Man United fans’ silent protest in Liverpool defeat gives INEOS Ten Hag problem
Stick or twist? What do Manchester United’s powerbrokers do with Erik ten Hag now?
Five of them sat and watched this horror show at Old Trafford with frustration etched in their faces. On the front row, Jason Wilcox, Dan Ashworth and Omar Berrarda looked pale and stunned as if they had just seen a ghost.
Their team had certainly given up the ghost, surrendering against their oldest enemy, which is unforgivable.
Behind them in this two-row jury sitting in judgement on Ten Hag were the knights of INEOS, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford.
Ratcliffe wore a face like thunder. Brailsford raised his hand to his face, almost as if to hide his eyes from this unfolding humiliation.
They backed Ten Hag in the summer with the triggering of an extra year on his contract. They backed him in the transfer market with more of his choices from Dutch football.
They actually had a good transfer window, releasing and selling as well as recruiting, yet any optimism disappeared amidst the sounds of Liverpool fans singing ‘ole’.
What will worry INEOS is that there was one Dutch manager at Old Trafford today who looked like he’d been with his team three years and another who looked like he’d only just met them.
Unfortunately for INEOS, the newcomer Arne Slot looked by far the more in tune with his team. Liverpool’s players knew exactly what they were doing under Slot and had an identity. Ten Hag’s players really just had a shirt in common.
United have some good players, Alejandro Garnacho, Kobbie Mainoo, Lisandro Martinez and Bruno Fernandes are significant talents, but as a team they are so painfully less than the sum of their parts.
Those who will eventually decide Ten Hag’s fate watched players not doing the basics, like Casemiro failing to keep the ball, like Marcus Rashford not making the right runs enough. Is Rashford being instructed to come inside more often, rather than unleashing all that pace behind a right-back? Bizarre.
Ten Hag deserves criticism for his failure to improve United, whether the players individually or the team collectively. He deserves criticism for leaving his midfield so open in effectively a 4-2-4 system.
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But players also have to take more responsibility, like Casemiro, Mainoo and Bruno Fernandes responding to Ryan Gravenberch or Dominik Szoboszlai charging through midfield.
The culture of United under the Glazers has been a lack of individual responsibility, a lack of leadership, a lack of sacrifice for the cause.
So INEOS can change the manager; but they also have to change the culture.
Twist? Bringing in any of Gareth Southgate, Ruud van Nistelrooy or Thomas Tuchel, the three frontrunners to succeed Ten Hag, seems premature even now, even after this wretched display.
Having backed the manager in the summer, they have to give him more than three games. They have to hope that when Rasmus Hojlund and Lenny Yoro are fit, and Manuel Ugarte can start and shield the back four, that United will look more of a cohesive, progressive unit.
What is certain is that Ten Hag cannot risk any more rinsed repeats of this.
Why this game feels so damaging to Ten Hag in the eyes of United’s powerbrokers has to be the reaction of the fans.
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Even those diehards on the Stretford End, the home of the most loyal United support, began heading to the exits early. They didn’t stay to boo – United fans are largely supportive of their managers – but they voted with their feet. It felt a silent protest.
INEOS will surely have noted that.
Ratcliffe and company will definitely have noticed United being given a lesson by their greatest rivals.
Slot inherited a strong collection of players from Jurgen Klopp and in three games he has moulded them to his game-plan. It is still hard to know what Ten Hag’s game-plan is. Building from the back or swift counters?
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It is very straightforward to appreciate within a fortnight Slot’s Liverpool: the full-backs, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, are not whipping in so many crosses.
Liverpool are more about working the ball through the middle, passing effortlessly between Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister and Szoboszlai, and Salah dropping back and flicking balls past the outclassed Lisandro Martinez to Szobozslai.
Liverpool’s identity is clear. United’s is hidden, or simply too scared to show its face.
Slot saw United’s weaknesses and exposed them. Salah, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz, pressed high and hard, turning over the ball from a nervous, at times sluggish United defence.
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What will also worry United’s leaders is how Ten Hag’s team folded suddenly like a deckchair in a hurricane. Matthijs de Ligt was good for half an hour. He saw off Szoboszlai on the right, intercepted a pass from Jota to Diaz and then dispossessed Jota.
He looked calm, composed, in control. United then conceded and De Ligt lost his early authority.
Ineos will see how the goals highlighted Liverpool’s greater hunger for the ball and understanding of the most effective avenues to goal. The goals also highlighted United’s pathetic ball retention.
First, Casemiro gave up the ball, Gravenberch stormed forward, fed Salah, who crossed for the unmarked Diaz: 0-1. Diaz then pinched possession off Casemiro, Alexis Mac Allister and Diaz worked the ball to Salah, who cut the ball back for Diaz: 0-2. Diaz was involved three times in the move and no United player followed him. Mac Allister then harried Mainoo, Szoboszlai eased the ball right to Salah, who finished unerringly: 0-3.
As easy as 1-2-3. And it could have been two or three more.
Liverpool worked harder. When Rashford broke down the left with 12 minutes remaining, Salah immediately chased back and Rashford was forced to abandon his advance, and turn back.
When Amad Diallo, a livewire on his introduction, ventured deep down the right, he was hounded by Mac Allister and the substitute Darwin Nunez.
Slot’s players wanted it more, and that’s the biggest indictment of Ten Hag’s management.
If INEOS stay calm and supportive for now, Ten Hag has to show signs that he can actually organise and inspire United. Otherwise, it will be let’s twist again at United.
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