• Football department scrutinising style of play
• Manager safe for now with injuries and signings in mind

Erik ten Hag’s game model has to start impressing Manchester United’s Ineos-led football department or he is in danger of being removed, with the style of play this season viewed as underwhelming. United entered the international break having won once and lost twice in the Premier League in a disappointing start.

There is recognition inside the club that Ten Hag has been undermined by injuries and needs time to integrate his five summer signings, but also serious concern regarding how he sets up the side. The Dutchman’s game model is being scrutinised by United’s football department, which is overseen by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and led by Dan Ashworth, the sporting director, and Jason Wilcox, the technical director. A major part of Wilcox’s role is to monitor how the first team play.

• Ashworth clear on stance before Liverpool defeat
• Berrada ‘convinced we’re going to be successful’

Erik ten Hag has received public ­backing from the two most senior Manchester United executives hired by Ineos this summer, as questions swirl again regarding the manager’s Old Trafford future.

United confirmed in June that Ten Hag would be retained after they considered several other candidates, but the team have three points from their first three games after losing against Brighton and Liverpool in consecutive matches.

Casemiro display against Liverpool was painful, but the blame for United’s early season struggles sits with an incoherent structure

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In his beginning is his end; now the night falls. Two years ago, before their third game of the season, against Liverpool, having lost one of the games they’d played 2-1 to Brighton, Manchester United presented Casemiro before an adoring crowd at Old Trafford. At the weekend, before their third game of the season, against Liverpool, having lost one of the games they’d played 2-1 to Brighton, Manchester United withdrew Casemiro before a despairing crowd at Old Trafford. Two years ago, United won 2-1; on Sunday, they lost 3-0, and it could have been a lot worse.

It was, frankly, painful to watch: a player who once commanded games, who has won four Champions Leagues, been integral to one of the most successful sides in history, reduced to a player so devoid of confidence even the basics looked a challenge. The early signs this season had been promising. There was a sense that Casemiro was sharper again, that the concerns about his fitness that had plagued last season might have been surmounted. But on Sunday his pass accuracy was just 73%, way off what is acceptable for a defensive midfielder, and his errors cost the opening two goals.

And yet there is a context. Eleven minutes in to the second half, Kobbie Mainoo was dispossessed leading to Liverpool’s third. Manuel Ugarte, who was presented before kick-off after his £42m ($55m) move from Paris Saint-Germain, must have wondered what he’s got himself into. The United holding position is like the Siege Perilous in Arthurian legend; eventually one will come who is worthy of achieving the Grail but until then whoever takes that position is doomed.

It’s not just about individuals. United now seem to be in a similar position to the pre-Mikel Areta Arsenal. The structure has failed and so hopes are placed in individuals. Which is daft enough when the player involved is as talented as Mesut Özil, but eventually you end up believing Nicolas Pépé is the answer to your prayers. Ugarte may turn out to be an upgrade on Casemiro, but no one player can ever be the answer.

Ugarte will need a better system around him and that’s where the focus begins to shift and the camera comes to rest on Erik ten Hag. Even with allowances for the position they inherited, how can it be that, three games into his reign at Anfield, Arne Slot has created a more coherent midfield than Ten Hag, now in his third year at Old Trafford, has managed. How can it be that, of all the former Ajax players in the pitch on Sunday, the best was Ryan Gravenberch?

In this dramatisation of the 1958 Munich air disaster, the author’s previous brushes with controversy seem to have stifled artistic licence

You could see Peace’s new book as his third in a series of novels centred on football bosses – the Manageriad? – after The Damned Utd (about Brian Clough) and Red or Dead (Bill Shankly). It unfolds more than three months after the Munich air disaster of 1958, when the plane carrying Matt Busby’s Manchester United home from a European
Cup tie in Belgrade crashed after a stop to refuel, killing 20 of the 44
people on board, with three more dying later in hospital.

Writing in the third person but from the point of view of dozens of those involved – players, journalists, families – Peace dramatises the crash, its aftermath and how United, then reigning champions, managed to complete the remaining third of the season under Busby’s assistant, Jimmy Murphy, miraculously reaching the FA Cup final. It’s a tale of duty, guilt and blame, with the day-to-day commitments on the pitch and boardroom fulfilled amid the burying of the dead and nagging questions about why the plane crashed. A voice inside the head of goalkeeper Harry Gregg, tormented after saving fellow passengers from the wreckage, asks why no one on board spoke up about not taking off in bad weather. “Because like all people,” he replies, “we’re afraid to lose face in front of our friends.”

It’s a stirring proposition but there are doubts about Peace’s handling from the start, with an on-the-nose epigraph from James Joyce’s The Dead introducing a prologue in which the United players, a month before the crash, enter the pitch at Arsenal in white away kit, emerging “out of the tunnel like a ghost train”, a line I winced to read – and that’s before the first line proper, in which Bobby Charlton’s mum is worrying
that “something was wrong, she just didn’t know what”. Her friend agrees: “Can you not sense there’s something in the air … ?”, just as Peace cuts to the wreckage.

