The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Sport Saturday
Beating Liverpool can secure Ten Hag’s future but defeat may spell end
Old Trafford meetings with bitter rivals will be crucial in maintaining faith in Dutch manager to revive United
Erik ten Hag faces Jurgen Klopp twice over the next three weeks. Gatecrashing the Liverpool manager’s farewell party will go a long way towards ensuring there is no managerial change at Manchester United in the near future.
There is no sugar-coating the importance of tomorrow’s FA Cup quarter-final for the Dutch coach. The first of the Old Trafford meetings with Klopp will have a massive bearing on how much faith there is left in Ten Hag to revive the club.
Win, and Ten Hag will – to steal Klopp’s famous phrase – turn some of his doubters into believers. Lose, and the international break will feel like an eternity, the 13 days until United’s next match, away at Brentford, being filled with speculation, all of it negative.
We often see the November international break as a graveyard for managers, as chairmen and owners consider whether a change is necessary to shift the direction of a campaign.
The upcoming one feels more significant in determining the way ahead at Old Trafford. “Beware the Ides of March,” and all that.
That generally applies everywhere. Whether it is coaches and players pondering their next move to a bigger or better club, or boardrooms checking the availability of targets, you can be sure the groundwork and key decisions leading to summer announcements are happening now.
The executives at Anfield and Old Trafford will be holding the most critical talks about who their manager will be at the start of next season. Obviously, the circumstances are not the same.
As the new football supremo for Fenway Sports Group, Michael Edwards knows he will be accelerating the search to replace Klopp to ensure a smooth transition.
It will be clearer by tomorrow night if Sir Jim Ratcliffe is greenlighting or pausing the hunt for an alternative to Ten Hag to spearhead another rebuilding process. Given his situation – I have already written in this column that the United manager is effectively on trial – there are many who will argue the FA Cup quarter-final draw is a nightmare for Ten Hag. It could go the other way. Rather than seeing peril when facing Liverpool, he should be relishing a golden opportunity.
A positive result can help shift the perception of him. If he goes on to win the FA Cup, perspectives of the season will radically change, especially given the calibre of opponents still in the competition.
Upon taking control of United, Ratcliffe said he wanted to topple Manchester City. Make no mistake, Liverpool and United will always judge themselves against the other.
Fixtures against historic rivals are always more consequential. United can beat most teams and still face criticism if the performance is not up to scratch, as against Everton last Saturday. When United face Liverpool, it is always about the result.
The two clubs’ position as England’s most successful means there is more emotion around these meetings than any in the fixture calendar, only the city derbies getting close. Winning feels more satisfying and losing stings more.
Managerial changes have often followed the realisation that one club have fallen too far behind their North-West neighbour, and particularly poor showings in this fixture for coaches who are already under pressure have a habit of setting the stopwatch for the end of a reign.
Brendan Rodgers’s fate was sealed after defeat by United in September 2015, as it later emerged FSG had its first meetings with Klopp in New York shortly afterwards.
Jose Mourinho was sacked as United manager after defeat at Anfield in December 2018, the hot-blooded reaction to being outplayed demanding immediate reassurance to the fans that a change of direction was afoot.
Three years later, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was sacked within a month of a 5-0 loss at Old Trafford.
Ten Hag’s experiences against Liverpool have been mixed.
At the start of his reign he won over sceptics with a 2-1 win. Murmurs had begun after a couple of dodgy performances in August 2022. They were laid to rest for a long time after the victory over Liverpool at Old Trafford.
The speed with which Liverpool have reasserted superiority over United, having finished eight points behind last season, is one of the reasons Ten Hag is in such a difficult situation now. History may offer him comfort.
The FA Cup will always be synonymous at Old Trafford as the trophy that kick-started Sir Alex Ferguson’s glorious reign. Every time an under-pressure United manager secures a hard-fought, narrow victory in the competition, Mark Robins’s ears are burning.
Casemiro’s late winner against Nottingham Forest in the last round was more worthy of comparison with the goal that changed English football history than most, given it was in the same stadium and against the same opponents where Ferguson’s side famously won in 1990 en route to his first major honour in England.
As a football-mad youngster, I always perceived United as a cup team more than a title challenger. I was at Wembley to see them win the FA Cup against Everton in 1985. Eighteen months later, Ron Atkinson was sacked.
The last United manager to win the trophy, Louis van Gaal, learnt of his dismissal before the 2016 final, with the club having already decided to appoint Mourinho.
If Ten Hag were to replicate that win, it is hard to imagine United would dispense with his services.
The flipside of that argument, of course, is they are playing a Liverpool side who, despite their injuries, gave one of their highest quality performances for years in the second half of the 1-1 draw with Manchester City last Sunday.
Klopp and his players will smell blood. Before the last round against Southampton, I was among many Liverpool supporters who hoped to progress in the FA Cup, but deep down was content to prioritise the title push and Europa League following the Carabao Cup win.
The pairing with United changed that. As Klopp said before the third-round tie away at Arsenal, you do not compromise in fixtures like this.
Klopp knows his time is coming to an end and is on course to go out with a bang. The onus is on Ten Hag to defy those who fear he is about to leave United with a whimper.
Managerial changes have often followed the realisation that one club have fallen too far behind their North West neighbour