To become the Manchester United manager is to be judged on your ability to embrace a series of contradictions.
By the end of Erik ten Hag’s tenure, his football was consumed by them. He departs the club having won a Carabao Cup and an FA Cup in his two completed seasons, a factoid he repeated numerous times as his third one lurched towards dissatisfaction.
Ten Hag was the fifth permanent manager to attempt to right the ship at Old Trafford following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in the summer of 2013. The Dutchman leaves with a reasonable claim of being a successful United manager, given he won silverware, something 14 of his predecessors did not do. In some ways, his tenure underlines how hard it is for anyone to live up to the standards set by Ferguson — who, in a pointed coincidence, recently had his ambassadorial position ended by the club — and, before him, Sir Matt Busby.
No club in England has won more top-flight titles than United’s 20, but 18 were won by either Busby (five) or Ferguson (13). Those two also account for 33 of United’s 44 major trophies and, in total, 20 out of the club’s 23 managers have failed to deliver a First Division/Premier League title.
Below is a graph of United’s ClubElo rating — a measure of team strength that allocates points for every result, weighted by the quality of the opposition faced — that illustrates the club’s post-Ferguson decline.
To take the managerial role at Old Trafford is to know you are more likely to be deemed a failure than a success and while Ten Hag did deliver trophies, his final months at United saw him overwhelmed by problems to which he could not find solutions.
The Dutchman’s game model was based on his teams dominating possession, but also attacking in a fast and direct manner. It asked forward players who weren’t the most adept at pressing to push high up the field, while a midfield group lacking running power did their best to cover the space in behind those forwards.
The good moments saw Ten Hag’s United become devastating when launching counter-attacks, but sub-optimally placed and skilled when defending against them. In the bad ones, they struggled to launch attacks that were not counters, while remaining vulnerable to quick breaks by the opposition.
Trying to explain Ten Hag’s best plan for his team grew difficult as it appeared he wanted to steal the best parts of every strategy with little consideration of how it might all fit together.
Balancing creativity with realistic goals is the mark of a good leader, but to be a Manchester United manager is to accept an impossible job with constantly shifting aims.
Ten Hag was good at taking United from their lowest recent ebb back into the Champions League. He was less effective at finding a way to keep them there once teams adjusted to his opening batch of tactics.
His arrival at the club in 2022 came after a season when United had finished with their lowest points total (58) of the Premier League era, and he displayed admirable skills in sorting out several inherited problems.
The United of 2022-23 worked as a better collective on and off the ball compared to what was left after predecessor Ralf Rangnick’s six-month interim stint. Victories over Barcelona in the Europa League’s knockout phase and Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup final made many believe the club was on the way to being back.
There were also worrying results — particularly away from home against top sides — but the belief was that Ten Hag, with another season to enact a plan in 2023-24, would find new ways to improve things.
It wasn’t to be.
Ten Hag talked up United’s potential to be the best transition team in the world, but his plan to make them a more potent attacking force simply led to them being more flimsy in defence. Nearly everything that could go wrong last season did. Ten Hag had difficulty amending the plans he had put into place and even things he used to do well — such as his use of substitutes — began to ebb away.
An unexpected victory in May’s FA Cup final against Manchester City reminded the footballing world of his tactical skills in one-off games, but the start of this season saw all of United’s bad habits resurface — too easy to defend against and to manipulate in midfield or out wide. His press conferences and interviews saw him attempting to ride two horses at the same time, eager to talk up past successes while offering little guidance on how he would secure future ones.
Managing United is a difficult job, and many of the problems Ten Hag encountered were not exclusive to his reign.
To hold that role is to serve as the de facto figurehead for a multi-billion-dollar enterprise trying to please a global, multi-generational fanbase. This club are newsworthy at local, national and international levels, every day. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a little over a billion football fans grow restless when United aren’t seen to be doing something.
In a sport where the greatest players often talk about the value of stillness and taking an extra second before making a critical decision, United have spent the post-Ferguson decade and a bit blundering their way into situations out of haste. The decision to delay Ten Hag’s dismissal back in the summer was an attempt to buck that trend, but a continued downward spiral of results made his role untenable.
Where do the club go from here?
A misguided belief in institutional exceptionalism has led to 11 years of disappointment and decay that the club’s new minority investors are only beginning to address.
United have not participated in a meaningful title race lasting into May since 2013, and have finished in the top four on five occasions since Ferguson’s retirement. United’s former vice-chairman Ed Woodward once said — infamously — that “playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business”. United fans are entitled to wonder why their club cannot deliver both.
Chief executive Omar Berrada, appointed this summer, has told staff that the aim is to win the Premier League title in 2028, in time for the club’s 150th anniversary.
How United go about that with a new manager and stadium redevelopment plans to take into account will be the next challenge.
Since the Ferguson era ended in 2013, United have entered multiple seasons unsure of the things that made them the biggest and most successful football club in England.
They will need to find that again if they wish to return to the summit of the game.
(Top photos: Diogo Cardoso and Visionhaus via Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
