Erik ten Hag has been urged to be ruthless when it comes to sanctioning outgoings at Manchester United.
The unwanted records just keep tallying up for the Reds this season; their 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth marked the Cherries’ first-ever win at Old Trafford, a fifth loss out of United’s opening 10 matches on home turf and a seventh loss in the opening 16 Premier League games.
Tomorrow could see United exit the Champions League at the group stage should they fail to overturn Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, who boast a 39-game unbeaten streak in this phase of the competition. Even with a win, the Reds’ fate is out of their hands and they’ll be relying on Galatasaray and Copenhagen’s clash ending in a draw.
Crooks weighs in on United’s woes
When no members of Ten Hag’s squad were – understandably – included in BBC’s Team of the Week, Garth Crooks had his say on the currently-in-disarray club.
“This was a classic case of United’s players not taking Bournemouth seriously and thinking they were pushovers, having beaten Chelsea in midweek. They have now put themselves back under enormous pressure with this result and they only have themselves to blame,” Crooks explained in his Team of the Week column.
“There are players who shouldn’t even be there and if boss Erik ten Hag intends to stay at the club he needs to do something about that very quickly. Their problems are less to do with Ten Hag and more to do with their poor attitude and application in recent games.”
Again, I say there’s no point qualifying for the next stage of the Champions’ League. We’ll just get beaten by our first opponents; probably embarrassingly so.
As for being ruthless with outgoings: absolutely! But who’s going to buy the players we don’t want? Ain’t gonna be a big queue forming as we found out in the summer.
Only chance here is take a make-us-an-offer stance, and accept – even if it’s half. Take the loss, it’s completely pointless paying the wages of players who shouldn’t be there.