Ten Hag aims to fulfil Man United’s top-four dream
Back in October, when Manchester United supporters were still making their minds up about Erik ten Hag’s managerial nous, his suitability for English football and his judgment of players, he took his team to Stamford Bridge and claimed a notable victory in the tactical joust.
The Chelsea manager that day, the tactically admired Graham Potter, was check-mated from kick-off. United, Potter admitted, “were building their attacks too easily, and driving us back”.
Potter owned up to being out-coached with the kind of statement substitution no manager likes to have to make, redrawing his plans after barely half an hour by taking off Marc Cucurella, a defender and the Chelsea footballer Potter had the closest, longest working relationship with.
“We had to get another player in midfield, and put more pressure on them,” Potter said.
He brought on Mateo Kovacic.
Ten Hag later raised Potter again by populating his midfield further with the introduction of Fred. Fittingly, it was a goal from midfield, scored by Casemiro in stoppage time, that did justice to United’s performance by earning a 1-1 draw.
“That’s why we brought Casemiro in,” said Ten Hag, who had pushed for United to pay Real Madrid up to €80 million for the Brazilian, a judgment that has since been clearly vindicated.
That point gained at Chelsea, who had taken the lead late on through a penalty, will be appreciated all the more if United repeat or better it this evening at Old Trafford.
A draw ensures United finishing in at least fourth place in the final Premier League table, the principal target of the club when they hired Ten Hag last summer. It means Champions League football next season, a privilege once taken for granted by United but which they have missed out on for two of the past four seasons.
With one point from either of their two remaining games, Ten Hag will have trumped Jurgen Klopp, whose Liverpool trail United by three points and have only one fixture left.
He will have left a similar exemplary memo to Chelsea’s muddled executives as he did with his shrewd game plan at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea are pondering the fact that Potter was one of four different managers who took charge of them during a season in which they are destined to finish in the bottom half of the Premier League, perhaps as much as 30 points shy of qualifying for the Champions League, a competition Chelsea won in 2021. Ten Hag, whose first season in England
The Chelsea game was a milestone. He dropped Ronaldo for the first time and let everyone know who was boss
has yielded silverware, with the League Cup – and could yet add more if United reverse expectations in the FA Cup final against Manchester City – appreciates that qualifying for Europe’s elite club competition can seem tougher than ever.
“We want to compete with the best,” he said. “So then you have to be in the Champions League. In the Premier League you have to be in the first four, that’s not easy. Many are competing for it. Many think they should be in it.”
That sense of entitlement is being sharply challenged. The 2023-24 Champions League will have an uncomfortable look for several clubs who regard participating as almost a given.
Of the nine who have reached the past six European Cup finals, four are likely to miss out. There will probably be no Juventus, penalised for financial mismanagement; certainly no Chelsea or Tottenham; and, should United earn that remaining point, no Liverpool.
Ajax may very well be absent, too, for the first time in 12 years. That speaks for how much Ten Hag’s former employers have missed him. Going into this weekend’s last game of the season, Ajax sit third in the Eredivisie, a league in which only the title-holder is guaranteed a Champions League group phase entry.
Ten Hag had guided Ajax to three successive Dutch titles – and a Champions League semi-final in 2019 – before United poached him.
“We are still on a journey,” he said, reflecting on a first year in England that began with two defeats and United bottom of the Premier League.
By the time he took his players to Stamford Bridge, they were building momentum, and as he was out-calculating Potter tactically, he was also showing himself to be a bold, brave dressing-room strategist.
That trip to Chelsea marked a significant milestone: it was the first time Ten Hag dropped Cristiano Ronaldo. It was the moment a new manager made sure everybody knew who was boss.