For the very first time in a long time, Manchester United lost its 13th game in a single season to occupy the lower rug of the English Premier League table with the possibility of not getting a place in the UEFA Champions League or any continental championship.
The English biggest high profile club has suddenly become a crumbling team led by a sinking manager, characterised by a lot of snapshops of chaos that, by the end, it was hard to keep track of it all.
It was in the midst of all these that, the management of Manchester United has showed clearly that, the manager, Erik Ten Hag, may not be retained for next season, largely because of the great humiliations in the club’s recent history.
Man United losses 13 times this season have been linked to the lack of organisation at the back, or the total absence of any plan in attack. And supporters are still amused if the number of goals scored against the club actually flew in without the players knowing it.
The management kept wondering what caused the players’ dishevelled and made them disinterested. They have been bemused at the individual moments that demonstrated how badly the team was beaten.
Using the recent 4-0 loss against Crystal Palace as an ibstance where the image of Casemiro lying face-first in the turf, for example, as younger men ran away from him. Or of Antony screaming at his team-mates, in a fruitless attempt to deflect from his own errors.
In the game, there were so many small moments of ineptitude, all adding up to paint the most damning of pictures for Ten Hag. This was already a bad season for United but now, as it approaches its end, it is becoming a disastrous one. The Premier League table has them in eighth, outside of the European places and with a goal difference of minus three. This was their 13th loss of the Premier League campaign, a club record.
Such is the scale of United’s injury crisis, there is little hope that anything might change for the better in the remaining weeks. The list of absentees remains the primary excuse for Ten Hag but nothing could justify this performance. Oliver Glasner’s Palace dominated every aspect of the game and, in truth, should have scored more.
Ten Hag must know that his hopes of remaining in the job are vanishing, if they are not already vanished. And that is assuming he even wants to remain at Old Trafford. Few would blame him for feeling otherwise, especially amid suggestions in the German press that Bayern Munich are interested.
This is a shell of a United team and the consequences of failing to qualify for Europe are serious. No one who saw this collapse at Selhurst Park was thinking of the club’s financial prospects but their failures this season could ultimately hit them where it really hurts, and the planned rebuild would be made even more complicated without European football next season.
It says so much about the current United that Palace were regarded by many as the favourites before this game, and that they went out and played like it. It was Palace, not United, who produced the big-team football. It was Palace’s players, not United’s, who had the confidence to express themselves and the ability to hurt their opponents.
The best of them all was Michael Olise, who scored two fabulous individual goals and played with a swagger that embarrassed United’s defenders. It is no surprise that United are among Olise’s admirers. Clearly, their recruitment team will admire him even more after this, although which recruitment team would not want a player of Olise’s obvious class?
There were similar flourishes from Eberechi Eze, who floated in midfield while United trundled, and from Jean-Philippe Mateta in attack. Palace were strong, skilful and disciplined. In a few months, Glasner has done what Ten Hag has been unable to do in two years: impose a clear style of football, with the full buy-in of each of his players. “We played great football,” said Glasner. “The players had a lot of fun on the pitch.”
It must be said that Ten Hag’s case has not been helped by all the absentees. The loss before the game of Bruno Fernandes, for the first time in 2024, represented the 63rd case of injury or illness that United have suffered this season.
Into his position came Mason Mount, perhaps still hoping to make a late run for the England squad after finally recovering from his own fitness issues. This was Mount’s first start since early November, which feels so long ago that it almost belongs to a different chapter of United’s history. This club’s world – on and off the field – has changed enormously since then.
Back at the start of the season, for example, Casemiro was still regarded by many as one of United’s more reliable performers. A seasoned pro, and a leader. These days, playing as a makeshift centre-back, he moves like a man swimming against the tide. Time catches us all and, on this evidence, it has Casemiro in the tightest of grips.
For the fourth, it was once again Casemiro at fault. He was thrown to the floor by Daniel Munoz, who then fed Olise again, and the 32-year-old’s demise summarised this United performance: tired, broken and totally outclassed.
Meanwhile, former Manchester United players lined up to call for the club to sack manager Erik ten Hag after their disastrous season plumbed new depths on Monday night with the 4-0 humilitation at Crystal Palace.
Both Michael Owen and Paul Scholes said that Ten Hag’s time at United should be up following their latest embarrassment, which saw the club suffer a record 13th defeat in the Premier League to leave them in eighth and at risk of missing out on European football next season.
Owen said that United’s display was so dismal that the hierarchy should make an immediate change to try and save what’s left of their season, while Scholes admitted the Selhurst Park defeat felt like “the final nail in the coffin” for the Dutch manager.
I’ve said it for a long time that Ten Hag is not the right man for this job, I’ve been saying it for ages and ages,” Owen told Premier League Productions after United’s defeat to Palace.
“He cannot, simply cannot, manage the team next season.
“I almost wonder now, they’ve got a cup final and they’ve got a few important games that could mean European football next year or not.
“At some point you’ve got to make a decision, they’re going to get absolutely hammered by Manchester City [in the FA Cup final], they’re going to get annihilated, in fact, Arsenal will smash them to bits at Old Trafford, Newcastle will probably beat them and I wouldn’t even fancy them going to Brighton either. They might not get anything out of the rest of the season, playing like that.
