Ten Hag saga is major black eye for Ineos as United's brand is dying

Ratcliffe now has a hugely important decision if his club are to stop being a fading heritage exhibition

- Barney Ronay

Well, that's finally happened then. On, now, to the next glorious two-year plan. The last few months of Erik ten Hag's time at Manchester United have felt at times like a throwback to the dog days of the Soviet Union, when the Secretary of the Central Committee always seemed to be either dead or dying, wheeled out grudgingly to oversee a parade every three months, the human face of this vast, dying red bureaucracy.

As of yesterday afternoon we finally have clarity. The latest man in black is no more. That frowning bald Dutchman with a way of standing on the Old Trafford touchline that conveyed a strangely tender kind of pathos, a man to whom the world is simply doing things, will now receive the large payoff governed by an insane two-year contract signed this summer, at a point when he was already just a pair of legs in a suit.

Is this the worst United sacking yet? Does it, at least, feel epic, an Event Sacking? Not so much. And this is perhaps the greatest achievement of Ten Hag's time and more vitally the early days of Ineos. Between them these two entities have managed to transform United - who for all their flaws are above all messy and sexy and loud - into something glacial, Soviet, and weirdly dull. It seems boasting about winning the League Cup will do that to you in the end.

Ten Hag aside, the last few months of drift have been a disaster for that most vital of things, the brand, which for the first time feels a little shrunken and incidental. Above all this has been a major black eye for Ineos, which has handled the succession clumsily, and which is, so early in its time in charge, still in the process of revealing itself and its capacities.