Ten Hag insists he has zero regrets

FA Cup final appearance seen by boss as great achievement

Erik ten Hag insists he has the supporters’ backing and does not regret taking the Manchester United job despite the team’s underwhelming season.

Eighth-placed United host Arsenal today having won once in their past seven league matches, including last Monday’s shambolic 4-0 defeat at Crystal Palace, putting them at risk of missing out on European qualification.

Regardless of where United finish in the Premier League they can still reach the Europa League by beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final at the end of the month, but the failings in the league have put Ten Hag’s position under the microscope, especially since the arrival of minority owner Jim Ratcliffe.

Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal finished eighth in his first two seasons in charge but the club stuck with him and he has rewarded the backing with two title challenges. “I think the fans have the patience, you’ve seen it on Monday,” Ten Hag said.

“I see some comments they don’t. Either they don’t have any knowledge of football or they don’t have any knowledge about managing a football team or they just aren’t up to it. I think there are many people who see the problems and they are patient.”

United’s worst Premier League season saw them finish seventh in 2013-14, the first since Alex Ferguson’s retirement, an unwanted record that could be worse under the incumbent manager. “This is a massive club and you only realise that when you first come in, the things you have to face,” Ten Hag said.

“But I wanted to take on this challenge and have not had one second when I regret that decision. I am really happy to be here.

“I did my job and in the first year I would say it was a good formation. We played to our levels, maybe we over-performed. In this one we haven’t and I know why, but we are still in an FA Cup final and that is a great achievement.”

Ten Hag has been frustrated by the constant flow of injuries at the club, meaning he has been unable to put out what he sees as his best team all season.

“There has been great team spirit — not on Monday [against Crystal Palace] and that is why I was disappointed,” Ten Hag said.

“Monday I was really disappointed and the players were disappointed with themselves, there was a collective failure. All the other games, we have fought with each other, showed good team spirit, now I can’t have any doubt about this.”

Starting today, the dead men walking of Manchester United have one more week in the Premier League penitentiary before the bell starts ringing for their summer break: Arsenal this afternoon, Newcastle on Wednesday, Brighton next Sunday.

But a squad that has never been more ready for its holidays will still have another week in the slammer because of their appointment with Manchester City at Wembley on May 25.

Has there been any other club or any other fan base that has ever looked forward to an FA Cup final with less enthusiasm and less optimism in the cherished history of that grand old tournament? It has always been a glorious day out for the players and supporters who were lucky enough to make that gala fixture in the annual calendar.

Right now, however, given the state of affairs at Old Trafford, this blue riband event is looking more like an appointment with the gallows. Instead of getting measured for his new suit, Erik ten Hag appears to be getting measured for a straitjacket. The supporters are climbing the walls as well. After ten years of torment by managers, players and owners, they too are fit to be tied.

It has been a decade not so much of false dawns as false dusks. If the darkest hour is before the dawn, then there have been many moments when it got so dark that it seemed the light of mercy could only be around the corner. Instead the darkest hour always seems to have been followed by another, even darker hour. There have been so many new lows, it turned out they were all prematurely branded as such, because there was another even newer low about to take its place. Rock bottom has turned out in fact to be bottomless.

Roy Keane is a Bob Dylan fan. So he might be familiar with the Dylan lyric: “When you think that you lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.”

The current gaffer has been living that lyric on and off for two years. It was in May 2022 that the Dutchman rocked up to Selhurst Park to cast his eye over the team that was about to become his project. He would be unveiled as the new manager at a press conference the following day. It was the last game of the season and the final game of Ralf Rangnick’s bizarre interim tenure. United had the decency to lose 1-0 to Crystal Palace that afternoon, thereby presenting the new boss in an even brighter light as the heir apparent, the saviour they were crying out for, the new dawn after the latest dusk.

Last Monday he was back at Selhurst Park. And now they were being skittled 4-0 by a Palace team that could have scored six or seven, such was their rampant superiority over a United side that was, once again, a degenerate rabble. It was United’s 13th league defeat, making 2023/’24 their worst season in Premier League history. The latest nadir in a litany of nadirs.

