Manchester United players were reportedly impressed with how manager Erik ten Hag handled the difficult situation with Cristiano Ronaldo last week.
The Portugal international left the Tottenham game early as he spent another match on the bench, and Ten Hag made it clear this behaviour would not be tolerated, whilst still keeping the door open for him to return to the team in future.
Ronaldo was left out of the matchday squad to face Chelsea at the weekend, and it seems that everyone at Man Utd agreed that this was the right call and were impressed with how Ten Hag dealt with it, according to the Manchester Evening News.
It’s not been an easy job for Ten Hag since he left Ajax to become the new Red Devils manager, and the Ronaldo situation has only made things harder.
Still, for the time being it seems that the Dutch tactician is passing this tricky early test pretty well, and it’s having the desired effect on the rest of his squad.
Ronaldo’s situation has led to plenty of transfer gossip about his future, but Fabrizio Romano wrote in his exclusive CaughtOffside column today that there’s nothing to the links with the likes of Newcastle United and Napoli.
“Newcastle always wanted to go down a different path with a focus on young players. No news on Ronaldo, as things stand,” Romano said.
On Napoli, he added: “Napoli have Osimhen, Simeone and Raspadori as strikers, so I don’t see them joining the race for Ronaldo in January – at least, nothing ongoing as of today.”