Forbes

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has pleaded for more time to revive the club in the aftermath of yet another disappointing performance.

United suffered a humiliating 3-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford on Sunday to prompt speculation Ten Hag could soon lose his job.

The defeat left United slumped in 12th place in the Premier League table with just seven points from their first six games, and a goal difference of minus three.

“I am not thinking about this,” Ten Hag replied when asked if the club’s co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his executives could make a change of manager.

“We all made in the summer the decision to stay together, as an ownership, a leadership group. Also we made the decision from a clear review what we have to improve and how we want to construct a squad. But we knew it will take some time, how the window went, some players late in like Manuel Ugarte.”

“Also we have to make some improvement in organisation, we still have some injuries, we need some time. We are all on one page or in one boat together, the ownership, the staff and the players as well. I don’t have that concern.”

The scoreline was bad, but the performance was even worse from United, who went behind after only three minutes and allowed Tottenham to have 61% possession and 24 shots on goal.

It was only the performance of their goalkeeper Andre Onana that prevented an even worse scoreline for United.

“What I saw in the first 30 minutes is below the level of what we can expect from a Manchester United team and even when you concede so early you should stay calm and just stick together and stick to the plan then you would have a foothold in the game and we didn’t have this.”

"You saw that we were stressful on the ball from that moment on the opening goal. We had too many mistakes. The press was no good in the first half. We conceded some counter-attacks after we countered and we made some very bad decisions when we had a lot of space. It was a bad start to the game.”

“Tottenham were dominant. We couldn't get the right press. We also made mistakes in possession. We couldn't find the spare man, we couldn't pass over the press."

United also had their captain Bruno Fernandes sent off three minutes before half-time for a late tackle on James Maddison. "The referee gave him a red card and I've got my opinion, and I don't think it's a red card,” said Ten Hag.

United must now quickly regroup as they face difficult fixtures away to FC Porto in the Europa League and Aston Villa in the Premier League over the next week.

"It is always a new day,” Ten Hag said. “I told them, just in the dressing room, to come on. Tomorrow is a new day. We definitely have to learn, we have to do things better. We have to be better in the pressing and also better on the ball. There were situations where we could have played better, found the spare man and kept the ball and we didn't, which was so disappointing.”

“I just focus on Porto. We close this game down, deal with it and then we move on. We will turn this around. Tomorrow, we will start all over again. The season is still very young, with many games to play."

Old Trafford was largely empty for the final exchanges of Sunday’s match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. The game was long settled before the full time whistle and so many of the home supporters felt they’d seen enough. This is a feeling they have grown accustomed to with Erik ten Hag as United manager.

Ten Hag had to fight to keep his job over the summer. Manchester United finished a lowly eighth in the Premier League table, but victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup final hinted at the team’s potential. Nonetheless, ten Hag was made to wait weeks as Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS assessed other candidates.

Ultimately, ten Hag was given another opportunity to prove himself, but Manchester United’s dreadful start to the season shows INEOS made the wrong call. Ten Hag should have been replaced in the summer. For all their big talk since entering the club earlier this year, the new leadership botched the biggest decision they have had to make so far.

On the pitch, Manchester United is making the same old mistakes. Ten Hag’s team has no clear identity or structure. At times, United wants to play a chaotic style of play that opens up space and moves from back to front quickly. At other times, it attempts to play a possession-orientated game. It does neither well.

In the past, ten Hag has pointed at the number of injuries to explain Manchester United’s poor performances. It’s certainly true that the Old Trafford team was decimated by injuries for much of last season. Now, though, those injuries have cleared. Ten Hag was able to start a full-strength team in the 3-0 loss to Tottenham.

More than once, ten Hag as pointed to the two trophies Manchester United has won during his time in charge. The reality of modern soccer, however, is that success and failure is judged on league performance and United is grossly underperforming. Ten Hag is running out of excuses to explain away his team’s failures.

INEOS has stated its aim to return Manchester United to the top of English and European soccer, but the club is a long way from that level right now. Ten Hag certainly isn’t the only issue that needs resolving at Old Trafford. There are deep-rooted problems that have been evident for years. Ten Hag, however, might be the easiest issue to solve.

Amid the sea of Son Heung-min jerseys, there was another piece of clothing that was popular among fans at Tottenham Hotspur’s preseason games in Seoul: Hello Kitty scarves.

