Hardest Job - Sir Alex or Ten Hag

[SAred]

So who has / had the hardest Job?

- Sir Alex Knocking Liverpool of their Perch while fighting Arsenal and later Jose Chelsea

or

- Ten Hag knocking our noisy neighbors back to being noisy neighbors while fighting the oil rich clubs and wealthy midtable teams.

 

[Ish]

I'd say SAF, without a doubt (in my mind at least).

It's not even close either.

 

[spiriticon]

Well, Ten Hag hasn't knocked anybody off their perch yet. The noisy neighbours are still very noisy and we are still a mile behind them, as we were 5 years ago.

 

[Revan]

SAF of course. He didn’t have near unlimited resources that ten Hag has. He also had a worse squad to begin with.

 

[captain666]

SAF had a lot of sh*t to clear up in his first years,ETH the same,but he's only had one year in the job.

 

[SirAF]

Ferguson. Come on, man!

 

[2 man midfield]

Fergie. He inherited a fairly mediocre side, at a club who still expected success, with a limited budget. Ten Hag ticks two of those boxes, but not all.

Ten Hag is doing a great job, but I feel like a lot of it is just applying some common sense decisions that have been lacking in the last decade. The foundations have always been there for him to come in and succeed at any point post Fergie, because of the club we are.

In short, Ten Hag has his work cut out but his job is made easier because of what Ferguson did in his time here.

 

[Mickson]

EtH. We had the most money during the PL years and very few competitors. No one can beat today's Manchester City, and add to all the other teams with extreme funds.

 

[Skills]

Is this a pisstake?

 

[Tom Cato]

Sir Alex had by far and beyond the hardest job here, the economy in the modern game is a pure fantasy compared to the 80s and 90s.

 

[2 man midfield]

EtH. We had the most money during the PL years and very few competitors. No one can beat today's Manchester City, and add to all the other teams with extreme funds.

What about all those other teams that spent more than we did? I think we were 6th for net spend during Fergie’s PL tenure

 

[Stadjer]

I do think that SAF his first challenge was to knock Liverpool of their perch while ETH his first challenge is to beat Manchester City. The same Manchester City that has been dominating the league with record points for years and won a treble just a few months ago. The Liverpool team that SAF had to defeat was the dominant team at that time so in that sense they both have to face a comparable first challenge.

Overall i do think ETH his job is a little bit easier. He started way off Manchester City but since Manchester United is a more financially dominant power it should be a bit easier for him to bridge that gap. Because of what SAF achieved, ETH his job should be a bit easier but it still is a very difficult job.

 

[Ayoba]

SAF

 

[bringbackbebe]

EtH. We had the most money during the PL years and very few competitors. No one can beat today's Manchester City, and add to all the other teams with extreme funds.

SAF didn't start his tenure during the PL years.

 

[lysglimt]

I dont understand why everyone says Ferguson like it's not even a debate. Ferguson had a lot of advantages in his first 4-5 seasons that ETH does not have. And no I am not saying ETH has a harder job, just that it's not quite as obvious as some seems to think.

Managers weren't fired as quickly as they were today - Ferguson would never have survived the 89/90 season in todays climate. After outspending everyone else, we were as bad as Chelsea were this season. And if fans had their way. Ferguson would have been fired, he was really unpopular. If ETH ends 6th or 7th next season - he is gone.

Yes Ferguson took over a weaker side - but after a couple of seasons he was also able to spend money like no other club in England could - in the summer of 89, United spent a lot more than everybody else - Arsenal who won the league before spent £500.000 on Siggi Jonsson, Liverpool ended second and spent £800.000 on Glenn Hysen and Steve Harkness. We spent about £7 million on Ince, Pallister, Phelan, Webb and Wallace. Today, there are 5-6 clubs who will spend as much as we do (or more) - and spend the same amount on wages as we do. So let's not pretend Ferguson did not have a huge financial advantage for a lot of seasosn.

In addition - Liverpool and Arsenal were already passed it by 1990 - once Ferguson survived that season, the competition were a lot weaker than 2-3 seasons earlier. Especially Liverpool had a lot of players in the late 20s like Barnes, Whelan, Houghton, Nicol, Beardsley, Rush, Hysen, McMahon etc. And let's be honest here, the Arsenal and Liverpool-team around 1989/90 were not topclass in Europe - City and Arsenal today are. So Ferguson didnt have to create the best team in Europe, just the best team in England. ETH needs to get the best team in the world to win the league.

