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Marcus Rashford has praised the mentality and mindset of his manager, Erik ten Hag, whom he believes is “fully dedicated to winning at all costs.”
Speaking to Gary Neville in an interview, Rashford was effusive in his praise of the approach Ten Hag has sought to establish at Manchester United:
“When [the manager] came in, I didn’t hear him speak about getting into the top four once, he just wanted to win trophies and he’s got that mentality. It didn’t matter what competition we were playing in, he wanted to try and win everything.”
United would lift the Carabao Cup last season, defeating Newcastle 2-0 in the final. It constituted the first piece of silverware the club has won in six years and illustrates the winning mentality, regardless of the competition, which Ten Hag has attempted to cultivate amongst his new squad.
They would fall short a few months later, however, losing in gut-wrenching fashion to Manchester City in the FA Cup final; a loss which contributed significantly to City’s treble-winning success. But there exist 115 reasons why no reasonable football fan should take this ‘achievement’ seriously.
A more disappointing exit in the Europa League final to Sevilla, where the players “let themselves down” according to Rashford, will be something Ten Hag “want[s] to address.” This dissatisfaction with loss is a fundamental component of the mentality which drives elite sports stars; the fear of loss is almost a greater motivator than the desire to win.
Ten Hag is evidently taking steps to instil this mentality amongst a squad containing players who have not previously lifted major trophies before.
A further issue within factions of the United squad last season, and beyond, is a pronounced mental fragility when the going gets tough. Catastrophic losses away from home to Manchester City, Brentford, Aston Villa and, particularly, Liverpool displayed these weaknesses in the most public of fashions.
Rashford acknowledges the hurt involved in those defeats, describing there as being “no lower point” in football than going to a rival’s stadium and losing as comprehensively as United did.
But he’s quick to underscore the need to find light amidst a sea of darkness, pointing out that the team would always respond to these embarrassing results with a “bounce back.” Rashford details how “in the games after [these defeats] we always had a good performance and won.” Rocky’s iconic quote about getting hit feels like an apt encapsulation of United last season.
It is undoubtedly a slow and arduous process to improve the mentality of an entire dressing room, despite the presence of individuals with the requisite mindset.
A manager must balance his attention between the collective and the individual, maintaining enough time to focus on specific players. No player is exactly alike and some level of adaptability must be made towards each member of the dressing room to extract the best from them.
Wayne Rooney offered a superb insight into Sir Alex Ferguson’s mastery of this balance, revealing how the manager knew a confrontational approach would draw the best out of the talismanic forward. Ferguson would often direct his infamous “hair dryer” at Rooney, regardless of whether it was warranted, as he was aware it would elicit a positive reaction on the pitch.
A player such as Nani, on the other hand, would cower in the face of negativity and Ferguson accordingly adapted his approach. In fact, Ferguson would often verbally criticise Rooney as a message by proxy to Nani:
“If he did it to another player – for example Nani – he knew he’d lose the player but he just knew the right thing to do. He’d tell me to stop dribbling, aiming it at Nani!”
Ten Hag appears to be adopting a similar approach to Sir Alex in his own unique way; instilling a winning mentality in the dressing room at the same time as focusing on improving his players, both on an individual and collective level.
Rashford confirms this perception:
“At the minute we’ve got a manager that’s fully dedicated to winning at all costs and he wants us to be as best as we can individually and as best as we can be as a team.’
Those words will be music to the ears of United’s fans.