Why Ten Hag failed: From player disputes to bad results

Rob Dawson, CorrespondentOct 29, 2024, 09:31 AM ET

Erik ten Hag craved control at Manchester United but it meant that, with problems piling up, there was nowhere to hide. In the end, his fingerprints were all over too much of the failure — there were no excuses left — and Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at West Ham United proved to be his final act as manager.

Ten Hag did it his way, accommodated by the club at almost every turn, but still couldn’t make it work. On a preseason trip to Oslo in the summer of 2023, he complained to club staff that the grass at the Ullevaal Stadion was longer than had been agreed. He was told that rain in the Norwegian capital overnight led to unexpected growth, and it was just one of those things; Ten Hag replied that it wasn’t good enough.

The Dutchman enjoyed a lot of control while at Man United. He dictated details from the length of the grass to aid quicker passing to the layout of Old Trafford. Early on in his reign, Ten Hag was allowed to redesign a group video analysis room at Carrington — complete with a huge screen, tiered flooring and interior decoration featuring images of United fans — at a cost of more than £200,000. Yet his changes weren’t restricted to the facilities.

Ten Hag changed the way players prepared for games, asking them to arrive four hours early for matches at Old Trafford in their own cars rather than spending the night before at a Manchester hotel and arriving together on a coach. He repurposed a large hospitality suite and turned it into a prematch room for his squad. He moved the lockers in the dressing room so the defenders sat to his left, and the midfielders and forwards sat to his right, when he stood in front of his tactics board.

At Old Trafford, Ten Hag insisted on switching the benches around to be nearer the tunnel, even though it meant his technical area would then straddle the halfway line, which, in his opinion, would give him a better view of the game. He was told it would cost money to make the change because the home benches are heated and the away benches are not, but Ten Hag put his foot down and got his way. He often did.

United knew what they were getting when they hired him from Ajax Amsterdam in the summer of 2022. Club bosses were told a story that when he first arrived at Ajax in December 2017, he continued to use a suitcase embroidered with the branding of his former club, FC Utrecht. He was told it was perhaps not the best look for the Ajax manager to be carrying Utrecht merchandise, but he liked the bag and used it anyway. Ajax bosses told their United counterparts that it showed “Ten Hag’s stubbornness in a nutshell.”

Ten Hag was the same at Old Trafford, but with so much control came ultimate responsibility for performances and results that were eventually deemed unacceptable. After a little over two years, four months in charge, Ten Hag was sacked on Monday after a run of just four wins from 13 matches in all competitions to start the 2024-25 season. Languishing at 14th in the table — as close to the relegation places as the top four — United were on course to place even lower than last season’s worst-ever Premier League finish.

Ten Hag leaves with a record of 70 wins and 35 defeats in 128 games. The signs of discord have been there for a while and even though United sources insist Ten Hag has conducted himself with professionalism and dignity throughout his time at Old Trafford, his departure is no surprise.

Conflict with players from Ronaldo to SanchoAfter completing the purchase of a 27.7% stake in the club early in 2024, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos team were initially sympathetic to the issues faced by Ten Hag, but increasingly found that many of the problems pointed back to the manager.

Ten Hag survived their extensive end-of-season review largely because of the surprise FA Cup success over Manchester City on May 25, and because agreements couldn’t be reached with other candidates including Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino. That victory was such a shock that a postmatch party had to be hastily arranged with no prior planning.

Ten Hag’s contract was soon extended by a year after, but there was a feeling within the Ineos hierarchy even then that a change might be necessary if the form that saw them finish eighth in the Premier League last season — United’s lowest-ever finish in the league’s 31-year history — didn’t drastically improve during the early part of the new campaign.

Ruud van Nistelrooy and Rene Hake also arrived in a summer revamp of Ten Hag’s coaching staff. Ten Hag had a previous relationship with Hake, but not with Van Nistelrooy, and it prompted some players to speculate that the former Netherlands international, who spent a year in charge of PSV Eindhoven between 2022 and 2023, would be a ready-made replacement if Ten Hag was sacked; exactly what ended up happening when Van Nistelrooy was appointed as caretaker manager on Monday.

It was telling that CEO Omar Berrada and sporting director Dan Ashworth — hired in by Ratcliffe and Ineos to revamp the club’s footballing structure — both distanced themselves from the decision to keep Ten Hag by making it known privately that they weren’t involved in the conversations because they had not officially started in their new roles in July. It gave their public backing of Ten Hag in early September a hollow feel.

play1:02

Why Ruud van Nistelrooy as interim manager is a risk for Man United

Gab & Juls discuss how long Ruud van Nistelrooy will get as interim manager at Man United.

