Erik ten Hag has insisted that his footballing vision for Manchester United combines the club’s identity and the qualities of his players along with Ajax’s passing philosophy.
The United manager had given an interview in his native Dutch this week in which he had seemed to suggest that he did not have the footballers to play like his former club Ajax.
But Ten Hag, whose team have lost eight of their 15 games this season and been accused of having an identity crisis and no style of play, has argued that was misinterpreted and that he is looking for a blend of both clubs.
He insisted: “The explanation from my point of view was totally wrong that I can’t play like Ajax because I have different players. I came here with my philosophy based on possession but also [I want] to combine it with the DNA of Manchester United and combine it with the competences and the characters of the players. We have seen what it was. We played very good football last season.”
Ten Hag is adamant his strategy is not to play long-ball football but to use the pace and height of his attacking players and the distribution of goalkeeper Andre Onana to beat the opposition’s press.
He explained: “We want to go more direct, but the explanation for my direct thought is I want to go for long balls. No, I don’t want Andre Onana to go for long balls. I want to play out from the back. But if an opponent is going in high press, it is a good option to go direct.
“But what I meant with directness is we want to press from different blocks and then go direct because we have the players like Rasmus Hojlund and Marcus Rashford and Antony and Bruno [Fernandes] and Scott McTominay who are very good at it and with the passing of Christian Eriksen, and then the full-backs joining in and that was my idea.”
Ten Hag and United travel to Fulham on Saturday lunchtime— (Getty Images)
With United out of form and beaten five times already this season at Old Trafford, Ten Hag believes the problem is not with his gameplan, but the way his injury-hit and much-changed team are implementing it.
He added: “The intention is clear but definitely it is the case that the execution isn’t there but at the moment we have so many changes every game, we can’t line up the same two or three games in a row and we have to swap.
“We have to win and I don’t want to find excuses if we are not winning. We have to be more pragmatic but still we have to win. That is the demand and I can’t walk away from that.”
