FootBiz newsletter #18: Inside the sacking of Erik Ten Hag and the pursuit of Ruben Amorim

Erik Ten Hag arrived for work at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground on Monday morning with his familiar frown after another Premier League defeat.

Nonetheless, the Dutchman had no choice but to continue preparations for Wednesday night’s EFL Cup tie with Leicester City.

Such is the fixture congestion during this part of the season that you don’t have too much time to revel in your victories nor wallow in your defeats. United were in Istanbul on Thursday to play Fenerbahce before flying back to Manchester, then to London to play West Ham and then back home once more, and so as is common with such compressed timelines, Ten Hag did his pre-match press conference for Leicester straight after the post-match press conference on Sunday.

Those answers, recorded and ready to broadcast, will never see the light of day following his dismissal on Monday morning. By Monday evening, he was in Amsterdam living the life of an unemployed coach for the first time in his 12-year managerial career.

Chief executive Omar Berrada and sporting director Dan Ashworth had called Ten Hag to a meeting and were tasked with delivering the unanimous decision that he would not continue in his post. Notably, neither were part of the decision to keep the Dutchman as part of United’s ‘summer review’ that surprisingly ended up with Ten Hag having an extension triggered in his contract.

That decision will now cost United millions more in compensation, with sources estimating the payoff at around £13m. Sitting in 14th place currently, they would (roughly) make that money back if they finish the season in 9th place or higher.

The surprising decision to keep Ten Hag came after United had ended the season on a run of terrible form, with the club’s leadership understood to have originally made the decision to part ways with the Dutchman after a 4-0 humiliation at Crystal Palace in May.

An unexpected win over Manchester City in the FA Cup final changed things, even though the strategy of playing on the counter-attack was imposed upon Ten Hag by Darren Fletcher and other coaches. Ten Hag had wanted to play City at their own game.

While United are known to have sounded out a number of potential replacements (chiefly Thomas Tuchel, Kieran McKenna, Roberto De Zerbi and Mauricio Pochettino) as they assessed their options in the summer, they stuck with Ten Hag and then did so again - this time including Ashworth and Berrada’s input - after United’s struggles continued and the executive group met in London earlier this month to consider his future again. Twice they backed him, but results did not improve.

With the players, he was sometimes considered a bit “cold” and hard to relate to. Unusual for a former player.

With the media he was pleasant but occasionally feisty and defiant, accusing the press of “creating fairytales and lies” about his job security and potential replacements being approached. While he was aware enough to know which direction things were headed if results didn’t improve, it is understood that he felt the club were unlikely to make a change until the next international break and that he still had weeks to right the ship.

The ship had continued to sink for too long though. According to ELO, a publicly available weighted rating of teams, this is the weakest Manchester United team since 1995 - worse than the lowest points under Louis van Gaal, David Moyes or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - and they are no longer among the top 25 teams in Europe despite being arguably the biggest club on Earth.

INEOS had no choice but to act.

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The INEOS piece

Since Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought a minority stake in United and assumed control of the sporting department there have been many changes at senior management level but far fewer around the first team.

CEO Richard Arnold left at the end of 2024, his interim replacement Patrick Stewart departed in the summer along with partnerships chief executive Victoria Timpson and chief communications officer Ellie Norman. Cliff Baty, the club's CFO, also left at the end of last season amid a huge clean-out.

Closer to the first team, John Murtough, previously responsible for the football operations, left the club in addition to two Ten Hag allies Mitchell van der Gaag and Steve McClaren, who departed the first-team coaching setup in the summer.

It would be tempting to say that United’s next hire as first-team manager is INEOS’ first big test, but the reality is that they failed their first big test in retaining (and extending) Ten Hag during the summer review.

Structurally, the club has a lot more pieces in place now with the arrivals of Ashworth, Berrada and technical director Jason Wilcox and, having eventually realised their error, that is the group that will be evaluated on the first INEOS coaching hire at United.

It is hard to imagine a world where the club doesn’t wrest more control over transfers away from whoever comes in as coach.

A successful structure in a modern football club leaves little room for a head coach to be involved in recruitment, as incentives and timelines can be somewhat misaligned. United under Ten Hag have been a poster child for the need to separate these powers inside a club, with much of the club’s recruitment during his tenure being very poor.

Antony’s £86m transfer from Ajax is the most obvious example for hitting the holy Ten Hag trinity of being:

• a player who has dreadfully underperformed

• a price that was ludicrously inflated, with wages to match

• yet another signing from the Dutch Eredivisie

But this is not simply hindsight. Data used by leading clubs showed, at the time, that Antony was of a comparable level to Luis Sinisterra who Leeds were buying for £25m in that same window. That sort of fee for Antony might not have been so offensive, but United’s signings have invariably been overvalued in fee terms, overpaid in salary terms and underperformed on the pitch. Rasmus Hojlund still has time to prove his worth, but has similarly not looked like a £64m striker. Mason Mount cost £55m and has one Premier League goal (but no assists) in his two seasons in Manchester.

Indeed, it is difficult to find a signing brought in under Ten Hag’s regime which could be considered an unqualified success. Or as one leading figure in football data put it:

“If you bring in a load of mediocre players for a billion then it doesn’t matter how good at coaching you are, there’s a ceiling for what you can do.”

