Erik ten Hag's New Year resolutions at Manchester United are to win trophies and continue to make Old Trafford a fortress.
United have made a promising start to life under Ten Hag, both on and off the pitch. While goals still aren't frequent enough, significant improvements have been made at the back making the side much more difficult to beat.
A series of positive results since the resumption of club football has seen United climb back into the top four for the first time since March and they now have a two-point advantage as well as a game in hand on fifth-placed Tottenham. They are still competing on three further fronts as well.
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A Carabao Cup quarter-final against League One's Charlton Athletic at home should see United advance to the semis, they remain in the FA Cup and are still within a chance of winning the Europa League, though they will have to advance past Barcelona. Ten Hag has made ending the club's five-year wait for a trophy his big target for 2023.
"It’s always about trophies. It’s not about looking too much to yourself, it’s about looking to your family and looking to trophies," he said when asked about his highlights of 2022 by United's in-house media. "That’s what I did and always will do, so looking back, I’m happy and I’m happy with my family - we are satisfied and settled in Manchester so I’m happy with that. But when I look at sporting [highlights] then it’s definitely trophies and that is also what we aim for in 2023."
When then asked about his resolutions for the new year, he replied: "Yeah, professionally, it’s what I just mentioned, it’s about trophies. We are not, at this moment in the season, thinking too much about that, for now it’s about getting into a position where you can win trophies. It’s a long way, especially this season, we are not even halfway yet, there are many games to come. So don’t focus too much on what can happen, it’s about thinking game to game."
United have dropped points at home on only three occasions so far this season. The opening defeat to Brighton, the loss to Real Sociedad and the goalless draw with Newcastle. It's a dramatic upturn in form at Old Trafford and something Ten Hag aims to continue.
"Yeah definitely, it has to be [a fortress]," he said. "We want to be resilient and we want to be playing with discipline in our game, we expressed that with 11 in attack and 11 in defence.
"It’s about doing your job, being hard to beat in every duel as a team, in every game, and we are heading in the right direction. So we are happy with that, but we can’t be satisfied as we don’t want any laziness and laziness means the performances will drop. So we have to keep focused and keep improving on details and keep getting better every day because good is not good enough."
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