Who did not think that, sooner or later, we’d be here again? At the end of last season, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Sir Dave Brailsford and the rest of the Ineos leadership at Manchester United spoke to numerous potential candidates after the club finished eighth in the Premier League with a negative goal-difference. They decided they would, after all, keep Erik ten Hag on as manager. After that decision, who did not foresee a point in the near future when, after another run of poor results, they would be back in the same place as before, just several million pounds poorer having bought another load of Dutch and Dutch-adjacent players?
This is United and that means these problems are always complicated by the memory of Sir Alex Ferguson, who endured some lean years before finally winning the league in his seventh season at the club. The instinct for fans is always to show patience. Nobody wants to be Pete Molyneux, the fan who held up a banner reading “Three years of excuses and it’s still crap … ta-ra Fergie” six months before the decisive 1990 FA Cup triumph that was a springboard to Ferguson’s success.
In that context, last season’s run to the FA Cup only adds to the confusion, particularly given the memorable wins over Liverpool and Manchester City on the way. For those desperate for Ferguson parallels, they were easy enough to find. Yet the FA Cup is not now what it was then and pointing out that Ferguson’s 1990 run to the trophy was fortunate does not disguise just how lucky United were last season: a harum-scarum, implausible victory over Liverpool is all very well, but United probably shouldn’t need that type of win against Newport or Coventry.
And so here we are. If the first-half performance against Tottenham on Sunday wasn’t the worst under Ten Hag, it’s only because there are so many other candidates – the four goals conceded at Brentford in his first season, the six conceded in a half at Anfield in March 2023, the entirety of the 4-0 defeat at Crystal Palace last May … They were shapeless, demotivated, petulant and apparently entirely devoid of confidence.
After the 3-0 win at Southampton and the 7-0 League Cup success against Barnsley, then a dominant first-half display in last week’s 0-0 draw at Palace, there was an attempt by some to suggest United have shown signs of improvement. But then, Barnsley are in League One, and United were poor before Southampton missed a 33rd-minute penalty and dismal in the last half-hour at Palace. How far have United fallen when drawing 0-0 and surviving a sticky spell against two sides in the bottom three can become evidence of green shoots? Wednesday’s drab 1-1 draw against Twente just felt familiar.
The infamous Ten Hag doughnut has re-emerged, that yawning space in the middle of midfield. His United have a habit of conceding goals that, for want of a better phrase, just look weird; it’s not normal for an opposition centre-back, even one as quick as Micky van de Ven, to win the ball and bullock forward unchallenged for 60 yards before crossing for a tap in. Where was the structure? This is the whole point of working on defensive shape, so that should possession be lost, players are in the right position to check a counter. But somehow Kobbie Mainoo and Manuel Ugarte – who seems to be fitting in perfectly, although not in a good way – went missing, while Noussair Mazraoui, distracted by Timo Werner, was too wide.
And then it happened again. Two minutes into the second half, Lisandro Martínez overcommitting recklessly to allow Brennan Johnson to run unchallenged for 50 yards before crossing for Dejan Kulusevski’s goal. Martínez has a wild streak, but that mentality, that irrationality, underpins everything about United. Bruno Fernandes was a little unlucky to be sent off having slipped before catching James Maddison, but a calmer player wouldn’t have been making a desperate lunge for the ball in that situation.
Perhaps most damning, though, is that United had actually got back into the game, and were causing Spurs some problems. Then Ten Hag made a double change with 17 minutes remaining and, immediately, the pressure United had been causing Spurs was lifted; Dominic Solanke scored four minutes later. It had been a similar story at Palace last week, with Ten Hag’s changes handing the initiative to Palace.
There was a theory that Ten Hag being kept on gave Ineos cover, somebody to scapegoat if this season started poorly. But United made £180m of signings in the summer, all presumably with at least some input from Ten Hag. Already that looks like investment in a lame duck. The more games drift by, the more their failure to replace him despite giving every indication they really wanted to looks weak, a club that didn’t know what it wanted, or lacked the nous to get what it wanted over the line.
And so the ghost ship drifts on, devoid of a plan, devoid of structure, devoid of leadership. The Glazers may not be running things any more, but neither, it seems, is anybody else.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition