Erik ten Hag is under pressure again at Manchester United in a deja vu from last season and different managerial candidates have seen their name linked to the job.
Thomas Tuchel was an option before he took the England job, and the likes of Sebastian Hoeness were reported to have rejected United’s advances.
There is no standout candidate available as things stand since nobody ticks all the boxes that Man Utd fans would ideally want to tick.
It has led to Erik ten Hag being in the job perhaps for longer than his results dictate but the United board will probably face a new issue when making a potential appointment if Don Hutchison is to be believed.
Dressing room would ‘eat alive’ Thomas Frank
With Tuchel coming off the market, the focus turned to managers already in the job because the free market of managers doesn’t inspire much confidence.
There is, of course Kieran McKenna at Ipswich but his side, even though outmatched, are struggling in the Premier League and the optics of making that move mid-season are not good.
Then it comes to Thomas Frank, steering Brentford to another overachieving season with his trademark brand of combative football.
Thomas Frank has been linked to Man Utd before and the links came running back as soon as Tuchel was out of the running but his is not a straightforward appointment to make.
Don Hutchison recently claimed on BBC Live Sport that a Man Utd player had told him that if Frank was appointed, the “dressing room would eat him alive”.
Hutchison would tell the player that it is their problem, insinuating that the players are not doing enough on their own to turn things around.
He said: “I won’t name names, but I said it to a Man United player about two weeks ago, and we were chatting, who do you think, and I said Thomas Frank. And he said to me, he said that the dressing room would eat him alive. And I went, well, that’s your problem. There’s your problem straight away.
“If you are not accepting a manager and a coach like Thomas Frank, who would get you organised, because that’s what you can see as a fan.
“It doesn’t matter if your team is losing every single week. What you want to see as a fan, you want to see is your team organised, which they are not, and are those players running for the badge. And they are not.”
A remarkable claim
Hutchison is obviously not in a position to name names but if he is correct, then it confirms many fans’ theories that the players use the manager as a convenient blanket for their own deficiency.
This wouldn’t be the first time it had happened, as pretty much every manager before Ten Hag has had to suffer the same fate.
However, it would be shocking in this case because the current dressing room seems aligned with Ten Hag.
“Bad apples” of the squad have been discarded with ruthlessness and currently, there don’t seem to be any problematic personalities in the Man Utd squad.
Unlike previous managers, there is no conflict with any player playing out publicly so the player telling Hutchison the dressing room would ‘eat alive’ Thomas Frank is a remarkable claim.
It points to a deep-rooted problem with the squad and their mentality that their first instinct on hearing Frank’s name is so negative.
Maybe Ineos are on to something when they remain stubborn in their backing of Ten Hag.
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