What Manchester United are about to do shows stark Liverpool and FSG gap

Should Erik ten Hag be the man chosen to guide Manchester United out of the wilderness then he will be the eighth manager to have stood on touchline as Red Devils boss since Sir Alex Ferguson left in 2013.

David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have all held permanent roles, incumbent Ralf Rangnick was tasked with guiding the club on an interim basis until the end of this season, while Ryan Giggs and Michael Carrick both took on caretaker roles in 2014 and 2021 respectively.

A club that had dominated English football for 20 years has found itself just becoming one of the pack in recent seasons, and with every failure the next appointment is always pushed as the one to really turn around the fortunes. Moyes was the hand-picked successor to replace Ferguson, hand-picked by Ferguson himself didn't work out, while attempts to bring in the big guns to find a quick route back to success in the shape of Van Gaal and Mourinho also never delivered what the fans craved. Solskjaer's appointment leaned into the well worn and path of handing out jobs based upon sentimentality, while Rangnick's arrival was set to help United shape a new vision to shake off the mediocrity with which they have become accustomed.

Ten Hag's feats with Ajax in the Champions League, bringing the best out of players and working with limited resources has seen him revered as one of the top coaches in Europe. He has been credited with helping to bring the likes of Matthijs de Light, Frenkie de Jong, Hakim Ziyech and Donny van de Beek to the fore, and he has been someone that United have coveted for some time.

Reports suggest he is on the verge of becoming the new boss having reached an agreement, with some of that agreement