Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS have reshaped Man United with dozens of bold moves behind the scenes but have dithered on the biggest call of all: the fate of Erik ten Hag.
With the Red Devils enduring their worst-ever start to a Premier League season, the owners finally pulled the trigger after Sunday’s dramatic defeat to West Ham.
Ruben Amorim is poised to be named the new United boss having verbally agreed to join from reigning Portuguese Primeira Liga champions Sporting.
Ten Hag spent over two years at Old Trafford, winning two trophies in the League Cup in 2022-23 and the FA Cup in stunning fashion over rivals Man City last season.
Man United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe arguably got swept up in the emotion of the latter triumph at Wembley, subsequently handing Ten Hag a contract extension until 2026.
That was somewhat out of character for Ratcliffe, who made 250 United personnel redundant at a cost of £10m in what was cynically dubbed a ‘headcount rationalisation’ just weeks earlier.
| Position | Team | Played MP | Won W | Drawn D | Lost L | For GF | Against GA | Diff GD | Points Pts |
| 9 |  BrentfordBrentford | 9 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 18 | 18 | 0 | 13 |
| 10 |  FulhamFulham | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| 11 |  B’mouthBournemouth | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 12 |
| 12 |  NewcastleNewcastle | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 10 | -1 | 12 |
| 13 |  West HamWest Ham | 9 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 13 | 16 | -3 | 11 |
| 14 |  Man UtdManchester United | 9 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 11 | -3 | 11 |
| 15 |  LeicesterLeicester | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 13 | 17 | -4 | 9 |
| 16 |  EvertonEverton | 9 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 10 | 16 | -6 | 9 |
| 17 |  Crystal PalaceCrystal Palace | 9 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 11 | -5 | 6 |
| 18 |  IpswichIpswich | 9 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 20 | -11 | 4 |
The INEOS billionaire has been just as ruthless in the club’s executive branch, bringing in a whole new suite of directors, as well as implementing a new hierarchy in the football department.
Even Sir Alex Ferguson has been taken off the payroll. The Manchester United legend was stripped of his £2m-a-year ambassadorial role earlier this month.
And yet, Ratcliffe and his peers in the United boardroom have not shown the same cutthroat character with Ten Hag, who, remember, was a Glazer-led appointment.
And their hesitancy has come at a steep cost to the club which will be felt deep into the Amorim era.
Antony, Casemiro, and more: The Ten Hag’s Signings who lost £123m in value
Of the 21 players he recruited at United, Ten Hag signed five former Ajax players.
His hit rate was – to put it charitably – abysmal, even in the context of United’s recent history which has been littered with recruitment disasters.
Using data taken from Transfermrkt, United in Focus looked at Ten Hag’s 15 permanent signings who are still with the club and compared their current value to their original fees.
The data shows that £123m has been wiped from United’s overall squad value, with Antony and Casemiro unsurprisingly the biggest individual drivers of that nosedive.
What’s more, those figures represent the more favourable end of the spectrum for Ten Hag, using today’s conversion rate and a conservative aggregation of reported transfer fees to populate the chart.
The lost value also doesn’t take into account players who Ten Hag didn’t sign but whose values entered a tailspin under the Dutchman’s supervision – Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, for example.
It is not a scientific approach, but it is emblematic of the trend that has underlined Ten Hag’s time in M16.
Erik Ten Hag’s salary, his compensation, and Ruben Amorim fee
Ten Hag took home a £9m salary in his first two seasons as United boss, falling to £6.5m this season and next due to United’s failure to qualify for the Champions League.
That means Ratcliffe and INEOS will have had to either fork out £13m upfront to sack Ten Hag, or continue to bear that cost over the next year and a half, with another manager on the payroll.
Either way, two years salary plus the remainder owed to the 54-year-old totals £31.5m at a time when the margins under Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) are razor thin.
United are also expected to pay £8.3m in compensation for Amorim (although there is some dispute around that figure), taking the overall remuneration cost of the Ten Hag era just shy of £40m.
- READ MORE: The Ineos figure who turned Ruben Amorim’s head and swung the deal in Manchester United’s favour
Lost Champions League and Premier League prize money
To calculate the prize money lost in the Ten Hag era, we have used the fact that his salary was docked by 25 per cent when he failed to qualify for the Champions League last season as the baseline
Champions League qualification this season would have been worth a bare minimum of £50m – and given that it is the first year of the lucrative new format, probably much more than that.
Each place in the Premier League is worth approximately £3m, so the gap between 8th where United finished last season and 4th was worth another £12m.
Ten Hag will point to the injuries that blighted his time at Old Trafford, and with some justification.
The total cost of the Ten Hag era, plus other financial factors
The analysis above is relatively crude. After all, it is nigh on impossible to quantify exactly how much the Ten Hag era cost and how much was attributable directly to him.
It’s worth bearing in mind, for example, that United forked out £331m in player wages in 2022-23 and another £365m last season. The club’s losses over that period total around £150m.
United’s commercial income has also stagnated somewhat in recent years, suggesting that Ed Woodward was wrong when he said that United would continue to soar financially regardless of results on the pitch.
In total, the figures we have put together conservatively estimate the cost of the Ten Hag era at £224.8m. The reality is likely far more bleak.
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