16 Conclusions on Aston Villa 0-0 Man Utd: Ten Hag sack question deferred but unanswered

Yes, that’s right. We’ve got 16 Conclusions on a game in which almost nothing happened on a day when two other games had almost everything happen. We’re very sorry. As with everything else, we suggest blaming Erik Ten Hag.

1. Do 16 Conclusions on the United game, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. There’s narrative out the wazoo. There’s no way the game will be so dull you’ll struggle to find things to talk about, they said. Not like there could be another game that day that ends up being far more worthy of such attention, is it?

Here, though, with a gnawing and growing sense of inevitability, came a prime example of why we don’t generally do these for mid-table sludge like Erik Ten Hag’s Manchester United.

2. It’s hard to be too critical of Ten Hag taking this most grimly pragmatic of stances today, but we’ll not let that stop us. The whole ‘one game to save his job’ narrative that can swirl around a manager is always inherently daft. If it’s actually true then it points to a club and a manager and a team already in such a mess that it’s hard to see how any result could actually ‘save’ the poor manager in question, a man who will inevitably be frequently described as beleaguered.

And yet… This game felt like a uniquely dangerous confluence of events and circumstance for a manager under the kind of pressure Ten Hag now endures. The international break can be overplayed but it is without doubt a time that provides a natural pause, a football vacuum into which speculation and debate naturally flows.

3. Villa too represented uniquely challenging opponents here. Arguably the worst possible opponents. Because there is no clearer example currently of everything United are not. No more conspicuous currently successful overachiever.

United’s bench was a graveyard of Ten Hag’s failed or failing signings and it cost more than Villa’s starting XI. The very fact United came here with the view that a point would be a brilliant result and being correct to think that is damning in itself.

Villa also, of course, represent the very finest example in Our League right now of the potential benefits in making a managerial change when things are going demonstrably awry. An Aston Villa team heading for another relegation fight under Steven Gerrard has been transformed into one that beats Bayern Munich in the Champions League within the space of two years.

They were far worse than United are now, if you can imagine such a thing and had no right to expect this level of improvement this quickly.

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4. There’s a common refrain that nothing can be done at United, that the players will just keep underperforming and keep getting managers sacked so there’s no point in making another change. Theirs is certainly a flawed squad, but it’s impossible to look at Aston Villa now and Aston Villa two years ago and accept that kind of defeatist talk. It is not a wildly unreasonable position to take to suggest this United team should have done better than finishing eighth last season and absolutely should not currently sit 14th after seven games that have featured neither of the two best teams in the country and two of the four teams without a single win all season.

It can and must be better than this, surely. Going to Villa Park and grimly clinging on for dear life to a point that might prolong the agony for everyone for another two weeks just cannot be the limit, even in the most needs-must short-term, of this football club.

5. Shrewd observers may have noticed we’re now five conclusions in without really talking about this match at all. Be grateful it’s only five.

There really is just so very little to say about a match whose status as a near absolute non-event can be explained and mitigated on both sides, but that doesn’t make it any more of a suitable spectacle for the rest of us.

There is perhaps no clearer indication of just where United currently stand that the fact this game ended up being a terrible one played entirely into their hands. It’s undeniably glib, but undeniably true. Had there been any danger of a football match breaking out here then there seems almost no chance that would have ended up being to United’s benefit.

6. The six shots recorded in the first half marked a new low for the Premier League this season, and it really didn’t get markedly better after the break.

Much praise was issued United’s way on commentary for the new-found solidity they showed in keeping Villa at bay, but in truth the brutal reality felt like the home side just never really turned up and still the best United could muster was a grimly utilitarian goalless draw.

7. Villa may ponder in the aftermath just how they failed to take greater advantage of the midfield mismatch that was so immediately apparent and never truly resolved.

Ten Hag appears to have an almost pathological fondness for placing Kobbie Mainoo in a midfield two where he is required to do 100 per cent of the running, and the times in the first half where Christian Eriksen was to be found with four claret and blue shirts around him and not a white one in sight was alarming.

And you’d struggle to think of player better suited than exploiting such gaps and opportunity than your Youri Tielemans, or the Morgan Rogerses of this world, yet they never quite managed to turn such opportunity into actual clear chances.

To the extent that what few decent openings the game did provide actually broke in favour of the visitors. That these chances when they came were apparently deliberately or at least consistently aimed at Emi Martinez or defenders’ shins just highlights the near total lack of confidence with which this United team currently goes about its attacking business.

8. It’s a deeply awkward but entirely unavoidable fact that, while all agree Ruud van Nistelrooy stands as the next (at least interim) manager in waiting, there is currently nothing they do worse than finishing.

They’re not currently actively good at anything, but the finishing really does stand out above all else.

United rank a – no doubt surprising – fifth for xG this season but a lowly 199th for actual G. They’re xG performance mark of -5.55 is the worst in the league, their six per cent conversion rate somehow as high as 18th and their 17 big chances missed leaves them 17th by that metric too.

While it’s easy to dismiss the notion that United shouldn’t change the manager because things might not get better anyway – something that by now surely has to be worth the minuscule risk of things getting worse – it does appear reasonable to ask the question of whether handing greater responsibility to a man with direct responsibility for their most conspicuous weakness is in fact the right answer.

Martinez rarely needs a second invitation to offer up a Hollywood save, and United were keen to give the big man plenty of chance to give of his very best.

