Explaining how Erik ten Hag’s human touch is reviving Manchester United

On Wednesday night, in a moment of genuine emotion for many, Jadon Sancho returned to playing for Manchester United having not featured for the side since October.

Struggles in Jadon Sancho‘s personal life saw his mental state affected, and a deterioration in his form was a direct product of this. Subsequently, he stopped featuring in the side for a while and was not seen in training either.

Most suspected he was either injured or had been dropped by Erik ten Hag for poor form, and many gave up on Sancho entirely, believing that he would never get going for United. Some accused his mentality, his mindset, and his bravery of being the issue. It was in fact his mindset that was holding him back, but not in the way many expected.

Read More: Just how far has Erik ten Hag taken Manchester United this season?

Football fans often speak of mentality as something exclusive to football, forgetting that beneath the footballer is a human being with their own personal life and feelings, very much like ourselves. Personal lives and footballing lives are not separate, they never have been and they never will be.

Sancho was clearly not himself, on the pitch looking like a shell of the player that was once considered second only to the untouchable Kylian Mbappé when it came to young talent, and his social media pages became blacked out with all posts removed and no activity shown. He was soon spotted training on his own in the Netherlands with a set of coaches, whilst many of his teammates and friends were in Qatar representing their nations at the World Cup.

Reports emerged that Ten Hag had given Sancho some time off due to struggles in his personal life, and then sent him to train with some recommended coaches of his away from the spotlight in the Netherlands. This was to allow Sancho some time to focus on his football individually and get into a better space mentally, something that later down the line Ten Hag confirmed.

It is the later down-the-line part that sticks out here. The Dutchman kept things under wraps until it was reported by the media and made common knowledge, keeping his player protected from the media circus and most importantly building a bond based on trust. A stark contrast from his predecessor Ralf Rangnick, who made any and everything going on at the club common knowledge to the entire world almost immediately – including the death of a relative of Sancho’s.

This is not the first thing Ten Hag has dealt with privately either, earlier in the season a tragedy in Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s personal life was not revealed to the media by the Dutchman when quizzed on the player’s absence after a game.

Ten Hag has set a clear precedent that his people come first because those people are what make his players. It is for this reason that every Manchester United player has bought into what he has wanted, the only one who did not is currently playing his football in Saudi Arabia. This has seen some real success stories.

Erik ten Hag inherited a Marcus Rashford who had just come off his worst-ever footballing season and from the outside looked as though he had fallen out of love with the sport.

After being forced to play through injuries for the best part of two years, missing a spot kick in the final of the Euros then being abused for the colour of his skin for it, being mismanaged and losing form and some struggles in his personal life, all whilst taking on the government over free school meals for underprivileged children and seemingly getting more criticism than praise for it, this was understandable. The mental pressure had piled onto him, and many believed United needed to let him go.

From the very first moment he stepped in the door, Erik ten Hag vehemently opposed this notion. He made his belief in Rashford clear to everyone and dismissed any possibility of Rashford being sold under him. Fast forward around seven months and Marcus Rashford is currently one of the most in-form attacking players in world football.

Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial were two players who had complicated relationships with the fanbase. Both had been with the club for years and had periods of genuine world-class quality, but their times with the club had been riddled with inconsistency both on the pitch and off it, those two being other examples of players whose mentalities were questioned by fans.

Now, Shaw comes across as a very mature figure and a genuine leader within United’s squad, with the signing of Tyrell Malacia having pushed him to rediscover his best form. He is a key player for Ten Hag and has even been trusted to play at centre-back in the absence of Lisandro Martínez, doing it well too.

Martial has had a complicated season with injuries and many fans remain unhappy with him, but one thing they cannot fault is that he has shown greater fight and determination than ever before in his career, with Ten Hag speaking about his hunger to play – even revealing he has begged Ten Hag to play him in games where he hasn’t been 100% fit. Ten Hag has strongly backed Martial all along and made his importance clear to media and fans alike.

These are a few examples of where Erik ten Hag’s human touch has turned things around for players, and for all his tactical nous and coaching ability it is being able to get your people on side that makes the biggest difference. He very much seems to have Sancho on side and has managed his situation perfectly so far.

Sancho has had such a sterling career so far that it is easy to forget he is only 22-years-old. When evaluating what he has done so far at such a young age, to question his mentality and bravery as a footballer looks utterly ludicrous. It was his mentality, his bravery that saw him take a risk aged just 17, leaving his home country and everything he had ever known to go to Borussia Dortmund in Germany searching for first-team football, believing he was good enough.

This same mentality saw him become a key player for the German side, racking up at least 20 assists in all competitions for three straight seasons between 2018/19 and 2020/21. In the 2019/20 season, he also hit the 20-goal mark and became one of few players to have ever registered both 20 goals and 20 assists in the same season. Even many of the game’s greatest forwards never achieved this. In the league, he scored 17 and assisted 16, becoming one of a handful of players to both score and assist 15 goals in one of Europe’s top five leagues. It was in March of that year that he left his teenage years behind him.

Sancho had become Dortmund’s talisman, and as their talisman he went away to the Nou Camp in the Champions League in that 19/20 season and stepped up to score an excellent goal. His side may have lost the game, but is this individual act not that of a true footballing Gryffindor? To question Jadon Sancho’s mentality as a footballer is to question everything his career is built on, and there are no questions surrounding this.

When the Englishman took to the pitch on Wednesday night, fans rallied together to roar his name in support after what he had been through in recent months, what he had fought through to get back to that stage. Sancho did not fight this alone, his manager supported him all the way and now that he is back fans can do their bit to support him too. Footballers notice all of these things.

When the mind is not right, when your personal life is in a difficult space, then your professional life is often affected by this too. This is just as true for footballers as it is for any other profession, and Erik ten Hag’s treatment of players as people first has seen him be a success at Manchester United so far. Jadon Sancho is on his road back to being one of the best players in the world, and Erik ten Hag’s handling of the situation has helped to steer him over the bumps, as he has been driving everything good at Manchester United this season.