Erik ten Hag’s plan for Manchester United was, it should be said, never to try to replicate Ajax’s exact playing style at Old Trafford, even if the temptation would be to think that, all the more so given the number of players he has signed with Dutch links.
“We really looked into the history of Manchester United and we really looked also into the qualities of our players,” the Dutchman said in July when asked about how he wanted his side to develop after an encouraging debut season. “And then you can say, ‘So what do we want to be?’ We want to be the best transition team in the world. We want to surprise.”
It was not exactly a shock, then, to hear Ten Hag say in the wake of United’s resounding 3-0 home defeat by Manchester City on Sunday that he will never be able to make his side play like his Ajax did, because that was never really his intention.
What will be disconcerting for United fans, though, is that the team are so timid, pedestrian, rudderless, disjointed and lacking in identity that it would be hard to discern the original mission statement had Ten Hag not previously detailed his vision.
An injury crisis that has robbed the United manager of a number of key players this season has not helped, particularly losing the likes of Luke Shaw and Lisandro Martinez.
But that alone does not explain why so many players appear to be regressing, others seem uninterested or confused and how more than £400 million could have been lavished on the squad in three transfer windows and the team still look and feel so short. United’s six principal attackers have one goal in 2,288 minutes of Premier League football between them, for example, and nowhere has the drop off felt more pronounced than in the dismal form of Marcus Rashford.
When Ten Hag talked about his wish for United to become the planet’s pre-eminent transition team, he was not referring to them simply being a consistent threat on the counter-attack. He wants them to excel in the defensive and attacking phases, able to switch at devastating speed both in and out of possession in different areas of the pitch.
He probably explained it best before a pre-season game against Borussia Dortmund in Las Vegas this summer when he said: “What fits this team is transition, both ways. When you want to have a good attacking transition, you need very good pressing. That’s key, so we work a lot on that, on moments where we are compact. From compactness, we press the opponent and that can be in different levels on the pitch.”
Note the word ‘compact’ and now consider the City match – and any number of other games this season, including Tottenham away, Wolves at home, the first half against Nottingham Forest. There was nothing compact about United’s set-up in those matches.
Indeed, against Pep Guardiola’s Premier League champions, the huge gaps between defence and attack ran counter to a team that wants to play effectively on the transition, even before other considerations come into play.
“I would say the second part of their big problem [against City] was the distances between the striker and the defenders was huge,” said Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager who was observing for beIN Sports. “There were situations where the strikers were closing down, trying to pressure, and the defenders were 20 metres behind the halfway line.
“You cannot win the ball back against a team like Man City when the distances are too big. The team was not compact enough, and after that there was the difference of individual quality.”
Ten Hag may not have trusted a makeshift back four comprising Harry Maguire, Jonny Evans and Victor Lindelof to play a higher line against City. But United instead ended up in a strange halfway house with disconnects all over the pitch and a poor shape out of possession. And the current injury crisis may not have felt quite so debilitating had Ten Hag, who has been allowed to dictate the club’s transfer policy, spent the money better.
Of the 41 players in the wider senior squad left behind by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick, 25 have gone and Ten Hag has made 10 permanent signings and currently has another two players on loan. This is his team now.
His most expensive purchase, the £85 million Antony, was not introduced until the 86th minute against City and lucky to stay on until the end after lashing out wildly at Jeremy Doku. Equally, it is remarkable that United can still remain so porous and lightweight in central midfield when that was the area of the pitch Ten Hag identified as requiring the most surgery when he joined.
City was the fourth successive home match in which Ten Hag has felt compelled to replace one of his central midfielders at half-time. Sofyan Amrabat was taken off at the interval for the second game running. The loan signing from Fiorentina is clearly having trouble adjusting to the speed of the Premier League and United somehow started the second half with Christian Eriksen and Scott McTominay as midfield pivots. Casemiro was missing with injury but, barely a year after United invested £70 million in the Brazilian, the 31-year-old’s reduced mobility in the middle is becoming an issue.
A team with designs on being the best in transition is always going to encounter difficulties when the midfielders are too slow to react after losing the ball and much less comfortable going backwards than forwards. Contrast that, say, to the RB Leipzig side City faced in Germany earlier in the month, whose compact structure and rapid transitions gave Marco Rose’s side a clear identity and presented Guardiola’s side with numerous problems before two late goals secured a 3-1 win.
Perhaps some United players are simply not equipped to implement Ten Hag’s instructions, or are starting to tune out. The collapse in Rashford’s club form since signing a lucrative new five-year contact after scoring 30 goals last season is a particular worry.
It was certainly interesting to hear Ten Hag suggest after the 2-0 defeat at Spurs in August that his attackers and defenders were not doing the jobs asked of them. Another issue is that so many United players look fatigued, and increasingly listless as a consequence.
A frenetic schedule has not helped but, whereas complaints in the past have been that training under previous United managers was not intense enough, there are thought to have been some concerns that not enough time now is being given to recovery between games and that it is not helping the injury situation.
All told, it is not a pretty picture.
