Thing is, given where Man Utd are at, they need a manager to lift the whole club. I’ve little doubt that if all the structures were healthy at the club, Ten Hag could do a reasonable job of holding the reigns at the club. But they need far more than that from where they are. They need a real charismatic figure to lift things. You look for example at what Ange has done in a very short space of time at Spurs.
Man Utd have just made poor managerial appointments – either hopeful long term figures who have little to no experience of big clubs or safe pairs of hands in established managers who were arguably past their peak.
Now you can ultimately blame the owners for that as they ultimately run the club and appoint all the figures at the club or the figures that make the decisions. But I’m not sure how much of that is a factor, rather I think its the culture at the club which seems to want to do things “the right way” and find another Ferguson for the long term. To me Liverpool seemed to spend an awful long time of keeping the boot room structure at the club or appointing former players before they finally changed and turned to Houllier & Benitez and started winning bigger trophies again. And I think the same is sort of true for Man Utd. They are too set in their ways for me and thinking too much of another long term fairy tale with another Fergie – and I think this is also applying to their recruitment in signing younger, less proven players when they need players for the now. Indeed reading an article about what happened with Emery at Arsenal – he wanted players for the now but was told they were looking more to the future. Now you might say the club was now right but I actually think Arsenal are still lacking top quality players to truly compete for the title.
So I think Arsenal & Man Utd are still living in the shadows of their previous managers – even if Arsenal are doing better, they still haven’t won the league for nearly 20 years.
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