Manchester United's hopelessness at West Ham smacks of a managerial endgame for Ten Hag

The Danakil Depression is a plane approximately 125 miles long by 35 miles wide that lies at the northern end of the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia. Formed by the divergence of three tectonic plates in the Horn of Africa, it lies 410 feet below sea level while year-round temperatures make it the hottest place on Earth. Although it was there that the 3.2million-year-old fossil of Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, was discovered in 1974, leading some to suggest it was the cradle of humanity, its salt lakes are now widely considered the most barren place on the planet.

Or at least they were until Saturday when further evidence emerged to suggest the bleakest place on Earth, the environment most devoid of creativity and imagination and hope and joy, is Manchester United. There, too, paleoanthropologists claim, there is fossil evidence of ancient life, glory even, although if there are rare extremophilic microbes, it’s only in the kitchens.

United have gone four games without a goal for the first time since autumn 1992. If the drought continues against Aston Villa on Boxing Day, they’ll have scored less out of five than the club’s hygiene rating. They have won one of their past seven. The last time they lost this many games before Christmas was 1931. But it’s not just about results and statistics; it’s about how drab, how weary, how uninspired they appear. Alejandro Garnacho scuffed a couple of efforts straight at Alphonse Areola and worked a couple of crossing opportunities, and Kobbie Mainoo hit a low grubber the keeper shovelled wide – and that was it.

The oddity of United this season is not so much that they have been bad – that has become familiar enough over the past decade. It’s that they’ve been bad in two completely