Erik ten Hag at Manchester United was always going to end in salty tears

UNTIED

Like the shock you get when you touch an electric fence deliberately, Erik ten Hag’s dismissal from his role as Manchester United manager was entirely predictable but still came as a bit of a surprise. Binning off the Dutchman is certainly the most significant decision the new breed of Ineos go-getters have made since Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought his stake in the club, doubling up as an embarrassing admission that they could scarcely have got their previous biggest decision more wrong. While United’s FA Cup final win might have been impressive enough to cover over a multitude of gaping fissures, it seems that only Ratcliffe and the kind of “world class” high-performing executives with which he likes to surround himself were too dumb to see that offering Ten Hag a new contract in July was ever going to end in anything other than salty tears.

As the chief backer of a sailing team that has just been thumped in the Americas Cup, Ratcliffe and his Ineos Sport group have also helped mastermind the descent of once all-conquering professional cycling and motor racing teams into the realms of the bang average, are “principal partners” of the worst All Blacks rugby team in history and not one of their three football clubs are pulling up trees. A thrifty cost-cutting billionaire he may be but when it comes to sporting glory, Ratcliffe doesn’t appear to have the same Midas touch that has served him so well when it comes to building his oil, gas and petrochemicals conglomerate. While his initial popularity at United was almost entirely down to a faux man-of-the-people schtick and the fact his name isn’t ‘Glazer’, many of the decisions he has made since arriving at the club have proved extremely unpopular.

Sacking Ten Hag is unlikely to be one of them, not least because the Dutchman has sounded increasingly deranged in recent weeks. His nadir? After months of relentless bleating about injuries, his attempt to explain why his side’s humiliation at the hands of Spurs doesn’t count because a red card shown to Bruno Fernandes was subsequently overturned on appeal. Ten Hag is more entitled to argue that Sunday’s defeat at West Ham was down to inexplicably poor finishing and a bizarre VAR intervention, but having been given every chance to succeed while his rudderless team showed no sign of improvement, it almost seems a kindness that he has been handed his P45. One of more than 200 staff to have been ushered to the Old Trafford door marked “Do One” since Ratcliffe arrived, at least he gets to leave with a multi-million pound payoff.

Inevitably, talk has turned to who will replace him and while Ruud van Nistelrooy has been placed in temporary charge, a number of more experienced suspects are also in the frame: Rúben Amorim, Thomas Frank, Gareth Southgate, Xavi, Kieran McKenna and Peter Bosz are just some of those whose names being bandied about in the hours following Ten Hag’s dismissal, their contrasting styles suggesting that nobody has a clue who will be in the next cab off the rank when it comes to adequately replacing Lord Ferg, over a decade and six managers later. Whether or not the Sir Dave Brailsford hive mind has any clearer a vision remains to be seen as, once again, one of the world’s most famous football clubs prepares to go back to world-class basics.

LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE

Join Niall McVeigh for live rolling coverage of Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony to find out if Erling Haaland and Aitana Bonmatí will retain their spherical trophies from last year.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“How many of us have a university background or are willing to sit in an office? Without the smell of the grass, without access to the players, the dressing room, the sweat? Few of us [former players] have the desire to go into that field [of football governance’]. Besides, we had Platini. And you saw what happened to him” – Marcel Desailly sits down with Jonathan Liew to talk about his future plans, becoming ‘a legend’ and why he could not be an elite midfielder in the modern game.

 

Marcel Desailly photographed in Doha earlier this month. 

 FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS

“Re Fernandes’ message to Ten Hag: the passive aggressive stuff someone would scrawl on your leaving card if they didn’t like you in the first place” – Kev McCready.

“At the risk of triggering a cascade of conflicting opinions, I would maintain that anything purporting to be the ‘best’ football headline of all time should be brief, lucid and meaningful. The specimen to which you refer (‘Inverness in a mess’ – Friday’s Football Daily, full email version) is merely extended torture of the English language concluding with gibberish. Here, by contrast, is my own favourite example of a genuine front-runner: “Queen in brawl at Palace”… the Queen being Gerry (an elegantly coiffured striker secured from Motherwell) and the Palace was, of course, the Palace, the Crystal one, managed at that remote date by Bert Head” – Tony Thulborn.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

The latest episode of Football Weekly, which helpfully was recorded juuuuuuuuust before the Ten Hag news broke, can be found right here.

NEWS, BITS AND BOBS

Brentford’s Thomas Frank is the favourite to replace Ten Hag.

Real Madrid have cancelled their delegation’s plans to attend the Ballon d’Or ceremony at the last minute as the club understand Vinícius Júnior will not win the male award.

Georgia Stanway said it is “inevitable” that England will plateau after their huge success. “As much as teams are evolving, we also have to evolve. We have to continue to make little tweaks to get that one up,” she sighed.

The FA is keen to “transform the landscape” of the grassroots level with ambitions of getting a further 220,000 people playing across England by forming an additional 15,000 teams.

The Spanish government, La Liga and Real Madrid will discuss and investigate the racist insults allegedly directed at Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal during the clásico at the Santiago Bernabéu.

Emma Sears scored on her debut for USA USA USA in a 3-1 comeback win over Iceland, the first time that Emma Hayes’s side has gone behind in 12 games under the new head coach.

STILL WANT MORE?

Will Unwin explains how Manchester United’s patience with Ten Hag finally snapped. Jamie Jackson breaks down – by the medium of video – what went wrong for the Dutchman. Oh, and there’s a very nice gallery of the highs and (mostly) lows of Ten Hag’s tenure at Old Trafford.

Barney Ronay on Arsenal 2-2 Liverpool, and why the Saka-dependant Gunners and work-in-progress Merseyside team are still battling to keep up with Manchester City. David Hytner, meanwhile, writes on Virgil van Dijk challenging the Arsenal injury narrative.

In his USA USA USA-facing newsletter, Jonathan Wilson explains why elite teams are evolving away from all-out attack, despite the gluttony of goals over the weekend.

Nick Ames questions Saudi Arabia’s World Cup bid and the cost of human life that has come with it.

Nicky Bandini celebrates Kenan Yildiz’s two goals in an all-time classic Serie A clash between Inter and Juventus.

Le Classique became a damp squib amid Marseille’s tactical missteps, writes Luke Entwistle.

Alex Reid on the Ballon d’Or shortlists and the absence of those two.

John Duerden laments the job Roberto Mancini did in Saudi Arabia despite leaving a with a whole lot more cash.

Count ‘em: 10/ten/X talking points from a weekend full of Premier League action.

MEMORY LANE

In honour of his new interim role in Manchester, we look back at Ruud van Nistelrooy’s humble beginnings. Here he is with the then PSV manager Erik Gerets after the side clinched the Eredivisie title in the 2000-01 season.

 

The good stuff.