Erik ten Hag has made a brilliant start to life as Manchester United manager, winning his opening three matches with an aggregate score line of 11-2.
United kicked off the new era with a 4-0 victory against Liverpool in Bangkok before beating Melbourne Victory 4-1 and Crystal Palace 3-1 upon arriving in Australia. They are only pre-season friendlies and Liverpool and Palace did not play their strongest sides, but they are impressive results nevertheless.
The wins have been made more eye-catching due to their context. Ten Hag is currently without Cristiano Ronaldo, who has been left behind due to family reasons, while he also doesn’t have his number one transfer target, Frenkie de Jong.
Instead, the Dutchman has got decent performances out of players who were nowhere under the management of his predecessor Ralf Rangnick. Anthony Martial has scored once in each game, just months after returning from an unsuccessful loan spell at Sevilla. Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho have appeared rejuvenated, while Diogo Dalot has been one of the surprise stand-out players so far.
Ten Hag is understandably happy with the start but is also refusing to read too much into it. "I think it's pre-season and we are happy with the improvement we see but also you see a lot of work to do," he said on MUTV after the win over Palace. "We scored some wonderful goals and that is also true.
Asked whether his side were winning the ball higher up in the field in dangerous positions, he replied: "I agree and that is also the demand on the team. We press all day and, if we can, do that high up the pitch. But if we can't, we get to do that in a lower block but we also have to press and do it together as a team."
Ten Hag’s work is such that he has already accomplished some of the goals he outlined in his first United press conference. His start is quite different to that of David Moyes, who took over from Sir Alex Ferguson in the summer of 2013, but immediately looked out of his depth.
Ten Hag might quite rightly not want to read into friendly pre-season results, but Moyes did not have that luxury – people were certainly reading into his results. That’s because he managed to oversee three defeats from his first seven games before the start of the 2013/14 season.
A roll-call of their opponents highlights just how embarrassing that run of results really was. Just like this summer, United travelled to Asia and Australia. Back then they played matches against a Thai All-Star XI, the A League All Stars, Yokohama F. Marinos, Cerezo Osaka, Kitchee, AIK and Sevilla.
That is not a tough run of opponents, but things did not get off to a promising start. Moyes’ reign started with an embarrassing 1-0 loss to the Singha All-Star side in front of 60,000 supporters in Thailand.
Moyes tried to play it down but he must have been at least a tad worried. “Was it a bad sign? No,” he insisted. “If I am going to lose any games, these are the ones to lose. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like losing games but in relative terms it’s not of the biggest importance at this stage of the season.”
United bounced back with a 5-1 win over the best the Australian A-League had to offer, with Jesse Lingard and Danny Welbeck both bagging braces, but it didn’t last. They were then beaten 3-2 by the mighty Yokohama Marinos before a 2-2 draw against Osaka.
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Their second win of the summer came in a 5-2 triumph over Kitchee, with Welbeck, Lingard, Chris Smalling, Adnan Januzaj and Fabio getting on the score sheet before they returned to Europe.
Moyes’ side played AIK and only managed a 1-1 draw, in what the Mirror’s match report from the time describes as a “miserable” way to conclude their pre-season campaign. The whole summer had been overshadowed by Wayne Rooney ’s desire to leave, but that was no excuse – and it was about to get worse.
Rio Ferdinand was given a testimonial to mark his 11 years of service at Old Trafford, but United lost that too, shipping three goals to lose 3-1 against Sevilla. That ended the summer and meant they had conceded 13 goals in Moyes’ first seven games in charge.
"There is a frustration,” Ferdinand said bluntly. “We want to win every game so to lose is disappointing but it's lucky there weren't three points at stake.” Unfortunately for Moyes he didn’t have many games where three points were at stake with which to turn things around. He was sacked after 10 months and, in hindsight, his dreadful pre-season was a sign of things to come.