9. Alas, the one time he might have been pressed into making an actual meaningful save he was denied by Bruno Fernandes’ free-kick being placed an inch or two too high and splatting against the crossbar. It was no surprise that the closest United actually came to scoring an actual goal came from a set-piece, and even less of a surprise – if such a thing were possible – to discover upon viewing replays that Martinez had it covered anyway.

And so there it was – a third straight Premier League game without a goal for United and a result that doesn’t so much save the manager’s job as delay the inevitable.

Those of us in the #numbers game can be grateful that Manchester United and Ten Hag Sack chat will thus continue to dominate the narrative across what threatens to be another low-key international break, but one does start to wonder what the end game is here.

10. Ten Hag is keen to stress this remains a long-term project, but his approach to the game today betrays his own realisation that this is simply not the case. A long-term project would not place Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans at the heart of its defence. Ten Hag needed to, because he knew that while these may not be his two best central defenders or men with huge roles to play in whatever long-term plan he has (any time you fancy giving the rest of us a hint what it is, Erik, feel absolutely free to do so), they are currently the two least likely to do something particularly egregiously bad.

11. And yet this all just adds to the overriding sense of futility. This hand-to-mouth ‘one game to save the job’ approach just cannot last. Yes, this particular game at this particular time against this particular opponent brought with it a uniquely difficult challenge, but no matter how much Ten Hag insisted afterwards that he retains the support of his bosses, the way he and United approached this game said different.

He didn’t approach this game with any great intent to show why he should be Manchester United’s manager for the long haul; just produced a grimly dreary if perfunctorily successful attempt to show that he shouldn’t necessarily be sacked just yet. If they didn’t sack me after Spurs or Porto, the thinking appears to go, they won’t do it after a draw with Villa.

But this is only a question deferred, not one answered.

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12. What else actually happened in the game? We’re honestly struggling to remember. Will any of you notice if we start talking about Brighton’s comeback and Tottenham’s hilariously on-brand collapse instead?

Marcus Rashford! Knew it would come back to us. Marcus Rashford. He absolutely should have been sent off for a second bookable offence after a second petulant lunge of a tackle in quick succession.

We’ve never really been convinced by this ‘higher threshold’ malarkey for a second yellow card. If it’s a yellow card, it’s a yellow card, surely.

But even if there is to be a higher threshold for what constitutes a second rather than first yellow, this surely cleared it pretty comfortably.

13. We’re going to do two conclusions about this, we’re afraid, because again – look at the stats for the game and give us literally anything to do instead. We’ll address a wider point here, if we may. What we think has happened here is something that while not directly a result of VAR is a result of that infernal machine’s apparent impossible dream of a future where decision-making is flawless and consistent.

So what you’ve got is the entirely understandable, perfectly reasonable human thought process whereby a referee will – for entirely obvious reasons – be instinctively warier of showing a second rather than a first yellow card. The consequence is so much graver, it stands to reason he would want to be more sure.

That’s absolutely fine. Until, that is, you’ve taken the sport down a road that apparently leads to a flawlessly consistent decision-making utopia. Here there can be no room for such human frailty, so it must be enshrined in the laws and playing conditions themselves. It’s a reminder that trying to write laws and playing conditions that meet a benchmark of perfect correctness and fairness in all conceivable situations is something that simply cannot be done. It has never been managed in any field of law, and it seems vanishingly unlikely that our daft sport might somehow stumble on being the first.

That said, it might be more likely than this result proving to be a springboard to a decade-long era of Fergie-esque greatness for Ten Hag and United.

So yeah, in summary: Rashford should have been off. His half-time axeing in Portugal remains a puzzler, because yanking him for defensive lapses when he was United’s main/only attacking threat felt harsh and the actual reason given – rotation and giving Garnacho minutes – felt like something that would apply only to a friendly rather than a theoretically important European game.

Ten Hag’s decision to hook him here immediately after that second offence? Yeah, fair play, chalk that one up for the beleaguered manager. A win’s a win.

14. Let’s try and cut both teams a bit more slack here with a few more non-Ten Hag reasons why the game was the very dampest of squibs. Aston Villa had one of the very greatest nights in their modern history this week with the 1-0 Champions League win over Bayern Munich.

The very existence of ‘Aston Villa’ and ‘1-0 Champions League win over Bayern Munich’ in the same sentence is something that would have been unthinkable until very, very recently. This is not a club or squad currently accustomed to such events, nor to having to back them up with the weekend mundanity of a visit from lower mid-table Premier League opponents.

In hindsight, it would have been more surprising had Villa managed to summon anything approaching the energy of Wednesday night.

15. Another slice of mitigation for both sides was the deadening effect of injuries on pre-match gameplans. Both teams were forced into changes; Villa by an injury to Ezri Konsa, United by one to Maguire.

It was a setback to this game and also potentially one for England manager Lee Carsley. More importantly here, it allowed Ten Hag to indulge in another of his foibles; bringing two centre-backs on at the same time, something that we can’t recall being a thing at any time in football history but which Ten Hag seemingly now deploys in every single game.

It might currently be the most compelling reason to keep him gainfully employed.

16. One might also pause to reflect on the fact that even with the unorthodox deployment of Ten Hag’s favoured double centre-back substitution there was still no place for Lisandro Martinez, but frankly by this point we can barely muster the energy to care.

Try as we might, it’s just impossible to care deeply about anything connected to this United team unless and until it departs from its current meandering road to nowhere, something that appears less and less likely to occur under the current manager.