Opposed to Chelsea on Thursday in a late match of the 32nd day of the Premier League, Manchester United coach Erik Ten Hag issued a warning to potential future buyers of the Red Devils, so that they avoid the mistakes made this season by the new bosses of the Blues.
While the process launched last November to try to sell the club drags on, the Dutchman, who led his team to the gates of the Champions League, is above all waiting to know the project that will be put in place.
“You have to make the right choices, you can have money but you have to spend it intelligently and you need a strategy behind all that, otherwise the money will bring nothing,” he said.
If he did not mention Chelsea, the allusion to the more than 600 million euros invested in transfers since the arrival of the American businessman Todd Boehly and the investment fund Clearlake Capital at the head of the club, more than a year ago, is transparent.
To this disorderly recruitment policy were added the dismissals of Thomas Tuchel and then his replacement Graham Potter during the season, resulting in one of the worst seasons in the Premier League for the club.
Chelsea are currently 12th, while their worst finish, in 1993/94, was 14th and they have just 43 points, already out of reach of their worst total for a season at 38 matchdays, which was 50.
This observation also applies, to a lesser extent, to the recent history of Manchester United, which has not been champion since 2013 despite such reckless spending on transfers.
Erik Ten Hag underlined the difficulty for the teams to stabilize in the highest part of the table.
“At the moment there is a concentration of good players, top managers and also money, it’s all here in England. This gives a superb competition but also an exacerbated and difficult competition”, he recognized.
Despite a victory in the League Cup, an English Cup final to be played on June 3 against Manchester City and a qualification in C1 which is only one point away, with two matches to be played at home, against Chelsea then Fulham, the technician does not want to get carried away.
“We will have to evaluate all that after the season, draw the right conclusions for the future. This is definitely what we will do after this season,” he assured.
