Erik ten Hag lost his job at Manchester United for a multitude of reasons but, in his own analysis of what went wrong, there was one particularly striking observation. “The generation I grew up in had much thicker skin – you could be much more direct,” said Ten Hag. “If I would do that with my current group of players I would demotivate them. The current generation find it offensive. Criticism really gets to them.”
It did not take long for Ten Hag’s words to find support. “The tail is wagging the dog,” declared Graeme Souness, who highlighted players’ media exposure, contractual power and what he called the “wokeism that permeates” society.