Erik ten Hag has opted against taking a leaf out of Sir Alex Ferguson's book to try and get the best out of Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United this season.
Under the glorious 26-year reign of the Scotsman, plenty of big decisions were made that may put some players noses out of joint to try and inspire some form out of others. Paul Scholes recently highlighted his way of dealing with Wayne Rooney, who had his work-rate called into question at times during his illustrious spell at Old Trafford.
It is a similar situation for Ronaldo at the moment, who has found game-time hard to come by under Ten Hag due to the Dutchman wanting a certain level of willingness to press and defend from the front from his attacking options.
Scholes told BT Sport: "You’d get onto him a little bit, even if he [Ronaldo] didn’t press he gives you something which is the hardest thing to do in football and that’s score goals that win you games of football.
"Wayne Rooney in our team he got pushed to the left because he wouldn’t run back in our team. He ended up centre forward and that’s the sacrifice you give to your teammates to try and win games."
The fact that a manager as established as Ferguson was able to recognise Rooney's prowess in front of goal was more important than pressing and was the most obvious way to make United more threatening means Ten Hag could still have something to learn from the Red Devils legend.
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Ferguson would have known that the burden of running and covering plenty of ground would have only increased for Rooney's teammates by playing the ex-England star through the centre, but did so anyway to get results.
Ten Hag will be all too aware that by persisting with Ronaldo as a centre-forward option like he has at times for Europa League contests, he will only be increasing the workload for his teammates - but that is the sacrifice potentially required to unlock one of the game's greatest goal-scorers.
Finding the back of the net has not come naturally to United this term, with Ten Hag's side scoring the second-fewest amount of goals of all 10 teams currently sitting in the top half of the Premier League table.
While United bagged three against Omonia in match-day three of their Europa League campaign, Ronaldo was not one of those on the scoresheet - despite having a plethora of chances.
It was hardly the kind of performance that will make Ten Hag reconsider his stance on the 37-year-old forward and play to his strengths while calling on his teammates to do more dirty work as a result.
