So what is success for Erik ten Hag at Manchester United this season?

It's a harder question to answer than you'd think.

During the final (half) season of Jose Mourinho, Manchester United fans thought they had hit rock bottom. But as Bojack Horseman¹ once said:

“I've had a lot of what I thought were rock bottoms, only to discover another, rockier bottom underneath.”

And in 2021/22, Manchester United managed to hit that rockier bottom.

Though some older fans would argue that United’s relegation to the Second Division was a bigger example of failure in the club’s history, the modern-day equivalent would be 22nd May 2022.

With a 1-0 defeat to Crystal Palace, United became the first team in Premier League history to finish the season with a goal difference of zero (though silver linings it’s better than a negative one); they also recorded their lowest points total ever. Ralf Rangnick’s side missed out on Champions League football and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s project lay in tatters.

There was, however, a shining beacon of hope - Erik ten Hag. United announced in April that the Dutchman would join the club in the summer and after that point, many fans were waiting for his arrival.

But before he embarks on his debut season it is important to contextualise what is success for Ten Hag?

By this I mean it is easy to say what would constitute a great season; silverware and a strong league finish or potential win is the ideal scenario, but what is the bare minimum United should accept?

Pep Guardiola probably characterised the modern perception of success in football best when he said:

“You need strategies, ideas, whatever – but at the end you need trophies. Without trophies you cannot convince people. Only that carries weight in football.”

Ten Hag arrives at Old Trafford with three Eredivisie titles and two Dutch Cups, so he has some goodwill stored in the bank to prove his pedigree to his squad and the footballing world.

However it seems rather obvious to say this but let’s get it out of the way near the top - Manchester United are not going to win the Premier League title next season; however much you hope and pray, 21 is not coming in 2022/23.

Miracles have occurred before, Leicester City’s win in 2015/16 being the biggest proponent for ‘the narrative of anything can happen in football’, and one that is still used to try and sell the underdog story now as Manchester City have won the last four out of five (great Arctic Monkeys song) titles.

Chelsea's title win in 2016/17 might be another example fans use to say well it can happen when you’re backed and get the right guy in; a 43-point swing from 10th with 50 points to first with 93.

But Conte only signed four first-team players (one being the man who delivered the title to Leicester the year before, N’golo Kante) and he mostly just got the existing team playing to their standard. Chelsea had won the title during the 2014/15 season but during the 2015/16 season, the team massively underperformed (Eden Hazard scored four goals in the league).

So if the title is out of the question what about a top-four spot? Their absence from Europe’s top competition has been felt this season both in their pockets and in their ability to sign players, so the club will be keen to return in 2023/24.

As I discussed in my article ‘So… can Tottenham Hotspur win the Premier League next season?’, I believe three of the top four spots will be made up of Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham next season, so that only leaves one spot to play for.

Chelsea started slowly in the transfer market and suffered a big blow after Romelu Lukaku didn’t work out last season, but new owner Todd Boehly is splashing the cash, with Raheem Sterling set to join and other targets in the pipeline.

Arsenal are also quietly doing good business (even if their fans are very vocal about it on social media) and it is quite lucky that they were not able to sign Raphinha, who would have significantly upgraded their right-hand side. Mikel Arteta will be hoping to improve on his 5th placed finish last season and his team are further along in their project than United.

This makes it difficult because even if United improve these teams need to also get worse, given the gap between them currently.

I’m just going to take a moment to pause and take stock. This might sound like a doomsday prophecy; a Kobiashi Maru² situation. But I think it’s important to fully paint the picture of the mountain that United need to climb under Ten Hag.

Years of mismanagement have put them years behind their competition and even a large jump doesn’t put them back where they need to be. But there might be one shining beacon… The Europa League.

Nobody likes having to tune in and listen to the Europa League anthem, it’s good but you know that it’s just not the same as the Champions League one, however, that’s what United fans will have to do next season.

Getting to the semi-final shouldn’t be a difficult task for United (unless a rather difficult side, unfortunately, drops down from the Champions League group stages and is matched against them) and from there it is up to Ten Hag and the players to get over the line.

A piece of silverware would be nice for United fans to have after five years without a trophy and the Europa League would obviously come with other benefits, but a good run and a bit of luck in the League Cup and the FA Cup could also present a good opportunity.

The issue is that cup football is a crap shoot, one bad game or one unlucky call can knock you out, so it’s never best to bet on it as a measure of success. As Billy Beane³ once eloquently put it when talking about the knockout stages in baseball:

"My sh*t doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f**king luck."