Often Premier League preseason tours are seen as a chance to sell shirts, but this year, Spurs’ local opponents in South Korea, Team K League, have decided to play Spurs at their own game.

The K League has teamed up with Japanese entertainment company Sanrio and convenience store 7Eleven to create keyrings, umbrellas, mousemats and other merchandise combining Sanrio’s popular cartoon characters with K League clubs.

Last season’s champions Ulsan HD, who will be taking part in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, are represented by the cute white dog Cinnamoroll, Daegu FC and Pohang Steelers are represented by rivals My Melody and Kuromi respectively, and gear for the capital club FC Seoul is covered with images of Hello Kitty.

The collaboration has been timed to coincide with Tottenham’s match against Team K League, an all-star team made up of players from each K League club.

Tottenham Hotspur won that match against Team K League 4-3 on Wednesday night, with Son Heung-min scoring twice in the first half. But while most preseason tours seem to benefit the touring team commercially, possibly at the expense of local sides, this year, the K League has done what it can to make sure Spurs’ visit benefits Korean soccer too.

As well as selling Spurs merchandise outside the Seoul World Cup Stadium, the league also had its own products, from the Team K League shirts used for the match, to the Sanrio collaborative items. It also set up a pop-up shop selling those items at the city’s Lotte World Mall, including photo sticker booths and a giant inflatable Hello Kitty in a soccer jersey.

It is capitalizing on a boost in popularity this season. Some of that might be explained by FC Seoul signing former England midfielder Jesse Lingard, but that doesn’t explain the higher attendances in games that haven’t involved FC Seoul.

Lingard is currently injured and couldn’t take part in the Team K League match, but was spotted at the stadium talking to former Nottingham Forest teammate Brennan Johnson.

Instead, the player that fans were focusing on for Team K League was Yang Min-hyuk, who signed for Spurs just before their preseason tour and is set to join the London-based side in January – a monumental rise for a player who was only on a semi-professional contract at the start of the season.

Yang is currently at Gangwon FC, where he has kept them in the title race midway through the K League season.

Korea’s soccer league runs through the summer, which has made it difficult for some European sides to do preseason tours in the country as local clubs have complained that fixture clashes would take the spotlight off K League games on those dates. That, combined with Juventus’ disastrous trip to Seoul in 2019, have meant that the K League and touring European sides have not always seen eye-to-eye.

But this summer at least, Korea’s local soccer league has found a way to benefit from Spurs’ visit.

Tottenham Hotspur finish their trip to Korea with a match against Bayern Munich in Seoul on Saturday.

The narrative around Tottenham Hotspur has focused on transfers for at least the last three decades.

Whether the team is high or low the one consistency in the white half of north London is that how much money the team has or hasn’t splashed on talent will be the prevailing discourse.

Sometimes these discussions about spending have gotten so serious they’ve ended up in the courtroom.

Ex-chairman Alan Sugar was so annoyed about an article in December 1999 that accused him of being “miserly” he sued the Daily Mail and won £100,000.

Speaking after the libel trial, the man who’d written the article, Jeff Powell, tried to justify his claim.

"I just felt [former manager] George Graham deserved an injection of cash and if two terrific players were brought in there could have been a transformation and the story of Tottenham could have been different now,” he said.

Lord Sugar disagreed emphatically, of course. ”Every single penny generated in that football club is devoted to buying players," he said after the court ruling.

"We don't have a separate pot for the chairman's heated seat in the directors' box. Everything that is surplus goes to buying players and paying their wages."

A quarter of a century on the debate over investment at Tottenham Hotspur hasn’t moved on much from the late 1990s.

The latest person to trot out the same tired lines is former Spurs captain Hugo Lloris. From the comfort of his new home in Los Angeles, he told the BBC he blamed limited transfer activity for the lack of trophies arriving in North London.

Specifically, he felt that between 2017 and 2019, as Spurs prepared to move to a brand new stadium, there was a well-documented shortage of new talent meant they were unable to seize the initiative as a result.

"I am not the kind of guy that looks backwards," the now LAFC goalkeeper told BBC Sport.

"Everything I do I try to have no regrets. At that time we did our best. We brought the club to a level that it didn’t used to be at.

"We didn’t miss much but when we reach this standard in terms of performance and results, the club was probably also focused on the new stadium. It meant there was a restriction in terms of investment. At that time, the others, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City invested a bit more than us in the top players and in the end, it makes a difference.

