From Fergie Time to a nervy time

This season is already beginning to resemble last season – and Erik ten Hag is at risk

FIVE ASIDES Premier League: Brighton 2, United 1 

For Erik ten Hag, it’s the same old story. He and United renewed their vows in the summer, after a rocky patch ended with a sudden twist of happiness. Now, though, the second honeymoon is over, and their friends and family are beginning to fret. In Brighton, as he finished a pre-match chat with the TNT crew, Ten Hag found himself being complimented on his scent by Rio Ferdinand (‘looking after yourself there, Erik!’). But two hours later he had the same whiff about him that he had for most of last season. Losing to a mid-table team, leaving the door open in the dying minutes, ending up with a goal difference of no difference: this is not the sweet smell of success. In the Premier League sack race, as of Sunday lunchtime, Ten Hag was second or third, right up there with Sean Dyche.

As a Premier League manager, you measure out your life in international breaks. That’s when your status hangs in the air and speculation swirls like dead leaves. The break can’t make you, but it can break you. This season the first one comes very early – after only three games. United don’t have to be in the top four at that stage, but they do need to have won more points than they have lost. If they’d held on to 1-1 in Brighton, they could have afforded another draw this weekend. As it is, the only way to reach five points is to get to six by beating Liverpool. Last season United didn’t lose to their old foes – it was 0-0 away and 2-2 at home in the league, with that 4-3 thriller in the cup in between. That was both reassuring (even a makeshift United defence can cope with this Liverpool forward line) and unnerving (the backlash is surely round the corner). While United deserved their cup victory, Liverpool dominated both those league games: if you went by xG, they were three times better than United at Anfield (1.97-0.63, according to Understat) and five times better at Old Trafford (0.81-4.43). And Mo Salah, like Danny Welbeck, nearly always scores against United.

The fixtures computer is not on Ten Hag’s side. It has pitted him against three of last season’s top five (Liverpool, Spurs, Villa) in the first seven games. It keeps giving him re-runs of fixtures from the past six months – Fulham home, Brighton away, Liverpool home, Palace away (a crime scene in May). It has also handed him the dreaded Saturday lunchtime slot, not once but twice in the first four games, and both on the south coast. The next one, at Southampton on 14 September, should be easier, though the heat will still be on because it’s another must-win. There’s no run of easier games until November. 

For two of United’s new signings, this was the difficult second appearance. After scoring the winner against Fulham with an inspired touch, Joshua Zirkzee sabotaged what should have been the winner at Brighton with an inadvertent one. (Alejandro Garnacho could have seen the danger coming and finished with a blast rather than a tap-in, but the problem was so unfamiliar that it was asking a lot of either player to find an instant solution.) After fitting in easily against Fulham, Noussair Mazraoui was more of a stranger here, misdirecting one pass in six rather than one in 11 and seeing the crosses for both Brighton goals come from his patch. After succeeding with his subs against Fulham – Zirkzee scoring, Garnacho assisting – Ten Hag flopped with them here as those two messed up the one big chance. His last throw of the dice, Antony, allowed Simon Adingra to make the match-winning cross by failing either to tackle him or to shepherd him onto his weaker foot. Just sell him!

United’s players made too many bad decisions. The defending for both Brighton goals verged on the criminal, making you wonder whether the new hierarchy’s to spend more on the defence than the midfield is already backfiring. Zirkzee wasn’t the only hero who was also a bit of a villain: Amad, before he scored, failed to capitalise on a peach of a cross from Diogo Dalot and then put an awful pass behind Marcus Rashford to blow a three-on-two. Rashford himself missed out on what should have been his first goal of the season by being offside, not for the first time. His critics said he was making his runs too early, but it takes two to miss a connection and some of his team-mates were playing the pass too late. Dalot, for all his strengths, seldom got on the overlap to allow Rashford to cut inside and shoot. Mason Mount performed, again, like a once-sparkling midfielder who has become a specialist presser. Casemiro and Bruno Fernandes were both erratic, getting into good positions and then misplacing the final ball. It was still a mystery why Fernandes was taken off, when, as usual, he was looking like the man most likely to make things happen. It was also a mystery why Ten Hag didn’t send for Christian Eriksen, the pass master who is now a forgotten man. United have lost eight games in added time in the whole Premier League era and six of those have come on Ten Hag’s watch. He has turned Fergie Time into a nervy time. And now, unless he claws back these lost points against Liverpool, his days are numbered.

Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. He has been supporting United since the days of Wilf McGuinness.