Ten Hag’s time in charge ultimately delivered two trophies in two years, but it was never easy.

After beginning his reign with defeats to Brighton and Brentford in August 2022, sources told ESPN there were early complaints from some players that Ten Hag struggled to communicate, and concerns that instructions were being lost in translation leading to confusion on the pitch. Following the 4-0 defeat to Brentford, one player told close friends that Ten Hag didn’t know how to motivate, with players often finding him difficult to read. He could be jolly one day, and extremely serious the next. One source described Ten Hag as “too strict.”

His disciplinarian approach was initially welcomed by senior players who believed standards had slipped under interim manager Ralf Rangnick, but some of his rules would cause additional issues.

Most players agreed that Cristiano Ronaldo was in the wrong when he refused to come on as a substitute against Tottenham in October 2022 but, after seemingly winning the battle of wills initially, sources told ESPN many within the club soon started to think Ten Hag had taken the punishment too far.

Ronaldo was initially ordered to train away from the first team, but when he tried to enter the dressing room and retrieve a pair of his trainers, he was told by staff he wasn’t allowed in. The stand-off ended only when Ronaldo enlisted an academy player to go into the dressing room for him, with a number of senior players viewing the blanket ban as an unnecessary humiliation.

The fallout with Ronaldo was seismic, but although the Portugal legend’s departure from Old Trafford during the break for the 2022 FIFA World Cup was relatively clean, a similar situation with Jadon Sancho was not.

Sancho was a high-profile and highly coveted signing when announced on July 1, 2021. His arrival, fresh off the back of four brilliant years at Borussia Dortmund, was seen as a coup for United in the face of interest from other top clubs, but things quickly devolved after a promising start.

play2:17

Ogden: Ten Hag sacking suggests INEOS don’t know what they’re doing

Mark Ogden reacts to the timing of Man United’s sacking of Erik ten Hag.

A public fallout between the England international and Ten Hag was followed by four months of Sancho being made to train, eat and change on his own. A number of players tried to encourage Sancho to apologise, but the longer the situation went on, the more players began to believe that — again — Ten Hag had taken things too far. Sources have told ESPN that Ten Hag wanted Sancho to say sorry publicly because the player had made the conflict public on social media, but sources tell ESPN that some players viewed the demand as an unnecessary humiliation.

The Sancho situation increasingly became an embarrassment. As Sancho — sent on loan to former club Dortmund in January 2024 — was tearing holes in Paris Saint-Germain during the Champions League semifinal first leg in April, United representatives sent messages to high-profile pundits telling them to stop talking up the forward’s contribution because it reflected badly on the club.

With no one willing to match Sancho’s valuation over the summer, Ten Hag was convinced to allow him back into first-team training. He remained reluctant throughout the uneasy truce, feeling that it could be viewed as a loss of his authority. Eventually Sancho joined Chelsea in a cut-price loan deal on Deadline Day in August 2024.

Players question his training methods as injuries mountSancho was one of a number of issues Ten Hag faced during a particularly difficult second season. Injuries were a problem, and not just the volume of them: United had to deal with 45 separate cases during that campaign.

Players questioned the intensity of some of the training sessions and were often left thinking they would benefit from more individually tailored programmes. One senior player put his injury problems down to being asked to train in the same way as much younger squad members, believing instead that he should be allowed longer to recover after games.

Sources have told ESPN that Ten Hag would use extra training as a response to poor results and performances, which many players found counterproductive. They would feel tired ahead of the next game, lose, and then be given more extra training. Ten Hag’s answer was always that Premier League football is intense, so training must be the same.

Towards the end of last season, Ten Hag was cutting an increasingly isolated figure. Members of his own staff began to question why the team was being set up in the same way despite often conceding 20 or more shots. Players, too, began to feel the team was “too open.”

Ten Hag never lost the entire dressing room in the way Jose Mourinho did before he was sacked but, over time, more and more individuals began to develop their own gripes. Ratcliffe’s right-hand man at Ineos, Sir Dave Brailsford, held one-on-one meetings with the squad in February and again in April. There was an overriding feeling that support for the manager within the dressing room had dipped significantly during the intervening two months.

Ten Hag put his case forward to Ratcliffe and Brailsford, insisting that “no team in the world” could have coped with the amount of injuries Man United had suffered. He pointed to his promotion of youngsters Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo, and voiced his frustration that the club had missed out on signing stars like Frenkie de Jong (who stayed at Barcelona), Alexis Mac Allister (who joined Liverpool), Federico Valverde (who remained at Real Madrid) and Harry Kane (who went to Bayern Munich).

