Cristiano Ronaldo, Mason Greenwood & eight off-field sagas that have undermined Erik ten Hag's time as Man Utd manager

Ten Hag might have been excited about the prospect of working with Cristiano Ronaldo when he agreed to become United manager in April 2022, but by the time he had taken charge of the team for his first campaign, the Portuguese was already causing him a headache.

Ronaldo had been granted permission to miss United's pre-season training camp, and while the player had serious reasons for needing some time off, it was also clear he was angling for a move away from the club. United received no serious bids for him, though, and when he reported back it was obvious he did not want to be there.

Ronaldo left a pre-season friendly with Rayo Vallecano at half-time and later in the season stormed off before full-time against Tottenham, having refused to come on as a substitute. He was suspended by Ten Hag for one game, but soon returned to action.

However, he made his situation with the club untenable following his controversial interview with Piers Morgan in which he bad-mouthed Ten Hag and the club, and his contract was mutually terminated weeks later.

Just four hours after declaring that Ronaldo was to leave United, the club made another bombshell announcement: the Glazer family were launching a "strategic review" which opened up the prospect of new investment or a full sale.

The announcement lifted the spirits of fans who had become disenfranchised with the club's stewardship by the American family, but no one envisaged that the process would rumble on for more than a year until INEOS finally sealed its 25 percent stake in the club on Christmas Eve 2023, 13 months after the review had been launched.

Ten Hag would repeatedly insist that the process was not affecting his team, but the uncertainty about whether INEOS or Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani was going to become the next owner, or if the Glazers would retain full control, inevitably caused a huge distraction and led to waves of protests from supporters.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has made the right noises since being confirmed as new minority shareholder and is beginning to overhaul the club, beginning with hiring Omar Berrada as CEO from Manchester City. But it felt like the club had been in limbo for 13 months, with valuable time lost.

Ten Hag inherited the uncomfortable situation surrounding Mason Greenwood as the striker had been suspended by United several months before the Dutchman became manager following his arrest in January 2022. When all charges against Greenwood were dropped in February 2023, it opened the door to him returning to play, although no decision was made while the club conducted an internal review.

Ten Hag has never spoken publicly about Greenwood, but it has been reported that he was in favour of reintegrating the striker into the squad, as was then-chief executive Richard Arnold before a public backlash forced the club into making a U-turn and sending him on loan to Getafe.

On a pure footballing level, Ten Hag was deprived of a striker he had been expecting and planning to work with. The club's handling of the situation also brought a stream of negative publicity and angered many fans, providing another unwelcome distraction at the start of the new season.

Just three weeks into the season, Ten Hag had another uncomfortable situation to confront after dropping Jadon Sancho from the squad to face Arsenal. When asked about Sancho's omission, the manager surprisingly revealed he had left him out over "his performance in training" and warned: "You have to reach the level every day at Manchester United."

The manager thought he was sending a firm message to Sancho and was not expecting the player to fire back immediately on social media and accuse the manager of making him a scapegoat for United's troubles. Ten Hag had invested a great deal of time and effort in getting Sancho back on the right track the previous season and was furious with his response, suspending him from the team.

Sancho refused to apologise, and with no solution in sight was loaned out to Borussia Dortmund in January. The confrontation called Ten Hag's man-management skills into question and, most crucially, deprived United of a player they had paid £74m ($94m) to sign two years previously.

With the dust barely settling on the spat between Ten Hag and Sancho, United were plunged into another off-field crisis when Antony's ex-girlfriend, Gabriela Cavallin, shed more light on previous accusations she had made against the winger of domestic violence.

The accusations led to Antony being dropped from the Brazil squad and later being given a leave of absence by United while he dealt with the allegations from Cavallin and two other women. And the episode led to yet more criticism of United's lack of due diligence when signing players, as one of the alleged incidents had taken place while Antony was still at Ajax.

Antony, who denies all the accusations against him and voluntarily attended an interview with police, returned to the squad in early October. There have been no fresh developments in the case and he has not been charged. Instead, focus has returned to his dismal performances for United, with him only scoring his first goal of the season last Sunday against Newport County.

Ten Hag has also had to contend with Anthony Martial's continual decline. The Frenchman has become such a toxic figure at the club that the mere sight of him coming off the bench against Brighton to replace Rasmus Hojlund provoked a cacophony of boos from enraged supporters.

Ten Hag has had to call upon Martial on a number of occasions, as he is the club's only other centre-forward along with Hojlund, but the France international has not been available since the start of December. His long absence was a mystery and kept being described by United as an illness, but the club confirmed last month that he needed groin surgery and would be out until April.

It is now possible that he never plays for United again, a sad but fitting ending to a hugely disappointing career for him at Old Trafford.

Ten Hag has been left with no money to spend to plug the holes in his squad due to off-pitch events as United have moved dangerously close to breaking the Premier League's rules on profitability and sustainability (often referred to as Financial Fair Play, or FFP).

The Dutchman has to take his share of blame for this, as the club have spent around £400m ($509m) on transfers on his watch, and he urged those above him to overpay to a ludicrous extent to sign Antony. However, United's bungling in the transfer market also predates his arrival. A lack of funds meant he could not even make any loan signings like last year, even though he acknowledged the need for back-up to Hojlund due to Martial's long spell out.

"I looked but there is no space with FFP to do something about this lack of quantity in the striker position," he said last month. "Of course, Rashford can play as a striker, we have some other creative alternatives and it’s clear Anthony [Martial] is out for a couple of months, so it’s a gap in our squad."

Rashford's latest indiscretion was yet another embarrassing episode for the club after he apparently lied to them about having a second consecutive night out in Belfast at the infamous Thompson's Garage club, and missed last Friday's training session as he was ill. It has been revealed that Rashford had been on a tequila-fuelled binge and collapsed into bed at 3am, just five hours before taking a private jet back to Manchester.

Ten Hag did his very best not talk about Rashford's behaviour, and has drawn a line under it while insisting that the episode does not show that his players do not respect him. Yet the striker's shenanigans merely underlined the rotten player culture at United, which Ten Hag had previously vowed to root out.