Desperate Times: Liverpool and Manchester United at Old Trafford

Fuck the fucking fuckers (FFF).

The stench of desperation wafting from the dressing rooms at Old Trafford, two days before Manchester United hosts arch-rival Liverpool, is so strong that I can smell it from my house in Dallas, 4,600 miles away.

Let’s start with the home side, where the acute tang of desperation is underlaid with the miasma of old rot. The problems of Manchester United are both immediate and long-familiar. Another year, another manager, another tactical system, but the same old crisis. Manchester United have opened the season by losing against Brighton and Brentford — neither of which are among the elite in the Premier League. Manchester United currently sit dead last in the league table, having scored once and conceded six in those two losses. What I wrote last season about this team applies with even greater force now.

In short, United has had a bunch of managers in a short time frame. They have all employed different tactical approaches and have made costly transfer purchases based on their own needs, for their own systems. Now, United has a bloated wage bill filled with a hodge-podge of highly-talented players who do not fit together as a team, and are mostly very unhappy.

Erik ten Hag: the Latest To Be Thrown into the Smelly Manchester Swamp

New manager Erik ten Hag arrives at Old Trafford with an impressive resumé. In four and a half seasons at Ajax, he led the club to three titles in the Dutch Eredvisie, and brought a very young underdog team all the way to the Champions League semi-final against Spurs in 2019 (the season that Liverpool won the title). Only a miraculous 96th-minute second-leg goal by Lucas Moura prevented ten Hag’s Ajax from advancing to the Champions League Final.

After Ajax’s Champions League success in 2019, the superclub vultures swarmed for ten Hag’s young stars. Within two seasons, the core of that great 2018-19 team was gone — Hakim Ziyech left for Chelsea, Donny van de Beek to Manchester United, Matthijs de Ligt to Juventus, and Frenkie de Jong to Barcelona.

Ajax has long been a powerhouse in the Netherlands. But compared with the biggest clubs in England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France, Ajax have much less money and glamor with which to entice world stars.

But ten Hag and Ajax invested the incoming money paid for their departing players well, and the manager settled in with a new group quite quickly. In the 2019-20 season, the pandemic stopped league play in March. Unlike England’s Premier League, the Eredvisie never completed that season and no league title was awarded. However, Ajax were in first place when COVID hit. The following season, Ajax won both the league and the domestic cup titles, but did not advance out of the group stage of the Champions League. Last season, ten Hag departed Ajax with a third league title, and also advanced to the knockout stages in the Champions League. Ten Hag won 74% of his matches in his four-plus seasons at Ajax.

Tactically, ten Hag typically uses a 4-2-3-1 formation. Like Klopp, ten Hag directs his teams to press immediately after losing possession, and seeks to create scoring opportunities from this counter-pressing. In possession, ten Hag’s teams typically overload one side of the pitch, attempting either to exploit a man advantage on the flank or drawing the defense and switching play to the now-vacated spaces on the opposite side.

Without doubt, ten Hag is a good manager, and he may even be a great one. Given time and the right type of support, there’s no doubt that ten Hag could rebuild Manchester United into a Premier League power. BUT … Will he get that time? Will he get that support?

Recent evidence suggests that he will not.

From 1986 to 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson served as Manchester United’s manager for 26 seasons, and he won 13 Premier League titles and two Champions League trophies. This is the tenth season since Fergie’s departure, and ten Hag is United’s eighth manager. They have won no Premier League titles and have finished outside the Top Four five times, including last season.

Ten Hag is certainly not the first good manager to take over at United since Ferguson left. Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho both brought incredible managerial records to Old Trafford — between the two of them they had won 14 league titles in the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and England, and also had won three Champions League crowns. But with Manchester United, neither of these two European managerial legends could succeed. In fact, neither made it to the end of a third season.

Now, on the heels of losing 4-0 to Brentford, ten Hag finds himself in the middle of the same quagmire that has swamped every United manager since Fergie. The ghosts of past glory are everywhere, bringing with them the entitled expectations of fans and ownership. For their part, United’s owners have spent plenty of money — United pay more wages than any team in England. But the players being paid that money have not earned it and don’t deserve it — certainly not as a group.

As noted above, United’s players have been recruited by a bunch of different managers, who have all employed different tactical approaches. The team does not fit together, and many of United’s talented players long ago gave up being happy in a Red Devil shirt. After just one season back in Manchester, Cristiano Ronaldo wants out. Club captain Harry Maguire is not a good enough center back to start for any team that expects to finish in the Top Four in England. New midfielder Christian Eriksen literally came back from the dead to have a good season last year for Brentford, but is not a Top Four midfielder at this late stage of his career. And there are substantial questions whether ten Hag’s new center back signing, Ajax’s Lisandro Martinez, is tall enough to work in the Premier League at the highest level.

I could go on and on. Bruno Fernandes is extremely talented, but not much of a presser, which his manager desperately needs. Jadon Sancho would seem to be a good fit for ten Hag, but has yet to gain any momentum since returning to his home in England after tearing up the German Bundesliga with Dortmund.

Real Madrid’s Casemiro is the most recent superstar to arrive, and perhaps he will help. Or, more likely, he’ll become just as frustrated as his former teammate Raphael Varane and the rest of his new United teammates.

Without the type of players that ten Hag needs to make his system work, he is unlikely to win in the short term.

Meanwhile, the weight of expectations and the ghosts of past glory mean that it will be quite difficult for ten Hag to reach the long-term. It will not be easy for ten Hag to succeed where Mourinho and van Gaal failed.

From my perspective, I wish ten Hag nothing but the worst. Serves him right for choosing Manchester United

FFF.

