Yahoo Sports ‘We are together’ – Ten Hag prepares for enormous week at Manchester United
Erik ten Hag has done an exclusive interview ahead of an enormous week for Manchester United.
After a slow start to the season, there has been non-stop speculation over the future of Ten Hag as manager, with reports suggesting Ruud van Nistelrooy may become interim manager until the end of the season.
Ten Hag explained that they will watch the game back from the weekend once, like they usually do, in an attempt to identify mistakes as well as offer solutions.
“It’s like a process as you always,” Ten Hag said, as quoted by Sky Sports. “You play a game and you review it and take the assessments out, you set your conclusions and you take it from there.”
Focusing on the 3-0 defeat to Tottenham, Ten Hag was asked what his view of the performance was after watching it again.
“It’s a bad performance and we have problems and I have to address the problems and to give the solutions to the team.”
The big job now with United on a winless streak of three matches is keeping the belief. There was optimism in the camp before the season started but that has gone now we are talking about managerial uncertainty just two months into the campaign.
“The most important is always keeping the belief. You stay in the game by keeping the belief. That’s the most important message that we have to give because if you lose your faith you lose everything.
“We have to keep going and stick to the plan and move on.”
United have two huge away games this week against FC Porto and Aston Villa. The October international break starts next week and we are guaranteed to be bombarded with more managerial speculation.
The Dutchman accepts that he is also at fault when United underperform, adding: “We are there together. When the players have a bad performance then I haven’t done my job great because they didn’t play as I expected them to do. We are there together and we have to fight together to get out of this.”
Ten Hag went into detail about United being in transition when asked how much time he needs to turn things around.
“For a long period, we are in transition at Manchester United. From the moment I came in, we knew we had to change. We had to replace some older players and bring new players in. Our choice was to bring young players in and you know that takes time to get the messages on board, to get a game model on board and to introduce a new culture that takes time.
“In the meantime, you have to win and I think we have proven in the last two years, and we win. And I’ve proven in my career that always I will win. The last six years I have eight trophies.
“We have to embed the game model, we have to embed a stronger team as we have now and so we have to work on our problems and give the solutions. We have a good potential on players so once it’s embedded we will go and we will drive, and I’m sure we will achieve the targets we have set for this season.”
The targets set by United is winning trophies and finishing as high as possible in the league.
Ten Hag confirmed that he believes everyone is aligned together in the squad.
“Yes, and we have seen this in this group there is a good spirit. Even after all the setbacks from yesterday [Sunday], they kept going. You see that spirit in this team and you see this is a team they want to fight for each other.
“Also you can see the fans and they are disappointed but they kept with us and they kept supporting us from the first moment until the last moment. We are in it together.”
Finally, asked whether he could be sacked if results don’t improve in the next two matches, Ten Hag concluded: “I’m not thinking about it, I’m not anxious. We are together.
“We created a togetherness in the summer with the ownership and the leadership.
“We made this agreement and we were all behind it. We also know the strategy [is to bring in] young players in a transition period.
“They also know in the end when we are May, in all my last six seasons, always there were trophies. That is what we are also now aiming for.”
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