Erik ten Hag had been warned. His closest friends, his confidantes, all alerted him when he was first approached by Manchester United that this was a job unlike any other. This is not Ajax. This is not Utrecht. This is not Go Ahead Eagles.
Devoid of hiding places, an environment where excuses don’t wash, where winning is an expectation; did he really want to rush head first into the eye of the storm?
‘So many people advised negatively when I started in this club,’ he said this summer. ‘I could have gone into projects with much better conditions, with much better structures but I choose this: Man United.