In defence of Erik Ten Hag at Manchester United

The Dutch manager has struggled to convince fans and critics alike that he's the man for the job, but he may turn things around if given the chance.

To say Manchester United have been inconsistent this season would be something of an understatement. Despite his best efforts, Erik Ten Hag has struggled to convince fans and critics alike that he is the man to take the Old Trafford club back to the top of the Premier League table. And yet, there is still a lingering thought in the back of my head that suggests that the Dutch tactician may still be the answer to Man Utd’s problems. And I’ll try to explain why. 

Ten Hag strikes me as one of the most fascinating managers in European football today. Unlike so many of his peers at other super clubs around the continent, the Dutch tactician is not only battling to get his team back into the Premier League top four, but is also constantly pushing back against the club’s own tendencies from one transfer window to the next. At Old Trafford these days there seems to be this intriguing dichotomy between what the club does off the pitch and what their manager is trying to do on it. 

Signed from Ajax in April 2022, Ten Hag was heralded as a great reformer that would be able to implement a long-term vision for Man Utd and guide the club to the sort of success enjoyed by their domestic rivals in recent years. Liverpool had Jurgen Klopp, Manchester City had Pep Guardiola and even Arsenal were beginning to look like a genuine threat under the stewardship of Mikel Arteta. In no uncertain terms, Man Utd were playing catch up but also hoped to leapfrog these clubs and reestablish themselves as English football’s dominant force. 

That, however, hasn’t exactly worked out. Since taking over the reins at Old Trafford, Ten Hag has won 123 points in the Premier League. Which places him, comfortably, in fourth place behind the aforementioned trio. Ahead of the rest of the chasing pack and good enough for regular Champions League qualification, perhaps, but 11 points behind Klopp, 26 behind Arteta and a rather daunting 30 behind Guardiola. If that’s the pace Ten Hag is trying to match, he’s not doing a very good job of it. 

This is perhaps where that aforementioned dichotomy at Man Utd comes into play and seems to get in the way of the club keeping up with their rivals. Debates over Ten Hag’s ability as a manager and tactician are undoubtedly important but they’re just as potent as they are unanswerable at this moment in time. And for the sake of this discussion, I’m far more interested in comparing the situation the Man Utd manager is in, with the rivals he has been tasked with matching. And, most importantly, whether Ten Hag is being held back by his own club’s inability to help him build a proper team capable of competing in the Premier League. 

One of the most striking aspects of Ten Hag’s time at Man Utd - and where fans of the club are most willing to give him credit - is in the manner in which the manager has awarded game time to younger players in his squad. In just two seasons at the club, Ten Hag has awarded debuts or cemented first  team spots for Facundo Pellistri, Willy Kambwala, Hannibal and most notably Kobbie Mainoo and Alejandro Garnacho. In fact, such has been Ten Hag’s tendency to call up youth players from Man Utd’s academy that the club can lay claim to eight former academy players in their first team squad this season - the second best record in the Premier League behind only Liverpool. And that shouldn’t really be a huge surprise when we consider Ten Hag’s background as a manager before he arrived in Manchester. 

Prior to being a youth coach at Bayern Munich, Ten Hag made his name at Ajax by not only building a squad that won the league title in three of his six seasons at the club but also one that was pretty dependent on young players. In fact, over the course of his six seasons in the Eredivisie, Ten Hag’s side were on average the fourth or fifth youngest team in the top-flight and very rarely signed players  over the age of 28. Of course, this isn’t entirely unnatural for Ajax - who are famed for rearing young players and turning them into international stars - but is important to note when we then compare Ten Hag’s success in the Netherlands to his struggles in England. 

Indeed, in his six years at Ajax the club signed only five players over the age of 28 for a combined total of €19.2m. In the last two seasons alone, Man Utd have spent over €75m bringing just as many players 28 or over to the club. And not only is that out of step with what Ten Hag was used to at Ajax, but it also stands in stark contrast to how their Premier League rivals scout and sign players in the  transfer window. 

For example, if we take a look at the average age of Arsenal’s signings since Arteta joined the club, we can see that it would sometimes rise to 25 or 26 but over the course of the last five seasons it has stood at an average of 23.97. Similarly, when we consider the last nine seasons at Liverpool under Klopp, the Anfield club have also followed a similar strategy of signing players in their early 20s with the odd exception to cover holes in the team. As such, the average age of Liverpool’s signings since Klopp arrived stands at an even lower 23.07. 

This, perhaps to no great surprise, is a little different to Man Utd’s current strategy. Since Ten Hag joined the club, the average age of their new signings stands at a notably higher 25.95. And in the five years prior to Ten Hag’s appointment the club’s average age of new signings stands at an equally troubling 25.93 - with the average age of their signings in the season prior to Ten Hag’s arrival being a staggering 30.0. 

This, hopefully, goes some way to illustrating where Man Utd differ from Arsenal and Liverpool. Where the Old Trafford club have continued wasting money on ready-made senior players that haven’t lived up to the billing, their rivals have gutted their squads and built impressive teams around new players. If Man Utd want to emulate that, they’ll need to change their tactics in the transfer window. And, fortunately for them, they may already have a manager that is capable of such a job and indeed wants to do exactly that. 

Despite the older players signed by Man Utd in recent years, Ten Hag’s starting XI has begun to drop in average age quite dramatically. In the 22/23 season, his 11 most used players had an average age of 28.2. This time around, that figure has dropped by six percent down to 26.6, which is impressive when we consider that 36-year-old Jonny Evans has had to cover for the 26-year-old Lisandro Martínez in the heart of defence for much of this season. And, based on my own estimations, should the club avoid any serious injuries next season, Ten Hag’s preferred XI could drop even further down to 25.6. 

Indeed, if Ten Hag was to get his way, it’s not hard to imagine Martinez stepping back in for Evans, Mainoo taking the place of the ageing Casemiro in the middle of the park and a front-line built around Garnacho and 21-year-old Rasmus Hojlund to create the foundations for a good team going forward. The question is whether Man Utd will let him do exactly that. 

Before Klopp was able to build his new-look team at Anfield, he had to make difficult calls in moving on ageing stars like Martin Skrtel and Daniel Sturridge. Arteta, quite dramatically, had to draw a line under the Arsenal careers of big earners like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mesut Ozil before he was able to build a team capable of challenging for the Premier League. And it’s not hard to envisage Ten Hag having equally difficult conversations with Raphael Varane, Harry Maguire, Christian Eriksen and perhaps even Marcus Rashford. But the Dutch tactician can only do that if he has the backing of the club to prepare long-term plans for the squad’s future.  

Whether such a scenario will come to fruition and indeed whether Ten Hag will still have a job at Old  Trafford next season will probably be down to new part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Man Utd have thrown good money after bad in signing older players over the course of the last 10 years and with that has come a carousel of managers that have failed to make sense of squads pieced together by accountants rather than scouts or head coaches. The Old Trafford club may now have an opportunity to break away from that troubled cycle, but it would require Ratcliffe to put his trust in Ten Hag and to let the Dutch manager finally do what he was hired to do at Man Utd.