If the parachutist’s parachute was delayed like this, he would have opened the spare long ago. Under Erik ten Hag, Manchester United’s coaching chair rocked all last season, but only now, after another series of disastrous results at the start of the new year, the club’s management decided that the Dutchman’s services were already counterproductive for the Red Devils.
He will be replaced by Rúben Amorim, who built a brilliant reputation in his native Lisbon, specifically in Sporting there.
Erik the Hag could count himself exceptionally lucky this summer. He survived something that football coaches rarely do – an intense debate about his future that his superiors had without him. Manchester United’s new sports management, i.e. co-owner Jim Ratcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada, sporting director Dan Ashworth and technical director Jason Wilcox, decided after much thought that they could not see a better alternative on the market, and extended Haga’s contract by a year.
The decision was met with a lot of incredulous reactions at the time. Yes, the Hag had an extremely successful FA Cup final, in which the Red Devils deservedly beat heavily favored rivals Manchester City. However, eighth place in the league, a negative ratio of goals scored and conceded and, above all, completely dismal performances, where United often by some miracle wrested points from matches in which they deserved to lose – all this, amid the sounds of a screeching fire alarm, indicated that the Hag of the fallen giant back will not succeed in the limelight.
Disastrous football at Old Trafford
Football as disastrous as last year has never been seen at Old Trafford in this millennium. The Hag directed his charges into a strange, dysfunctional mix of a disorganized high press and a tight defense, resulting in an empty space in the middle of the field that resembled a North Korean eight-lane highway. United played a hellish system nominally looking like 4–2–3–1, but in reality it was more like 5–0– 0–5.
The position of Manchester United after the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson
- 2013/14: 7th place. Coach: David Moyes, Ryan Giggs
- 2014/15: 4th place. Coach: Louis van Gaal
- 2015/16: 5th place. Coach: Louis van Gaal
- 2016/17: 6th place. Coach: Jose Mourinho
- 2017/18: 2nd place. Coach: Jose Mourinho
- 2018/19: 6th place. Coach: Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær
- 2019/20: 3rd place. Coach: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
- 2020/21: 2nd place. Coach: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
- 2021/22: 6th place. Coach: Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Michael Carrick, Ralf Rangnick
- 2022/23: 3rd place. Coach: Erik ten Hag
- 2023/24: 8th place. Coach: Erik ten Hag
The Hag would say about it (and he often did it in the press with increasing levels of bizarreness) that injuries are to blame for everything. To a certain extent, this is understandable – when, as a result of staff absences, Harry Maguire and Johnny Evans form the stopper duo, deserving veterans, but in short, you cannot expect them to successfully complete sprint duels with anyone who does not walk on crutches, then it is probably wiser not to push the defensive line too much .
But not much else worked in the team. The attack played on chance and the individual quality of Bruno Fernandes (or worse, Scott McTominay). André Onana, bought in goal in place of David de Gea because of his excellent passing, often kicked the ball into the distance to nobody, instead of holding it for a moment with his teammates. And to say the Hag wasn’t able to get the best out of Jadon Sancho is a ridiculous understatement for what their personal differences have caused – Manchester United sending one of the most talented attacking players to run the Isles in recent years to help Chelsea out.
In light of last season’s utterly botched season, it seems odd that United’s management decided to give Hag another chance. At the time, several different explanations were floating around, each of them quite possibly a little true. There was no better candidate on the market. That Hag retained the cabin support. We’ll see what this coach can do now that he’s backed by really capable senior management!
But here Messrs. Berrada, Ashworth and Wilcox lied a bit in their pockets. Yes, the new management team Jim Ratcliffe has put together is certainly several galaxies more competent than anything the majority owners, the Glazer family, employed during the post-Ferguson era. But did the new rulers really think that a club where standards had sunk below the earth’s crust for years under the guidance of artists like Ed Woodward or John Murtough, would be like being doused with living water purely because they were now sitting in the office? “That Hag was completely useless last year, but when he has us, everything will change!”
Well, it didn’t change. Even after expensive purchases in the active summer transfer window, Ten Hag failed to stamp any recognizable identity on the team. Performances were perhaps a little better than last season, but the results were much worse. No manager can survive long in this constellation, with or without the FA Cup in the display case.
Transfers in the Premier League
Balance sheet of selected Premier League teams since ten Hag joined the United bench (season 2022/23). Departures minus arrivals. In millions of euros.
- Manchester United: – 475,1
- Manchester City: -14,9
- Arsenal: – 353,6
- Chelsea: – 788,7
- Liverpool: – 171,4
- Tottenham: – 386,1
- Newcastle: – 266,8
- Aston Villa: – 156,3
At the beginning again
So the situation that all Manchester United fans know well is repeating itself – a new head coach arrives, with him a new rebuild, a new beginning, a new rush of hope that this time it will finally be better. Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, Solskjær, the Hag… None of them have been able to bring significant or long-term success, although all but the first have offered some kind of false dawn. Why actually? What is so inexplicably rotten about the Red Devils?
It won’t be bad coaches, not even bad players – you can think what you want about the quality of Manchester United’s scouting, but for the incredible amount of money that has been invested in the team, there have also come a number of suitably big names – many of whom would be happy to welcome more successful ones to their squad competitors. So why did excellent footballers such as Angel di María, Alexis Sánchez or Paul Pogba, who proved world-class in other jerseys, not succeed in Manchester?
