Erik ten Hag has admitted his Man United side “is not ready” for the start of the Premier League, with Arne Slot‘s view on Liverpool the complete opposite.
Man United kick off the new Premier League season with the visit of Fulham on Friday night, with Ten Hag pessimistic about his side’s chances.
“It wasn’t the pre-season where you can, in five, six weeks, work on the team,” he told reporters on Thursday, after a summer that saw United travel to Norway, Scotland and the USA before their Community Shield loss to Man City.
“It’s very complicated. We had the USA tour squad, then we add the players who did the Euros and Copa America, then now our new signings.
“We have to make a team from it and that team is not ready, but the league starts and there are more managers who deal with this problem.
“We definitely have this problem, but we still have some rules, some principles, and we have to make a start.
“We can’t hide ourselves, we can’t run away from it, we have to deal with it.”
Ten Hag, who has new signings Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Joshua Zirkzee available but not the injured Leny Yoro, Luke Shaw, Rasmus Hojlund, Tyrell Malacia and Victor Lindelof, is already downplaying expectations.
It could not be further removed from Slot’s view on Liverpool’s curtain raiser at Ipswich on Saturday, having dealt with the same issues in pre-season.
The Reds were without Alisson, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joe Gomez, Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz when they travelled to the US.
Fortunate though they are with injuries, with no players absent, they have not managed to add to their squad in the transfer market.
But speaking in his own pre-match press conference on Friday, Slot made the opposite statement to Ten Hag: “We are ready.”
“I think it would be perfect if after four or five weeks of pre-season you are already close to perfection, which is very difficult to reach,” he said, reflecting Ten Hag’s view.
“And some of them have only been in for 10 or 12 days. But like I said, many things have stayed the same and the players have stayed the same.
“So, we are ready for the game tomorrow.
“If you talk about where in the end we want to go to, there are still a lot, lot, lot of things to improve.
“But I think if I’m here for three, four, five, six or seven years I will still give you the same answer, that there are a lot of things to improve, because it’s impossible for players to reach perfection.
“We’re always aiming for this but there are always ways to improve the team.”
One manager already preparing to deflect criticism and another ready for the challenge ahead – if you didn’t already know, you’d surely guess Ten Hag was the new arrival and Slot the coach heading into his third season in charge.
