Manchester United kick off the new English Premier League season with the visit of Fulham on Friday but there are just as many questions surrounding the club as there were when the last campaign ended.
Those areas of doubt were added to on Thursday when United manager Erik ten Hag revealed his side “is not ready but the league starts”.
The Dutchman, who saw his side lose 3-0 to Liverpool in their final preseason match, added, “We can’t hide from it. We have to deal with it.”
The fact that it was the visitors Fulham who provided one of the Red Devils’ biggest upsets last season will not be lost on ten Hag.
The west London club won 2-1 at Old Trafford in February following an underwhelming display by the home side that saw Fulham take the lead through Calvin Bassey. Harry Maguire levelled matters with one minute of normal time to play, offering United hope of an unlikely and undeserved win, but it was the visitors that came away with all three points after Alex Iwobi settled matters 60 seconds after Maguire’s goal.
That result marked the start of a 17-game run to finish the season during which United recorded only six wins alongside five defeats.
One of those victories was May’s FA Cup final win against rivals Manchester City – a game that may well have saved ten Hag’s job. The Dutchman would have to wait until early July to hear that the season review, by the new owners of football operations at the club INEOS, resulted in a contract extension. The duration leaves question marks as to how wholeheartedly the Jim Ratcliffe-owned group believe in ten Hag and a sharp focus will be on early season results.
Fulham won only two of their final nine Premier League games at the end of last season – suffering four defeats in that run – but finished in a more than respectable 13th spot.
It was their away record that saw them slip from the 10th-placed finish they achieved the year before. That year, only five teams betted Fulham’s seven league wins on the road, and only three teams conceded fewer than Fulham’s 24 on their travels. But last year, life on the road was far more difficult.
United Arab Emirates Dirham Exchange Rate
