‘I am a fighter and I am in that fight’: Erik ten Hag and Manchester United in the shadow of the father
Manchester United men’s team have been struggling this season including two successive 3-0 home defeats. Inevitably, there is talk of the manager Erik ten Hag’s position being under threat unless he oversees an upturn in results. In his first season in charge, United won the League (Carabao) Cup and finished third in the Premier League to earn a return to the Champions League. So what has gone wrong this season? Reading the reports in the papers, and thinking about it as someone who works with organizational dynamics, a few things jumped out. Fresh legs – Ten Hag has brought players over from his former club Ajax who are not performing well and this has led people to question his decision-making or ‘smarts’. It is understandable that he might want to have players he feels he can trust and who have performed for him before, but I wonder what this communicated to the existing United players. Trying to replicate a ‘formula’ or even re-create the same team in a new context is unlikely to ...