Football Manager 2022: Simulating Erik Ten Hag's first season at Manchester United

Erik Ten Hag has joined Manchester United as the club’s new manager, replacing Ralf Rangnick, so we’ve put him in the hotseat on Football Manager 2022 to see how he’s going to perform.

The Dutchman has arrived from Ajax and will be out to right a few wrongs at Old Trafford after their dismal run under the caretaker boss.

United ultimately finished the season in sixth place, 13 points behind Tottenham Hotspur in fourth, and 35 points behind champions Manchester City.

It was a truly dismal campaign and Ten Hag will be hoping to hit the ground running at United.

We’ve used the Football Manager 2022 Editor to put Ten Hag at United, and to add some realism we’ve also added Fulham, Bournemouth, and Nottingham Forest to the Premier League, while relegating Norwich City, Watford, and Burnley.

Let’s take a look at how Ten Hag did in his first season at United!

United did not exactly spend big as they looked to strengthen their squad under Ten Hag.

They first paid £3.4m to sign ex-Spurs youngster Samuel Shashoua, although he’s firmly one for the future and was loaned to Hamburg for the season.

United then paid £34.5m to sign Mauro Icardi from PSG, before buying two more youngsters in January: Marcelo Allende and Christoph Klarer from MC Torque and Fortuna Dusseldorf respectively.

That was it for new signings.

However, ahead of the new season, United beat off a host of competition to sign Darwin Nunez from Benfica for £46m, and paid the same amount to sign full-back Owen Wijndal from AZ Alkmaar.

The club barely raised anything through sales, although both Phil Jones and Eric Bailly left on loan.

They remained horrendously inconsistent.

In their first 21 games of the season in all competitions, United won seven of them. They drew