Erik ten Hag's Manchester United can win the national cup double. Photo: Getty Images/Ash Donelon
Dear Eric. Back in August I was at Brentford Community Stadium to watch your first away game for Manchester United. After the confusion of the previous season, I really wanted to see if you managed to impose some kind of rhythm and purpose this summer on a team that has gone astray. The answer was not encouraging. To put it mildly.
In The Sunday Telegraph, I described the opening 45 minutes, during which Thomas Frank's superbly prepared Brentford took a 4-0 lead, as the worst performance I've seen in my 50 years with United. I was there during Dave Sexton's dark weeks of negativity, I saw the team lose 5-1 at Maine Road in a stuttering "Ta-ra, Fergie" days I was tired of Louis van Gaal's tactics to tears.
It was the worst of it all.
Here's how bad it was: at least on Ralf Rangnick's awkward break, they managed to score an accidental goal. But it was a pathetic parody of what a United team should be. Intimidated, depressed, brooding, it was a performance flawed in every way. And this is an act of kindness.
No one blamed you, although many believed that you undertook an impossible job. When visiting fans chanted «You shouldn't be wearing a shirt» at your players, the verdict was universal: you're in trouble.
However, eight months later you won the League Cup, took the team to the top of the Champions League qualification and reached the FA Cup final. Frankly, if you had predicted where you were going at that post-match press conference in west London last August, you would have been laughed at all the way to Manchester.
Even more remarkable, you did this by managing the resources you inherited, rather than instigating the massive purge that many of us watching that day insisted was your only way forward. Eight players who started at Brentford played at Wembley in Sunday's semi-final against Brighton. If not for the injury and disqualification, five more people who participated in that sad sunny day could have been involved in the case. Since then, only Antony and Casemiro have arrived. And, with all the calmness and determination of the latter, the two men do not make a team.
Ten Hag& Team #39 chased Brighton without having key defenders. Photo: Getty Images/Michael Regan
Although there is another significant difference between the team that scored all the penalties in the semi-final shootout and the team that looked like they could barely tie their shoelaces against Brentford: the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo. You've obviously realized that the former club legend has become a source of persistent negativity; leakage of team spirit. You handled his departure with a diplomatic gentleness that speaks volumes.
This ability to focus on the immediate was paramount. What you have done is not just organization and preparation, you have changed the mindset. Your management of a man is clearly excellent. Players like Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Luke Shaw look completely reborn, putting on performances that were previously considered beyond their control. Then Marcus Rashford, who went from a man whose only future seemed to be to start again away from Old Trafford, into the central and decisive cog in the machine.
True, your team is still subject to terrible misses. But at least the embarrassment at Anfield, the gutting at the Etihad and the capitulation at Sevilla was immediately followed by a twist that insists you can spot and fix problems quickly. Even if it means, like after the mess in Brentford, that you have to join the group cross-country run.
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That's what's impressive: your tactical pragmatism. When something doesn't work, you quickly change tactics. Your replacements are smart and efficient, not the mechanical replacements that some of your predecessors have been.» intervention. Moreover, as shown by Shaw's effective centre-back replacement, you showed that flexibility to your players.
Obviously, there is a way. The simple process of calculating how many of your first XI will go to Manchester City's top squad shows how far behind Pep Guardiola's resources you are when it comes to the agreed fee for who matters: the Premier League title. But then even the suggestion that you were going to challenge would have been dismissed as a fantasy on that gloomy day last August.
After that defeat, I assumed that the United board of directors had made a characteristic mistake. without hiring Antonio Conte. Given what you've done this season as part of the analysis, it looks even more ridiculous than some of United's defenders that day. The fact is that one person can change the team. What a difference you made.
Quiet commentary by Shaw Sancho before penalty at Wembley
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