This can't go on! Man Utd guarantee entertainment but this wild, unsustainable style will take them nowhere

United have to be the most entertaining team to watch in the world. This season, neutrals have been unable to take their eyes off them. United's early exit from the Champions League was not just mourned by their own supporters. It was a huge blow to adrenaline junkies all across Europe, who had feasted on five truly epic games in which United had scored 12 goals and conceded 14.

They had lost 4-3 to Bayern Munich and to Copenhagen and chucked away the lead in both matches against Galatasaray, conceding six goals in the process and making the mediocre Turkish side crammed full of veterans look like Galacticos. Even their 1-0 win over Copenhagen was high on drama, featuring a last-minute penalty save from Andre Onana.

And as many of the last 16 ties passed without any twists or turns, a fair few neutrals were left longing for United and the wild storylines they always throw up. Luckily for English football fans, the chaos has continued in the domestic competitions. There have been the insane 4-3 victories over Wolves and Liverpool.

The Brentford game may have ended 1-1 but the scoreline did not tell the full story. The Bees had 31 shots and 85 touches in the opposing box - more than any other team this season.

Thrilling football may be in United's DNA but the truth is that the epic plot twists in the Sir Alex Ferguson era were so memorable because they only happened every so often. There were late winners but they tended to come after attritional matches in which they wore the opposition down and then struck at the end.

Thursday's game was played at 100mph and by the end, the players were utterly exhausted and incapable of doing the basics, such as marking Cole Palmer at a corner. Four players pointed at Chelsea's most dangerous player as he stood alone in the box before the corner from which he grabbed the winner. Everyone knew he was a threat but no-one took upon themselves to go and pick him up.

"He can’t be getting in that space at that stage of the game after scoring two and, for most parts of the game, being the most dominant Chelsea player on the pitch. You’ve got to identify that," Rio Ferdinand said on TNT Sports.

This young, often inexperienced group of players do not know how to get games over the line. And no one takes responsibility. Bruno Fernandes loves to point and shout, but nobody seems to listen to him, and mistakes like not picking up Palmer keep on happening.

One of the chief criticisms of United this season is that they do not know how to manage games. And one statistic sums this up like no other. Ten Hag's side have conceded 27 times within 10 minutes of scoring a goal or letting one in. In other words, they either undo their own momentum after scoring or they sink even further into the abyss.

This was the case against Brentford, when Mason Mount scored in the 96th minute and then Kristoffer Ajer equalised in the 99th. It was also true against Chelsea, Palmer scoring twice in the space of 82 seconds.

It happened in the whirlwind FA Cup victory against Liverpool, when Alexis Mac Allister and Mohamed Salah scored in the space of three minutes at the end of the first half. And it happened at Molineux, when United threw away a 3-1 lead by conceding in the 85th and 95th minutes.

United won those games with their own last-gasp heroics from Kobbie Mainoo and Amad Diallo. But what has happened before and after those games illustrates that this type of football is just unsustainable.

The problem is that while everyone else can see that United's tactics and style are not conducive to getting consistent results, Ten Hag cannot. While he was understandably furious about throwing away five points in the last two games by conceding goals deep in stoppage time, he put the late collapses down to individual errors.

"We got ourselves into a winning position, with some brilliant football, scoring some great goals and we didn’t manage the game in stoppage time," he told a press conference.

"You have to do your job. The players know their jobs and they didn’t make the right decisions. We didn’t react quickly enough. We have to make better ­decisions. We have to read when to keep the ball, when to pass and move and switch the play when we are winning.

"We made individual errors that cost us the game. We have to learn from it. When you are a Man United player you should already know how to deal with this circumstance. In five days we dropped five points. That is unacceptable. We gave away a game we should have won."

But would any team be comfortable playing in this anarchic way, in which the opposition is almost encouraged to have as many shots as they like?

United have conceded more than 20 shots in five of their last six league games and the numbers seem to be getting worse. Brentford had 31 shots while Chelsea had 28. Even goal-shy, relegation-fighting Everton had 23 attempts against United.

Ten Hag has repeatedly dismissed criticism of the amount of shots United have been conceding and did so again after the Chelsea defeat, describing the focus on this area of statistics as "ridiculous".

He claims that the shots United concede tend to be of low quality and hid behind the fact that, before visiting Stamford Bridge, his side had the fourth best defensive record in the league (they are now joint-fourth with Tottenham).

Last month, Ten Hag had questioned Jamie Carragher's deep analysis of his side's style of play, suggesting the Sky Sports pundit was "subjective" as a former Liverpool player. Carragher had said United "defend like a team I've never seen before" and suggested their tactic of pressing high but defending as a low block was "impossible".

United fans were delighted when their team beat Liverpool a few weeks later but the chaotic nature of that game only served to underline Carragher's point. That victory was talked of being a turning point for Ten Hag and United's season but instead it looks like yet another false dawn, the exception that proves the rule.

Liverpool are no strangers to drama too and are also accustomed to getting into uncomfortable positions, falling behind against Brighton and then losing their lead against Sheffield United before eventually winning and staying top of the Premier League. Those turnarounds felt like inevitabilities rather than great escapes.

And that's the crux of United's issues. They have lost plenty of late goals and surrendered points at the death, but they have also won too many points late in games. Five of their 15 league wins have been thanks to goals in the final 10 minutes, with three of them (Brentford, Fulham and Wolves) coming in stoppage time. A further two came from two goals down (Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest).

Those late wins have been balanced out by last-gasp defeats and Ten Hag has set an unwanted record by becoming the first United manager to oversee 12 defeats in a Premier League season, overtaking David Moyes. And yet, there is still no indication of whether or not he will be in charge next season or not.

There have been some reports that INEOS do not want to change managers as there are already so many changes happening at boardroom level. In an ideal world, they would like to give Ten Hag another crack at the whip, with a proper structure in place above him.

But can Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford, who were both at Stamford Bridge on Thursday to witness the chaos first hand, stomach many more sickening late defeats?

Ferdinand summed up the anarchic nature of the seven-goal thriller and warned Chelsea and United that this style of play is no roadmap to success.

"Neither side had any control. It was like a basketball match, up and down. You attack, we attack. That’s the worrying thing for both of these teams," he said. "Yes, Chelsea will indulge in this, and they will enjoy it for tonight.

"But when the dust settles, Chelsea and United have got to look at themselves and say that they have to find an element of control. Those traits [unpredictability and chaos] don’t win big titles, simple as that."

Now Ratcliffe and Brailsford must choose between chaos and order. And as much as they might been entertained, they will know that the football Ten Hag and United are serving up will not take the club they have so invested so much in very far.

Brailsford's serial-winning Team Sky cycling team left nothing to chance and won the Tour de France seven years out of eight. There was little drama but there was untold success. It is clear what type he prefers. So for all the joy and excitement Ten Hag's United keep offering, it is unlikely to last much longer.