Erik Ten Hag is missing at Manchester Unitedand for the sixth time in just over a decade, England’s biggest football club is looking for a new head coach.
Ten Hag is absent because he wasn’t very good. He had won only one of his last eight matches in all competitions. United, with defeat at West Ham on Sunday, had slipped to 14th place, a season after finishing eighth, lower than ever in the Premier League era. Poor results and performance had become a trend this, over the past two months, seemed more and more irreversible.
There is, however, also a broader pattern to consider, one that should not necessarily absolve Ten Hag but should frighten potential successors.
Since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, no United manager has lasted three years in the role.
Five different men – six if you count Ralf Rangnick’s six-month interim spell – have been tasked with maintaining or restoring United’s prominence. They were recruited for various reasons, from various countries, with different levels of experience and influence. David Moyes was a Briton who had succeeded in small English clubs. Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho were huge names and proven winners. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a Man United legend. Ten Hag was a trending signing from Ajax in the Netherlands.
Everyone came with a plan to shape Manchester United. Each had a distinct attitude and style. Everyone came with their own tactical ideas, their own list of players to target, their own ideals. Very little commonality connects the five.
And yet, they all failed in a siege that, year after year, seems more and more toxic.
Their only commonality is their shared experience in a decaying club that, apart from money and prestige, has done nothing in the last decade to merit a place among England’s elite.
Ten Hag, in some ways, was among the best of the five. His winning percentage was better than Solskjaer, Van Gaal, Rangnick and Moyes. His two trophies – the 2024 FA Cup and the 2023 League Cup – matched Mourinho’s spoils. The circumstances he faced – injury rashes, management and ownership troubles and uncertainties – were undoubtedly more unfavorable.
So it’s silly to present him as the problem, as the clueless manager dragging a once-proud club to new depths.
He was the latest punching bag, the face of United’s many problems; but this is by no means the main reason why these problems persist.
The problems, over the years, have been archaic structures, unqualified managers and poor recruitment of players. The result is an inconsistent team of second-rate players who, on paper and on the pitch, don’t seem to fit together.
Is this what United’s next manager, Gareth Southgate, thinks? Zinedine Zidane? Xavier? Ruud van Nistelrooy, the interim? – will inherit. Added to this are still high expectations and a behind-the-scenes structure that always seems to be evolving.
The work is not impossible. But this requires reforms that go far beyond the competence of a coach. These will go to new co-owner Jim Ratcliffe; and his principal athletic assistant, Dave Brailsford; and CEO Omar Berrada, who was hired from outside Manchester City; and athletic director Dan Ashworth.
Reforms are apparently underway. But until the changes prove significant… why, other than a lucrative salary, would a coach want this job?
Van Nistelrooy, a former United striker and most recently Ten Haag assistant, will take charge until United’s management finds someone confident (or delusional) enough to take on the challenge.
And in the meantime, the 2024-25 season, like several before it, already seems lost.