UNTIED
Like the shock you get when you touch an electric fence deliberately, Erik ten Hag’s dismissal from his role as Manchester United manager was entirely predictable but still came as a bit of a surprise. Binning off the Dutchman is certainly the most significant decision the new breed of Ineos go-getters have made since Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought his stake in the club, doubling up as an embarrassing admission that they could scarcely have got their previous biggest decision more wrong. While United’s FA Cup final win might have been impressive enough to cover over a multitude of gaping fissures, it seems that only Ratcliffe and the kind of “world class” high-performing executives with which he likes to surround himself were too dumb to see that offering Ten Hag a new contract in July was ever going to end in anything other than salty tears.
As the chief backer of a sailing team that has just been thumped in the Americas Cup, Ratcliffe and his Ineos Sport group have also helped mastermind the descent of once all-conquering professional cycling and motor racing teams into the realms of the bang average, are “principal partners” of the worst All Blacks rugby team in history and not one of their three football clubs are pulling up trees. A thrifty cost-cutting billionaire he may be but when it comes to sporting glory, Ratcliffe doesn’t appear to have the same Midas touch that has served him so well when it comes to building his oil, gas and petrochemicals conglomerate. While his initial popularity at United was almost entirely down to a faux man-of-the-people schtick and the fact his name isn’t ‘Glazer’, many of the decisions he has made since arriving at the club have proved extremely unpopular.
Sacking Ten Hag is unlikely to be one of them, not least because the Dutchman has sounded increasingly deranged in recent weeks. His nadir? After months of relentless bleating about injuries, his attempt to explain why his side’s humiliation at the hands of Spurs doesn’t count because a red card shown to Bruno Fernandes was subsequently overturned on appeal. Ten Hag is more entitled to argue that Sunday’s defeat at West Ham was down to inexplicably poor finishing and a bizarre VAR intervention, but having been given every chance to succeed while his rudderless team showed no sign of improvement, it almost seems a kindness that he has been handed his P45. One of more than 200 staff to have been ushered to the Old Trafford door marked “Do One” since Ratcliffe arrived, at least he gets to leave with a multi-million pound payoff.
Inevitably, talk has turned to who will replace him and while Ruud van Nistelrooy has been placed in temporary charge, a number of more experienced suspects are also in the frame: Rúben Amorim, Thomas Frank, Gareth Southgate, Xavi, Kieran McKenna and Peter Bosz are just some of those whose names being bandied about in the hours following Ten Hag’s dismissal, their contrasting styles suggesting that nobody has a clue who will be in the next cab off the rank when it comes to adequately replacing Lord Ferg, over a decade and six managers later. Whether or not the Sir Dave Brailsford hive mind has any clearer a vision remains to be seen as, once again, one of the world’s most famous football clubs prepares to go back to world-class basics.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“How many of us have a university background or are willing to sit in an office? Without the smell of the grass, without access to the players, the dressing room, the sweat? Few of us [former players] have the desire to go into that field [of football governance’]. Besides, we had Platini. And you saw what happened to him” – Marcel Desailly sits down with Jonathan Liew to talk about his future plans, becoming ‘a legend’ and why he could not be an elite midfielder in the modern game.
“Re Fernandes’ message to Ten Hag: the passive aggressive stuff someone would scrawl on your leaving card if they didn’t like you in the first place” – Kev McCready.
“At the risk of triggering a cascade of conflicting opinions, I would maintain that anything purporting to be the ‘best’ football headline of all time should be brief, lucid and meaningful. The specimen to which you refer (‘Inverness in a mess’ – Friday’s Football Daily, full email version) is merely extended torture of the English language concluding with gibberish. Here, by contrast, is my own favourite example of a genuine front-runner: “Queen in brawl at Palace”… the Queen being Gerry (an elegantly coiffured striker secured from Motherwell) and the Palace was, of course, the Palace, the Crystal one, managed at that remote date by Bert Head” – Tony Thulborn.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Tony Thulborn, who lands a Football Weekly scarf. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
