EPL TALK: Manchester United catching Manchester City? Erik ten Hag sounds utterly deluded
Manager can blame injuries, but he cannot seriously claim Red Devils are getting any closer to their dominant neighbours
UNLIKE their spluttering team, Manchester United fans still lead the pack. In terms of size and stature, there remains a gulf between the Red Devils and the rest, with the obvious exception of Liverpool. If nothing else, a decade of steady decline has confirmed a distinct lack of bandwagon jumping.
In other words, United supporters have endured some rubbish and not walked away. They’ll tolerate just about anything, except their intelligence being insulted.
And yet, Erik ten Hag continues to treat the Old Trafford faithful like doe-eyed toddlers, gently patting them on the heads after being thoroughly outplayed by a rival kindergarten. This cannot go on.
The United manager had any number of legitimate excuses to brush off another one-sided derby defeat, which teased an upset with Marcus Rashford’s thunderous opener, before swiftly resuming normal service: i.e. Manchester’s men ran over Manchester’s boys. Ten Hag had an injury crisis. The left side of his defence was decimated. His top scorer on the pitch at kickoff was Scott McTominay. (Let that thought marinate for a bit.)
Ten Hag had options in his post-match interviews. A dysfunctional mob taking on a foreign state-fuelled machine, a newish squad battling an established empire, a relatively inexperienced English Premier League manager facing the best of his generation; any of these throwaway lines would have sufficed in the circumstances.
But he went big instead. He puffed out the chest and opted for grandstanding, putting on a mini-show of progress perhaps for new minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who wants to knock City and Liverpool off their perch within three years. Well, if ten Hag’s bombastic analysis is any yardstick, United might knock off City and Liverpool within three months.
“It’s not that big (a margin),” he said. “And when we have everyone on board, we can be competitive.”
That’s right. Bring back Luke Shaw, Harry Maguire and Lisandro Martinez and Pep Guardiola is surely contemplating a laxative like no other. The two halves of Manchester would practically be mirror images of each other. United boast footballers to match both Phil Foden’s balletic beauty and Rodri’s lung-shredding tenacity and an attacking pair to mimic the astonishing telepathy of Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland and … we are already tiptoeing towards the fringes of absurdity.
Homegrown Foden shows how far Man United have fallen behind
There’s no shame in falling short of Manchester City’s exacting standards. Every other club does, too, including Arsenal, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and anyone else masquerading as legitimate, long-term rivals to Guardiola’s behemoths. Wherever the silverware ends up this season, the real power remains undisputed. But ten Hag insists on pretending otherwise, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Put aside Manchester City’s 74 per cent possession and their 27 shots at goal (eight on target. United managed just one.) Gloss over the hosts’ 728 passes - compared to the visitors’ 227 - and try to forget, if you haven’t already, United’s seven men camped in front of their box for much of the dispiriting contest and just focus on one player.
Phil Foden.
United once patented hand-reared dynamos like Foden. Everything about him is too fast. His body parts. His brain. His passing and movement. His eye for goal. He’s Paul Scholes with quicker feet. Chasing the latest Foden upgrade is like chasing the Terminator 2 villain. He’s a shapeshifter. He bends into something else and goes again. Victor Lindelof tried to catch Foden but ended up looking like a puppy leaping at a plastic bag in the wind. It was a non-contest.
When did Manchester United last have a player like Foden, not just talent-wise, but in terms of progress? Guardiola, the master sculptor, has chipped away at his prized clay for years now, creating a 23-year-old masterpiece. Foden had more shots than United (nine), picked up a brace, collected 116 touches and achieved a 95 per cent pass accuracy and even then, his most telling contribution was a late, frantic dash towards his own box to dispossess Antony. And still, Guardiola wants more because Guardiola always wants more.
Where’s United’s Foden? Or Ruben Dias, Rodri, John Stones, Bernardo Silva, de Bruyne or Haaland? Where’s the bench to bring on Julian Alvarez, rather than Sofyan Amrabat? Where’s a discernible style of play? It’s a tedious Q&A session for United followers to endure, but one they begrudgingly acknowledge as the cyclical nature of English Premier League imperialism currently works against them. A chasm remains between the two Manchester clubs.
So address it head on. Blame the injuries. Emphasise the depleted squad and the reliance upon kids (even though Liverpool appear to be progressing rather nicely with theirs, picking up a trophy along the way). Just play the martyr and promise to improve. It’s unwise to attempt a bit of sleight of hand with a disillusioned fanbase who know United a little better.
City had an off day, of sorts, with their shooting taking on an erratic pinball quality, at least until Foden took charge with his technical superiority. But City’s dominance was rarely in doubt because United’s strategy was never going to prevail. Flinging bodies in front of anything that moves works in pub team football, but is typically less successful in a Manchester derby. It’s just not a sustainable template. It’s barely a template at elite level.
And yet, ten Hag continues to plod along, from week to week, game to game, generally making it up as he goes along, narrowly edging poor contests or inevitably faltering against more enlightened opponents, as he grasps for anything to suggest that his team might finally offer more stability and coherence than a box of frogs.
But United are still all over the place, a reality that only ten Hag is refusing to accept. He can lose games to Manchester City. All managers do. But he cannot fool his own supporters.
United are still all over the place, a reality that only ten Hag is refusing to accept. He can lose games to Manchester City. All managers do. But he cannot fool his own supporters.
Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.
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