- Erik ten Hag admits standards at Man United still not what they should be
- Dutch coach clings to job at end of season after FA Cup win
- In his latest interview he says Ralf Rangnick was right about United’s shortcomings
Erik ten Hag has admitted that former Man United manager Ralf Rangnick was right when he said the club needed “open heart surgery” and were “a long way from winning titles”.
Rangnick took over as interim team from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and led United to a sixth-place finish and 58 points adrift in the 2021-22 season. He often called out the club’s shortcomings in a brazen tone, even claiming they were six years behind Liverpool.
According to him, the problems at Old Trafford were so deep that major structural changes were needed from top to bottom: ‘You don’t even need glasses to see and analyse where the problems are.
“Now the question is how do we solve them? It’s not enough to do some minor adjustments – cosmetic things. In medicine, you would say this is open heart surgery.”
And in an interview with ADVERTISEMENT In the Netherlands, Ten Hag admitted that Rangnick, who led Austria at Euro 2024, was right and that United’s standards are still not high enough.’
Erik ten Hag has warned that Manchester United are still a long way from winning the Premier League
Rangnick (left) said Man United needed ‘open heart surgery’ and that Sir Jim Ratcliffe (right) was the one who performed the operation
Ten Hag said: ‘Rangnick was absolutely right. We worked very hard on it for two years, but he said it exactly right: it is a thorough, very complex operation.
”And I knew when I started that it would be a tough job. There are many people who advised me. Louis van Gaal too.
‘We want to get this club back to where it was more than a decade ago, to a club that wins the Premier League, that can win Champions Leagues. We’re still a long way from that, I think.
‘I think we have made progress since then, otherwise we would not have won two prizes. But we are not yet at the point where we have a ‘winning culture’ in all respects. Our standards, our norms and values, still need to be raised.’
He also hit out at the mentality of the group he inherited, adding: ‘I wasn’t shocked. But the culture, the mentality was really not good. To win, to really deliver top performances every week, we had to change a lot.’
Rangnick’s complaints were echoed by former Leeds manager Jesse Marsch on Simon Jordan’s podcast.
Manchester United finished eighth in the Premier League last season with 60 points
The American revealed: ‘I think he knew he was entering the lion’s den but he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to coach Manchester United. This is a huge opportunity for everyone.
‘What I heard from Ralf and other attendees was that the cohesion within the club was virtually nil.
‘That their communication with the scouting departments, the sports departments and the directors gave them the feeling that there probably wasn’t much of a future for them, which maybe there wasn’t.’
United have now undergone the open-heart surgery that Rangnick said was necessary and have restructured their football operations since INEOS took over control of the football operations under Sir Jim Ratcliffe.