Erik ten Hag is not the first Manchester United manager to be ruthless with squad numbers

"I am not a number, I am a free man," exclaims Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. Eric Bailly is Manchester United's man with no number.

The decision to revoke Bailly's number is one of the most ruthless acts yet by Erik ten Hag at United. Some fans may have missed Bailly's absence from the provisional squad numbers United published on Thursday, for Bailly last pulled on the United shirt in December 2021.

Even Jose Mourinho was not brave enough to deny such a senior player a squad number. James Wilson lost the '19' in 2016, one month before he was loaned to Derby. He never played for United again.

Fellow academy graduate Tyler Blackett was another denied a squad number by Mourinho before he was swiftly sold to Reading.

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Most mischievously, Mourinho passive-aggressively reassigned Marcos Rojo, formerly the number five, the number 16 amid his desperation for a centre half. The '5' was eventually occupied the following year by Harry Maguire, with Mourinho long since sacked.

The most merciless was Louis van Gaal in his handling of Victor Valdes. Valdes openly questioned Van Gaal's training methods during a session, was stripped of the number 32 and transfer listed.

"He doesn't follow my philosophy. There is no place for someone like that," Van Gaal said, mentioning the dreaded 'ph' word. "There is not one place for one player. The philosophy is how you play football and how you maintain your match rhythm. For example, he refused last year to play in our second team.

“That is one aspect of our philosophy but there are a lot of others for how you play like a goalkeeper for Manchester United. When you are not willing to follow the principles of the