It was almost like an FA Cup-winning manager almost falling over.
In a room filled with reporters who had been reporting for days that his boss was planning to replace him, a bruised, embattled but bellicose Erik ten Hag defended his record as Manchester United manager.
“Winning two trophies in two years is pretty good,” he said. “Three finals in two years is good. If they don’t want me, then I’ll go somewhere else and win trophies because that’s what I do.
It’s a great line, worth repeating, and he does. He sat down with MUTV in July to reiterate his “two trophies” view after Ten Hag’s contract was extended and his future was sealed.
He repeated the words a few days later after United’s first pre-season friendly in Trondheim, adding: “Apart from (Manchester) City, that’s more than any other club in English football. “
He repeated the words again after the friendly against Rangers in Edinburgh.
A US tour followed.
That’s just preseason. Since the start of the season, Ten Hag has mentioned his two domestic cup wins in six interactions with reporters in pre- and post-match press conferences, let alone interviews with broadcasters.
The most recent example was a tense exchange with a reporter following Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Liverpool when Ten Hague invited him to point out the “mistakes” his team were accused of making. After reporters rattled off a long list of repeated mistakes, Ten Witches retreated to his old faithful.
“I have a different vision. I think we are the team that has won the most trophies in English football after Manchester City. “I feel sorry for you. “
Of course, he’s right. It’s just as real now as it was at Wembley. But three games into the new season, his deft dismissal of his critics’ arguments in May has quickly become a crutch he can lean on.
On Friday, after repeating his favorite sentiment, Ten Hag added: “There is only one thing in football and that is at the end of the season, whether you win prizes, trophies or not.” But as others have pointed out , a view that contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Solskjaer said in March 2021: “Any cup competition can give you a trophy, but sometimes it’s more about the ego of other managers and clubs that ends up winning something.”
“Trophies don’t say ‘we’re back’. It’s the gradual progress to the top of the league, and the consistency and the odd trophy. Sometimes cups can hide the fact that you’re still struggling.
Solskjaer’s words come from a manager who has the opposite problem as Ten Hag. United’s league results have steadily improved under the Norwegian – from sixth to third to second – but the trophy cabinet has been empty.
Solskjaer has defended his record by claiming the league is the true barometer of progress, just as Ten Hague has defended his record by pointing to trophies. Opinions vary as to which view is correct.
Ten Witches with his other trophy: the Carabao Cup (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
While it is crucial for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United to qualify for the Champions League on the final weekend of the 2019-20 season, do you remember who they beat that day? Do you remember the score? You might think so, but a 2-0 win at Leicester City behind closed doors is hardly immortal.
Likewise, memories are not created by finishing second in the league. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side finished second in 2021 12 points behind champions Manchester City and have not topped the table since the end of January.
The only trophy United came close to winning that year was the Europa League. Speaking ahead of the final in Gdansk, Solskjaer insisted trophies sometimes “hide other facts”. But after United lost to Villarreal on penalties, he admitted he could not consider the season a success due to his failure to lift a trophy.
If you ask anyone who has known the inner workings of Old Trafford over the years, they will say you can’t survive as a Manchester United manager if you don’t win trophies. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s coaching career arguably proves that, while Ten Hag proves the opposite: deliver a trophy, coupled with Manchester United’s greatest day in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, and you can overcome anything Difficult, even with the Premier League’s worst ever result.
And, of course, there was the 4-3 quarter-final victory over Liverpool – one of the best games and atmospheres at Old Trafford this century. Coupled with the Carabao Cup triumph, the past two years have provided fans with indelible memories, with the highs offsetting the lows.
But Solskjaer’s view is closer to the way performance is ruthlessly assessed at elite levels in modern football. There’s no denying that league play over 38 games home and away is a truer measure of a team’s quality and a gateway to qualification for the lucrative Champions League, which has an impact on budgets that the FA Cup cannot.
As Ten Hag points out, Manchester United may have been the second most successful team in English football over the past two years, but no one can honestly believe they are the second best.
Nor is anyone expecting United to be any closer than Arsenal to challenging Manchester City for major honours, although Mikel Arteta has only added the Community Shield to his list of honours since Hag was appointed.
This is reality. In a quieter moment, aside from the adversarial nature of the press conference and the heat of the battle, even the Ten Witches would have agreed that the trophy wasn’t enough. You need pots and points.
United’s decade-plus run will only end when the club regularly competes for the Premier League title and reaches the latter stages of the Champions League again.
There were some mitigating factors last season – injuries, off-field turmoil, uncertainty about taking over, a lack of proven left-backs – but United performed below par in the games that mattered most.
Despite domestic cup success, that’s why their manager is under pressure to prove progress has been and can still be made, and why he can only point to his two trophies for so long. Even the Ten Witches would have accepted this if they weren’t staring at a roomful of reporters and television cameras.
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(Above: Eric Ten Witches and the FA Cup; photo by Alex Pantlin via Getty Images)