 

[M Bison]

Agree SAF had it tough the one thing that makes todays job harder is social media and the constant need for content and clicks. It’s so wide ranging, players having their own brands and in lots of circumstances, players being bigger than their clubs.

I’d still go with SAF but I bet he’s glad he grew up when Twitter etc didn’t exist and players accepted a rollocking without it being leaked on IG etc!

 

[Dannn411]

Sir Alex. Not remotely close. Team was 11th and fading fast into irrelevance when he joined. Built a powerhouse footballing institution.

 

[CantonaManc]

Very hard to pick but i will go with Sir Alex but Ten Hag job is not easy at all, everyone who tried in the last years failed. The pressure is huge even though he doesn't show it !

Anyway i think Ten Hag said it best when he took over the club. He stated that it would take 2 to 3 years for this club to truly challenge for titles and I think any respectable Manchester United fan acknowledges that especially after the turmoil this club has faced over the past three years. New age football fans always jump to catch words like Savior world class golden generation goat but these things take time and effort. Look at any of the other top clubs Liverpool Arsenal Manchester city and recognize that all of their projects have taken approximately three years to bear any type of success.

As a United fan who watches every game, it's hard to articulate with data alone how he has transformed every aspect of the club, especially the underlying quality of the football we play. I have no doubts that he has saved us from falling off a cliff.

Last season we were very strong at home but have a habit of getting trashed against big teams away from home and he must fix this. I am very happy with the progress considering it’s season one, but we will only be able to judge properly by the 3rd season I reckon.

 

[united_99]

Did a quick google check as I wanted to know how bad we were exactly when SAF took over. It said we were 19th in the league. Is this correct? So we were fighting relegation/in a free fall.
Anyway, it’s SAF who had the harder job and it’s not even close. He was lucky in 88/89 that he wasn’t fired and whoever made the decision deserves a statue outside OT! His Aberdeen work and everything which was happening at United at every level including at youth level, and especially SAF’s ideas and long term vision most likely rescued him.
United was a drinking club. Also the European ban was already in place when he took over. So if you didn’t win the league (to win the trophy as no Europe), then it didn’t even matter if you finished 2nd or 14th. So maybe finishing bad in those years wasn’t as much an issue for the board as it was when the ban was over.

Whereas the team ETH took over had weaknesses, some lazy, overpaid players, some not good enough, apparently our worst season ever, we didn’t even have a manager for the last few months before he took over, the one we had before was according to some Caf experts not even a manager, and we still finished 6th.

 

[Tom Van Persie]

SAF and it's not even close. ten Hag has had a huge job on his hands too don't get me wrong but the job SAF took on was a different animal.

 

[That_Bloke]

SAF by a country mile and there's absolutely no comparison at this point. What I do wonder though, is if SAF would've been given the same amount of time to get his thing going if he managed MU in the current PL.

 

[Von Mistelroum]

SAF easily. We'd been poor for so long back then and he had to face some of the great teams in history in Europe (prime Juve, Bayern, Madrid, Barca etc.) as well as probably the 2nd and 3rd best managers the Premier League has ever seen in Wenger and Mourinho. Thankfully, he was the best the PL has ever seen so it all worked out nicely in the end!

 

[Skills]

SAF by a country mile and there's absolutely no comparison at this point. What I do wonder though, is if SAF would've been given the same amount of time to get his thing going if he managed MU in the current PL.

He wouldn't need the same amount of time in modern football. Klopp didn't at Liverpool. Someone as hopeless as Solskjaer managed 2nd here in a couple of seasons.

 

[united_99]

SAF by a country mile and there's absolutely no comparison at this point. What I do wonder though, is if SAF would've been given the same amount of time to get his thing going if he managed MU in the current PL.

He would have probably been given as much time as Klopp had by Liverpool. Also before last season Arteta wasn’t even finishing in the top 4 and Arsenal still kept him. So even today not every club fires a manager just after a few bad results or after 1-2 bad/average seasons.