“It’s a good dressing room and they fight for each other,” Erik ten Hag said after Manchester United beat Fulham with an injury-time Bruno Fernandes winner on Saturday. And perhaps there is some truth to that. There’s always a lot made when a manager comes under pressure of whether the squad are still fighting for him and, given they’ve won four of their last six games with last-minute heroics, it’s fair to say that this is not a group who are meekly accepting their fate. Then again, if you’re constantly having to get out of jail, it’s probably worth asking what you’ve done to get in there in the first place.
In the aftermath of the 3-0 defeats to Manchester City and Newcastle, there had been rumours swirling at the end of last week that Ten Hag would be sacked if United lost at Fulham, although the truth is that he is probably insulated until Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s 25% takeover of the club is resolved. As and when Ratcliffe does take charge of the football side of operations, though, he will have a clear question to answer over Ten Hag’s future.
Given Ratcliffe was keen to appoint Ten Hag at Nice, the French club he owns, that would have seemed an implausible as recently as August. Last season, Ten Hag seemed admirably clear-sighted amid the chaos. After the opening defeats to Brighton and Brentford, he realized he could not ask David De Gea to play out from the back and amended his approach accordingly. He successfully oversaw the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo, who had become an expensive distraction and was never going to be able to press in the way Ten Hag’s Ajax-influenced philosophy demands. United even won the Carabao Cup, their first trophy since 2017.
Yet three months into this season, Ten Hag is somehow at the stage when every game seems crucial. With fixtures away to Galatasaray and home to Bayern to come, Wednesday’s Champions League game away to FC Copenhagen looks crucial for their hopes of making it out of a group that, when the draw was made, was regarded as relatively benign. The win at Fulham was necessary to stop the sense of collapse but this has still been a bad enough start to the season for Herbert Bamlett to be invoked.
United fans have heard far too much about Bamlett in the past decade. He was a referee who, with United trailing Burnley in an FA Cup tie in 1909, abandoned the game because of heavy snow. United won the rearranged fixture and went on to win the Cup for the first time. He later became a manager and, in 1930-31, oversaw United’s relegation to the second division after losing their opening 12 matches of the season. This is the first season since then in which United have lost five of their first 10 home games.
The Bamlett Invocation has come to feel a necessary part of the United managerial cycle, a warning that the end is nigh. It’s a job that chews up managers. In terms of league titles won, United are the most successful team in English history, and yet they have only ever won the league under three different managers: periods of frustration such as the one United are currently going through are part of the history of the club.
Perhaps there is something about United that makes it unmanageable for all but the most messianic of leaders but the problem recently is fairly obviously the ownership. Alex Ferguson could keep it going under the Glazers but, since his departure in 2013, the club has been blighted by a lack of investment – in the stadium, the academy, the recruitment department and, yes, in media facilities. Money has been spent on players, but with no discernible pattern other than a predilection for expensive promise that fails to deliver and expensive stopgaps to patch up the holes left by the general incoherence.
Ten Hag is to an extent a victim of that but it’s an obvious concern is that he has had more say over transfers than many of his predecessors, and none of the 16 players who have arrived during his reign have been unarguable successes. Antony, who played for Ten Hag at Ajax and cost $101m, has become an enormous millstone. And while there has been fight in the exhausting heroics required to see off Brentford, Sheffield United, Copenhagen (at home) and Fulham, there was only petulance in the shambolic defeats to City and Newcastle.
All of the six managers who have followed Ferguson bear some responsibility for the malaise. Some are more to blame than others but the far bigger issues lie in the boardroom. Nobody can realistically expect a change of manager to change United’s fortunes immediately. But when a club is sinking, standard practice is to change the manager.
The wait for Ratcliffe should spare Ten Hag in the short term but decline, once embarked upon, is not easily arrested. Perhaps Ratcliffe’s arrival will change the mood and restored morale, perhaps Ten Hag will regain his confidence and his clarity of vision, but at the moment, a familiar pattern is repeating.
On this day
A draw at home to Coventry the previous Saturday had left Manchester United fourth-bottom of the First Division table – and, frankly, even that represented something of a recovery given they had lost six of their first eight games. The doubts really had set in the previous season: United had enjoyed a record-breaking start, winning their first 10 games and going unbeaten until a 1-0 reverse at Sheffield Wednesday on 9 November. But they had fallen away badly, wining just four of their final 13 games to finish fourth. Questions were beginning to be asked about the fitness of Ron Atkinson’s side. Might it be that the drink culture at the club, which had seemed so vital for camaraderie, was beginning to sap at them?
That summer, at the World Cup, Bobby Charlton, working for the BBC, had a quick chat to the Scotland manager, Alex Ferguson. It was enough to prepare the ground. On the morning 6 November 1986, Atkinson was sacked; later that afternoon, Ferguson was confirmed as his successor. It took time, but United had embarked on the most successful spell in their history.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition
