A Disaster Years in the Making

With the Erik ten Hag experiment finally over, United returns to the drawing board. As the club continues to watch its rivals reach new heights, the Red Devils are directionless.

Despite winning the FA Cup last season, this past summer condemned ten Hag to failure.

Since the start of the season, ten Hag remained on borrowed time. Instead of cutting ties with the manager, the club spent the summer trying to give the manager one last chance.

The additions of de Ligt and Mazraoui represented the club, giving ten Hag the players he felt comfortable with. However, neither player truly made sense, with both players coming off of mediocre stints at Bayern. Even other moves like the Yoro and Zirkzee ones seemed not to fit any sort of timeline.

By doubling down on a failed experiment, the club robbed themselves of starting fresh. Now, that leaves new manager Rúben Amorim with a team that is not his. The winter window promises to deliver nothing of significance, as all the bad moves must be undone in the summer. 

United’s summer of malfeasance doomed them to this start.

Had the club moved off of ten Hag and started the summer fresh, it would have given them a real glimpse into their future prospects.

As United struck out on more transfers and moved towards giving ten Hag his comfort players, alarm bells began to ring. The club’s unwillingness to make a decision regarding the manager forced them into this terrible summer.

If this summer occurred in 2019, United may have won. The signings of his ex-Ajax players proved that the club was married to the idea of ten Hag continuing. Bayern find themselves at a low point, but saw both players as expendable.

Since leaving Ajax in 2019, de Light’s stock continues to plummet, as he has never found the form that he did under ten Hag. The defender never truly developed further and lacks the necessary passing skills required in the modern era. Mazraoui profiles to be nothing more than just a rotational right back and should only be seen as such.

Perhaps what exemplifies this terrible decision the best is how Mazraoui, a right back, was forced to play the 10 because of a lack of other options. United gave ten Hag what he wanted while ignoring needed depth. 

Additionally, United placed their hopes in players that were much too raw. To be fair to both Zirkzee and Yoro, they have not yet been given a chance to show their potential. The issue remains that United needed those players to be key contributors on day one.

Both players need proper time to develop, and they’ll never truly get that at United. If the club truly is serious about the development of these promising young players, it needs to follow Arsenal’s example. Either let them play through their mistakes or send them out on loan. You need patience, but United may no longer have that. 

By both appeasing ten Hag and targeting developmental players, United dug themselves a hole that they won’t get out of.

Everything is wrong about the club this summer, and nothing seems to be changing soon.

Amorim joins a team in the middle of a total freefall. This may prove to be one of the toughest jobs in football right now, and the fixes aren’t easy.

PHOTO: Manchester United/Facebook

After van Gaal won the FA Cup with United, the team still went ahead and sacked the Dutchman by failing to repeat that with ten Hag, the club set any subsequent manager up for failure. Doubling down on his failing tenure will continue to destroy the ability of the next manager to succeed.

The Portuguese manager inherits a squad that makes no sense. It is a weird mix of washed-up players, like Casemiro, and intriguing young pieces in desperate need of time, like Højlund. Another set of players, including Mainoo, promises to be solid foundation pieces, but the squad around them is still weak.

The manager needs a true summer window during which Amorim gets the chance to put his stamp on the club. The winter window only promises to be a bandage on United’s gaping wound.

While dreams of Viktor Gyökeres dance around the minds of United fans, that acquisition might have to wait until summer. With only a few months until the winter window, Amorim might use this time to evaluate his options. Essentially, this period serves as an audition for the moves that will happen in the summer. 

Klopp faced a similar issue when he joined Liverpool: having to wait until the following summer to flesh out his side. Waiting until the summer also likely keeps the front office from overreacting and spending too much too soon. It also gives this front office the chance to exercise some patience finally. 

Going into these next few months, Amorim faces a challenge that Erik ten Hag failed to assess properly.

Fixing United remains the most daunting job in football, but can anyone actually figure it out?

Once more, United returns to the well of new managers, hoping things will be different this time. The ten Hag era ended with toxicity that no one saw coming when he took the job.

Perhaps the rot at the core of United might be too hard to defeat as of now.

PHOTO: Manchester United/Facebook