Opinion: It’s not too late for Man Utd to admit they made a mistake with Sancho, but Ten Hag needs to go

From being completely out of the Manchester United first-team squad, to bossing a Champions League semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain just a few months later, few could have seen this remarkable comeback from Jadon Sancho coming.

However, one man who should at least have had a slightly better idea of what Sancho would be capable of is Man Utd manager Erik ten Hag, who had worked with him and witnessed him in training for well over a year before the bizarre decision to let him go this January.

Sancho is flourishing in his second spell at Borussia Dortmund, and his man of the match display last night has the unfancied Bundesliga side dreaming of the huge achievement of making this season’s Champions League final.

The more you look at it, the less this looks like United shifting out one of their deadwood players to a European outfit desperate enough to take a gamble on him, and the more it looks like a supremely talented player escaping the shackles of Ten Hag to move up a level and play the kind of football that brings the best out of him.

While Ten Hag perhaps had a case for getting rid of the ageing Cristiano Ronaldo when he did, for United to waste this kind of young talent is inexcusable. Now the decline suffered by Marcus Rashford makes a bit more sense as well. The evidence is stacking up, and there’s no place for Ten Hag to hide.

Sancho transfer blunder shows Ten Hag has to go

Thankfully, it’s not too late for United to admit they got this wrong, with the new ownership perhaps able to step in and offer the 24-year-old another chance to prove himself at Old Trafford, though it surely has to be under a new manager who will nurture him the way Dortmund have.

If INEOS and the new board they’ve brought in have anything about them, they’ll quickly see that Ten Hag is the problem here, with the Dutch tactician simply not looking like the kind of manager who can work with the kinds of players who’ve made United great down the years.

One can only imagine how a young Cristiano Ronaldo, or other mavericks like Eric Cantona would’ve got on under Ten Hag – players who were born to express themselves and get fans off their seats simply seem to shrink under this manager.

While there can of course be no excuse for poor professionalism or a lack of effort, there are also some players you can relax your rules for. Rio Ferdinand has publicly revealed before that Carlos Tevez put in next to no effort in training, but the great Sir Alex Ferguson had the sense to know that some players were worth indulging.

Sancho might not ever end up being quite in that category, but at the same time it’s clear there’s a far better player there than we’ve seen at United. A performance in a big game like this is absolutely damning for Ten Hag and his methods, and the club’s experiment with the former Ajax boss needs to end as soon as possible.