"I still believe we were close but at the same time, we missed a bit. This question is good because the only thing when I look backwards, I just don’t know how things would have been if we had stayed one or two seasons more at White Hart Lane.”

A Change With Ange?

Supporters on the whole tend to want to see their club’s spending money on transfers even those who follow the most established successful outfits.

Maybe it comes down to a fear that trying to improve the existing talent at a manager’s disposal isn’t enough to compete with a rival investing large sums in shiny new buys.

But some Tottenham Hotspur fans must surely be sick of this relentless debate about transfers, after all, there is no evidence it has helped the team.

And you have to also wonder what Ange Postecoglou makes of it.

Part of what won Spurs fans' hearts at the start of last season was the positive attitude taken by the Australian coach. He didn’t moan or gripe about transfers like Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho did in the past.

This summer so far Spurs have acquired Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall, but the refreshingly different sentiment from Postecoglou is that stockpiling further talent is not essential to his feeling positive about the club’s chances.

“We've got a strategy in place about what we want to do,” Postecoglou explained.

“I'm really happy with the two lads we've brought in, both obviously very talented but more importantly really ambitious. They're not here to ease their way in. They want to play and I think that's great.

“They've brought a good energy to the group and no doubt there will be a couple more additions but I'm comfortable with where we're at.”

As always with transfers, and Spurs is far from unique in this, it’s a question of quality over quantity.

From Sergei Rebrov to Tanguy Ndombele there have been plenty of occasions over the past 30 years that Tottenham has spent big on a player who’s failed.

So it will be refreshing for Spurs fans to hear that Postecoglou is focused on bringing in only the players he thinks are right and not grabbing any available stars.

"This time of year it is pretty hard for supporters because they don't have all the information,” he explained.

“It’s fair to say there is plenty of misinformation out there, so it's pretty hard to gauge.

"We are working hard towards bringing players in and it's a process you sometimes have to be patient with. But in terms of what we've set out to do, that's still the plan, and you have to stay disciplined.

"Sometimes the timings don't work out. it doesn't happen as quickly as you want and you don't get them in the ideal time.

"But it's really important you stay disciplined through that and not run off and chase other things.”

Hopefully, under Postecoglou this focus and positivity will mean age-old Spurs excuses about transfers or spending money will be banished for good.

The narrative around Tottenham Hotspur has focused on transfers for at least the last three decades.

Whether the team is high or low the one consistency in the white half of north London is that how much money the team has or hasn’t splashed on talent will be the prevailing discourse.

Sometimes these discussions about spending have gotten so serious they’ve ended up in the courtroom.

Ex-chairman Alan Sugar was so annoyed about an article in December 1999 that accused him of being “miserly” he sued the Daily Mail and won £100,000.

Speaking after the libel trial, the man who’d written the article, Jeff Powell, tried to justify his claim.

"I just felt [former manager] George Graham deserved an injection of cash and if two terrific players were brought in there could have been a transformation and the story of Tottenham could have been different now,” he said.

Lord Sugar disagreed emphatically, of course. ”Every single penny generated in that football club is devoted to buying players," he said after the court ruling.

"We don't have a separate pot for the chairman's heated seat in the directors' box. Everything that is surplus goes to buying players and paying their wages."

A quarter of a century on the debate over investment at Tottenham Hotspur hasn’t moved on much from the late 1990s.

The latest person to trot out the same tired lines is former Spurs captain Hugo Lloris. From the comfort of his new home in Los Angeles, he told the BBC he blamed limited transfer activity for the lack of trophies arriving in North London.

Specifically, he felt that between 2017 and 2019, as Spurs prepared to move to a brand new stadium, there was a well-documented shortage of new talent meant they were unable to seize the initiative as a result.

"I am not the kind of guy that looks backwards," the now LAFC goalkeeper told BBC Sport.

"Everything I do I try to have no regrets. At that time we did our best. We brought the club to a level that it didn’t used to be at.

"We didn’t miss much but when we reach this standard in terms of performance and results, the club was probably also focused on the new stadium. It meant there was a restriction in terms of investment. At that time, the others, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City invested a bit more than us in the top players and in the end, it makes a difference.

"I still believe we were close but at the same time, we missed a bit. This question is good because the only thing when I look backwards, I just don’t know how things would have been if we had stayed one or two seasons more at White Hart Lane.”

A Change With Ange?

Supporters on the whole tend to want to see their club’s spending money on transfers even those who follow the most established successful outfits.

