eRik Ten Hag is gone, but his shadow is still looming in British football. I fully understood the mistake. Manchester United renewed their contract as the euphoria of beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final. Three months after the new season, 10 HAG was fired in United’s 14th place at the table with 11 points in 9 games, spending more than £180 million on summer transfers.
Sports director Dan Ashworth and various members of the 10 HAG backroom staff also left at a total cost of £14.5 million. Or, put it another way, it kept its 10 HAG costs at £200 million, effectively undermining this season. No one wants to get caught up in 10 hug traps.
The two cases are not exactly the same. There is always a tendency to simply understand what happened before. So many clubs repeat flip-flops between idealistic dreamers and dour pragmatists. A fat pope and a papal model with little history.
Even United’s recent standards have been bangled in the decision to stick to 10 hugs. But likewise, every club owner or director recognizes the need to avoid 10 hug traps and the need to avoid them. For several years, it will be even more difficult for managers to save jobs by winning trophies. This is directly related to both Ange Postecoglou and Ruben Amorim.
Threats to Amorim are still theoretical, but as an example of Ineos’ sailing team and Sir Ben Ainsley, Ir Jim Ratcliffe has the ability to be ruthless. He dismisses famous figures as easily as scrapping a packed lunch, a steward bonus, or a pensioner’s concession. Anyway, the lawsuit against Amorim is that his football is primarily unsuitable for the team and it would be cheaper and easier to replace the dugout ideologue cheaper than the entire player’s dressing room.
The EC and end against Lyon in Thursday’s Europa League quarterfinals bolster his position. As Rory McIlroy’s victory at the Masters last Sunday showed, sports are at their best when it combines anxiety, unhappiness with brilliant people, creating incredibly dramatic denials. The final minutes at Old Trafford, Cobby Mine and Harry Maguire appear in emergency services to produce exceptional finishes for both the central forward, but will be remembered for decades, as if the 2-0 victory simply wasn’t. Fans allow a lot of frustration with such experiences, even if they rely on error.
In that sense, Thursday’s victory was not immediately successful due to Amorim, whose 4-3 victory over Liverpool’s Borussia Dortmund, was in the 2016 Europa League quarter-finals, but acted as a confirmation of the Jurgen Klopp project. The only caveat is that for United, much the same thing goes for him about his 4-3 victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup quarterfinals last season, and it turns out that Amado Diallo’s extra-time winner is a lure on the way to the 10 hug traps.
It’s even more dangerous with Postecoglou. It’s completely plausible that Tottenham won the Europa League and the Australians still leave the club. United, on the other hand, won nothing. However, Thursday was a good night for Tottenham’s most impressive away away performance, Post Coglu, since a 4-0 victory at Manchester City in November. Their defensive idea would clearly not be ideal to rely on having players with Mickey Van de Ben’s strange pace, but on the other hand, they have players with Mickey Van de Ben’s strange pace at the moment.
The difficulty of winning at Deutsche Bank Park should not be underestimated. The Spurs were on the fourth side of the season of 21 people this season, but likewise, annual spending on wages in Tottenham is about three times as high as Eintrak Frankfurt. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it fits the theory that Post-Coglu’s ultra-aggressive football works just like Celtic when his side has resource advantages. That advantage becomes even more pronounced in the semi-finals against bodø/glimt.
It should not undermine the success Tottenham may have, but it will probably put it in context. Particularly for the reason that he is injured in the back four, the post-Coglu defense can be grounded in that the league campaign was already pointless by the time the hearts of the season, eroding confidence and regaining a measure of stability. However, it is also true that after the opening of the 10 games, there was little evidence that he was fit for the Premier League.
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Spurs is a club defined by their longing for success, but Juande Ramos, the only manager to win the trophy in the last 26 years, was fired eight months after winning the 2008 League Cup at the Premier League club bottom. Jose Mourinho is not reluctant to remind people, so the Spurs fired him six days before the 2021 League Cup final.
The lack of silverware haunts the spurt, but the club still has a complicated relationship with it. The best thing for managers who want a long career at Tottenham is a very concrete failure, even putting budgetary profits ahead of Champions League qualifications and more specific trophies.
Perhaps it simply points out the twin impulses that lead to the friction that exists between football and them. While everyday victory and control may provide consistency and please executives, the visceral agitation that animation fans come from the night at Old Trafford is like nonsense and drama, where you can carefully plan, or actually make plans.
Executives always support reliability. We have never built a successful business with players doing something unlikely in an unlikely time. Fans may please the three target flapping limbs after 114 minutes, but this means less profitable than consistency. And that’s even more appropriate considering how well everyone knows the need to avoid 10 hug traps.
