Thanks for a more nuanced post. The first bit, about Sancho the football player at United, I agree with most or all of what you write. A slight deviation might be where I wasn’t surprised at seeing the False-9- experiment take a back seat when the rubber hit the concrete, seeing as Sancho did okayish to not too impressive in that role, and it did look like a stop gap experiment with Martial and partly Rashford indisposed and a lack of strikers preseason. Either way, this is the part that we’ve been able to watch both of us I guess. Neither is your view here particularily pro-Sancho, I would say.
The second bit, about Ten Hag being a small-minded ego dictator (?!) is more jarring. A wee bit because, in a way, as ego dictators go, most big managers including most of our recents (Ferguson, Van Gaal, Mourinho) make Ten Hag look like an altruistic anarchist in comparison, a wee bit because what he actually said publically pales in comparison with many of the the things the likes of Ferguson, Mourinho, Guardiola, Klopp have said about their own players at times. Van Gaal sent Victor Valdez to the reserves, Mourinho did the same with Schweinsteiger, Ferguson did lots of stuff like that, and wether you could argue that their tactics haven’t evolved enough, their egoes are still state of the art. But these are minor quibbles.
What I find the hardest to grasp about yotr last post, is how adamant you seem in your interpretations about what has happened on what grounds regarding the things that really aren’t open to the public. It sounds like you know for a fact that the playing staff lost their respect and acrued disdain for Ten Hag over it, that Ten Hag is behind character briefings, that Sancho has mental health issues and was at a loss of confidence at the time. These claims seem more like guesswork taken as fact, and simultaneously overlooks similar guesswork pointing towards Sancho’s longstanding issues with professionalism, other players reacting negatively to Sancho’s attitude and expecting harsher (or more fair?) treatment of him several times historically. I think we should be careful taking these hypothesies as gospel, but neither does there seem grounds for being so assured about how the situation was behind the scenes when Ten Hag reacted to Sancho in the first place.
What we know for public facts, is that Ten Hag answered a question in a press conference that was peanuts compared to what most acclaimed managers say on a regular basis, and that Sancho reacted in a way we very seldom see from any professional footballer even these days. It’s fair to say not many reacted much to Ten Hag’s initial heat-of-the-moment explanation why Sancho wasn’t in a match day squad (remember, he disn’t even say he had trained badly), the reactions and scandal came first upon Sancho’s highly unusual attack, deliberated written attack on the manager. We don’t know who was right about what, lest you be Sancho entourage or Ten Hag family, but I think it’s clear to see what created the most public outrage of the two statements.
I’ve seen Sancho given a good spread of opportunities under Southgate, Solskjær, Rangnik and Ten Hag, and while his talents are easy to see, it has been hard to overlook his apparent lost-ness over so long time. He reminds me of Gary Birtles in a way. I think you’re right he should go elsewhere. I would be careful adamantly claiming he is a self centered, lazy, manipulating, leaking, half-hearted, unintelligent sobster as many do, I don’t think we know that. Neither do I find convincing evidence that Ten Hag is more egotistical, fraudulent or naive/small-minded than a manager is bound to be to achieve anything in today’s top football. The only thing I’m quite sure about is that if you present that infamous twitter message to any manager who has won anything much the last twenty years, wether it’s Ferguson, Heynkes, Mourinho, Ancelotti, Guardiola, Klopp, Conte, whoever, that player would 9 out of 10 never play for that manager again.