He had to go
He had to go
Erik Ten Hag can't complain: his team went from good to bad to worse and ended up entrenched in a pattern of haplessness
FIVE ASIDES Erik ten Hag’s dismissal
He had to go. Under Erik ten Hag, United’s results went from good to bad to worse. Their league position went from good to bad to ugly: from third in his first season to eighth in his second to 14th in his third. Fourteenth! Jose Mourinho was sacked when United were sixth, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer when they were seventh, so Ten Hag, however sorry he may feel for himself, really can’t complain. He was only any good in the domestic cups, winning two of them; and, curiously, the minute the first of those cups was won, with a no-drama win over Newcastle in the Carabao final of 2023, United’s league form went to pieces. Although, to be fair, it was still better than their form in Europe.
It wasn’t just the results. Ten Hag’s team had less of an identity after 26 months than Unai Emery’s Villa or Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs had in six. He often sent out a team that you just knew would get overrun in midfield. His substitutions seldom made them better: he managed to overturn the proud United tradition of the Fergie-time winner, losing more PL games to goals in 90+ minutes than all his predecessors put together. The penalty at West Ham was bad luck, a poor decision from the VAR Michael Oliver, who somehow forgot that any errors were supposed to be even more ‘clear and obvious’ this season. But the defeat was part of a pattern of haplessness that had become entrenched. So were the howlers in front of goal: the three players guilty in this game – Alejandro Garnacho, Diogo Dalot and Bruno Fernandes – were all Ten Hag loyalists. They couldn’t be accused of not trying; it was more a case of the whole squad becoming infected with a virus.
Ten Hag was an erratic shopper who squandered £80m on Antony. He was a patchy strategist whose teams often looked as if they were a man short even when they weren’t. He was an indifferent communicator who never took Alex Ferguson’s advice that you have to win the press conference as well as the game. He was a haphazard thinker who would do baffling things (putting Noussair Mazraoui at No 10, then being surprised to grab a draw from the jaws of victory; not signing a left-back, yet not giving Harry Amass a competitive minute). He was a decent man from the less urbane end of the Netherlands who coped with the step up to Amsterdam but stumbled after making the leap to Manchester. His good spells tended to rely rather too much on a single player – Marcus Rashford, who scored 30 club goals in Ten Hag’s first season; Fernandes, whose purple patches would make United decent for a month or so as he added goals to his consistent, if scattergun, creativity; Rasmus Hojlund, who had a feast last Christmas after starting his PL career with a famine. The bottom line was that Ten Hag made a talented team less than the sum of their parts.
He wasn’t a good seller, either. He sold Fred, who had lifted United’s win rate when selected, even though that was often for the big games. He tried to sell Harry Maguire, who also has a high win rate (and scores some vital goals). He sold Scott McTominay, the man most likely to come up with a late winner; Ten Hag showed reluctance about that, blaming the profit and sustainability rules, but he had created the problem by buying two right-sided centre-backs in one summer (Matthijs de Ligt for £37m and Leny Yoro for £51m). He became worse and worse at taking responsibility, preferring to blame the ref, the players or the injuries. He even said ‘I deny and ignore that result’ about the 3-0 capitulation to Spurs, on the grounds that Bruno Fernandes’ red card had been rescinded. Ten Hag was, indeed, in denial and ignorance – about how badly United had played with Fernandes on the field. They got better with ten men.
Once Jim Ratcliffe took over, Ten Hag had an extra burden that his successor may well find as tricky as he did: managing up. It’s hard enough handling the players, the egos, the agents, the media and the relentless schedule (players can be rested, bosses can’t). Ratcliffe appointed so many chiefs that even a workaholic like Ten Hag must have struggled to fit all the conversations into his day. When Ratcliffe was offered the chance to give Ten Hag a vote of confidence, he declined, saying it wouldn’t be his decision, it was up to Dan Ashworth and Jason Wilcox, the football people in the hierarchy. But Ten Hag was having to deal with them every day because they were the sporting director and the technical director, so he would have been doing that while wondering if they were turning against him. And he knew that his colleagues had spoken, either directly or not, to several candidates about his job. The whole thing was so awkward, it was grim. It makes you wonder if Ratcliffe and his wingman, Dave Brailsford, have the judgment their role requires. They may both have knighthoods, but two gongs don’t make a right.
Tim de Lisle is a sportswriter for The Guardian and the editor of United Writing. He has just been shortlisted for Editor of the Year (Sport, Health and Fitness) by the British Society of Magazine Editors.