When Manchester United appointed the high priest of pressing there was an expectation that by now we would be seeing the fruits of Ralf Rangnick's labour.
There was an acceptance that the turnaround would not be immediate. Rangnick was arriving midway through a congested season and taking over a group of players used to operating on the back foot, but there was still a feeling that he would get there eventually, that there was enough time to see some obvious changes.
In his introductory press conference, the 63-year-old made no secret of his methodology. He said he was "not that far apart from Jurgen [Klopp] in terms of our ideas about a style of football".
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Rangnick knew he couldn't ask the players to deliver things they weren't up to straightaway, but he did reveal what he would like them to become during his interim spell at Carrington.
“I cannot turn the players we have into the pressing monsters I want them to be within two, three or four weeks," he said.
After the passivity of the Solskjaer era, when United were conditioned to play on the counterattack, it was refreshing to think this team were now on the track to adopting a much more modern approach.
But in truth, the closest United came to turning into "pressing monsters" was in Rangnick's first game in charge, the 1-0 win against Crystal Palace. Somewhere along the way, the German has decided that this squad is incompatible with his demands.
To watch United now is to see a team that generally has little interest in pressing at all. Occasionally they take up aggressive positions to try and block passing lanes, but there is little structured pressing going on.
There could be various reasons for that. United's players haven't exactly been enamoured by Rangnick's methods and there was always the obstacle of building a coherent press when the attack is led by a 37-year-old in Cristiano Ronaldo.
These were players not used to such an approach and not signed to play in such a system. If the attack press, it needs the rest of the team to follow it up and that hasn't always been the case.
Looking at the United squad, Fred is by some distance the best presser in it. Bruno Fernandes has the energy to press but can occasionally lose his discipline in doing so. His energy to win the ball back is impressive but he needs to do so within a proper structure.
Rangnick wanted pressing monsters, but in the end, he's barely got pressing pussycats. The interim manager will leave this summer but his methods will be taken on by Erik ten Hag.
The two managers share some similarities and a commitment to an aggressive approach off the ball, trying to win possession back high up the pitch is one of them.
Rangnick might have accepted defeat in his attempts to get a full press out of this group of players, but his stay in the dugout was only ever temporary. Ten Hag won't compromise on his principles and if there are players in that squad who don't fit into his pressing ideals, then this time they will be the casualties, not the manager.
If Ten Hag is to instil a high press into United in his first year in charge then this will need to be a successful transfer window. A younger striker and a holding midfielder are high on the wishlist and both will need to be ready to plug and play in an aggressive system.
The 52-year-old will need time to turn this team into a fully-fledged pressing unit, but that is clearly the route United need to take and by deciding the current Ajax manager is the best fit for the job, is clearly a process that football director John Murtough is committed to.
A two-and-a-half-week pre-season tour will certainly help Ten Hag implement his ideals, a block of high-intensity training that was denied to Rangnick. Those sessions in Thailand and Australia will be crucial to getting United ready to take on the philosophy of their new manager, but it will be a process also made a lot smoother by some new arrivals in the transfer window, players who are ready to take on these instructions.
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