And now the only conversation around ETH is his ETD — Estimated Time of Departure. After a season of drift and derision, the 4-0 has tripped a long-running state of ambivalence about his position into something closer to hard clarity. The number of pessimists among the fan base and the punditocracy seems to have reached critical mass. Erik is now on borrowed time.

But at time of writing he is not quite definitely about to be defenestrated. The window is open, apparently, but it’s not quite wide open. The Ineos interlopers, the new corporate raiders in the boardroom with their 25 per cent share of the business, are reportedly not quite sure yet whether to stick or twist.

At his press conference Friday lunchtime, a few reporters did their own bit of sticking and twisting of the knife. One of them conjured up a rather uncomfortable parallel with Ten Hag’s fellow Dutchman and previous holder of the poisoned chalice. “Louis van Gaal had a difficult second season in charge of United in the Premier League and Europe but then went on to win the FA Cup, but to his great disappointment was sacked. Have you got any concern that the club, even if you go on to win at Wembley, might end up making a similar decision to what they did over Louis?”

At this, a wintry smile chilled the gaffer’s features in a modest attempt at hiding his discomfort. “No,” replied Ten Hag. “I think they have

common sense.” He had his facts and stats regarding his roster’s unfeasible season in sick bay ready and primed. “They see when you have 32 different backlines, when you use eight centre-backs, we use 13 different partnerships [as] centre-halves, when they see where we don’t have a left full-back, when we have so many injuries, they know that will have a negative impact on results.”

The owners, new and old, will also presumably have noted that for all the chronic mishaps on the injury front this season, Ten Hag still hasn’t managed to establish any semblance of an identity for his team; that no matter who is selected, a discernible, repeatable pattern of play should have been established by the manager after two years on the training ground. Nor does the cultural malaise that has afflicted the dressing room for much of the last decade seem to be any closer to being eradicated either. Bad attitudes and bad habits are still materialising game after game, like a stain on the front of the jersey that keeps re-surfacing no matter how many times it has been washed. This malaise, if anything, looked to have metastasised at Selhurst Park.

So, given that performance, asked another reporter on Friday, was it any wonder that so many fans didn’t think they had a chance against today’s opponents? United are currently 29 points behind Arsenal; United’s goal difference is minus three, Arsenal’s plus 60. Naturally, Ten Hag felt obliged to lavish praise on the supporters for their patience and “understanding” in such trying circumstances. It wasn’t just flattery from a beleaguered manager who needs their backing. They know full well that the roots of the ongoing crisis lie much deeper in the organisation than merely the dressing room and training ground.

But even if the gaffer is surrounded by structural problems on all sides, he has to show consistent evidence that he himself has the chops when it comes to building a squad, creating an identity and changing a culture.

It can be done, as Mikel Arteta, for one, has proven. The Arsenal manager has turned around an institution that had fallen into dysfunction during late-era Wenger and the years thereafter. When the team starts winning, it’s amazing how much it will lift the rest of the organisation too.

A manager with the requisite vision and force of will does not have to wait for the rest of the pieces to fall into place before he can be freed to do what he wants to do; by imposing his will and his vision on the pitch, the rest of the pieces, in the boardroom and elsewhere, will eventually start locking together also.

Arteta is the thoroughbred who is pulling the whole Arsenal infrastructure behind him now, with everyone headed in the same direction. Ten Hag is beginning to look more and more like the horse standing behind the cart, hoping that it will start moving first.

On Friday, he referenced the FA Cup final a number of times, giving the impression that he is hanging his hat on a win at Wembley to secure at least another season at Old Trafford.

But, he was asked from the floor, shouldn’t the owners in the meantime issue a statement of support, saying that you are definitely going to be here at the start of next season? Ten Hag at first tried to shut down this particular line of inquiry. “This question you have to make to the owners, not to me,” he replied without further elaboration. But, retorted the reporter, couldn’t they end all the speculation, instead of you having to sit here and face these questions from the press? This time, he bit a little more. “That’s my job. I take responsibility for to speak with you and that’s why I’m the manager, to give the answers.” Then he duly gave his answer: “I don’t care if they do or they don’t. I’m working only [on] improving my team and to develop my team and that’s my job here.”

Right now, it does not look like it will be his job for much longer.

A discernible pattern of play should have been established by the manager.