Under-fire Ten Hag is wise to avoid the Ratcliffe trash talk
Sir Jim wants to knock City off their perch... but it’s easier said than done
WHEN Erik ten Hag was reminded that Jim Ratcliffe wants to knock Manchester City off their perch, he looked about as comfortable as a straightA chemistry nerd who had been pushed into a playground scrap with the school bully.
‘So I think that has nothing to do with each other…’ began Ten Hag in reply, side-stepping the fact that it has everything to do with the comparison between the two clubs.
It’s just that now isn’t a great time for Manchester United to be measuring themselves against their ‘noisy neighbours’, to quote another phrase Ratcliffe borrowed from Alex Ferguson when he spoke to the media last week.
The Ineos billionaire is using City as his blueprint to rebuild United and it’s easy to see why. Omar Berrada has already been poached from across town with that purpose in mind, and United’s new chief executive is unlikely to be the club’s last recruit with a blue background.
At least Ratcliffe is realistic enough to look at going toe-to-toe with City as an initial three-year plan.
Whether Ten Hag will stay around long enough at United to oversee that process is another matter. Ratcliffe wasn’t quite so sure-footed when he spoke on that subject.
It’s all well and good making bold claims from the comfort of an office in Knightsbridge but something else entirely being stood in the eye of the storm, as Ten Hag will be at the Etihad tomorrow afternoon.
The Dutchman has been there before, of course. His first visit as United manager, in October 2022, saw City go four goals ahead by half-time and 6-1 up courtesy of hat-tricks from Phil Foden and Erling Haaland, before two late strikes from Anthony Martial gave the scoreline a modicum of respectability.
Seven months earlier, United were thrashed 4-1 at the Etihad under interim boss Ralf Rangnick. Ten Hag knows what City can do, hence his reluctance to engage in anything close to trash talk in the build-up to this game.
Pep Guardiola’s side threatened to stage another demolition derby when they won 3-0 at Old Trafford in October, and after Ilkay Gundogan scored the first of his two goals 13 seconds into the FA Cup final in June.
It felt as though United dodged a bullet that day at Wembley, but they couldn’t stop City marching towards the Treble. With 14 wins and a draw from their last 15 games, the champions are in ominous form again.
For all Ratcliffe’s rhetoric about the future, the reality is that United are nowhere near City at the moment.
This is a team clinging to the hope of Champions League qualification, possibly via a fifth-placed finish if English teams perform well enough in Europe this season to earn the Premier League an extra spot.
Ten Hag’s side could be 11 points behind fourth-placed Aston Villa and six behind Tottenham in fifth by kick-off at the Etihad. There is more than local pride at stake.
The United manager insists it won’t be a defining weekend in the race for Europe, but he is the one who has been billing every game since the turn of the year as a cup final, and that was before last weekend’s shock defeat by Fulham at Old Trafford.
At his pre-match press conference this week, Ten Hag spoke about opponents always raising their game against United and how the boot may be on the other foot against City — another indication of the power shift over the last decade.
‘Most of the time we feel — and you can also see it — that the opposition get their best output against United and maybe this game is the other way around,’ he said.
United will certainly have to raise their game to have any chance of winning, but they have done so once before under Ten Hag. In last season’s Old Trafford derby, Bruno Fernandes’s controversial equaliser knocked City out of their stride before Marcus Rashford completed a smash-and-grab.
‘We have the togetherness to make a good game plan,’ said Ten Hag. ‘We have done it against City, and against Liverpool. The players are looking forward to it. I can smell it when I am around here.’
However, United’s recurring injury problems — particularly the absences of Rasmus Hojlund,
Lisandro Martinez and Luke Shaw — mean they are even more vulnerable than usual. Victor Lindelof and Sofyan Amrabat have looked uncomfortable filling in for Shaw at left back and City could have a field day there.
The champions will be without Jack Grealish but Ten Hag won’t need reminding that Haaland comes into this game on the back of a five-goal haul in the FA Cup win at Luton in midweek.
United, meanwhile, were scraping past Nottingham Forest with a late winner from Casemiro. You can count their convincing victories this season on one hand.
It has been another peculiar week at Old Trafford — Ten Hag demanding an apology from Fulham for mocking Fernandes on social media for allegedly feigning injury, and accusing Forest of targeting his captain’s leg injury.
Then Rashford penning an article challenging questions over his commitment in the wake of that tequila bender in Belfast.
It ends with the most difficult of assignments in the 192nd Manchester derby tomorrow. Ten Hag knows he and his players have their work cut out.
For now at least, City remain firmly on their perch.