Former Manchester United midfielder Fred has offered a blunt assessment of Erik ten Hag, praising the manager\u2019s tactical work while criticising his handling of players during a difficult spell at the club.<\/p>\n
Fred, who featured in Ten Hag\u2019s first season in charge, said the Dutchman stood out for his football intelligence and the way he set teams up. But he also argued that the atmosphere around the squad deteriorated because of the manager\u2019s approach with the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are coaches who are very good tactically, but very bad with the group,\u201d Fred told the Charla Podcast . \u201cThen there are coaches who are very good with the group and are tactically c—.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, [Ole Gunnar] Solskj\u00e6r, he was very good with the group, but tactically … well, he had [Michael] Carrick and [Kieran] McKenna as his assistants. They both went to the Championship, two former players who managed to get promoted with their teams. They helped a lot, but [Solskj\u00e6r] was more about uniting the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I worked with Ten Hag. Ten Hag was, tactically, a very good guy. Very intelligent. But with the group, he was a piece of c—. He couldn\u2019t manage it, man, he\u2019d fight with everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe fought with Cristiano [Ronaldo], he fought with Casemiro, then he fought with me, with [Marcus] Rashford … that\u2019s rough. The guy lost the locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t play me! Sometimes it got stressful. Only his Dutch players played. A clique-driven coach. But he was, tactically, one of the best I\u2019ve worked with. The team on the field was very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fred also revisited the tensions involving Cristiano Ronaldo, who returned to Old Trafford before Ten Hag\u2019s appointment. The midfielder said the striker was still scoring when the new manager arrived, but the demand for the team to work harder off the ball changed the relationship between them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t playing Cristiano,\u201d Fred recalled. \u201cCristiano was doing well, scoring goals, then [Ten Hag] arrived and he wanted the team to run. Cristiano is older, we had to run for him there. It\u2019s normal, but he didn\u2019t want that, so he went and benched Cristiano. There was some drama.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen there was a game, all the guys were asking if Cristiano was leaving. There was nothing we could do. Then we got back from the game, as soon as the plane landed and the press guys switched their phones off of airplane mode … that was when he gave the interview where he really criticized the club.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fred praised Erik ten Hag\u2019s tactics but said the former Man United boss struggled badly with the dressing room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[59,180,182],"class_list":["post-21262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-featured","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}