Can Erik ten Hag succeed at Manchester United despite tension?
We ought not to be surprised that the sale of Manchester United has been a clumsy and cloudy process.
- Published before Man Utd 1-0 Wolves
Their frozen transfer activity over the summer, where players have had to be moved on before incomings could happen, feels suddenly jarring, at odds with the club’s thawing under Erik ten Hag and the clear sunlit path that lies ahead of them.
Since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Man Utd have never been in a worse state and have never been in a better state.
They are trapped by vampiric owners, freed by a gifted leader; held back by a never-ending nightmare, propelled by dreams of a title challenge. Never before in the Premier League has a club been such an oxymoron, or has a manager defied the constraints of his bosses so artfully.
That’s easy to say in pre-season, of course, when the team is purely theoretical; when it glows with the breezy optimism that accompanies the limitless potential of a league table full of zeros.
But can the tension between the two sides of Man Utd really hold?
Erik ten Hag's year
We will find out soon enough. The transitional year is over and now, at this great club, results must be delivered.
This is the year of Ten Hag, and like it or not it will be defined by the new number nine, a 19-year-old whose performances will unfortunately bear the weight of Ten Hag’s project and of the Glazers’ austerity.
Rasmus Hojlund cost Man Utd £72m. Including wages Harry Kane would have cost approximately £50m more than that, or roughly a third of the total dividends Man Utd paid their American owners between 2015 and 2022.
Kane is a game-changer: a bonafide Premier League legend and ready-made Manchester United superstar, a two-in-one whose creativity and goalscoring could easily be worth an extra 10 or 15 points per season.
It will not be Hojlund’s fault if he cannot live up to Kane, but should the biggest purchase of the Ten Hag era go wrong Hojlund will accidentally become the grandest symbol yet of the Glazers’ deathly grip.
Even moderate success with Hojlund might hurt a bit, because ironically the greater Ten Hag’s progress the more frustrating the owners become.
It wasn’t just financial restraints that held back David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, yet Ten Hag, at this rate, could be the first United manager who falls agonisingly short only because one of the richest clubs in the world was drained by its owners.
Or maybe, just maybe, the paradox will hold and Man Utd really will go all the way. Another efficient and inspiring summer certainly suggests it is possible.
Shift to Ten Hag tactics
Year one was surprisingly low on Ten Hag energy, from a tactical perspective at least.
Casemiro and Christian Eriksen seemed to plug gaps more than radically shift United’s strategy, with focus instead placed on small individual improvements amid a team that was oddly lacking in the hard pressing and muscle memory passing triangles we saw at Ajax.
That has notably shifted during pre-season, with United seemingly running harder and taking greater risks as they prepare for phase two, thanks to a very strong transfer window in which Ten Hag has finally shifted enough dead wood to bring in the players he needs to implement the Ajaxian high press, swarming possession football, and intricate automatisms we thought we would witness in 2022/23.
Andre Onana, so much better with his feet than the departed David de Gea, could revolutionise how Man Utd play, allowing them to pass out from the back and continually draw the opponent onto them, in turn weaving away from danger to create the rhythms that characterise all of the best teams in Europe.
Mason Mount is another brilliant signing, an intelligent and line-breaking creative player capable of absorbing the complex tactical ideas that the likes of Fred and Scott McTominay (both on their way out) never could, and whose off-the-ball work rate will help lead the press.
Finally, to Hojlund, a man alarmingly priced given his inexperience but whose ceiling is certainly high.
His pace, strength, and shot power have drawn comparisons with Erling Haaland but Hojlund is considerably less refined and less prolific.
He is the great gamble; the teenager on whose shoulders potentially rest the entire project and its relationship to the Glazers.
Who will Manchester United sign?
Hojlund is not expected to be the last signing.
Sofyan Amrabat, a defensive midfielder with the press-evading qualities currently lacking in the congested areas of central midfield, would be yet another round peg in a round hole for Ten Hag, although any deal is reportedly dependent upon United finding a buyer for McTominay, Dean Henderson, and Harry Maguire.
Again, it comes down to money, to tight purse strings at a club that have spent the last decade as world-beaters when it comes to revenue streams – and not a lot else.
Thankfully the Glazers have loosened these a little in 2023, pausing the dividend payments for the first time, but presumably only in response to United losing their grip on a place in the lucrative Champions League.
The policy change won’t last. The family might.
The far more significant pause - on the potential sale to either INEOS chief Sir Jim Ratcliffe or Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani - is a strong indicator that the Glazers will decide against leaving.
There is no obvious end in sight, no obvious point at which United’s owners would see the market as stable or the Premier League’s potential wealth as having maxed out.
So it’s up to Ten Hag to defy gravity. He will know, as will Man Utd fans, that their wretched owners are never the ones to pay the price - and that expectations at Old Trafford are never curtailed by off-field events.
The first year was a free hit. This one has to count.
Ten Hag, on the eve of the new Premier League season, could not have done any more with what he’s been given. Unfortunately, whether it’s enough will most likely come down to a 19-year-old arriving in a brand new country, tied to a huge price tag, and filling the phantom boots of Harry Kane.
Good luck to him.