Erik Ten Hag: Who is the new Manchester United boss?

Erik Ten Hag is the chosen candidate for the Manchester United. He was announced today as the new manager. Ten Hag is the man responsible for the revolution and resurgence of Ajax in recent seasons.

The reports about Ten Hag's impending hire note that while Mauricio Pochettino was also highly regarded, the expense it would take to trigger his release from his PSG contract saw the Red Devils turn to Ten Hag.

With that, the Dutchman Ten Hag is reportedly nearing an official appointment as the new Manchester United permanent boss, potentially at the end of the league season.

Erik Ten Haag: Biography:

At 52 years old, Netherlands-born Erik Ten Hag has grown through the ranks of Dutch football, first as a player and now as a coach.

Ten Hag was born in the town of Haaksbergen, in the Twente region of the Netherlands. He enjoyed a 13-year playing career, earmarked by three separate spells with Eredivisie side FC Twente.

Considered one of the rising managerial stars in world football, Ten Hag has been in coaching since 2012, a period of 10 years after his retirement as a player.

What would Erik Ten Hag bring?

Erik Ten Hag has attracted widespread praise for his exciting, attacking system that fits the mould of a prototypical modern manager. And the fact that Ajax have conceded just seven goals in 24 league games in 2021/22 shows he knows how to put together a good defence, too.

"Erik is rightly regarded as one of the most exciting coaching talents in world football at the moment because of the work he does with Ajax," Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp said about Ten Hag in 2020.

"Of course, it is a wonderful club – one of the stellar names of European football – but in this moment it is clear they have outstanding leadership of the organisation and Erik is a big part of that."

Trophies & Honours:

While Ten Hag was trophy-less during his first three managerial spells, understandably as he took charge of smaller clubs, that changed when he joined Ajax.

Since taking charge of the Dutch giants, Ten Hag has guided the club to the Dutch league title twice, also leading the club to the Dutch Cup in the same season both times. He may have earned a third title had it not been for COVID-19 ending the Dutch league early in 2019-20 with the club sitting atop the table, but no title was awarded. This season, Ajax leads the Eredivisie and is in pole position to win another league crown, four points above second-place PSV, who beat them in the cup final this month.

In Europe, he has yet to win outright silverware, but he has performed quite well at times, including the 2018-19 season when he saw the club into the semifinals of the Champions League, beating Real Madrid along the way. The run came to an end in heartbreaking fashion as Tottenham engineered a late comeback to win 3-2 on aggregate.

Ten Hag has won the Dutch league's Coach of the Year award twice, first in 2016 with FC Utrecht and then again in 2019 after Ajax's stunning season. He also finished fourth in FIFA's awarding of its worldwide Coach of the Year award that year.

Erik Ten Hag's managerial style:

Having openly admitting to being heavily influenced by Pep Guardiola during his time at Bayern Munich, Erik ten Hag deploys a very attack-minded 4-2-4 at Ajax, to enormous success this season.

The attacking mentality has seen a renaissance for striker Sebastien Haller, who has scored an incredible 46 goals in 59 Ajax appearances after a failed two-year spell at West Ham. It has also seen the club set an incredible goal differential mark in Eredivisie play, with an outlandish 83 goals scored to just 14 goals allowed through 28 games played in 2021-22 as of April 3.

"I learned a lot from Guardiola," Ten Hag said back in 2019. "His philosophy is sensational, what he did in Barcelona, Bayern and now with Manchester City. That attacking and attractive style sees him win a lot. It's this structure that I've tried to implement with Ajax."While that 4-2-4 can be devastating, the Ajax side also benefits from being a big fish in a small pond, padding its numbers against far inferior Eredivisie sides. His 2018-19 Champions League run featured a similar but slightly more pragmatic 4-3-3 that featured a double-pivot in midfield that has its roots in Dutch football, but has become widely popular across the globe through the last decade.

He has been known to occasionally deploy a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-4-2 diamond as well, although his versions of those formations all end up having the same key principles, with a pair of midfielders through the middle that play off each other, and a pair of attacking wingers that pin opposing full-backs to their own end lines.What really marks Ten Hag as a manager is his devotion to Total Football, the Dutch-born philosophy of using triangles to overload key areas of the pitch both on and off the ball. This system feeds off the versatility of players in various positions on the field, allowing them to flow freely around the pitch.

This has been widely adopted across the globe over the last 15-20 years, but Ten Hag is a clear disciple of the mentality.In the famed 2019 Champions league run, midfielder Frenkie de Jong became a worldwide sensation due to his ability to perform multiple roles in midfield, earning him an eventual move to Barcelona. Ten Hag also helped fuel the rise of Hakim Ziyech and Matthijs de Ligt, both of whom eventually made moves to bigger European clubs as well.

Unique tactics used by Erik Ten Hag:

The foundations of ten Hag's build-up are solid, and really quite conventional. But where the value lies, is not only how Ajax are able to progress the ball and begin to create, but how they can utilise coached movements and problem solving to adapt vs various opposition shapes.In terms of progression, the keys, once in settled possession, are:

1) opening the passing lanes

3) allowing the receiver to consistently receive in an optimal manner.When Ajax create the ring of security, the fullbacks tend to drop into a narrower position. To oppose this, the wingers move wider to open a diagonal lane.

This is beneficial for numerous reasons:

1) The wingers (who are typically inverted) can receive in a consistent manner, back to touchline/pressure, which is conducive of cutting inside/making their go-to dribbles/actions. Antony & Mazraoui share a strong relationship, with the RB knowing when to leave the winger 1v1.

2) The opposition block is stretched laterally, and from here Ajax can begin to distort and pick holes. Chance creation doesn't just occur in the final third: distorting the block in early phases can generate chances downstream.