Ralf Rangnick: Manchester United need ‘open-heart surgery’ to recover

Ralf Rangnick has likened what Manchester United require to open-heart surgery, with the interim manager stating the club can be resuscitated if there is strong leadership in support of Erik ten Hag.

Rangnick, who is due to take up a consultancy role but indicated on Friday he would step away if not wanted by the new manager, has been at Old Trafford for nearly six months. The team are sixth, three points behind fourth-placed Tottenham and fifth-placed Arsenal – who they face on Satur day – having played a game more, and the German is clear what must occur for United to be genuine title contenders again.

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“You don’t even need glasses to see and analyse where the problems are,” he said. “Now it’s about how do we solve them? It’s not enough to do some minor amendments – cosmetic things. In medicine you would say that this is an operation of the open heart. If this happens and everyone has realised that this has to happen and if people want to work together then it makes sense and I believe it doesn’t take two or three years to change those things. This can happen within one year.

“For sure [strong leadership is needed]. This is something that not just one single person as a manager can do. With all respect to Jürgen [Klopp] and Pep [Guardiola] I’m sure that they didn’t do all the things themselves [at Liverpool and Manchester City]. There were also other people involved in those two clubs, people in certain positions, no matter what area it was, in order to rebuild and build something we want to build here. In all areas you have to have top people and they have to work together in a very close, reliable way.”

Rangnick was asked why Ten Hag could succeed if predecessors