Most managers have a smaller impact on the success or failure of their team than is commonly believed. There’s a reason why one of the best predictors of an early-season ranking is the salary budget. Talent that wins. As Bill James noted, many coaches will make a reasonable comeback simply by addressing the problems the previous guy created. Once they’ve settled in and are creating their own problems, it’s time to make a change.
The highest levels of coaches – Arsène Wenger when he took over at Arsenal, Antonio Conte at the height of his powers – can make the tactical or organizational changes to transform a club, with their presence raising the ceiling in a meaningful way, at least for a while. . And as Manchester United knows better than anyone, the very best managers repeat this trick more than once.
If there are people who change the course of a club for the better, there must also be people who do the opposite. Occasionally bad managers are rightly appointed, more often than not coaches are thrown out of their depth or given roles that do not suit them. It would take a manager with a lifetime of experience in the big club spotlight to put together the outsized squad that Graham Potter got at Chelsea. That club has a rich history of picking the wrong coaches at the wrong times, and Andre Villas-Boas’ high line is hardly a fit for the aging John Terry. They are not alone in that regard. Arsenal replaced a manager who defined a club with an introvert who was more focused on tactics than a figurehead. They have held Unai Emery accountable for the damage his tenure at the Emirates Stadium has done to his reputation.
Over the past thirteen years, Manchester United have discovered new ways to prepare good coaches for a fall. David Moyes found it too difficult to be the man after him the man. Louis van Gaal was given a team that was not suited to his methods. Jose Mourinho, he could have been as responsible for this row as anyone. Now they are trying to reassess a beleaguered coach, three months after concluding Erik ten Hag was the best man for the Manchester United job.
Without the aftermath of an FA Cup to blind them, the United hierarchy, who met at Old Trafford on Monday, will have to ask the same questions again: is Erik Ten Hag one of the most managers whose presence has an overall negligible impact on the results or does the fact that he is active as a manager hinder the progress of his club? Is the Manchester United squad a collection of mid-table talents playing mid-table football while waiting for something to change? Or is a potential Champions League candidate being held back by a coach who is not suitable for the position?
Ten Hag’s approach does not work
There is certainly a compelling argument that affirms this last question. Since his appointment, Ten Hag has tried to apply the principles at Old Trafford that brought him great successes at Ajax. Without possession, Manchester United’s attackers continue high. The idea is that the midfield and defense should follow suit, putting pressure on the opposition and forcing the kind of high turnovers that could make this side ‘the best transition team in the world’. as Ten Hag promised he would deliver in the summer of 2023.
However, his players are not suitable for that approach. Too few of its forwards are pressing with the required intensity – last season United ranked 10th in attacking third ball recoveries and sixth in passes allowed per defensive action – while few if any players in midfield or defense have the pace to take themselves a step back one against top strikers. They fall back and suddenly space opens up for opponents. From that moment on the problems only get bigger. Ten Hag’s side tend to defend man-to-man, all it takes is a few players dragging their defender out of position and you have situations like Tottenham’s opener at the end of last month when Micky van de Ven advanced from his own half into the United penalty area without a single attempted challenge.
United have improved in terms of expected goals (xG) this season, both for and especially against, but the bar for that is staggeringly low. In seven games they have gone from the fifth worst defense in the Premier League for xG allowed to seventh, from the tenth best attack to ninth. They are just as resolute and aggressive in the middle when it comes to the statistics, but also when it comes to their points tally. Last season, an all-time high of a year in terms of results turned a lower mid-table into an upper mid-table. Some finishing issues now have an upper center table side in the lower center table.
The system does not suit the players and corrective lenses are needed to strengthen the manager’s eye for talent. The best additions United have made since the summer of 2022 have been qualified successes like Lisandro Martinez and Andre Onana. Onerous contracts have been awarded so that Casemiro and Christian Eriksen can provide quick solutions. The takeover of Antony has been an unmitigated disaster. That of Mason Mount has not been much better, a young footballer who had to get his career back on track when his talent was lost.
In the meantime, Jadon Sancho, unceremoniously kicked out by Ten Hag, is quickly back on course with Chelsea. Casemiro’s immutability forced the sale of Scott McTominay, an unusual but ultimately useful player for a club in United’s position.
This is where it gets embarrassing for the so-called best in the hierarchy in its class. By extending Ten Hag’s current contract in the summer, the manager retained his great influence over transfer policy and that meant that more players came who bore his fingerprints. Joshua Zirkzee is getting more shots than skeptics thought, he’s just not doing much with them. Noussair Mazraoui seems serviceable and it is still too early to judge Manuel Ugarte. Perhaps the same goes for Matthijs De Ligt, but his early performances are a timely reminder of why both Juventus and Bayern Munich have been so willing to part with a 25-year-old who was once considered the next great centre-back.
Even Ten Hag has his doubts, despite claiming he rotated his options when he paired Leicester City centre-back Johhny Evans and Harry Maguire at Villa Park in 2018/19. Evans could have gone so far to a superior Aston Villa side. That will not be the case in the medium or long term. Digging that deep in such circumstances is invariably the sign that a manager is looking for an answer.
The rot at United goes deeper than the manager
All this could indicate that Ten Hag is net negative? That is entirely possible, but the great delusion into which Sir Alex Ferguson United have trapped themselves is that the manager is the cause and solution to all their problems. And yet, regardless of the identity of the man in the dugout, when the going gets tough, United walk away. How many times in the last thirteen years have they checked in the same way as when Tottenham started better at Old Trafford? All signs on the pitch indicate that there is something deep-seated within Carrington, a deep fragility that no manager has yet successfully addressed.
Recruitment problems that predate Ten Hag are also taking their toll, so that anyone engaged in the joyless task of assembling a combined Aston Villa Manchester United XI ahead of Sunday’s match could quite easily have concluded that nine, ten, perhaps even eleven representatives of Unai should come. Emery’s side. A team with top talents like Bruno Fernandes and Onana should be better than fourteenth place. Still, the rest of the team hardly screams top four or five contenders.
Ultimately, it is a manager’s job to address these issues. Few if any of the players Ten Hag has inherited have shown sustained improvement, those he has identified as improving have often been anything but, and those who have left the club have convincingly argued that it is simply unreasonable to judge any talent based on how it performs. in a Manchester United shirt. His management of men has certainly not been an unqualified success; he has done little to ease the pressure on Marcus Rashford during his recent slump and was seemingly unable to bring out Sancho’s prodigious talent. The deeper-rooted problems at the club may be beyond the capabilities of most coaches, but one of the richest clubs in the world can still afford the best, even if PSR forces them to watch their money.
When Ten Hag was appointed in the summer of 2022, there was a deep feeling that the wrong moves could take Manchester United further away from the top six at a time when they were barely clinging on. They had been a fairly average team with an extremely average xG profile and the goal difference of a necessarily average Premier League team. Two and a bit years later you could describe the team in much the same terms. Whatever the cup competitions say, mediocrity is being entrenched. For a club like Manchester United, that simply cannot be good enough.