What Erik ten Hag learned from Pep Guardiola as Rio Ferdinand offers Man Utd insight

They will soon be rivals, but Erik ten Hag will have much to thank Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola for when he takes over as Manchester United manager this summer.

Ten Hag is poised to succeed Ralf Rangnick as United boss at the end of the season. He will move from Amsterdam to Manchester to take on a huge rebuilding job at Old Trafford, where Guardiola will become his main rival in the Premier League.

The 52-year-old Dutchman will have a major task on his hands, with Paul Pogba, Jesse Lingard and Edinson Cavani set to leave the club on free transfers, while many others face uncertain futures. United are about to finish their fifth successive season without silverware and Ten Hag will be expected to turn things around very quickly.

As former United defender Rio Ferdinand has explained, there are many facets to managing United. It is a completely different beast to Ajax, Utrecht or Go Ahead Eagles. “He's valued and looked at as a very good coach and he's coming in and he's risking that,” Ferdinand said on his YouTube channel Vibe with Five this week.

“We've seen many managers now with far more experience, who have won much more than Ten Hag, bigger reputations, who have come in and been chewed up by this football club and spat out. And the players are still the same.

“So he has to find a way of getting in there and managing the characters, the personalities and the egos that are in there. And I know I sound like a broken record but the thing he has to do first is change the culture, bring the new culture and drive it. He has to do that, it's a massive part of if he's going to be successful.”

As difficult as that sounds, Ferdinand was also quick to point out that Ten Hag does have some experience of working at a