The ‘Manchester United are back’ bandwagon is almost ready for boarding under Erik ten Hag

A comfortable win against Bournemouth has left Manchester United clear in fourth place and starting to dream of a Premier League title again.

Another Manchester United home game, another comfortable win. A 3-0 win against Bournemouth didn’t require them to break into a sweat, but this wasn’t an insignificant result. All around them near the top of the Premier League table, their rivals were dropping points. Arsenal and Newcastle cancelled each other at The Emirates. Manchester City were held at home by Everton. Spurs lost at home to Aston Villa and Liverpool to Brentford.

United are now two points clear of Spurs in fourth place in the table and are within sight of second place. There’s even been some conjecture about launching a surprise title bid. Unsurprisingly, there has been considerable praise for the players that they’ve brought in after last season’s disaster; Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Lisandro Martinez have all lifted this team, while offloading Cristiano Ronaldo has surgically removed the one major cause of Old Trafford drama from the club.

In the four games since he finally left the club, United have played four, scored nine goals and conceded none. Marcus Rashford alone has scored four of those goals.

And perhaps that’s the single most impressive thing about the way in which Ten Hag has transformed Manchester United this season. The re-signing of Cristiano Ronaldo was a desperate throw of the dice from a leadership that seemed to value marketability over what a player could offer on the pitch. The Glazers are still there for now, but even their time owning the club seems to be coming to an end and with that it feels as though United – and some might say for the first time in almost a decade – are focused on the football again.

While new players are a highly visible manifestation of an improved culture within the club, the decision to bring in Erik ten Hag as the new manager proved to be ultimately pivotal. Manchester United have not been successful in this respect since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson almost a full decade ago. David Moyes, Louis Van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were, one after the other, the wrong man for the job, with the transition from Solskjaer to Ten Hag via the disaster that was Ralf Rangnick during the intervening period.

Ten Hag’s success hasn’t been built on buying in expensive new players alone. He’s also clearly improved players that were already there. It’s…