Erik ten Hag and Arne Slot have been by no means buddies – they usually’re about to turn out to be enemies

They aren’t buddies, in response to Arne Slot. “Mates is somebody you see so much and exit with for dinner with,” mentioned the Liverpool supervisor. Erik ten Hag doesn’t belong in that class. Their relationship, Slot claimed, is as “good and regular as with different managers”. However a rivalry has been renewed; it may not be personal between them, nevertheless it tends to be between their golf equipment.

They’ve been on the two greatest groups of their native Netherlands; now they’re on the two most profitable ever in England. It was Ajax in opposition to Feyenoord. Now it Manchester United versus Liverpool.

Ten Hag is each the extra established and the person whose place has been in higher peril. He has received two trophies in England. He needed to wait a few weeks after the second, Might’s FA Cup, to find he wasn’t being dismissed. United without end really feel a piece in progress, whereas regressing final season to their lowest-ever Premier League end.

Slot, he suggests, has a greater inheritance. Jurgen Klopp left a workforce who got here third and who sustained a title problem till April. Certainly, their probabilities of the quadruple have been solely ended by United on the finish of March within the FA Cup. Liverpool completed 22 factors above United final season, although that’s partly an indictment of Ten Hag. They were the last Premier League club to make a signing this summer. “It’s tough for us to make the workforce even stronger,” mentioned Slot, however United appear to have a everlasting want for extra gamers.

“Liverpool, it is clear, they’re in a distinct section of the lifecycle,” mentioned Ten Hag. “They’ve a workforce that’s mature, gamers who’ve been taking part in for a very long time collectively and who’re very skilled. I believe the gamers, the partnerships, the relationships in that workforce are very clear and that’s what he inherited. That has been constructed over the previous years. We have now way more of a combination and must construct a brand new workforce.”

Ten Hag suggests he bought the tougher job in taking on at United. His interim predecessor, Ralf Rangnick, mentioned they required “open-heart surgical procedure”. Ten Hag has referred to the “no-good” tradition earlier than his time. In its method, United would be the job of a lifetime.

“That was one of many causes I wished to come back right here, to have this problem,” he defined. “I knew beforehand that this was essentially the most tough factor I’d ever do in my life, to come back right into a membership the place there have been plenty of issues, which we needed to remedy.

“I inherited a historical past from six years of no trophies that meant the dressing room and the qualities weren’t proper. So we needed to construct, we needed to assemble, to carry out and to deliver up a better degree. We did this with transfers, however we additionally did it by bringing academy gamers into the workforce.”

These youthful gamers, resembling Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo, have supplied among the best endorsement of Ten Hag’s administration. But transfers have come at a price: the arrival of Manuel Ugarte from Paris Saint-Germain will take his spending to round £600m, with £200m of it this summer season. The figures for Slot are altogether smaller: his first signing, the £25m goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili, was loaned again to Valencia, so it is just the £10m winger Federico Chiesa who will be available this season.

Ten Hag has noticed tactical shifts below the brand new regime at Anfield, however Slot is working with Klopp’s gamers. Have been all of them match, his fellow Dutchman may decide a United XI consisting solely of his personal signings and have a number of extra on the bench. “What you see now’s that we have now introduced new gamers in, many younger gamers, and we’re in a lifecycle from the beginning,” Ten Hag added. “We’re nonetheless within the transition stage, we have now younger gamers and now we have now to assemble a workforce from it for the longer term.”

The counter-argument is that United can’t stay in transition without end. There are, however, authentic causes to argue they’re there now, with the arrival behind the scenes of a brand new set of powerbrokers this 12 months, whether or not Sir Jim Ratcliffe or Sir Dave Brailsford, Omar Berrada or Dan Ashworth – and with new voices in recruitment.

Nevertheless, if Ten Hag’s logic is that United are a workforce for the longer term and Liverpool a aspect for now, their common ages this season are 25.9 and 26.4 respectively. And there is usually a sense that, like many enemies, United and Liverpool have sure similarities. Liverpool have continuity within the workforce however a brand new face within the dugout, and United have the identical supervisor however an ever-changing solid of gamers.

Ten Hag contrived to have a profitable document in opposition to Klopp together with a 7-0 defeat. Now it’s an all-Dutch battle, the place Ten Hag has implied that Slot begins with a bonus.

Manchester United v Liverpool kicks off at 4pm on Sunday 1 September, protection begins on Sky Sports activities Premier League at 3.30pm