ERIK THE UNREADY?
Are you ready for the new Premier League season? Because Manchester United aren’t! In a mature, realistic observation that has already been disingenuously twisted by shameless emoji-wielding wrong’uns, Erik ten Hag said his team may not come roaring out of the blocks when they play Fulham tonight. “We had the USA tour squad, then we added the players who did the Euros and Copa América, and now new signings,” he said. “Now we have to make a team from it. That team is not ready, but the league starts – and there are more managers to deal with this problem. We can’t run away from it, so we have to deal with it.”
The last time United played Fulham on the opening weekend, in 2006, they routed them 5-1 and kept sprinting until they had taken the title off José Mourinho’s Chelsea. There’s no chance of that happening this year, and not only because José is now raising stress levels in Istanbul rather than London. That said, United will hope this is the start of a new era in which experienced suits make dispassionate decisions and don’t just allow the manager to buy a load of Eredivisie alumni. Wait, hang on. In fairness, Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui have the potential to be very good signings. Most of United’s best XI are 26 and under, so there is clear medium-term potential. But that won’t save Ten Hag if, like last season, opposition players are able to gambol through a chasm in the centre of the field.
United’s rousing win over Manchester City in the FA Cup final probably kept Ten Hag in a job, and it’s understandable that he’s playing the trophy card. “With the two trophies [in his first two seasons] we won more than any other club, apart from City, in England,” he said, and you know full well he’d have been claiming the Community Shield as well had Jonny Evans not popped one into outer space. “We are confident, we have a good team, we have a good squad. We have to be more consistent and we want to win every competition in which we are taking part, definitely also the Premier League.” The next few weeks will tell us whether United have improved, or whether such optimistic talk is the equivalent of a band proudly announcing that their new album is a return to form, only to inflict an absolute clunker on a devastated fanbase. Ready or not, Ten Hag needs a decent start.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I grew up in foster care from the age of six or seven, right up until 18. It gives you life lessons early on. It moulded me into who I am now and what I stand for. I wouldn’t change anything that happened in my childhood because I wouldn’t be sat here as a professional footballer today without it” – Newcastle’s Lloyd Kelly talks to Louise Taylor about his upbringing and advocating for more people to foster children.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
“If Spurs players are now going to be suspended for a ‘severe lack of judgment’ then they’re going to need a squad as big as Chelsea’s” – Noble Francis.
“Bruce Ellis [Thursday’s letters] has clearly spent too much time in the flamin’ Aussie sun! Ice cold milk in nursery school? In 1947? I recall said milk being tepid if not parboiled in summer; possibly ice cold in winter, once you had carved a path through ice and snow to the school gates” – Neil Thomson [and others].
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