Yet the fault in Munichs isn’t artistic licence – rather, its lack. After The Damned Utd, former Leeds midfielder John Giles sued Peace for his portrayal as “a scheming leprechaun” (Giles’s words), and it’s hard not to feel that Peace has been wary of taking liberties ever since, portraying Shankly from the outside in Red or Dead and doing similar here. One funeral procession after another is described via names of roads on the route; unremarkable action is narrated to imply troubled psychological states, as when we see Murphy in his garden “out in the cold, damp morning, pacing up and down… holding his rosary, its beads and its crucifix in his hand, rubbing at the figure and face of Christ on the Cross as he paced, as he prayed, first asking for forgiveness, then asking for comfort, comfort for others, asking for strength, strength for others, then strength for himself, the strength to help others, the strength to go on, to somehow go on.”

Jack Grealish on the comeback trail, Iliman Ndiaye offers Everton hope and Declan Rice appears unruffled

While Mikel Arteta fumed at the perceived injustice in Declan Rice’s sending off against Brighton, there was a far more measured response from the England midfielder. Despite admitting he had been “shocked” to see the referee, Chris Kavanagh, show him a second yellow card for obstructing Joël Veltman from taking a free kick, Rice acknowledged that a first dismissal on his 245th Premier League appearance had cost his team victory as they head into the first international break already playing catchup to Manchester City. “I just wanted to apologise to my teammates, which I’ve done, and to the fans,” he said. “When you get sent off, it’s never nice, you get a sense of guilt over you, and I was lucky that my teammates really helped me out and we didn’t lose the game. I’ll learn from it.” Ed Aarons

Match report: Arsenal 1-1 Brighton

Match report: West Ham 1-3 Manchester City

Match report: Manchester United 0-3 Liverpool

Match report: Newcastle 2-1 Tottenham

Match report: Ipswich 1-1 Fulham

Match report: Everton 2-3 Bournemouth

Match report: Chelsea 1-1 Crystal Palace

With Marcus Rashford and Casemiro struggling, the same worrying questions are back for Manchester United’s Ineos regime

Already, the new Erik ten Hag/Ineos project is on the back foot. This 3-0 shellacking by Liverpool could have been far more humiliating – and damaging. Two defeats from three Premier League outings is a dismal way to sign off before the international break, as Ten Hag and company seek to regroup a mere 16 days after the season’s start.

Trying to write this collapse off as a blip is fanciful because on show was a failure in basic competence, from front to back, epitomised by the catastrophes engineered by a hapless Casemiro that led to goals.

• ‘It’s my last year in the club. I just want to enjoy it’
• Forward’s current deal at Anfield expires next summer

Mohamed Salah appeared to plead for a new Liverpool contract by stating “nobody in the club” has discussed a fresh deal with him and saying “it’s my last year in the club” after orchestrating their 3-0 victory at Manchester United on Sunday.

The 32-year-old forward scored one and set up the other two for Luis Díaz as Erik ten Hag’s team suffered a damaging defeat. Salah said: “To be fair I was coming to the game [as if] it could be the last time [playing at Old Trafford]. Nobody in the club has talked to me about contracts. It is not up to me, it is up to the club.”

Arne Slot steered Liverpool to a comfortable win, with Mohamed Salah adding to Luis Díaz’s goals

“In terms of gamechangers,” says Rick Harris, “United do have Christian Eriksen, who has probably changed more games than Nunez, Gakpo, Elliott and Endo put together.” Ha, good point. With Mount injured and McTominay sold, he may now be Bruno Fernandes’s deputy as the No 10 – and he was sensational in that slot for Denmark against Slovenia at the Euros.

“A lot of chat about Liverpool’s contract situation,” says DDJ Stephens, “a lot about how Slot’s style is similar but more calm and patient... all good, but why is nobody talking about Nunez not getting any game time under Slot yet, despite his professed desire to make him the big nine for Liverpool?” I think he did come on for the last 20 minutes or so against Brentford, but point taken.

It was difficult to imagine a more perfect afternoon for Arne Slot – or a more harrowing one for Erik ten Hag who, just three games into the Premier League season, is back in familiar territory; the vultures circling, his credentials as the Manchester United manager under yet more scrutiny.

Slot had won his first two games in charge of Liverpool – against Ipswich and Brentford – but this was supposed to be an acid test. It was not, United so obliging, their first-half woes epitomised by a terrible performance from Casemiro. Things did not get any better thereafter, the only consolation being that they avoided a real pasting, one to rival the 7-0 at Anfield from two seasons ago. Liverpool had the chances to rack up a similar number of goals.