Ratcliffe's reign has got off to an awful start
He needs to do something about Ten Hag – and stop making eyes at Tuchel
COMMENT Premier League: Crystal Palace 4, United 0
Since Jim Ratcliffe was finally given control of the football side of Manchester United, on 20 February, hardly anything has gone right for the first team. In ten league games, United have won just twice. They have given the fans a pleasant surprise only once, when they squeezed past Liverpool in the FA Cup. They have gone from sitting pretty in sixth place, two wins clear of the chasing pack, to floundering in eighth, behind Newcastle and Chelsea. They have thrown away leads at Brentford and Stamford Bridge, at home to Burnley, and at Wembley to Coventry. They have lost to Fulham at home and now, worst of all, they have capitulated at Crystal Palace. A respectable top-six team, heading for the Europa League, has turned into a rabble. In the league table since 20 February, United stand 16th, one point above the bottom three. The Ratcliffe era has begun not with a bang but a series of whimpers. And it is getting worse.
Ratcliffe keeps announcing appointments, adding to the number of chiefs. But only one of them has actually arrived – Jason Wilcox, who has come from Southampton, and before that Man City, to be the technical director. Ratcliffe and Dave Brailsford are rightly eager to sort out the structure and they seem to be attracting people who are ‘best in class’ as they put it, though if that test were being applied to everybody, Ratcliffe himself would not have got the gig. The most senior figure who hasn’t been moved on or eased out is the one most responsible for the mess: Erik ten Hag. Of course, it’s not Ratcliffe’s fault that United have a traffic jam in the treatment room, so bad that it now extends even to the unstoppable Bruno Fernandes. The injuries may not be Ten Hag’s fault either, though there are suspicions that the rot set in when the players were overtrained, while also doing a stupid amount of travelling, on the pre-season tour of America. And you can see why Ratcliffe wants to let Ten Hag lead United out for the Cup Final, even if it will be a case of leading lambs to the slaughter.
After that, even if Amad somehow conjures up another last-minute winner, Ten Hag has to go. For the past ten weeks he has been a hopeless coach, unable to fix United’s glaring flaws – the hole in midfield, the hail of shots faced, the habit of folding under pressure. For two years he has been an uninspiring spokesman, and in the past fortnight he has begun to sound deluded (‘one of the most dynamic and entertaining teams in the league at the moment’). With Jadon Sancho, he proved himself a clumsy man-manager: it was he who started the rift by bad-mouthing Sancho in public. And now Sancho, in exile, is starring in a Champions League semi-final.
Again and again Ten Hag has proved himself a predictable selector, all too easy for opposing managers to outwit. A manager’s job is to make the team greater than the sum of its parts, and he hasn’t managed that all season (except, oddly, against Aston Villa). The Palace debacle has left him heading for United’s lowest-ever Premier League points tally, worse even than the year of David Moyes in 2013-14. They have already lost 13 league games, with three tough opponents still to come – Newcastle, who have taken revenge on United three times since the League Cup final, without conceding a goal; Brighton, who have beaten United in their last four league meetings; and first of all Arsenal, who are playing well enough to beat this United team 8-2.
If Ten Hag was sacked now, it might be cruel (in view of the Cup Final) but it would also be kind. It would give him the chance to go and talk to Bayern Munich, who, for reasons best known to themselves, have him on their shortlist. Like rich men flirting with each other’s wives, United and Bayern are each eyeing up the other’s manager. Thomas Tuchel is now the bookies’ favourite to take over from Ten Hag, even though he comes with obvious drawbacks. His stints at big clubs have all been short, he seems bad at managing up (which will be a big part of the United job once Omar Berrada and Dan Ashworth join Wilcox, Brailsford and Ratcliffe himself), he put backs up at Borussia Dortmund by being dismissive of the club’s history, and his principal skill, setting his team up for Champions League games, is not one United are about to need.
Ratcliffe has got to decide not who he wants, but what he wants. Is his priority a proven ability to repair a damaged institution? If so, he should brave the boos and go for Gareth Southgate, who has done just that with England, and is also a progressive people-manager and a good ambassador. Or is it more important to have a proven ability to get the best out of a club squad? In that case, he should go for Kieran McKenna, who has worked wonders with Ipswich, two seasons running, and is also a popular figure at Old Trafford from his time as one of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s assistants. Graham Potter was a flop at his only big club; Roberto de Zerbi has had a poor second season, just like Ten Hag; Ruben Amorim would be good but new to the Premier League and not easy to prise away from Lisbon. Ratcliffe has shown signs of not wanting to spend much more of his vast wealth: if that’s a priority too, he surely has to pursue McKenna, who would come cheapish and has managed Ipswich on a shoestring. Whether McKenna will actually want the job is another matter. You don’t have to be mad to work there, but it helps.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian, where he had the dubious honour of live-blogging the Palace game. (Warning: blog may contain offensive language.)