Ten Hag's United are now a cup team
In their last 40 league games, they have lost 16 times. This can't go on
SEVEN ASIDES Premier League: United 0, Liverpool 3
Two games into the Premier League season, we took a rather gloomy view of United’s predicament. Three games in, it already looks as if it we weren’t gloomy enough. Erik ten Hag is in even bigger trouble than we thought. United were the more threatening team for the last half-hour of this game, but all is not well that ends well. When it came to the crunch, between the 35th minute and the 56th, Liverpool were vastly superior, as clinical as they had failed to be on their two other visits this year (when United somehow won 6-5 on aggregate). This time United were outplayed in the middle third of the match – and, as so often, in the middle third of the pitch. The midfield battle, which should have been 4-3 in United’s favour as Ten Hag persisted with the two-false-nines formation that had worked against City, turned out to be 3-2 to Liverpool as their trio treated United’s pivot like a divot. And one of the two trying to cope with them was Casemiro, giving the ball away 11 times in the first half, being replaced by a novice for the second, and having the worst day of his career in England – which, after all the bad days he had last season, is saying something.
Erik ten Hag did get some things right. He showed faith in Marcus Rashford, a big-occasion player who, even in his annus horribilis last season, scored against Liverpool, Arsenal and City. Here Rashford created United’s two best chances with artful crosses to Joshua Zirkzee and emerged, at both Whoscored and Sofascore, as one of United’s highest-rated performers (not that that was exactly high praise). Rashford’s goal famine goes on, but as Ten Hag said the other day, he’s looking sharp and hungry. And it wasn't his fault that he didn’t have a shot: with Zirkzee, like Rasmus Højlund for most of last season, looking for runs in the inside-left channel, Rashford is cast as a supplier, not a marksman.
Where Ten Hag got it badly wrong was with his selection further back. After complaining about the number of times he had been forced to change the back four, he went and changed it when he didn’t have to. He dropped Harry Maguire, still his favourite fall guy, and gave Matthijs de Ligt a testing first start. That might have worked out if he had also reinforced the midfield. The team I picked, on the MEN site, had Toby Collyer alongside Casemiro to shield the defence, with Kobbie Mainoo (a star against Liverpool in April) further forward, Bruno Fernandes at the tip of the diamond, and Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho as a front two set up for the counter, much like Rashford and Dan James when they combined for a great breakaway goal in this fixture five years ago. I was probably wrong about Garnacho, who has reverted to being a superb sub: Amad, when he came on, was more involved and influential. But the key was the midfield. United are so often over-run there, and nobody over-runs opponents like Liverpool. If you’d had to guess which team had a new manager, you’d have said it was United. Arne Slot has slotted in alarmingly smoothly. (Rather than inflict the highlights on you, we’ve gone for something more cheering.)
At a time when he should be choosing his battles, Ten Hag is picking fights. He called Alan Shearer ‘stupid’ and told Ian Ladyman of the Mail ‘I feel sorry for you’. He was right to defend Rashford against Shearer, but wrong to throw a playground insult at a man who is, like it or not, a leading pundit. That’s the trouble with bluntness: it’s often a blunt instrument. He could do with polishing up his PR and his English, still angular after more than two years.
United have now lost 16 of their last 40 league games. That’s 40 per cent! They have scored two league goals this season, while Erling Haaland alone has seven. At Opta, United are now forecast to do even worse than last season and finish ninth with 55 points. Since finishing third in his first season – an achievement that had a lot to do with Rashford’s annus mirabilis – Ten Hag has turned them into a cup team, able to rise to the occasion in a knock-out, yet often at a loss in the league. He may have had a vote of confidence from Omar Berrada, but he’s still on the brink. Let’s face it: he has five weeks to save his job, because that’s how long there is till the next international break.
This is what he has to do. (1) Win at Southampton, the only Premier League club with fewer goals in 2024-25 than United. If he loses that game, he may as well resign on the spot. (2) Batter Barnsley in the League Cup: the target should be 4-0, a scoreline United have never achieved under Ten Hag. He can seize the chance to start some forgotten men, including Christian Eriksen, whose creativity may well be needed alongside the crunching-tackle machine that is Manuel Ugarte. (3) Grab a draw or a win at Palace, a tough place to go at the best of times and all the more so at 5.30pm on a Saturday. (4) Get the Europa campaign off to a decent start by dispatching FC Twente, one of Ten Hag’s old clubs. (5) Beat Spurs at home, which will go some way to atoning for Liverpool. (6) Pick up a point or three at Porto. (7) Be decent at Villa Park. Another win is probably too much to expect after the two last season, which relied on Villa being uncharacteristically flaky. Ten Hag will have to swallow his distaste for rotation, spare some star players the trip to Porto, and hope that Villa are reeling from facing Bayern in the Champions League.
That’s a lot of planets that need to be aligned. Ten Hag is a decent man and we wish him every success. ‘Sacked in the morning,’ the Liverpool fans sang. That gleeful prediction didn’t come true as Berrada’s interview, conducted before the game under embargo, was published the next day. But Ten Hag still faces a hell of a challenge, made even harder by the way Jim Ratcliffe flirted with alternatives in May. And it’s all too possible to sing ‘Sacked in October’ without having to change the tune.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian, where he had the dubious honour of live-blogging this game.