Manchester United were truly awful against Spurs - this is why it simply isn't working for Erik ten Hag

Manchester United fans have endured plenty of dismal performances since the heady days of Sir Alex Ferguson, but few worse than the one they witnessed on Sunday against Tottenham Hotspur. It was a 3-0 battering, and they could easily have conceded more goals. Erik ten Hag’s side were eviscerated – outplayed, outfought and outmanoeuvred consistently from first whistle to last. But why was it so bad, and can it be fixed?

There is a question, of course, over how long United’s Dutch head coach will be given to fix it. That may be someone else’s job soon, and the sight of Spurs running rings around the home side at Old Trafford in front of banks of empty red seats in the closing minutes does not lend the impression that patience is merited. Still, Ten Hag was handed a new contract just a few months ago following a much-trumpeted internal review, and Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his deputies may feel compelled to give him a longer leash than other managers may have been given.

Ten Hag does not necessarily deserve it. He has made many slight tweaks to the specifics of his tactical set-up over the opening weeks of the season – the exact formation of the front line and midfield has been shunted about, the pressing triggers have changed, and so on – but the fundamental issues at the heart of his system remain.

A team of two halves with little to connect them

One of the more damning indictments of United’s showing on Sunday was that they seemed to be outnumbered and overwhelmed almost everywhere on the pitch. No matter where the ball was, Spurs had an extra man and space to make use of him. Positionally, United were a disaster.

This started to become a problem last season. Ten Hag has always played with a relatively deep defensive line at United, including during his successful first season when he won the EFL Cup and made the top four – but what has changed is the gap allowed between defence and attack, with the forward line pushed upfield and asked to stay there. The result has been isolation between defence and attack.

When United gain possession in defence, they almost invariably have six men back and four forward, two distinct units with Bruno Fernandes the only occasional link between the two. The attackers stay high out of possession, which means that there is little tracking back, while the full-backs and midfielders are often set so deep that they can’t support the counter-attack when it can be sprung. As a result, teams who do have players moving between the phases (which is most of them and certainly true of Spurs) are able to have more players than United most of the time at both ends of the pitch.

That gulf between the deep defensive line and the high attacking one also forces United’s playmakers to make low percentage plays when they win the ball in their own half – long passes to Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho, for instance, or lengthy dribbles which risk multiple attempts at a tackle. In Kobbie Mainoo, they have a fine passer and a very strong ball-carrier, but he is the only player typically found in deeper positions with the range to make things happen.

Typically teams hoping to start deep and play quick counters will have fast, aggressive full-backs adding pace and width to the attack and giving the midfielders options at a shorter distance, but that’s seldom seen with United’s current squad. Nouassir Mazraoui has helped in that regard, but he hasn’t turned the dial on his own.

In any case, Mazraoui spent much of the first half bottled up or being sent one way and then the other by Destiny Udogie, before the Italian was mercifully substituted due to a knock. Ten Hag’s full-backs not only sit much deeper than many teams’ but also play quite narrow. With the forwards not tracking back and plenty of space on the flanks, Spurs were persistently given space to run the ball quickly into crossing positions with minimal pressure, and that same space between Mainoo and Ugarte and the forwards in central areas allowed Micky van de Ven all the time he needed to burst forward at full tilt and be able to take players on to brilliantly tee up Brennan Johnson’s opener.

Ten Hag said after the game that it was “not possible” that a defender should be allowed to run so far unchallenged, but it was the space afforded by his system that made it possible. Had Van de Ven been under more pressure in the first phase of his sally forward, he may not have been able to generate the pace to burst through the lines so easily. And had the forwards been coming back to help the midfield and full-backs out more often, then they may have been able to make far better use of the ball when Spurs’ attacks did come to nothing. Instead, their attacking output largely consisted of hopeful long passes in the direction of Garnacho. To put their lack of attacking output in context, Dejan Kulusevski has now created more chances at Old Trafford this season than any United player – by four.

