Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United are regressing and one theory says manager’s selection decisions are to blame

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Erik ten Hag was once on top of the world at Manchester United, but a lot of the optimism from his first season has faded away.

A horrendous start to the campaign has left the feeling surrounding the club very tense, and a stark contrast to the highs of early in 2023.

Granted, the start last season wasn’t the best, but there was a special point early this year when United and Ten Hag seemed almost unstoppable.

The peak had to have been the win over Barcelona followed by the Carabao Cup victory – but has everything come sliding to a halt since?

United have been on a slow decline

Journalist Mark Ogden, speaking on the BBC Sounds Football Daily podcast that took place a couple of days after the Brentford fixture, revealed a shocking stat which proves Ten Hag has been on a downward slope since the high of the cup win.

“There’s a stat that I saw a couple of weeks ago, it will have changed now as they’ve lost more games,” he began.

“But, up until and including the League Cup Final win against Newcastle last season he’d won 72% of his games. Since then, it was down to 51% and that was two weeks ago so it’s probably even worse.”

Ten Hag may have contributed to problems

He then went on to explain the reasons why this could be the case, and in reality, the blame lies solely on the gaffer.

“There’s been a massive drop-off since winning the Carabao Cup, that’ll be because he (Ten Hag) didn’t rotate often enough last season so a lot of players got tired,” Mark suggested.

“He’s had key injuries to players like Christian Eriksen and Lisandro Martinez because of it.

“You look at Casemiro who’s in his thirties, and Raphael Varane – you can see why they’re having problems. They haven’t got the energy to get around the pitch.”

Ten Hag may have had a great starting XI, but he’s worked them into the ground. This is really showing this season, with the veteran players looking like they have indeed lost more than a yard or two of pace.

He hasn’t been helped by some unforeseen injuries to younger players, but this has all combined to create a bit of a catastrophe.

Let’s just hope Ten Hag can guide them out of the storm he has potentially created.