BBC presenter Gary Lineker has criticised Manchester United head coach Erik ten Hag for his man-management.

The Dutchman has questioned the attitude of certain players in TV interviews and Lineker believes the poor performances we are seeing from the Red Devils is a direct result of ten Hag upsetting some members of the first-team squad. Speaking on The Rest is Football podcast, he said:

“It’s hard to tell with these player power things but it felt like they down tooled a little bit at the weekend against Newcastle, that’s for sure. They didn’t exactly put too much effort in. I mean sometimes that can be confused with a lack of confidence and when you are losing your way on the pitch. But generally, it is the manager that suffers under these circumstances. But talking about player power, certainly in the modern age, managing has changed.”

“You have to have the players on board, you can’t just go around b******ing players, in fact, it was always a no-go when you go public with players. I think that is the one area that I would criticise Ten Hag a little bit – I don’t think he’s handled situations brilliantly with various players. He’s had a lot to deal with, but he’s repeatedly been critical openly and publicly and that is the one thing, even when I played, that was unacceptable. You could take any type of b******ing in the dressing room, but anything a manager does to put you down publicly is a no-no.”

Ten Hag has made a rod for his own back

The departure of Cristiano Ronaldo, the falling out with Jadon Sancho, stripping Harry Maguire of the captaincy and his strained relationship with Raphael Varane can all be looked at in different ways.

A more positive outlook would be that ten Hag is enforcing his will on the squad and removing players he feels he can’t work with, weeding out the bad apples.

On the other hand, you could easily see it as a manager who has regular personality clashes and struggles to manage a squad full of elite players.

United are standing by their manager

Despite reports that ten Hag has lost half of the dressing room, the board have given the 53-year-old their backing.

If United put in another bad display against Chelsea on Wednesday night, though, more questions will be asked about the manager’s position.