1. Jose. Respect! Respect!! Respect!!! Not a fan of the guy or his football, but he brought a level of... respect and expectation that is associative of a big club i.e. winning the majority of games; being tough to beat, win or lose; high league finishing positions; trophies and deep runs to latter stages of cups; an aura of progression.
All this until it went tits up and he nuked the place for both fanbase and players. The caf has never recovered from the civil wars that started in the Jose era; the culture of finger pointing, blaming others and generally being a toxic dressing room also occurred because of him.
2. LVG. LVG did a lot of wacky things, including: gutting the squad, promoting some terrible academy players, signing off on poor purchases, overlooking some elite players(!), losing his nerve in terms of offensive actions, but he also instilled a playing style that always gave us a chance and had us go into big games as a very difficult opponent. Like Jose, the pendulum swinging from us being just a few signings away from being a force, or us sliding into boring mediocrity was ever present the further along we went with him.
Both of these top 2 were way past their best when they came here and displayed glimpses of their former glory as well as the compounded interest of their worst aspects they always had but got away with when on top of the world. They both coped under our spotlight initially, but ego and self pride had it that such storied winners were not equipped for criticism or hardship from losing positions. You could tell both men had the power to take us back to the top or tank us, equally.
3. Ole. Was supposed to be the tactical nadir from which all other subsequent coaches would look light years superior to. Played an extremely simplistic and naive brand of football, but at the same time, understood the league, understood the basic tenets of Rock, Paper, Scissors and threw that blanket over how you best upset different schools of thought. Ole legitimately flummoxed Pep for a time in this manner and had us as a bona fide counter-attacking threat against anyone in the league.
The initial winning streak he went on was not new manager vibes, as you do not streak for so long based purely off a new manager bounce, but what Ole lacked was the ability to add nuance or modify anything given he didn't really understand coaching at the level that keeps ever-assimilating wolves at bay. In other words, Ole's hand was shown too many times and got deconstructed over time. The prompt to then change style was his undoing because the prerequisite coaching framework was not in place, thus our play became blind hope and moments of brilliance over any concerted methodology that could be imposed on the opposition and impressed on our players.
Still, Ole took us on some glorious runs of form and optimal output littered with big game wins. He also brought back much needed positivity after Jose's sabotage. Ultimately, he took us as far as he could and maximised output for a period of time. He had an unceremoniously humiliating demise, which some cannot divorce from the two counter-attacking seasons prior. His coaching level was more in line with the end than the beginning, which is where the conflation comes in and belies the league finishes as well as the initial paragraph. If you're being objective, you take the whole and not cherry pick or selectively parse, and overall, Ole had more good than bad runs even if he wasn't good enough for the job ultimately.
4. Moyes. Moyes' biggest crime was being too small for the job; he should never have taken it on if he wasn't of the brazen, firebrand Scottish ilk of so many great managers who came down to England absolutely, unwaveringly determined to make their mark and scorch earth with anyone or anything that got in their way. From: Busby, Shankly, Graham, SAF, Dalglish or even Docherty, never in recorded history would you hear such pathetic quotes trying to downplay expectations and lower that big club energy and momentum.
Moyes was not ready for the United job and had us playing like mid-table grafters. His saving graces are that time was not on his side, so even though he burdened us with his signings and a terrible campaign, his feet weren't under the table for long enough to let the rot set in. By the same token, he wasn't given as much money to waste as others.
5. Ten Hag. I'd liken his credit to having bought a house that was well within budget that you had no problem paying the mortgage on for the first year, then... everything goes tits up as you lose your stable job as well as your savings: it doesn't matter if things were going well a year ago; in the here and now, you're inundated with red letters you have no idea how you're going to pay; all credit lines are exhausted and the bank are threatening repossession. They couldn't care less about your esteemed position and profile of last year as it has no longer the guarantee you can get back on your feet.
Ten Hag is overseeing our worst season of all managers in the post-Ferguson era with a team assembled that has no identity whatsoever and is good for so little that fans can't even universally agree upon what the biggest flaws are. Every other manager had identity and a yardstick to be measured by, for better or worse. Our strengths and weaknesses were clearly defined up until Moyes in 4th, but ten Hag has taken it one further and now we're not good at anything: Scoring, defending, creating chances, controlling midfield, strategically hard to beat, able to overcome odds, the list goes on... and on.
Even if we say identifying and buying talent isn't his job, he has encumbered this club with so many players we won't get anywhere near breaking even on that'll it take years to get rid of unless we buy them out of their contracts or massively subsidise them elsewhere.
It has been with great dismay that I've watched this guy go from the most pleasing appointment of the lot to someone who needs an interjection and for the reins to be taken off him. I've never seen a manager nosedive himself from an overwhelmingly positive position to a polar opposite with no warnings or tells before.
The excuses made for him, no other manager has been afforded, not even Ole, and if Moyes had got as much wrong as ten Hag has, and been so stubborn about it to boot, there would have been a storming of the gates.
As much as there was hope a club legend would succeed, it was ten Hag whose football and modern conceptualisation I most backed and wanted to carry us forward out of any of the guys we got in, but he's decided to abandon everything that got him the job, and he is much worse at the kind of football we now play than the managers above him, and he's outfoxed a magnitude of order more than any of them too.
