Manchester United Still Far From Premier League Title

MANCHESTER – Coach Manchester United , Erik Ten Hag, admitted that former Man United coach Ralf Rangnick’s statement was true that his team needed ‘open heart surgery’ or needed a lot of changes. According to him, his team is still very far from being able to win the Premier League again.

Rangnick replaced Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as United manager midway through the 2021/2022 season and led them to a sixth-place finish in the Premier League. During more than half a season at Old Trafford, he often exposed the club’s shortcomings in brutal fashion, even claiming they were six years behind arch-rivals Liverpool.

At that time, Rangnick also revealed that the problems in the Red Manchester camp were so deep that major structural changes were needed from top to bottom. He described his team as needing ‘open heart surgery’.

“You don’t even need glasses to see and analyze where the problem is. Now the question is how do we solve it?” Rangnick said. “It’s not enough to just make some small changes, cosmetic things. In medicine, you would say this is open-heart surgery,” he added.

Recently, Ten Hag also confirmed Rangnick’s statement, who is now the coach of the Austrian national team. He admitted that Man United are still far below the standard to return to their glory days.

“Rangnick is absolutely right. We have been working hard for two years, but he said it right: this is a thorough and very complicated operation,” Ten Hag said as quoted by Daily Mail, Saturday (20/7/2024).

“And I knew when I started that it was going to be a tough job. There were a lot of people who advised me. Louis van Gaal too,” he added.

Furthermore, Ten Hag is also very aware that Bruno Fernandes and his colleagues are still very far from being able to win the Premier League and Champions League again. Even so, according to him, there has been a movement in a better direction so that they can collect the FA Cup and English League Cup titles with him in the last two seasons.

“We want this club to be back to where it was more than a decade ago, a club that won the Premier League, that can win the Champions League. I think we are still far from that,” the Dutch tactician explained. “I think we have made steps since then, otherwise we wouldn’t have won two trophies. But we are not yet at the point where the ‘winning culture’ is here in every way. Our standards, norms and values ​​still need to improve.”

Ten Hag also heavily criticized Man United’s mentality when he first arrived. According to him, there are many cultures and mentalities that need to be changed from his squad.

“I’m not surprised. But the culture and the mentality is really not good. To win, to really perform every week, we have to change a lot,” he concluded.

(sto)