Ineos look like naive amateurs. They have embarrassed themselves
HAS the FA Cup saved Erik ten Hag just as legend tells us it once saved Sir Alex Ferguson? No, not really.
The truth is that Manchester United looked across the football landscape and couldn’t find an upgrade.
So Ten Hag stays. Bruised and a little embarrassed, perhaps. Most definitely undermined and certain now of the shaky ground on which he stands.
But alive and in work and ready, no doubt, to try to prove everybody — and the Premier League table — wrong.
To be clear, United and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s circle of advisers who now run the club were perfectly entitled to do the things they have done. They were within their rights to look for a new manager and speak to all the people they felt they needed to speak to.
Businesses should always look to improve and to trade up. Football clubs that stand still tend to get overtaken pretty quickly and United were — and still are — in danger of being swallowed up by the peloton.
So, yes, United were right to look around. Why would they not? And they were entitled to do so while Ten Hag was still in situ. To sack a manager and then start looking for a replacement makes no sense.
Despite an out-of-character performance in the FA Cup final that saw them beat Manchester City with 25 per cent possession, last season was a mess. There were mitigating circumstances, largely in the shape of injury problems. But it was still a mess.
United looked uncoached and unmanaged for much of the campaign and culpability for that lies at Ten Hag’s door. Ratcliffe and Co were acting in the best interests of the club in seeking to replace their coach.
In realising now that there is no outstanding candidate to fill his shoes, they have also made a sensible call to keep him. Change for the sake of change rarely works in football.
So United have held their nerve and there is something to be said for that. In trying to rebuild and repurpose United, Ratcliffe’s Ineos are playing the long game. They have no choice. So to give Ten Hag more time — pay no heed to a new contract if he signs one because they mean nothing — will not kill them in the long run.
Ineos have still embarrassed themselves, though. Their motives may have been pure but their conduct has been that of naive amateurs rather than the elite sporting outfit they purport to be. A decision on Ten Hag should have been made before the Cup final. One trophy — one performance — changes nothing.
Their ‘end-of-season review’ should have been completed by the time United took to the field against City at Wembley. Stick or twist, they should have known and then got on with it quickly.
To delay has cost them credibility in the eyes of their supporters and in all likelihood their manager. Watching Ten Hag dangle on a piece of string for the last two and a half weeks has been as painful as it has been unprecedented.
The drip-drip of information that has leaked so steadily from all those alternative coaches they have spoken to has hardly helped Ineos either. Another bad look.
Is there a manager in Europe who has not had a tap on the shoulder from Ratcliffe and his crew in the last four weeks? It seems not.
What Ineos know now is that confidential conversations in football are not always easy to come by. United’s list of possible replacements for Ten Hag has been so public they may as well have stuck an advert in the Manchester Evening News and invited applications.
If Ten Hag’s football has been clumsy and a little nakedly obvious at times over the last 10 months, then so has the conduct of those who now hold the future of England’s biggest football club in their hands.
Ten Hag will have to improve if he wants to stick around longer than the autumn. So too must Ratcliffe and Ineos if they are ever to haul Manchester United back off the seat of their pants.