EPL TALK: Ten Hag mad to accept Man United job

ERIK TEN HAG must be joining the other Manchester United, the old one, the good one that presumably still lives in the Dutchman’s head. In an age of multiverses and three Spider-Men, he’s conjured two Uniteds.

And he’s signing for the other one.

Ten Hag’s Red Devils are populated with Busby’s Babes, the Class of ’92 and a dynasty to rival the Mings. He’s putting pen to historical paper. He’s joining an alternate reality, surely, because the other Red Devils, the ones good for a giggle against Everton, are a bit rubbish.

It’s the only explanation. An irrational analysis for an irrational turn of events, a prince of European football cantering towards a fallen kingdom and promising to pull up the lumbering drawbridge - also known as Harry Maguire - and save the day.

According to reports from the Netherlands, the 52-year-old is obsessed with formations, structures and the millimetres between the lines. Ten Hag eats and sleeps football. United currently eat and sleep.

Ten Hag has plotted his career with meticulous precision, learning under Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich, before establishing himself at Utrecht and then Ajax. He's created a meticulous coaching organisation from top to bottom.

And now he’s swapping Ajax’s stability for the towering inferno of Old Trafford, switching it up like a gambler going from the odd game of blackjack to betting the wife and kids on a spin of the roulette wheel.

United’s sales pitch must have been something else altogether … Come and join the club, Erik. Well, when we say club, we mean a debt-ravaged, leveraging exercise that hasn’t collected a trophy for years, but does have an official global mattress and pillow partner, which doesn’t validate Louis van Gaal’s spurious claims of United being a commercial club, rather than a football club, in any way.

On the contrary, United are a football club that continues to compete with Europe’s elite in the transfer market, spending vast sums to entice Raphael Varane, Jadon Sancho and Cristiano Ronaldo. Of course, none have improved in the surreal, regressive experiment that the coaching staff appear to be conducting among themselves.

Naming one United signing who has flourished is rather like picking a discernible playing formation or philosophy since Jose Mourinho packed his buses and left.

Of course, United know better now. Mourinho and van Gaal were archaic attempts to chase Sir Alex Ferguson’s shadow and hire only experienced veterans and household brands. Youth is the way forward, which is why Ten Hag will be a whole one year younger than Mourinho was when he took over at Old Trafford.

And the incoming manager will inherit a leaderless, imbalanced squad of contract squabbles, ageing superstars and erratic form. And that’s just Paul Pogba. Elsewhere, Ronaldo is aware that the United brand ensures a salary that his diminishing powers can no longer justify as he struggles to hit a target that isn’t a young fan waving a phone.

In defence, Maguire continues to resemble a decent, no-frills centre-back prone to the occasional error, i.e. what he always was until an inflated transfer fee and a jingoistic English media turned him into the Second Coming of Rio Ferdinand.

And poor Marcus Rashford, the magnificent social worker formerly known as the future of English football, feels ravaged by his time at United. He looks older, slower, jaded. He’s 24.

Oh, and the stadium is falling down. The Theatre of Dreams has become the Nightmare of Disinterest, unloved by visitors, ignored by owners and left behind by the gleaming centrepieces at Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham and even West Ham.

Luckily, Ten Hag won’t be encumbered in any way by a rabid hit team of former United players turned pundits, ready to combust in their leather chairs if they fail to witness the requisite spirit and desire.

Yes, that’s sarcasm. Yes, that’s Roy Keane. And if Ten Hag’s United don’t do it for raging Roy on a wet Wednesday night in a nondescript English town, then the Dutchman can expect the memes the following morning.

Honestly, why would such a rational man give up title-challenging Ajax for this?

Maybe, just maybe, because Ten Hag can peer into the multiverse and see the other United, the winning one, the one revered from Manchester to Marine Parade and lots of other alliterative towns in between. He knows the pinnacle gets no bigger. Only Liverpool comes close (with apologies to Italian and Spanish clubs and Manchester City etc.)

Global sport offers nothing more imperious than a dominant United. Like Sinatra, if Ten Hag can make it there, he can make it anywhere. But Sinatra was only conquering New York, not a dysfunctional football club, demoralised from top to bottom.

To fix it, Ten Hag doesn’t need luck, but control to influence football decisions from boardroom to dugout. It’s the kind of influence he enjoys at Ajax but not seen at United since Ferguson. Without time and autonomy, his mad gamble will almost certainly fail.

And a broken club will part ways with another broken manager.

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 26 books.

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