Less than 12 months after finishing as the Premier League's runners-up, Manchester United have spent the entire season lurching from one disaster to the next.
While Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side were nowhere near Manchester City at the top of the table last term, both figuratively and literally, nobody expected United to be languishing this far behind the league's big-hitters this year. But as both Roy Keane and Gary Neville alluded to after Tuesday night's crushing 4-0 defeat to Liverpool, this current Manchester United side is unrecognisable from the team that dominated English football for decades under Sir Alex Ferguson.
Erik ten Hag is set to become the fifth man to try and emulate the iconic Scotman's success since he stepped down back in 2013. The 52-year-old has done a sterling job at Ajax, winning five trophies in his four years at the helm - but the task that awaits him at Old Trafford is a different beast entirely.
Manchester United are no longer a flag-bearer of the English game - they're now a run-of-the-mill side with a culture that's rotten to the core. If there were any doubts over the size of the job awaiting Ten Hag, then Tuesday night's meek surrender to Liverpool - for the second time this season - should have emphatically quashed them. Neville even insisted that United are currently the worst he's ever seen.
He told Sky Sports: "So, I have no idea and don’t know how to explain how it has gone from being slightly promising, finishing second last season, to the point of an all time low in my 42 years of watching United. I have never seen it as bad as that. I have never seen a Manchester United team wilt in a football game in my 40 years of watching them."
It's becoming more and more apparent that the task awaiting Ten Hag is arguably bigger than the one that was first presented to Ferguson all those years ago - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing for the Dutchman; in fact, it represents a major opportunity.
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The managerial role at Manchester United should still be one of the most coveted jobs in football, even with the ongoing turmoil on the pitch. And ironically, United's pathetic performances have probably already taken some of the heat off of Ten Hag.
Each of Ten Hag's predecessors have been weighed down by the seismic expectations that have been placed on them from day one at Old Trafford. But that isn't likely to be a problem for Ten Hag; nobody is under any illusions over just how bad this current crop of players are.
Nobody is expecting Ten Hag to conjure up an instant fix - it's now widely accepted that the club needs a full-on cultural reset. The entire club hierarchy, including the fans, will be more patient than ever before in a bid to allow Ten Hag the time he needs to facilitate such an extensive task. The early indications are that he'll be given the freedom to tear things up and sketch out his own blueprints for success both on and off the pitch after United dispensed with the services of two long-serving scouts on Tuesday.
Long gone are the days where the manager at Old Trafford was expected to manufacture miracles. Ten Hag will given the chance to conjure up his own legacy at the club without that millstone around his neck - something that wasn't afforded to his many predecessors.
