The impossible job: managing Manchester United

In a terse statement Manchester United have announced that Erik ten Hag has been sacked as manager.

Manchester United had paid out £71.5m in redundancy payments for managers, executives and staff since the year SAF retired until 30 June 2024.

Ten Hag was the fifth permanent manager to attempt to right the ship at Old Trafford following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in the summer of 2013. The Dutchman leaves with a reasonable claim of being a successful United manager, given he won silverware, something 14 of his predecessors did not do.

In some ways, his tenure underlines how hard it is for anyone to live up to the standards set by Ferguson — who, in a pointed coincidence, recently had his ambassadorial position ended by the club — and, before him, Sir Matt Busby.

No club in England has won more top-flight titles than United’s 20, but 18 were won by either Busby (five) or Ferguson (13). Those two also account for 33 of United’s 44 major trophies and, in total, 20 out of the club’s 23 managers have failed to deliver a First Division/Premier League title.

To be a Manchester United manager is to accept an impossible job with constantly shifting aims.  Managing United is a difficult job, and many of the problems Ten Hag encountered were not exclusive to his reign.

To hold that role is to serve as the de facto figurehead for a multi-billion-dollar enterprise trying to please a global, multi-generational fanbase. This club are newsworthy at local, national and international levels, every day. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a little over a billion football fans grow restless when United aren’t seen to be doing something.

Where do the club go from here?  A misguided belief in institutional exceptionalism has led to 11 years of disappointment and decay that the club’s new minority investors are only beginning to address.

United have not participated in a meaningful title race lasting into May since 2013, and have finished in the top four on five occasions since Ferguson’s retirement. United’s former vice-chairman Ed Woodward once said — infamously — that “playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side of the business”. United fans are entitled to wonder why their club cannot deliver both.