Ten Hag’s first task is to sort out United’s biggest mistake: bringing Ronaldo back

It wouldn’t quite be true to say that everything was rosy at Manchester United a year ago, but they had finished second in the Premier League the previous season and had added Jadon Sancho and Raphäel Varane to the squad. The doubts around Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s management meant a serious title challenge still seemed unlikely but nobody really expected them to fall to sixth, with 16 points fewer than they had gathered the previous season.

The campaign began well enough, with a 5-1 demolition of Leeds and then four points from admittedly less-than-inspiring performances in away games at Southampton and Wolves. This seemed the familiar pattern: Solskjær’s United excelled against teams who came at them and left space for the pace of their forward line to exploit, but found it harder against teams who sat deep.

And then, in the final week of the transfer window, came the oddest of distractions: the reports that Cristiano Ronaldo, his relationship with Juventus fractured, was on the verge of joining Manchester City. At which point the United machine sprang into action – Sir Alex Ferguson, Rio Ferdinand, Bruno Fernandes, the generations coming together for one dreadful mistake – to ensure that he signed for United instead. If City had devised an operation to destabilise a club that was just beginning to look like it might conceivably re-emerge as a rival, it could hardly have executed it better.

United played poorly for much their first game against a dismal Newcastle, but Ronaldo scored twice in a 4-1 win and that was enough. Grown men wept: the prodigal son had returned. And so the Solskjær nostalgia project was derailed by an even more intense nostalgia. The frolic in past glories obscured the chaos of the present.