‘You have to see the bigger picture and the bigger picture looks very good,’ Erik ten Hag bizarrely proclaimed following defeat by Fulham.
The bigger picture? That would be Manchester United sitting sixth in the Premier League, riddled with injuries that threaten to undo a lot of recent good work and now heading into a season-defining week against Nottingham Forest and Manchester City.
When every game is labelled as a ‘final’, as Ten Hag has repeated for weeks now, losing any of them escalates the pressure in an instant.
It wasn’t just the defeat by Fulham, either. It was the manner of it. Thoroughly outplayed; no real playing identity; £86million Antony getting sent on in the 99th minute; United’s form was made to look as fallible as their confidence. All while Ineos are in the building, watching, taking notes, assessing their options.
So now it’s a must-win FA Cup fifth round trip to Nottingham Forest, where they were last beaten prior to the Fulham loss, and then a daunting prospect of taking this patched up side down to road to face City in a Manchester derby.
Pressure ramped up on Manchester United after they fell to an abject defeat against Fulham
Erik ten Hag is running out of time to prove to incoming owners Ineos he’s the man for the job
‘We are used to it, not only from January are we playing a final but we also have an experience of many players who can deal with pressure situations so we look forward to it,’ Ten Hag said ahead of losing to Fulham.
Enjoying it? Players who can handle the pressure? It sure didn’t look like that at 5pm on Saturday.
The results speak for themselves: an eighth home defeat of the season, 10 league losses, 15 in all competitions.
Take the 10 league losses, Sir Alex Ferguson never experienced that in any of his 21 Premier League campaigns. Now it’s become standard at United, occurring five times in the past 11 seasons.
And so while Wednesday night might not be a Mark Robins in 1990 moment, the significance of the FA Cup for this United side and Ten Hag cannot be understated.
Finishing bottom of a Champions League group that included Galatasaray and FC Copenhagen was tremendously poor, as was the defence of their Carabao Cup title, going down 3-0 to a much-changed Newcastle United side at Old Trafford.
The FA Cup, and rapidly fading hopes of the top four, are all that remain for United.
Lose at Forest and the season is effectively…