Manchester United are a club in transition.
The last 12 months have seen three different men in charge of the team.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign as boss came to an end before German tactician Ralf Rangnick was appointed as interim manager until the end of the season.
Following what turned out to be a hugely disappointing end to the campaign, Rangnick, who guided the side to just 11 wins out of 25 matches, was unsurprisingly excluded from the process of identifying a permanent manager.
The plan was for Rangnick to pass over the first-team reins and move to a consultancy role, however, after the 20-time league winners made a final decision on hiring Ajax’s Erik ten Hag, it quickly became apparent that Rangnick had no future with the Premier League giants.
Now, according to a recent report from ESPN, ten Hag was so reluctant to work with his temporary predecessor that the club ended up parting ways with the former RB Leipzig boss.
It has been noted that Rangnick was expecting to meet with ten Hag in person to exchange thoughts on the state of the team, but after only receiving a phone call, became unhappy at the lack of proper hand-over.
Some of Rangnick’s public comments may have upset several key figures behind the scenes too.
Speaking to reporters after the side was thumped 4-0 by Liverpool back in April, Rangnick, as quoted by Sky Sports, said: “If you analyse the situation it is not difficult to analyse. For me, it is clear there will be six, seven, eight, maybe ten new players. Before you sign those players you need to be aware how you want to play.”
The German’s infamous recommendation that the club need to sign as many as 10 new players is believed to have gone down like a lead balloon among senior staff at Old Trafford, so an awkward exit was always going to be on the cards.
Watch out.
When Ten Hag will eventually fail they will blame it on Ralf Rangnick…