God Knows Liverpool Also Need a Win

Unfortunately, the stink of desperation will also be rising from the visitor’s dressing room at Old Trafford.

It’s ridiculous that two games into the season, without losing either match, Liverpool are concerned that they are on the brink of dropping out of the title race. But, here we are. We live in the world of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City are ridiculous. If you want to win a title against this City team, you better not drop points very often. Having dropped points in both of their opening games, the harsh reality is that Liverpool have indeed put themselves behind the eight ball in the title race. Before the season started, fivethirtyeight.com’s algorithm said that Liverpool had a 30% chance of winning the Premier League. Now, as I write this on Saturday, August 20, the algorithm says LFC’s chances are down to 17%.

Liverpool do not want to spend this season fighting for a Top Four spot, or cruising to a distant second-place finish. Liverpool want another league title, and the Reds justifiably believe they are good enough to go get it. But if they fail to get a win Monday for the third straight game, those hopes will fade considerably. The title race could end before it ever began.

Injuries, a Suspension, and a Possible Shithead Continue to Be a Concern

Liverpool continue to have injury problems affecting the defense, midfield, and the forward line. Based on Klopp’s press conference on Friday, here’s the state of the squad:

Caoimhin Kelleher (Goalkeeper) – Out
Ibrahima Konate (Center Back) – Out
Joe Gomez (Center Back) – Back and “will start”
Joel Matip (Center Back) – Light training
Nat Phillips (Center Back) – Light training
Calvin Ramsay (Right Back) – Out
Thiago (Midfield) – Out
Jordan Henderson (Midfield) – Light training
Curtis Jones (Midfield) – Out but “getting closer”
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (Midfield) – Out
Roberto Firmino (Center Forward) – “He’s ready”
Kaide Gordon (Wide Forward) – Out
Diogo Jota (Wide/Center Forward) – Out but “getting closer”

Meanwhile, Darwin Núñez will sit out the first of three matches resulting from his butthead/head-butt moment of madness last week against Crystal Palace.

To make matters worse, rumors abound that Naby Keïta is unhappy and negotiations to extend his contract have been ended, at least for now. This scares me, given Keïta’s history when he’s unhappy. When Liverpool were trying to buy Keïta from RB Leipzig years ago, Leipzig were unwilling sellers. But Naby badly wanted the move, and he acted like a complete shit — including injuring a teammate on the training pitch — until he got what he wanted.

As I said last week, I’m a big Naby Keïta fan. I was quite surprised last week when Klopp did not include Naby in the starting lineup. I was even more shocked that Klopp failed to use Keïta as a substitute, despite needing goals in the second half against Palace to get three points. I fear that Keïta has been acting like a shit again, perhaps in an effort to force a transfer before the window ends this month. If so, Klopp will have little patience with him. If my fear is correct, then this essentially means we’re another man down, because Klopp is unlikely to play him. [Edit: Since I wrote this, Klopp has told the media that reports of Naby being unsettled are false, and he “looks really good” in training this week. If Klopp were pissed and freezing him out, he probably wouldn’t make such statements. Maybe the only thing that kept Naby out of the Crystal Palace match was that he had been ill and missed a bunch of training the week before.]

What Will Happen on Monday?

I’ve got to say, because both teams are so desperate, and because the crowd will be so intense, I fear that anything could happen in this match.

Even with Liverpool’s current personnel problems, LFC are a much, much better team. And, with ten Hag trying to teach his team a new set of tactics that includes a high-pressing approach, Man United’s tactics are likely to play exactly into Liverpool’s hands. Liverpool want their opponents to press. Most teams park the bus against them, so Liverpool crave seeing space behind the defense, the opportunity to beat a press and carve a team apart.

I have previously sneered at the cliché that you can “throw out the form book” (for us philistine Americans, this means “ignore the teams’ recent performances”) for a big rivalry match. However, in this particular match, I think the cliché might apply after all.

Liverpool have proven their mental toughness over several seasons. But pressure and a maniacal crowd can affect even a mentally strong team.

What’s more, since the back end of last season, Liverpool have now conceded the first goal in eight out of their last 10 matches across all competitions. If United continues that unfortunate trend, the pressure from the quickly-fading title chances and the volume of abuse from the Old Trafford faithful will mount considerably.

Liverpool’s results in the first two weeks have underwhelmed, and their performances have not been great either. Having said that, across the first two matches Liverpool accumulated a higher expected goals (xG) total than any team in the Premier League. Their expected goals allowed, however, stood at a worse-than-mediocre 13th best.

Liverpool’s balance has been out of whack, and injuries have contributed. It’s still unclear to me, however, why Liverpool were so ridiculously bad in the first hour of the opening match against Fulham, when nothing seemed to work.

I’m quite unsure who Liverpool will start in midfield on Monday, although the rest of the lineup seems pretty easy to guess. Based on the last match, we may see another Fabinho, Milner, Elliott midfield, although that group didn’t exactly excel last week. I’m hoping that Keïta is not buried on the bench, despite my speculation that he has earned exactly that spot. Perhaps Henderson will start, although I doubt it. I think the manager will try to protect him from aggravating whatever nagging injury he is currently nursing.

If we do see the Fabinho, Milner, and Elliott combination again, they need to find a way to press better as a group so that United cannot enjoy long spells of possession, as Palace did last week. Keïta would help fix that problem in a hurry, if he is permitted to play.

Here’s my guess at the LFC lineup [Edit: After I wrote this, it seems Jordan Henderson returned to full training on Saturday. This, combined with Klopp’s recent comments on Keïta — see my earlier edit — suggest to me that Monday’s midfield will most likely be Fabinho, Keïta, and Henderson].