For the past two months, or so, it feels like the media have been trying to drag Manchester United into a title race. The only team in Europe to be still in with a chance of winning four competitions as Erik ten Hag leads the way in his first season as manager.
Football fans know how quickly it can all crumble before your eyes. The next week throws up some huge fixtures for the Reds and the manager is going to have to find ways to rotate his side over the next month.
Manchester United are currently five points behind new Premier League leaders Man City with 15 more matches to play this season.
We shouldn’t forget that United’s objective from the beginning was to get back into the top four and I must stress that I would be still very happy with that.
Arsenal, in second place, have not won since their 3-2 defeat of United on January 22 and have dropped eight points in their last three matches. Talk about imploding but we’ve seen it time and time again with Arsenal, so it’s not very surprising.
Ten Hag doesn’t want to get dragged into having conversations with reporters over a title and I think he has made that clear since the day they started pestering him with questions about it. It’s still way too early and Arsenal, who were blowing their trumpet for weeks, look silly because they were never going to go all the way in the league this season.
In turn, Ten Hag has told journalists to sit tight until April – to see what position United hold in the Premier League – before jumping the gun with any title talk. There’s too much football to be played between now and then to give a premature prediction and City can win enough games to get across the line.
“We don’t think so far about this,” Ten Hag said of the title race chatter, as per Manchester Evening News. “What we have to do is put us in April in the right position. So our thinking can always be on the next game, always have to be better than the previous game and think about game from game with the energy and focus.
“We have to win on Sunday, we have to collect three points against Leicester and that demands a lot of energy and demands high standards.”
As I also said when we Employed Erik, do not expect us to win things straight away, yes the pleasure is back watching Utd, and there is excitement that we are still up for 4 trophies, but hey guys it’s s work in progress, they are not the finished article yet. I said in August I’d be happy with 4th place and good cup runs, we are on track with that right now, and if we end the year like that I’ll be happy, if we throw In a cup or two, then that’ll be over achieving, which isn’t a bad thing. So just remembe where we were and how far we still need to go.