Erik Ten Hag has been sacked as coach of Manchester United.
The Dutchman was informed on Monday morning and has left Old Trafford after two-and-a-half years in charge, with his final game being the Premier League defeat to West Ham United on Sunday.
The result left the club in 14th place in the table, seven points off the Champions League qualifying places, after just three league wins from nine matches and just four in 14 in all competitions.
The club is now working on the next steps with former striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, who has been appointed in the offseason to work alongside Ten Hag, after being asked to take charge on an interim basis with the rest of the management staff remaining in their positions for the time being.
A statement issued later on Monday confirmed the news and said: “Erik ten Hag has left his position as first-team manager of Manchester United.
Eric was appointed in April 2022 and has led the club to two domestic titles, winning the Carabao Cup in 2023 and the FA Cup in 2024.
He added: “We are grateful to Eric for everything he did during his time with us and wish him well for the future.”
Ten Hag was retained as United’s manager in the summer following an end-of-season review following an eighth-place finish in the Premier League, the club’s lowest since 1990, and an FA Cup final victory over rivals Manchester City.
United exercised the option of a one-year extension on the 54-year-old’s contract at the beginning of July. His previous contract, which he signed upon his appointment in 2022, was scheduled to expire in 2025.
However, another extremely disappointing run to start the new season has prompted key decision-makers, including chief executive Omar Berrada, sporting director Dan Ashworth and technical director Jason Wilcox, to recommend a change.
United keep Ten Hag in place after winning the FA Cup (Michael Regan – FA/FA via Getty Images)
The Athletic revealed during the international break that United were scheduled to meet in London, while also reporting that Ten Hag’s performance as manager and possible departure would be discussed at the meeting.
In Ten Hag’s first season with United, he guided them to third place and oversaw their victory in the Carabao Cup, ending a six-year run without a trophy.
However, last year, United struggled domestically and in Europe, suffering a group stage exit from the Champions League, and only qualified for the Europa League this season by winning the FA Cup.
United had looked for potential replacements including current England coach Thomas Tuchel, newly appointed USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino, former Brighton & Hove Albion coach Roberto De Zerbe, Brentford coach Thomas Frank and Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna.
But at the end of the process led by co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS sporting director Sir Dave Brailsford, the decision was made to move forward with Ten Hag.
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United were active in the summer transfer window, signing Matthijs de Ligt, Lenny Euro, Joshua Zirkzee, Manuel Ugarte and Noussair Mazraoui for a total outlay of around £205 million ($274 million), including add-ons.
After the transfer window ended and just hours before Liverpool’s defeat, Berrada said that Ten Hag had the “full support” of the club’s hierarchy.
Ten Hag previously coached Ajax for four-and-a-half years before taking over at United in 2022. He also coached fellow Dutch team Go Ahead Eagles and Utrecht, both of whom coached Bayern Munich’s reserve team for two years. .
United will next play against Leicester City in the League Cup at Old Trafford on Wednesday.
“United’s patience has finally run out.”
Analysis from Manchester United correspondent Mark Critchley
For United’s key decision-makers, finally parting ways with Ten Hag after a narrow defeat in very controversial circumstances may have come as a surprise to some.
However, with his team sitting 14th in the table, having won just four of their 14 matches in all competitions this season, others may be wondering what it means to wait any longer? Increasingly, keeping Ten Hag around was delaying the inevitable.
Despite a summer of change above and around him, as well as spending more than £200m on the squad, neither results nor performance have improved significantly since last season.
Ten Hag clung to the argument that two trophies in two seasons represented progress, but few bought into it as results stagnated, and unless there was significant improvement, his bosses’ patience was always likely to wear thin as well.
The decision represents a reversal for the INEOS-led hierarchy, which backed Ten Hag when he extended his one-year contract over the summer, a month after the impressive FA Cup final win over Manchester City at Wembley.
It will now fall to the newly created football structure – led by CEO Omar Berrada and sporting director Dan Ashworth – to choose Ten Hag’s successor in a bid to save the season.
How bad is it?
Analysis by Mark Curry
Without even looking at recent performances on the pitch, a zoomed-in view of United’s results indicates just how badly their stock has fallen among Europe’s elite.
Using data from ClubElo – a measure of a team’s strength that assigns points to each result, weighted by the quality of the opposition they face – we can track United’s rating over the past decade and beyond.
Peaks and troughs are typical for any team, but the graphic below highlights how United’s dominance has declined. After a notable decline following Ferguson’s retirement in the summer of 2013, fortunes have improved under Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
However, there has been little reason for optimism since Ten Hag’s arrival when United’s ClubElo rating reached an all-time low in the post-Ferguson era. There have been some green shoots of recovery at times, but hardly enough to stick with long term.
Comparisons with the glory days are inevitable, but it’s only when you plot United’s production over time that the scale of the problems becomes abundantly clear.
(Top image: James Gill – Dinehouse/Getty Images)
