The winds of change are sweeping Manchester United after Erik ten Hag’s sacking but not everyone will be enjoying it the same.
The fans are happy since Erik ten Hag was quickly going nowhere with the team, Ruben Amorim’s potential arrival at Man Utd is exciting, and Ruud van Nistelrooy will experience coming out of the Old Trafford tunnel as the Man Utd manager.
Of course, it’s not ideal for the person sacked but by the end of his time at the club, Ten Hag looked bereft of ideas and a fresh start should do him a world of good too.
The same cannot be said for one other staff member at the club, who has been dealt a nightmare hand with this decision.
State of affairs for Man Utd staff after Erik ten Hag sacking
Van Nistelrooy is a club legend who will have a lifetime pass at Old Trafford as long as he wants, as a staff member or otherwise.
Erik ten Hag will go elsewhere and restart his career, better for his experiences with Man Utd and the learning from it.
The goalkeeping coach Jelle Ten Rouwelaar is also a specialist who was needed after a vacancy in the coaching staff opened up and Andre Onana’s improvement is a string in his bow after just months in the job.
Fellow new arrival, Andreas Georgson is a specialist set-piece coach who filled a vacancy that United didn’t have anybody for before his arrival. It helps that United have started looking mildly threatening from set-pieces.
That leaves Rene Hake, the man who left a head coaching role in the summer to become an assistant to Ten Hag, and four months on, finds himself in an awkward situation.
Rene Hake’s nightmare at Man Utd
Hake effectively arrived as the replacement for outgoing assistant Mitchell Van der Gaag in the summer since Van Nistelrooy came as the former club legend to diversify the voices in the staff.
Hake was highly rated too, guiding Go Ahead Eagles to a remarkable ninth-place finish in the Dutch League before making this move in the summer.
His previous ties with Ten Hag, be it related to FC Twente or FC Utrecht, made him the perfect trusted man to place Van der Gaag.
However, that represents a problem now since Hake is the only one whose existence at United was solely down to the manager who has just been sacked.
He doesn’t have Van Nistelrooy’s club legend credentials, isn’t a specialist for an area like Georgson or Rouwelaar, and most importantly, an incoming coach almost always brings his assistant coach/coaches with him.
While Van Nistelrooy will survive due to his club allegiances, Hake might find himself out of a job just four months after bravely leaving a successful head coach role to go all-in with Ten Hag.
Unfortunately, he went all-in on a guy Ineos weren’t all-in on. As a result, he finds himself in a nightmare situation where around him has a place at United amidst the incoming change but he doesn’t.
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