If disappointment were a source of fuel Manchester United could power a rocket to the moon and back. Of course we are disappointed, said Erik ten Hag after a second successive defeat at Old Trafford against Galatasaray. We know we have to better.
Ten Hag has performed the same song on six occasions already this season and may yet open his tonsils in a seventh lament after the visit of Brentford. Save for the Carabao Cup victory over a second-string Crystal Palace, Ten Hag’s team might plausibly have lost nine times. They were hanging on against Wolves in the season opener, likewise against the ten men of Nottingham Forest and needed a worldy from Bruno Fernandes to subjugate Burnley.
Ten Hag had an excuse a year ago after losing his opening two Premier League games. That was not his side. This one is. It was his goalkeeper, Andre Onana, who passed to an opposing forward that led to the penalty that induced Casemiro’s red card on Tuesday. His goalkeeper that went down on one knee to wave Mauro Icardi’s winner into the net, and his goalkeeper who booted away possession in the second half more than David de Gea ever did.
And Onana is not his biggest concern. Far more of an issue is a porous midfield, and Ten Hag appears no nearer to finding a solution than he was a year ago despite the additions of Casemiro, Christian Eriksen, Mason Mount and Sofyan Amrabat, a loan signing who followed another loanee, Marcel Sabitzer.
The real problem for Ten Hag is the emerging idea that his difficulties are becoming less about personnel and more a failure of coaching. It is 10 games into his second season and United appear to be going backwards. Whatever his methods might be, they are not working.
If it were not bad enough that United have won only four matches, three of them by the odd goal, they are conceptually incapable of hanging on for a draw.
Collapses appear inevitable, and goals are conceded in bunches. Forest scored two in two minutes, Arsenal two in five, Bayern two in four, Galatasaray two in ten. That’s on the coach as much as the players.
After the international break at the end of October, United host Manchester City and Newcastle in the space of three days in the Premier League and the Carabao Cup.
Ten Hag has no margin for error in the three games prior against Brentford, Sheffield United and FC Copenhagen if he is to survive negative results against City and Newcastle.
He is further hemmed in by his intransigence over the exiled Jadon Sancho and over-dependence on the increasingly erratic Fernandes.
It is fine to take a principled stand against Sancho’s perceived ill-discipline when you are winning, less convincing when you are losing with a squad depleted by injury. And having made Fernandes his captain, it is almost impossible to bench him.
No player in top-flight football has played more minutes that Fernandes, 6,666, in the calendar year from September 2022. That is the devil’s number and some. Fernandes revealed his superpower with what might be the goal of the season at Burnley, yet against Galatasaray he was the petulant, incoherent mess with whom United fans have become dispiritingly familiar, contributing hugely to the disfunction in midfield.
When the skipper’s head goes, it triggers a domino effect through the team. Fernandes has been flogged by Ten Hag as he was by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Add to that the puzzling diminution of Marcus Rashford and Ten Hag has lost his principal levers of power.
A brave, or desperate Ten Hag, might benefit from resting both against Brentford in favour of the more reliable if prosaic labours of Mount in the No.10 role and the dynamic running on the left of Alejandro Garnacho. He might also consider playing Amrabat as the midfielder he signed from Fiorentina and find someone else to do a shift at left-back.
A return to the starting line-up for Garnacho would be a further uplift in the week when he welcomed to the world his first child, Enzo. Though at just 19, Garnacho is young for the responsibilities of fatherhood and saving United, Ten Hag is in need of fecundity wherever he can source it.
In that regard he at least has the coming into flower of Rasmus Hojlund to celebrate. The Dane’s two goals against Galatasaray, not to mention the slick finish chalked off by VAR, are powerful reasons for optimism. Goals are ultimately the route to an easier life. United won’t have to be perfect should Hojlund develop into the kind of Scandinavian-goals-guarantee available to City.
To the English ear at least there is little to distinguish Hojlund and Haaland. Were Hojlund to pass the eye test, too, the Ten Hag’s post-match singalong might sound very different.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/rX3LEoU
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