Man Utd are now in seventh place in the standings after losing nine Premier League games so far this season. However, it could be argued that their lack of a cohesive style of play and their performances have been more worrying than their record.
That was demonstrated once more over the weekend when they drew 2-2 with Tottenham at home. Despite scoring twice, both goals came during the break, and Spurs controlled possession and opportunities, having 16 shots, 64% of the ball, and trying over 200 more passes than the opposition.
Carragher has stated that McClaren, and his time at United under Sir Alex Ferguson, may share some of the blame for Ten Hag’s reactionary style of play, which involves constantly adjusting tactics to counter opponents’ strengths.
The Liverpool great asked, “Do you think Steve McClaren is an influence?” on the most recent episode of Sky Bet’s Stick To Football podcast.
“The reason I say that is because, when you discuss the play’s style, it’s likely the kind that each of us played, where there was no weekly routine or set activity.”
Every week, we would play new games. For example, you might play counter-attack when travelling in Europe, or you might play a small team at home where you know you’ll have plenty of possession of the ball. United has the sense of football from 20 years ago, somewhat.
In De Gea’s first few games under Ten Hag, the team played Brentford and Brighton. De Gea was trying to play out, but he was having trouble with the ball, and Eriksen was diving deep to get it. Ten Hag wanted to add Frenkie de Jong, who is a true football midfielder.
After that, he moved on and had a fantastic season, winning a cup, making it to another cup final, performing admirably in Europe, and reaching the quarterfinals.
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Steve McClaren’s previous tenure at Manchester United, where he worked under Sir Alex Ferguson and somewhat codified the way United plays. I’m not sure.
They were sort of saying, “Well why would we change it because it went quite well last season, let’s maybe try and buy a better caliber of player to continue what we’re doing.” They were counter-attacking, quick, and using wingers.
Carragher did, however, defend United’s strategy under Ten Hag, saying, “That’s his style of play; that’s what we’re seeing, which is counter-attacking, quite direct, a lot of the time.”
Simply put, we now associate the best teams with nearly identical styles of play. Playing through the thirds and full-backs coming inside are two things that have a lot in common, if not exactly the same thing.
Thus, if you watch Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, and possibly Tottenham right now as well, you’ll notice that many of the same things are happening behind the scenes.
Man United simply plays in a different way. Their style isn’t lacking; rather, it’s entirely out of character for what the best teams do and how we anticipate them to play.
I don’t know if it was like that every week, but we just associate Ajax almost exclusively with Barcelona and a certain style of play because I think we’re just sort of conditioned from Pep Guardiola going back ten years with Barcelona and we think about Ten Hag at Ajax.
“But that’s just a style of play; I just think it’s really hard to win like that these days.”