Manchester United fire Erik ten Hag in private, according to reports.

Reports say that Manchester United doesn’t want to fire Erik ten Hag, even though the team has had a terrible start to the season.

The Dutchman has been in charge of the team for only two wins in their first seven league games, and United still hasn’t won a game in European play. Ten Hag led the club to two much-needed draws in the last week, even though fans were getting more and more angry.

There are new rumors that Thomas Tuchel might be hired as the new manager at Old Trafford, but the club’s leaders are not eager to get rid of Ten Hag. The former Ajax manager’s contract was extended for another year in July, which gave him the freedom to hire a lot of new people and change how his backroom staff was set up.

CBS News’ Rob Dawson says that people in charge at Manchester United have told each other behind closed doors that they “really don’t want to sack” Ten Hag. Since they swore allegiance to the controversial head coach in the summer, it would be “embarrassing” to break up with them in less than two months of the new season.

After United’s awful 3-0 loss to Tottenham at the end of September, the board secretly said they were “very calm” and “didn’t want to make a knee-jerk reaction” about Ten Hag’s job. Since then, the Red Devils have had two very different draws. The first was a crazy 3-3 tie with Porto, and the second was a goalless draw with Aston Villa on Sunday.

David Ornstein of The Athletic said the same thing on NBC Sports: “Hope they don’t get to that point.” Ornstein, on the other hand, shot down the idea that United couldn’t afford to fire Ten Hag.

To get out of Ten Hag’s new, longer deal, the Premier League giants would have to pay a compensation fee of around £17.5m. This is a lot more than they would have had to pay before his summer extension. But no one thinks that spending that much would put United’s financial fair play standing at risk.