Broken Manchester United stuck in a cycle of Champions League failure
United still back Erik ten Hag despite their early elimination from the Champions League, but another group-stage exit is the result of a decade of dysfunction
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Your support makes all the difference.It’s often said that one of the worst things in football is when people start to pity you and that is where it has got to with Erik ten Hag. Thomas Tuchel was expressing “sympathy” for his situation.
“Almost always I feel sympathy for the other coach but we try everything to win matches,” the Bayern Munich manager said after his side’s comfortable 1-0 win over Manchester United. “He has a lot of key players injured for a decisive match. It is not an easy time but I am pretty sure he knows what to do next and he does not need my advice or clapping on the shoulders. He is experienced enough to go through it. I had not a nice moment last Saturday and sometimes you feel lonely as a coach.”
Ten Hag certainly expressed a lonely view after the game. He said United played well. Very few watching on could have felt the same.
It was a must-win European game but one that certainly didn’t feel a must-watch after a few minutes. United were turgid with almost no attacking impetus, ultimately having more injured players than shots on target.
The absences might speak to some of their problems but it really shouldn’t be this bad. To go with the humiliation of another group-stage exit, they have now lost 50 per cent of their games this season.
Such a situation is leading to increasing questions over Ten Hag’s capability to do the job as well as over his future, even though he is at no risk of the sack yet. The club still back him, but they also don't want to make any big decisions until the Ineos situation is resolved.
That does speak to something bigger here. United have now gone out at the group stage more than any other round since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, which is as resounding a reflection of the deep dysfunction as you could have.
It is why, even allowing for growing arguments that Ten Hag may not be up to it, there is something bigger here. United are now at a point where it feels like anyone but the strongest personalities would suffer here; as if it’s only a young Ferguson who could manage it. Talk about history repeating itself.
United, however, need to become a modern club. This is why the Ineos confirmation can’t come quick enough. The plan is for Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s staff to do an audit of how the entire club works, before bringing in a sophisticated football structure that mirrors the most successful sides in the game.
It often feels incredible they don’t have this. They’re just not structured like Manchester City or Liverpool or Bayern Munich. That can be seen in Ten Hag’s signings. The manager has been afforded a power in the market you don’t see with Pep Guardiola, say. There, the club works so well that the Catalan need only suggest a profile of the player that he needs and City’s staff come back with several options. It all fits. It is similar to Liverpool.
At United, Ten Hag has demanded specific players, that could well be unused if another manager comes in with a different style. There’s even an argument that the team is still in some way adjusting to the fixation on signing Frenkie de Jong last season. Ten Hag specifically wanted his former Ajax passer for how he interpreted his game, and no one else would do. When they couldn’t get him, after an almost summer-long search, they changed approach completely and went for a very different midfielder in Casemiro. There are now suggestions Kobbie Mainoo has a lot of what Ten Hag wanted in De Jong, but he is just 18. He was born a few weeks before the Glazers took over.
This has been one of the issues in the last decade of their running of the clubs. Promising players have been held up as saviours and initially done well, only to have too much responsibility put on them and get swallowed up by the doom. This could well describe Marcus Rashford’s recent career, even though he is now facing up to more individual criticism.
There has really been a collective failure.
Ten Hag is at fault since it’s bizarrely impossible to discern the playing style of a former Ajax manager, but there is obviously much more to it.
There was once a famous line by Brendan Rodgers about why he would turn down Chelsea. “I am trying to build my career and not destroy it.”
This is what United have become. While managers will be tempted by the money as well as the idea of potentially being the one to finally fix such a big club, promising young coaches would have to consider how this would affect their career.
There is so much broken. Ratcliffe and his staff can’t come quick enough.
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