In a roundabout way, we return to the question of top management. For many years, the Glazer family left the management of the club in the hands of Ed Woodward, an investment banker by profession. Despite the absence of sporting success, he managed to keep the financial income and value of the club at a respectable level. The naysayers could argue that this is the main thing that matters to the Glazer family – and that all the transfer disasters, players brought in for big money for a big name without any overall plan, are actually secondary.
No matter how the team changed, it always remained remarkably disjointed, with huge gaps in certain positions (how many years did United lack a right wing?), full of bright individuals who did not fit together into a coherent system. The club worked very well as a business – and as soon as the results got too dire or the chemistry in the cabin completely broke down, all you had to do was sack the coach and look for another unfortunate who was willing on the promise of a fat transfer budget and potential legend status to restore glory United, come to ruin the career.
The only way the whole thing could work would be if Woodward et al. they accidentally stumbled upon the new Alex Ferguson. But football has moved on in that time – omnipotent managers who managed everything from training to transfers are essentially an extinct species at the top level. So the question is whether even a rejuvenated Sir Alex would even succeed in such an environment.
The most valuable football clubs in the world
Status as of May 2024. Value in billions of US dollars.
- Real Madrid: 6.6 billion
- Manchester United: 6.55 billion
- FC Barcelona: 5.6 billion
- Liverpool FC: 5.37 billion
- Manchester City: 5.1 billion
- Bayern Munich: 5 billion
- Paris Saint-Germain: 4,4 miliardy
- Tottenham Hotspur: 3.2 billion
- Chelsea: 3.13 billion
- Arsenal: 2.6 billion
Lessons learned under the new co-owner?
The new sporting management under Jim Ratcliffe has at least seemingly learned his lesson and is starting to build a modern football structure at Old Trafford full of professionals tested by other successful teams. Their chosen coaching savior is to be Rúben Amorim. But will he become one? Or will the same cycle as all the others grind him down within two or three years?
There are reasons to believe that it might not be the same as always. First: Amorim is undoubtedly a quality coach. With relatively limited resources, he brought Sporting two titles in four years, in addition to an attractive, flexible tactical display. Second: even if the new management has not been able to transform Manchester United yet, it can be expected that over the next few years the situation inside the club will gradually change for the better, which will create a better environment for coaching work. Third: the sports management probably already had one eye on Amorim during the transfer window, because summer arrivals fit his system suspiciously well.
What to expect from Amorim
Unless something unexpected happens, we will see a three-back system from the new coach that can best be written as 3–4–2–1. The central stopper works as an anchor, his outer colleagues have the task of moving the ball higher, where two central midfielders are waiting for him, one with more defensive tasks (at Sporting, for example, João Palhinha, now at Bayern), one more of a creative eight (at Sporting, Matheus Nunes, now at Manchester City). There are aggressive wingbacks on the edge, and two offensive midfielders or inverted wings operate under the complex striker, who must manage both attacks behind the defense and power play with his back to the goal.
Although it goes against the principles of the faint-hearted “The United Way”, which is to play with four backs and speedy wingers, Manchester United’s current squad is quite well prepared for Amorim’s style, thanks to the summer transfer moves. The central stopper will be played by Matthijs de Ligt, the left defensive position is as if made for Lisandro Martínez (or a recovered Luke Shaw), on the right should be the soon-to-be-recovered Leny Yoro.
Despite Hag’s preferences, Manuel Ugarte, Amorim’s former protege at Sporting, was brought into the reserve – he should occupy the position of defensive midfielder (and receive significantly more confidence than the Hag was putting in him). The eight will be played by Kobbie Mainoo – or Bruno Fernandes, who proves that he can be effective even in deeper positions.
Right wingback Diogo Dalot, on the tip Rasmus Højlund, with his parameters an absolutely ideal striker for Amorim’s system, below him Marcus Rashford, Alejandro Garnacho, Amad Diallo or Fernandes… It doesn’t look bad at all!
The biggest question is what to do with the problematic left wingback position. Shaw is perpetually injured and will be more useful to the team in a withdrawn role anyway. Tyrell Malacia has been struggling with a serious injury for more than a year, and questions hang over his overall quality. Álvaro Fernández was, for some reason, sold to Benfica, where he inevitably began to shine. Don’t be surprised if you hear the name of 17-year-old Watford star Harry Amasse more and more in the coming weeks and months…
All of this suggests that Amorim does not descend into the atrocious chaos and dysfunction that many of its predecessors have. A certain underbelly for his work was enough to grow even before United even offered him a contract. Of course, the new coach will not have it easy. On the contrary, the pressure on him against Sporting will be enormous – and the key is that he does not succumb to it in the same way that the Hag did.
The Dutch coach began to abandon all his principles under the weight of unfavorable results, discarding what made him a coaching star at Ajax – and replaced it with blind improvisation without any long-term plan. If Amorim mentally withstands the crises that are sure to come, and believes in himself and his methods, it is quite possible that success will return. Or at least the cynical certainty that, despite partial triumphs, things will soon fall apart once again tragicomically at United will disappear.
