Despite being unbeaten in their last three matches, Erik Ten Hag is on thin ice at Manchester United.
The 54-year-old has endured an up and down two years at Old Trafford. Although the former Ajax boss has two major trophies to show for his time in charge, United’s lack of consistency has seen him come under fire.
And this season has so far been no different. The Red Devils kicked off the campaign with a 1-0 win over Fulham but quickly suffered back-to-back defeats, including a 3-0 thumping against bitter-rivals Liverpool.
Erik Ten Hag frustrating Man United hierarchy
However, although United’s recent form has seen them score 10 goals without reply, the team’s lack of identity is annoying the club’s senior decision-makers, which now includes INEOS’ Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
According to GiveMeSport, there is growing frustration behind the scenes at Ten Hag’s failure to settle on a preferred starting 11.
“That’s the word filtering from the Old Trafford hierarchy who believe after more than two years in charge, Ten Hag should be presenting a United side who take the pitch being able to defend and score with equal ability,” a snippet from their report said.
Even though the team’s recent goal scoring sparked a new wave of optimism among supporters, last weekend’s drab 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace reminded many just how inconsistent and off the pace the side can be.
In need of an improvement in performances, Ten Hag, similarly to Sean Dyche at Everton, must start to impress his employers or risk becoming the first big-name manager to be sacked this season.
WTF do Ineos want? The back line is much improved and pretty much settled defensively.
Kobbie is still young and can’t be expected to play every match and Ugarte is new, and both would seem to be the preferred starters in their positions. Caemiro and Eriksen are both useful squad players who lack pace, but sometimes their guile, particularly Eriksen’s lately, makes more sense.
Ahead of them you have Bruno, Mount, Amad, Rashford, Garnacho, Anthony, Zirkzee, and Hojlund. Eight not cheap players who would like to start every match, but only four places. What would whiny Jim like ETH to do, not play four of them in any match until someone is crocked?
Maybe he just wants to cut costs and get rid of 4 wages, he does rather like letting staff go in order to chase incremental profits after all.
Not sure which is worser: The Glazers never saying anything about how the club is run, while running it into the ground, or JR spouting rich boy inanities about his new plaything because it gets his name in the press releases.
How long before a streaming pile of hagiographic pish on ManUtds saviour clogs up PrimeFlixPlus? Ugh.
ETH is starting to get things going, defence is much better, midfield is looking stronger. What we need is attackers who are paid to score goals, is to do their job. We should have beaten palace very comfortably, approach play is good, finishing is confidence, when they get going they will be good
Lazy journalism. United are much improved and Ten Hag (and his team) are dealing with the issues one at a time. You use these anonymous tit-bits of hearsay and rumour – much of which is caused by similarly ill-informed ‘journalists’ – and amplify it over and over to create stories.
Absolute rubbish.
An excellent game last time out. This team has the makings of a fine wine. The fluidity of their game is the best I’ve seen in several games. It now remains to be seen if/when our strikers will progress to the next phase of their game (scoring goals). It doesn’t need to be pretty. Very encouraging indeed.