Ten Hag Stays! We Wade In.

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Some days you choose the topic…
Other days, the topic chooses you.

After shopping for a new head coach this spring, mainstream media confirmed today that Manchester United will now keep Eric ten Hag for another season, and are allegedly working on an extension to his contract?

As recently as two years ago, ten Hag was one of the most sought after head coaches in Europe. He won three titles with Ajax, and was the fastest coach ever to achieve 100 wins with the Dutch giants. He also coached Ajax to a Champions League semi-final appearance, before being knocked out in the 96th minute by a goal from Lucas Moura of all people.

He is unequivocally a good coach.

So please explain this…

The stats aren’t just fireable for a Manchester United head coach, they are “the players quite on Jose for a full season, but we forgot to fire him” levels of bad.

15th in the Premier League in Expected Goal Difference. (Which is the best publicly available predictor of overall team performance.) 12th in attacking xG. 16th in defensive.

Maybe most importantly… Manchester United gave up the second most shots per game of any team in Europe.

Second only to Sheffield United. They gave up more than Luton Town. And Darmstadt. 🤯 

They weren’t amazing last year (6th in xgD), but they also weren’t a walking tire fire. So what happened?!?

“This is terrible obviously, but we were playing a 36-year-old Evans every game (who had just been relegated), with a centre back partner often being a centre mid. And then the screen in front of that was Mctominay/Broken Casemiro/18 year old. I don't think any manager is gonna succeed when the squad building is what it is.” - StatsBomb Data Wizard and sad Manchester United fan Harry Crane

Let’s be clear: Manchester United have not been legit good in the Premier League in AGES. The last time they finished 3rd in xgD was 20-21. And before that it was 17-18. The last time they finished in the Top 2 for xgD was before Alex Ferguson left!

Richest club in the world. Haven’t had a vaguely dominant season in over a decade.

The reason for that comes down to systemic rot. The football side of this club is a fucking shambles.

Let’s dive into the weirdness! The United org structure on the football side (overseen by John Murtough for longer than officially acknowledged) is huge, with unclear reporting lines, and from the outside at least, a lot of people who aren’t particularly good at their jobs. Maybe that’s too harsh - people there might be good at what they do, but the process is bad and has been forever. Different coaching regimes have come and gone in failure, and yet things behind the scenes stayed largely the same. That’s good when you are successful… and very, very bad when you are not. Recruitment has been a chaotic hodge-podge of latest coaching flavour and style, with zero long-term vision for how to play or squad needs.

It’s a cruel fact, but in a competitive industry, firing underperforming members of staff isn’t bad, it’s necessary. This is true both on and off the pitch.

Obvious mistakes have been made over and over again, and colossal amounts of money have been wasted in the transfer market.

To bring this back around to where we started, ten Hag is a very good coach who has had success at almost every level he’s coached at. He will probably be successful after he leaves, though to what degree is a bit uncertain. Manchester United have far bigger problems than ten Hag. And yet, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of Manchester United keeping a coach who finished 8th, had a negative goal difference, and whose team gave up the second most shots in Europe.

Unless…

This is all a holding pattern to keep things ticking over until Dan Ashworth is allowed out of his gardening leave doghouse (whoops), and Gareth Southgate is brought in to manage United after a nice, post-Euros break? Not that I think Southgate solves literally anything at the club, but Ashworth might.

From a neutral’s perspective, this is all highly entertaining as United have been for so very many seasons now. Long may it continue.

For Manchester United fans, however, they must be desperate that the combination of Ratcliffe and Dan Ashworth can rebuild the football side to finally match the commercial again.

Douglas Luiz, Weston McKinnie, and the Accounting Swap Deal
I am on record as not being excited by Douglas Luiz. He’s the Chipotle burrito of midfielders - slightly below average in just about everything, but functional enough to keep you alive. There are many better alternatives.

Weston McKinnie is worse than that. I say this being highly aware that this evaluation places my hand is directly in the hornet’s nest of USMNT Twitter.

I’m going to post a radar here to back up my take. At this stage in his career, I was genuinely curious what McKinnie does on the football pitch other than occupy minutes that should be given to other players. You should also feel free to re-post this to Twitter, but tag any taeks to @thetransferflow as a big favour. Then we’ll all slowly back away and let them fight amongst themselves.

ANYWAY… [Brian_Windhorst.gif]

Why would they do that? Why would two teams swap Meh midfielders and a potentially viable young left back?

The exciting answer is “PSR rules.”

Until recently, Italian teams used to inflate some transfer prices by 2x among themselves and others in order to offset accounting losses for tax reasons. (See also: Arthur Melo for Pjanic, summer 2020.] At least until the Italian government caught wind and came after all of them for fraud. I know this because we had to provide estimated market prices for various historic transfers as evidence for one of our clients. [I would LOVE for Horncastle or someone similar to write a detailed story on how the government found out and what happened after.]

NOW, the problem to be solved is no longer obvious tax fraud, it’s finding legal loopholes to circumvent league-wide spending rules with friends and enemies alike.

Does this swap rumour make football sense? Probably not. Does it make ACCOUNTING sense? Almost certainly.

Why are we commenting on it? Because it’s weird - for now - but probably going to become more common as spending limits really take hold.

Rumours and News

• Romano is reporting Leverkusen are trying to get Girona’s Aleix Garcia across the line. West Ham and Lopetegui are allegedly also involved. The price listed is £14M, which feels like something from 2019, so the world is a bit confused. Feels like a good signing for either, though as a player, it’s hard to see why you’d go to East London unless the bag 🤑 was incredibly heavy.

• Atalanta’s Ederson allegedly of interest to Liverpool. He’s a younger, more defensive alternative to previous rumour target Teun Koopmeiners, but neither is particularly exciting at the prices mentioned. they don’t feel like a great fit to me unless Liverpool are changing the style of midfielder they normally recruit.

• Brian Priske is the new head coach of Feyenoord, taking over for Arne Slot, who moved to Liverpool. Priske moves from one well-run StatsBomb club to another. Looking forward to what he does in Dutchieland.

• Jhon Duran is allegedly of interest to various teams, including Chelsea. The good news is that he has seen playing time and scored goals in a top league at a very young age. The bad news is that he’s A LOT of playing time away from being someone ready to start for Chelsea. It’s slightly hard to parse this one. The Colombia → Chicago Fire → Aston Villa ->Chelsea pipeline is not a well-trodden one.

• Levi Colwill is of interest to Bayern Munich. This one actually makes a TON of sense. Bayern are highly likely to lose Fonzie Davies to Real Madrid this summer, but they want a replacement first. Colwill’s numbers from last season look excellent. This would keep him out of PL competitor hands, while helping with PSR.
  
  It would be weird for both of the good, young Chelsea left backs to leave this summer on permanent moves and play for German teams, but it also sort of feels almost natural now?

• The Manchester United rumour mill now includes Ivan Toney and Jonathan David. I think Toney’s gambling suspension caused him to miss his Sell By window. Jonathan David, on the other hand… we’ll assuredly talk about him another time.

• The excellently named Silas Katompa at Stuttgart is listed as a potential target for Fulham, which seems fairly promising.

• Arsenal are (reportedly) happy to sell Kieran Tierney to literally anyone for a fee of £10-15M.