Next Man Utd manager: Former Chelsea boss ‘admired’ by Ratcliffe turns down Euro giants as Ten Hag s
Former Chelsea and Brighton boss Graham Potter has reportedly turned down the chance to manage Ajax as he waits for another opportunity in England.
The English coach has been linked with Manchester United in recent weeks as pressure continues to mount on Red Devils boss Erik ten Hag.
Reports suggest that Sir Jim Ratcliffe has already begun drawing up a list of potential replacements for Ten Hag as he aims to take Man Utd back to the top of the Premier League.
Several big changes have already taken place behind the scenes at Old Trafford. Ratcliffe poached recruitment guru Omar Berrada from rivals Manchester City, for example.
TEAMtalk sources state that Man Utd are still confident of bringing in Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth, too, despite delays due to the Magpies’ demands for compensation.
A new manager could be the next port of call for Ratcliffe and his Ineos team if Ten Hag fails to prove his worth before the end of the season.
Man Utd currently sit in a disappointing sixth place in the Premier League table and look set to miss out on Champions League qualification.
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They do remain in the FA Cup, however, and will face Coventry City in the semi-finals.
Winning that competition could save Ten Hag’s job but with Man City and Chelsea also still fighting for the trophy, there are definitely no guarantees of that.
Graham Potter in the running for Man Utd job
As Man Utd search for potential replacements for Ten Hag, Potter’s name is one that seems to keep coming up.
Reports suggest that Potter has admirers within the club and Ashworth is also thought to be a big fan of his.
Now, according to Sky Sports, as cited by Metro, Potter has ‘turned down an approach from Ajax’ to become their new manager next season.
That is because the 48-year-old is ‘waiting for a job in England.’ Ratcliffe is said to be ‘keeping an eye’ on Potter’s situation and is ‘considering’ bringing him in.
Chelsea paid around £20m in compensation to extract Potter and his coaching staff from their positions at Brighton, but he is now a free agent.
Man Utd would have to pay up the remainder of Ten Hag’s contract to sack him – which is valid until the summer of 2025 -which would cost around £8m.
Potter didn’t live up to the hype at Stamford Bridge but it’s fair to say that managing Chelsea has been far from easy since Todd Boehly’s takeover in 2022.
Ratcliffe seems to think that Potter could succeed at Old Trafford, so it will be interesting to see how this story progresses in the coming months.
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Ten Hag sack: Man Utd axe talk ramps up as Gary Neville brutally destroys Dutchman for ‘baffling’ tactics
Gary Neville fears Erik ten Hag left himself badly exposed of the Manchester United sack after strongly condemning the Dutchman’s tactics and approach to Sunday’s 2-2 draw against Liverpool at Old Trafford.
The Red Devils made major strides under Ten Hag during his first season at helm, reaching two cup finals and, crucially, claiming a third-placed finish in the Premier League to seal their return to the Champions League. However, little has gone their way this season, with Manchester United slumping to 12 defeats already in the Premier League and crashing out of Europe in embarrassing fashion.
They can salvage their season, somewhat, with success in the FA Cup with a semi-final showdown against Coventry City lying in wait, though their slim prospects of qualifying for the Champions League again appear to be over in the wake of three matches without a win.
IN DEPTH: Three ways Ten Hag can miraculously avoid Man Utd sack, as Ratcliffe prepares to swing the axe
As a result, United are now a distant 11 points behind Tottenham in fourth, with a place in UEFA’s secondary competition, the Europa League, now looking far more likely.
Indeed, stormclouds over Ten Hag’s future have been gathering for months, particularly in light of our exclusive that revealed a number of senior players at Manchester United all expect the axe to fall on the Dutchman this summer.
Since our exclusive report, the likes of the Daily Mail and the Manchester Evening News – the latter of whom admittedly do have to step more carefully – have since followed suit with near-identical reports of their own.Related video: Jurgen Klopp 'absolute fine' with Liverpool's situation after draw at Man Utd (Daily Mail)
And when the local paper suggests the writing could be on the wall, it certainly cannot bode well for the under-fire Dutchman.
Neville questions Ten Hag tactics after Liverpool draw
Woeful performances since the return from the international break have certainly done Ten Hag no favours, with United failing to win any of their last three games.
They were second best in a 1-1 draw at Brentford; conceded two injury time goals to lose 4-3 at Chelsea, and then were somewhat fortunate to claim a 2-2 draw against Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Those last two games has seen United conceding a record number of shots on their goal, with Chelsea managing 28 against them at Stamford Bridge on Thursday and then Liverpool trying their 15 times in that first half on Sunday.
As a result, Neville feels that, even though two brilliant goals from Bruno Fernandes and Kobbie Mainoo earned Man Utd a draw, their approach to the game at Old Trafford did Ten Hag no favours.
Speaking on the Gary Neville podcast, the pundit labelled United’s performance as ‘mad and chaotic’ and that their tactics were more than a little baffling.
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“Manchester United’s style of play is mad,” he said. “Some of the things you see out there, you wouldn’t see at schoolboy level.
“Their structure defensively goes from being in shape and being okay to all of a sudden emptying the whole midfield. Players press on their own without the rest of their team-mates going with them.
“You have players in front of the ball at throw-ins and the ball gets thrown in behind towards the back four.
“All of the things that you see as, if you like, the easiest things in football to do, Manchester United do really badly.
“They are so easy to play against. Liverpool had 15 shots in that first half.”
‘The type of performance that can get you the sack’
Neville added: “You can’t really coach that type of performance. You are just relying on individual moments, luck, goalkeepers making saves and defenders making blocks. That’s what we’ve seen from them against Liverpool.
“I don’t think it is any lack of endeavour. There is no lack of desire in the team. There’s just no sense to their actual performance levels.”
Neville also thinks that, despite claiming a 2-2 draw, United’s performance left more questions than answers over Ten Hag’s suitability to help United challenge the likes of Liverpool and Manchester City for the game’s top honours.
“When [part-owner] Sir Jim Ratcliffe came in, we said it was like an audition until the end of the season for Ten Hag and what he needs is to build a style, a system and a pattern of play,” Neville continued.
“We don’t see a pattern.
“Most United fans, including myself, back Ten Hag and want him to succeed.
“But think about the performances this week. At Brentford, you can never accept that. That is a low in terms of all standards. That is where you are questioning desire, work ethic and the parts of the game where you are thinking has the manager lost the dressing room.
“Jamie Redknapp said it. That is the type of performance that can get a manager sacked.
“I actually don’t think we’ve seen that same type of performance against Chelsea and Liverpool. Brentford was by far the worst performance of the week in terms of energy and spirit.”
Man Utd approach to games is ‘fun, entertaining but mad’
“At Chelsea, you lose in the last minute. It’s embarrassing and bad to lose two goals late on but actually, you can lose a game of football that way.
“Against Liverpool, the same bad habits, the same bad structure, the same defensive errors and the same gaps in midfield. They were all there, but there is still a level of effort and desire.
Erik ten Hag insists his job is safe at Manchester United and he is not in danger of the sack
“It is baffling, some of the things you see.”
Ten Hag continues to insist he is confident his job at Man Utd is not on the line and he will be in charge come next season.
But Neville added: “There are parts of the team where you do wonder what is going on in the coaching aspect during the week and what Ten Hag’s instruction is.
“I can’t believe Casemiro or Bruno Fernandes or Kobbie Mainoo are doing this off their own back. They must be being told to do it.
“But then, to be told to do it and watch it, it’s strange. It’s very, very strange to see.
“No other team in the league plays as badly out of possession as they do. That’s why they concede so many shots, and over 20 against Liverpool. That has got to stop and stop quickly.
“It’s difficult to defend, it really is. It’s been a strange week of football from Manchester United.
“If you try to analyse that week of football doing your coaching badges, or as a coach or a player or as a fan, you can’t even put it together. It’s odd.
“They are such an odd team to watch. I don’t really know what else to say other than that. It’s fun at times, entertaining, but mad.”
Jamie Carragher questions where Man Utd are going under Ten Hag
The condemnation also arrived from Neville’s co-commentator Jamie Carragher, who has also questioned the direction the club are heading in under the Dutchman.
“It’s obviously not gone great for Manchester United this season, but when we talk about a manager, we always say he needs results. That’s the same for every manager,” Carragher told Sky Sports.
“I actually think, with Erik ten Hag, that he needs performances to give Manchester United some belief going forward.
“I think you can accept the results this season in terms of them having injury problems. You can also talk about the ownership and other things. You can give some sort of reason as to why it hasn’t gone as well as people thought.
“But when you are watching your team, you’ve got to feel like you are seeing something and where it might be going, even if you are losing a game.
“That is the thing I would worry about as a Manchester United fan. I don’t quite see where it is going. What is the end result?
“If it is what we saw against Liverpool, I don’t think it can go up against Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal over the next couple of years.”
Ten Hag told how he can spare himself from sack talk
Carragher was left bemused by their defensive frailties and suggests that above anything else could see the axe fall on Ten Hag.
“I’ve never been a manager, but it is easy to stop,” he said. “The basic principles of being tough to play against, I don’t think they are hard to coach.
“We’ve both been on the training pitch, keeping the team compact, narrow, back four, where’s our starting position. Are we high? Are we deep? Are we together?
“It’s basic. It’s the basics of football.
“It’s not about a fluid Pep Guardiola football or Jurgen Klopp football, it’s just about being difficult to beat. It’s something you would normally associate with a team coming up into the division.
