Can Ten Hag survive Jim Ratcliffe’s bloodletting?
It’s becoming clear that Jim Ratcliffe is less a minority investor at United than he is a kind of viceroy, running things on behalf of the imperial oppressor, The Glazers.
And now that Big Sir Jim has the keys to their outpost, he is sprucing it up: Omar Berrarda is coming in from Manchester City as CEO, while they are now in open transfer-saga-mode to land Dan Ashworth as sporting director. (These are the kinds of open transfer sagas which Ashworth will presumably be tasked with ending.)
Amid this transition to what Ratcliffe’s acolytes would call Best in Class, what of Erik ten Hag? Will he be retained when Ashworth et al get their feet under their desks?
On the balance of things you’d have to say, probably not. United are on a fine winning run at the moment, but Rasmus Hojlund’s goals are masking some serious structural problems with the team. United cannot exert any kind of control over games, which means they look lethal on the counter-attack while also threatening to fall apart defensively if the opposition so much as looks sternly at them.
At the moment they are earning results, but the number of chances United are conceding every time they play means this is hardly sustainable. But of more concern to ten Hag is less the style’s efficiency than the fact it is not what was advertised: United are currently playing a kind of chaosball that’s a million miles from the style of play ten Hag promised on arrival.
And this unpredictability may prove to be a problem for his new bosses. United’s new structure will know that the best player recruitment is done when there is a clear style of play for which players can be targeted, so they will want to work with a manager who can be relied upon to stick by his principles. Ten Hag might find that wobbling on that front may prove more damaging than any of his results.
Liverpool’s best hope may be their competition
Liverpool currently lead the league, but given their injury problems, they are probably the weakest of the three runners in the title race.
But they do have a couple of factors in their favour. The first is the prospect of being propelled by some kind of mass emotional event wrought by Jurgen Klopp’s departure. They will face Manchester City at Anfield on 10 March: the atmosphere will be feral for a game Liverpool must win.
The second thing in their favour may be the presence of Arsenal. Never before have Liverpool gone toe-to-toe with City for the title and could count on a third party to take points from City, but Arsenal are good enough to do exactly that. Liverpool must hope for some kind of mutually assured destruction, and they should pray that City and Arsenal are drawn to face each other across a two-legged tie in the Champions League. Liverpool can allow City and Arsenal to slug it out, and then scoot around them to the finish line.
Chelsea lost their nerve at City
So, have Chelsea set a template to take points off Manchester City? Perhaps, but just make sure you can spent hundreds of millions of pounds on players good enough to counter-attack at pace while also ensuring your defensive midfielder has some kind of strange protection from being sent off. Oh, and you need Erling Haaland to have a freakish off-day in front of goal. So if all those factors align…be happy with your point.
In truth Chelsea caused City a lot of problems on the break, and Mauricio Pochettino may regret not sticking with Plan ‘A’ for longer. But he removed his pacy outlet up front after 64 minutes by introducing Christopher Nkunku, and then renounced attacking altogether by swapping to a back five with Trevoh Chalobah’s 71st-minute arrival in place of Cole Palmer.
Chelsea fell deeper and deeper, and their resistance was eventually broken by Rodri. The identity of the goalscorer shouldn’t be a surprise, given Rodri scores an abnormal number of his goals against sides playing a back three/five, most famously in the Champions League final against Inter Milan.
It was an impressive Chelsea performance, but they should have kept their counter-attacking threat on the field for longer, because simply defending against Manchester City is a waste of time.