Ralf Rangnick's time at Manchester United has come to a premature end and the players at Old Trafford won't necessarily be sad to see him go.
The German took over on an interim basis from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in December and was poised to take up a consultancy role following this season. Those plans have been axed and the tactician will now go his own way having accepted the job as Austria's manager.
Rangnick was never shy to speak his mind and some will have been fearing the messages he may have passed on to Erik ten Hag after witnessing first hand the worst United season of the Premier League era. The 63-year-old may have had a sky high reputation in his homeland, but his CV did leave himself open to criticism.
United's squad haven't covered themselves in glory this term. They began referring to Rangnick as "specs" having also coined nicknames for his assistants earlier in the year. American Chris Armas was known as "Ted Lasso" with his methods a cause of frustration.
It is claimed that those at the club didn't like Rangnick's home truths. The MEN were told he "started dropping bombs" when he eluded to the size of the job that was required at Old Trafford as he hinted at mass changes within the squad. “You don’t even need glasses to see and analyse where the problems are,” he said in April.
“Now it’s about how do we solve them? It’s not enough to do some minor amendments – cosmetic things. In medicine you would say that this is an operation of the open heart. If this happens and everyone has realised that this has to happen and if people want to work together then it makes sense and I believe it doesn’t take two or three years to change those things. This can happen within one year."
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That message did not go down well whilst Marcus Rashford was reportedly among those who struggled with Rangnick's feedback. The England forward didn't like his criticism and was handed just nine league starts under the German as his form dipped notably.
Ten Hag's first press conference suggested there were doubts about Rangnick's position going forward. The Dutchman gave little away and knows full well he needs to put his stamp on things early on. When asked if he was okay with the German reprising a role at Old Trafford he simply said - "That's on the club."
Less than a week later though it has been decided that Rangnick's new role with Austria "would make it hard to spend the time working for United that was previously anticipated".
