Sport

INEOS dithering might have cost Manchester United their season

Manchester United simply couldn’t take any more. Sunday’s defeat to West Ham dropped Erik ten Hag’s team down to 14th place in the Premier League table and proved to be the final straw for the decision-makers at Old Trafford who sacked the Dutchman less than 24 hours after the loss at the London Stadium.

INEOS finally made the decision they should have made in the summer when they kept ten Hag in charge despite United suffering their worst-ever Premier League season. Victory over Manchester City in the FA Cup final was used to argue ten Hag deserved to stay, but this triumph wasn’t reflective of United’s dismal season as a whole.

At no point of ten Hag’s tenure was the Dutchman able to implement a clear plan or style of play. Even in his first season when Manchester United achieved a respectable third place finish, ten Hag compromised on the principles that got him the job in the first place. Ten Hag’s United never looked like his Ajax team.

For some reason, though, INEOS dithered on sacking ten Hag and that might have cost Manchester United the entire 2024/25 campaign. It will take a remarkable turnaround for the Red Devils to get anywhere near the top four. They wasted far too much time praying ten Hag would work out as United manager when there was no evidence to suggest he would.

By waiting two months into the season to dismiss ten Hag, Manchester United have also limited their options in hiring a replacement. In the summer, Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel were both available and would have been a good fit for the Old Trafford club. Now, though, both are off the market having recently accepted new jobs.

Ruben Amorim has been strongly linked with the new vacancy at Old Trafford, but the Sporting CP head coach is untested at the elite level. Other reported candidates such as Gareth Southgate, Graham Potter and Thomas Frank also have their drawbacks that could prevent their appointment.

Of course, Manchester United went through a lot of change in other ways this summer. Dan Ashworth arrived from Newcastle United as the club’s new sporting director with Jason Wilcox also arriving from Southampton to be a part of United’s new-look front office. Omar Berrada came in as the club’s CEO.

It’s possible INEOS felt they couldn’t make a decision on ten Hag’s future until these new members of staff had been afforded time to assess the landscape at Old Trafford. The only thing worse than not firing ten Hag this summer would have been hastily replacing him with a coach unsuited to what United want to build.

Before Manchester United make another managerial appointment, they must settle on a vision for the future of the club. What sort of football do they want to play? What should their strategy be in the transfer market? These are the sort of questions that must be answered before identifying ten Hag’s permanent successor.

Ten Hag came to embody the worst of Manchester United in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. They gave the Dutchman too much influence over transfer strategy. Ten Hag might have left, but United are now stuck with many of the under-performing players the former Ajax boss pushed to be signed. His unwanted legacy will linger for a long time.

While ten Hag was hired before INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s arrival at Manchester United earlier this year, their indecision in not firing the Dutchman before now saw them fail their first big test as minority owners. Now, they must strike a balance between not wasting any more time and not rushing into an ill-judged appointment. Doing that won’t be easy.