Maybe it comes down to a fear that trying to improve the existing talent at a manager’s disposal isn’t enough to compete with a rival investing large sums in shiny new buys.

But some Tottenham Hotspur fans must surely be sick of this relentless debate about transfers, after all, there is no evidence it has helped the team.

And you have to also wonder what Ange Postecoglou makes of it.

Part of what won Spurs fans' hearts at the start of last season was the positive attitude taken by the Australian coach. He didn’t moan or gripe about transfers like Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho did in the past.

This summer so far Spurs have acquired Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall, but the refreshingly different sentiment from Postecoglou is that stockpiling further talent is not essential to his feeling positive about the club’s chances.

“We've got a strategy in place about what we want to do,” Postecoglou explained.

“I'm really happy with the two lads we've brought in, both obviously very talented but more importantly really ambitious. They're not here to ease their way in. They want to play and I think that's great.

“They've brought a good energy to the group and no doubt there will be a couple more additions but I'm comfortable with where we're at.”

As always with transfers, and Spurs is far from unique in this, it’s a question of quality over quantity.

From Sergei Rebrov to Tanguy Ndombele there have been plenty of occasions over the past 30 years that Tottenham has spent big on a player who’s failed.

So it will be refreshing for Spurs fans to hear that Postecoglou is focused on bringing in only the players he thinks are right and not grabbing any available stars.

"This time of year it is pretty hard for supporters because they don't have all the information,” he explained.

“It’s fair to say there is plenty of misinformation out there, so it's pretty hard to gauge.

"We are working hard towards bringing players in and it's a process you sometimes have to be patient with. But in terms of what we've set out to do, that's still the plan, and you have to stay disciplined.

"Sometimes the timings don't work out. it doesn't happen as quickly as you want and you don't get them in the ideal time.

"But it's really important you stay disciplined through that and not run off and chase other things.”

Hopefully, under Postecoglou this focus and positivity will mean age-old Spurs excuses about transfers or spending money will be banished for good.

Ange Postecoglou cut a frustrated figure towards the end of his maiden Premier League season. While Tottenham Hotspur made progress under the Australian, Postecoglou voiced his concerns over the quality of his squad, hinting at a summer rebuild. As things stand, though, that rebuild has yet to materialise.

Spurs signed Archie Gray from Leeds United for a transfer fee of around £40m, but the teenager is a developmental player who might not make much of an impression on the first team this season. Lucas Bergvall has arrived from Djurgarden, but once again it’s unclear whether he will receive much game time in the first team.

Many supporters expected the North London club to be in the market for a new centre forward. Harry Kane still hasn’t been replaced following his transfer to Bayern Munich a year ago and while Son Heung-min did a good job of stepping into the footsteps of his former teammate by moving centrally, Tottenham need another top level striker to lead the line.

Jonathan David has been mentioned as a target, but Spurs has yet to make its move for the Lille striker who is also attracting attention from Chelsea after scoring 19 goals in Ligue 1 last season. Brentford’s Ivan Toney has similarly been linked with a switch to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with the England international openly keen on a move this summer.

Postecoglou could also use another wide attacker in his squad with Eberechi Eze believed to be a target for Tottenham. The Crystal Palace winger, however, is still at Selhurst Park and is reportedly attracting attention from Manchester City. If Eze has a choice between Spurs and the Premier League champions, he will surely opt for the latter.

In central midfield, Tottenham is also in need of strengthening even after the addition of Gray and Bergvall. Postecoglou requires proven performers who can step into the first team and give Spurs two-way quality in the centre of the pitch with both Yves Bissouma and Pape Sarr enduring stop-start campaigns in 2023/24.

Much of Tottenham’s summer business so far has focused on shifting unwanted players out of the club. Joe Rodon was shipped to Leeds United while Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg has joined Marseille on loan. Meanwhile, Eric Dier, Ivan Perisic and Tanguy Ndombele have been set free as free agents. Others such as Emerson Royal and Dejan Kulusevski could be on their way out.

To build on the foundations established last season, though, Postecoglou requires a lot of incoming business to be done over the next month or so. The Australian has remoulded the team he inherited last summer and now it’s time for Spurs to give him some more raw materials to work with.

Across Tottenham Hotspurs’ 2023/24 season, there were many times when it felt like a defining moment for manager Ange Postecoglou was happening.

