How Liverpool RUINED Ten Hag and Manchester United

“If they don’t want me anymore then I will go somewhere else to win trophies, because that is what I have done my whole career," said Erik Ten Hag after winning the FA Cup with Manchester United back in May.

Well now he will get that chance, because this morning he was sacked by Manchester United.

The sacking came as no real surprise. Manchester United sit 14th in the Premier League. Only Crystal Palace and Southampton have scored fewer goals than them this season. They lost in the last minute again yesterday to West Ham. The wheels have come off.

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And yet the decision was made last summer to keep Ten Hag in his post as a direct consequence of Manchester United winning the FA Cup - a trophy diminished in stature and increasingly lacking relevance. It figures.

That FA Cup run last season involved a 4-3 victory over Liverpool in the quarter-final that Old Trafford celebrated like they had just won the league.

Just last week Kostas Tsimikas said that this game 'destroyed everything' in Jurgen Klopp’s final season, with the team not being the same after.

The game itself involved an 87th-minute equaliser and a 120th-minute winner that, on any other day, could have bounced off the post. This essential bit of luck over Klopp’s seismic Liverpool side ensured that Ten Hag was given more time despite his team showing no real improvement.

They then squeaked past Championship side Coventry City on penalties in the semi-final, only reaching spot kicks because Coventry had a winner disallowed with winger Haji Wright’s big toe being judged offside.

Some calamitous defending in the final handed them the win over Manchester City. And you can say that it doesn’t matter how you win, but the incredibly fortuitous nature of Ten Hag’s victories - starting with the win over Liverpool - has led directly to this point.

Liverpool created Manchester United's woes

This came despite the fact that he walked away from his first visit to Anfield as a 7-0 loser - the largest defeat Manchester United have ever suffered to the Reds. He was outclassed by a better coach and a better team that day and it was brushed off as a new manager bedding in to a team that he hadn’t put together.

So his FA Cup victory afforded him one more summer. It afforded him another war chest and a chance to finally create the team that he envisioned.

What did he do with it? Spent somewhere in the region of £185m on a rumoured-to-be-loaned-out Joshua Zirkzee, a chronically injured Matthijs de Ligt, an already-injured Leny Yoro, a feckless Manuel Ugarte and Noussair Mazraoui, a full-back he deployed in attacking midfield last week.

And then an immediate 3-0 loss at home to Liverpool.

This is in addition to Mason Mount, Casemiro and Antony, among others.

Manchester United are still, as they have been for a decade, in a calamitous situation of their own making. They had the opportunity to sack Ten Hag in the summer and chose not to.

And whilst we would never enjoy a Liverpool victory, at least something good came out of that quarter-final loss; the further capitulation of Man Utd and their floundering manager.

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