A lot of money spent, but minimal value created unless you are an agent.

There have been eyebrows raised over how involved Ten Hag’s agent, Kees Vos at SEG, has been in the club’s moves and even his presence at United’s training ground. At the end of the summer transfer window in 2023, Vos published an Instagram post of himself in the doorway of the home dressing room at Old Trafford with the caption: “My wife and I have a different meaning of the word ‘home’ these days.”

Some insiders felt it was a bit too close to the bone and an example of his excessive level of comfort around the club.

While INEOS’ reputation for generating results in a sporting environment comes from their sailing and cycling successes, there has not been a lot to write home about at Nice or Lausanne, where they also own football clubs.

Who they choose as their next head coach, the powers he is given within their structure and the project they set out for Manchester United going forward will go a long way to define how INEOS are seen as operators in the footballing world.

A Ruud awakening?

For now, it will be Manchester United legend Ruud van Nistelrooy in the dugout.

The Dutchman has a Solskjaeresque feel about his arrival, with both becoming fan favourites for scoring crucial goals over many seasons as a player before turning their hand to coaching in their homeland.

Van Nistelrooy is understood to not be under consideration for the permanent job, with those close to him having maintained for a while that he wouldn’t feel ready for a role that big despite success in his time as PSV Eindhoven coach. Interestingly, one club that was considering Van Nistelrooy as a candidate for their managerial vacancy found less than positive reviews of his coaching from PSV players when they conducted some due diligence into his time there, and did not pursue him.

The 48-year-old will be in charge for United’s EFL Cup tie with Leicester City on Wednesday and, presumably, the trip to Chelsea on Sunday in the Premier League.

That will depend on how quickly things move with finding a replacement…

Who is next?

What we have been told is that Manchester United had already sounded out Ruben Amorim and Barcelona legend Xavi as they considered their options for replacing Ten Hag. After some digging on Monday evening, there is a suggestion that Sporting told Amorim he could cost just €10m to spring from his current contract if he ever wanted to join a designated group of elite clubs, which is half as much as other clubs were quoted in the summer (and amusingly Benfica or FC Porto would have to pay €30m).

The Manchester Evening News went strongest on Monday night, claiming that the Portuguese has already agreed to take over at Old Trafford. Many other outlets have the club as being in talks with Amorim, with David Ornstein the first to do so. Portuguese outlet A Bola report that Amorim met with Dave Brailsford and is being offered more than double his current salary of €3 million.

The leading alternatives to succeed Ten Hag now are somewhat different to the managers United spoke to last summer. Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino and Roberto Di Zerbi have all taken new jobs with England, the USA and Marseille respectively, while Gareth Southgate has made it clear that he will not take a job in football this season. 

The only manager United spoke to last summer whose situation has not changed is Thomas Frank, who remains at Brentford. While the Dane’s release clause of £9 million would not be prohibitive to United, extracting him from Brentford mid-season could be and he isn’t thought to be top of the list. 

As a result United have been forced to look further afield than their summer shortlist, who had all at least enjoyed some success in England. Many of those currently under consideration represent a bit more of a leap into the unknown, and could be unavailable in any case. 

Amorim might even fit into both categories. The 39-year-old came close to landing the Liverpool job last summer before United’s rivals recruited Arne Slot. He also had talks with West Ham before they hired Julen Lopetegui and remains in demand on the back of leading Sporting to their first Portuguese championship in 19 years in 2021, a title they won again last season, and an impressive showing before that on a smaller budget at Braga. He has only managed in Portugal, though, a very stratified league.

That is not to mention that he could soon have more attractive options than attempting to turn around the Titanic-sized underachievers that are the post-Sir Alex Ferguson United.

Hugo Viana is leaving Sporting to become Manchester City’s director of football at the end of the season, and if Pep Guardiola was to politely decline the club’s offer of a new contract then Amorim would be close to the top of the new man’s shortlist. 

Either way, friends in Portugal assure us that former Sporting right-back Joao Pereira, who won a Portuguese title playing under Amorim and now coaches the B team at Sporting, would be the likely choice to replace his former boss.

Xavi is understood to have indicated to United that the timing is not right for him to move to England, as the iconic midfield player wants a long break following his tense spell in charge of Barcelona, which ended with him being sacked in embarrassing circumstances last May after he had earlier agreed to stay on. Barcelona’s stunning revival under Hansi Flick this season has also led some at United to question whether Xavi has the same vision and skillset in the dugout as he did on the pitch. 

Beyond the big names the club reached out to via intermediaries, United’s options were fairly limited. Zinedine Zidane is available, but has only worked with genuine galacticos at Real Madrid as opposed to United’s expensively assembled imitations and is thought to be waiting for the France job anyway.

Graham Potter has been on an interesting media charm offensive of late which suggests a belated eagerness to return to work 18 months after being sacked by Chelsea. The manner in which a hitherto impressive young coach shrank in the spotlight at Stamford Bridge, however, might suggest he is not ready for the United hot seat. 

All of which goes some way towards explaining why United recruited Van Nistelrooy when overhauling Ten Hag’s backroom staff last summer. As a Premier League-winning striker he will have the instant respect of the club’s underperforming players, as well as the fans. 

If nothing else Van Nistelrooy may also be able to buy his employers the precious resource which finally ran out for Ten Hag yesterday: time. 

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