In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Erik ten Hag is finished at Man United, his worry for old pal Gareth Southgate if he took over at Old Trafford, a simple solution to stop set pieces being and a look at a brilliant week in the Champions League for English clubs.
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Erik ten Hag is finished but Southgate would be a worry
After Sunday’s Man United performance, I think Erik ten Hag is finished. By what metric are we judging him? Results? If so, his results have been poor.
People were putting up graphics of Gary Neville’s Valencia team recently, and just like Neville’s time in Spain, ten Hag doesn’t have the personality, authority or gravitas to carry Manchester United football club to where they need to be.
Whether you like it or not, and people say ‘come on, Stan, we don’t need the big personalities anymore, surely, it’s just all about the coaching,’ the fact of the matter is United need someone almost picking up, metaphorically, a flag and carrying it forward saying, ‘charge.’
Everybody pulling in the same direction, from the players to the staff to the supporters. Don’t underestimate that feeling.
Enzo Maresca can get away with being head coach at Chelsea because he’s got a good group of young players, and the perception is that he’s a quality coach to bring the best out of them. Arne Slot was left with a sort of golden legacy, if you like, and the big personality of Jurgen Klopp who carried everybody forward with him.
The manager of Manchester United football club has to be the standard bearer that goes ‘nobody’s coming to Old Trafford and winning.’ There’s no smiles, there’s no greeting opposition players and managers on the pitch and swapping shirts. Old Trafford has to be a fortress, and for it to be a fortress, everybody has got to play their part.
Players have got to make it hostile, and the manager has got to talk obsessively and only about Manchester United. Not about City, Arsenal or Liverpool. Erik ten Hag just doesn’t have that in him.
He would’ve been a good coach coming in on the back of a golden era where pretty much everything had looked after itself, and all he needed to do was coach the players.
But they need a leader, and solely a leader now, and ten Hag isn’t one.
Looking at his potential replacement, I have 10 out of 10 respect for Gareth Southgate. I’ve played with him twice. I knew him from being a kid at Crystal Palace, and we played in the same reserve team. We made our debuts on the same day at Anfield for Palace and he was my captain at Aston Villa.
We’ve remained in touch ever since and I have nothing but respect for the job that he’s done for the England national team.
He will make Manchester United a thriving culture, because he’s very much the man for knitting the parts together of an organisation to make it function. Given half a chance at Manchester United, he will do all the right things behind the scenes.
However, my worry is that his last club job was 20 years ago, when Middlesbrough did get relegated on his watch. Club management, as he will know, is very different on a day to day basis to being the England head coach, where you where you turn up every two or three months, albeit under immense pressure come tournament time.
Don’t underestimate the global fan base either, the Goldbridge’s of this world, The United Stand, 16 different fanzines and fan groups… they will tear Southgate apart.
I cannot foresee a situation whereby Gareth Southgate can turn around the Manchester United team quickly enough and sufficiently enough to satisfy the board or supporters, and that will only see him having to put up with insane levels of disrespect. I can’t see Graham Potter doing that job either though.
Poch has the US job and why would Unai Emery leave a sparkling Villa side?! So it leaves the field fairly barren to be perfectly honest, and that’s why ten Hag kept the job in the first place. A little bit of continuity.
I think the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stuff is ridiculous. He didn’t do the job that he was paid to do the last time, so the fact that you love him, he scored an iconic goal in a Champions League final and he’s very good with youngsters, as well as having a lovely smiley baby face… he still shouldn’t be in the conversation for one of the world’s biggest jobs.
Ten Hag never had the support of the Man United dressing room
I don’t think Erik ten Hag ever had the support of the Man United dressing room if I’m being perfectly honest.
I think that when you win a couple of cups, you get the halo effect and all of a sudden go away as a player and think, ‘well, actually, maybe there is more to this guy.’
However, Man United haven’t played with any identity, with any belief, with any authority since he’s been there. That’s just the truth.
There’s been two or three games, including the cup final against Man City that was, without a doubt, the big reason why INEOS decided to keep him. Why wouldn’t they? They’d just beaten arguably the best team on the planet who are also their noisy neighbours. It was at Wembley, and they’d given their fans an unforgettable memory.
There’s absolutely nothing to suggest beyond that, however, in your bog standard league games, that Manchester United are feared or even respected anymore in the way that they were on the football pitch.
If INEOS would have been a little bit more analytical and clearer, perhaps without contract extensions and the like being in play, and said ‘we’re going to give our manager until Christmas,’ then everyone would know the score for a few months. Then, if results aren’t as expected, the doors close on his tenure.
Players pick up on things and though they’ve got their professional pride to play for, I doubt that there’ll be one player that’s playing for the manager. Not one.
They’re so bad at the moment, there is zero chance of Manchester United getting back into the Champions League positions this season, and that’s a sorry state of affairs.
Simple solution to players kicking the ball away
The issue of players kicking balls away or delaying set pieces is a really easy one to solve.
Bring in a law or a rule that a player, when the referee has blown his whistle, is not allowed to touch the ball. No player is allowed to pick it up, to move it, to roll it… until the referee has blown the whistle a second time.
Whether it’s a corner or a free kick, and the official might have to give a signal that accompanies it as well as a bit of literature that goes around Premier League dressing rooms, no player on the pitch is allowed to touch the ball until the referee blows the whistle again.
There’s a huge grey area at the moment that if the referee blows the whistle and the ball is dead, players are just trying to take up their position.
It’s a habit that they’ve got into and been told to do by coaches and managers. ‘Go and stand on the ball, move the ball, kick the ball, stop the ball. Don’t retreat 10 yards…’
I think if the referee took ownership of that particular situation, he bends down, picks the ball up, marches five or six yards and puts it wherever he needs to put it, it’ll immediately stop the the habit of players getting in his way.
It will also stop the situation like that which happened to Kyle Walker during the Arsenal game.
English clubs have been a joy to watch in the Champions League
The Aston Villa performance and result against Bayern Munich was great for everyone and particularly the younger Villa fans that haven’t seen anything like this in their lifetimes. Everybody left Villa Park in good spirits at the end of the game, walking off and singing songs.
This week’s Champions League fixtures have been excellent for the English clubs. Liverpool have now played two and won two, Villa have played two and won two, City and Arsenal are both on four points after much improved performances.
A clean sheet for Arsenal against PSG, one for Villa against Bayern…
You can never really look beyond the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich or Juventus, those kind of clubs, when it comes to the Champions League, but I do wonder, with this format, whether we’re going to see some big clubs spat out fairly early. Milan, for example, have played two and lost two.
Before you might have had a Champions League group done and dusted after three or four games, whereas now I genuinely think, especially because you have this really weird situation of not playing teams home and away, everybody has to turn up. Everybody’s up for it.
I’m really enjoying it. Enjoying watching English clubs navigate the Premier League and the ‘new’ Champions League.
So far so good. A clean bill of health for English clubs, but with lots of football still to be played terms and conditions still apply.