Sources have told ESPN that Ineos was told during conversations with the recruitment team that many of Ten Hag’s transfer demands were “unrealistic.”

Tension over recruitment and transfer policiesRecruitment was a contentious issue throughout Ten Hag’s time at Old Trafford. His demand for control over transfers saw United terminate their collaboration with Rangnick, who had agreed a two-year deal to act as a consultant. When Ten Hag took over in the summer of 2022, Rangnick expected to meet face-to-face for a detailed meeting about the state of the squad only to discover the new United manager was willing to only grant him a phone call.

One player Ten Hag did get was Antony. Having worked together at Ajax, Ten Hag was the driving force behind signing the Brazilian winger, but the transfer has been an unmitigated disaster. During talks with Ineos, Ten Hag said that, while he wanted Antony, it was not his fault that the fee had risen to more than £85 million when he was available for a much lower price earlier in the summer of 2022. A source has told ESPN that Ajax could not believe the offer United eventually made because it was so far above his market value, while other sources note that signing Antony and Casemiro was partly driven by the panic caused by those early defeats to Brighton and Brentford.

There was further tension in recruitment meetings following the Ineos takeover, with Brailsford keen to stress that responsibility for signings would ultimately be handed to Ashworth and technical director, Jason Wilcox.

Ten Hag at first struggled to build a working relationship with Wilcox, dismissing him as somebody who lacked the credentials for his job, having previously run Man City’s academy set-up and then a year as Southampton director of football. Things improved following talks over the summer, but Ten Hag was still reluctant to give up control, arguing that he had been granted a transfer veto in his contract. Sources have told ESPN that Ineos was not impressed with his record in the market.

Ten Hag insisted that he hadn’t pushed for every transfer made under his watch and instead was forced to accept certain players because positions had to be filled. He wanted Kane — an experienced goal scorer — when the club was looking for a striker in the summer of 2023 and instead got Rasmus Højlund, a young player with vast potential but very much a work in progress.

Furthermore, Ten Hag was exasperated by the club’s financial situation and viewed both January transfer windows during his reign as missed opportunities. He was allowed to only sign Wout Weghorst and Marcel Sabitzer on short-term loans in January 2023, and his request for a striker in January 2024 to help ease the burden on Hojlund was turned down.

According to a source, Ten Hag insisted that he had to sign Antony, Lisandro Martínez and Casemiro in part because they were strong characters who were vital to deal with a dressing room that was in a mess post-Rangnick. Antony and Martinez demanded Ajax let them go — Martinez at one point argued directly with an Ajax official over a move to United — which impressed Ten Hag and football director John Murtough.

Martinez, a staunch Ten Hag supporter, was missed in the dressing room and on the training pitch during a long injury layoff between September 2023 and January 2024. The Argentinian was encouraged to spend more time around the squad during a particularly poor run of form in December 2023, when staff reported back to Ten Hag that he was close to losing the support of some influential senior players.

Defenders Noussair Mazraoui and Matthijs De Ligt and arrived from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2024, but the United hierarchy was initially unconvinced as to why the club needed the latter player, having just signed Leny Yoro to a long-term deal. Mazraoui was seen as a straight replacement for Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who ultimately joined West Ham, while De Ligt was felt to be decent value and added more depth at a problem position. After discussions with Ten Hag, they sanctioned it due to the low costs involved.

Ten Hag did his best to manage the squad with an emphasis on individual meetings but, privately, he accepted it was a step up from what he had known at Ajax and found United players were almost “businesses” in their own right with huge entourages around them, all with their own opinions. On one occasion, a request made by a player’s PR representative for more exposure on the club’s social media channels ended up on his desk.

Ten Hag, according to sources, made a conscious effort to avoid criticising individuals in the media for fear that it would do more harm than good. After almost capitulating to Championship side to Coventry City in the FA Cup semifinal in April, he kept the players in the Wembley dressing room for so long that by the time they came out, the Coventry players were lined up waiting to swap shirts. But in his news conference immediately afterward, he decided to shield his squad, instead focusing on the fact United had won the game on penalties to reach a second successive FA Cup final.

play2:18

Dawson: Man United interested in Thomas Frank to replace Erik ten Hag

Rob Dawson examines the potential replacements for Erik ten Hag at Manchester United.

Some staff felt Ten Hag protected his players too much and instead inadvertently made himself a lightning rod for criticism. Ten Hag, though, believed that many players didn’t respond well to public criticism and that it was important to keep the dressing room behind him as best he could. He repeatedly backed Marcus Rashford despite concerns about his body language during training and games.