“That’s the really strange thing for Manchester United going forward. Everyone will be delighted leaving the game today because it was a great game and they help knock Liverpool off the top of the league.
“But the bigger picture, of how the game started and how it finished, still leaves you scratching your head.”
United return to action on Saturday with a trip to face Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium and looking to avenge arguably their worst result of the season, a 3-0 home loss to Andoni Iraola’s side back in December.
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Do you care about the ‘tiresome obligation’ of the Champions League?
The Champions League reaches the vinegar strokes this week but is any neutral entertained? For a start, no one should be asking that. We should be all thrilled at the brilliant football on display. This is the elite playing the elite, so bow down and start supplicating to the football gods.
But many have not got the old-time religion as the same teams are playing the same teams as usual to a dwindling interest. You could call it the sort of fixtures so beloved of the European Super League. Even if Manchester City and Real Madrid are playing the qualitatively best football, that no longer matters. Of course they are.
This is not people being wilfully arsy, it gets to the core of what football is; the mistake UEFA and others make is to assume that if you concentrate most of the money within an elite, you will get the best football. You will, of course you will, but that doesn’t matter. Sport is about jeopardy, human frailty and unpredictability. These games are not. Whoever wins these ties doesn’t stir most of us.
READ: Ranking Champions League favourites after the quarter-final draw: Arsenal below Bayern, ahead of Real
You can’t argue that it’s not the elite, nor that it’s always going to be the elite. The economics make it inevitable. If you’d been asked to predict the quarter-final sides, you would have predicted most or all of them. The degree to which we just accept this, shrug and get on with our lives or cling to an assumption that one or two teams are breaking the mould, signifies the degree to which we have accepted its irrelevance.Related video: Pep on preparing for Tuesdays match against Real Madrid for the Champions League (English Football Channel)
I have to think about it because early Eddie come
Most people can’t get TNT and won’t see it anyway, and just don’t care. It is quite profoundly not the people’s game but the authorities show no sign of being bothered.
The problem is, the system has an inbuilt superiority which will only get worse as basically the money keeps the money. It is only football’s innate occasional ornery nature that even hints that the latter stages of the competition will not involve the same teams every year forever. This is simple economics. Football at the highest levels is becoming a repeat of itself, more exhibition than competition.
Just changing the architecture of the tournament won’t alter the financial elite’s dominance. Two and two still equals four and there’s nothing they can do about it. The Europa League and Conference Leagues are similarly distorted by Premier League money. Premier League teams should always win both competitions.
The ties are regularly complete financial mis-matches and it is only the Premier League’s lazy reliance on money to do all the work which causes them to fail when put up against well-organised teams not wholly motivated by riches. TNT and others pretend the ties featuring English teams are a fair fight, when they are anything but. You can’t have it both ways, if it’s ‘the best league in the world’ largely because of the pull of money, you can’t pretend it is a fair contest between a team that has at least double or more resources.
Unfortunately there is an audience for these ties which sees nothing wrong with the same clubs reaching the same level every year. In this we see football’s audience being divided between ’it’s always the same teams’ as a bad thing and ‘it’s always the same teams’ as a good thing – two entirely different outlooks on football.
But with the way football’s economics are structured, unless turkeys start voting for Christmas, things are not set to change – quite the reverse – and the Champions League is the best expression of this. It’s ironic that one group sees this state of affairs as a good thing because it guarantees more money and supports their dominance and another which sees this state of affairs as a very bad thing because it guarantees more money and supports their dominance.
In this way football is divided against itself, and it sustains its fundamental unfairness without shame or self-opprobrium as once again, the elite sides bring a nuclear weapon to a knife fight.
Is anyone going to vote for a fundamental economic change? No. How it is is how it will be unless grounds are empty and change is imposed, but can any change be imposed?
It reminds me of a guy I knew who ran a failing restaurant in Harrogate. He had a loyal set of customers who liked plain, some might say, old-fashioned food before it was rebranded as ‘vintage’. And he was scared to alienate them, even though they were the cause of his failure. Eventually he turned the place into a fashionable eatery and got a huge new customer base and in the process lost his old customers who wanted old school ‘traditional’ cooking. That’s UEFA, scared to let go of nurse for something worse.
I’ll watch the games, but in common with most of the small audience watching on television across Europe, I won’t care in the slightest who wins. And UEFA will keep pretending their elite competition is elite when it’s a procession for the same old same old and relies on that being enough for their audience. As Jonathan Wilson has said with the painful truth that perhaps only a Sunderland fan can muster: ‘The Champions League seems to have slipped with incredible haste from unmissable spectacle to tiresome obligation.’
There is no future in how things are. Changing the competition structure will not change that because the same financial trends will still exist to manifest the same results. The question is, do any of the quarter-finalists care? Almost certainly not.
READ: Will the Premier League get a fifth place in next season’s Champions League?
