Erik ten Hag faces another crucial home game against Liverpool soon after a Manchester United defeat to Brighton. Micky van de Ven must exorcise some demons.

Game to watch: Manchester United v Liverpool
More than two years on from Erik ten Hag’s first win as a Premier League manager, his long-term suitability to the role at Manchester United remains uncertain. “We can talk about tactics but it’s all about attitude,” he said after that victory, an echo of a line he used earlier this month.

Ten Hag needed to beat Liverpool at Old Trafford in August 2022. His reign had started with a 2-1 defeat against Brighton after considerable summer investment was made to turn around the mess he had inherited. By August 2024 he has to conquer those same visitors in the aftermath of both a 2-1 loss to Brighton and a significant transfer expense designed to address a problem he has either helped create or not done enough to solve.

The season is young but the question of how precisely this iteration of Ten Hag’s Manchester United is different to the one which toiled enough last season for the owners to explore the availability and quality of prospective coaching replacements is fair.

No team had more of their Premier League games – 19 of 38 – settled by a one-goal margin last season; already in 2024/25 Manchester United have won 1-0 and lost 2-1 in matches which could easily have gone the other way. Too much still seems to be left to chance, Andreas Pereira messing up a two-versus-one attack or Joshua Zirkzee’s ludicrous offside the prime examples, for this to be in any way sustainable at an elite level.

But Ten Hag is still an excellent manager and this remains a ridiculously talented group of players, not just capable of delivering in this sort of game but possibly geared specifically towards thriving in one-off fixtures. If their recent meetings with Manchester City did not underline that point, past matches with Liverpool themselves make it difficult to ignore.

Source: Football365