa del Rey quarter-final defeat over two legs to Celta Vigo, this would be challenging for top spot. The league title was snaffled after a typically forthright to and fro with Clasico rivals Barcelona, while a slightly scruffy Champions League group stage featuring three draws on their way to second place behind Dortmund was put right in a dominant march through the knockouts. Classic Real Madrid Champions Leaguing, really. They know their way around a UCL knockout tie better than most. Napoli and Bayern were beaten home and away in the last 16 and quarter-finals, while a 2-1 second-leg defeat to Atletico mattered not a jot with a 3-0 lead in the bag from the first. On to the final in Cardiff, and a 4-1 shellacking for Juventus. It is the history of the etc.
Super Cup and Club World Cup formalities were also completed along the way, although extra time was required against both Sevilla in the former and Kashima Antlers in the latter. The Antlers were only in the tournament at all as J-League champions because Japan were hosts, but defied the odds to make it all the way to extra-time in the final, beating Auckland City, Mamelodi Sundowns and most notably Copa Libertadores champions Atletico Nacional (thanks in part to the first penalty ever awarded by VAR) along the way.
1) Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, Champions League, DFL-Supercup (Bayern Munich 2012/13)
There is no Carabao equivalent in Germany, so this does have to go down as a largely unimprovable effort for Bayern, for whom a Quadruple featuring no tinpottery whatsoever is thus impossible. Won all three major pots in some style, breaking all manner of records on their way to a ludicrous 25-point victory margin in the Bundesliga and winning their six DFB-Pokal games by a combined aggregate of 20-2. Arsenal gave them an almighty scare in the Champions League last 16, winning 2-0 in Munich after a 3-1 Bayern win at the Emirates appeared to have put the tie to bed three weeks earlier. Sauntered past supposed European superpowers Juventus and Barcelona by scoring 11 goals and conceding none before outlasting Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund at Wembley to take the Big Cup.
We don’t want to get into the hypothetical, but it does seem pretty reasonable to assume this team that lost just once to a German side (2-1 to Bayer Leverkusen in October) all season long may well have won a German League Cup were there such a thing to be won.
Merson ‘felt sorry’ for one Man Utd player as he accuses senior stars of ‘looking after themselves’
Arsenal legend Paul Merson admits he felt sorry for Man Utd debutant Omari Forson as the Red Devils lost 2-1 to Fulham on Saturday.
Alex Iwobi struck in the 97th minute as the Cottagers responded to an 89th-minute equaliser from Harry Maguire as the Cottagers claimed a stunning Premier League success at Old Trafford.
It was the London side’s first win at the ground since 2003 and, after creating the majority of the chances throughout the game and taking a 65th-minute lead through Calvin Bassey, Silva felt it was merited.
Fulham’s success punctured some of the optimism that has swept into Man Utd this week following the completion of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s partial takeover.
The defeat was the 10th of the campaign in the Premier League for Man Utd, ending a four-game winning streak, and was a setback to their hopes of reaching the top four.
Forson was a surprise inclusion off the bench in Rasmus Hojlund’s absence but the teenager struggled to get up to speed in his first Premier League start.
READ MORE: Ten Hag finally exposed as ‘a fraud’ and Man Utd have been ‘lucky’ to have the Glazers as owners
Reflecting on Forson’s display, Merson said: “I felt for him. He was getting a little bit frustrated with himself and lost the ball a couple of times.
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“When you come into the team and you’re making your full debut you’ve got to rely on your older players, they’ve got to play well as well.
“He didn’t get that today none of the players around him did well and it didn’t help him.
“I felt sorry for him. The older players let him down not giving the ball in proper places and sort of looking after themselves.
“As an experience he should be proud of himself making his debut for Manchester United at a young age so he should remember that.”
It had looked like Maguire had won a late point for Man Utd with a close-range goal before he was exposed for Fulham’s last-gasp winning goal.
And Maguire bemoaned the lack of a focal point without Hojlund, he said: “We got hit by the injury to Rasmus, who has been big focal point for us but it is up to us to find the solutions and the areas we need to improve on.
“He has been our focal point, we can play into him, he holds it up, he starts the press really well, not only that but Marcus has been playing really well on the left.
“It’s the story of our season, we’ve been injury hit – as other teams have – and we need to find a solution quick.”
Arsenal hammer Newcastle to keep title pressure on Liverpool, Man City
Arsenal's free-scoring Premier League form continued as Newcastle were blown away 4-1 at the Emirates on Saturday to move back within two points of leaders Liverpool.
Mikel Arteta's men stumbled to a 1-0 Champions League defeat at Porto in midweek, but were quickly back on the horse domestically to take their tally to 25 goals in six consecutive Premier League wins.
Arsenal's prowess from set-pieces forced an own goal from Sven Botman before Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka and Jakub Kiwior from another corner killed off Newcastle.
"We continued in the same way, we maintained our rhythm and it was a joy to watch the team play," said Arteta.
"The boys were really good, really aggressive and we deserved to win the game."
The Gunners are aiming to win a first league title in 20 years and keen to make amends for faltering down the final straight last season as Manchester City stormed clear on their way to win the treble.
Arsenal are the side in red hot form but remain in third, one point behind second-placed City, with the title race fascinatingly poised 12 games from the end of the season.
Defeat is another blow to Newcastle's aspiration of European football next season.
Eddie Howe's men were outclassed to remain down in eighth, 15 points adrift of the top four, and have now conceded 23 goals in their last eight league games.
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"We were off in most aspects of our game. We didn't do the basics right," said Howe.
"Sometimes away from home you have those spells in the game and you have to weather the storm. Unfortunately we didn't do that and we conceded some bad goals." ;
Howe was forced into handing goalkeeper Loris Karius just his second appearance since joining Newcastle in 2022.
Karius was unfortunate for the opening goal as he parried Gabriel Magalhaes' powerful header, but the ball ricocheted back off Botman and crept over the line.
Arsenal have now scored 19 times from set-pieces in the Premier League this season.
If there was a hint of fortune about the opener, the hosts' second was a thing of beauty.
Jorginho's ball over the top picked out the run of Gabriel Martinelli, who turned the ball perfectly into the path of Havertz for his eighth goal of the season.
Saka has now scored seven times in the last five Premier League games and only a fine save from Karius at his near post delayed the England international continuing his scoring streak before half-time.
Havertz should have sealed the three points within two minutes of the second half when he dragged a shot wide after Martinelli's pass played him clean through on goal.
But the German international was involved for the third goal as from his pass, Saka jinked inside and fired into the far corner for his 16th goal of the season.
Set-piece coach Nicolas Jover has been credited with Arsenal's lethal threat from dead balls.
The Frenchman had more cause to celebrate 21 minutes from time when Kiwior's header from Declan Rice's corner deflected in off Lewis Miley.
Newcastle did at least muster a consolation five minutes from time when former Arsenal midfielder Joe Willock looped in a header off the post.
But that did little to spoil Arsenal's Saturday night party as they made another statement to Liverpool and City that they will not crumble under the pressure of a title race like they did 12 months ago
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