Deplorable Tottenham Hotspur loss is a watershed moment...one way or another
Unfortunately, if you’re a fan of Manchester United, there have been far too many dark days at Old Trafford in recent years.
A stadium once synonymous with success has turned into a place where big teams remind us of how far the club has fallen from its lofty heights.
Under Erik ten Hag, the defeat vs Tottenham may have been the most damning and time will tell if it’s to be the most damaging, but in truth, there’s plenty of reason as to why it should be.
For now, it seems Ten Hag has been granted till the international break to show this team is still behind him (it probably is) but it’s his consistent persistence of being capricious with the tactics and setup that play into the opposition’s hands.
Too much change has hampered his United team, they often look bizarrely like a mishmash of three different styles.
There is a clear blueprint for how to beat Tottenham Hotspur this season. Before the game on Sunday, Ange Postecoglou was under pressure. After a 3-0 battering which, let’s face it could’ve been much worse, the media are championing this win as ‘defining’ and a ‘masterclass’.
Even if those two things are true, it’s because Ten Hag ignored the issues Tottenham faced and decided to set his team up in a manner that gave Tottenham all the solutions and space they needed to run rampant.
What has tended to happen this season, is teams (like Arsenal for instance) set up to nullify Tottenham. They commit a lot of men in attack, so when they run out of ideas as to how to successfully find their attackers in space when you win the ball back THEN you can hit them with transitions.
Instead, United decided the way to go about things was to commit their own attack in the press (which as we’ve seen from last season still has it’s issues) and Tottenham’s attackers were smart enough to move United’s block around and drag players at will.
Even when United didn’t press, the performance was eerily similar to last season when teams manipulated United’s structure out of possession.
The ball would go wide to Werner and as a winger went over to help the full-back, just in front of him, an attacker in Maddison would take away the covering central midfielder (Ugarte).
It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before, the opposition easily pulling United players around, which begs the question if there is so much evidence of this occurring previously, why hasn’t Ten Hag done anything about it?
In his first season, he was praised for smelling what the game needed. Be it, using full-backs to break down teams that sit deep, staying compact and utilising transitions to hit the better teams on the break or just riding off the confidence of his tinkering as games entered their later stages.
Now he’s changing too much, too often and has lost his sniff for what’s needed in matches. We’re five games into the season and both Liverpool and Tottenham have ripped United to shreds. This was a manager heavily backed in the window on the back of a magnificent cup win against the best manager in the world and the best team in the world.
After toing and froing and publicly meeting with other managers, a new contract extension was hashed out and Ten Hag was eventually deemed the manager to lead United in the INEOS era, the conglomerate backed the Dutchman financially too.
Perhaps we’re seeing why there was a delay in announcing that Ten Hag would stay as United manager. Last season the squad was decimated by injury and in response, each tactical ploy from the former Ajax manager failed miserably.
Not only does he have a squad this season that is fit, but he also has several new additions with whom he has previously worked.
Four of United’s back five have already worked under Ten Hag. The issue is, if this was game five and we didn’t already have mountains of evidence where teams have exploited United’s structure without the ball the reaction wouldn’t be like this. Still, frankly, it was a gigantic surprise Ten Hag was the coach in the first place going into the season.
The Dutchman has been on thin ice since last season’s miserable league form, now the ice is quickly cracking beneath him.
Reports have suggested that the Porto and Aston Villa games coming up are last chance saloon for the Dutchman to prove he should be the manager for INEOS’s first season.
Either a remarkable turnaround occurs where finally it’s sunk in that United and the former Utrecht manager can’t continue playing in this manner or the likelihood is, heading to the international break after this game week a decision is taken.
The latter would, unfortunately, be justifiable in a club whose gloriously successful history continues to be a burden for any manager to live up to.
