Man Utd manager Erik ten Hag
Growing claims that Erik ten Hag faces the sack at Manchester United have earned a sympathetic voice from two pundits in his homeland, who have labelled Old Trafford as a place where all the top managers end up ‘dying there’.
The Dutchman enjoyed an excellent first season in charge, leading the club back into the Champions League after a third-placed finish in the Premier League, together with Carabao Cup glory and a place in the FA Cup final. However, hopes that Manchester United could further close the gap on the elite in his second season at the helm are very quickly turning sour.
A ghastly 11 defeats in the 23 games they have played so far this season only tells half the story, with United seemingly leaping from one crisis to another.
Indeed, Ten Hag goes into Tuesday’s must-win UCL clash against Bayern Munich with pressure growing on his shoulders by the day and off the back of a humiliating 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth – who claimed a historical first-ever Premier League win at Old Trafford. In truth, the Cherries could – and probably should – have won by even more.
Now as they welcome one of European football’s elite sides in Bayern Munich, United will need to claim a win and hope the other match in Group A between FC Copenhagen and Galatasaray ends in a draw, if the Red Devils have any hope of reaching the knockout stages.
Should they crash out, Ten Hag has been told he is done due to three fatal mistakes.
It all means Ten Hag goes into a win or bust match under more pressure than he’s ever been under in his professional career.
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Lose to Bayern and United will not only have been beaten in four of their six Champions League encounters, it will also mean they have lost a painfully bad six times at home already this season.
That all amounts to the club’s worst start to a season in 51 years – the 1962/63 campaign – making it more painful reading for Ten Hag and United.
The stats don’t lie and it’s easy to see why talk of the sack is growing. That will reach fever pitch in the wake of a heavy beating on Tuesday and then again if they lose at Liverpool in the Premier League on Sunday.
Despite that, Gary Neville has explained why sacking Ten Hag would not benefit United in the slightest.
And the Dutchman’s plight has certainly earned plenty of sympathy in his homeland, where a pair of pundits reckon his plight is made “five-times worse” due to his treatment by the British media.
United themselves as a club have taken his treatment personally with three publications recently banned from attending his press conferences.
And according to Dutch pundits Wim Kieft and Johan Boskamp, the treatment by the British media has not gone down well in the Netherlands.
“They [the media] are just lying there in bushes, that is not nice there,” Boskamp commented.
“It’s five times worse there than here,” Kieft added in agreement.
Kieft feels a degree of sympathy for Ten Hag, claiming he’s not the first manager to have been destroyed by the British media.
“Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal also died there. Everyone dies there… There must also be something wrong within that club,” he added.
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