MANCHESTER UNITED OPT TO KEEP THEIR UNDER-FIRE MANAGER
Sean O'Conor
Two and a half weeks since Erik Ten Hag turned the tables on his doubters by engineering a memorable F.A. Cup final win, sources are reporting Manchester United have decided to keep their Dutch manager.
For how long we do not know as no top-level boss is ever safe from the sack, but we do know the threat of imminent dismissal has gone and Ten Hag is having contract extension negotiations with the club.
Although nothing official has been announced, it is understood that now Ten Hag will lead the team into next season following a review.
Unless such talks break down, their conclusion will complete a remarkable turnaround from the situation before the cup final when the narrative was a chronicle of a death foretold.
Buried alive by the media before the game, the beleaguered Ten Hag responded by outcoaching the great Pep Guardiola and beating the world's best team Manchester City to take the trophy.
The new lords of Old Trafford - Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos team, had put on their nice blazers with matching Red Devils ties for the public execution at Wembley Stadium, the latest humiliation of the post-Alex Ferguson era.
Joining them in the posh seats were the club's legendary Scottish manager and the unloved co-chairman Avram Glazer, similarly resplendently attired.
They were all there to witness the last rites of Ten Hag, the latest sacrificial lamb to sup from the poisoned chalice that is the manager role at Old Trafford, a textbook impossible job, like the manager jobs at Barcelona, Brazil, England or Real Madrid.
Everyone had thought the Dutchman was facing the final curtain on his two-year reign that Saturday but it did not need The Guardian newspaper's soccer pundit Jacob Steinberg to act like a tabloid hack dropping an 'exclusive' bombshell the day before the final that Ten Hag's guillotine was a fait accompli.
That was arrogant and disrespectful to Ten Hag at the time, embarrassing and unprofessional now he is staying.
We had seen it happen to another Dutch United coach Louis Van Gaal, after the 2016 final, and Ratcliffe notably failed to mention Ten Hag in his post-match vote of thanks, while only offering him a formal handshake on the podium, his formerly made-up mind suddenly riddled with doubt.
Without the cup win, Ten Hag would certainly have been out of a job. The charge sheet was lengthy: Finishing eighth with a negative goal difference despite the Premier League's highest wage bill, finishing bottom of their Champions League group and facing more shots than any club in Europe's big five leagues tells a sorry tale.
Add to that a record number of Man United defeats in a Premier League season and conceding more goals than ever before in a campaign.
Moreover, some of United's 19 defeats in all competitions last season were just shocking - losing 3-0 at home to Bournemouth and 4-0 away to Crystal Palace was painful, while the Cup run included nervous wins against fourth-tier Newport and second-tier Coventry where they let comfortable leads slip.
Even the cup final, glorious as the victory was, was based on neutralising a superior team à la Jose Mourinho and finding the chink in Man City's armour, but it is not realistic for Man United to play counter-attack every match and especially at Old Trafford, firing diagonal long balls to Alejandro Garnacho against teams playing high up the field.
While one swallow does not make a summer, the defence for Ten Hag laid out a number of salient points:
The manager's frequent excuse of injuries upsetting his plan was justified when United fielded a total of 16 different centre back pairings and 35 different back four pairings across the season. United have lost more time to players being out than any other EPL club. Why they are suffering from so many injuries has not been adequately explained however.
Recruitment is ultimately out of the manager's hands and a flawed structure has defeated one coach after another, including the storied Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal, so sacking yet another one would only drag the club back to square one again.
Working amid this dysfunctional structure, Ten Hag has bagged two trophies and reached three finals in two seasons, which on paper is far from a failure. But he was also wise to remind the journalists not to forget what he had done on the training ground, bringing his experience of Ajax's famous youth system to bear.
The fact United's U-18 side are Premier League champions and that two teenagers - Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo, were the stars of the F.A. Cup final also counted in Ten Hag's favour.
But at the end of the day big silverware matters and there are no prizes for second place in football. While few if any would rate Ten Hag higher than Arsenal's Mikel Arteta, only the Dutchman came away with a trophy this season, a statistic for the history books. His tactical masterclass in outsmarting the reigning English, European and World Club champions and their great manager will live longer in the memory than Arsenal's league campaign.
The win certainly lifted the mood at Old Trafford and the Ineos team taking over rightly called a moratorium on Ten Hag's head before taking soundings from all stakeholders. Despite an apparent split on the way forward, what seems to have swung their mind were unconvincing contacts with Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel, a rejection from Kieran McKenna and doubts about the others in the frame - Thomas Frank, Graham Potter and Gareth Southgate.
Southgate was still a realistic option given his familiarity with two of the incoming Ineos owners, but his commitment to England at Euro 2024 was too big an obstacle for a deal right now given a win for the Three Lions could lead to calls for him to stay.
Pochettino's star appears to be waning after single-season engagements with PSG and Chelsea, while Tuchel too has apparently sullied his reputation after falling out with PSG despite winning Ligue 1, Chelsea after one and a half seasons which included winning the Champions League, and finally Bayern Munich after a sole season.
In the end, Ratcliffe & Co. ran out of time to find a Ten Hag replacement with the transfer window opening on the 14th of June.
The players back Ten Hag if their celebrations meant anything and the fans seem to have come around too according to recent polls. Not long ago Ratcliffe had deflected a question about the Dutchman's future by reminding the interviewer that the club's structure had defeated every manager since Ferguson - David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ralf Rangnick and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had all fallen by the wayside.
When one thinks of prolonged success at a club it has always been down to a manager given time to make himself at home - Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, Bob Paisley at Liverpool, Ferguson at Old Trafford and Guardiola in East Manchester now.
Guardiola has as secure a base as one could wish for and hey presto he has won everything from East Manchester. Now there is a new structure at Old Trafford emerging, the job of the manager should become easier and Ten Hag lives to fight another day.
As Mark Twain apparently told a nosy English journalist in 1897,
"The report of my death was an exaggeration."
Buy tickets for soccer matches around the world