Manchester United set to dismiss Erik ten Hag regardless of what happens in FA Cup final

According to a recent Guardian report, Manchester United have decided to sack current their men’s team manager, Erik ten Hag, at the end of the season.

United’s disappointing 2023/24 campaign ends this weekend as they take on Man City at Wembley Stadium in the FA Cup final. In what is a rematch of the same event last year, United need to win the game in order to secure European football for next season.

This is Ten Hag’s third cup final in his two years in charge of United. However, United have ostensibly already made the call to not continue with him.

Up until recently, the new INEOS sporting ownership of the club had been talking about continuing with Ten Hag going forward, but even then the news does not come as a surprise.

Despite registering 60 points in the league, United have finished eighth, their lowest finish in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. What’s more, despite massive injury issues, Ten Hag’s tactical choices and quibbles with players have made it harder for him to justify his lack of results.

In the end, the results seem to have cost him his job. Again, not a surprise. In modern-day football, United sacking Ten Hag after a disappointing season is a writing many had been seeing written on the wall for a while now.

The manner, however, and the timing the INEOS group have chosen to make this call is definitely an interesting one. With reports emerging barely 24 hours before United’s biggest game of the season, one can only assume this to be a last-ditch attempt to

rally the team together for one last hurrah for their manager, who could only boost his pedigree if he were to lift a second trophy with United in two years.

New boss may get United a short-term boost

Given the footballing climate we’re in, most understand and accept that it’s time for United to move on from Ten Hag. Many names have been making the rounds to take his place: Gareth Southgate, Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino, and Kieran McKenna being the most common ones.

Here’s the thing, though: United are currently not in a position to make long-term managerial appointments. The INEOS team have been adamant to learn from the club’s mistakes over the past years and establish a proper footballing structure between the ownership and the coaching staff.

To that end, they have going about making appointments, with Jason Wilcox (technical director) and Omar Berrada (CEO) having already been roped in. Dan Ashworth had been expected to take up the football directorship at Old Trafford, but that move now seems in jeopardy, with recent mail leaks between him and Berrada having put United in a precarious position.

In any case, making a long-term managerial appointment without a football/sporting director in place is like installing a window before putting up a wall; it’s not going to work. United have made too many mistakes over the past decades to not understand this.

And, given INEOS have been more than happy to wait for Ashworth, even if he were to not come now and someone else did in his place, what we have at our hand is a situation in which United are likely to go into the summer without a director of football in

place and yet a new man at the managerial seat—in a worst-case scenario, there may not be a manager at all.

What United need right now is a manager who can work mostly with the existing squad, help them improve, and get the best out of them as a collective. To that end, even if he prefers working with a stable hierarchy in place, Thomas Tuchel has shown with his stints at PSG, Chelsea, and Bayern Munich that he is more than capable of performing in the middle of a thunderstorm—some would say better, even—and could do the job for the club in the here and now. Then, when they have their footballing hierarchy fully-stacked, United could go about bringing in “project” managers.

Even then, we know all too well at this point that the talk of “long-term project” managers is just bells and whistles. Patience runs short in the footballing world these days, and when the results stop coming, excuses are garnished on top of that bland truth to deliver a manager their marching orders.

In the end, Ten Hag has been successful

So, the Erik ten Hag era at United is coming to an end. This begs the question: was it a successful one?

There will never be a singular answer for this question, but one shall strive nonetheless. Given this season has seen United’s worst finish in the league, it’s hard to imagine it as a success.

Here’s the thing, though: the only manager in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era that has delivered United back-to-back top-four finishes in the league is Ole Gunnar Solskjær, and for all the good work he did in exceeding expectations at a job he should never have been given in the first

place, he was lambasted for never winning a trophy at United. Well, Ten Hag won one in his first year; by that same logic, why shouldn’t his reign be considered successful?

The time given to managers now is microscopic compared to what we used to see in the decades gone by. Klopp, Arteta, and Guardiola are outliers in the world of Potter, Pochettino, and Tuchel.

More Manchester United News-

• Kieran McKenna and ex-Chelsea coach on Manchester United radar as they make Erik ten Hag decision
• “Cut that cr*p” – Roy Keane livid if Manchester United celebrate just reaching FA Cup final vs Man City
• “There’s only one” – Manchester United star Casemiro pens emotional message for ex-Real Madrid teammate on retirement

Silverware is the best tried-and-tested method one has to talk about “success” in professional competitive sport. Ten Hag already has one. He may get another this weekend. He may not have been at United long time, but he was definitely successful in terms of the rigid narrative constraints that govern the modern football discourse.