Man Utd drew 0-0 at Villa Park on Sunday afternoon. That was dubbed as the game in which a decision on Erik ten Hag's future will be made.
However, it was based on victory or defeat. Win, he stays. Lose, he's gone.
Neither of those happened and I don't think anyone predicted a boring 0-0 draw which actually leaves more questions than answers. Some reports are conflicted in that there's still a chance that he could get sacked while others think he could keep his job after that draw.
When looking at the news, a lot of it is leaning towards the club keeping the Dutchman. But the Manchester Evening News have come out and said that Thomas Tuchel is a potential replacement for Erik ten Hag.
I don't believe that a result against Villa should determine whether the manager stays or goes because that is a difficult place to go to when you're playing wel let alone poorly. In an isolated game without all the issues surrounding the manager, a draw at Villa Park and even a point at Porto isn't necessarily the worst.
While United haven't won a game since the dinosaurs, we've only lost one of our games in this period between the international breaks. The problem with that one loss is the performance and how we we defeated 3-0 at home to Spurs. The other issue is that we've only won two of the last seven and drawn the other four.
The start to the season has been our worst-ever after seven Premier League games as United have just 8 points and sit 14th in the table with a -3 goal difference with just 5 goals scored, 3 of which came in the win over Southampton. This means we are 6 points off top 4 and 5 above the relegation zone.
The only positive for United this season is that Andre Onana is top of the clean sheets list with 4 above the likes of Alisson and David Raya.
Let's go back a few years because we were in a similar situation with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and it should be something that the new board can learn from.
In the Norwegian's final season at the helm, much like ten Hag, the football wasn't great, the results were poor and there appeared to be problems in the dressing room despite being 4th in the league with 14 points, 2 behind Chelsea at the top.
But it was from mid-October that things unexplainably starting to go awry.
A terrible display at Leicester resulted in a 4-2 defeat; a late winner by Cristiano Ronaldo got the win over Atalanta after another poor display; then came that 5-0 thumping at home to LFC - this is where I believed they should've sacked him; we then managed to get a 3-0 win at Spurs who were worse than us under Nuno Espirito Santo, who was then sacked after that game; another Ronaldo-inspired comeback at Atalanta gave Solskjaer a 2-2 draw in the CL; another embarrassing performance at home to City saw us lose 2-0 when, if not for David de Gea, would've been more; and finally, that 4-1 humiliation at Watford was the end of the line.
This is what I mean with ten Hag.
If they're going to sack him, they may as well do it now because can they absolutely guarantee that things will get better? I also don't think that going from a game-to-game basis is the way to go. It makes no sense to me.
Should they keep him after this Villa result, what if we lose to Brentford at home in our next game, will they let him go then? If that does happen, wouldn't it make more sense to let him go now and let the new manager come in and have the next two weeks during the international break?
This is why I think that if they back him, they may as well do so until Christmas at least otherwise it wouldn't make any sense even more so when you've backed him publicly and spent so much money on him in the transfer window.
But if they look at how we're playing, the position in the table, the lack of goals, and it being our worst-ever start to a PL season, if they do sack him, I can't really complain. On top of it all, he isn't really using his new signings unless he absolutely has to. He hasn't used Manuel Ugarte at all in the last two and even brought on Casemiro towards the end of the game at Villa instead of the new midfielder.
As we've known for a little while now, there is a meeting between United's board on Tuesday in London in which they will discuss many topics with the manager's future being the main talking point.
But what will they do is the question.
Background Image: Erik ten Hag | Creator: Michael Regan | Credit: Getty Images Copyright: 2024 Getty Images via Goal