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Erik ten Hag

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Despite Liverpool largely enjoying the superior league position during Klopp’s near nine-year reign, he won just two of his 11 away games to United. That run included a 4-3 FA Cup quarter-final exit and 2-2 Premier League draw last season that precipitated a Liverpool collapse in his final few months in charge. Yet the pressure is arguably even more on the Dutch manager in the other dugout. 

Erik ten Hag was backed by those at the top of United’s new sporting structure at the end of last season despite finishing eighth—the club’s worst ever Premier League performance. 

“Liverpool are in a different phase of the life cycle,” Ten Hag told reporters on Friday. “They are a mature team with players who have played together for a long time and are very experienced. We are much more mixed and we have to build a new team.”

But ten Hag still believed in his team. “We can always win, last year we won [in the FA Cup] in the second part of the season,” the Dutchman said.
 
Hope of a new dawn for the Red Devils has been diminished in the opening weeks of the new campaign. Joshua Zirkzee’s late winner on his debut at least ensured a winning start against Fulham, but a 2-1 defeat to Brighton last weekend had many of the same hallmarks that have seen United struggle previously under Ten Hag.