Analysis: Where it went wrong for Ten Hag at Man Utd

Alex Keble assesses Erik ten Hag's time at Manchester United following his departure from the club on Monday.

And just like that, the Erik ten Hag era is over.

The final count stood at 850 days and 128 matches in all competitions, yet Ten Hag’s winding and dramatic journey somehow felt a lot longer.

He survived changes in the boardroom, led the club to two pieces of silverware, and went from Man Utd saviour to overseer of their lowest-ever Premier League finish.

The final straw was a 2-1 defeat at West Ham United on Sunday that could so easily have been a comfortable victory, a fittingly chaotic end to a tenure that was so often lacking a clear story.

It seems funny now to recall this was not always the case.

Only a little over a year ago Ten Hag was widely praised for taking Man Utd back into the UEFA Champions League and resetting the culture in the process, but a poor 2023/24 Premier League campaign - albeit one that ended with a hugely impressive FA Cup final triumph over Manchester City – has made us forget all that.

And the confusing story continued into 2024/25, a season Man Utd have begun with a much-improved defence but a much-weakened attack, reversing their issues from 2023/24 but ultimately bringing the same end result.

Here’s the story of where it went wrong for Ten Hag.

2022/23: a strong transitional season but perhaps not as good as it looked

Moving on Cristiano Ronaldo, getting the best out of Marcus Rashford, rebuilding midfield around the powerful Casemiro, winning the EFL Cup without conceding a goal, and getting Man Utd back into the Champions League: it was a perfect debut season in the job for Ten Hag.

Or was it? With hindsight there were signs that Man Utd’s restructuring wasn’t quite as good as it seemed.

Ultimately it seems the end was built into the beginning, when a 4-0 thumping at Brentford made it two defeats from two matches to begin the campaign, because in those encounters, and indeed throughout the first season, the tactical side of things was confusing.

“Maybe you have seen Ajax?” Ten Hag said in his very first press conference when asked how his team will play. “And I like that. But it is always players who dictate the way of play.”

That caveat made us interpret United’s oddly shapeless performances in 2022/23 as a deliberate tactical decision to rely on individualism during a transitional season. Perhaps he was given too much credit here.

There was no high press, no obvious passing structures or relationships building on the pitch, and on pretty much any metric United floated around mid-table – except for the points tally, that is.

United came third, thanks to Casemiro, Bruno Fernandes and Rashford producing game-winning moments from within a fairly defensive and counter-attacking strategy.

Rashford scored 17 Premier League goals that season and looked revitalised. Lisandro Martinez proved to be a strong signing from Ajax, and while Antony didn’t live up to his price tag there was hope he just needed time.

Elsewhere, Ten Hag hadn’t got his way with bringing in reported transfer target Frenkie de Jong in the summer from Barcelona, but he had adapted to Casemiro as leader, deploying football more like Zinedine Zidane’s conservatism at Real Madrid (hence just 53.7 per cent possession on average) than anything we saw at Ajax.

But beneath the headline numbers was a telling statistic. Opta’s Expected Points table - a metric that simulates the number of goals scored by each side in a match based on their respective Expected Goals (xG) - had Man Utd down in sixth on 64.2 points, only 8.6 higher than 2021/22’s 55.6, indicating significant over-performance, and in hindsight the 7-0 defeat to Liverpool in the spring lingers more in the memory than the EFL Cup triumph.

PL sides 22/23 actual points and Expected Points

Nevertheless, it was clearly job done: their second-highest points tally (75) since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, a third-place finish, and a trophy.

Which means, after another summer, year two would bring the tactical revolution…right?

2023/24: Ten Hag’s ‘direct’ football falls apart

“I can't play like Ajax because I have different players,” Ten Hag said in May 2023. “I came here with my philosophy, based on possession, but I wanted to combine it with the DNA of Manchester United, the players and their characters.

“I want to emphasise more on going direct.”

Ever since August 2023, pundits have said they simply do not know what Ten Hag is trying to do with his tactics. But, in fairness, he spelled it out pretty clearly at the end of his debut season.

Fast and direct football is the “United Way”, and signing intelligent hard-pressing players like Mason Mount and Rasmus Hojlund, along with a goalkeeper in Andre Onana who could help Man Utd build out from the back, seemed like a good start.

But instead Man Utd fell flat. Casemiro took a backwards step, Rashford lost his form, and the Man Utd midfield became at times non-existent, a consequence of United’s defenders consistently dropping off as the forwards pressed, creating huge amounts of space in midfield.

Ten Hag just couldn’t plug this gap, and week after week opposing teams would glide through open patches of grass.

Man Utd ended the season with 667 shots against, the second-most in the division, 862 progressive carries against, the third-most, and 366 successful take-ons against, the fourth-most.

In fairness to Ten Hag, there was also a truly unprecedented injury crisis that knocked his team off course. They suffered more injuries than anyone else in the Premier League, with 45, and it felt like all of them were in the defensive line, partly explaining their poor record.

But that isn’t really an excuse for their performances in the league or the Champions League, where they finished bottom of their group, conceding 15 goals in six matches.

Indeed, returning to the Expected Points table, Man Utd were arguably fortunate to finish eighth. Opta has it that they “should” have finished 15th, with just under 45.0 Expected Points.

PL sides 23/24 actual points and Expected Points

That seems almost inconceivable – as does what happened in the most extraordinary of FA Cup campaigns, when United survived wild contests against Liverpool and Coventry City to set up the final: a brilliant 2-1 victory over Man City to claim a second trophy in as many years under Ten Hag.

But even in this moment we can see the ending, United’s defensive shape and 26 per cent possession telling us this wasn’t the sign of rebirth but a smash-and-grab win.

2024/25: Tactical problems are reversed as bad luck continues

The FA Cup win bought Ten Hag time, as well as a new line of defence: only Pep Guardiola had won more trophies than him since his arrival in 2022.

That was enough to convince the new part-owners INEOS to invest in him, but after another summer of heavy spending (taking his total to a reported £564million, more than any United manager since Ferguson), it was clear from the outset that Ten Hag needed to hit the ground running.

He did not. And so, 11 points from nine matches – plus three draws in the UEFA Europa League, making it more than a year since Man Utd last won in Europe – was deemed severe enough for the axe to fall, despite a few green shoots.

Having welcomed back key players from injury (though unlucky again with new signing Leny Yoro sidelined), Man Utd upped their defensive line and upped their aggression: they currently top the Premier League charts for tackles won and interceptions, with 120 and 102 respectively.

Progress here, mind, has been counter-balanced by wasteful finishing, most obviously in what would prove to be Ten Hag’s final match at the club.

Diogo Dalot’s missed open goal felt like a microcosm of their season. Ten Hag, no doubt, will see it as yet another piece of bad luck.

And he did have plenty of that. We will never know if United could have pushed in 2023/24 without all those injuries, if this season’s results would have been better with Yoro, or even, going back further, how the trajectory might have changed had De Jong been signed instead of Casemiro back in 2022.

But for all the ifs and maybes, after more than two years in the job Ten Hag must claim ownership for the team he built and there is near universal agreement that throughout that time – including, in retrospect, the first season – Man Utd have never had a clear identity or playing style.

Ten Hag leaves the club averaging 1.72 points per match, their third-lowest in the Premier League era and only just ahead of David Moyes’ 1.68.

Forget the injuries, the false dawns, or the FA Cup drama. This is a results business, and that one statistic is the closest thing we have to a clear story of the Erik ten Hag era.

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