Small margins?! The gap between Man Utd and City is bigger than ever - and Erik ten Hag shows no sign of bridging it

Although United led for 48 minutes at the Etihad, it always looked like a fragile advantage, and they were in fact clinging on for dear life from the moment the game kicked-off, illustrated by the fact City had 100 percent possession in the opening five minutes.

The match statistics told a very different story to the narrative Ten Hag was pushing. United saw just 26% of the ball over the 90 minutes while City had more shots (27) than United’s rate of possession. Ten Hag’s side had a mere three efforts on goal, with Marcus Rashford’s 30-yard piledriver being their only one on target.

While Andre Onana was kept super busy down one end, making eight saves, Ederson barely touched the ball with his hands. City made 792 passes while United made just 288, and less than half of those were in the opposition half, where 618 of City’s took place.

United had one brief spell where they kept the ball well and managed to frustrate the City faithful, but mostly they were afraid to get possession and looked very limited with it. They approached the game against City like Brentford and Red Star Belgrade had earlier this season. This is supposed to be one of the biggest clubs in the world, but they played like one of the smallest.

And this was not an anomaly, a one-off strategy to cope with playing City. They played in a similar fashion at home to Tottenham in January and away to Premier League first-timers Luton Town last month. In fact, Luton, who have the smallest wage bill in the league, have scored as many times as the Red Devils this season. Only six teams have scored fewer goals than United in the Premier League.

However conditioned it might be by injuries, the current style of play is not befitting of a club of United’s standing or wealth. And as City eventually proved with their late onslaught, it is not sustainable against top opponents. It did not take Sunday’s defeat to demonstrate that, however. United have only beaten one top-nine side away from home in nearly two seasons under Ten Hag, their somewhat fortuitous victory at Villa Park in February.

Having spent so much of their history in the shadow of United, City have been making up for lost time since their 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour, soaring ahead of their local rivals in the last eight years. Since Pep Guardiola took over in August 2016, City have earned 154 more points than United (687 to 533), winning 62 more games in the Premier League (216 to 154) and scoring 243 more goals (721 to 478). They have also finished ahead of them in the league on seven occasions (it will soon be eight).

This trend had begun before Ten Hag became United manager, but the Dutchman has not come close to reversing it. He made progress last season, delivering a first trophy in six years by lifting the Carabao Cup, finishing third in the Premier League and reaching the FA Cup final, where his side lost 2-1 to City.

But rather than building on the momentum in his second campaign, United have gone backwards. They are three places lower in the league than they were this time last season and have nine points fewer, effectively undoing all that progress made. They only remain in the FA Cup (with a daunting quarter-final against Liverpool next) and their hopes of finishing in the top four have practically vanished.

Things could get even worse in the remainder of the campaign. Ten Hag is one defeat away from equalling United's most league defeats in a Premier League season and will need to pick up at least 15 points to avoid setting their lowest-ever points total, from two years ago, just before he was appointed.

The Dutchman cannot say he has not been given time. He has had two seasons to remould the team in his image and the style of football has not altered much from the counter-attacking of the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer or Jose Mourinho eras. He was appointed on the back of the thrilling possession football he oversaw at Ajax, but soon abandoned any ideas of replicating that style with United.

He admitted in an interview with Viaplay in October: “The players you have determine how you will play. We are playing different football than I showed at Ajax. That will have to be the case because I can’t play the same way here. That is not the DNA of Manchester United at all. Ajax has a very typical and characteristic style of play. With Manchester United I will always show different football, I did so last year as well. We play much more direct football here because I have the players for that here, especially up front.”

It was a strange thing to say given how much money Ten Hag has had to spend, as he was handed a war chest of over £247m ($313m) in his first campaign and £217m ($275m) in his second, according to The Swiss Ramble. He has also had a large amount of control over transfers, urging the club to sign Lisandro Martinez, Antony, Tyrell Malacia, Onana and Mason Mount. Of those, only Martinez could be said to be turning out well, although he has missed more than six months due to injuries.

Onana is improving and was one of the few players to perform well against City, but he had a nightmare start to his career at Old Trafford and was partly responsible for the early exit from the Champions League. Antony is one of the biggest transfer mistakes in Premier League history while Mount, who has been limited to just four league starts due to his injury problems, cannot be far behind.

In any other season, Ten Hag would have been fired following the disastrous results at the start of the campaign, but the fact that United were still conducting their strategic review at the time meant he remained in place. That process finally came to an end in December, when INEOS bought a 28 percent stake in the club to take charge of the football operation.

CEO Sir Jim Ratcliffe and director of sport Sir Dave Brailsford have been assessing every aspect of the club ever since, and while there has been no suggestion that they want to sack Ten Hag imminently, they have hardly given him a vote of confidence.

“I’m not going to comment on Erik ten Hag because I think it would be inappropriate to do that,” Ratcliffe told the media two weeks ago. “But if you look at the 11 years that have gone since David Gill and Sir Alex [Ferguson] stepped down, there have been a whole series of coaches — some of which were very good - and none of them were successful or survived for very long. And you can’t blame all the coaches.”

It was hardly a ringing endorsement for the manager, even if it was an acknowledgement that he, like his predecessors, has been working in difficult circumstances, in an institution with little direction or expertise. INEOS will now provide that leadership, and Ten Hag is running out of time to convince his new employers that he is the right man to lead the team from the dugout.

Ratcliffe has already made big and bold changes, raiding City to hire Omar Berrada as United’s next CEO and approaching Dan Ashworth from Newcastle to become the next sporting director. There is little reason to believe he will stop there, especially given how trigger happy INEOS have been at Nice, cycling through five coaches between 2019 and 2023. It is also significant that Ashworth was spotted meeting former Chelsea coach Graham Potter, who he worked with at Brighton, last week.

With Ten Hag facing so much uncertainty about his future and INEOS not being willing to back him publicly, perhaps it is time for United to follow the leads of Liverpool, Barcelona and Bayern Munich and announce that the manager will step down at the end of the season. The Dutchman is highly unlikely to resign as he has more than a year left on his contract, so the call will have to come from above.

There is little point in getting rid of him right now as there will be a dearth of candidates willing to take over now, and the last time United experimented with an interim manager and appointed Ralf Rangnick for six months, it had dire consequences. Ten Hag has earned the right to finish his second season, but he has not done enough to demonstrate he can lead the team back to where they want to be.

Ratcliffe has already declared he wants to knock City and Liverpool off their perch whilst admitting that United have a very long way to go before they can reclaim their spot at the top of English football. The fact that Ten Hag thinks only "small margins" separate United and City proves he is not the right man to attempt it.