Soccer

Ten Hag and Ineos turned Manchester United into something glacial, Soviet and weirdly dull

Next manager is arguably the most important appointment in the club’s modern history. Manchester United can’t afford to carry on being a dying brand

Erik ten Hag has overseen not just underachievement, but a collapse of the internal geometry of the Manchester United team. Photograph: John Walton/PA
Erik ten Hag has overseen not just underachievement, but a collapse of the internal geometry of the Manchester United team. Photograph: John Walton/PA
Barney Ronay
Mon Oct 28 2024 - 22:18

Well, that’s finally happened then. On now, to the next glorious two-year plan. The last few months of Erik Ten Hag’s time at Manchester United have felt at times like a throwback to the dog days of the Soviet Union, when the secretary of the central committee always seemed to be either dead or dying, wheeled out grudgingly to oversee a parade every three months, the human face of this vast, dying red bureaucracy basically a corpse in a coat propped up in front of some missiles.

As of Monday afternoon we finally have clarity. The latest man in black is no more. That frowning bald Dutchman with a way of standing on the Old Trafford touchline that conveyed a strangely tender kind of pathos, a man to whom the world is simply doing things, will now receive the large payoff governed by an utterly insane two-year contract signed this summer, at a point when he was already clearly just a pair of legs in a suit.

Is this the worst United sacking yet? Does it, at least, feel epic, an Event Sacking, as Manchester United sackings are supposed to? Not so much. And this is perhaps the greatest achievement of Ten Hag’s time and more vitally the early days of Ineos.

Between them these two entities have managed the amazing feat of transforming Manchester United, who for all their flaws are above all messy and sexy and loud, into something glacial, Soviet and weirdly dull. It seems boasting about winning the League Cup will do that to you in the end.

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Ten Hag aside, the last few months of drift have been a disaster for that most vital of things, the brand, which for the first time feels a little shrunken and incidental. Above all this has been a major black eye for Ineos, which has handled the succession clumsily, and which is, so early in its time in charge, still in the process of revealing itself and its capacities.

The first point to make is the obvious one. What took you so long? Another demerit on the Ineos scorecard: even doing the right thing, sacking an inadequate manager, has somehow been turned into a bodge via the simple fact of delay. It was obvious Ten Hag had to go at the end of last season. Jim Ratcliffe had set his own criteria for retention, specifically qualifying for the Champions League and developing an attractive style of play.

How did that work out then? United finished eighth and are now 14th. And while attraction is clearly subjective, the defining quality of the current United team is bafflement, vagueness of purpose, a group that seems totally under-equipped for the complex task at hand, like watching a litter of well-meaning Labrador puppies trying to rewire a circuit board.

Ten Hag has overseen not just underachievement, but a collapse of the internal geometry of the team. Nobody has improved. No components of the team speak to one another. The outcome has been a kind of shapeless panic-football and a revolving carousel of how-about-this selections.

Even the bad vibes of Ten Hag’s own end times were becoming contagious. Struggling managers often use their public appearances to set the narrative of their departure. Ten Hag had taken to railing constantly about injustices, perhaps with the aim of being remembered as simply unlucky. This can also poison the waters. Matthijs de Ligt’s entire United career to date seems to have involved throwing his arms wide while howling about injustice, conspiracy, chemtrails, phone masts. This hasn’t been good for him.

The reality of Ten Hag’s time is £600 million spent to make a mediocre team worse, and last season arguably the worst showing by any English team in the Champions League group stage. Through this Ten Hag has seemed constantly to be wreathed in gloom, less big club impresario more austere 16th-century priest who will talk, if you really insist, about VAR and defensive mistakes, but really just wants to tell you that all human life is dark, short and joyless.

[ Manchester United close in on Rúben Amorim to succeed Erik ten Hag ]

And so here we are, at a point where the real story isn’t actually Ten Hag at all, but Ineos and the puzzle of a much-fanfared management collective which seems, at this stage, to have no more idea of how to govern this thing than anyone else.

Why did the management cartel retain Ten Hag for so long? Presumably for many reasons, not least the failure to source a replacement. In the event, those four months of delay have effectively doubled down on the bodge of the previous league season.

Getting into the Champions League from this point will require a feat of dramatic resuscitation. Missing out on that expanded jamboree, for a club this size, so in thrall to their own brand power, feels like a generational mistake. Elite football is a fluid place right now. This really wasn’t the moment to stumble.

It feels doubly significant because the age of Ineos is still so young. Who are these people anyway? To date almost nothing has been achieved beyond the hire of some convincing-looking men in suits. Mediocre footballers continue to arrive. One of the few good decisions, cutting off Alex Ferguson (Ferguson is 82: £24 million has been paid to him since he retired) became a poorly timed piece of anti-PR.

And yet of course nothing is ever done or closed. Football constantly renews. And the question of what next seems unusually important. Managing this vast and uncontrollable entity, with all its maddening exceptionalism, has never been easy.

To be United manager is to undertake three simultaneous roles. First you need to manage the past, which is constantly in the room, rattling at the door handles, sweeping the plates from the kitchen dresser. Second, you need to manage the dysfunction of the present, from leaking roof and unbalanced squad to sui generis owners. And third you need to win, and to do so with vigour and energy, as though guiding this vast, creaking plague ship is in fact the simplest thing in the world.

In the post-Ferguson death scape United have tried a proper football man, an ageing legend, a has-been giant, a club museum waxwork and a sensible but limited mid-ranger. What now? A punt on youth? Some 27-year-old polyamorous Swiss who arrives on a hoverboard and talks about domination of the non-spaces?

The role of a manager is often overstated. But it is a hugely important moment for Ineos, and one of the few really significant levers they have to pull. Arguably it is the most important appointment in the club’s modern history. Manchester United really can’t afford to carry on being this version, the dying brand, the history boys, a fading heritage exhibition.

[ The games that convinced Manchester United to get rid of Erik ten Hag ]

Thomas Frank would be decent and likable but also limited in scope and previous achievements. Xavi or Zinedine Zidane already look like an amusing disaster. Gareth Southgate is in theory a culture merchant and whole-club visionary, but the job would eat him alive within six weeks (imagine the sheer volume of heartfelt open letters this is going to require).

Rúben Amorim has been hotly tipped for the job and was also linked previously with Manchester City should Pep Guardiola decide to leave at the end of the season. Amorim is a pragmatist tactically, but a young, vigorous, charismatic one. It seems a sensible fit in outline. United need a manager with steel, a non-company man, someone to inject some no-compromise intensity into this decaying host.

United will feel they basically need a hyper-competent maniac, someone on the rise, willing to suffer and work, but with sufficient levels of will and egotism to carry the club’s sense of themselves. But for now perhaps the idea of era-building and culture shift should be abandoned.

The message of the slow death of the Ten Hag era is that this is an institution in danger of missing its moment, of finally facing that step-change, excluded from an elite tier that is in the process of aggressively re-gearing. Never mind marginal gains. Above all they just really need to start winning. – Guardian