Erik Ten Hag post mortum

The writing has been on the wall for quite some time

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In theory Erik Ten Hag was a great hire. At least for me, he ticked a lot of the boxes. His side played entertaining football, he was someone who had longevity at a club, and was making a step up to Manchester United. He looked like someone who wanted to be at Old Trafford for a long time, not someone who wanted Manchester United to be just another notch in their belt. Most importantly, he hadn’t just been sacked for being bad at his job.

There were certainly concerns too. His record in Europe was a bit spotty and his teams had a propensity for letting two goal leads slip away¹. The narrative that he plays youth was a myth. Ajax managers have to play youth but over Ten Hag’s time at Ajax he consistently brought in older and experienced players.

A bit more concerning is the Eredivisie is not the Premier League. It’s a much smaller league and the list of successful Dutch coaches in England is not a long or distinguished one. Most importantly, his success in Holland came at the biggest club with the largest amount of resources in the league. How would he fare in a much more difficult league at a club that merely has a vast amount of resources but not the largest?

To be clear, none of these reasons should have ruled Ten Hag out of the job. Hiring someone with more experience would not have guaranteed any different results for United. Ten Hag’s C/V was 100 percent good enough for a club like Manchester United to take a chance on him and I applauded them for doing so.

However there was also nothing in that C/V that suggested Ten Hag was guaranteed to be a success at Old Trafford either. United were right to take a risk on Ten Hag, but when you take a risk like this you have to acknowledge you might not get the right guy on the first try and rather than stubbornly trying to force it, it’s best to cut your losses and move on.

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There were of course a lot of flaws in the process for hiring Ten Hag. Manchester United had just gone through efforts to establish a new sporting structure with John Murtough being named Football Director. This was to be his first big hire.

United wanted a structure where the sporting people handled recruitment and the manager simply coached. Erik Ten Hag wanted control over the transfers. Murtough, wanting his guy, gave in.

Before United even had a chance to establish that structure they had undone it. They also had just made Ten Hag’s job significantly harder since Ten Hag isn’t a scout and would not be recruiting the best players. It’s quite telling that less than two years later all the people involved in hiring Ten Hag and making the signings that first summer were no longer holding their jobs.

There were some other flaws in the process. United were hiring Ten Hag to bring the style of football he played at Ajax to Old Trafford. One problem, United did not have nearly the same type of players that Ten Hag had at Ajax - something Ten Hag would say publicly.

The Ten Hag era famously got off to a disastrous start with United losing to Brighton and Brentford by a combined score of 6-1. The xG suggests it wasn’t as terrible with United scoring once² on 2.3 xG and conceding six against 3.1 xGA however game state may have played a role in that with Brighton especially taking their foot off the gas in the second half.

Ten Hag responded by throwing his principles out the window and changing everything. Abandoning your style of play was a not decision I was in favor of at the time, though now that I’m two years older I’m not entirely sure I’d hold the same decision.

United parked the bus and scored a big win over Liverpool, then continued to play this gross brand of football and they pulled out some results with very unconvincing performances.

Ten Hag would steady the ship and ultimately go on to win 75 points in the Premier League, a Carabao Cup, and reach the FA Cup Final. It was United’s second highest points total since Sir Alex Ferguson retired and their first trophy since 2017. However there were still signs that things weren’t as good as they seemed.

After winning four straight games, United went from October until after the World Cup without winning consecutive league games. United struggled to beat some weak competition in the Europa League leading to a final match at Real Sociedad where United needed to win by two goals to avoid the Europa League playoffs and two extra fixtures at a time when United were already dealing with heavy fixture congestion. Needing two goals, United took just four shots all game³.

In the first half of the season the team was heavily reliant on counter attacks. United would ultimately score 10 goals from counter attacks, the most United scored in a Premier League campaign since 2009.

After steadying the ship Ten Hag did get United to come out of their shell and start to press higher up the pitch. United looked a lot better but things also looked like they were being held together by duct tape, which in this case the duct tape was the superb play of Casemiro.

Casemiro sat behind the forwards cleaning up the mess whenever the press was broken.

Casemiro was truly world class that year. It was one of the most fun individual seasons to watch from a United player in some time. He seemingly did it all - and he had to. He was tasked with covering acres of space as United often ended up in a 4-1-4-1 formation.

Warning signs were there. The first being that United were extremely reliant on Casemiro. The Brazilian started (just) 24 league matches in 2022-23 or 63 percent. When he started United conceded 10.43 shots per match. In the 14 matches without him they conceded 15.93 shots per game - only Bournemouth conceded more.

In the second half of the season Casemiro dealt with suspensions and fatigue, United had to change things up. They started playing a lot slower, and were greatly boosted by the return of Jadon Sancho⁴ who fit the slower play style but would famously be out of the team by the start of the next season.

The finish looks comfortable in hindsight but even with three games remaining there were genuine fears that United would be caught by Liverpool and finish outside the top four. United may have finished that first season in third place but their underlying numbers suggested they had greatly overachieved. They won a ton of one goal games which was neither the sign of a good team or something sustainable. They were poor in several areas and finished sixth in expected goal difference.