Early on there was the explosion of joy from the home fans as Dejan Kulusevski rifled home a winner to complete a remarkable comeback against Sheffield United.

Then there was the red card for Cristian Romero against Chelsea which turned a commanding 1-0 display into a 1-4 defeat.

The March routing of Aston Villa felt consequential until the equally weighty 3-0 loss to Fulham the following week deleted the progress achieved by that win.

However, whilst those moments felt important at the time there is one that will outlive them all; Postecoglou’s postgame reaction to the loss against Manchester City.

As he entered the media room at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium for the second to last press conference of the season the Australian coach looked truly downbeat.

It wasn’t the performance that had altered his mood, that had been excellent against one of the best teams in the league, no, Postecoglou was in disbelief that so many of the home fans had been urging their opponents to win so they’d prevent bitter rivals Arsenal claiming the title.

"The foundations are really fragile," the Australian said of the build-up to the game which had focused on the desire of Spurs fans to lose.

"The last 48 hours have shown me that. It's inside the club, outside the club. Outside, inside, everywhere. It's been an interesting exercise. It's just my observations, mate.”

When asked about the Spurs fans' chanting about Arsenal after Manchester City’s goals, Postecoglou replied: "I'm not interested, mate. I just don't care. Maybe I'm out of step, but I just don't care, I just want to win.

"I want to be successful at this football club, it's why I was brought in. So what other people, how they want to feel, and what their priorities are, are of zero interest to me.

"I know what's important to build a winning team - that's what I need to concentrate on.”

There was great sympathy for his position in the aftermath of the game, although most of it came from voices outside the club.

One closer to home was former Spurs midfielder Jamie Redknapp, who was in wholehearted agreement with the Australian manager.

“It’s not been easy listening to what’s been going on and people questioning whether Spurs winning the game,” he said live on television after Postecoglou’s comments were broadcast.

“But they had the Champions League, if they had won today and they win on Sunday there was a chance of Champions League football at this club.

“The people were more interested in stopping Arsenal from winning the title and that mentality and I 100% agree with him [Postecoglou]. That’s the culture that has been created for a long while at this club. I was here, I didn’t ever feel it was a winning mentality. You can’t always win but sometimes you can make sure you try.”

But the point overlooked by both men is that there was an incredibly specific context which determined the Spurs fans wanting a Manchester City victory.

The game, coming as it did so close to the season’s end, was definitive in Arsenal either winning the league or not.

If the Citizens had dropped points against Tottenham Hotspurs the club’s biggest rivals would be in poll position for the crown. That’s why they were subdued.

Last season, when the club faced City in February 2023 at a crucial but not definitive moment of the previous campaign, they supported their side as vociferously as ever.

This is what Postecoglou failed to recognize when he said pregame: “I was part of one of the biggest rivalries in the world in the last couple of years with Celtic and Rangers, and I understand the rivalry, but I’ve never and will never understand if someone wants their own team to lose.”

Understanding the Old Firm rivalry would be knowing that Celtic fans would probably be even more self-sabotaging were the same set of circumstances to arise involving Rangers.

As a Spurs fan who supported City explained in the Daily Mail after the game, the Australian’s mistake was to interpret the reaction to that one game with specific context as some sort of broader theme.

“In criticizing the fans' mentality after the game he suggested we don't want to watch a winning team,” the supporter wrote.

“It showed that he doesn't appear to understand the fanbase and what the rivalry with Arsenal means - a rare misstep from someone who has spoken so eloquently throughout the season.

“His rhetoric also feels damaging. Suggesting Tottenham fans need counseling for wanting City to win, despite earlier in the season saying he can't tell supporters how to think, the usual trophy jibes more akin to Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte in seasons gone by and even confronting a fan in the crowd all feed towards a growing disconnect between manager and supporters.”

Given this was a coach who made the fans feel good, he needs to take a moment to understand them better.

It has made the summer far more complicated than it might otherwise have been.

He didn’t have to agree with their stance, but he could have understood and accepted it.

Ange Postecoglou’s charm is undeniable, but the real test of whether it is a useful tool or simply a nice attribute will be shown now when there is a challenge.

After another sold-out attendance at the Emirates Stadium for today's North London Derby against Tottenham, Arsenal Women's average crowds this season now exceed 35,000.

After another sold-out attendance at the Emirates Stadium for today's North London Derby against Tottenham, Arsenal Women's average crowds this season now exceed 35,000.