The £350m reason why Man Utd boss Erik ten Hag's post-Liverpool defeat excuses are wearing thin

It is, believe it or not, 18 long months since Liverpool eviscerated Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United 7-0 at Anfield after one of the most dominant second-half displays in Premier League history – a game which demonstrated a colossal gulf in class between two clubs who should, in theory, have been evenly matched. That’s 18 months for Ten Hag to learn, adapt, to build his squad to his requirements, and to narrow the gap. Based on Sunday’s 3-0 defeat at Old Trafford, he has failed completely.

United may have conceded four goals fewer this time but the flow of the game was scarcely any different. Liverpool were faster, sharper, better organised and beat United in every last department. This was a moral thrashing as well as a comfortable victory on the scoresheet, and that 18-month old gap hasn’t closed in the slightest despite three transfer windows and £350m worth of investment in players. That spending – almost double the amount spent by Liverpool in the same timeframe – is partly why Ten Hag’s post-match excuses wore a little thin.

“For three players it was their first start of the season… Manuel Ugarte did not play one minute, he needs to build his fitness. Then we have to build him into the team. I am sure he will contribute,” he said. “It will take a couple of weeks, maybe even a month. That is the same for a lot of players… It is the third game of the season. I have had to explain this so many times. We have to build a new team.”

The claim that he has new signings that need bedding in and that it’s unreasonable to expect his team to be up to speed may sound sensible enough on paper, but ignores the fact that it’s equally true for every other team who have made significant changes this summer. Liverpool have a new manager, but have won their first three games without conceding. Manchester United haven’t started slowly. They have continued to be as bad as they were last season.

Much of the analysis has focused on individual errors, particularly those of Casemiro, who was justifiably hooked at half-time and who may well soon be replaced by the younger, likely superior Ugarte. But even when United’s players weren’t making mistakes, the structure of the team was lacking. As was the case for almost the entirety of last season, which ended with the club’s worst ever Premier League finish, the midfield was strung out all over the pitch, the forwards either isolated or forced to drop too deep to link up, the full-backs were either too high to defend effectively or too deep to support the attack, and nobody was covering the right areas when the ball was coming back at them, which was often.

Take Luis Díaz’s opening goal. Yes, Casemiro’s pass was poor and created a five-on-three counter-attack which would have resulted in a goal against better teams too, but that doesn’t excuse all three players United had back running to the near post at the same time, leaving both Díaz and Dominik Szoboszlai completely free at the back stick.

Nor does it answer the question of why Casemiro’s passing option was into Kobbie Mainoo, who had two white shirts right on top of him. Had the pass been accurate, he would have been under pressure quickly in a potentially low-percentage situation. Liverpool strangled their hosts in midfield, almost always having two players to United’s one, but Ten Hag never seemed to react by looking for different passing patterns or bringing players into the centre of the park from other areas to even things up. The team was set up to fail.

Furthermore, if Ten Hag wants to lean on his having an under-prepared side with too many players unable to contribute at full effectiveness as his crutch, then the rejoinder has to be – whose fault is that? Ten Hag has had two years to put a side together, and prior to this summer had considerable influence over signings. Antony was his man, as was Mason Mount and most of the others who have come through the door at Old Trafford and underperformed. If the players he has at his disposal aren’t good enough, then shouldn’t he be the one to take the blame, at least in part?

The United fans who believe in Ten Hag – and there are considerably more than most ‘outsiders’ might expect, especially after he got his tactics right against Manchester City to win the FA Cup back in May – may also point to bad luck, and it’s true that Ten Hag has to deal with an astonishing number of injuries since the start of last season, including to summer signing Leny Yoro.

That hasn’t helped but given how often their players get injured, how often those injuries seem to recur, and how often players return to the line-up some time later than was initially forecast, you have to wonder if there are problems within the medical team, or with the players’ workloads and the way they are being rehabilitated after fitness problems. That wouldn’t be Ten Hag’s fault directly, by any means, but it would be interesting to know if Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s root and branch review asked those questions. Certainly, he looked like a man with a few pressing questions on his mind when he was pictured burying his head in his hands as he looked on from the posh seats on Sunday.

Meanwhile, over in the other dugout, Arne Slot has gotten on with his job largely by changing nothing that didn’t need to be changed and as a result has put his team into a brilliant early-season position, at least so long as you pretend the looming contractual issues they have with Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold aren’t there. That potential source of anxiety aside, the Dutchman has simply continued doing much the same thing that Jürgen Klopp did, and is getting much the same results, such as thumping a poorly-organised Manchester United side. He has had less time to prepare his team than Ten Hag but has immediately produced a much more coherent team.

It remains a mild surprise that Ten Hag kept his job after Ratcliffe made such a loud song and dance about his internal review, but the FA Cup win bought him some grace. That day, he got it right, but figuring out how to beat Manchester City hasn’t yet translated to figuring out how to get good results against Brighton & Hove Albion or Liverpool. This United side are too disorganised and too open to be this much slower than sides like that, and that hasn’t changed in 18 mostly painful months.