Manchester United collapsed 100 years ago
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The most high-profile event of the weekend in world football was the devastating, with a score of 0:4, the defeat of Manchester United by Brentford in the second round of the championship of England. The result of Erik ten Hag’s team is so stunning that the bookmakers are already waiting for the imminent dismissal of the Dutchman, who showed the worst start among all the newly appointed Manchester United coaches in more than a hundred years, and the club’s fans accuse the owners of United – the Glazer family – that for many years they ruined the team without investing in its development.
In English football, there is probably no more discouraged person than Manchester United head coach Erik ten Hag. He took over Manchester in June, making a big career leap, thanks to the reputation he earned during his time with Ajax as a specialist who knows how to deliver results without having top players. In Manchester United, with its powerful squad, ten Hag was expected, apparently, to quickly refute the thesis that the club was sick. So spoke ten Hag’s predecessor Ralph Rangnick. He noted that the team needed “open heart surgery” rather than conservative treatment. But his words were taken as an attempt to shift the responsibility for misfires to the players. After Manchester United’s visit to Brentford, Rangnick’s words no longer seem like an exaggeration. After all, it took the hosts only 35 minutes to break the enemy, sending four unanswered balls into his goal.
According to the results of the match, it would be possible to accuse of all grave, for example, Manchester goalkeeper David de Gea.
The first goal is on his conscience – the ball, after a light hit by Josh da Silva, flew past the goalkeeper under his arms.
In less than ten minutes, as de Gea gave the ball into the fight, an interception followed – and Matthias Jensen doubled the score. And in the third ball that flew into the gates of the guests, you can blame Lisandro Martinez – the most expensive summer acquisition of Manchester (Ajax received € 57 million for it), which, apparently, did not have enough dimensions to stop Ben Mee, who was beating in the fall. At least the legend of the Manchester club Harry Neville after the match was indignant at the decision of Eric ten Hag to put up such a short squad for the game. Is that the fourth ball can not be attributed to someone else’s mistake. Here, in all its glory, Manchester United showed itself as a whole, allowing the hosts to deliver the ball from one penalty area to another in two passes and bring Brian Mbemo to the ball.
After the match, Erik ten Hag took the blame for the failure, but still reduced the conversation with reporters to the fact that the team did not fulfill the game plan. She, according to the coach, threw it in the trash. Ten Hag noted that in order to achieve a result, players must give all the best – both individually and collectively.
And apparently, in order to bring his vision to the players, he canceled the post-match day off and drove the team to training.
The Manchester mentor has a lot to worry about. After all, he had already entered his name into that part of the history of Manchester United, which he clearly did not want to get into. Manchester, we recall, also lost the opening match of the championship (“Brighton” – 1: 2), and thus, ten Hag became the first Manchester United coach in 101 years to lose the first two official matches after his appointment. In 1921, the team showed the same result under John Chapman. True, the same, of two defeats, the Manchester team gave a start in 1992 under Alex Ferguson (the Scot had already led the team for six years by that time) and, as now, fell to last place, but then they took it and became champions. But if the misfires under Ferguson were still episodic, then under ten Hague, perhaps they are systemic in nature.
It seems that the composition of the team simply does not fit the requirements of the coach, and his desire to remake the stars, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, is akin to trying to change a wheel on the go on a car rushing along the track.
The statistics of the ill-fated meeting with Brentford are indicative in this regard. “Manchester United”, as they say, did not run. But ten Hag’s teams have always been both running and pressing. In total, the guests’ players ran 95.6 km during the game against 109.4 km for the opponent. If we compare the teams in terms of the number of spurts given by their players, then the advantage of Brentford will be even more impressive – 90 to 65. Or take the episodes in which the teams showed high pressure – Brentford used it 21 times, Manchester United – only seven.
The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust reacted harshly to the incident, in a statement which notes that the incident is the result of decisions made by the owners of the club, the Glaser family, since 2013, when Alex Ferguson left the team. Harry Neville, in turn, noted that the policy of underfunding the club, pursued by the Glazers, put Manchester United in a difficult position. As a result, he believes, a paradoxical situation has developed: now there is money, but top players simply do not want to go to Manchester United even for good salaries, because they do not believe in the club’s prospects.
We add that after the match, the bookmakers sharply revised the quotes on who will become the first coach of the English Premier League (EPL) team to lose his job this season. Prior to the meeting with Brentford, Betfair accepted bets that it would be Erik ten Hag at odds of 34.0. That is, the position of the coach was assessed as very strong. After the game, the coefficient was already 7.5, and ten Hag closed the top three contenders for dismissal. Worse than his, Betfair estimates only the position of Frank Lampard, whose Everton also started with two defeats (4.33), and Southampton mentor Ralph Hasenhüttl (3.0).
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