Having endured their worst ever start to a Premier League season, it seems that the writing may be on the wall for Erik ten Hag at Manchester United.
The Dutch manager has won two trophies during his tenure at the club, however the Red Devils’ league form has been cause for concern over the last 12 months and has shown no signs of improving despite the huge amount of money forked out for new players.
With Ten Hag seemingly running out of time at Man Utd, we at 90min decided to have a look through the list of currently unemployed managers to see who the club could appoint next.
Manchester United currently have two major problems:
1. They don’t score enough goals.
2. They concede too many goals.
While Massimiliano Allegri wouldn’t be much use at fixing the former, he certainly would fix the latter. The Italian manager is a notoriously brilliant defensive strategist, making Juventus damn near impenetrable during his two spells at the club (particularly the first).
The stats prove as much. His teams have kept the second most clean sheets in Serie A history, and he enjoyed two spells in which Juve didn’t concede a single goal for ten straight games. In comparison: Man Utd only kept nine clean sheets during the entireity of the 2023/24 Premier League season under Erik ten Hag.
And while his football may not be pretty, the ten Serie A and Coppa Italia winners’ medals he has in his trophy cabinet are proof that it’s effective.
A reported favourite of Dan Ashworth, Gareth Southgate was linked with a potential move into club management with Man Utd at the tail end of last season.
And while many English Man Utd fans perhaps wouldn’t be too happy with the appointment – given the amount of stick Southgate’s tactics at international level received – the manager’s counter-attacking set-up would probably work at Old Trafford.
As we’ve seen previously, the likes of Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes excel in a counter-attacking system, which would get the most out of United’s best players – something Ten Hag has explicitly failed to do over the last 18 months.
Another manager who has been heavily linked with taking over Man Utd, Thomas Tuchel would certainly be a high-profile appointment.
The German has managed some of the top clubs in the world in Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund, and has won trophies at every single one of them.
He may be a bit prickly, but maybe that’s exactly what the Man Utd squad need – a manager who will take a no-nonsense approach.
The easiest appointment of the lot, Ruud van Nistelrooy is already at the club and currently working as an assistant manager at Man Utd.
Having won the KNVB Cup as the head coach at PSV Eindhoven a few years back, Van Nistelrooy has shown promise as a manager in the past.
He could be another Ole Gunnar Solskjaer-style stop-gap appointment for the club which, given how well the Norwegian did in the first few months of tenure, may not be a bad thing.
