Rio Ferdinand says Manchester United must give their new manager the time and backing to turn the faltering club around.
United are set to appoint Ajax boss Erik ten Hag as their fifth permanent manager since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down at Old Trafford back in 2013.
Former Red Devils defender Ferdinand believes his old club must trust Ten Hag, just as Arsenal have done with Mikel Arteta, if they are to have any chance of getting back to the top. Ferdinand told William Hill: “ Manchester United are obviously now looking for a new manager, and hopefully things at the club will change.
“If you look at Arsenal, they've found the manager, they trust in him and they've allowed him to do some things where a lot of people have probably doubted it. Such as with the Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang situation, where people thought he’s a big player and you have to keep him. But now Arteta has done what he wanted and Arsenal are on a good run at the moment.
“You have to trust in the manager and trust in the process and, fingers crossed, United will do that. When you're a professional, you have to apply yourself right every single day. The culture, with the environment that you're in, has to be structured and put together for you to be the best you can be as an individual, but in our sport, as a collective as well. Up until over the last few years, United has not been set up like that.”
Ferdinand said United, who finished second in the Premier League last season and are currently seventh, must accept where they currently are and undertake a major rebuild. He explained: “You can’t lie, you can’t try and sugar-coat it and dress it up as something that it isn’t. The league table doesn’t lie. The league table tells you where you’re at and United aren’t good enough at the moment, aren’t playing well enough, aren’t consistent enough. That's just a fact.”
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United have now gone five years without winning a trophy, their biggest drought for three decades, and a far cry from the glory days under Ferguson, when they were a relentless machine, amassing silverware. Ferdinand, who played for United from 2002 to 2014, said they got so used to winning they were relentless in their pursuit of major titles, barely pausing to celebrate them. Ferdinand told William Hill: “This may sound a bit arrogant, but you became accustomed to winning the Premier League.
“Even our fanbase at the time didn’t really celebrate the way you should celebrate, because they were used to winning. Teams would win the Carling Cup or the FA Cup or get promoted and they would do open-top bus tours around their city. We won the Champions League and the Premier League in 2008 and we got off the plane from Moscow and the manager said 'I’ll see you in pre-season guys'. Where the hell was our open-bus tour? Are we not going to celebrate? It was crazy. It made us better though. If we'd celebrated too much and overindulged for too long, you forget about the next target. I became obsessed with what was next.
“We would win and even that night, sometimes I would be speaking to the CEO, asking him who the targets were to get in next season, because I was like a fan. He would tell me to enjoy the moment, but I could only enjoy it once I knew that we would go on to win. I was almost in fear of dwelling too much. I was always thinking ‘what\s the next target? We have to go again’. We were lucky enough to win back-to-back titles three times on the bounce and it gets harder each time, because the target on your back gets bigger.”
