It seemed so strange in that context, Manchester United having held talks with Thomas Tuchel, Roberto De Zerbi and various others, to stick with manager Erik Ten Hag, who had been floundering for an entire season. Results had been poor, performances frequently even worse and the mood inside the club, while not approaching late-Jose Mourinho-level toxicity, was almost unremittingly bleak.
Beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final brought a day to remember, but it had the feel of a happy ending for Ten Hag rather than a new start.
The message from inside Old Trafford in June, after they had decided to offer Ten Hag a reprieve after all, was that they wanted to give him the opportunity to work under an elite sporting structure. As Mark Critchley suggested here, it is far from clear whether that is something they were in a position to offer. There is something deeply hubristic about such talk when INEOS’ track record in football is so underwhelming.
Eight months after that statement, five months after holding talks with coaches as stylistically opposed as Tuchel and De Zerbi, and four months after choosing to trigger a one-year extension of Ten Hag’s contract, it is still not entirely clear what that style is meant to be. United’s summer transfer activity certainly didn’t bring much clarity in that respect although perhaps Amorim can make more sense of their latest intake than Ten Hag ever looked like doing.
In some ways, perhaps the United hierarchy should be grateful that results remained so poor. Performances were arguably a little more coherent and structured than last season, but this is the faintest of praise. Results gave them little option but to call time on Ten Hag and seek a top-class replacement immediately. Far better if they can do that than write off another campaign under a beleaguered manager or an interim.
Ten Hag said recently that there is “almost no club in the world where the expectations are so high as at Manchester United”. Did he really believe that? He was kept on last season after finishing eighth in the Premier League with just 18 wins (few of them encouraging) from 38 matches and with a negative goal difference. There are few bigger clubs in world football, but this is not a club that has sacked managers – or been under external pressure to sack managers – for falling just short.
If it is to be Amorim, he will be given time. He will also get money to spend (unless, of course, United have blown too much of their profit and sustainability allowance on players for the previous manager). An improvement will be expected of course, but it will be requested in the context of medium-term improvement. That is not an overwhelming level of expectation.
It was fascinating to hear that Berrada, when addressing the club’s staff recently, cited a target to be Premier League champions again by 2028, the 150th anniversary of United’s formation. It was a target that somehow managed to sound both terribly unambitious for a club of United’s size and unduly optimistic when looking at the state of the squad.
On the one hand, Manchester City, Premier League champions in six of the past seven seasons, are a daunting opponent and Liverpool, Arsenal and even Aston Villa and big-spending Chelsea look better placed to challenge them in the immediate future. Looking at United’s squad, there is some obvious talent, in Bruno Fernandes and some of the younger players, such as Leny Yoro, Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho and Rasmus Hojlund, but under Ten Hag they did not even seem to have the nucleus of a squad that might challenge for the big prizes any time soon.
But the mention of those other clubs tells you it shouldn’t be as difficult as United and their managers keep making it look. Liverpool went from an abject position in late 2015, before the appointment of Jurgen Klopp, to the Champions League final within three years, winning the Champions League within four years and winning the Premier League within five; Arsenal went from finishing eighth in their first two seasons under Mikel Arteta to making genuine title challenges in seasons four and five; only goal difference was keeping Villa out of the Premier League’s relegation zone when they hired Unai Emery in October 2022, but by the end of his first full season, they had qualified for the Champions League, where they have thoroughly enjoyed themselves, sitting top of the table after three games.
Recruitment is a big part of where United have gone wrong. So many of their big signings have flopped, which points to failures of strategy, failures of coaching and failures of environment. The new regime at Old Trafford insists things will improve on its watch. It hopes that summer signings Noussair Mazraoui, Matthijs de Ligt, Manuel Ugarte and Joshua Zirkzee, having brought negligible improvement to date, will be energised under a new coach.
But it isn’t just about energy. United desperately need goals. In the last three seasons, they have 57, 58 and 57 in the Premier League. For context, the seven teams who finished above them last season all scored at least 74. Zirkzee, Garnacho and Hojlund have potential, but the reluctance to invest in proven goal-scorers and proven creators is all the more confusing when set against the sums and wages paid for players in other positions.
There is so much work to be done. United will hope that a new coach can unlock something in those players the same way Klopp, Arteta and Emery – all of them mid-season appointments – got so much more out of the squads they inherited at Liverpool, Arsenal and Villa.
If it is to be Amorim, his work at Sporting inspires a certain confidence that he would bring an uplift in performance, both individual and collective, over the first 12 months.
But that is almost taken for granted when a manager takes over a big club at a low ebb. The greater challenge at United is to ensure that any such uplift can be sustained beyond the first year or two – and to escape this familiar post-Ferguson cycle where the rot sets in so quickly and where, suddenly, it once again seems such a long way back to pre-eminence.
- A Tell report / Republished from The Athletic
About author
