Enough Was Enough

It’s official. Erik Ten Hag is no longer the manager of Manchester United football club. The signs were there that he wouldn’t last much longer, and the defeat against West Ham proved to be the final straw for the ownership. He should have gone in the summer to tell you the truth, but I guess after winning the FA Cup, INEOS wanted to give him some extra time to turn things around. Unfortunately for him, that time finally ran out. They say a cat has nine lives, and he lost all his. So, in this week’s post, I’ll run through the reasons why I think it went wrong for the Dutchman.  

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Lack of Footballing Identity

When Ten Hag was the Ajax coach, he was praised for his brave and adventurous playstyle. That Ajax team was enjoyable to watch. They were renowned for playing dynamic, attacking football with intricate passing in the midfield and overloads that would allow the fullbacks to be heavily involved in attack. If you were a fan of Ajax, you could easily identify how Ajax were trying to play. Fast forward to his time at United, and one of the biggest criticisms he faced was an unidentifiable playstyle.

I think what Ten Hag was trying to do was evident; replicate the Ajax way at United. The problem was, the playstyle he attempted to adopt didn’t suit the players at his disposal. Ten Hag’s desire to try and play such attacking football without having the necessary defensive cover meant United conceded a ridiculous number of chances. Teams would run through United at will. It’s all well and could having an ethos, but if you don’t have the players to bring that ethos to life, it won’t end well. The inability to adapt didn’t help his cause either. If plan A isn’t working, you need to be able to have some more tricks up your sleeve, and he didn’t have any.

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Poor Recruitment

Bad recruitment wasn’t just an Erik Ten Hag problem. It’s been an issue ever since Sir Alex Ferguson retired. Still though, that doesn’t negate the fact that the transfer business that he’s overseen in the two years he was in charge has not been good, to put it lightly. There’s always that question as to how much control a manager has over the signings they make. A lot of the signings he made were HIS signings, and it’s clear that none of them have really got United back to where they need to be.

United spent a whopping £600m on signings during his time, and most of them were absolute stinkers. The transfer strategy was lazy; buying players he’s worked with in the past, rather than making better use of the scouts to find players better suited to play for United. I could go through every signing, but buying Antony and Casemiro for a combined £140m says it all. Truly baffling pieces of business. At the end of the day, he had the final say on the players that were being brought into the club, and too many times, the players brought in were not United players.

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Unable to Developing Players

Recruitment is an important part of football, but arguably more important is being able to develop and improve players. The best managers, the likes of Guardiola, Ferguson, Wenger, were all able to take their players to that next level. It’s all well and good being able to sign the players you want, but if a manager is not able to improve the footballers already at the club, what good are they? If you were to ask me, is there anyone at United that became a better player because of Ten Hag, I would struggle to name many.

I remember in a previous post, one of the things I said that Ten Hag needed to do this season was get Marcus Rashford close to the previous levels he was operating at. Aside from his first season in charge, the Englishman has looked a shadow of himself. Part of it is down to the player, but a top manager would be able to get more out of Rashford than he has. There are other players that I can think of that haven’t really improved in his time and in my mind, it was a big reason why he no longer has a job.  

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Not the Right Personality

Whilst this may not have necessarily lost him the job, one thing that I started to dislike about Ten Hag was his personality and the general way he presented himself. To be the manager of a big club, you need to have something about you, a bit of charisma and be a big presence. The more I think about it, the more I feel that Ten Hag’s personality was never realty the right fit. Towards the end of his tenure, the way he would handle press conferences and the media as a whole left me befuddled.

He should know that, as the United manager, you’re going to face the pressure from reports, and you need to be able to handle it in the right way. Too many times he didn’t. In a recent presser, he said that the 3-0 defeat against Spurs basically doesn’t count because Fernandes’ red card was overturned. What kind of nonsense is that! We were terrible BEFORE the sending off anyway. He constantly had to remind people he’s won two trophies in two years in the Northwest. That’s all good, but if anything, those trophies created a false façade of progress and an accurate picture of reality.

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This Week’s Hot Take

Ten Hag has left United in a worse place, footballing-wise, than before he joined. Think about it, look at the team and players that were United prior to his arrival. Obviously, there were issues with that team, but man for man, the quality of players was vastly superior to what it is now. I look at the team that I see today and it’s unrecognisable. A lot of that is down to Ten Hag. Whatever manager comes in next, they’ve got to perform another overhaul potentially to bring United back to their best.