Erik ten Hag is following the legacy of legendary former Manchester United Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson in his bid to take the club back to the top.
Former United forward Brian Kidd, who won the European Cup under Busby and helped Ferguson win four Premier League titles as his assistant, reckons Ten Hag shares their philosophy. Busby and Ferguson had a commitment to youth and Kidd believes Ten Hag shares that vision – and their attacking football ethos - by putting faith in the likes of 18-year-old Alejandro Garnacho.
“When you look from the outside looking in, he's not afraid to play the kids is he?” said Kidd. “That's a good thing. Then you go back to Sir Matt and Jimmy Murphy [Busby's assistant coach] - if you're good enough, you're old enough.
“I still can’t believe I was 17 when I went on the tour to Australia in 1967. Then I got that first full season, then we won the European Cup. They had faith in you.
“From the outside looking in, it doesn’t look like he's afraid to put the kids in. Then you need the senior pros there to bring them along.
“When you had Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, George Best, Bill Foulkes and Tony Dunne, they looked after you. I can remember Eusebio saying 'whose Brian Kidd?'.
“Nobody had heard of me. So you do need that. You need the senior guys to look after you.”
Kidd, 74, also claimed Ten Hag had made the ideal start by winning a trophy in his first season with United's Carabao Cup triumph in January, which ended the club's six-year wait for silverware.
“The mantra was always to put silverware on the sideboard every season,” said Kidd. “That's the demand.
“The League Cup is silverware. Make sure you're putting silverware on the sideboard, it doesn’t matter what it is. That's the demand. You can’t be flippant.”
Kidd has a foot in both United and Manchester City camps, having played for both and worked as an assistant manager at both, most recently under Pep Guardiola, leaving in 2021.
As such, Kidd will be torn for Saturday's FA Cup final, the first between the Manchester clubs, but his greater influence came at United, where he was made youth team coach by Ferguson in 1988.
“I was fortunate when Sir Alex asked me to do the local youth,” said Kidd. “I'd played for Manchester boys, so I knew the secretaries and the Salford boys had a lot of good kids in those days.
“For me, coming back and being a local lad as well, you knew what the local kids had gone through. There was a belief in the youth, the kids. It was different when I was younger because you would only sign a schoolboy form when you were 14.
“Not like it is now, where they're signing kids at five-years-old. You signed a schoolboy form then, if they thought you were okay, they gave you an apprenticeship.
“It wasn’t cosmetic, there was a real belief about the youth policy with Sir Matt and Jimmy Murphy, his assistant.”
