Manchester United has struggled with having a consistent manager since the retirement of the great Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013. Since his retirement, Manchester United have just lifted three silverwares: the FA Cup under Louis van Gaal, the League Cup, and the Europa League under Jose Mourinho. After the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho, and Raphael Varane in 2021, Manchester United were expected to challenge for titles last season but that was not the case, they struggled with consistency and also failed to qualify for the Champions League, which saw Ole Gunnar Solskjaer lose his job.
The Dutch coach, Erik ten Hag took over the managerial role at Manchester United replacing the former interim boss Ralf Rangnick. With the help of his analysts and assistant coaches, Ten Hag has forged a reputation for playing being a meticulous planner and he leaves no stone unturned when it comes to readying the players for matches.
As someone that loves to play around with formations, during his early years as a manager, he worked with a 4-4-2 formation, then moved on to a better 4-3-3 formation, which helped the Ajax team excel.
Image copyright: Derick Kinoti
During his Ajax reign, he led Ajax to a Champions League semi-final, won three Eredivisie titles, and two KNVB Cups and he also became the fastest manager in Eredivise’s history to reach 100 wins. He achieved the feat in only 128 matches.
Despite having a good pre-season, the team showed a glimpse of fluid attacking football which left the fans buzzing. The start of the season didn’t go as expected as Manchester United lost their first and second match of the season to Brighton and Brentford. The losses showed the need for a defensive midfielder and a right winger and that led to the signing of world-class Casemiro from Real Madrid and a reunion between Erik ten Hag and rising world-class talent Antony from Ajax, which increased the squad depth having signed the likes of Eriksen, Martin Dubravka, Lisandro Martinez and Tyrell Malacia.
Having lost the first two matches of the season, Manchester United went ahead to win their next four matches including a 2-1 and 3-1 victory against Arsenal and Liverpool respectively. But their winning streak came to an end with a heavy 6-3 defeat to Manchester City.
Manchester United has gone ahead to win their next three matches despite the heavy defeat, and the win has been impacted by the substitution made by Erik ten Hag. Though he has made a lot of chances and taken various decisions in favour of Man United, he refused to take credit.
A substitute has scored in each of United's last four games before their goalless draw against Newcastle, including the winning goal in three of the matches, with the latest super sub impact coming from Scott McTominay in their 1-0 zero wins against Omonia Nicosia.
Manchester United haven’t had convincing wins yet but under the leadership of Erik ten Hag, they look set on the right path by streaking wins together to boost their confidence and improve their winning mentality which was missing last season.
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