Ten Hag’s logic in using a comparatively low block in defence is sound. His defence lacks the speed to cover quick balls over the top and perhaps the technical ability to play around a well-organised high press consistently. But it’s notable that United are at their best on the occasions when they are able to push up and pin the opposition back for periods, joining the dots and making the passes shorter and easier while still using the dynamism of their attacking players – as they did for a brief spell just after going 2-0 down on Sunday. Whether it’s better to bring the forwards back more or gamble and push the defender further upfield, something has to change.

Individual errors and struggling signings

One of the primary reasons that Ten Hag was given a new two-year deal by Ineos over the summer was pressure from the fans, who largely pinned the blame for a disappointing league performance – their eighth-place finish was their worst since the formation of the Premier League – on the players, many of which appeared to be struggling for form or making little effort. Keeping the Dutchman was the popular choice, especially after he got his tactics right against Manchester City in the FA Cup final.

It's certainly true that individual errors are a part of the puzzle, and placing the entirety of the blame on the system would be unfair – although some of the mistakes seem much like lapses of discipline (Lisandro Martínez getting drawn out of position repeatedly, for instance) which should still fall under the purview of the manager.

United seem to have had many players well off form in the past two seasons. Rashford has been the most noticeable, but there was Jadon Sancho too, who struggled to put anything together and fell out with Ten Hag, refusing to apologise for whatever had happened between the two and being exiled to the reserves as a result. Casemiro fell off a cliff after an exceptional start. Mason Mount, admittedly hobbled by persistent injuries, has been underwhelming. And so on, and so forth.

When so many players seem to be enduring worrying dips at the same time, however, the root cause can only realistically be narrowed down to a problematic dressing room or poor individual man management by the head coach. It’s impossible to discern which might be the case from the outside, but it’s hard not to notice the suddenly improved form of Jadon Sancho as soon as he left for Chelsea. The winger already has three assists in three games for the Blues – as many as he managed in any single league season at Old Trafford.

Ten Hag’s signings have often made little sense, either. The disastrous deal to bring Antony in for a fee rising to £83.5m is on the manager, as was the call to sign Mount for up to £60m, a player who excels in tight areas around the penalty area but was shoehorned in as a much deeper midfielder and failed to flourish against type.

With Ineos now in charge of sporting affairs at United, it’s trickier to know how much influence Ten Hag had with this summer’s transfer business, but there are head-scratching decisions there, too. If a new number nine was required, why sign Joshua Zirkzee, a player who has all the physical attributes of a traditional centre-forward but who actually played in a much deeper role at Bologna? If the ability to handle opposing counter-attacks was a key defensive concern and quick forward passing is the attacking plan, why go for Matthijs de Ligt, who struggles with vertical passing and lost his place at Bayern Munich after being criticised by Thomas Tuchel for that very reason – and who was clocked as the Bavarian club’s slowest defender last season?

There is not only a visible disconnect between defence and attack on the pitch, but also a disconnect between Ten Hag’s tactical scheme and the players being signed to match it. Some of the blame should be placed at the door of Ineos, who at a minimum signed off on the transfer deals made this summer and may well have been the driving force behind them. But Ten Hag’s own judgement of his personnel appears questionable.

Only Ineos know the extent of their remaining patience with Ten Hag, although they have not typically been patient with head coaches at OGC Nice or Lausanne, the two continental clubs in which they have a controlling interest. And only Ten Hag himself knows whether he has a Plan B, or will instead prove to be bloody-minded and stick to his current, failing methods.

The latter seems concerningly likely, however, because the structural issues at the heart of United’s play are far from new, and it’s telling that so many of their best moments and results against other big-name teams tend to come in games which break down into chaos, when tactical schemes are thrown out of the window and the quality of the individual player becomes paramount. United have plenty of quality – but Ten Hag isn’t finding a way to use it.