Erik ten Hag will fail at Man Utd if the club make the mistake of not giving him full control

You know what they say: far better than to be the man who follows Alex Ferguson is to be the man who follows the man who follows the man who follows the man who follows the man who follows the man who follows Ferguson. You cannot say that Manchester United have not tried a range of options – British and foreign, dictatorial style and everybody’s friend, club legend and foreign import. You can say that none of them worked.

Erik ten Hag is different again, not least because he has elements of each of his predecessors but is directly comparable to none of them. He has been recruited directly from another club (the same is only true of David Moyes), has recently succeeded in Europe and a domestic league and is known for building clubs according to his vision of how football should be played. He has overachieved with a smaller club (Utrecht), succeeded with a domestic giant (Ajax) and developed a style under a modern great (Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich).

A slate cannot be both clean and yet smeared with dirt. And yet despite everything: the Great Ronaldo Debate 2022, the Bruno Fernandes and 4–3-3 conundrum, Paul Pogba being told to f__k off by his own fans, Harry Maguire – sad statue edition, Marcus Rashford – sad everything edition, the recruitment illogical, the misplaced arrogance, Gary Neville saying “This is Manchester United” in an increasingly weary tone, the Ed Woodward directorial dissonance. Despite all of that and more, there are reasons to believe that this can be a good fit.

Ten Hag has a prodigious record of developing young talent. He has a clear idea of what he wants and – more importantly – clear ideas of how Manchester United must help him get there. There are no strings of attachment to the club and there, on the surface at least, seems to be no inflated ego. He does not seek to put Manchester United back on a quasi-mythical perch nor to silence noisy neighbours, simply to make them the best club they can be.

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But more important than all of that, he arrives at a club that has no choice but to let him shape them rather than the vice versa. They have reached their likely rock bottom and they have called in the emergency services. Anything other than an accession to Ten Hag’s demands on recruitment, staff, coaching and style will be met with mutiny.

There are doubts; of course there are doubts. There are doubts because Manchester United are a mess. There are doubts because that mess has dragged down managers more than the managers could pull the club up. There are doubts because United love talking about their grand visions for expansions and improvements but their inaction speaks louder; who knows if Ten Hag will actually get all he wants.

There are doubts because Ten Hag has never managed in this maelstrom nor in one of the major European leagues. The last successful Ajax head coach to come to the Premier League with a mandate to impose his philosophy was Frank de Boer; he lasted five matches before being sacked. Peter Bosz only fared marginally better in Germany. There are doubts because Ajax seem to exist in a bubble – the last player or manager to leave them and be more successful was probably Christian Eriksen in 2013.

And there are doubts because success here will surely require a leap of faith and a double dose of patience from all involved. Those players and coaches who have been interviewed for the countless features about Ten Hag’s impending appointment all detail an intense acclimatisation period during which they doubted his methods. After that they were convinced – doubters became disciples. Here, doubts tend to take roots and spread like Japanese knotweed.

But then everything is a leap of faith when you’re standing at the edge of your own miserable abyss. If it can’t get any worse, there is no option to be brave and to reach for something better. This will require patience, but patience stopped being a choice long ago – the gap to the top and the gap between their current malaise and where Manchester United could, should, might just be again dictates as much. For now we must simply wish Ten Hag well as he enters the lion’s den.

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