He came. He saw. And then he left again. Ralf Rangnick has finished at Manchester United – and not just as a coach. On Sunday, it became clear that he will not be an external adviser for the next two years anyway. He now takes over the national team to Austria, and with that is a sad chapter over. Nothing about this appointment has made sense. Rangnick has been the interim coach who himself said he was not an interim coach. Instead of gaining full power as director, as he wanted, he was pushed to the sidelines as a “consultant.” The results have been as gray and uninspiring as Rangnick himself. His greatest strength has been to tell us everything that is wrong in the club. Now that he should help fix it, he has said goodbye. Not like Solskjær And with that, he leaves behind a season where United have taken 58 points, the club’s lowest sum since the Premier League started in 1992. The team came in sixth place and was eliminated from the FA Cup against Middlesbrough. Over 38 league games, the goal difference was 0. Only four teams in the world make more money than Manchester United. IN CRISIS: Manchester United have not won the Premier League since Sir Alex Ferguson resigned in 2013. Photo: Ian Walton / AP The list was low for Rangnick. He took over a crisis-stricken team that had limped out of the starting blocks, and things could hardly get worse. However, they have not gotten much better either. Say what you will about Ole Gunnar Solskjær, but when he took on the same role three years earlier, he at least gave the team a boost. New coaches are meant to have an immediate effect, and Solskjær took eight victories in a row. Under Rangnick, the team has remained much the same as before. Even with a gift package of a term list at the start, he won 11 of 29 matches in all tournaments. At the start of the season, Solskjær took 1.4 points per league match. Rangnick finished at 1.6. Gave up Plan A We never saw any of the tactical revolution. Rangnick was described as the “godfather” of modern German football, a guru who refined the country’s style of play with 4-4-2, zone marking and high pressure. But that was in the 90s. These principles are well known now, and Rangnick has not been able to apply them anyway. He started by asking the team to push hard. That plan lasted for a few games, before Rangnick gave up. He often talked about the team lacking the “physique” to push hard over time. Towards the end, he admitted that they did not have strikers who could play like that, and aimed especially at Cristiano Ronaldo. This was true enough. But Rangnick knew Ronaldo was like that before he took the job. He had time to find out that the team could not push hard. Why then take over a team that you know can not play your type of football? FAIL: Cristiano Ronaldo scored many goals, but the club still failed to qualify for the Champions League. Photo: LINDSEY PARNABY / AFP When Plan A failed, Rangnick also failed to find a good Plan B. Over the same period, Antonio Conte, whom United declined this winter, transformed Tottenham both physically, tactically and mentally. This does not mean that Conte would necessarily have looked after United, but he has shown them what a modern top coach looks like. Conte had just won Serie A with Inter. Rangnick came straight from a director role in Lokomotiv Moscow. What we have seen in the last six months has explained why. Internal dissatisfaction Nor has the culture in the stable improved under Rangnick. The effort has been weak, and especially the collapse away against Liverpool was humiliating. Reports of dissatisfaction with Rangnick’s assistant, the American Chris Armas, have leaked from the locker room, which the stable has compared to the fictional joke coach Ted Lasso. The players must have disliked the training sessions. Stopper Eric Bailly wrote “please” during an Instagram post that said he and Raphaël Varane should start in defense, with Maguire on the bench. This is unthinkable in teams like Liverpool and Manchester City. Rangnick has agreed that such things are unheard of. But he has never been able to do anything about it. Needs surgery In fact, Rangnick’s foremost role has been as a sort of investigator who has reported what he has seen at Old Trafford. He has been asked what is wrong, and has answered honestly. – This club needs an open heart operation, he said towards the end. So bad it is on the inside. HONEST: Ralf Rangnick was clear several times that United have problems. Photo: JOHN SIBLEY / Reuters In this sense, it is possible to feel sorry for Rangnick. He has taken a lot of the slap for a team that reflects how dysfunctional the club as a whole is. He has not been allowed to do what he does best. Rangnick specializes in restructuring clubs. If United did not want such a guy, they should never have contacted him. By making him a temporary coach and external advisor, they have given him neither the time nor the power he wanted. In fact, Rangnick was offered the role of interim coach by Chelsea last year, but said no. Reason? That he is not a temporary coach. He obviously sees it himself. He lacks the charisma to lift a stable in a short time, and does not have a tactical plan that is flexible enough to transform teams overnight. So the question is what United thought by giving him these two roles. Nor did the new coach, Ten Hag, seem to understand Rangnick’s title as an adviser. – It must be at the club’s expense, said Ten Hag. NEW MANAGER: Erik ten Hag will lead Manchester United next season. Photo: MAURICE VAN STEEN / AFP Murtough is responsible This bill belongs to John Murtough, who became sporting director in March last year. It was he who hired Rangnick, after visiting him in Leipzig in 2019. That Murtough has started the job with such a failure is not very promising for United. Especially not when you take into account that he now has the main responsibility for the sporting strategy, as the influential general manager Ed Woodward is now out. Murtough has never had this job before. United is not the place to try and fail. The hope for United must be that Ten Hag himself takes responsibility for equipping the staff around him. He was involved in many different parts of Ajax, and it is hardly coincidental that two of United’s leading scouts have left the club after he was hired. When you also know that Ten Hag is one of the strongest coaches in the industry, it never made sense to keep Rangnick as a consultant. Rangnick is unlikely to be missed at Old Trafford. He was the wrong man in the wrong job. The best thing about his time at the club is that it is finally over.
ttn-69
Wrong man in the wrong job – NRK Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule
