At Manchester United, Erik ten Hag will not be following in Sir Alex Ferguson's footsteps in order to coax the best performance out of Cristiano Ronaldo during this season. Instead, ten Hag has chosen not to take a page from Ferguson's playbook.
During the glorious 26-year reign of the Scotsman, plenty of significant decisions were made, some of which may have caused some players' noses to get out of joint in an effort to try and inspire some form of performance out of others. Paul Scholes recently discussed the way in which he dealt with Wayne Rooney, whose work-rate was criticized on multiple occasions during his illustrious tenure at Old Trafford. Scholes' comments were made in light of the fact that Rooney had been the subject of such criticism.
It is the same situation for Ronaldo at the moment, who is finding it difficult to get game time under Ten Hag because the Dutch manager wants his attacking options to have a certain level of willingness to press and defend from the front. This situation is similar to what is happening for Ronaldo.
"You'd get onto him a little bit," Scholes said, according to BT Sport. "Even if he [Ronaldo] didn't press, he gives you something which is the hardest thing to do in football and that is score goals that win you games of football."
"Wayne Rooney was a member of our team, and because he refused to run back, he was moved to the left side of the field. In the end, he was playing center forward, and making sacrifices like that for your teammates is what it takes to try to win games.
Because an experienced manager like Ferguson was able to recognize that Rooney's skill in front of goal was more important than pressing and was the most obvious way to make United more dangerous, Ten Hag may still have something to learn from the legendary manager of the Red Devils.
This season in the Premier League, it has not been easy for United to find the back of the net, as evidenced by the fact that Ten Hag's squad has scored the second-fewest amount of goals of the 10 teams that are currently sitting in the top half of the table.
Despite having a plethora of opportunities, Ronaldo did not score for United in their third match of their Europa League campaign, which was played against Omonia. This was despite the fact that United scored three goals against Omonia.
It was hardly the kind of performance that would make Ten Hag reconsider his position on the 37-year-old forward and play to his strengths while calling on his teammates to do more dirty work as a result of the situation.
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