Ten Hag provided with Man Utd inspiration by Alex Ferguson's Jaap Stam advice

Erik ten Hag has enjoyed a solid start to life as Manchester United manager, but there are still plenty of unresolved issues to be dealt with by the Dutchman.

United have picked up a 4-0 victory against Liverpool in Bangkok and a 4-1 win over Melbourne Victory at the MCG over the past week. Both matches have contained plenty of positives, with Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford back scoring and young players catching the eye. Yet the games have also seen a continuation of the doubt surrounding Harry Maguire.

Upon his arrival as United manager Ten Hag made it clear that Maguire would remain as the club captain. "Harry Maguire is the captain," he said at his first press conference. "I have to get to know all the players, but he's an established captain and he has achieved a lot of success."

Asked about the same topic later on, he reiterated his stance : "I have to repeat: next season is a different season. I think he did a great job, he is a great player. He achieved already a lot. A really good contribution to Manchester United. So I am looking forward to working with him."

Ten Hag has backed Maguire after he endured a poor 2021/22 campaign. But the questions about his place in the side will only increase when Lisandro Martinez completes his £46million transfer from Ajax in the coming days. Martinez will become the only left-footed central defender at the club when he joins, meaning he will be gunning for Maguire's position on the left of central defence.

Maguire's shaky performance in the win over Melbourne victory won't have helped his confidence much after he missed the Liverpool match with a knock. Now might be a good time for the £80m man to take some advice from a former United defender who once found himself in a similar position.

Jaap Stam became the most expensive defender in the world when he joined United from PSV Eindhoven for £10.6m back in 1998. Things did not immediately go to plan for the Dutch centre-back, who struggled up against Nicolas Anelka on his debut, while he won just two of his first five matches.

Stam turned things around to help win the treble in his first season and consolidated his reputation as a safe pair of hands by adding another two league titles in the next two seasons. But when things were difficult in the early days, Stam took advice from his manager, the man who deemed him worth a record transfer fee: Sir Alex Ferguson.

"When you open up the papers after the first few weeks and they're saying you're a waste of money then, of course, it gets to you," Stam told the Off the Ball podcast last year.

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"I spoke to Sir Alex at that time as well and he gave me one piece of advice, which was a very good one, which was 'don't read the newspapers' and that's what I did.

"I put everything aside, everything away and you focus on your football. He told me as well, 'we've seen you play, we know what you can do, we trust you, everybody likes you very much as a player and as a professional. We know what you can give us,' so from that moment you focus on yourself and get your confidence back, then after a couple of weeks everything went how I wanted it to be."

As he gets himself into the swing of things in pre-season, Maguire should follow Ferguson's advice. United have four more friendlies to help the England international get up to speed before opening their Premier League campaign against Brighton on August 7. Maguire should block out all the external noise and focus on making sure of his place under Ten Hag.