Manchester United’s manager, Erik ten Hag, is still in charge, but there’s growing uncertainty about his role in the October internationals.
If Erik ten Hag shows up for Thursday’s pre-game press conference at the Jimmy Murphy Centre, he has still not avoided danger.
Ten Hag is practical, thick-skinned, and experienced enough to understand how football organizations function. “So was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.” Before the end of his last competition, he knew that his time was over. Jose Mourinho was another one who could see past the obvious.
The two Manchester United outliers were Louis van Gaal and David Moyes, who persisted in delusion and denial right up until the very end. There would be no Moyes comeback after the Manchester journalists revealed on Easter Monday, 2014, that he was going to be fired.
Moyes made use of the bank holiday to complete a planned move involving Luke Shaw. A manager at United had not been fired in twenty-seven and a half years. For the Moyes family as much as it was for United supporters, the promise of it was sudden and profound.
The Moyes and Van Gaal teams set the standard for the top four. Because neither team was able to go to the Champions League, they were both put to death. An extension was given to Van Gaal to manage United in an FA Cup final.
Eight weeks before he arrived in Manchester, Solskjaer had agreed to take over as caretaker with Ed Woodward. Mourinho is a situation-savvy manager who was aware of Woodward’s strategies.
For the present US administration, time is of the importance, but they also have it. The players and coaching staff are spread out throughout the globe, there won’t be any games for 10 days, and training won’t start up again until the next week.
“It’s absurd to think that a manager has ‘two games to save his job,'” a senior club executive said recently. This claim is corroborated by the response to United’s admirable draws with Porto and Aston Villa.
It is not unusual for students to be dismissed in the second week of an international break. Four days before their domestic season began at West Ham, Mauricio Pochettino said goodbye to the Tottenham players.
Brendan Rodgers was far more decisive during his time at Liverpool, where he was fired hours after a Merseyside Derby tie in October 2015. Liverpool was six games unbeaten and had built up a golden duck in Jurgen Klopp.
Regarding Ten Hag’s replacement, United are unsure. Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the main person who admires Thomas Tuchel, and he is easily approachable. In the office, respect is shown for other administrators.
United may also have to make ethical concessions during the Ineos time. A major risk is that the team may miss out on Champions League football for a second straight season if a possible coach is signed and time is promised. This has not happened since United entered the competition in 1993.
Mourinho was chosen by Woodward because of his ability to produce results quickly. In his first season, United won two titles and returned to the Champions League two days after the assault at Manchester Arena. The scenes were passionate and exuberant.
More than three months before Van Gaal finally left Carrington in May of 2016, Mourinho was contacted. Woodward raced to Van Gaal in the long 11-day break that separated Moyes’s penultimate and final games in charge in April 2014.
Following the February Olympiakos scandal, Moyes’s position changed from Woodward’s. The elimination from the Champions League and a run of 3-0 home league losses (which might seem familiar) made this situation much worse.
When Under Solskjaer’s leadership, United’s performance collapsed, shocking everyone. After Liverpool destroyed United 5-0 at Old Trafford in October, they did not have a replacement in place because he was given a new three-year deal that would expire in July 2021. That day, when Richard Arnold, the new CEO, walked into the press room, two staffers trailed behind him. They looked nothing like an execution squad.
The management decided that Solskjaer had to go after the disastrous result, but they needed more time to create a strategy for his replacement. Watford and Manchester City dealt United two more crushing defeats before to Solskjaer’s farewell interview. United hired a caretaker and an interim manager once they realized they were still unprepared.
When United interrupted Ten Hag’s vacation in June, he semi-jokingly told Dutch television that United had “thrown a spanner in the works.” In retrospect, it seems that he was uncomfortable professionally with the decision to keep him on at this point. Ten Hag and Ineos are a troublesome couple.
With an FA Cup final winner’s medal around his neck, Ten Hag bragged in the Wembley press conference room, “If they don’t want me, then I go somewhere else to win trophies because that is what I do.”
Ten Hag readied himself for the missile. United made a mistake.
