How much pressure is falling on Erik ten Hag at Manchester United?

A look at the situation the boss finds himself in.

Transcript

00:00 We'll move on to United and just look at that Fulham defeat at home, you know, very late on.

00:07 But we saw signs of that when Ten Hag's team's had a poor spell.

00:12 This is the sort of reaction that's come following in.

00:15 It sort of was the same following their defeat against Fulham.

00:18 Has there been an overreaction, do you feel, because United were on a fantastic run of form, really, leading up to that game?

00:26 It's interesting. It's a good point because they'd won five in a row, they suddenly lose one game,

00:33 and it feels like a crisis. It feels like, oh, Ten Hag's going to go in, he's also going to pick a new manager.

00:38 He's facing criticism from Jamie Carragher, he's fighting back.

00:41 I mean, I was at the press conference yesterday, the whole second section was pretty much about his future,

00:46 and the fact that Sir Jim Ratcliffe, as I say, hasn't given his unwavering support, I suppose.

00:52 He was very vague with his response, but at the same time, I mean, you look at that run of five games,

00:58 OK, one of them is in the FA Cup against Newport, which, by the way, wasn't a straight-forward game for United,

01:02 which in itself has been mad. They played West Ham, who had 22 shots at Old Trafford.

01:08 They played, who else, Wolves, a game that they were in complete control of going into the last 20 minutes,

01:15 and nearly messed it all up. They played against Villa.

01:19 Villa were probably the better team, at the very least, they deserved a point.

01:23 They were very fortunate to get away with that. And then against Luton, OK, they went 2-0 up early on,

01:28 but were hanging on by half-time, and again, relied on moments of attacking brilliance,

01:33 rather than a concise and, you know, performance where they dominate the opposition.

01:40 They are just, I mean, many times if I said it to you this season, the opposition dictate at the Manchester United

01:44 what sort of game it's going to be. They don't get on the ball and control games,

01:48 they're very reactive in the way they play, and that midfield set-up is bizarre.

01:51 It's just absolutely, I can't get my head around it, why he pushes his two other midfielders up,

01:56 and I think if just Mane who just dropped 10 yards deeper and played a little bit closer to Casemiro,

02:00 they would be such a better team. But he seems almost wanting to make it a basketball game at times,

02:05 Ten Hag, where you attack, we attack, and actually, especially when he had Garnaccio, Rashford, Hoyland playing well,

02:11 they were attacking really well, so they were winning football matches because of that.

02:15 Scott McTominay popped up with a few goals as well, certainly his help,

02:18 but I just don't think that it's an approach that in the long term is going to succeed.

02:25 You know, you might win do or die matches, you might kind of have Roy the Ruvver's comeback,

02:31 but I don't think that's what you want to win a title. Look at Manchester City, that's not the way,

02:35 they absolutely control games, they can sometimes kill teams with a thousand passes,

02:40 and that's just not the way to approach it. I think that full-on defeat was really damaging for him,

02:47 actually, even though it comes on the back of five wins, I think it was really damaging.

02:52 As I've said, we're recording this before the Forest game, but if he loses to Forest,

02:55 loses in the Derby, I don't know. I might have a busy week next week, that's all I'll say.

03:02 (laughs)