So what other measures can we look at?

Some fans might say well the best signifier of success is if Ten Hag can noticeably implement his style of play ahead of next season. But there might be an issue with even that.

Imagine Ten Hag is trying to play chess, ideally, he would have all the pieces he wants to implement tactics and strategies. But some of the pieces will likely be missing (a very important one as well if United are unable to secure a deal for Frenkie de Jong), which means we’re already off to a rough start.

Now imagine that some of the pieces he has at his disposal instead aren’t chess pieces at all; they’re actually for checkers. Sure their diagonal movements may be useful in certain situations but if they’re in the place of a Queen or a Knight, they’ll end up hindering how effectively Ten hag wants to play.

Factor in that your key piece which the previous system was Frankenstein-ed around is screaming from the rooftops that he wants to leave and you’ve got yourself a real issue.

Cristiano Ronaldo's desire to leave might have actually been positive in the grand scheme of things for Ten Hag, given he is an individualistic player who would conflict with the Dutchman’s system. Still, since no one wants to sign him it has become an exponentially worse problem.

And though that might be the ‘biggest’ problem it is nowhere near the only one.

So in that situation, you’ve got to ask yourself ‘Are you going to see the best of Ten Hag’s brand of football?’ Probably not, but you’ll start to see something that hopefully looks like a plan with a few compromises to try and get the best out of what he’s trying to work with.

United weaved themselves into a tangled mess in the last decade with half-baked projects and terrible decision-making, their biggest enemy being themselves.

Only towards the end of last season decided that ‘enough was enough’, but unfortunately you can’t solve every problem overnight; there’s got to be a period of transition where you deal with the echoes of your past mistakes.

While Richard Arnold and John Murtough oversee things behind the scenes, Ten Hag is trying to bring United back to life on the pitch, but he’s doing so with a squad constructed and trained by six different managers. It was never going to be a walk in the park and patience will be needed.

So to answer the question, ‘What is Success for Erik ten Hag at Manchester United’, I think the only team that United have to beat is themselves. Arthur Ashe (a very old but very good tennis player) once said:

“You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.”

United are not even playing close to their limits; they know they can earn more points, score more goals, concede fewer, and make better decisions on and off the pitch.

They know there’s serious room for improvement before you start competing with other teams in the league.

It may sound like something your mum would tell you when you were younger, but you can only control what you do, you can’t control what anyone else does.

So if United get more points and look like a better team but fail to reach the Top 4, maybe even challenge for some silverware but fall short in the semi-final or final to just a better side, this should still be seen as a good thing for Ten Hag’s first season.

Some fans may not agree and that’s fine, you may feel that I am accepting the low standards that a decade of poor form has thrust upon me and you’d be partly right. I am acknowledging that United are a disjointed mess, but I’m still hoping that they don’t stay that way.

Many want United to run before they can walk but the problem is that the team can’t even crawl yet. You can have high expectations, you’ve just got to be realistic about how long it will take to reach them.

But of course, this is football, and Ten Hag is managing Manchester United, ‘the biggest club in the world’; patience is something he needs but might not get.

United are not quite at the point that Arsenal and Liverpool were when they went down the line of giving extended amounts of time to Mikel Arteta and Jurgen Klopp. They are more like Barcelona, on the cusp of entering the wilderness but still able to ‘fake it till they make it’ (admittedly in a much more financially secure way than the Catalan club).

I may say that the situation demands that Ten Hag is given time, but I am not running a multi-billion pound football club.

I do not have sponsors breathing down my neck, players who want to fulfil their own personal ambitions or millions of angry fans with expectations to live up to. If Ten Hag does not seem close, especially if the club significantly invests in this window, he could be out of the door before the season’s end.

And of course, if the timings align, ‘Erik Ten Months’ will be plastered across every newspaper’s front page and website.

So we could be sitting here in 12 months analysing the rubble of yet another broken rebuild, dissecting how United managed to find the even rockier bottom.

But nobody knows what the 2022/23 season holds, but United are apparently ‘making good decisions now’, so they might actually give Ten Hag the time he needs.

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1. The amount of Bojack Horseman quotes, a cartoon about a depressed former actor that is also a horse, that apply to Manchester United is unnerving.

2. An unwinnable test in Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy (that Captain Kirk figures out how to beat through cheating the system).

3. Billy Beane invented the Moneyball system which revolutionised Baseball, though the Oakland As never won a World Title (Also watch Moneyball it’s great)