Erik ten Hag is fighting to save his job as Manchester United manager. The 54-year-old has yet to be given the unequivocal backing of the club’s new football leadership regime, led by new minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and the team are outsiders to secure Champions League qualification — eight points adrift of fourth place with 12 games left to play in the Premier League.
With United already out of this season’s Champions League — Ten Hag’s side finished bottom of their group — and eliminated from the Carabao Cup in the fourth round, the FA Cup is the club’s only route to silverware, with Wednesday’s fifth-round tie at Nottingham Forest (stream live on ESPN+) now a huge game for Ten Hag and his players.
Ten Hag, hired from Ajax in June 2022, won the Carabao Cup and guided United to a third-placed finish in the Premier League in his first season, but his second campaign has seen the team lurch from one disappointment to another.
So what does the future hold for the Dutch coach? With his new bosses already making moves off the field by hiring a new CEO, Omar Berrada from Manchester City, and lining up Newcastle’s Dan Ashworth as director of football, the manager’s position is uncertain to due to a lack of public commitment to Ten Hag.
There are good reasons for him to stay; there are similarly good ones for him to be replaced. But what will United do?
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Why Ten Hag has to go
Every football manager is ultimately judged on results and that is why Ten Hag’s Old Trafford future is so uncertain.
United have massively underperformed this season, particularly in the Champions League where they won just one game and finished bottom of a weak group including Galatasaray and FC Copenhagen. Ten Hag’s team conceded 15 goals in six games — only Belgian minnows Royal Antwerp (17) had a worse defensive record in the competition.
In the Premier League, Ten Hag’s team have lost more games at this stage of the season (10) than David Moyes’s 2013-14 side (8), and Moyes was fired less than 12 months into a six-year contract shortly before the end of that campaign.
It has been one step forward then one step back for United this season. Despite the club boasting the most expensive squad ever assembled last year, according to UEFA, this term their goal difference after 26 games stands at zero — they have scored 36 goals and conceded the same amount. To put those numbers into context, leaders Liverpool have a goal difference of +38, having scored 63 and conceded 25; Arsenal have the best goal difference right now (+39) after scoring 62 and conceding 23.
One key element of Ten Hag’s appointment as manager was his track record of putting faith in young players — a quality which chimes with United’s deep-rooted tradition of backing young talent.
Ten Hag has delivered in that area, with both winger Alejandro Garnacho (19) and midfielder Kobbie Mainoo (18) emerging as first-team players this season after being given opportunities by the manager. Højlund, at 21, is another young star beginning to shine under Ten Hag as he has scored 13 goals in his 30 games across all competitions so far this season.
So while results on the pitch do little to help Ten Hag mount a convincing case to keep his job, it is clear that he has worked in an extremely tough environment because of off-field factors. With Ratcliffe now bringing clarity and a sharpened focus on football, Ten Hag might now actually be able to spend more time doing what he was employed to do: build a team capable of making United serious challengers again. Why move him on this summer when he hasn’t had the opportunity to prove himself?
