Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane visited the club’s training ground in 2019 and saw the culture that Erik ten Hag has tried to change at the club
Manchester United have been forced to change the culture that once left Roy Keane distinctly unimpressed upon his return to Carrington.
United’s struggles and underachievement in the post-Ferguson era have been well-documented. For a decade, the storied club were faced with new problems as players’ grievances were leaked and aired in public; a prospect that would not have entered Sir Alex Ferguson’s thinking during his 26-year reign.
While Erik ten Hag has looked to return to Ferguson’s disciplinarian ways and INEOS have instilled a new recruitment structure, former United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was confronted by a completely different dressing room atmosphere from the club’s heyday. After an initial wave of optimism, following Jose Mourinho’s departure, Solskjaer’s first full season in charge started badly, with the team languishing outside the top four.
Ahead of a Manchester derby clash at Old Trafford in 2019, Solskjaer called on his ex-teammate Keane to help rouse team spirit. However, the iconic midfielder was seemingly left bemused, with one United player dismissing the seven-time Premier League winner as he addressed the squad.
“As you’d imagine Roy has strong views on what it takes to be a proper United player and he gave it them straight,” a training ground source told Mirror Sport in 2019. “He wasn’t impressed with one player who didn’t seem to be all that interested and looked as if he’d rather be somewhere else.”
While Keane’s speech appeared to have the desired effect, with United winning against Manchester City and eventually making a late charge into the Champions League places, it was far from the end of the club’s problems. Solskjaer has since bemoaned the culture of players leaking stories and his successor Ralf Rangnick also pulled no punches.
When asked what problems incoming boss Ten Hag should address, the German coach declared that United needed to make major changes. “You don’t even need glasses to see the problems… now it’s only about how you can solve them,” he said. “Not minor cosmetic things. This is an open-heart operation. If everyone realises this has to happen and works together, it doesn’t need to take years.”
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Upon his arrival at Old Trafford, Ten Hag laid down the law by presenting the squad with five key rules to abide by. The Dutchman explained that he would drop any player who was late for training or team meetings; asked for the squad to come to him with their problems and not to communicate through agents; no alcohol allowed during match weeks; eat food prepared by the club, not personal chefs; and to have their BMIs monitored monthly.
His hardline approach to discipline led to high-profile disputes with Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho. However, it has also helped the manager usher in a new crop of youngsters and win two trophies in as many seasons, though this sense of optimism may have dimmed slightly following the team’s 3-0 defeat to rivals Liverpool on Sunday.
Speaking earlier this summer, Ten Hag admitted that Rangnick was spot on with his summary of United’s squad before he took charge – with INEOS also overseeing changes in football operations. “Rangnick was absolutely right,” he said.
“We have been working very hard on this for two years, but he said it exactly right: it is a thorough, very complex operation. And I knew when I started that it was going to be a tough job. And there were a lot of people who advised me against it, yes, including Louis van Gaal.
“So when I came I wasn’t shocked. But the culture, the mentality was really not good. To win, to really achieve top performance every week, we had to change a lot across the whole club. In a top sports environment everyone works to the highest standards. United drifted away from that, I noticed that from day one.”
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