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It was the stand-out line, from another game where Manchester United had been levelled. “It’s not like I’m Harry Potter,” Erik ten Hag said after the 3-0 defeat to Liverpool. “That is what you have to acknowledge.”
The statement was in response to a question over how Manuel Ugarte will fit in, but felt a comment about everything given that he prefaced it with “this is another one”. There are many more things that Ten Hag himself refuses to acknowledge, at least in public. When it was put to the United coach that his team are suffering from many of the exact same flaws as last season, he responded in that defensive way that has become a habit.
“What do you mean?” Ten Hag said. “Maybe explain to me with the mistakes that are regular.”
The litany of problems were listed, that include individual errors, marking and being turned over so close to their own box. Ten Hag just stared, before stating: “You are sure? I don't think otherwise you wouldn't win trophies as we did against big opponents. So I'm sorry for you, I have another vision. I think we won after [Manchester] City the most trophies in English football, so I'm sorry for you.”
The most uncharitable interpretation of that is that it’s no wonder United keep suffering from the same issues if the manager evidently doesn’t see them as issues. It’s of course possible this is just that refusal to concede anything to the media in that way that does happen in press conferences when a manager suffers a pressurised run. They can't show vulnerability.
For all Ten Hag’s talk of “vision”, though, there was another image from the game that was much clearer. That was of Sir Jim Ratcliffe with his head in his hands, to go with some grim faces around him in the executive boxes.
Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe summarising the mood of the club's fans 🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/GadgLnJpXY
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) September 1, 2024
It’s impossible not to wonder at moments like that whether the new Ineos hierarchy regret deciding to persist with Ten Hag after openly considering his sacking in the summer. This was one of the group's first big decisions and, no matter what happens, it is going to frame the entire season. The very fact the process became so public was an issue in itself. Put simply, everyone knows there were serious doubts about Ten Hag. That means he looks and feels like a lame duck.
There is only one way to stop that. That is to start producing excellent performances and results. And they do genuinely need to be excellent, on account of the fact there was so much uncertainty about Ten Hag's future that this is going to come back up with every single set-back.
They’ve been anything but excellent so far. In fact, there have been some concerning patterns.
It was conspicuous how concisely Arne Slot summed up United’s issues - both new and old - in a pitch-side TV interview after the game. “Their full-backs, nine out of 10 times, are really high, and then Casemiro comes in between,” the Liverpool manager told Sky Sports. “So, if you pick up the ball and you can keep [Luis] Diaz and Mo Salah high, then you’re constantly in a one-on-one situation.”
Put in blunter terms than the more diplomatic Slot would dare, such a summation meant Ten Hag’s approach was so easy to deconstruct that the Liverpool manager confidently felt he could do so in just his third game. And while an obvious response to this is that Slot walked into a much better structure - as Ten Hag previously made a point of saying - their starts aren’t being compared.
The United coach has now been in the job two years, having mostly had significant control of transfers. His team still didn’t have anything close to the coherence that Liverpool did.
There’s another point to that, too. It’s not like Slot has just perpetuated Jurgen Klopp’s approach. They press and build play in a very different way. Salah, who looked resurgent against United, went into detail about this.
"It's been a big change,” the Egyptian said this week. "I had been with Jurgen for seven or eight years, but now with the new manager there's different things. I enjoyed it before and I'm enjoying it now.
"We play a different kind of football now. The manager now wants to control the ball all the time - with Jurgen, sometimes we'd just go counter-press and try to attack all the time in their half. But now we need to control the game, sometimes slow things down because that's part of the plan, and that's a big difference.”
It could be seen in the ways they opened United. There’s been similar at Brighton, where Fabian Hurzeler plays in a much more nuanced way to Roberto De Zerbi. Again, his team have looked much more in tune than United.
Ten Hag talks of “building a team” but, again, he has been at that for more than two years. Despite that, the United coach has been tactically bested by a 31-year-old in his second Premier League game and a recently arrived Eredivisie coach in his third.
That need not be damning in the long term but it does point to fundamental issues, and the evidence so far doesn’t give much encouragement Ten Hag will turn it around.
Does that mean Ineos will eventually do what they didn’t in the summer? One view is that it would look bad to sack Ten Hag so quickly after the summer’s decision. It’s just there is little in football that looks as bad as performances like this.
The line from the club is patience, that they are happy with the encouraging summer signs, that Ten Hag just needs time and space in this new structure to bring it together, but there are still so many variables.
It’s just such a worry that so many previous flaws have remained consistent. You don’t need to be a wizard to change those.