Ten Hag wanted to stay in control, even if it increased an already massive workload. He picked the squad numbers for new signings — it was his decision to hand Mason Mount the No. 7 shirt rather than to Garnacho — and wanted to know what media commitments players had, why they were doing it and whether or not they were contractually obliged.

When club staff were worried Ten Hag was being asked to hold too many news conferences, they suggested former assistant Steve McClaren could take over before a Carabao Cup tie. Ten Hag declined, insisting the “message” always had to come from him. According to a source, a request made by a TV company to speak to Van Nistelrooy in August was turned down on Ten Hag’s say-so.

On one occasion Ten Hag cancelled his own interview with Robin van Persie, who had flown to Manchester to conduct it, because it clashed with his training schedule. Nothing got in the way of his work — something acknowledged by Ratcliffe and Brailsford — but it wasn’t enough to save him after a disastrous end to his second season and miserable start to his third.

In the end, too many bad resultsTen Hag is one of only four managers in United’s history to win trophies in consecutive seasons alongside Ernest Mangnall, Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson, but winning the FA Cup was achieved against a backdrop of United’s worst league season for 34 years.

When Ratcliffe and Ineos began the process of investing in United in November 2022, they had no intention of sacking Ten Hag. Even early this year, their feeling was that the structure at the club was wrong and that any manager would struggle to perform. But after finally formalising their agreement to buy a minority stake in February, setbacks on the pitch came thick and fast.

play1:54

Has Gareth Southgate been warned-off Manchester United job?

James Olley and Mark Ogden discuss whether the ex-England manager could take the helm at Old Trafford.

The 2-1 defeat to Fulham at Old Trafford on Feb. 24 was considered a watershed moment. Ten Hag called the squad into Carrington the following day and made them watch a replay of the game in full before going out to train.

Six weeks later, Ratcliffe was in the stands at Stamford Bridge as United conceded twice in stoppage time to lose 4-3 to a Chelsea team that was also in a state of flux. Sources have told ESPN that Ratcliffe made his frustration with the performance well-known both during and after the game. Ratcliffe was in the stands again at Wembley as United threw away the three-goal lead against Coventry, and it was followed two weeks later by the humiliating 4-0 defeat at Crystal Palace.

Ten Hag had started to seriously fear that he was not in Ratcliffe’s long-term plans in March when he was informed that assistant Benni McCarthy — a key member of staff in his first two years — had not been approached about signing a new contract. Chelsea’s surprise decision to part company with Pochettino in late May prompted concerns among United’s new leadership team that they had to act quickly because both clubs would be picking from the same pool of managers.

It led to discussions with potential candidates in the week leading up to the FA Cup final, a situation considered so humiliating that close friends advised Ten Hag to quit.

Sat in the Wembley news conference theatre after beating Man City, Ten Hag was defiant saying that if Ratcliffe and the new co-owners “don’t want me, then I go somewhere else to win trophies because that is what I do.”

In the same room in February 2023, he walked into his news conference carrying the Carabao Cup — United’s first trophy for six years — and nearly left it on the desk before joking that he was “already thinking about the next one.” After two in two years, he won’t get the chance to make it three in three.

play0:48

Slot backs Ten Hag for ‘big club’ job in the future

Liverpool’s Arne Slot reacts to the sacking of fellow Dutch manager Erik ten Hag at Manchester United.

The surprise victory over City in the FA Cup final was enough to keep him in a job for another six months, but the goodwill built up after that day at Wembley eventually eroded. Their 3-0 defeat to Liverpool in September caused renewed worry among United’s leadership that Ten Hag may not be able to turn things around.

After that, United’s 3-0 defeat to Tottenham a month later was another nail in his coffin. A source has told ESPN that after Bruno Fernandes had been sent off late in the first half, the players were unsure what Ten Hag’s plan was as they emerged for the second 45 minutes and conceded just two minutes into the half.

Serious consideration was given to sacking Ten Hag during the October international break and, despite beating Brentford when domestic fixtures resumed, the 2-1 defeat to West Ham on Sunday was the tipping point. The final decision was made on Sunday night, and Ashworth and Berrada were waiting at Carrington early on Monday morning to deliver the news.

With Van Nistelrooy left to prepare for his interim role and a Carabao Cup game against Leicester City on Wednesday, Ten Hag was driven out of Carrington for the last time and on Monday afternoon arrived at Manchester airport to fly home to the Netherlands.

United handed Ten Hag the keys to Old Trafford when he arrived. Two years on, he’s been told to give them back.

Additional reporting by Mark Ogden.