On Wednesday night at Anfield, an under pressure Premier League manager lost a game 5-1 and managed to injure himself while urging his team on from the technical area. He then appeared in the post-match press conference on crutches. It’s a proper story, that.
Yet it wasn’t Julen Lopetegui and West Ham who were leading sports bulletins that night or featuring heavily on the back pages of the newspapers the next morning. No, those slots were reserved for Manchester United. Just as they were on the BBC football homepage, the talkSPORT website and the rest.
United had drawn a rather mundane Europa League tie with FC Twente 1-1 at Old Trafford. Not much had happened. There were no major incidents in the game. No managers on crutches. But United hadn’t won and when that happens the biggest football club in the land tends to find its way to the very top of the news agenda.
Sometimes it still surprises me and I have been at this a long time. But the noise around United is constant and sometimes it can be unfair and not particularly reflective of reality.
At the moment this is Erik ten Hag’s problem to deal with. It’s his turn to ride the Old Trafford carousel. It’s his turn to turn on the TV after each round of Premier League games to find a raft of ex-United players staring back, each with a rather immovable view of what they have just seen.
Erik ten Hag has come under criticism after Man United’s underwhelming draw with FC Twente
United’s failure to win means the club have again risen to the very top of the news agenda
The under pressure Julen Lopetegui saw his West Ham side lose 5-1 to Liverpool before he appeared in his post-match press conference on crutches, yet this wasn’t the main story
It can be very difficult to steer a course through it. Of the men who have followed Sir Alex Ferguson into the seat, perhaps only Ole Gunnar Solskjaer managed it. He wasn’t good enough, Solskjaer. But he had played for United. He knew how it worked. When it mattered – when the noise was at its loudest – he would say very little of consequence.
Ten Hag has not found this position yet. He has not mastered the art of vanilla. He tends to be reactive and at the start of the week he allowed himself to be drawn in to an argument with Sky’s Jamie Redknapp following the 0-0 draw at Crystal Palace.
United had played pretty well at Selhurst Park. They should have won the game. They attacked fluently and created chances. In fact they have generally recovered well from the 3-0 home defeat to Liverpool that came just before the international break.
But when Ten Hag decided to take issue with Redknapp’s assertion that Marcus Rashford had been dropped for reasons other than those connected with football, he rewrote everybody’s back page story for them. In an instant, any narrative about an improved United performance was smothered by noise of the kind Ten Hag just doesn’t need.
Ten Hag must learn to dampen the United fire and stop picking petty fights with the media
He let himself to be drawn into a row with Jamie Redknapp after benching Marcus Rashford
I happen to think Redknapp was wrong. I believe Rashford was rested, as his manager said, through squad rotation. Ten Hag is well within his rights to make that point and defend his corner.
But the 54-year-old also needs to ask himself whether it was a fight worth having. Because if you are combative as a United manager then you will spend your life with your gloves on and your hands up. It will come at you in waves, both through the traditional media but also on social channels such as Twitter and the rest. And you won’t win.
There is an idea largely perpetuated by members of the media who were never there that every one of Ferguson’s press conferences contained gold dust. It’s untrue.
Ferguson could be explosive, irascible and occasionally very funny but only when he needed to be. Many of Ferguson’s press briefings were very dull. He only engaged fully when he had good reason to. When, for example, he needed to needle an opponent, influence a crowd or a referee, or send a message to a player.
Ferguson used the media to his advantage. Ten Hag, by contrast, is allowing himself to be tossed around by it when what he needs more than anything is some peace and quiet to get on with proving that he is the right man for the job.
Sir Alex Ferguson was a master at using the media to his advantage when he was United boss
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, with his United background, is perhaps the only one to manage it since
I admire Ten Hag for some of the stances he has taken. With Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho, for example. He is a man of principle in an environment where it can be all too easy for your convictions to get a bit fluid. There are times – particularly when a manager’s authority is being questioned – when the right thing is to stand up squarely for what you believe in.
But Ten Hag doesn’t need arguments with Jamie Redknapp right now. He doesn’t need to be at the centre of the news cycle. The world will always talk about United and, yes, they will do so more than perhaps any other club in the country.
Sometimes that will feel unfair to Ten Hag and that’s because it is. However, it’s sometimes best to let that washing machine turn and churn on its own. You don’t need to put yourself in the middle of it. If you do, the chances are you will drown.
Should Arsenal be penalised for set piece tactics?
I couldn’t have enjoyed the game between Manchester City and Arsenal any more than I did. It was a truly life-affirming contest between two modern rivals who more often than not present us with the very best of our game.
However, Arsenal’s second goal and the chat around it did send me home scrambling for the rule book and this is what it says about the law of ‘obstruction’.
‘Obstruction is when a player unfairly uses their body to prevent an opponent from getting to the ball. A player can use their body to shield the ball from an opponent as long as the ball is within playing distance. Playing distance means that the player could touch the ball if they stretched their leg or jumped’.
Arsenal’s tactic of using three players to effectively form a semi-circle in front the opposition goalkeeper – in this case Ederson of City – to prevent him moving towards an aerial cross has been characterised as cleverness with the credit afforded the club’s set-piece coach Nicolas Jover.
But the above explanation of the law only serves to underline my instinct on this, namely that it’s foul play. The ball is nowhere near the three blockers as it soars towards them from a corner. This is when they first make their move towards Ederson who subsequently is prevented from doing his job.
Anywhere else on the field this would be called as a foul without hesitation or argument. So why not in the penalty area? Am I missing something?
Arsenal’s second goal on Sunday raised questions about whether Ederson was obstructed
Levy misses the point
At a Tottenham fans forum this week, chairman Daniel Levy named his three biggest achievements at the club as reaching a Champions League final, building a new stadium and having watched some amazing players. No mention, then, of the last trophy Tottenham success, the League Cup against Chelsea in 2008.
And this is one of the things about Levy. He dreams big but often overlooks the smaller things that matter to football fans, like cups and medals and big days out.
Levy, 62, is rightly proud of Tottenham’s stadium. It’s a fabulous example of where big ideas and plans can take you. But when he talks about the inconvenience of having to play in the two English domestic cups – as he also did at the same meeting – then he fundamentally overlooks what it is that his club’s supporters desperately and fundamentally care about.
They want a trophy, Daniel. And the Carabao Cup would do.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy often misses the point of what Spurs fans really want
City are also guilty of timewasting
One more mention of the City-Arsenal game.
City were narked at their opponents’ time wasting but last season at the Emirates their goalkeeper Ederson was booked for the same offence.
And it was in the first half….
