It was about as close as an FA Cup-winning manager came to a mic drop.
In a room of journalists who had spent the past few days reporting on his bosses’ plan to replace him, a bruised, embattled but combative Erik ten Hag defended his record as Manchester United manager.
“Two trophies in two years is not bad,” he said. “Three finals in two years is not bad. If they don’t want me, I’ll go somewhere else and win trophies because that’s what I do.”
It was a good sentence, worth repeating, and he did so. After Ten Hag’s contract was extended and his future settled, he sat down with MUTV in July and reiterated his ‘two trophies’ point.
He said it again a few days later in Trondheim, after United’s first pre-season friendly, adding: “Apart from (Manchester) City, that’s more than any other club in English football.”
He repeated it again after the friendly against Rangers in Edinburgh.
Then on tour again through the United States.
That was just the preseason. Since the start of the campaign proper, Ten Hag has referred to his two domestic cup wins in six conversations with journalists during pre- and post-match press conferences, not to mention interviews with broadcasters.
The latest instance, after Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Liverpool, occurred during a tense exchange with a journalist who had invited Ten Hag to name the ‘mistakes’ his team was accused of. After the journalist had listed a long list of repeated mistakes, Ten Hag withdrew to his old faithful.
“I have a different view. “I think we have won the most trophies in English football after City,” he said. “I’m sorry for you.”
He’s right, of course. It’s as true now as it was at Wembley. But three games into a new season, an argument he used to neatly quash his critics in May is fast becoming a crutch to fall back on.
On Friday, having just reiterated his favorite point, Ten Hag added: “There is only one thing in football and that is at the end of the season whether you win prizes, trophies or not.” But as others have noted, that view is in stark contrast to that of his predecessor Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
“Any cup competition can bring you a trophy, but sometimes it’s more of an ego thing for other managers and clubs to finally win something,” Solskjaer said in March 2021.
“It’s not like a trophy says, ‘We’re back.’ It’s the gradual progression of being in and around the top of the league and the consistency and the odd trophies. Sometimes a cup match can disguise the fact that you are still having a bit of a hard time.”
Solskjaer’s words are those of a manager who had the opposite problem as Ten Hag. Under the Norwegian, United’s rankings improved steadily – from sixth to third to second place – but the trophy cabinet was bare.
Solskjaer defended his record by claiming the league is a real barometer of progress, just as Ten Hag defends his record by pointing to the silverware. Opinions will differ as to which view is correct.
Ten Hag with his other trophy, the Carabao Cup (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
As crucial as it was for Solskjaer’s United to qualify for the Champions League on the final weekend of the 2019/20 season, do you remember who they beat that day? Do you remember the score? Perhaps, but that 2-0 win behind closed doors at Leicester City is certainly not a result that will echo through the ages.
In the same way, memories aren’t made by coming second in the competition. Solskjaer’s side finished 12 points behind champions Manchester City the year they finished second in 2021, having not topped the table since late January.
The only trophy United came close to winning that year was the Europa League. Solskjaer said before the final in Gdansk that silverware sometimes “hides other facts”. But after United lost to Villarreal in a penalty shootout, he admitted he could not consider the season a success after failing to deliver silverware.
Ask some who have known the inner workings of Old Trafford over the years and they will say that you cannot survive as a United manager without winning trophies. Solskjaer’s time in charge is perhaps proof of that, while Ten Hag’s proves the opposite: deliver a trophy plus the best day of United’s post-Sir Alex Ferguson era and you can survive anything, even the worst Premier League finish ever.
There was of course also the 4-3 win over Liverpool in the quarter-final – one of the best games and atmosphere at Old Trafford this century. Add to that the Carabao Cup victory and the past two years have provided fans with indelible memories, highs offsetting the lows.
But Solskjaer’s vision is much closer to how performances are coldly judged at elite levels in modern football. A league campaign of 38 home and away games is undeniably a better gauge of a side’s quality, and usually the gateway to lucrative Champions League qualification, which impacts budgets in a way the FA Cup cannot.
United may be the second most successful side in English football over the past two years, as Ten Hag points out, but no one would honestly argue that they have been the second best team.
Nor would anyone suggest that United are closer to challenging City for major honors than Arsenal, despite the fact that Mikel Arteta has only added a Community Shield to his list of honors since Ten Hag’s appointment.
That’s the reality. In a quieter moment, away from the adversarial nature and battles of a press conference, even Ten Hag would agree that trophies are not enough. You need both pots and points.
United’s decade-plus of underperformance will only end when the club regularly competes for Premier League titles and reaches the final stages of the Champions League again.
There were mitigating factors last season – injuries, off-the-field turmoil, takeover uncertainty, the absence of an established left-back – but United were below par in the competitions that matter most.
That is why, despite domestic cup success, their manager is under pressure to prove that progress has and can still be made, and why he will only be able to point to his two trophies for so long. If he weren’t staring into a room of journalists and television cameras, even Ten Hag would accept that.
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(Top photo: Erik ten Hag with the FA Cup; by Alex Pantling via Getty Images)