That was the landscape going into year two for Ten Hag. In the Kwest Thoughts season preview I wrote that United would need to improve their underlying numbers just to tread water, let alone improve. They needed to make big strides.

That’s when everything fell apart.

Ten Hag started the season saying he wanted United to be the best transition team in the league. It’s not that that (laughably) never happened, it’s that it never even looked like it would happen.

After the “success” of his first season Ten Hag decided to go back to implementing his principles. All that did was neuter the attack while not addressing any of the defensive issues. Casemiro was still tasked with defending acres of space without the legs to do it.

United were dreadful. They conceded 17.34 shots per game and from February on that number was 20.06. In 25 of their last 39 matches United went at least 20 minutes without a shot attempt!

Ten Hag and his defenders cited injuries, and while a key injury can certainly prevent you from getting results, injuries will not cause your expected goal difference to go from +0.45 per game to -0.33! The truth was most of the injuries were to backups and they disproportionately affected defenders rather than attackers. Lisandro Martinez was often cited as the missing piece even though United win more without him and lose more often when he’s in the team. A great defender on his day, but his absence was not the reason United had a poor season.

The biggest reason for United’s poor play was Erik Ten Hag. Last season the Dutchman began to really implement his tactical ideas. As it turns out, those ideas are not particularly good.

United’s squad balance isn’t particularly great but Ten Hag drags it down even further. Too many of United’s wingers are cut inside and shoot types, but Ten Hag has pinned them wide to the touchline, leaving the most dangerous spaces to often be occupied by the fullbacks. This itself lowers the ceiling of your team as those fullbacks are not good enough to hurt teams from those spaces, they’re not even the best players United have for those spaces!

When United do get the ball to their wingers they aren’t supported by an overlapping fullback, leaving them to run at two and sometimes three defenders.

United’s forwards don’t pass the ball to their strikers⁵. A big part of that is because the wingers are so wide they’re disconnected from the striker. United are relying on fullbacks who aren’t good in the final third to provide that link. It’s a complete misuse of the talents they have. This is by design, this is the football that Ten Hag wants, and this is what it looks like when there aren’t injuries decimating the squad.

There has been a lot of off the field noise at Manchester United the past two years but ultimately Ten Hag has no one to blame but himself. It has not been uncommon to see him get tactically outdone by lesser known managers on an almost weekly basis. This happens at home and away, to “top six” sides and sides not in the top six. Hell, even League Two side Newport County’s coaches have gone on record talking about how easy it is to play against Ten Hag’s side.

It is rather incredible Ten Hag has managed to hang on this long. United under Ten Hag have been bad. Really bad! Ryan O’Hanlon pointed out last April how they were statistically the worst United side of the post Fergie era. United’s eighth place finish last season was a massive over performance on their underlying numbers - a testament to the level of talent they have in their squad. The truth is United are bad right now and have been bad for most of the Ten Hag era.

As of October 16 2024

If anything the noise around the club the past two years has kept Ten Hag in the job longer. Any reasonable club would have sacked Ten Hag when he lost five of eight matches in December of 2023. However that was the exact time when INEOS’ takeover was announced but not yet official. Ten Hag stayed in the job mostly because nobody knew if they had the power to sack him.

The writing has been on the wall for some time now. The approach INEOS has been taking with regards to this season lean towards the notion that they view this as “year zero” rather than “year one.” Right from the start they’ve been looking to kick the manager question down the road for as long as possible, which makes all the more sense if they view this season as a write off.

INEOS spoke to other candidates this summer, which a club that is backing their manager simply does not do. Ten Hag winning the FA Cup undoubtedly made it easier to retain him but that decision was likely preferred simply because it was cheaper. United did not give Ten Hag a new contract but rather just triggered the +1 option on his existing contract, which is also not a sign of long term support.

When CEO Omar Berrada and Sporting Director Dan Ashworth gave their public backing to Ten Hag in early September, they were also very quick to clarify that they were not involved in the decision to retain him. This is not the behavior of a club that believes they have their long term manager.

Yet Ten Hag stayed in the job with a chance to change peoples minds. A chance to prove the doubters wrong. That chance is rare these days.

Ten Hag proved he was unworthy of that chance. He didn’t learn his lessons from the previous years. He stubbornly insisted his ideas were good and double downed on them, leading to nothing changing. United have won just seven of their last 22 Premier League matches and one of their last 11 matches in Europe. No manager can survive that.

United were right to take a chance on Erik Ten Hag. It didn’t work out. It happens and you move on. There are lessons to be taken from this. As long as you’re learning those lessons you shouldn’t be scared of taking a risk on the next rising manager.

1. Four times Ten Hag’s Ajax sides had a two goal lead in a European match and didn’t win

2. Albeit it was an own goal

3. It is ironic that one of the biggest highlights of Ten Hag’s tenure - defeating Barcelona - was a tie that United never should have been in

4. Following Sancho’s return United went 9-2-0 in the 11 matches he started. They only won one match when he wasn’t in the starting XI

5. Again the one player who did is now playing for a rival